“That’s it, Dala. Ask Tessa if you’re curious.”
Dala looked distant as she followed the young woman’s advice.
Jorse didn’t bother asking. She wouldn’t tell him anyway.
Once Dala blinked awake from her daze, and stared at Jorse for a moment before she muttered, “It’s not fair.” She glared for a moment more, before she went away again.
Anya reached out and touched Dala’s hand with a single finger. Then she removed it.
Outside the cave it was pitch black; the sort of black you describe when you literally can’t see your hand before your face. To Jorse, it looked like there was a full moon just beyond hazy thin clouds. Everything seemed to glow in dull silver light. He clutched his staff tightly.
One hundred yards from the cave entrance he caught the remaining five. Two went down before they knew what hit them, but the last three were seasoned fighters. The second of the three ran his thin blade into Jorse’s back, just above the hips, before he fell. Jorse had been in enough battles to know that the wound was fatal. He had, maybe, fifteen minutes before he bled out. The last man begged for mercy. Jorse broke his staff on the man’s helmet. The fight was over.
Using the cracked staff for support, Jorse staggered into the cave. The three men were armed and staring out into the dark, and Jorse gave them a lopsided grin as he entered.
“There were only ten of them.” He whispered. “Check for yourselves.”
Dala, however, surprised him the most. She took one look at his wounds and commanded the two guides to carry Jorse into the small back room. Then she unceremoniously kicked them out, putting her “Uncle” to guard the small entrance.
“Anya,” She said to the thin air. “How bad is it?”
The young woman was standing beside her, looking pale and drawn, and more than a little transparent. “The wound is fatal.” Dala gasped. “I may be able to save him if I can borrow on your power.” She gave Dala a sharp look. “Power from the both of you. I warn you, though. This will bring you closer than you ever thought you would get, both to each other, and to us. The other option is to watch us die, because I can’t fix Jorse myself. I don’t have the strength anymore, for now I too am dying. It’s up to you.”
Dala looked at the fading girl, and down to the stricken Jorse. “Do whatever it takes. Jorse saved me, and I guess that it’s time to repay the favor.”
Anya’s smile was wan. “Give me your hand.” The hands of the two women seemed to blend, to flow into each other, while the hand Anya placed on Jorse’s chest appeared to sink in until it touched his fluttering heart.
~~~
Jorse opened his eyes to see three incredibly beautiful women staring down at him in concern. He frowned. Anya he knew, and would always know. Dala was there, concern painted across her face, but the third? Tessa? She looked like Selene, tall and beautiful, but with golden hair, hung in a long braid over her right shoulder, and smoldering blue eyes.
“Tessa?” His voice was hoarse, as if it hadn’t been used in a while, and the name came out a croak. All three women began to cry.
He remembered the sword stroke in his back.
Her warm solid hand was holding his.
He frowned as he sensed someone else.
“Dala?” His voice was hoarse, but she was by his side, holding his other hand.
“How do you feel?”
He tried to sit up and a stabbing pain lanced into his back. He fell back down. “Like shit.” He grinned. “And I guess that I have you and Tessa to thank for feeling anything at all.” He bowed his head. “Thank you both for saving my, our lives.” He looked to Tessa and then back to Dala. “Last chance, ladies. Thank you for my life, but you both can still go your own way if you wish.”
Dala’s grip on his hand was vice-like. “Not on your life, Jorse Schwendau. I still have plans for you, even if I have to share. As far as Anya goes, well, I’ve learned a lot in the past four days. Anya and Tessa are parts of our souls now, you and I, and just because Anya has a physical form shouldn’t make me jealous. Of course you love her; you almost have to love her.” Two crimson spots appeared on Dala’s cheeks. “I can see why you would be physically attracted to her.” Her dark blue eyes were intent on his face. “Anya is as much part of me now as she is of you, and I’ve found that I love her too.” Her grin was lopsided. “This is all so confusing.”
“Thank you, Dala.” It was about all he could get out before he fell down the long black well of sleep.
