Unbound Heart

by Jane Atchley

  The vet cursed. “It was an animal attack of some kind, sir, wolves, hell, wild dogs—I don’t know.”

  Wolves did not attack healthy men on strong horses. “No.” Duncan shook his head. “You are wrong.”

  “Begging your pardon, Field Marshal, I know an animal attack when I see one.”

  Duncan’s mind raced. He only half listened, a habit leftover from childhood. Sometimes it caused him to stammer because his mind was leagues ahead of his tongue. Ideas tangled up and came out garbled. He had learned to compensate, speaking slowly, forming his sentences in his mind before uttering them. The resulting pauses made his speech formal and stiff, far better, in his opinion, than sounding half-witted. He focused his attention on the offended vet.

  “Can you save it?”

  “Sure, with the help of a first-class Nhurstari blood-talker.”

  Unable to squelch a spark of hope, Duncan’s gaze slid to the elf standing at his side.

  “I’ll do my best, Duncan, you know I will, but without Eoin…” The elf lifted one shoulder, a typical Nhurstari shrug.

  The spark of hope died. Eoin, Eamon’s twin, currently served with Captain Fawr training a Nhurstari cavalry unit in the north. Together the twins were a formidable enchanter, possessed of all the high Nhurstari talents. Apart, Eamon’s talent was barely strong enough to light a candle.

  “Your best is all I ask. Carry on.”

  Clearing the sudden catch in his throat, Duncan turned to Sergeant Major Falconer, better known as Bird. “Organize a search team, please. If his horse made it back, our specialist may still be alive out there. I will head one of the teams myself.”

  “The hell you will, Shug.” Bird looked grim. “Suppose something happens to you. Then what—”

  Duncan overrode his man’s protest with a sharp hand gesture. He put up with the moniker Shug because Troopers loved nicknames. Shug, referenced his family’s cane holdings, the largest in the Maoliou Isles, and served as a more acceptable substitute than many others. If he had learned nothing else in five years service, he’d learned to pick his battles.

  “When I require your opinion, Bird, I will ask for it.”

  The sergeant major’s jaw tightened. He gave a curt nod. “Yes sir.”

  Then what? It was a valid question one Duncan had asked himself. The council in Elhar had not backed his appointment. They wanted Captain Fawr, the Kingdoms’ most famous fighter, at the head of their army. But Captain Fawr had forced them to accept the untried first lieutenant hiding in his shadow.

  Duncan strode back to his tent and dropped into the chair behind his campaign desk. It did not matter how he had come to it. He was field marshal. Unlike Captain Fawr, he would reach his objective without torching crops or turning whole regions into killing fields. Hang old-school slash and burn tactics. If this army could not take inspiration from new ideas, well, there was something wrong with them. Frustration boiled up his throat as hot as lava. He ran his finger under his uniform’s suddenly stifling high collar.

  His men needed an honorable victory but Duncan’s efforts had not delivered a single pitched battle. The enemy would not stand and fight. They were like pickpockets, hitting easy marks, a village here, a farmstead there, fleeing before his superior force. His army’s morale bled away drop by drop, and Duncan had not discovered a means to stem the flow. For all his intelligence, he did not read people well. He did not possess his captain’s happy talent for putting men at ease. In fact, his physical appearance produced the opposite effect. He made the men uneasy. Perhaps tonight’s extra beer ration would at least slap a tourniquet on the problem until he thought of a better solution. Duncan stared at the map laid out on his desk. He told himself it was better if he stayed out of sight. Too bad he could not lead from that position.

  Duncan reviewed the search party Bird assembled. The man had chosen his life-partner, whom the men called Lady Bird, a young private Duncan recognized as something of a hunting legend around the garrison, and a pair of corporals noted for their wilderness skills. Good choices. Too bad he could not use them.

  “Our allies are conspicuously absent here, Bird?”

  “We take care of our own, sir.”

  Given Bird had begun service at the garrison before Duncan was born, he understood his sergeant major’s attitude. Understanding did not make it less inconvenient. “The exclusive use of garrison personnel signals our allies we consider them inferior.”

