She wondered why he hadn't taken it, or if he had simply emptied the contents at some point when she hadn't noticed. But that was unlikely.
The bag was, indeed, still full of every manner of knives and swords, mace and, even still, the crossbow she'd had a hard time resisting, last evening.
Realizing she might well have to defend herself, if those two guards were overcome, she set about hiding the smaller weapons about the room. Blades under the pillows, a mace under the bed, swords leaned casually, as they might be in a warrior's tent, along the walls, anywhere she thought they would be easy to get to, if or when she needed to. She would have the element of surprise, of course. No heathen villagers would think that there would be a woman in this tent, much less, one who knew how to defend herself.
She could still hear the clank of sword fighting just outside the tent, but it was nearer now, and, for a moment, she was awash in a great wave of homesickness. She always associated those sounds with her brothers, Persis, the eldest, and her favorite, in particular.
But she quickly shook herself out of her emotional reverie and back into the real world, where it was very likely her life was in grave danger. She hunkered down behind one of the tables she'd tipped over as cover, off to one side, where she wouldn't be in the line of sight of anyone who stormed in, clutching the loaded crossbow, as well as a handful of arrows for it. There was a sword at her feet, and knives for throwing – not that either was going to be easy to use, with her wrists caught together as they were, but she was more than prepared to go down fighting.
Chapter Nine
A long while later, when she was just about to peep out of the tent flap again, to see what was going on, it opened, and she tensed, prepared to die in defense of her life, but it was a familiar face, rather than a bloodlust bent warlord that entered.
Stohsz was in a hurry – they needed to move very quickly and get on the road before the enemy realized what they'd done, but the tent was curiously vacant, and he frowned, wondering if his little bird had finally flown the coop. "Avette?" he called, scanning for that familiar crown of hair.
She came out from behind her hiding place. The butt of the crossbow he had deliberately left, along with a lot of other weapons in the bag in his tent – in case things had gone badly, and he and, what was left of his men, had to make a last stand here, in her defense, was nestled against her shoulder, like a long lost lover. He wasn't quite sure how many men would have joined him in what would have probably been a suicide mission, but he knew at least that Tseugot would have – they were as brothers, although they were of no known relation. But the others were just as likely to cut and run, even knowing that, if he survived, he would hunt them down, like dogs, and kill them, one by one, if necessary.
As if they had all the time in the world, he laid down his sword and stretched in front of her, although he was careful not to get too close – a female with a weapon should never be considered trustworthy, although he had to admit to himself that he was impressed with her impromptu preparations. He could see how she'd carefully littered various weapons about the tent and would bet that the bed contained even more of them, and that was a smart move on her part. If he and his men hadn't succeeded in what they needed to do, she could have died fighting or killed herself with one of them, either would have been preferable to what the enemy would have done to her, if they'd gotten their hands on her.
An unfavorable comparison rose in his mind between what he'd been doing to her, for these past long months, and what he knew they would have done, but he dismissed it entirely. There was no comparison in his mind. She was alive and healthy with him, even fulfilled, as her hair proclaimed to everyone. With them, she would have been dead inside of five minutes or less.
If she was lucky.
"Sir, are you ready?" Tseugot barreled into the tent without the usual courtesies, coming to a full stop as he saw that his commander was being held at bay, by his slave, of all things.
Stohsz replied, without removing his eyes from Avette's. "Give me a minute, Lieutenant."
The younger man turned to go, then reconsidered and stopped at the flap, turning to say, "Can I assist, sir?"
"Did I ask for your help?"
That was all his second needed to get the hell out of there before one of the weapons lying around was turned on him. If anyone could handle an outraged woman – lowborn, highborn or in between – it was Stohsz.
He leaned casually against one of the makeshift tables that held the maps he had been studying of the area. "Put the weapon down, Avette, before you get yourself into more trouble than you're already in."
"You risked my life by using me as a decoy, parading me around in all of those jewels and all of that gold. You let it be known that you had all these riches with you – including me – and lay in wait for them."
It was the closest thing to a smile she'd seen from him. "Not quite, but mostly right. You were never in any real danger." He looked at her seriously, and she knew he was telling the truth. "I would never allow that. But I knew that if I waved a beautiful woman, heavily decorated in precious stones and gold around, one of the nearby villages would be desperate enough to try to raid us for one or the other or both. And while all of their sound men were here, dealing with the fact that what they thought would be a defenseless camp, after we left so noisily, wasn't so much, we raided their truly defenseless town."
Avette wasn't sure whether she should still be angry or not, and while she was pondering it, he knocked the crossbow out of her arms and into his. His last move – she knew from her own training – should have been to reverse the weapon and knock her in the head with the butt of it – if he didn't want to use it to kill her outright. But he didn't do it. Instead, he tied her to the center pole of the tent and gathered up most of their things – which were pretty much all his – grabbed her and jog trotted them both to the horses. This time, someone else was riding the beautiful mount she'd come in on, and she was up in front of Stohsz.
