by Jaide Fox
She had no idea how effective such a ruse might prove, or if Talin even knew that she was no longer in the caverns. But she did not want to chance it, regardless.
She could not tell an appreciable difference in the fear clawing at her belly, or the nausea, but after a time she began to be less aware of it and more aware of her discomfort. Her rump grew numb in the saddle. Her back and shoulders began to ache from holding herself stiffly erect for so long. Her skin began to feel as if the sun would burn her flesh off as it moved slowly across the sky.
The orb had nearly reached its zenith when the bombardment ceased almost as abruptly as it had begun. Before anyone could draw a breath of relief, the shrieks, cries and bellows issuing from hundreds of demon throats sent a new rash of fear crawling over their skin and the ‘unholy’ army of the man beasts appeared on the crest of the surrounding hills, charging down into the scattered, broken army of the man children.
The allied armies of man regrouped, forming a near solid mass in the center of the valley.
Aliya was nearly unseated as her reins were jerked and the entire party of which she was a part, raced from the hill along a downward sloping crest, then up another. Following the brow of the hills, they came at last upon one higher than the one they had occupied before, slightly more distant and there the kings took up watch again over their chess game.
Aliya flicked a glance at the stone faced warrior that held her reins. His gaze was as fixated upon the battle below them as everyone else’s, but she could see he had the ends of her horse’s reins wrapped around one fist. As casually as she could, she surveyed the men around her.
She discovered that she was positioned near the center.
Disappointment and frustration washed over her.
Even if she could somehow manage to snatch the reins away from the man who held them, she was still trapped.
With an effort, she forced herself to relax the tension in her shoulders, watching the men around her now rather than the battle below, hoping an opening would come. Slowly, the sun crawled across the sky and the tight little knot of men and horses eased as her father and his allies shifted positions to keep an eye on the fight as it turned in first one direction and then another.
Realizing after a while that the wild idea of snatching her reins free and fleeing was not going to happen, Aliya finally shifted in her saddle and prepared to dismount.
“Stay put,” the man guarding her growled.
She gave him a cold look. “I have to relieve myself.”
She might as well have shouted it, for every man on the hillside turned to look at her with varying degrees of suspicion. She glared them balefully. Finally, her father nodded at the man, jerking his chin toward an outcropping of rock.
Frustration rose in her again, but she did her best to contain it, to appear unconcerned as the guard helped her down from the horse and walked her to the back edge of the hill. “Stay where I can see you,” he growled when he finally released her arm and allowed her to move beyond the view of the others.
Ignoring him, she moved a little further away, glancing at the outcropping of rock as if her only interest was in gaining privacy. When she glanced toward the guard again, she saw that he had closed the distance she was trying so hard to gain between them. “Must you watch me piss?” she demanded indignantly.
Instead of looking either startled or shamed, as she had hoped, he leered at her. “I must.”
Grinding her teeth, she turned her back to him, adjusted her clothing and squatted, raking her eyes along the ground in search of a rock. She spied one of a manageable size not far from where she’d settled. It was still just beyond reaching it without attracting his attention, unfortunately. Fluffing her skirts, she shifted a little closer, hoping she wouldn’t discover when she grasped the thing that it was not loose as she thought, but instead the protruding point of a larger rock.
Relief went through her when she grasped it. Rolling it beneath the edge of her skirts, she made a great business out of adjusting her clothing once more and gripped the rock as she rose, tucking it beneath a fold in her gown.
She didn’t look at the guard, afraid that he would see her intent in her expression. Instead, she watched her steps as he grasped her arm and led her back to her palfrey.
When he released her arm and encircled her waist to lift her onto the horse’s back, she swung the rock at his head, planting it solidly along the side. As he released her and staggered back, she yanked her skirts to her knees and raced for the rocky hillside, stumbling and nearly falling, righting herself. Her heart was hammering so loudly in her chest and ears it deafened her to pursuit, but the man had let out a curse when she struck him. She knew even if surprise had slowed their reaction, they would be after her in moments.
A dark shadow closed over her, distracting her as she clambered over a rock. Glancing around, she saw three of the royal guards closing in on her rapidly. Gasping, she tried to run faster. The reckless speed cost her her footing. Stepping on a loose rock, she skidded, pin wheeled her arms trying to regain her balance and lost the battle, pitching forward. Pain shot through her hands, arms and shoulders as she caught herself. Before she could push herself upright again, a heavy weight landed on her legs.
Closing her hands around the mixture of loose soil and rocks beneath her palms, she twisted, pitching the debris at the man’s face. In the sky above, she caught a glimpse of a great Golden Falcon. It was plummeting straight toward them and she knew instantly that it must be Talin.
Horror filled her as she realized that she had lured him by her own actions into just the trap she had feared her father would set. Wrestling frantically with the man that had managed to retain his grip on her in spite of the fact that she’d blinded him with the dirt, Aliya beat him on the head with her balled fist and finally began grabbing at rocks and pelting him with them. He lost his grip trying to shield his face from the rocks and she scrambled away.
