Fear settled in my stomach. I raised my tied hands awkwardly and tried to hit him. He laughed as the blow glanced off of him.
“Come on, now. Be a good girl. This can be fun for the both of us if you let it.” He started to unbuckle my belt.
“If you so much as touch her, I will kill you,” growled Ian. He threw himself at the man, driving his shoulder into the other’s face. I rolled and grabbed the filthy man’s belt, fumbling to get his dagger loose with my tied hands.
Ian groaned and I quickly cut through my ropes, only to be tackled to the ground as I turned. My lip split with the impact of the man’s fist. I swung and shoved the dagger up with all of my strength into his abdomen. The blood poured over my hands. I pushed him off of me and stood, taking in the situation as I did. Ian stood, his hands still tied in front of him, facing the two remaining men. The dark haired one stabbed at him with his dagger. Ian kicked out and managed to block the blow with the side of his boot. He stepped forward and brought his other leg up, his foot connecting with the other’s chin.
I grabbed my bow and notched an arrow, letting it fly at the last man. He cried out and turned toward me, his hand clutching his arm. My next arrow took him in the heart.
“Chaela! He’s got Klora!” Ian swore and looked around for a dagger to free his hands. I grabbed his arm to settle him.
“It’s fine, Ian.”
“But…” He gestured, wide eyed in the direction my horse was being taken.
I smiled and cringed as the split in my lip opened. “Just give it a second.” I heard Klora’s telltale grunt as he dropped his head between his knees and fired his hind legs into the air. His rider’s surprised cry was emphasized by the hollow thump of a man’s body hitting the ground. I stopped Ian from going over. Whisk’s snarl echoed back to us. I gave a whistle and both horse and hound came trotting back to us while footsteps could be heard running away.
“You’re just going to let him go?” Ian’s eyes were saucers in his head, or one was. The right one was well on its way to being swollen shut.
I shrugged. “We have bigger issues to deal with in the near future. Do you really want to be hauling a prisoner around?”
“I wasn’t planning on keeping prisoners. The bastard was going to die.” The anger in his voice was evident. My heart skipped as he dropped his tied hands over my head and pulled me to his chest. “Are you alright?”
I took a deep breath. If I was being honest with myself, the thought of being raped had never crossed my mind. Now that it was obviously a possibility, I felt as though someone had punched me in the stomach. I hesitated a fraction of a second before wrapping my arms around him.
“I’m fine.” I choked out the words and hoped he believed me. I would not cry. I refused to. I leaned against him, my legs suddenly weak.
“Shush, now.” He laid his cheek on the top of my head.
“I… I never thought…” I sucked in a breath, suddenly mad at myself for showing weakness. That anger sparked and spread to him. I ducked out from under his arms and kicked one of our packs.
“Chaela, it’s alright. It’s over.”
I shook my head and wiped my tears with my arm. “It’s not alright!” I screamed at the top of my lungs until all of my strength left me and I fell to the ground. I heard Ian cut his hands free and kneel in front of me.
“That never would have happened…” A sob shook me. “If I’d been…” I tried to sort through everything that was running through my head. I gazed up into his worried grey eyes and my anger dissipated. “I am not a man.” I remembered the feeling I’d had at the age of six when I’d gotten lost at the market. It was exactly what I was feeling now. Completely lost.
Ian’s eyes saddened and he shook his head. He took my face lightly in his hands. “No, you’re not.”
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” I whispered.
“You’re Chaela McKinney. Beautiful, brave, honorable Chaela.” He moved closer to me and pressed his lips to my forehead. “You are an amazing woman.”
I frowned. “You can’t stand me.”
He smiled. “You annoy the hell out of me.” He wiped a fresh tear from my cheek with his thumb. “That doesn’t mean I can’t admire your other qualities.”
I tried to settle on one emotion as many raced through me; confusion about who I was, a certain degree of fear at how my heart had sped at the feel of Ian’s lips on my skin, and somewhere deep inside of me, anger at my father. The last must have shown in my eyes and Ian’s saddened as he let go of my face.