As the dregs of the soldiers knocked down camp as best they could, then high tailed it out of there themselves, Stohsz and a small cadre of them headed for home as fast as the best horses he owned could take them. He knew backwoods trails that no one else did, from raids he had gone on with his father and grandfather, and although all of the doubling back and obscuring their trail took them a little longer than he would have liked, it also made him feel better about Avette's safety.
It had been the best raid of his career, and it could all be put down to her presence. They waited at the gates for the rest of his men, because he refused to enter the city gates without every one of them being present to receive the accolades. They had all earned it just as much as he had, and, in fact, one of the things his men liked the best about him was that they rode up front – he was not the first of them through the gates, but rather the last. When, finally, he rode victoriously into town, behind his men and his enemy's horses, weighed down by the sheer volume of booty he had brought back, the entire population turned out to chant his praises, even his father.
Stohsz swung down from his horse, taking Avette with him, to bow low before his father. "My father, we return with untold treasure."
"I can see that, my son."
"And my scairn is the reason we were so successful. She was the gentle lure that brought our enemies unknowingly to their deaths on the ends of our swords."
The crowd gasped in shock and horror, and then buzzed with the thought of it. A slave helped on a raid! It was unthinkable!
Kurszen was wise enough to admit defeat when it stared him in the face, with those bright green eyes of hers, nodding sagely in agreement. "It seems to me, my son, that you had all the treasure you needed before you left, although you don't seem to put much value on it. Perhaps that is why you haven't been able to give me the most precious tribute of all."
Frowning, Stohsz bowed his head as his father passed by him to take Avette's hand. "As my son has not seen fit to do it, I guess I shall have to go o
With that, he offered Avette his elbow and escorted her into his palace on the royal arm, leaving the prince literally in the dust.
* * *
In the days that followed, Avette's life changed completely, yet again. She was brought to live in luxury within the palace walls, which wasn't quite as nice as what she had grown up with, but was much more luxurious than how she had lived with the prince, to say nothing of the freedom. She could come and go from her rooms – she had a good sized apartment of her own, complete with a large sitting room, a private receiving room, den, kitchen and large bedroom, and Kurszen had given her leave to decorate any way she liked.
The first time she ventured out by herself was nerve-wracking, even though she was still not entirely by herself. The man who would have been her father-in-law was almost as overprotective as his son was, and he had asked, very prettily, if she would be willing to soothe an old man's nerves and only go out with an armed escort and in the company of the lady's maid he had allowed her to choose. She had picked Sita out of the candidates, because she was already familiar to her, since she couldn't have her old Lilta here, she supposed.
Of course, she had agreed to his restrictions, especially since they were so much more lenient than what she was used to from a Kohnzi man.
She did her best to ignore her nervousness and fear, as she strode down the market road for the first time as a free woman, in beautifully made clothes that highlighted her beauty, her hair up for the first time in more than a year, and it having assumed a more neutral, and much less embarrassing, yellow blonde color. Her eyes, that had been an angry green just before she had been freed, were back to a more serene robin's egg blue.
Her appearance at the market caused an uproar that no one was prepared for. The people descended on her, and at first, she wanted to shrink back from them, thinking they wanted to hurt her, but she forced herself to meet them boldly, her back straight and her head high. The guards had gone on alert, immediately, and tried to keep the crowd from surrounding her, but there were too many citizens and nowhere near enough guards.
Before things descended into further chaos, Avette tapped one of the guards, whose sword was drawn and at the ready, on the shoulder and asked him to step aside. While he was torn between whether he should obey her, or not, she slipped easily by him, to stand before a large group of people she thought probably wanted to tear her from limb to limb. They certainly hadn't been any too taken with her while she was being paraded around in front of them by their prince.
But things had changed since then. She had been a key part of one of the most successful raids in Kohnzi history, and her reputation was sterling. All they seemed to want to do was what they'd always wanted – to touch her, mostly her hair. She did her best to greet and smile at all of them, bending down to talk to the children, in particular, softly or let them kiss her cheek. One of them handed her a bunch of flowers, and soon, everyone was giving her samples of what they sold or made, so much so that her retinue ended up being donkey labor and carrying all of the gifts.
Finally, embarrassed by their generosity, she spoke up quietly, so that they had to lean in to hear her, saying that, although she appreciated their hospitality, that she couldn't possibly use everything that she had been given, and saying that she hoped that they wouldn't mind if some of it was donated to the poorest of their poor.
That just seemed to make them want to give her even more.
Her followers hampered her progress around the market. But she went to every stall and shook hands with every owner, sampling foods here and wares there, until she heard an unsettled hush fall over the crowd as she was turned towards them, and when she turned back to see what had hushed them, she found herself face to chest with the prince.
