In a Wolf's Eyes

by A. Katie Rose

  Rygel flipped the lad a silver coin. “Rub them down and feed them well, boy.”

  The boy nodded without speaking, pocketing the coin without looking at it.

  Through too many years of habit, I kept my eyes averted. Slaves could not look a free man in the face, and although I knew my eyes looked different, I could not help but hide them. The long years of training and battle taught me to see a great deal from the corners of my eyes so, in spite of an averted head, I missed little.

  After the brightness of the sunlight outside, my eyes took a moment to adjust to the dimness indoors. Appealing scents of baking bread, frying peppers and onions, roasting meats hit my nostrils, making my stomach rumble. I hadn’t eaten since daybreak and my belly rejoiced at the possibilities. Under the delicious smells of cooking food, I also scented the rougher odors of beer, ale, wine, stale sweat and unwashed bodies.

  Keeping my head down, I glanced about the taproom, which was half full. I noticed a few mercenaries drinking ale and talking in low tones. A family, two parents and six children ranging from about age twelve on down to a suckling infant, ate a sparse meal of bread, cheese and fried peppers at a small table in a corner to my right. The rest of the patrons appeared to be merchants who eyed our weapons with distrust, discounted us as harmless and returned to their own muted conversations.

  A sharp piercing scream greeted our entrance into the inn.

  I reached for my sword and half drew it before I realized the screech was a shriek of delight and came from a female throat. A form with flying black hair, pale blue skirts and a white peasant blouse launched itself at Rygel, seizing him around the neck. I caught a flash of his grin before the tavern wench kissed him full on the mouth.

  “You’re back,” she crowed. “I’ve missed you so much. Where have you been?”

  Her next kiss held an ardor that all but seared his lips to his face. I glanced away from the sight before me, thinking I should join the lad in the stables and leave the two alone.

  “Me sweet Tia.” He picked her up and twirled her round and round, her skirt lifting in the breeze. “Tia, Tia, Tia.”

  The wench shrieked, half in pleasure, half in shame, when he finally put her down, smoothed her aprons and flushed a bright red.

  “Damn you,” a new voice boomed from a doorway across the room. “You filthy, shit-eating gutter rat. You should have known better than to come back here.”

  The harsh menacing voice made me reach for my sword again. I doubted this was another lover waiting with bated breath for his return. Perhaps this was one that wanted to skewer him on the spot for his infidelity? I glanced around cautiously, while Rygel peeped through the wench’s hair at the newcomer.

  A large rotund woman stood before the doors to the kitchens, arms akimbo. Like the dark-haired girl, she wore a stained mauve dress and white kirtle, a pale yellow rag holding her hair from her face. A white apron encompassed her ample hips, her plump cheeks reddened from the kitchen fires. By her stance and tone of authority, I guessed she must be the innkeeper. If Rygel said they liked him here, where was her smile of greeting?

  “Leoda, my dearest love,” Rygel gushed.

  I glanced askance at him. Rygel? Gushing? Yet he had. I stilled my eyes that wanted to roll, and watched Leoda approach with no small suspicion.

  “You speak so cleverly of love,” Leoda went on, bearing down on him like a runaway team of draft horses. “Yet, you ran off quickly enough to the palace.”

  Rygel dropped the wench and scooped the plump Leoda into his arms. Whether she intended violence or not, his strong arms around her stilled any possibility of it. Her sudden squeal of pleasure pierced my ears like a sharp whistle. Leoda’s chubby arms grasped him to her in an embrace that made my cheeks burn again.

  “I missed you so!” she gushed, her face tight in his shoulder.

  With so much gushing going on, I was surprised the wooden floor had not yet flooded. I glanced away, embarrassed, when Leoda blatantly rubbed her breasts into his chest in a way that suggested a rather lewd familiarity. How many lovers did Rygel leave behind? Gods above and below, I almost muttered. Perhaps that information should remain a secret.

  Like the wench, Leoda wore a happy smile as she broke away from his embrace and looked up at him. Despite my ignorance of women, I knew an expression of lust when I saw one. Even the tavern patrons eyed Rygel up and down, perhaps wondering what manner of man captured the hearts of multiple women.

