by P. J. Fox
“Brother, have you rope?” Of course he did and, even if he didn’t, they were in a storeroom.
“Yes, brother.”
“Tie his hands to that hook.” Hart pointed. “Leave him enough slack to stand.”
As Arvid did so, Bonel began to yell for help. A little late, in Hart’s opinion. Hart, meanwhile, surveyed the room. There wasn’t much light, just from a series of small grated windows near the ceiling that were meant to let air circulate. Which was fine. Hart was used to working in near darkness. Dungeons were not, after all, exactly famed for their sunlit expanses.
He removed his vest, and laid it with his cloak and his gloves. Neatly, and out of the way. Straightening, he walked over to his victim. Slowly. As though they had all the time in the world.
“Do you know why I don’t wear gloves, to work? Most torturers do.”
The unfortunate man shook his head.
In a flash, Hart’s knife was free from his waistband and the man’s shirt lay in tatters on the floor. The knife vanished just as quickly. Hart trailed fingertips down the newly exposed flesh. Delicately. Almost lovingly.
“I like to feel the skin of my victims.”
His fingertips trailed lower.
“The cold. The clamminess. Like a corpse’s skin, fear is so powerful. And then the heat of the blood, in contrast. How the blood cools, over time.”
If the man hadn’t pissed himself yet, he would soon.
He’d begun to make a strange keening noise, deep in the back of his throat.
“What?” Hart’s fingers stopped. “So frightened, so soon? And we’ve only just begun.”
“There was a man before Borghild, too,” Arvid offered. He was lounging against a barrel. “I ate his liver.”
Hart turned. “Was it good?”
Arvid shrugged.
Hart turned and, like the viper he was known for, struck before his victim could blink. A punishing punch to the gut. And another. And another. And ah, there it was. The bloom of urine in the damp air. His favorite devices might be unavailable to him, including various specially designed blades and his favorite set of branding irons, but no matter. The truest, the deadliest powers were the ones one carried within: imagination and, above all, will. Fear was fear and pain was pain.
He felt his knuckles split skin.
“Tell me.” The words were insidious, soft. They hung in the air, a lover’s invitation.
“Please…please stop.” The man was gasping for breath.
“No,” Hart corrected him. “Tell me how much you love it.”
He removed his belt. The hard leather would make easy work of skin already primed. Welts and bruises covered his victim’s body. Crack. A drop of blood landed on Hart’s cheek, near the corner of his mouth. With a delicate movement, he removed it. And licked it from his fingertip, all the while holding the other man’s gaze.
“Brother?” Arvid asked.
“He tastes like filth.”
Hart still hadn’t raised his voice. He seldom did. He didn’t have to.
The belt cracked again. And again. “Not all men need fear me. Nor women.”
And again.
And again.
“Those who keep their covenants, and live in quiet alongside their neighbors.”
And again.
“Because, you see, like my namesake, I prefer to hunt in my own domain.” And again. “Don’t all predators have their chosen hunting grounds? Their chosen prey?”
“Indeed they do,” Arvid agreed. “The wolf hunts along the stream bed, not in the open plain.”
And again.
“Please,” his victim begged. “Please stop.”
“Tell me you love it, and I will.” Hart paused. “But there’s one caveat: you have to convince me.”
And again.
“Please—”
And again.
“I—”
And again.
“I love it!”
And again.
“I love it!”
And again.
“Do it harder! Beat me! Harder! Harder! Please, for the love of the Gods, beat me!”
Hart exchanged a glance with Arvid.
“Cut him down. But first, cut his breeches off.”
As Bonel fell forward, screaming from the sudden pain in his arms, Hart grabbed him and threw him over the top of the barrel. Arvid took his place at Bonel’s head, holding him, his fingers digging into Bonel’s open wounds. Hart, walking around him, kicked his feet wide. He tossed his belt aside and unlaced his own breeches.
Bonel was fat, but the twin globes of his ass parted easily enough. And Hart was already rock hard. With a single thrust, he forced himself inside. Past the ring of muscle at the entrance and deep that most secret canal. Further and further, until Bonel was forced, in his prone position, to take Hart up to the hilt and feel the weight of his balls as they rested against the stretched, unwilling flesh.
Bonel’s yells became screams, high pitched and inhuman.
It was the accomplishment, he thought, that aroused him. Of achieving ultimate control. There was nothing more dominant than taking a person—male or female—in this fashion.
With Lissa, with others, the need was driven by lust.
Here, there was none. Only something much darker. He felt everything and, yet, he felt nothing.
“How does it feel,” he asked. “Your first time?”
But Bonel couldn’t answer.
Hart thrust, and thrust again, eventually spending his seed deep inside the other man.
And then, bored, he broke his neck.
FIFTY-ONE
The earl had asked to see him, which Tristan thought odd.
Peregrine Cavendish, the 12th Earl of Enzie, was on his deathbed. A fact that the old man had only recently seemed to acknowledge. Before, part of him had been playing at being sick. Despite his exhaustion, despite his collapse. And, after, despite his near-crippling weakness and his lessened appetite. He’d held court from his bed, enjoying the torment he inflicted on his daughter. And even on the servants, who came in to wait on him. Tristan was certain that, at long last, in the earl’s mind, he was getting his proper due.