She could see even as she managed to win free, though, that the other two guards had stopped the moment they thought their comrade had her. One had no weapon and had charged back toward the main group, but the other man had already placed a quiver in his cross bow and was cranking the string back frantically.
“No!” she screamed, whirling abruptly and charging back toward the man with the bow.
The guard she’d just hammered with rocks was halfway up when she raced past him. He made a grab for her and managed to grasp a handful of her skirts, jerking her to a halt before she could reach the one with bow. To her horror, she saw him taking aim. Without stopping to consider, she bent down, grabbed a rock and hurled it at the man.
The ‘rock’ wasn’t a rock at all, but rather a hard clump of dirt and smaller rocks. It exploded as it hit the man’s shoulder, startling him, spattering the side of his face and neck with tiny missiles. She screamed as his finger jerked the trigger and the bolt flew free, lifting her head to watch its path. Above them, she caught a glimpse of the falcon as he swerved abruptly.
Before she could be certain of whether or not he had managed to avoid the bolt, she found herself surrounded by men and horses. She was jerked up and tossed across her saddle on her belly, kicking and screaming as the entire party pelted down the hillside. The first jolt that went through her as her mount leapt into a gallop knocked the wind from her lungs. Before she could think to try to slide off, or fall from her precarious perch, someone leaned down, curled fingers into the back of her gown and jerked her from the bouncing back of the horse.
Even as she struggled to catch her breath, she swung wildly at the man who was trying to drag her onto the front of his saddle. He dragged her up in spite of her best efforts, finally grasping her hair painfully and pulling back on her head until she thought her neck would snap. Something cold and sharp dug into her throat, taking the fight out of her instantly.
Her gaze flew to the man’s face, and then upwards in search of Talin.
He wheeled in a tight circle overhead and abruptl
y shot away, shrinking in a matter of moments to no more than a dot far up into the sky.
With an effort, she swallowed against the pressure on her throat, squeezing her eyes closed at the sting. She thought for several moments that the man would follow through with his threat and slice her throat. After an endless moment of time, though, the blade was slowly withdrawn.
Releasing his grip on her hair after a few moments, the man settled her more firmly in his lap, gripped her waist tightly with one hand and the pommel with the other.
One of the other guards had grabbed his reins when he dropped them to ward Talin off by threatening her.
Weak in the aftermath of her brief, if furious, struggle, shaky with relief that Talin had come so near dying in an attempt to rescue her, she leaned limply, if resentfully, against the man behind her, too weary to hold herself aloof even though it irked her that she could not.
The hostility of the men surrounding her was almost palpable. She didn’t need to look at them to see how they felt about her attempt to escape and her frantic efforts to keep them from shooting Talin. She could feel it.
Frustration brought stinging tears to her eyes. She had bungled her only chance. They would not allow her another one.
Chapter Twenty Two
When darkness cloaked the land in a heavy black veil, the man of the armies of both sides began to melt into it, slipping away to lick their wounds, count the living still among them and search for a better position for another assault. There were no tents pitched, no fires lit.
Dawn heralded another endless day of fighting and killing and being killed. As the sun set on the second day, both armies had whittled upon each other until there were fewer men standing than lying in pools of blood.
Again, as darkness closed over the gory battlefield, both armies withdrew to regroup. By dawn of the third day, Aliya was so exhausted she hardly knew where she was any longer. She could not fathom how the men could continue to fight when they had scarcely had time to eat or close their eyes.
The whole world had changed when the sun rose, washing the death fields with golden light, glinting off of the blood that coated almost every inch of earth.
The third day did not begin with the screams and shouts of man and beast, with the clatter of steel against steel. The ragged remnants of the allied army of men simply stared blank faced, dull with fatigue, at their enemies across the field.
Aliya was only vaguely aware of the hushed conversation around her, and not aware at all of the gist of it. When her father sent her a glance of contempt and snatched a strip of white fabric from his saddle bag, she merely stared at it uncomprehendingly.
Attaching it to the end of one of the staffs of the standard bearers, he nodded at the man. Nodding in response, the man lifted the standard, walked his horse to the edge of the hillside where they stood and then rose up in his saddle, slowly waving the standard back and forth.
Curious, but still without real comprehension of what was taking place, Aliya gazed across the field to see who he was waving at. Across the valley, a white flag appeared on the other side, waving back. As if they had only been waiting for that signal, her father and his allies turned their tired horses, straightened their backs, and spurred their horses forward. The royal guards fell in behind them, carrying Aliya with them as they rode down the hill to the valley and began to pick their way across the sea of dead and dying.
Already the stench of death was rising from the heat of the morning sun. Swallowing with an effort, Aliya covered her mouth and nose with her hand, trying to keep the bile from rising in her throat, trying to focus on anything besides the bodies her horse was daintily picking a path through. Skittish, shying and jerking its head as it tried to pull free of the man who led it every few moments, its nostrils quivering and flesh flicking, the horse she was mounted on reflected her own revulsion at traversing the valley of the dead.
