by Jez Morrow
Devon recognized that desert tribes saw things differently than Raenthe people did. And if yielding to native ways spared Devon’s own men from digging in this rock, all the better. “I don’t make war on the dead,” he told Xan. “If these men were yours, what would you do?”
“Burn the bodies, send the spirits home to the sky,” Xan answered.
Devon’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a wince. “That is not happening. I am not sending a party into these bare hills to scavenge for firewood.”
Xan glowered, a stormy look that could sweep entire coastal villages into the sea.
“Give me something else, Gladiator,” Devon demanded. He would really love some alternative to making his men hack at these rocks.
“Leave them,” Xan said. “Their own will come for them.”
All the diggers within earshot paused to listen, thrilled, hopeful.
Devon hesitated, “And that won’t offend your gods?”
“Their families will come to take them home.”
“Perfect,” said Devon. And to the men with shovels, he commanded, “Move these bodies off the road and out of the sun.” And just to be sure, he added, “Move them as if they were your brothers.”
The fallen were moved and posed respectfully. When Devon ordered blankets for them, a man obeyed, but paused, clutching his bundle, unwilling to let go of perfectly good blankets. He looked up to Devon on horseback, and said in a wail, “Ma dahn! They’re criminals!”
Devon nodded kindly. “They paid.” With their lives, they paid. Devon tilted his head for the man to go on and give the blankets to the enemy dead.
An infantry captain named Flacco moved in with a swagger, slapping dust off his tunic as he came. He rubbed sweat off his upper lip, which gave him a dirt mustache.
“Ma dahn! So the savages will come for their dead? You could take the column on through the pass. Leave me here with a cadre. We’ll hide in those rocks and slay the brutes when they come. They won’t expect that.”
“It will be their mothers and wives who come,” said Xan.
Devon told Flacco, “It won’t do. We normally give truce for our enemies to retrieve their dead anyway.”
Flacco stiffened. He gave a snarling sniff and spoke coldly, “I noticed your first guardsman didn’t kill any of your attackers, ma dahn.” His cold blue eyes narrowed at Xan.
“The first guardsman’s mandate is to keep his Sovereign safe,” said Devon evenly. “And he did that. He does not have orders to kill his own kind.”
“We were attacked. He could have killed one!” Flacco said sourly.
Devon had already noticed that.
Yes. Xan could have killed one or two.
Flacco’s broad features contorted. His voice was scornful, his eyes flicking toward Xan. “But you’re right, ma dahn. We shouldn’t wait in ambush. Maybe they would expect that.”
With that, Flacco all but accused Xan outright of passing information to the Kiriciki tribesmen.
Devon gestured for Xan to walk with him behind the rocks where Xan had sheltered him from the barbarian arrows.
Devon turned to face his first guardsman and asked him flat out, “Would they? Expect that?”
The sudden stinging in his cheek startled him. A slap. He’d been slapped. It was so unthinkable that Devon wasn’t sure it even happened except that his cheek was tingling. Xan’s blow hadn’t been hard, just enough to express outrage to his honor. And nothing more followed the slap.
Had it been done in public, there would have been nothing to do but have Xan put to death. Devon could have Xan put to death anyway. Xan knew that. Apparently his honor was worth more to him than his life.
Xan stood proud, awaiting whatever fate Devon chose for him.
No one had seen the slap.
Without apologizing or demanding apology, Devon said, “Since you are a being of honor, you shall live.”
* * * * *
Xandaras did not know what possessed him to slap the Sovereign. The mistake made him question his dedication to his mission. Xan could have been executed on the spot for that. Not even Xan could have fought his way out of the Sovereign’s garrison troop.
The Raenthe tyrant had insulted him, Xan told himself.
Then he argued back at himself, So what if he did?
As if the opinion of a Raenthe mattered.
As if Devon’s words mattered.
As if Devon mattered.
Xan’s anger had flashed suddenly, deadly hot, out of control, and he scarcely believed it while his own hand was in motion.