  “Leoda!” Rygel exclaimed, holding her away from him by the arms, appraising her from head to toe. “By Usa’a’mah himself, you are the most beautiful of creatures.”

  Leoda blushed under his flattery as she dropped from his arms and ran her hands over her skirt, straitening the folds restlessly. “Still running your mouth instead of your brain, eh, Rygel?”

  Not caring much for the attention Rygel received from the watchful eyes in the taproom, I stepped between him and them, making it appear as though I merely moved to investigate an intriguing tapestry nearby. A quick glance showed me most of the patrons dropped their interest immediately. Once out of sight, out of mind, as I suspected.

  Rygel laughed. “Did you expect anything less?”

  With his arm around the young wench’s shoulder, Rygel kissed the heavy Leoda on the lips with warmth and enthusiasm. I looked on, wondering absently what charms a man needed to possess to become popular with women. Always stabled apart, slaves of both genders never mixed. If a male slave received a reward of a woman, he had her only for an hour or so. Cephas, my former Slave Master, forbade the practice of giving women to gladiators. He believed the slaves fought better if there were no women to plague their focus on fighting and winning the battle. Thus, I knew next to nothing about women. I knew the mechanics involved, for what child over four did not? I had never experienced, for myself, the pleasure they say is involved.

  “Glory, how we’ve missed you around here, Rygel,” Leoda said, reaching up to stroke his cheek. “Did the Prince let you go or did you escape?”

  “Er,” Rygel stammered, at a loss for words.

  Leoda helped him out of his predicament, all unwittingly.

  “Ah, so you escaped. You are a naughty, naughty boy.” She pinched his cheek like a matronly grandmother, beaming, her eyes all but disappearing into the heavy folds of her cheeks. “He will be High King now, so you best stay on his best side.” She clicked her tongue. “Can you believe it? Two evil villains murdered our poor dear High King Lionel. That they be caught and hanged, I pray every day. May he find rest and peace, gods save his soul. And at Festival time, too.”

  I swear the tear that oozed down the folds of her plump cheek she manufactured easily, for the hard edge never left her pale beady eyes. She pinched Rygel’s cheek again.

  “The Prince won’t find you here, so we’ll be keeping you all to ourselves.”

  Rygel blushed, I noted with interest.

  The tavern wench gazed up at him; the worshipful look in her eyes almost made me blush. Rygel disengaged himself gracefully from Leoda’s grip, but kept his arm possessively around Tia. He glanced at me, yellow eyes laughing.

  “Ladies, permit me to introduce my cousin, Raine.” Rygel gestured toward me with a grand wave of his hand. “Raine, meet Leoda, the owner of this fine establishment. And this is Tia, her serving maid.”

  Making a slight bow, I murmured what I hoped was an appropriately polite response. While I knew what served well in the courts of my homeland, I knew next to naught about how a free man greeted a free woman of Khalid. Slaves did not often need courtly manners. I suspected mine had a great deal of rust around the edges. To make matters worse, Rygel chuckled. I had a sudden urge to stuff him down the nearest privy hole and sit down.

  “You must forgive him, my ladies,” Rygel said. “My cousin is terribly shy.”

  Tia giggled. From the candle of my eye, I saw Leoda look me up and down, a small sardonic smile playing over her lips.

  “My, my, Rygel.” She clicked her tongue. �
��He’s better looking than you are. You will have some competition very soon, I’m thinking.”

  Rygel’s grin faded and he looked at me sharply. To my horror, I felt a blush creep up my neck and over my face. The sensation of heat I felt increased my dilemma and I blushed harder, despite my attempts to calm it. I inwardly groaned, suspecting this turn of events would inspire more feminine laughter. I was not far wrong.

  Tia giggled again. Leoda laughed, taking my arm in hers. “Come now, shy one. Sit down over here and Tia will fetch ale for you and Rygel. Are you also a magic man?”

