“You are a man of great honor, sir,” Oskar continued reading, his voice lowering. “I expect you to find happiness in your marriage. I will not have the trade agreement tarnished by rumors of the gods being angered with us for trying to take more brides than they readily bestow. The knights need a reason to fight and the hope of a lady always seems to be the best motivation. I am not ready to give up on this alliance. Do whatever you must and learn what you can of your wife’s presence at the breeding ceremony. Keep this news to yourself. I have no wish to dampen the spirits of the men with Sorceress Magda threatening our borders.”
Oskar handed the letter back and Vidar folded it only to clutch it in his hand. He knew his orders, contradicting as they were. He needed to stop Magda and ensure his wife’s happiness. Though, the last shouldn’t be hard. It was unfortunate Sorin and Ronen did not find peace in their marriages, but Karre seemed happy to be with him.
“Do we ride for Spearhead?” Oskar asked.
“Not yet.” No. No matter how badly he wanted to go to his wife, to feel her against him, he was needed at the marsh encampment. “I have left orders to be informed should my wife need anything. There is nothing to worry about. The maids will see to Lady Karre and ensure she is taken care of. Besides, I have prisoners to interrogate.”
Two warriors had fallen, Richard of Daggerpoint and Peeter of Fallenrock, while capturing some of Sorceress Magda’s scouts in the southern marshes. With her people popping up everywhere, something big was close. He could feel it in his bones. The fallen Starian men could have killed the Caniba warriors and lived, but both men knew their duty and knew that they needed live prisoners for information. They died well and were not taken by the cannibals. After several weeks without their queen, Vidar hoped the scouts would be ready to talk. Caniba warriors became erratic and unpredictably mad when withdrawn from their idol.
“Let us hope that tonight is the night we discover where the sorceress’ encampment lies.” Vidar led the way up the incline toward the tent village.
Chapter Six
Because right now, in this moment, she didn’t care if she found anything worthy of hawking for a portal ride, she needed to get the hell out of Spearhead Fortress.
“It is whispered that Sorceress Magda studies the black arts. Her followers dance with the serpent and are made to endure its poison before joining her army. Only those who live, the toughest of the Caniba, are allowed into her ranks.” Jordinne paused in her story, looking at the other two maids gathered in Karre’s bedchamber. The maids sat in thickly cushioned chairs, newly padded as per Karre’s design. Richly colored fabrics hung from the walls to hide the stone underneath, flowing red and golds. Matching fabric hung around the bed, creating opulent curtains, held open with corded ropes. Firelight shone from the fireplace, contrasting their faces, exaggerating their expressions.
Karre took a deep breath, trying not to shiver. She hadn’t moved for some time from her place lounging on the bed. Vidar had been gone for weeks, leaving her to make her way in Spearhead alone. He just dropped her off and left. The fact stung, but she refused to dwell on it as she busied herself with familiarizing herself with the fortress and the people in it. She played the role they demanded, though it was tougher than other identities she had taken. They all called her Karre and she wasn’t sure what kind of character to be under her real name. She didn’t even know how to be her real self. Characters were much easier.
Karre had searched for valuables, something portable she could carry with her when she discovered a way off this plane. The weapons inspection brought little more than sharp blades and used swords. Bolts of material were nice, but they wouldn’t travel easily. And, as far as she could see, the fortress had no treasury. However, that was beginning to matter less and less as the women spoke. Because right now, in this moment, she didn’t care if she found anything worthy of hawking for a portal ride, she needed to get the hell out of Spearhead Fortress.
“And these Caniba are close to Spearhead even now?” Karre asked, thinking of the man-eaters the Starian people described in morbid detail—hairy, foul-smelling, beast-warriors with eyes pitted deep into their faces, sharpened teeth to bite into their awful meals and flesh covered with so many dirty pelts it looked as if they had fur.
“Yea,” Jordinne nodded. “Right on the border. Over the last four years, Magda has been getting very close to Spearhead and her warriors more aggressive in battle. Or at least that is what our men tell us.”
