Every inch of me, from my knees up, itched with sweat. I took off my hat, stuffed it into my pack, and ducked down into the stream until its coolness soaked through my clothes to my skin, then stood and bent over and managed to get my long hair and sticky scalp thoroughly wet.
Let me say here than I don't know which of us was most surprised.
CHAPTER 2
“Do not touch your knife. Turn slowly,” a voice behind me said.
I stiffened, my arms raised. The voice that spoke was soft, the words barely audible, his accent nothing I recognized.
Park ranger? What, had they already arrested Roman and crew and had come looking for me? I did a quick think and started readying a sobbing explanation about how I barely knew them and was shocked, absolutely shocked, to discover they had brought along booze and drugs on what I had thought was to be a commune with nature. That sounded right. I turned slowly as commanded, my arms above my head.
And then I looked up at my captor.
He was young, still closer to boy than man, looked about college freshman age. Beneath a thick mass of yellow hair was a knockout face, sky blue eyes, wide mouth and square jaw, thick neck. His skin was sunburned beneath a scattering of freckles on his shoulders.
“Who are you, girl?” he whispered.
His question snapped my mind back to my situation. Who was I, indeed? How long since I had been asked that question?
“Hail, Conan the Barbarian,” I said because although he looked nothing like the film version, was much better looking, actually, he was dressed in a costume Arnold would have envied. Classy outfit, killer boots, tooled leather belt. “What's up? Is there a medieval fair going on?”
“Your name?” he said again.
Okay, I could play games. Let's see, what were the rules? Oh right, wicked sorcerers used people's names to control them, therefore always give an alias.
Something that meant astrologer or fortuneteller? Gypsy Sue? No, something more glamorous, right? Maybe this fair had good food. I'd been to a few and run into cold hot dogs and warm coke but never mind, I could hope.
“Stargazer,” I said and grinned at him.
He did not return my grin. Maybe barbarians aren't supposed to grin and this guy was taking his role-playing way too seriously. “Come toward me slowly. Make no sound. I will not harm you.”
Yeah, I'd heard that one before. Still, out here in the woods with no one else in sight, I figured I'd humor the guy. In his hand he held a heavy broadsword, the kind used by barbarians to slay their enemies in every film I could remember and, unfortunately, it didn't look fake. Probably the edges were dull but still, the thing could leave a hell of a bruise.
He stood above me at the edge of the stream bank, half concealed by brush. After I waded out of the stream and climbed the bank, he reached toward me and plucked my knife from my belt. I'd forgotten all about it, that silly Swiss pocket knife that I had dug out of my pack to use to cut berries. Moving swiftly, he tucked it inside his boot, then hung his sword on his own belt.
“Okay, play time is over, fella. That knife was a gift and I want it back,” I muttered.
He grabbed me and turned me away from him so that he could pull my backpack off of my shoulders. When he let go of me, I turned to face him again and watched in silence as he reached into the pack, felt through the contents.
Big deal, all that remained in my pack was a clean tee shirt, my comb, my toothbrush and my billfold. He glanced at each item, looked puzzled, and then replaced everything except the billfold. He flipped it open and pulled out my credit card.
“I can't believe this!” I stormed. “Muggers in a national forest!”
He slid the card back into the billfold, dropped it back into the pack, then dug into the bottom and came up with the last item, my cellphone.
When he pressed his fingers into the keys, the phone lit up. His eyes went wide and those blond eyebrows practically disappeared into his hairline as he dropped the phone into the damp ferns.
“Hey!” I shouted and a bunch of other words I keep meaning to remove from my vocabulary because honestly, they sound juvenile, but by the time I'd made it through a string of them, I found the phone, picked it up, wiped it off against my shirt front and then thought, why not 9-1-1? If he was a fruitcake, I could use some help here. But when I pressed the keys, the roaming light faded and goodbye battery.
Okay, make the best of it, look at the guy and figure out the best route away.