They halted near the center, forming a line and Aliya saw then that they had been met there by the leaders of the clans of the man beasts. Abruptly alert, she scanned the long line until her gaze lit on Talin, scanning his body searchingly for signs of wounds.
Briefly, their gazes met, but he looked away almost at once as her father nudged his horse slightly forward of the others. “We will fight no more,” he said, his voice loud and strident in the near deafening silence that held them in its grip.
Some of the tension seemed to ease from every man in both groups as the high king of the man beasts, who had stepped forward as her father had, nodded. “We will withdraw,” he said in a deep, rumbling voice.
“You will agree not to seek retribution?” King Andor demanded.
The dragon king surveyed the men facing him. “Nothing will bring back the dead,” he growled ominously. “…On either side.”
King Andor nodded after a moment. “We will withdraw to rest and meet again here to discuss the conditions of peace.”
“Nay. We will not!” the dragon king contradicted him in a rumbling voice. “There will never be true peace between our peoples, only animosity and renewed attempts to war as soon as you have recovered. We have no wish to live among you, side by side with our enemies, the man children. We have decided to take our people and go north to the land of shadows to carve out new kingdoms for ourselves.
“Know this! No man child shall ever step foot across our boundaries again and live to tell of it.”
Aliya stared at the dragon king in dismay and then glanced quickly at Talin.
He would not meet her gaze. His face was as if carved from stone.
He thought she’d betrayed him, she realized. It was just as she had feared, and he would not speak up for her believing that she had returned to her father. “Wait!” she gasped before she had time to reconsider it. “I will go with you.”
She shrank back as all eyes turned to her.
“Your place is with your own people!” her father growled ominously.
“My place is with my husband! Talin! For mercy’s sake, I did not betray you. Do not let them do this!”
He glanced at her then, and she saw his gaze was filled with pain, not hate, but with knowledge, as well, of the inevitability of it. Her heart clenched in her chest painfully. “Your father is right,” he said after a prolonged moment. “You belong with your own kind.”
Aliya felt her chin wobble. She fought it, fought the tears clogging her throat. He loved her. Everything he had done spoke of love. It didn’t matter than he had never said the words. She knew it in her heart!
It did matter! She wanted to hear it, needed to.
“Then tell me you do not care for me and I will stay with these people whom I have come to despise! I will live with their hate if you do not want me anymore.”
His face twisted with pain. He opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. Swallowing thickly, he shook his head fractionally. “It does not matter. The high king has spoken.”
Aliya stared at him for a long moment and then glanced at the dragon king hopefully. He studied her face searchingly, glanced at Talin’s stony expression and then looked at her once more.
If you were with child then your place would be with your husband.
Aliya felt her jaw sag as the words flowed through her mind. Instinctively, she cupped a hand over her belly. She saw when she turned to look at Talin again that his gaze had focused upon her hand, become intent. “My child needs his father!” she
announced baldly.
The look her father bent upon her made her quiver inside.
The dragon king almost seemed to smile. “She carries the child of a man beast. She must go with us for I will not allow the child to grow up among his enemies.”
King Andor glared at her, grinding his teeth. Abruptly, he jerked on the reins, turning his horse and kicking it into motion. Almost as if they had practiced the steps and performed on a parade field, his allies and the royal guard turned as one and followed him.
Aliya felt the pain in her heart ease as she heard them
ride away. One by one, the kings of the man beast clans turned away, as well, until at last Talin and Aliya stood alone in the center of the field, gazing at one another. Stepping forward at last, Talin grasped the horse’s halter and looked up at her. “You will not see him again,” he said slowly.
A spurt of pain clutched at her chest, but Aliya nodded. “He was lost to me long before now. Mayhap, in time, he will cease to hate me and think fondly of the daughter he once claimed to cherish--mayhap not. It does not matter. I belong with the man I love.”
A faint smile curled his lips upward. Moving closer, he caught the pommel and swung himself up onto the horse behind her, wrapping his arms around her. “You are certain you will not come to regret being the devil’s concubine?” he murmured, dipping his head to lavish a row of light kisses along the side of her throat.
“Not if that devil is you,” she said huskily.
His arms tightened around her briefly. Finally, settling one along her waist to steady her, he took the reins and kicked the horse into motion. Aliya relaxed back against him as they finally left the battlefield behind. “You did not tell me you loved me,” she said pensively.
He leaned down and nipped her earlobe with his teeth. “Did I not?” he asked teasingly.
She elbowed him in the ribs. “You know very well you have not said it.”
“I adore you,” he murmured, amusement threading his voice.
She let out an irritated huff of breath and he drew back on the reins, bringing the palfrey to a halt. Catching her chin, he tipped her face up and kissed her hungrily. “I love you,” he murmured when he broke the kiss.
Aliya gazed up at him searchingly and was satisfied. “You will not be angry with me then?”
His brows rose questioningly.
“I am not with child,” she admitted guiltily.
Talin chuckled, his arms tightening around her. “Do you think one man beast among us believed that for a moment?”