by A. F. Dery
Then as he returned to the battle after a third such futile missive, he noticed at once that something changed in just that brief moment. He saw his men who had been beginning to lag, battle weary, charge anew at their foes, as though forgetting all fatigue and wounds and seeing nothing but the enemy. He saw one of the ones who had just fallen struggle back to his knees, hacking wildly at a foe despite the blood pouring from his wounds, looking almost like a reanimated corpse. The Raider he’d unexpectedly lunged at actually screamed.
Thane had no time to reflect on these things as he brought his ax down into a Raider’s back, but of one thing he was sure: somehow or other, the tide had just turned. He turned to an advancing Raider with his teeth bared in a lopsided grin, pleased at his opponent’s responding cringe as he rejoined the melee.
When at last the front was controlled and the wave of Raiders was quelled, he took count of his men’s numbers and saw they had lost but a handful.
Or so he thought at first. Thane’s eyes took in his men, many of whom were barely standing, some of whom were not standing at all, and yet all of them stared back at him expectantly, bright eyed in spite of cuts streaming blood, slashes leaking guts. A horrible, cold feeling fell over him, making his skin prickle with goose flesh.
This isn’t natural, he thought. The words came to his mind slowly, as though forcing their way through a fog. He felt numb, completely numb, frozen from head to toe. He could not even feel the ax in his hand anymore. He wasn’t sure he was still holding it.
He didn’t want to think anymore, but slowly, inevitably, a final word followed. Kesara.
Another tide of words hammered at his consciousness. Quite possibly some of them had fallen from his lips as well, for he was vaguely aware of his men blanching as they looked at him. Now in the numbness, he began to feel his heart pounding hard in his chest, and still nothing else.
Thane wasn’t certain how he knew where she was, but the moment he thought her name, he knew without words where she must be. He turned from his men and walked woodenly towards the High Lord’s castle, down over a grassy embankment, to a cluster of trees. She was there on the far side of one, kneeling and leaning against it. Her face was whiter than he’d ever seen it and her eyes were glassy, her pupils huge, only narrowly rimmed with blue. She was breathing in slow, shuddering breaths; her dark hair was damp with sweat. He registered it all with a sense of detachment, as though taking an inventory of things he was only indifferent to, for still he felt numb.
He came to a halt directly in front of her, but though she ought to have been looking straight at him, she showed no response to his presence. She was staring, but saw nothing.
Thane leaned down and reached out with a hand he couldn’t feel, and saw his fingers close around her upper arm, and tighten there. Kesara gave a sudden jerk, blinking rapidly, before her eyes rolled up and she collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Thane lifted her by the arm, as easily as a rag doll. He couldn’t feel her weight at all. She could have been a leaf. Something told him he must not carry her that way: it was like an idea coming from far away. He set her down on the ground again, clumsily. She crumpled bonelessly where he laid her. It took him a moment to pry open his fingers and let go of her. He returned to his men. He was not surprised to see that they now felt their wounds quite keenly. Their true number was nearly halved from when he had last seen them, only minutes before. He heard himself give one of his officers instructions on where to find Kesara and he gave the order to take her back to the castle. He told the man to return her to her room. He added casually that he was to execute the man who was supposed to be guarding her when he was done, if he found him. The officer immediately obeyed, with the rigid composure Thane recognized on his troops as being fear. Fear of him. He knew distantly that in other times, this would have disturbed him. As for now, he felt nothing. It was like listening to someone else speak, and looking at someone else’s man obeying someone else’s orders.
Thane began to give orders to the remaining men. There were bodies to be gathered for proper burial. Abandoning them on the field of battle was not the Eladrian way. There were men in sufficient condition to remain to hold the area in case more Raiders came. He knew they would need to be relieved, and quickly, but he was not about the leave the area unguarded. There were many more who were wounded but still lived. They would need a healer. Since the High Lord had sent no one, they needed to be returned to the castle for care. He sent a man to give a message to the High Lord updating him on their status and current needs. Not that any of the other messages had yielded any fruit, but it was his duty, the appropriate thing to do.