Jorse rubbed the sore spot on his back, as he leaned against his horse. Four hours was about all he could take in the saddle anymore, since the sword thrust had almost killed him three weeks ago. Hells, he had only been on his feet for two days. Three weeks ago he almost died. Three weeks ago the world changed for him. Gorku and Darko had once thought of him as an innocent boy run away from a Corsair warboat. Now they looked on him with more respect, if not outright fear. They were fighting men. They knew that a sword thrust through the kidney was a fatal wound. Now here he was walking around. They also knew that Dala
had somehow healed him. They heard the other voices, and they really didn’t want anything more to do with him, but they knew that they owed him their lives. They counted the ten bodies he had left in the darkness that rainy night. Mirek looked on with more than a little speculation, as his Naween filled in the blanks.
Darko pointed from his hiding place behind the rough, sand colored boulder, down the steep side of the hill to the encampment below. “Bandit camp there.” Using the tip of his boot knife, he pointed to a well-guarded tent off to one side. “Chief keep women there. You go?”
“I go.” Jorse replied. “Tonight, after dark.”
Darko nodded once. “Good. You fight good in dark.” Jorse studied the quiet camp. On the far side was a large red dome made of rough sandstone, the empty windows and doors looking like eye sockets of some great malevolent beast. It was the Temple of Hades.
Back at their small concealed camp the guide pulled something from one of the pack horses. Jorse blinked. It was a new staff of ash, heavier than the old staff. This would splinter bone or crush the thin local armor before it would break.
Darko pointed vaguely to the nearby hillside as he handed the weapon to Jorse. “Take from guard. He no need—you need.”
“Jorse nodded to the strange reticent guide. “Thank you.” Drako just nodded his reply.
The five sat in a small well hidden clearing, eating a cold dinner and waiting for the sky to darken. Jorse looked at Dala and smiled at her dark pants and dark shirt. The bow and quiver sat on the ground at her feet. “Are you any good with that thing?” He nodded at the bow.
“Almost as good as you are with that staff. Elsbeth insisted that I learn a weapon of some sort.” Her smile was thin and nervous, but her hands were steady.
“Are you sure that you can shoot in this light?”
“It’s all been taken care of.” Her choice of words told Jorse that Tessa had enhanced Dala’s vision too, and he sighed in relief.
He turned to his Uncle. “You’ve been unusually quiet since you arrived in Altai, Mirek. Is there a problem?”
The older man gave him a knowing smile. “I’m observing, as my wife asked me to do. You seem to be doing fine without my assistance.”
Jorse chucked. “Observing...”
Soon the dusky evening darkened, with only the dull red glow of the moon Hades, in its reverse orbit, to show them their way. It was somehow appropriate, Jorse thought as he stood. The two guides had frowned and muttered strange curses under their breaths when Jorse told them that they had to remain behind for the raid. They had complained, but they had stayed. Now the guides, sitting alone in the quiet clearing, watched the three shadowy forms disappear soundlessly into the night, and they wondered just what sort of people they had tied themselves to.
The camp at the Temple of Hades was quiet. Smoke, and the smell of cooking lamb drifted in the warm sluggish wind from a half dozen different fires; while Jorse, with Dala and Mirek watching his back, crept down the hill unseen and unheard. Ten feet from him a sentry stood up, stretching. Jorse’s hand tightened reflexively on the heavy stave, but he needn’t have worried. A dark shaft appeared, as if by magic, through the man’s neck, and the sentry collapsed soundlessly. Jorse smiled to himself. She could indeed shoot a bow. He moved on.
The tent that held the captives was large, maybe fifty feet in diameter, with bold stripes showing in the flickering firelight. Jorse arrived, moving from shadow to shadow, to crouch under a low scrub bush growing beside it. Two grim-faced armored guards stood at the back entrance to the tent with two more at the front. Jorse assumed that there would be two more inside. He stood up for a moment, so that Dala could see him, and moved on silent feet toward the rear of the tent. He drove the butt of his staff into the first guard, as the second abruptly sat down on the ground, staring in dumb amazement at the arrow that had suddenly sprouted in his chest. He collapsed sideways, a thin trail of blood running from his nose and mouth, eyes open and unblinking.
The first guard was still wheezing, trying to catch his breath when Jorse tapped him sharply on the back of the head with the staff, just beneath his pointed helmet. Pulling aside the hanging tent flap, Jorse peeked in, saw that the two guards were talking quietly with a number of bound women, and slid inside to duck behind a large jar of what he assumed was wine. One dark haired woman, looking in his direction noted his stealthy entrance. Her eyes widened, but she quickly looked down, hiding her expression from the two guards. Jorse was impressed at her quick thinking.