Devon questioned Xan’s loyalty and Xan reacted with wounded honor.
The trouble was that injured outrage was not Xan’s to give.
Xan was disloyal.
Xan hadn’t been behind the Kiriciki attack here in the pass, but his purpose in accompanying the Sovereign on this journey was not to guard the man’s life.
Xan was here to turn the tyrant over to his own tribe for judgment.
Xan nearly bungled a gods-given chance for vengeance.
Then, almost worse, Devon called him a man of honor. Xan was having a tough time with that one. He felt the words burn in his gut like bitter poison.
Xan had to remind himself that his loyalty was, at it had ever been, to his own tribe. Not to the Raenthe conquerors. Xan was not a traitor. He was loyal. Just not to whom the Raenthe tyrant thought.
So Xan had given his oath to this man. Oaths sworn when the alternative is death were not binding in the desert. In the wild lands, word must be freely given. Xan had been carried off to a foreign land for fighting the invaders and he’d been sentenced to die in the gladiatorial ring for defending his tribe and his desert brothers.
He owed Devon nothing.
Xan had always thought the Sovereign soft and decadent. In his slave days, Xan used to look up from the dust and blood of the arena and see Devon there in his canopied box. Xan had never seen anything so fine in his life. Never before. Never since. So beautiful and so masculine at once. Devon used to watch Xan bleed.
Xan had been brought to the daunting capital in chains like a raging ox, condemned and angry. He remembered being astonished by the outlanders’ technology and their wonders. Calista City looked like a home for gods, with huge buildings, marble fountains and water tamed into channels. Raenthe soldiers carried weapons that hurled bolts and balls and darts past the farthest dreams of the best desert archers. Xan used to look up from his death pit at that beautiful Sovereign in his cushioned box and dream about fucking him blind. And he would ask the gods why they had gone deaf to him.
Fate turned, as fate will. Now Xan was now assigned to the Sovereign’s person and ordered to take him to the wild lands.
The gods listened after all.
And the chance to fuck him had come even sooner than that. Not the way Xan had imagined it. That fuck had not been the humiliation he dreamed of.
Xan had been gentle. He needed to be gentle to get here. He’d taken Devon with great restraint. It was his chance to bring that crowned head under his control. Xan had put his cock into the Sovereign’s mouth. And Devon loved it. Xan had put his sex inside the Sovereign’s tight ass and had him sobbing for joy. Devon was really beautifully built, with that splendid hard body, that taut, narrow ass. He was extraordinarily sensual and touchingly innocent.
Xan thought he may even have been Devon’s first.
Devon had the smooth bronze skin of the Raenthe kind. He smelled good, and not just because of the spices and oils he used on his body. Devon’s musky essence was enticing. His tongue was exceptional. He must have learned the art from some very costly whores. Devon was the finest thing Xan had ever had.
Devon wore no paint. Jewelry, yes, and fine clothes, but no other art. Out here on the march with the army, Xan could see how very little the ornament added to Devon’s beauty. He was youthfully slender and beautifully muscular. A few flecks of scars on his skin were but flaws in the diamond. His nails were short, neat and blunt-honed.
>
Xan watched Devon ride. There was an elegant subtle curve to Devon’s back. Devon rode as he stood—tall, never rigid. He moved with a natural grace.
There had been no mistaking that look of stunned lust on Devon’s face when the regent Marcus first presented Xan to Devon as first guardsman. Devon had paced away from him like an agitated mare with her nostrils full of stallion. Devon’s desire had been so hot that Xan was surprised the chamber did not ignite. It was so obvious what no one else seemed to notice.
Devon wanted Xan. Xan knew he could make use of that desire.
The gods were very strange.
The Sovereign was turning out to be complicated, surprising. And now unnerving.
Xan had thought the pretty dictator ordered the burial of the mountain dead out of disdain for the barbarian kind. Xan had wanted to kill the Sovereign right there. The tyrant was putting desert men into the dirt!