His wounded were beginning to return to the castle when at last a messenger from the High Lord returned with a pair of healers and troops wearing the High Lord’s livery to relieve the Eladrians. Thane should have been pleased, or relieved, or something…he knew this…but he was cold, inside and out, and nothing else.
The messenger eyed him warily, like one would a wild animal, and after displaying the High Lord’s seal to verify his identity, he stammered out a message. The other Raiders had been subdued as well. The High Lord himself would inform him on the specifics after he, Lord Eladria, had had time to recuperate. There was no sign of any other attacks being imminent. The High Lord requested that Lord Eladria return to the castle and take his rest so they might meet and discuss what had happened. He did not believe there would be any further danger for the time being.
Thane gave a curt nod to the message. He returned to the castle, forcing one foot in front of the other. He thought nothing. He would not allow himself to think of anything. If he could feel anything, he would feel fear, he decided. Fear of thinking and of what the thoughts might bring.
Graunt met him before he reached the tower where the Eladrians were housed. She took him in with a single sweep of her dark beady eyes and immediately said, “You know you will regret it if she comes to harm, my boy.” Her voice was very gentle. He said nothing. He kept walking, and she did not follow.
Up the stairs to the tower. One foot before the other. Thump, thump, thump, his heart beat in his chest, hard enough that he thought he should be able to hear his armor rattle, though he did not. Thump, thump, thump. In fact he heard nothing else, not even his own armored movements, or his feet upon the stairs, or those of his men returning with him. All was silence, in his head, on the stairs of the tower, all around, except thump, thump, thump.
Thane walked to the door of his rooms. There was a man there standing guard, not the one he had left in charge of Kesara, and he dismissed him at once. His hand seized upon the door handle and he entered without breaking stride or looking to see that the dismissal had been heeded. He paused only long enough to force himself to let go of the door handle; he still could not feel his fingers. He advanced into the rooms, pausing only to shed his armor in the outer room, and went straight to the one once designated for the valet he’d never had.
He opened the door. Kesara was laying on top of the bed, still pale, still unconscious. He came right up the bedside. He stared at her. Thump, thump, thump.
After some time- it could have been moments, or hours, for all he knew- she stirred on the bed. Her eyes fluttered upon, confusion evident at once on her face as she realized where she was. Her eyes went to Thane. Rather than going to his face, they focused on something at his side, and somehow she went paler still, her mouth dropping open in a small “o,” her eyes widening. Thane followed her gaze almost absently and saw he was still holding the ax in one hand. Blood was still slowly dripping from its edge, very slowly, fat dark beads swelling and dripping. He looked at her again. Her eyes finally met his and she shrank back against the bed, her fingers knotting themselves in the blanket under her. Her knuckles went white.
Her lips moved and she looked as if she was trying to speak, but if any sound came out, he did not hear it. He watched her. Finally she gave up and pressed her lips together, slowly shaking her head back and forth, a
s if in denial. Her eyes were getting very bright. He saw a tear slide down her cheek, and a blink later, its fellows followed in a stream.
Thump, thump, thump. He forced himself to drop the ax, peeling his fingers off one at a time. He heard it clatter on the floor beside him, as if hearing it off in the distance. He again wrapped his hands around her upper arms. His hands wrapped around them completely. She felt like she was vibrating. He brought his face close to hers. He met her eyes.
“I should kill you,” he heard himself say, staring into those wide, wet eyes. His voice was flat, each word carefully enunciated. He was speaking like he would to someone at Court or on one of the Judgment days back home, slowly and clearly and very precisely. “I should kill you for doing this to me.”