We were the same height. Oh, that's right. Arnold-style barbarians aren't tall, so maybe that's why this guy picked this costume. Not tall, no, but he seemed much larger than me because he was solid and hard-muscled and if his intentions were unpleasant, I was going to have to count on my wits.
He wore gold arm bands above his elbows and at his wrists, and his fingers were covered with gold rings. Some of the gold almost looked real, although it had to be costume jewelry considering the size of each piece.
His woven vest was open in front and tied with laces that crisscrossed on his chest. More of that nice yellow hair gleamed like sunshine against his bare skin. He wore pants tucked into boots laced to his knees; kind of sexy, really.
“You are from the land beyond the mist,” he said. “How did you come here?”
“I flew over the top of a mountain, us stargazers have invisible wings,” I said, “and landed in your stupid stream.”
My wet shorts and dripping hair itched. To hide my fear, I pulled my long hair forward over my shoulder and slowly twisted it to wring out the water.
He frowned, caught my wrist in a firm grip, and said, “Come with me but make no noise or they will kill you.”
Reason enough to be silent, I decided. What kinds of games were going on here? Some kind of paintball battle? He led me away from the stream along a path through the woods where the trees pressed together and their leaves hid the sun.
“If you cry out, my guards will hear you. I cannot always control them.”
He half dragged me, pulling me along like a child, and his action cleared my mind. He was much stronger than I, but maybe dumber? If I kept my thoughts clear, could I outwit him? It probably depended on who his playmates were and how close it was to dinnertime and the end of the game. My heart calmed its pounding.
“Why do your friends want to kill me?” I asked. “Do they score a point for every limp body? Hey, I can do limp.”
His eyes widened with curiosity.
“I don't care if you live or die, but first I want to speak with you. I know from your dark hair that you are from the outlands. Only once before have outlanders come here and that was long ago and they are gone. You did not come that way. Still, I do not believe you can fly.”
I avoided his stare by looking over his shoulder, and said nothing. His act was way too complicated and he obviously had no plan to step out of character for me. Oh. Maybe this was a really large fair and he thought I was a participant.
“I'm not with the fair,” I said. “If you could just take me to the nearest road, I can thumb a ride.”
His lower lip jutted out. “You must be hungry with nothing to eat but berries. I will give you food if you will tell me how you came here.”
When I didn't answer, because honestly, how had I managed to get this lost, he shrugged and reached into a pouch strung to his belt, an honest-to-God leather pouch, which must have been lined with plastic. Anyway I hoped so, because he pulled out a hunk of cheese and a long brown piece of something or other.
He held them out to me. “Here, eat this.”
The cheese had a pungent odor, but it was food I recognized. I sniffed it, broke a small bit off of a corner and tasted it, not believing myself because probably the bacteria count was off the scale.
“Yes, thanks,” I said and palmed it, figuring I'd drop it in the ferns when he looked away.
Thing is, this guy was creeping me out and it seemed wise to humor him. He stood silently, watching me, then handed me the brown piece, some sort of smoked
meat, maybe? I could not guess what to do with it. It felt hard and dry in my hands, and had an unpleasant odor.
“What is this?”
“Dried mutton,” he said.
I handed it back to him. “Thanks, anyway, I'm a vegetarian.”
His eyebrows shot up, wrinkling his forehead. “You are what?”
So we were still game-playing.
I bowed my head and said, “Kind sir, I do not eat meat because I am not a barbarian.”
“What is a barbarian?” he asked.
“You -” I began, then stopped. Whoops? Had I misread the costume? Did he think he was someone in a Shakespearean play, Romeo, MacBeth? Okay, he was Danish blond, but the costume didn't look like any Hamlet I'd ever seen. How far did he want to carry the word play? “Barbarians are wolves, this is the forest and I am Little Red Riding Hood. Now can we move on out of here? Bugs are chewing my hide.”
He nodded. “Soon I will be missed and my guards will search for me. I must return to my camp and you must return with me. Do exactly as I tell you, Stargazer, and I may choose to let you live.”