He slowly withdrew his stelwood boot knife and balanced it in his hand, before he let it fly at the second guard. It struck the man in the back, burying its full gleaming blue blade. The guard gasped and dropped in a clattering heap on the tent floor. Two women screamed. The first guard spun, hand going to his sword hilt, but it was already too late, and Jorse’s staff cracked him sharply across the temple.
There was a scuffle, and two thumps behind him. Jorse spun to find a grinning Mirek, dressed in a mottled gray, blood dripping from his sword. The two still forms of the front door guards lay at his feet.
“I wasn’t going to let you have all the fun, and anyway, I talked it over with Dala and we agreed that it would be better this way.”
“Don’t I have a say in the matter?” Jorse was beginning to get angry, and Mirek just smiled.
“According to Dala, no.”
The women were beginning to stir, and Jorse went to the one who had seen him first. The one that he knew would keep her head.
“We are here to rescue the Queen of Aion.” He said quietly. “Can you tell me who she is?” Jorse was scanning the desperate faces of the women.
“She is not with us.” The woman replied. “She was taken by the Chief’s son to the Eagle’s Nest camp, far into the Daleeth Mountains. Three days ago they left.”
“Do they know that she is the Queen?”
“No, they are fools. She is blonde and they think only of the money they can get for her body.” She looked down at her own body. “As they did for all of us.” Her dark eyes came up, and she gave him a direct look. “You were lucky, you know. Hatch and most of his men left on a raid two days ago. Our rescue would have been - more difficult, had they been here. What will you do now?” There was fear in her dark eyes, and a smoldering anger.
“Can you ride?”
“Yes, but...”
“If we let you have the horses of these bandits, could you lead the women to safety?
Her eyes lit. “Yes.”
“The bandits will chase you, after they discover that you have been freed.” Jorse reminded her.
The woman’s laugh was low and sultry. “These men are pigs. My father is a prince of our people, and he has taught me many things. They will not find us.” Her dark eyes regarded him closely. “Tell me your name, rescuer.”
“My name is Jorse.” He turned to look at the shape standing beside him, and smiled. “And this is Dala.”
“Ahhh!” The woman exclaimed. “You let women fight?”
“If they have the skill and the resolve, yes.” He replied simply.
“How very practical of you.” She smiled and it was like a sunrise. “Jorse, my name is Sofija.” There was a gasp from some of the women in the crowd. “May God the merciful watch over you all your days.” She kissed him once on the right cheek, and once on the left. “And this is from me.” Her kiss was long and lingering, and Jorse knew that he would never see this woman again. “We must go now, Jorse and Dala.”
“We will clear out the rest of the bandits for you, and you can have their horses and anything else you think you might need.”
Sofija smiled grimly. “I think I may take the leader of this camp for my own slave. The punishment is suitable.”
“As you wish; ‘Alaikum Salaam, Sofija.”
Her dark eyes went large at his words. “Goodbye, Jorse, and may God be with you also.”
The fight with the remaining bandits was short; and those five didn’t put up much of a strug
gle. Sofija, true to her word, bound the leader of the camp and draped his unconscious body over her pack horse. She waved as the women disappeared into the night.
Chapter 14
Impenetrable. That was the first thing that Jorse thought when he saw the massive Daleeth Mountains rising up from the rolling brown hills before them, snow-capped mountains so high that they seemed to snag the very clouds that swept around them. The dark, craggy, slab -sided mountains with towering jagged rock spires made him want to give it all up for the placid life of a pirate.
“Trail there.” Darko said sourly, pointing a finger at the mountain. Jorse squinted. The so-called trail looked like a small line drawn diagonally up a chalkboard by a palsied artist.
“That?” His voice registered disbelief.
“Good trail. Be in mountains tonight. Cold.” Darko grinned before he rode off.
Jose mumbled to himself that he had just eaten breakfast, and already his day was ruined.
Anya’s voice in his mind was indignant.
The Corsairs of Aethalia: A Thalassia novel Page 22