  One of the corporals spit on the ground. “Well hell, sir, they are inferior.”

  Duncan’s eyes narrowed. He disapproved of vulgarisms, but nothing he did discouraged them. Their captain, his captain, could scarcely string together two sentences without at least one vulgarism. He picked his battles and he would never win this one.

  “Perhaps, Corporal…” Duncan reached for the man’s name. It eluded him as proper names often did. An extreme annoyance, given he recalled every other scrap of information ever to brush up against him. He had a blind spot when it came to people. Captain Fawr, on the other hand, would know the trooper’s name. He probably knew what the man’s parents did for a living.

  Eamon touched Duncan’s sleeve, a sure sign he had paused to long. “But still—” Duncan cleared his throat. “Politics demand we include them.” Turning toward the knot of infantry loitering nearby, Duncan pointed. “You, you, and you ride with us. Eamon, you are with me.”

  Chapter Three

  Three hours at a steady trot brought Faelan and Quinn to their base camp by midmorning. The Army of the Descendants encamped fifteen miles north of the enemy’s position. Flanked by two creeks, shaded by a stand of old timber, this was a comfortable camp. Faelan felt a surge of pride. Thanks to the morning’s brutal work their people could enjoy it one more day.

  War unexpectedly provided Faelan a chance to earn the rights men had by birth, and she seized it with both hands. Sure, war’s ugliness tarnished some of her bright joy, but nothing worth having ever came freely. Already she’d accumulated enough favor to avoid the usual fate of women in her society. She had refused marriage. So she couldn’t read or write. It would come, this knowledge. If she distinguished herself in this war, the chief-men couldn’t deny her. Knowledge would come and with it the power to choose her destiny. Faelan was determined to settle for nothing less. Self-determination was worth any price.

  Faelan stole a moment to savor her freedom before entering camp. The beauty of the countryside filled her senses, so many tall trees. Everywhere she looked the land sprouted fresh and green, not at all like the blistering sand and scrub foliage of her homeland. In the desert, one sometimes stumbled upon lush green places. Her people called them paradises, fought over them, killed for them. But those few patches of green were nothing. This was paradise.

  No orderly tent rows greeted her return to the Descendants’ camp. No bright banners floated on the gentle morning breeze. The blue-jackets had forced them to flee so often base camp consisted largely of hodgepodge animal hide shelters and lean-tos. And the smell…fifty thousand men, not to mention camp followers, all using hastily dug open-air latrines. Faelan shuddered.

  As she made her way to the tent she shared with her brother, one of the few real tents still in Descendant hands, Faelan noticed how ragged their citizen soldiers looked in their mismatched armor. They looked hungry as well. Even this bountiful land struggled to support their numbers, a condition sure to worsen as her uncle, the general, drew down their raiding parties.

  In the desert, water was precious, but here, like everything else, water was plentiful. With the stink of blood filling her nostrils, Faelan longed for a neck-deep soak. She had developed quite a taste for baths over the past few months. She could not wait to sink into the steaming water, close her eyes, maybe touch herself, and fantasize about a certain field marshal’s flame-blue eyes. Where had that come from? The only safe fantasy about the enemy field marshal was how to kill him.

  “Lannie. Quinn.”

  Not Nicholas. Not now. But there he was
, her would be lover, all six-foot two of him striding toward her with a big smile on his face. He’d been waiting for them. He clutched a robe in each meaty fist. Nicholas, a distant cousin from a neighboring tribe was, to be honest, very easy on the eyes. One night about six months ago, she had too much wine…he was there…it just happened.

  Now he was there every time Faelan turned around. At first, she enjoyed his attention. After all, as she kept telling anyone who would listen, women had the same needs as men. They lacked choices. Then he had started making noises about marriage. He hoped to advance himself by owning a shape shifter.

  Well, he could hope all he liked. Faelan had made up her mind. She had worked too hard for the privileges Nicholas got by having an appendage between his legs. She wasn’t about to give up her hard-won freedom for some backward-thinking troglodyte. She might consider a partnership of equals. But what man would take her on her terms. Even if one agreed, she would have to think twice before trusting the man not to change his stripes once he had her in his clutches.