Kesara stared back at him silently. She blinked. Suddenly in the midst of the cold, heat blossomed in his chest like a fire had been lit. A surge of rage went through him and it took every ounce of his self restraint not to shake her. In the space of a heartbeat, he’d gone from feeling nothing to feeling everything, too much, all at once. Now the blood roared in his ears along with his pulse. “Are you an idiot?” he roared, all bids at enunciation abandoned. “How can you not understand this? You die, and I am dead. What is there worth living for? What good am I to Eladria as a walking corpse? You’ve torn my heart out of my chest, do you understand? You’ve torn it out and now you are walking around with it not giving a damn.” She was shaking her head now, and he could see the confusion in her eyes. “You don’t understand me,” he said in a low growl. He felt a sudden hysterical laugh building in his chest. Damn his jaw, his tongue, his mouth, his stupid, stupid heart.
“Damn me for a fool,” he said then, very clearly, very deliberately. Then just as deliberately, he brought his mouth down to hers and kissed her. Or what kissing was to someone with a misshapen jaw and a scarred, twisted mouth. He pressed his lips to hers, and at the first contact, she stiffened. Whether in shock or disgust, he couldn’t be sure, and he was on the verge of drawing back, his face suddenly burning, feeling like even more of an idiot than he had just accused her of being, when she responded, kissing him back. He could feel by the arms still within his hands that she was straining against his grip, trying to press herself closer to him and bridge the gap still between their bodies. His hands loosened and she pulled her arms free, wrapping them around his neck and pulling him down to her with surprising strength for one so small. He hurried clumsily to rest his weight on his forearms before he crushed her, very alarmed that she was apparently ignorant of the fact that she was only a fraction of his size.
His alarm quickly vanished in the precipitous awareness of how warm and soft she was under him, and how her hands felt in his hair, and how she tasted like salt. His anger died an abrupt and undignified death, the fire in his chest replaced by a different fire.
She pulled back suddenly, breaking the kiss, meeting his eyes. “I understand now,” she said breathlessly. “I would do anything for you, Thane. Anything. My life is nothing to me.”
“Nothing to you and everything to me,” he whispered. He wasn’t sure she would understand that. He could barely even hear the words himself.
“I know how you feel about Eladria, I know Eladria comes first so I was trying to help,” she said in a small voice. Her lip trembled and he stared at it for a moment, captivated.
At last he said, “What am I to Eladria without you now? I love you, Kes.” He could not meet her eyes, now that he’d spoken the words out loud. His chest felt tight with an unexpected fear that was quickly becoming tinged with remorse. The air was thick with her silence. He could hear only the sounds of their breathing. She felt utterly still beneath him apart from the rise and fall of her chest; even her hands were frozen where they’d been.
A knock broke through it. “M-my lord?” a hesitant voice followed a moment later.
Thane drew away from Kesara, her arms dropping away from his neck as he half turned to the door. He realized then, to his surprise, that he’d left it hanging open, and likely the front one, too. One of the High Lord’s servants hovered uncertainly in the doorway.
“Forgive the intrusion please, my lord, but the High Lord wished to know if you would be ready to meet in an hour’s time…?” The servant appeared to be having trouble deciding what to look at. Or not look at.
“Of course,” Thane said curtly. The servant immediately bowed and scurried off without waiting to be dismissed. Thane sighed, quickly standing up and turning his back to her. He could not, would not look at Kesara. Her silence the moment before had said more than her words could. He felt a surge of emotion from the bond, but he couldn’t interpret it, and was scared to even try.
“Thane,” he heard her say. He shook his head without looking at her. Pain bloomed from somewhere inside his chest, the second pain he’d perceived physically since they had bonded. The first, she caused too.
“I need to prepare for my meeting with the High Lord,” he said gruffly, staring out the door. “For the love of the gods, stay in this tower, or I won’t be responsible for what I do.”
He flinched in surprise as she threw her arms around him from behind. “I love you too,” she said against his back. “And if you didn’t just say you loved me, then let’s pretend I didn’t say that, all right?” She let out a nervous little laugh.