“And you stay here willingly?” Karre searched every one of their faces. Each set of eyes looked back at her as if she’d just asked them the stupidest possible question. “Why not move north where it is safer?”
“Our men will protect us,” Jordinne said calmly.
“And if they don’t?” Karre gasped in disbelief. “Or if they can’t? What will you do then?”
“To say such a thing is…” Jordinne’s weak voice trailed off.
“It’s dishonorable,” the redheaded Bratene answered, her green eyes wide in her round head.
“It was just a question,” Karre whispered, seeing their mounting irritation at her doubtful words. She didn’t need to make enemies of the women.
“Those men, the strongest of the beasts, live only to serve her, obsessively doing the sorceress’ biding,” Jordinne said quickly, as if trying to gloss over Karre’s improper question. Her words filled with the drama of her tale. “They go mad when they can’t see her. I’ve see it happen to a prisoner once. They cry and yell and pull out their hair.”
Karre had asked them to tell her of the Caniba but did not expect the tales of horror and depravity that they spun for her like youngsters around a campfire.
“The Caniba rise from the earth and disappear like ghosts,” Bratene added.
“It’s impossible to tell Magda’s numbers,” Synna said, her words as soft as her sweet demeanor. She tugged shyly at her brown curly hair. “Her armies sleep beneath the earth, in the ground.”
“They hibernate like snakes,” Bratene broke in, “but are the children of men and wolves. Wolf-men.”
Dancing as Sparkle, Karre had seen several wolf-men. Sure they drank blood, but they’d been harmless enough. But had they turned evil and attacked, she could see how claws and fangs would make for a fearsome opponent.
“My first husband, Sir Fredrick, was one of the men who tried to infiltrate her camp,” Synna continued as if Bratene hadn’t interrupted. “He came back, but was never the same since being held as her prisoner. They have him locked away in a room lined with mattresses to keep him from bashing his own skull against the stone walls as he cries for the presence of the sorceress. I don’t know what she did to him, but he is no longer my husband. He eats without utensils or plate and a man must watch him at all times to be sure he does not hurt himself or escape.” Synna gave a small sniff and rubbed at her eyes. “I shall never see him again.”
Jordinne leaned over to pat Synna’s leg gently. “The gods will reward him well in the afterlife. Take comfort that you have other husbands.”
Synna nodded but said no more.
“The Caniba are beasts, a race born of the unholy fornications of people and wolves,” Bratene insisted, repeating her earlier words. This time she stared at Karre, as if to make sure she heard.
“Those are just children’s stories,” Jordinne denied. “You know better than to scare Lady Karre with those tales. Our men have fought and killed many in battle. They are flesh and blood.”
“They are the lowest form a man can become,” Bratene said.
“Be that as it may.” Jordinne sighed heavily.
“It is why we all carry a knife,” Bratene said lifting her skirts to show her upper thigh. A sheathed blade had been strapped tightly to her leg. “For, if we are ever taken, we know what needs to be done.”
“But I thought you said the men would protect us,” Karre couldn’t help saying, testing their earlier logic.
“They will,” Bratene inserted quickly. “Of c
ourse they will.”
“We trust our men to be honorable,” Jordinne added.
Then why carry the knife at all?
Karre gave a nervous laugh, one she didn’t feel.
“But if the gods so choose,” Bratene said carefully, lightly touching her throat.
“Yea, if the gods so choose,” Jordinne reiterated.
“You should carry one as well,” Synna said, “just in case the gods so choose.”
Karre studied them each in turn, taking in their earnest expression, reading more there than they would ever say. At their expectancy, she nodded once.
Yeah, Karre thought derisively, if the gods so choose.