But no. It hadn’t been intended as insult. It had been an ignorant blunder. Devon had thought he was respecting the enemy dead, treating them as he would his own, even if it meant laboring to dig holes.
So the Sovereign wasn’t evil.
He was, however, ignorant. Not someone you want ruling your kind. Devon was trying to lord over people he knew nothing about.
To his credit, Devon was trying to correct that ignorance with this journey.
It was too late. Xan reminded himself he was on a mission of vengeance and liberation.
He had the tyrant by the cock. Things were going better than he’d ever expected.
They were.
Truly.
Here Xan was on the very threshold of the wild lands and he’d almost squandered everything over a word, a Raenthe insinuation that he was doing exactly what he was doing—delivering the Sovereign to his enemy.
Devon had questioned Xan’s loyalty. As well Devon should.
The Raenthe tyrant who moaned in Xan’s arms was keeping a firm grip on his duty.
It was Xan who was losing his grip.
Xan felt the war within.
I like him.
Xan could not allow that feeling to continue.
Xan had a duty to deliver the tyrant into the hands of the desert people for judgment.
Still, he was going to feel it keenly as a bleeding wound, the look in those fine eyes when the time for truth came.
Chapter Four
The narrow mountain pass opened into the wild lands. It was a different world on this side of the barrier ridge. Devon felt the enormity of the sky here, the desert’s bleak beauty. It was hard, stark, vibrant in its fashion.
And it was dry. Fragrant herbs that thrived in harshness grew here. They grew thick and leathery, and exhaled piquant scents when men stepped on them. The herbs perfumed the army’s advance.
Trees were contorted into artistic windblown shapes, their branches armed with thorns. Bright flowers clung to the rocks.
Settlements were small and widely spaced. Their people of the desert did not come out to greet their Sovereign. They doused their fires and hid. Nomads on shaggy steeds ran for the hills.
Whole villages cleared out at the column’s approach. Devon could see the dust clouds of their retreat.
“They’re afraid of me,” said Devon.
“You are surprised,” said Xan, with an edge of mockery.
“I am,” said Devon. He kicked his stallion and rode to the empty houses. Smoke still curled from their chimneys.
Devon found all the houses abandoned, their inhabitants gone in haste, dinner still in the hearth.
In a barn he found spilled milk, a knocked-over stool and an uncomfortable, mooing cow.
When he came out, he saw some of his soldiers leading away livestock that had been left behind—a scrawny steer on a tether, a gaggle of sheep.
“Leave everything,” Devon commanded and motioned his soldiers to turn around and take the animals back to where they found them.
It was like that the entire journey. Native tents folded up and settlements vanished at Devon’s approach. The desert winds carried off the dust of their retreat and erased their tracks.
Devon spoke, not to anyone, maybe to the wind. “Why do they run?”
“From an army?” Xan asked back skeptically. The answer ought to be obvious to a fool.
“On the other side of the pass, my people did not run from me and my army,” Devon said.
They had not. Xan remembered that. The Raenthe villagers had loaded their Sovereign down with gifts, and it had not been out of fear. The girls kissed him. Men came out just to touch the hem of his cloak.
“You say you have come to see,” said Xan. “You shall see.”
* * * * *
Devon reined in. The train halted.
In the distance, a magnificent fortress palace appeared carved on a low spur that jutted out of a mountain like a dog’s knuckle. The stronghold’s colossal pillars looked to be carved out of solid rock. They were polished to a red sheen. The approach from the front was sheer. The fortress was impregnable. Around its base stood a stockade of pointed timber. An approach up any path up the rear was exposed to archers’ towers. Behind the citadel, terraced into the mountain slope, spread high pastures of sheep, short-legged cattle, horses and orchards.
The citadel was entirely self-contained. It was the kind of structure built by men who were afraid.
And men who were far too proud.
Devon called for his guide. “Is that it?”
“Yes, ma dahn.” The scout showed Devon the camel-hide map. Xan had never learned to read a map. The marks on the camelskin meant nothing to him. He stared at the fortress.