Against his will, he felt his lips curving into a grin, making him grateful that she couldn’t see his face. He felt shaky with relief and covered her hands, her fingers barely able to lace across his stomach, with his. “You usually understand me so well, why so much trouble now, Kes?” He was making a heroic effort to keep his voice steady, but wasn’t entirely successful.
“You did say it, right?” He felt her press her face against his back as if trying to hide it.
“What else sounds like I love you, Kes?”
“The gods only know. Next time, I’ll just throw myself off the balcony and spare myself this torment,” he barely heard her mutter.
“I’m tormenting you, am I?”
“You know you are. Maybe that proves you said something else, because if you did love me-”
“I’d torment you far worse. But don’t worry, there’s still time for that. Unless you’d still rather jump off the balcony?” His voice went husky. He felt her shiver against him.
“I’m fine staying in the tower, thanks,” she said, a little too quickly. He almost laughed. She let go of him and tugged his arm until he turned and looked down at her.
“You’re a hell of a lot shorter when we’re both standing,” he said before he could think better of it. He immediately regretted the words, but she smiled up at him, reaching up a hand, her fingertips grazing his scarred cheek.
“You’re more beautiful than you think, when you smile,” she said softly.
To his alarm, he realized that he was indeed still smiling widely, his teeth bared. His eyes widened, the grin vanishing. “I still don’t know how you can stand to look at me.”
“I still don’t know how you manage to avoid tossing me out of the nearest window, and yet,” she said teasingly. Her fingers stroked his cheek gently. “Can you bend down a little?”
“I’m afraid if I do, I’ll never make it to the High Lord’s meeting,” Thane said, the corners of his mouth twitching traitorously.
Kesara’s own smile faded. “He could have killed you…I saw the battlefield. You were outnumbered. You sent messengers, I saw them, but not one came back. Why would he do that, Thane? I thought you were allies.”
Thane shook his head slightly, equally perplexed. “I don’t know what the hell is going on, Kes. But that’s why this meeting is important. I intend to find out. Too much isn’t making sense. Something is terribly wrong if Lyntara is boldly attacking the High Lord’s own Keep in the middle of the day. It didn’t look like he was prepared for it at all. The man I know would never have been taken by surprise like this.” Thane’s eyebrows knitted together. “There’s more going on than we know, I’m certai
n of it, and I will reserve judgment until I’ve found out what it is.”
“Just…please be careful, Thane. I know you trust him, but…as you said…we don’t have the whole story.” Kesara’s blue eyes were pleading.
He leaned down just long enough to touch his forehead to hers, briefly closing his eyes. “You’re worried about me, dear Kes. Maybe you aren’t just trying to get chained to my bed, after all.”
This time he made no effort at all to hide his grin as she glared at him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was with considerable difficulty that Thane finally left Kesara’s room and cleaned up for his meeting with the High Lord. He could feel the exhaustion from the battle slowing his movements, but there was no time to rest. He wouldn’t dream of postponing this meeting after what had just happened with the Lyntarans. A quick wash and change of clothing later, he was soon descending the stairs from the Eladrians’ tower when he saw none other than Malachi loitering in the corridor nearby.
He suppressed a frown. Malachi was not the kind of man to just loiter aimlessly and with no purpose, and there was no real reason for him to be so near to this part of the building unless he hoped to run into him or some other Eladrian. The other man might view him on kinder terms, now that Kesara had come to Malachi’s wife’s aid, but Malachi should have known him better than to think that all was forgiven on that account, particularly after what he’d tried to do to Kesara. Thane flushed with anger as he remembered the pig-man.
Yes, there was a lot Malachi still hadn’t answered for. He didn’t mind that Kesara had helped Margaret- she was innocent in all of this, after all- but Malachi…
“Eladria, a word, if you will,” Malachi’s voice interrupted his darkening thoughts. His clipped tone was, by his standards, polite.