—
It was time to get out of Spearhead Fortress and head north. Usually Karre wasn’t one for taking off into an alien plane’s wilderness on her own, but desperate times called for a desperate Karre to grab whatever she could find and run far away from the people-eating monsters. This wasn’t her fight. She already had a great adversary—Divinity Corporation—and it was an all-consuming, vile foe. She didn’t battle beasts with a simple blade for protection. Even a forest filled with mammoth wolves, wild boar and charging bucks was preferable to wolf-men cannibals.
Karre felt her thigh, where the maids insisted she keep a knife hidden. They gave her a sheath that tied around her waist on top and around her thigh on the bottom to hold the knife in place. The weight was a constant reminder of what was out there.
Our men will protect us.
Jordinne had been so certain. That was well and good for them, but Karre’s man hadn’t been seen or heard from in weeks—and she did not count Sir Oskar’s few mumbled sentences when he’d stopped by the fortress as word from her husband. Apparently, Vidar was at a marshland encampment seeing to his “duty”. No wife, on any plane, would put up with the duty excuse.
Good thing I’m not really a wife.
Striding through Vidar’s chambers, she didn’t bother to look around. She had already snooped through his belongings. Aside from clothes and weapons, there was nothing noteworthy.
Outside the chamber, she slowed her steps, keeping her feet soft on the stone. She’d had the seamstress sew her a bag. Its strap fitted over her chest and the large bag hung alongside her hip. Inside, trinkets she had collected were padded with bits of material to keep them from clanking as she walked. She’d also wrapped foodstuffs for the journey.
She wasn’t scared, not of this, not of stealing out of a castle in the middle of the night. Over the last week, activity seemed to increase in the fortress. Knights came and went, always armed and sometimes covered in blood as they rode into the castle, always grim-faced and determined when they rode out. Tension tightened the lines of those who stayed behind.
Karre had been in some pretty rough situations, but wolf-men who ate their victims? The images it conjured made her stomach curl and the nightmares were even worse.
Our men will protect us.
“Then where the hell is my great protector?” Karre took a deep breath, trying to convince herself she didn’t care that Vidar was gone. Why should she? They had only known each other a short time before he left. So what if her body still desired him? So what if in her nightmares it was always him coming to save her? So what if in the dreams that followed they made love—tender and sweet, hard and rough, bent over tables, pressed against trees, in the dining hall at his place of honor, on the battlements, in the brewery… Okay, so there wasn’t a place in the fortress she hadn’t dreamed of being with him in.
She forced her mind to clear until only the task at hand filtered through her thoughts. Walking down the darkened hall, she ran the back of her hand over the stone to keep on path. Twenty steps would take her to her turn, then another twenty-three until she reached the main hall. Hopefully, with the late hour, no one would be there.
Karre quickened her pace, going through the arched doorway to the main hall where everyone gathered to dine during the day and drink generous amounts of liquor in the evening. Drinking would lead to fornicating and the people of Spearhead didn’t always retire to their chambers when it came time to “play”.
Scanning the long rows of tables littered with goblets, she found one couple sleeping on top of one at the far side of the room near the large fireplace. Karre walked to the head table, where she dined with a few of the honored knights, and grabbed an etched metal goblet. Shoving it in her bag, she reached for another one, dumping the remaining liquor on the floor. When she’d taken all five of the etched ones, she made her way toward the entrance with her hand on the bag to keep the goblets from clanking.
Her foot stepped on something in the dim light. She gasped, looking down to find a retracting hand disappearing beneath a table.
“Hold, watch it,” someone mumbled.
She stiffened, waiting several seconds before moving. The person’s hand did not reappear. Letting out her captured breath, she renewed her pace.
The chill of early morning brought with it a strange silence. The courtyard normally bustled with activity, but now it was abandoned and desolate. Faint shafts of light streaked the sky, but it was still too early for the sun to rise. Stars shone bright and she looked up to get her bearings. On most planes the constellations remained the same and once you could read them, it was possible to navigate no matter where you were—so long as you could see the sky.