At a loss as to how to explain myself, I watched him toss a few more logs into the fire. I decided that the best way to get through my identity crisis was simply to keep going. I moved the horses to where they could eat and spread the blankets by the fire. Ian frowned as he watched me lay our blankets side by side as opposed to across the fire as had been customary.
“I suppose I should have asked first, but…” I took a deep breath, unsure of how to word what I was feeling.
“Explain to me first why you’re mad at me.” He walked around the fire and came to stand before me.
“It wasn’t you I was mad at. I’m angry at myself. I’m angry at my father.” I swallowed hard. “He loved me, Ian, I know he did. He told me before he died he regretted raising me as he had, that what he’d done was wrong. I told him he was wrong, that I loved my life.” I could feel the tears start up again and I wiped them away angrily. “I have always known who I was. Never once in the past eighteen years have I ever questioned it and then suddenly, due to his words alone, I am unsure as to who I am. By gods, Ian, I’m sorry if you get the brunt of it… I just…” Words failed me and I simply stared at him, hoping he could understand. The stiffness in his body relaxed.
“What is the reason behind putting our blankets together?”
“I…I need to find out who I am. There are emotions and reactions I was forced to bury long ago. Tonight, there’s one thing I’d like. One thing I’ve never been able to have.” I blushed and Ian shook his head.
“No. I won’t. Chaela, you came close to being raped and now you’re trying to find yourself as a woman. I won’t lie with you. By gods, that will add a mountain more emotions to the pile and you haven’t figure out these ones yet.”
My mouth fell open in surprise. “What?” I started to laugh and a different kind of tears rolled down my cheeks. Ian glared at me as I tried to catch my breath. I grinned.
“Ian, I’ve always known I was a woman. I’m just… I’m stuck, yeah? Do I go on being Chael and living the life I love, or do I become Chaela and start actually living as a woman. I’ve never been with a man, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it.” I shook my head. “Another thing I need to think about is if I do come out and declare my true identity, who in the world is going to want to be with me.”
The relief on his face was comical. “What do you want from me, then?”
“It’s just, well…”
“Chaela, look at me.”
I looked up and he took a step toward me.
“It sounds childish. You’ll laugh.”
He shook his head. “I promise I won’t.”
“I was wondering if you would maybe just hold me.”
His lips twitched.
“I told you you’d laugh!”
He held up his hands. “I’m not laughing!”
“You’re about to!” I could feel my anger start to burn.
Instead of arguing further, he took two steps towards me and scooped me in his arms. “I wasn’t about to laugh you bull headed little girl! I was trying not to smile!” He held me with one arm and balanced me on his knee while he pulled the covers back. I simply stared up at him, to shocked to do anything. He set me down gently, watching me as he did. I blushed and he smiled.
“Good?”
I nodded and turned on my side so that my back was to his chest.
“So now you’ve got me curious,” he whispered by my ear. I tried to hide the shiver that
ran through me.
“Oh?”
“You say you’ve never been with anyone but that you’ve thought of it. What I’m wondering is this; have you kissed anyone?”
I grinned. “As a matter of fact, I have.” I felt him go still behind me. I maneuvered so I was facing him. “And now you’re wondering who?”
“I am.”
“Well, I may have been a runt of a Knight, but it seems the Princess Katheryn has a thing for smaller men.”
“No!”
I started to laugh. “Yes.”
He joined in my laughter. “You are something else altogether, Chaela.”
“So you keep telling me.” I turned away from him once again and didn’t object as he pulled me close. A new calm pushed the other more confusing emotions out of the way for the time being. “Goodnight, Ian.”
“Sweet dreams, Chaela.”
*****
Ian wiped his brow with his arm and smiled at me. “Maybe you were right. Maybe we should have gone through the mountains.”
I took a long drink of my canteen and nodded. “Of course I was right. It’s too bloody hot out here.”