  Nicholas draped a robe around her shoulders. He stood too close while she shifted, leaned in, and stole a kiss while she was not quite human. He had asked, no demanded, she shift during climax the next time they lay together. He claimed he’d heard it heightened the experience. From whom, Faelan couldn’t imagine. Nicholas was disgusting. If she’d ever entertained an interest in him, it had ended right then.

  “Go away, Nicholas.” Faelan shoved him back a step and ducked into the tent.

  Outside, Faelan heard Quinn teasing, “We’ve been to the enemy’s camp, my boy, caught a glimpse of their field marshal. I’m afraid the sight of him took the heart right out of our Lannie.” Quinn snickered at his own sideways joke. She’d make him pay for his impertinence the next time they shifted.

  Her old servant caught her robe as Faelan stepped into the steaming wooden tub the maid had prepared for her. “Did you really go there, precious?” Pretending curiosity wasn’t eating her alive, the old woman shook out a pale orange sari for Faelan to put on after her bath. Faelan knew better. A bigger gossip had never lived.

  A contented sigh slipped from Faelan as she settled into the tub. She closed her eyes and let the night’s tension seep out of her muscles. “We did. You should see the place. It’s different—”

  “And this field marshal fellow.” The woman ran a comb through Faelan’s short hair. “What is he like?”

  A smile touched Faelan’s lips. A god.

  “Is he tall?”

  “Mmm… Not really.”

  “He’s short then?” The maid lathered Faelan’s hair.

  “Yes.” Quinn’s voice sounded from the other side of the thin blanket strung up for privacy. “The man is a midget, very ugly.”

  Faelan shot upward, splashing bath water over the wooden tub’s edge. “Shut up. You lying fiend!

  Quinn’s laughter mocked her. “Poor Nicholas, she’ll never look at him now.” Snaking his arm around the edge of the blanket, he snagged Faelan’s only good towel. “I’m going to rinse off in the creek.”

  “If you report to our uncle without me, I swear I’ll cripple you.” Faelan motioned for her maid to hurry with the rinse water.

  “I take it the fellow is handsome?”

  “Handsome?” Faelan raised her eyebrows. “I spit on the word. The man makes handsome look like a wart on a goat’s nose.” She grasped the older woman’s hands. “Who needs the stars when there is such a place as this, such a man as that? It breaks my heart he has to die for a cause I’m not even sure ever existed. Is that wicked?”

  Her maid’s wistful smile reminded Faelan she too, had once been young. “It’s not wicked, precious girl. It’s natural.”

  Faelan fetched up a sigh so deep she felt it in her toes. “Too bad he’s the enemy.” And a relentless bastard.

  “Well, that’s the of way things, isn’t it? Dreams are well and good, but come nighttime a woman wants more than moonlight in her arms.”

  “You’re right.” Faelan stepped out of the tub, slipped into her robe. “But it’s a terrible waste.”

  “Now, take Mister Nicholas—

  “You take him.” Why was everyone pushing Nicholas at her all of a sudden? Was he bribing them? She wouldn’t put it past the rat-bastard. “What’s so special about Nicholas?”

  Her servant found a clean if threadbare towel to wrap around Faelan’s wet head. “Nothing much, except he’s real. He’s on our side, and he loves you.”

  “Loves me? Please. Nicholas loves Nicholas.”

  A quarter hour later, draped in yards of soft gauzy orange fabric, the lower half of her face artfully hidden behind a sheer veil cloth, Faelan sat in the much patched war tent and listened to her brother’s account of their night’s adventure. Once or twice, she bit her lip to keep from speaking out, and then a notion struck her, a reckless, wild notion. When Quinn finished speaking, Faelan rose and stood before the chief-men for the first time.

  “General Foley…Uncle, may I have permission to speak before the chief-men?” Receiving a nod, Faelan took a deep breath and plowed ahead. “I see you’ve found our information worthwhile. I can provide you with better information. What would you say to the enemy’s troop movements?”

  Her uncle’s grizzled brows rose. His pale blue gaze, so much like her own, fixed upon her. “How would you do this?”