He’d always believed himself destined for greatness, always longed, apparently, for a small army of servants to order about. And throw things at, and curse at, when they displeased him. Several of the maids had left his room in tears, refusing to return. To the earl, power evidently meant the power to consume. And to hurt.
That no one respected him seemed to bother him not a whit. If he even noticed. So long as his lunch arrived on time.
But with the spasms and the coughing, and now the blood, had come the realization that perhaps this wasn’t a holiday after all. That he wouldn’t be rising from this bed, at least not in this form.
All of which didn’t change the fact that he hated Tristan. No doubt the earl was quite unhappy with his situation, but he wasn’t the sort to face challenge with stoicism. Nor, despite Isla’s hopes to the contrary, was he the sort to go in for deathbed changes of heart.
None of it made sense to Tristan. The man had lived a long life, for one of his species. A life that, from his own lips, had been nothing but one disappointment stacked upon another. Why then, was he so upset about the prospect of death?
Apple stopped him near the door to what had become the earl’s chamber. She put out her hand, stopped just short of touching him, and let it fall. He looked down at her. She looked wan. Not like the earl, but like she hadn’t slept in a week. And maybe she hadn’t.
Her eyes were red-rimmed, but whether from tears or exhaustion he couldn’t tell. The bags under her eyes, though, those were from exhaustion. She’d either forgotten, or hadn’t bothered, to put on cosmetics. Her skin, without the rouge, was quite pale. A lovely color, really. She could have been Rowena’s mother, in another life; their looks were very similar. Only where Apple was aging into a quiet beauty, Rowena would grow florid.
“I…he’s not in a good mo
od this evening.”
Tristan didn’t especially care. “Has he been sharp with you, too?”
Apple hung her head. “I deserve it. I deserve everything everyone says to me.”
That was a matter for greater minds than his to decide. “Isla would welcome your company.”
“I cannot imagine it so.”
“You are, no doubt, preferable to Rowena.”
“That chit.” There was a brief flare of the old fire.
“Isla is alone, and her father is dying.”
“She has Greta and…other, better people.”
“And none of them are her family,” Tristan reminded her gently.
None of them knew where she came from, or how she’d lived. None of them knew the torments she’d suffered. Some of those torments might have been at Apple’s hands, but that after a bizarre fashion made her an intimate. An intimate as Greta could never hope to be.
Apple’s smile was faint, but genuine. He wondered if she’d thought about what she’d do, once the earl was gone. Whether she’d be allowed to remain with them was up to Isla. Although Tristan suspected that she’d leave, regardless.
He waited, for another minute, and then pushed open the door and went inside.
The earl was propped up on pillows, just as Isla had seen him. Tristan had been there for that conversation, too. A plate of food, untouched, sat on the bedside table. Fruit and cheese. Light fare, nothing difficult to keep down. Tristan had heard from the castellan that the earl had thrown the last plate of fruit and cheese on the floor and demanded roast boar. Which had not, needless to say, materialized.
Although a few jokes about roast boor, by those thinking themselves delightfully clever, had made their way around the kitchens.
At first, Tristan thought the earl was asleep. But then his head turned slightly and he gestured. His hand, resting atop his coverlet, already looked like that of a corpse.
“Come in. Sit.”
Tristan did so. He sat on the side of the earl’s bed, and waited. Noise filtered in from outside, but within the earl’s sanctum it was quiet. Dust motes danced in the light. The air smelled of camphor, and wax.
Tristan, sharing the bond with Isla, knew how she’d yearned for a parental relationship. His understanding of her feelings was, of course, only academic; which he suspected it would be, regardless. This wasn’t his parent. And things were always clearer from the outside, looking in.
He’d loved his own brother, Morin, despite Morin’s faults. Or perhaps because of them. Morin had never tried to kill him outright, but, like the earl, had made a habit of looking the other way. And Morin, too, had railed against him in the end. Which hadn’t changed Tristan, only intensified his self-loathing.
That Isla should simply cast out her sister, and her father, might seem the obvious and indeed only solution to some. But then, why not cast out her brother as well? Hart had killed more men than the earl. Even before he’d come north. He hadn’t offered to play chess with those bandits, back at Enzie. Nor was he famed for his equitable treatment of women.
Love was never conditional on perfection. What made one sin more palatable than another? And who was to judge?
Nor could one always choose who one loved. Only make the best of the situation, whatever that situation might be. Isla loved Hart, because he was her brother and because he was, or at least for a long time had been, her only friend. The only person in her world who wanted nothing more than her friendship in return. Her father, she loved because he was her father. And because it was very easy, Tristan had learned, to confuse feelings of pity and obligation—and even resentment—with true affection.
And Rowena? He suspected much the same. Isla had grown to womanhood being told she was responsible for these people. She’d be a cold-hearted creature indeed to simply cast the lessons of her childhood out, as soon as they no longer served her own interests.
A new equilibrium took time.