Again he caught my wrist and I felt the heat and sweat in his hand. Was there something he feared? Certainly not me, not the way he held on to me. He hurried me through the woods until we reached the clearing. In its center stood this humongous horse and who knew they let those things into national forests?
A pseudo-barbarian I could manage, but not a horse.
It threw back its huge head, opened its jaws baring wide yellow teeth, and made a terrible sound. Its long white tail switched around its hind legs. I figured it would rear up and come pounding down on me with its hooves.
“Come along, girl.”
“No!”
He peered into my face, his mouth curled up at the corners, and he laughed. “Are you afraid of my horse?”
“Had a really bad experience once,” I mumbled, not much wanting to elaborate.
I fell off a pony at Woodland Park Zoo when I was about five and everyone laughed at me and to this day I do not consider horses my friends.
“You must ride on my horse,” he said. “He will not hurt you. See? He is as gentle as a lamb.”
He walked up to the horse and scratched behind its ears. The horse dropped its head and pressed its nose into the guy's shoulder.
“I'll walk.”
“No. You cannot. You do not understand. If you walk into the camp my men will attack you before I can stop them. No, you must ride on my horse so they will know you are mine.”
“And why should that stop them?”
'You will see. Whatever I say, you must agree with me.”
He dragged me over to the horse and pulled my hand toward it until my fingers touched its nose. It was warm and oddly soft beneath its coarse mat of hair, probably a nice horse, yes, but I still didn't want it as a friend.
“There, Stargazer. He is not wild. His name is Banner and if you speak softly to him, he will love you.”
I managed to say, “Never much wanted to be loved by a horse.” Though, God knows, I'd had a few pigs fall for me.
Before I realized what he had in mind, the guy pressed his hands around my waist and lifted me off my feet as though I was no heavier than a backpack. My whole body went cold with fear when he sat me on the horse. Beneath me it twitched and snorted and I figured it would at any moment rise up and buck me off. Its hot, heavy odor nauseated me. The guy jumped up behind me, stretched his arms around me and caught the reins.
“Hold onto his mane,” he said, and when I did not move, he added, “The hair on his neck.”
“Oh, is that the mane,” I grumbled and considered grabbing the ears.
Oh yeah, don't make jokes around the obviously mentally deranged. Drugs? No, drugs were what was back on the picnic table and none of that crowd was up to jumping onto a tall horse. I grasped the coarse mane in my hands and hoped Banner would not be annoyed. What followed was plain old pain and my mind deserted me.
The horse lurched forward and I bounced and jerked on its back, held there in the circle of strong arms, while we pounded through the forest. Wind blew my hair across my eyes and branches caught at me, but we rushed on, crashing through the trees. The forest blurred around me, green shadows shot with sunlight. I expected at any moment to be thrown to the ground, every bone in my body shattered.
The horse shuddered and stopped. I flew forward against its neck and the boy pulled me back, his hands pressing hard against my ribs.
When my mind stopped whirling, I looked down at a circle of faces. Their surprise raised all of their pale eyebrows so they looked like copies of each other, all staring with their mouths open, all blond and heavyset and wearing matching costumes. How much time did these folks spend on rehearsing?
“I claim her as my captive,” he said to them, and they all looked at him and they all listened. “Any man who touches her will die.”
Right, and that's the cue to drag me from the horse, beat the kid, tie me to a stake and dance around singing rude songs. Or was that some other sort of gathering? Instead, they backed away from us, still staring but not arguing.
Only one of the men stepped forward and said, “Will you take her to your father?”
“When it pleases me,” he answered.
I said, “Enough's enough, I need aspirin and I need it now.”
Maybe they were all deaf. Or I was suddenly invisible. No one acknowledged my heartrending request.
The man who had spoken shook his head. His hair was sun-streaked blond on the top and underneath it was several shades darker. Did he wear it that way to his day job? “You must take her now. I will travel with you. I cannot guarantee your safety with a captive in your tent.”