We’d been in the sand plains for the past four days and it seemed to get hotter with every day we spent there. I found myself looking forward to when night fell and the heat of the day disappeared with the sun. I glanced at Ian and smiled to myself. Maybe it wasn’t just the fact the night brought cool air I was looking forward to. Since I’d spent the night in his arms, it had become the usual way for us to sleep. He never did anything other than to pull me close and hold me. I also noticed that since my melt down, we’d had fewer arguments. Whether this was due to the fact that he didn’t like to see a woman cry or because I had managed to make some sort of peace with myself, I had yet to figure out.
“Look!” I pointed ahead. “There’s water!”
Ian shook his head. “It’s an illusion. If you try to get to it, it will simply stay just out of reach.”
I frowned. “We’re going to need water soon.”
He nodded. “Just because we need it doesn’t mean we’ll have it. Maybe we’ll get lucky tonight and it will rain.”
“It rains here?”
“Only at night and not very often.”
The breeze picked the sand and blew it into our faces. Klora shook out his mane and snorted to clear his nose. I gave him a pat.
“Two more days, Klora. Two more days of this hell and we’ll be in green woods once again.”
A sand snake slithered along to our left and my horse shied away from it. Ian rolled his eyes.
“Honestly, Chaela, what do you see in that horse?”
“He’s a good horse. He’s gotten me out of more binds than I can count.”
“He’s unreliable.”
“On the contrary, he’s very reliable. I can always rely on him to be a meathead.”
Ian laughed. “I suppose there is a predictability to his unpredictability.”
“He’s never let me down, Ian. We’ve been through thick and thin together. I mean, besides you and Whisk, he’s the only one I have that I can trust.”
Ian smiled. “Did you just say you trusted me?”
I blushed. “I suppose I did.” I frowned. “What’s that noise?”
Ian’s eyes widened as he registered the loud roaring. He pointed behind me. “Sand storm! Chaela, run!”
He spun Klard and spurred him forward. The stallion dug into the sand and propelled himself forward. Klora didn’t need any encouragement. His ears flicked back to the sound of the approaching storm before he bolted after his sire.
“Ian! Where are we going? We can’t outrun a storm!”
“There’s a sand bank up ahead! It’s where we were going to stop for the night!” He glanced back under his arm to see where the storm was. He paled and spurred his horse.
“I don’t see anything but sand!” I tried to stay calm, though I knew that if I was being honest with myself, I was close to panicking.
“You see the next hill? It’s darker than the rest of the sand!”
I could see the one he was pointing out.
“They’re caverns. We need to get to them! Go!”
I spurred Klora and looked back under my arm to see if Klard was keeping up. Ian waved me ahead.
“Go! I’ll be right behind you!”
I let Klora have his head and aimed him where Ian had said we would find safety. I turned my horse into the biggest of the caverns and slid off.
“Easy boy.” I rubbed his face in an effort to calm him down. “Ian, where are you?” The entrance to the cave was starting to be impossible to look out of. I moved farther back into the cave to avoid the sand blowing in. A few large shadows moved through the blowing sand though it was impossible to tell if it was just more sand blowing up with the wind or a couple of horses trying to find shelter. The wall of moving sand parted and Klora reared back to get away from the creature jumping at us.
I laughed and patted Whisk on the head. “Did you see Ian out there?” I looked up, praying for all I was worth. “Please, Chael.” I looked up to the sky through the cavern’s ceiling. I said a prayer to a few of the other gods for good measure. The sound of the wind and sand was deafening.
Klora spooked again and I ran forward to grab True’s reins. Ian dismounted and I threw my arms around him.
“Thank the gods, I thought you’d gotten lost out there.”
He crushed me to his chest and pressed his lips to my sandy hair. “Are you alright?” He took a step back from me and shook his head like a dog, the motion creating his own little sand storm around his shoulders.