She neared the front gate, looking up at the battlements. The guards walked the length four times an hour throughout the night, circling back behind the castle. With no man guarding the gate, she took the steps leading up the outer bailey wall. She couldn’t unlatch the gate without drawing attention, but she could climb down the side of the wall onto the pathway from the gate to beyond the moat. With luck, no one would spot her escape.
Karre took off the bag and lifted it up, ready to swing it over the side. The sound of approaching hooves caused her to draw back her hand at the last moment, clanging the goblets as she clutched the bag to her stomach.
“Ho! Open the gate!”
Vidar!
Shit!
“Identify yourself!” Vidar demanded when she didn’t move. She could see by the silhouette of his body that he was looking up at her. Karre ducked down, hiding from view as she went to the narrow stairs to climb off the wall. The sound of running feet came as a guard made his way to investigate.
Vidar came home now? After weeks of being gone? It was a cruel twist of irony that he arrived the exact moment she tried to leave him. A shiver worked over her at the thought and she looked at the sky. It couldn’t be…
If the gods so choose.
Vidar shouted behind her as she ran from the wall, but the words were distorted. The gate creaked open behind her and Vidar rode in. “Karre?”
She stopped moving. There was no point in running now. Slowly, she turned, watching the horse come to a stop. A knight closed the main gate behind him as another from atop the wall watched the scene below. As the man by the gate came to take Vidar’s horse, Vidar strode the remaining distance toward her.
Think, Karre, think. Come up with an excuse. Smile at him.
“What are you doing on the wall, my lady?” he asked, his handsome brow furrowed.
She had forgotten how good he looked. The golden flecks in his hazel eyes caught up the moonlight, casting an animalistic, primal charm about him. Memories of his hands, how they felt, of his warm lips running over her flesh filled her. Her nerves tingled, as if reaching out to him.
“Looking,” she managed to answer after some time.
“Looking for what?”
Think of something.
She hugged the bag tighter. Weakly, she said, “For the Caniba.”
His questioning expression turned hard. “Caniba? Have they been spotted near the gate? Why wasn’t I informed? Get inside at once!” He reached for the sword at his waist and began to turn around to chase after the guard.
“No, they haven’t,” Karre said, stopping him. “The maids told me stories and
I… It’s silly. I think I scared myself and I just had to see the countryside for myself to make sure they weren’t out there.”
He looked at her again with piercing intensity and she lost her breath. Her eyes traveled down over his form—moving over his broad chest to his waist. Seeing the knife hanging near his hip, her eyes moved back up.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she finished, patting the blade hidden by her skirts.
At that, he relaxed. “There is no reason to be scared. Every man here would lay down his life to protect you, my lady.”
And if they fail?
Vidar reached to cup her cheek. “You look worried.”
“Sleepy,” she mumbled. An awkward moment passed between them. He withdrew his hand and averted his eyes to the entrance behind her. The breeze shifted and she smell the dried perspiration on his body, mingled with horse and dirt. “Should we go in?”
Vidar nodded. Karre looked at the wall, thinking of how close she’d come to escaping this place. But with Vidar there, the urge to run dissipated, replaced by the need to touch him, hear him, taste him. When he touched her, she felt safe, as if that brief contact could melt away all her worry.
“Will you wake a servant to bring me a bath?” he asked, falling into step beside her.
“Yes.” Her breathing deepened. Vidar in a bath, naked, wet.
“Thank you, my lady. I am weary from the ride.” He reached to take her satchel. “Let me take this to your chamber for you.”
Karre snatched it back in surprise. The goblets banged together. Vidar stopped walking and arched a brow. Panicking, she dropped the bag and lifted her arms around his neck, kissing him hard. His lips tensed and he gasped in surprise, but her insistent tongue to his mouth forced him to relax.
She let her body mold to his, feeling a tingling pressure where they touched. Karre moaned, momentarily forgetting herself. Vidar placed his hands on her hips and pushed her firmly back. “Let us go inside.”
Karre grabbed her bag and used his words as an excuse to carry it herself. “I’ll see to your bath.”
Taking Karre Page 9