Avette felt as if she'd been punched in the heart – and other places. Her mouth went dry, and her heart beat so hard that she was sure everyone around her could see it, especially him.
He knew her too well not to notice how disconcerted she became in front of him.
Mindful that everyone was watching everything they did and hanging on their every word, she didn't curtsey, which she probably should have, but murmured, "My Lord."
Stohsz reached for a hand she had not offered, pressing his lips to the back of it and boldly touching his tongue to her skin before withdrawing, as if he hadn't done anything untoward, murmuring in a tone that was unmistakably wry, "My Lady."
He put undue emphasis on the word "my" that had her pursing her lips at him.
It was all too reflective of what she had sighed, on entirely too many occasions, when in his arms, in the throes of passion. And right then and there, the very second he'd touched her and set the rest of her to blushing painfully, so, too, did her hair, although her eyes belayed that telltale sign by becoming a sharp, bright emerald green.
Stohsz, like everyone else, was so mesmerized by the changes in her that broadcast her feelings, he simply stood there like a dolt. Avette skirted around him – doing her best to ignore him and what had just happened – as she continued meeting everyone she could.
Of course, word traveled fast, and when she returned to the palace, she noticed – while trying not to – that he was not far behind her, although their ways separated when she went to her own rooms to flop down on her bed and do her best not to cry herself into oblivion.
A while later, the king summoned her, dismayed to find his son there, too.
He bade her sit down and saw to her comfort, then came right to the point. "We are in a bit of a quandary about you, Avette, since you are not married to my son, yet you are...were...involved with him for quite some time. As much as you might like to return there, we would not like to insult your father or your people, as that move may be interpreted."
Avette surprised them both by stating, "I have no particular desire to go back there. If I did, I should be subject to my father again, and, having become an adult woman…" Her eyes very carefully did not stray to the prince's when she said those words. "I have no wish to live that way. If you would like me to leave, I could, once…"
"Gods above, no, child! We wouldn't want to lose our heroine, now would we?" He reached out to pat her hand. "Besides, you are a tonic for me. If I weren't already married myself, I'd give my son a run for his money, let me tell you."
Avette wasn't sure whether to be appalled or flattered by the compliment. Either way, it was a bizarre thought.
"As you two already...know each other, in a way, it is my feeling that it would be better to formalize your arrangement and get on with producing heirs."
That had Avette out of her chair and halfway across the room before he could finish the sentence.
"I can well understand just how distasteful you might find the idea, my girl, but it does make the most sense, don't you agree? And you are no longer a scairn. You would retain your apartment here, and the two of you need only see each other for…" The old man hesitated a long time before continuing, "Conjugal visits."
"Father, might we have a moment to discuss this in private, please?"
Before he so much as moved, Kurszen asked of Avette, "Do you consent to be alone with him, m'dear?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very well, then." He gave his son a stern look. "I don't expect so much as a hair to be out of place when I'm back. Mark my words, boy."
His father had been a most formidable warrior in his time, and Stohsz treated the warning as gravely as if a man his age had issued it, answering respectfully, "Yes, sir."
To her great surprise, he wasn't on her as soon as the door closed behind his father. Instead, he remained in his chair, his back to where she was standing by a window.
"My father doesn't understand our relationship."
Avette snorted. "Neither do I, but that doesn't much matter now."
"You're going to reject his idea?"
"Even if I didn't, it wouldn't be the same between us."
He caught that barely noticeable note of wistfulness in her tone and held onto it with both hands, although he didn't tip his hand in the least, remaining right where he was.
"It wouldn't have to be different."
"It already is. I'm a princess, not a slave."
He took a long moment before replying in that deep, rumbling tone she recognized so well, "You are what I say you are, regardless of what my father might do or say. He can wrap things up as nicely as he wants to, to help him accept them. He can give you the whole damn tribe if he likes, make you his heir apparent. That wouldn't change who or what you are to me."
He couldn't see it, but he knew that the fact that he had even touched on that unmentionable subject of the word he had – with painful accuracy – used to describe her, not long after she became his, had stiffened her back.
Since he had been so long without her – not that it had been years – it had barely been weeks, but that was weeks too long for him – his attitudes had undergone a bit of a change. "We can be married. Or not. I don't much care. We can be parents or not. Again, I don't much care. I can rule, we can rule together, or you can rule. I don't care."
He rose and came to stand behind her, drawing her back, away from the window and into his arms. "The only thing I care about is having you naked, beneath me, whenever I want. There are several scores that want settling between us, and I intend to take every one of them out of your hide, one way or the other. We might as well make our parents happy and wrap it up all nice and legal, but none of that is going to change what we both know about each other. None of that is going to save you, when we're alone together in our own home."
-->