The citadel was built in a mix of Raenthe architecture and barbaric styles. Devon had been told that Governor Kani had a strong outpost. Devon had no idea.
Devon said, “Is that—is that ours?”
“Yes, ma dahn. That is the citadel. It looks very secure, ma dahn.”
“One ought to be able to get something more done from a base like that,” Devon said.
“Harpy’s Rook.”
Devon’s head turned. “Xan?”
“That building was not here when I was taken away. Later prisoners would come into the arena from the wild lands and talk of a place called Harpy’s Rook. This must be what they spoke of.”
“‘Harpy’ is a word from the Old High speech,” Devon said.
Harpy meant snatcher.
The fortress appeared more vast and impregnable as Devon’s troop came closer.
The citadel did not take alarm at their approach. The garrison would recognize the blue uniforms, the Raenthe precision formation, the gold and silver standards and the scarlet litter.
The huge gates between stone towers parted to welcome Devon’s army into the wide stockade with its high picket walls below the lofty citadel.
Devon rode through the gates behind the imperial standards. The garrison troops were jubilant. Reinforcements had come at last.
Devon announced loudly, “These are not reinforcements. This is your relief. You are going home.”
Oceans did not roar so. The sounds rang off the citadel’s rock.
Devon gauged from the soldiers’ riotous cheering how much they hated garrison duty here. Their voices resolved into a thunderous chant.
“DEV-ON! DEV-ON! DEV-ON!”
Governor Kani came out of a tower to greet the Sovereign with a forced smile. Devon had seen that look on ship captains when an admiral boarded their vessels. A master of his own world was not accustomed to having a superior.
Kani was a hulking man with a well-upholstered wrestler’s build. His teeth shone white within his black beard. He wore strange garb that had a military look to it. It was dark green.
Kani greeted Devon.
“Ma dahn! You made it! Thank all the gods!”
“I am here,” said Devon.
“Why? Why are you here?”
Devon must have looked affronted, because Kani quickly rephrased, “I welcome you. I am astonished
that you risked the passage. You have no idea how reckless that was.”
“I have some idea,” Devon assured Governor Kani.
“Why would you do that to yourself?” Kani said.
“I needed to see for myself what you are up against out here.”
“I trust you saw.”
“Do you?” Devon said.
Did Kani already know that Devon had been attacked on his way here? “What do you suppose I saw?”
Kani seemed to hesitate. He threw out like a guess, “Wild men acting wildly?”
“There was some wildness,” Devon admitted. “We were hit in the pass.”
“There! You see?”
“It means the barbarians knew we were coming,” Devon said.
Kani shook his head. “Out here every mountain pass is some bandit’s target. These people are trapdoor spiders. You will always be hit in a pass.”
“No one goes through the Witch’s Cleft but once in forever,” Devon said. “Bandits don’t lay traps where no one ever travels. These men were waiting. For me.”
“That is not possible,” Kani said.
“They hit my litter. First. They knew the Sovereign was coming through the Witch’s Cleft.”
Kani put his hand over his heart. “Ma dahn, I told no one.” The official communication had gone directly from the Sovereign to the provincial governor. “It had to be someone on your side. Who else knew?”
“Trusted people of my court,” Devon answered.
“And your guard, ma dahn,” Kani added significantly.
Kani’s eyes and everyone else’s eyes turned to the barbarian Xan.
“No,” said Devon. Afraid he sounded too insistent.
“How can you know that, ma dahn?”
“Because I am here.”
If Xan had meant to kill him, Devon would not have arrived at his destination.
Kani gave a provisional sideways nod, allowing that argument. Kani suggested instead, “Then perhaps your regent wants to keep the reign?”
Marcus.
Devon stiffened. He did not respond.
Devon noted other men of the citadel dressed in the same strange green garb as the governor. They must be Kani’s inner circle of personal guards. They were dressed differently from the garrison troops out in the front courtyard, who wore standard Raenthe military blue. “Your men out of uniform.”