  “Uh, nay,” I began, wondering frantically what I would say. I knew nothing of Rygel’s homeland.

  “Has anyone ever told you that you look like that gladiator, The Wolf?”

  My gut turned over, but I tried a smile that didn’t fit very well. “I get that all the time.”

  “You’re better looking than he is anyway. He’s so dark and brooding and scarred. I doubt he’s ever had a lover. And I’m certain you’re as popular with the ladies as is your kinsman.”

  Gods above and below. I swallowed hard, panic sawing at my throat. Sweat bloomed on my brow and under my tunic, trickling down my back. No arena opponent frightened me half so much as this chubby female less than half my size. What could I say? What should I do? I glanced about wildly, finding zero help among the patrons, or Tia, or Rygel. I gulped, and sweated.

  Saved from my predicament, she cut me off with female chatter to which I only half-listened. When she asked no more questions, the relief I felt tasted like sweet wine on my dry tongue.

  I allowed her to steer me to a table near the kitchens. Fortunately, the other patrons around the common room decided Rygel and I were of scant interest and returned to their low-voiced conversations. The other serving maids, and the kitchen help, remained elsewhere in the building. Leoda herded Tia away from Rygel, making shooing gestures, and smiled at us over her shoulder.

  “You lads relax and make yourselves comfortable. Tia will bring you food and drink.”

  Tia smirked at Rygel before disappearing into the kitchens. When they both vanished, Rygel sat down and grinned at me.

  “I told you this was a perfect place to hide in.”

  I quirked a brow. “Perfect how? Between you and your girlfriends, I’m sure everyone in the room knows your name.”

  “Would you rather be back in the palace?”

  “Aye,” I growled. “At least there I know my enemies.”

  “Will you relax?” Rygel leaned back in his chair, his arm sweeping the room. “Here, no one cares who you are or what you’re about. Here, people mind their own business.”

  Before I could respond, Tia returned, bearing two foaming mugs. Rygel snatched a quick kiss as she bent to place them on the table, his hand snaking its swift way around her waist. She giggled—the girl seemed incapable of anything else—and slapped playfully at his hand. With another kiss he let her go, allowing Tia to run to the kitchen, still laughing.

  I eyed her disappearing backside with unease fluttering in my belly. “She loves you.”

  Rygel snorted. “Oh, please.” His aristocratic nose disappeared into his pewter mug.

  “And, obviously, you don’t give a rat’s ass about her. You’re just using her.”

  He scowled, ale foaming his upper lip. “What are you, my mother?”

  “If I was, I’d give you a proper belting.”

  I felt no surprise when he responded with an eye roll.

  “What if you get her with child?”

  He shrugged, lifting his mug to drink again. “That’s her problem.”

  The indifference, the callousness, of his voice irritated me. “You bastard.”

  “Aye.” He grinned, saluting me with his cup. “Thank all the gods there are.” He drank deep.

  I leaned toward him, my anger rising. “Get her with child,” I growled, my voice low, “and I will dedicate my life to making your life as miserable as possible.”

  “What the bloody hell do you expect me to do?”

  “Whether you love her or not, you will take care of her and the babe. I promise you, you will.”

  “Aren’t you the sanctimonious prig,” he sneered.

  I sat back. “Despite all, I still believe in some decent code of honor and conduct. Moreover, deep down, so do you. You just need someone to bring it out of you. Either by force or by love.”

  “Grow up, Raine. There is no such thing as love any more. There’s just sex and ambition and lust.”

  “No love? Ever?”

  “Love?” Rygel waved his arms again, encompassing the room. “What is that, my friend? Where is it? Can you touch it? Taste it? Will it protect you from your enemies? If you feel it, it’s just her warmth in your bed and naught else.”

  I watched him as he poured a few drops from a vial into his mug of ale. His tawny eyes gleamed with far more lust as he gazed at his vial than he did at Tia’s intriguing body. So here it is. The addict gets his fix.

  Slightly sickened, I turned my head.

  Taking a sip of my own mug, I grimaced at the bitter ale. “You know what love is.”