“What comes next?”
Tristan’s eyes met the earl’s. The color had begun leeching out of them, leaving them like over-washed cloth. The surrounding whites were tinged with yellow.
His words, when he spoke them, were gentle. “I don’t know, old man.”
“How…how can you not?” He coughed, from the exertion of speaking.
Now that the growth inside had made manifest, Quentin had explained, he’d fade fast. This was a disease that often gave no sign in its earliest stages. Or, at least, no sign that couldn’t be ignored. Thus patients were marked for death months and, depending on how slowly the individual course progressed, even years before they had any cause for true concern. Thinking themselves perfectly healthy, they carried their own demons buried deep within: to the fields, to the tavern, to bed at night.
And then…this.
“There are limits, even to my knowledge.” Which was true.
“You’re not…human.” He coughed again on that last word, pressing a balled up rag to his lips. It was stained with red. The growth had, Quentin had also explained, spread to the old man’s lungs. Soon they’d cease to function altogether.
“No.”
“How old…are you?” More red.
“Old.”
“And you don’t…?”
“I don’t know what lies on the other side, because I’ve never died.”
“Will you?”
Tristan poured the earl a cup of water from the carafe at his bedside and helped him drink it. The cool water would refresh him and, for a few moments at least, ease his pain. The earl had wanted wine, and no one had any objection to letting him have it, but he couldn’t keep it down.
“I don’t know.”
“My daughter…isn’t human now, either.”
“No.”
“She won’t…die?” There was a hint of hope in that last word.
“No.” Nor age. Nor wither as her father had.
“I want you to turn me, as you did her. To save me.”
Tristan studied him. Morin had been like this in his last days. Afraid.
“No.”
They sat together, man and demon, in the fading afternoon light.
“This is your time.”
“But…I can’t.” His voice was small. Querulous.
“If everything goes on living, nothing ever grows.” Tristan’s tone was still gentle. As gentle as he could make it. “Spring comes because winter dies and, in turn, each year those same plants must go into the ground to renew themselves. The calf comes, because the mother grows. A calf cannot bear a calf and, in turn, if the mother lived forever, then there would be no room for her children.
“There is nothing wrong with being sick. With dying.”
“All of which is…easy…for you to say.”
“If I could have chosen to be a man, I would have.” To lie beneath the barrows, Isla by his side, their bodies mingling into a single dust. To die, knowing that throughout his life he’d fully loved her. Instead, he had her forever—half had her. Like a beggar spending eternity staring at a feast.
He’d taken her because he was selfish. This was your chance, he’d told her once. I was only ever going to give you one. But would he have? He couldn’t honestly tell himself, even now, that he would. That, willpower aside, he’d even had the capability. He needed her. Needed her enough to destroy her life. The woman he could not love.
“Go to the hall of your ancestors, old man. Feast with them.”
His eyes lit up. “Do you think…I will?”
Would he spend eternity like this, lying in a sickbed? Tristan liked to think that the Gods, if They existed, were not cruel. The Eastern religion taught that all creatures were born again, to learn those lessons they’d failed to learn in lives before. So that even if a man got another chance as a cockroach, he got another chance.
And eventually, one day, he might be a man again.
“I’m frightened.”
“I know.”
The earl held out his hand, and Tristan took it.
There was only one thing worse than fighting a war with allies, Hart decided, and that was fighting a war without them.
“I’m cold,” Rudolph announced.
They were all cold. After a brief thaw, they’d experienced a series of punishing rainstorms and the chill mountain air that came with such things. Spring in the mountains. What Arvid called a fine spring and what the rest of the men called weather that made their balls retreat so far into themselves they questioned whether they’d been made eunuchs.
He’d tell Rudolph to walk it off but none of them could walk; they were encased, men and horses alike, in knee-deep mud.
He looked skyward, blinking against the fat drops. His hair was plastered to his head. The rain had trickled in under his collar, too, down his back and soaking his smallclothes.
“No need to bathe tonight, brother.” Arvid grinned.
“Do you ever bathe?” Hart turned.
“I bathe my cock in the juices of many fine cunts!”
Hart sighed.
According to the writings of Gideon the Conqueror, who liked to catalogue such things, ten men or less were robbers. Ten to twenty-five were brigands, and twenty-five to fifty were a raiding party. Only this last grouping, according to those same writings, was ever composed of soldiers. At least, soldiers working for honest pay. Most brigands were defectors, banding together to pursue their own ends. More than fifty, therefore, constituted an army. Hart had a thousand under his command, and within a few short days he’d come to hate them all. Even the ones he hadn’t met yet.
Northerners. Tribesmen. The Southrons he’d met at Hardland, who were joining them on the trek east.
“This isn’t going to work,” Rudolph said.
Hart favored him with a flat look.
“We don’t even have a battering ram.”
“A battering ram? Really?” Hart tried not to let himself be drawn into these conversations, as acknowledging so much as Rudolph’s existence was beneath his dignity. But at that moment, drenched and sore and furious at himself for being stuck in such a ridiculous predicament, he let loose. “Have you ever even seen a battering ram?”