  Faelan had the seed of a plan. It had taken root while Quinn talked. Hopefully, the chief-men would not ask for details. “I’ll infiltrate their camp as a dog and attach myself to one of their officers, to their field marshal if possible.”

  From his place at her side, Quinn mumbled, “I’ll just bet you will.”

  Faelan glared him. “Quinn can’t pass for a dog, but given my size and coloring, I can.”

  Nicholas leapt to his feet, but Faelan’s uncle waved him down. “You would leave at the first hint of discovery?”

  Faelan’s heart missed a beat. Never had she imagined they would consider her idea, but all around the tent the chief-men nodded. Each knew the war was lost without something to change their fortunes. Faelan offered them that something.

  She raised her chin. “You have my word, General.”

  Her uncle gave a sharp nod. Faelan’s heart soared. This was the sort of great deed she’d hoped for since the war began. They’d have to grant her equality now. She swept out of the council tent with a victorious smile on her lips, and Quinn and Nicholas hard on her heels.

  Nicholas grabbed her arm, spinning her around.

  “Faelan, this is madness. I forbid it.”

  “Nicholas,” Quinn cautioned his friend. “My sister isn’t yours to forbid.”

  Faelan glared at Nicholas’ hand biting into her flesh. She’d have a bruise tomorrow. “Let go of me. Assaulting a shape shifter, even a female shape shifter, is a stoning offense.”

  Nicholas’ eyes widened. Even in human form Faelan smelled his fear. “It’s dangerous.” His large hands dropped to his side, made impotent fists. “How can I allow it?”

  Inside her wolf side stirred. “How can you stop it?”

  “Quinn? Tell her what happens to spies who get caught.”

  Her brother held his hands up between them. “The chief-men agreed. The decision is out of my hands. Believe it or not, Faelan is capable of making her own decisions. You must learn to respect her if you ever expect—well, you know.”

  “I won’t get caught.” Faelan lifted her chin, challenging Nicholas. Let him say another word and she would change for him. Just not the way he wanted. She watched him choke back his anger, but she saw it was not the end of the matter. From now on Nicholas would undercut her with the chief-men every chance he got.

  Chapter Four

  Meticulous by nature, Duncan based action upon careful reflection. His command style chafed the old-guard, who preferred his captain’s see-the-hill, take-the-hill approach. He regretted it, but not enough to act without due diligence.

  Based upon the veterinarian’s estim
ation, Duncan calculated the maximum distance an injured horse could travel. Using camp as a starting point, he mapped out an area covering five square-miles, divided it into sections, and sections into grids. Since the search area’s forested terrain made visual communication impossible, Duncan issued a horn to each team. Sound the horn twice if they found the specialist, once if they encountered trouble.

  By noon his teams had searched half the area and Duncan no longer hoped he’d find his specialist alive. He would find his man, though, if it took all day or all week. He did not leave men behind. Their families deserved that much.

  A horn sounded, two short bursts coming from a heavily wooded region to his immediate left. Duncan and Eamon wheeled their horses around and spurred toward the thicket.

  His scout lay face down in a pool of blood. Batting at the flies buzzing around the body, Duncan knelt beside his man and gently pried open the trooper’s fist. A clump of black fur stuck to the man’s bloody fingers. Wolves, like the vet said, but the attack made no sense. He glanced at the tracks. Wolves were shy creatures, hunting in packs, preying upon the sick or weak. His scout had been neither. The wolves had not eaten their kill. In his experience, only men killed for pleasure. The equation did not add up. Duncan liked things to add up.

  Duncan scanned the faces of the men gathered around him. His allies were a round-eyed, tight-lipped, superstitious lot, but they were not stupid. This scene felt wrong, and they looked to him to make sense of it.

  Hunkering down at his side, Eamon plucked the fur from the scout’s fingers. He brought it to his nose, sniffed, screwed up his nose. Eyes closed, he raised his head and sniffed the breeze. He pointed toward their camp. “It went that way.”

  Now that’s troubling. “Both?” Duncan stood, stepped back, allowed his men to move in and collect the body. Beside him Eamon gave that odd one-shoulder Nhurstari shrug.