  “I thought I did, once,” he replied. He took a deep draught and sighed. “I was mistaken. Quite happily, as it turned out. I got out of it with my skin intact.”

  I lowered my head slightly to watch him from my peripheral vision. The tros took effect almost immediately; his eyes lost the glassy look and his cheeks returned to his more healthy tan. From what I heard, I wondered if lust, one of the more interesting side effects of tros, would assert itself.

  “Women are never to be trusted, Raine, me lad,” he said expansively. “Use them, take your pleasure when you can, but never love or trust them.”

  “Never?” I murmured, drinking again of the bitter ale. Its taste must have grown on me, for the second and third sips were not as bad as the first.

  “Women are devious creatures and will castrate you before you even know she has a knife in her hand,” he went on. “Once was more than enough and I learned my lesson. I will never love a woman again.”

  “I think not,” I murmured.

  He eyed me over the rim of his cup. “Hmmm? What?”

  “I think that love will find you when you least expect it. I think despite your hard heart, a woman will soften it into a serious blob of quivering jelly.”

  He snorted. “You’re mad.”

  My voice dropped even further, without my consent. “Love will strike like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky.”

  “Save your prophecies for someone who wants to hear them.”

  He drank his mug to its dregs, his throat bobbing under each swallow. Yet, strangely, he avoided my eyes. ’Twas as though he feared to meet them. Slamming the mug down, he muttered under his breath in his foreign tongue, then fell silent.

  We both sat in uneasy silence until Tia returned with a platter of food. As we waited, I could see Rygel grow impatient, his skin twitching as though insects crawled over him, biting. His fine-fingered hands clenched over his pewter mug of ale. I noticed his pupils dilated, like a cat’s in the dark, and sweat broke out over his brow and upper lip. Despite my liking for him, I wanted to draw away. I felt a strong need to shy away from the weird effects of the drug, away from this unclean habit. I forced myself to sip my ale, instead.

  “Have you thought about getting clean, of getting rid of tros?” I asked carefully, “Of being free?”

  “Only every five minutes,” he replied, staring bitterly into his mug. “I’ve tried, a few times. The pain was incredible; it felt like fiery scorpions are crawling and stinging all over my body, eating me alive. The longer it goes on, the worse it got.”

  He rubbed his arms, again, shuddering. “Then as if that weren’t bad enough, the hallucinations start. Nightmares come creeping out of the woodwork. Ye gods! I wouldn’t wish those on my worst enemy. Once, I tried locking myself in a room without it, hoping I could bear the agony until I was free of it.”

  Rygel raised
a small sardonic smile, his fingers tracing the mouth of his mug over and over. “The dreams sent me bolting, the horrible pain making me scream. Brutal’s soldiers caught me before I could kill myself and forced more tros down my throat. I haven’t tried it since.”

  “There must be a way you can be free of it.”

  Rygel shrugged. “If there is, no one has found it.”

  When at last the dark-haired girl returned with a heaping platter of smoking food, Rygel ignored it. He jumped to his feet, grabbing Tia into his arms and holding her close.

  “Come, wench,” he muttered into her thick, snarled hair, but loud enough for me to hear clearly. “I’m on fire for you.”

  His hands caressed her buttocks and rather than slap him in feminine outrage, Tia snuggled closer, her arms around his neck.

  “Rygel, I would love to, but Leoda—”

  He cut her off with a savage kiss, his hips grinding against hers. Rather than pull away in outraged female astonishment, she nipped his throat with her teeth and giggled.

  “You better keep me out of trouble, Rygel.”

  The frantic lust reflected in her eyes put Rygel’s tros-induced desire to shame. Get a room, I thought, horrified at the erotic display.

  Embarrassed, I scooped some hot, roasted meat onto my pewter plate, not caring what beast it came from, and followed it with hot black bread and a slice of hard white cheese. The meat swam in thick gravy that held a few floating carrots, onions, peppers, lentils and a few others I could not identify, which I ladled onto the bread. It was plain fare, yet better than I would have seen as a slave. It smelled wonderful, and I silently blessed Leoda’s cooks.