I nodded and watched as he brushed the sand from his clothes and coughed up whatever sand he’d managed to inhale through his tunic. My throat tightened as I realized how easy it would have been for him to lose his way out in the storm. I swallowed hard.
He frowned. “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head and his expression softened. He held out his hand and pulled me to him when I took it.
“I’m here,” he whispered.
I nodded and took a deep breath. “I think I just realized I’d miss having you around if anything happened to you.”
He chuckled and kissed the end of my nose. “I’m glad.” His hand rested on my cheek and I closed my eyes at the feel of his thumb running over it. He took a deep breath of his own. “I’m here.” His forehead touched mine and we stayed in this position for a few minutes, simply touching to reassure ourselves that all was well.
He pulled back and smiled. “Hungry?”
I grinned. “Starving.”
He rummaged through his pack and pulled out a loaf of bread. “It’s going to be a simple supper tonight, I’m afraid. You don’t want to light fires in these.” He laughed. “I learned that one from experience.”
“Is it bad ventilation?” I could imagine that the caverns would fill with smoke quite easily.
He shook his head and spoke up over the howl of the storm outside. “Have you heard of flame spirits?”
“Only in the same context as wood elves.”
He grinned. “They’re not as friendly as wood elves. They also live in these caverns, though they don’t seem interested in coming out unless you start a fire in them. I think the flame attracts them.”
I stared at him with wide eyes before glancing deeper into the cavern. “What do they look like?”
“Little tiny men made of flame. I can’t be sure because I spent the better part of my time in their presence trying to put out the fires they were starting, but I’d say the tallest one was about six inches tall. That’s what they do, by the way. They find anything flammable and they touch it. Instant fire.”
“How did you get away?”
“I’m not ashamed to say I ran. I left everything but True behind. Let me tell you, I was one very hungry and thirsty man by the time I’d made it to the Wood Elves. Just you wait until you see the ocean. It’s amazing.”
I smiled. “How far did the
y chase you?”
“Just to the edge of the cave. Then, they turned back to the things I’d left behind.”
I looked back to the darkness behind us. Ian’s eyes widened as my eyes met his.
“No.”
I grinned. “Yes.” I stripped the saddles off of the horses while Ian set up our blankets. “I want to see them.”
“You’re crazy.”
My grin grew and he shook his head before finding one of the horse brushes and getting to work getting the sand out of the horses’ hair. The last thing we needed was for one or all of them to get sores. I took a step back from Klora before brushing him. I chuckled.
“Look, Klora. You’re grey!”
My horse seemed to take offence to this and gave a whole body shake, a cloud of dust and sand rising up and away from his body.
“You’re right. You look much better as a black.” I took the brush and finished what he had already started.
“Have you ever thought of why he was born this way?” inquired Ian.
I shrugged. “It seems like a pointless thing to think about. This is just what he was born.”
“You’re not even slightly amazed that in a land where every single horse in history has been grey, yours was born black.”
“Well, for one thing, he wasn’t born to be mine. It could have happened to any other horse.” I stopped my objection. “Actually, I’m lying. Dad did breed him for me. He made sure I got to see him drop. It was amazing. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The only ones who might have been able to control what color he was going to be would be the gods, but why would they care? To be honest, I always thought it was Chael playing another of his games with me.”
“Have you asked him?”
I raised an eyebrow at him.
“You’re the one who said you talk to him. I’m just wondering if he’s ever talked back.”
I shook my head. “I can talk all I want, but it seems I’m just talking to myself.”
As the storm outside slowly died out, our conversation turned to the book, what its purpose might be, and who might want it. As usual, we talked ourselves into a dead end. Frustrated, we sat on our blankets and played cards, another habit we were getting into before settling down for the night. After losing two of three hands, Ian rolled his eyes and, with a grin, accused me of cheating. I swore, Knight’s honor, that I hadn’t and that he simply couldn’t stand the fact that he lost to a woman more often than not.
Chael's Luck (A Knights of Dorathan Novel) Page 9