“Artur, I am able to care for myself,” the boy said. His voice was low but shook with fury.
“Well enough for you, my prince. If she kills you, it is I who will die a painful death at the hands of your father.”
Okay, a clue, the barbarian was supposed to be a prince of something.
His princely and slightly sweaty arm tightened around me, his ringed fingers digging into my waist. He raised his other hand to hold up his sword.
“Look at her! She is a priest of the Daughter. Dare you touch her?”
The men leaned toward me and their eyes narrowed. The one called Artur shook his head slowly. In his expression I saw recognition and then fear, but I could not imagine why and it seemed unfair that no one handed me a script. Right after aspirin, I needed a script. Because it hit me then, all the matching makeup and costumes, this had to be a low budget film, probably an entry for an amateur contest.
“I will take her to my tent,” my captor said. “Tomorrow I will take her to Kovat.”
The horse walked slowly through the camp, me and Prince Whatever still stuck on its back.
Between the tents stood a dozen or more gamers or actors and every one of them staring at me. They wore sleeveless leather tunics. The bulging muscles of their arms were banded in metal bracelets and they were a great ad for their favorite gym. Some wore belts covered with metal discs and a few wore silver hoops that looked as though they were passed right through their ear lobes, taking the whole costume craze a bit far.
A stench rose from their sweat soaked bodies that was worse than the smell of the horse, and was that the result of TV reality shows meeting costume fairs? If they wanted a guest lecturer on their program, I could explain about soap and deodorant and I knew a couple of slick methods for removing sweat stains from fabric.
As several of the kids I worked with at the Center were young teens, I knew how to be very firm with this lecture.
Swords hung from their belts and some of them held tall spears. Ribbons of yellow and red fluttered from the spears and from the tops of the tent poles.
My captor slid off the horse, pulled me after him, then caught me before I fell sprawling on the ground. He half-carried, half-dragged me into his tent, one arm around me, his other hand hard on my wrist. While the men w
atched, a few with their lips pulled back from their teeth in wide frat boy grins, I kept my face quiet. This was the nuttiest bunch I had ever met and until I figured them out, the low profile approach seemed best.
Once the tent flap dropped behind us, I glanced about, saw no one else, and lifting the wrist he still grasped, I bit hard on his hand.
He gasped. I twisted away from him, swung to face him and stared directly into his eyes, my teeth clenched. Until I figured out that group outside, I decided to refrain from kneeing him.
“You are my prisoner! You have no right to bite me!” he cried.
His face contorted in anger and pain. I suppose I should not have lost control, but he really did look like a little kid cheated in a game of hide-and-seek.
I laughed, then clapped my hands over my mouth.
“Dare you laugh at me?” He stared at the half circle of red marks my teeth left on his skin.
“Well, gosh oh golly, you forgot to tell me the rules,” I snapped back.
“You are my slave. I may treat you as I please. I captured you and that is the law.”
“Oh please. I am no slave, for sure not yours, and you're sounding more like a sexist pig every minute,” I shouted, unable to control my anger.
Yes, yes, I know anger is a weakness, but this guy was rapidly becoming my undoing.
He stared, wide-eyed. “Have you no slaves in the outlands?”
“Okay, fella, define slave.”
“A captive caught fair, from another tribe. A slave must do whatever its master tells it to do.”
“Really bad casting,” I said, “and anyway, I am a priest. You said so.”
“That might work later. For now, you are my slave.”
His tent was the size of a large room and contained a table covered with wooden bowls and flasks of pounded metal. The floor was piled with cushions, blankets, and sheepskins and was one a bearskin? Huh, didn't know those were legal. The tent held no hiding places but at least it separated me from that very smelly crowd outside.
“Tell me what a priest is and who the Daughter is and how I must act and what must I say?” If I could keep him talking, I might think of a shortcut to the final curtain.
Tyrant Trouble (Mudflat Magic) Page 2