Captivity

by Ann Herendeen

  Niall, exhaustion taking over, fear and jealousy forgotten, rolled on the ground with laughter. “Underground to Aranyi go you will?” he said. “Through tunnels dig you will?” He did a fair imitation of the miners’ speech himself.

  Dominic, diverted by the humor, squatted down to his son. Amazingly, the silver was returning to his eyes and the sounds of torture had gone silent. He reached a hand to Val, pathetically grateful that his son no longer wished to hide from him or cried at his presence. “Greetings to you, little man,” he said. “I was unaware the future Margrave Aranyi was a forge man.”

  Val’s face gathered itself into an impending tantrum. “I’m the air,” he said. Dominic sat down beside Niall, both of them howling with laughter.

  Val turned away from the sorry spectacle of two grown men behaving like infants. He felt at my chest, intent on his own needs. His fingers plucked at the strange garment that did not open over my breasts and he screamed with frustration when he found himself separated from the sure source of nourishment and comfort by a thin layer of linen that would not yield.

  Dominic sat up at the angry noise. He watched, fascinated, to see that for once I did not help Val in his quest, did not lift the shirt or pull down the neck. I shook my head at Dominic’s quizzical look, all silver now, his mind filled only with benevolence for wife and children and lover.

  “I can’t, Dominic,” I said. “I’ve dried up.”

  Dominic did not at first understand, but I sent my exasperated thoughts to him, of my hard, sore breasts and cracked nipples, the milk that would no longer flow. He let out a loud bark of laughter before seeing the implications. “Forgive me, Amalie. You said you were hungry, as if I needed telling.” His face clouded over with remorse.

  “Come on, beloved.” Dominic stood up, reached down for Niall, pulled him to his feet and put an arm around his shoulders. Through the touch of communion, he felt the residual fear, the involuntary shrinking that anyone who has felt the sting of the whip will betray when confronted with the object a second time. His eyes fell on Niall’s bruised neck and he caught the memories that Niall was too tired to conceal. Dominic’s mind spiraled downward.

  I thought back with difficulty to the last time I had eaten. Eggs, I remembered, and warm thin milk that had tasted like nectar. “Milk,” I said. “That’s what we need, the children and I.” If Dominic could focus on something specific, he might regain his equilibrium.

  Dominic turned from Niall as I spoke, shouted in a loud commanding voice that was, miraculously, sane and composed. He ordered men to bring the ewes and nanny goats from the pens in the bandits’ hall. There was an apologetic murmuring as he was reminded that the miners had claimed them and all the bandits’ property for their spoils, a quick easy solution as Gwynn and the others traveling to Aranyi with us offered milk from their own animals.

  Val was crying louder than ever. “Hush,” I said, rubbing his back. “Papa’s bringing us milk, just as soon as he finds us some.”

  Val was convinced we had all gone mad. “Papa doesn’t have milk. You have milk. I’m hungry.”

  “I’m sorry, love,” I said, “I don’t have milk anymore.”

  “You’re my mama,” he said. “You have to have milk.”

  Dominic had returned with a brimming bucket of warm milk. He snorted with laughter at Val’s forceful assertion. “Not forever, little man,” he said. “It’s time for you to relinquish the breast at last.”

  I leaned against Dominic’s strong arms as he supported my shoulders, giving me swig after swig of the milk from a small wooden bowl. It tasted magical, running into me like a stream of liquid energy, warm and sparkling with life. I couldn’t get enough it seemed, but Dominic knew when I was ready to lie back and catch my breath, smacking my lips, and watch Jana finish her own bowl, holding it out for a refill.

  Val continued to protest. “No!” he shook his head, clamping his lips shut as the rim of the bowl was held to his mouth. “No! No! No! I want Mama’s milk! I don’t like this milk. It’s yucky!”

  Dominic took the rejection calmly. “Then you won’t mind if I have some,” he said, and drained a bowl in one long gulp. He handed the bowl to Niall, who drank quickly and passed the bucket along to the Aranyi men, the wounded first, then Ranulf and the others. It was a hard and fast rule that whatever Dominic enjoyed of food or comfort on a campaign, his men must have a share. It was part of the reason it had been wrong for him and Niall to indulge in love, when the other men had no women or lovers with them.

  The bucket was twice replenished and drained before everyone had drunk his fill. Dominic winked at the men, who understood the last bowlful was to be reserved for Val, when he woke up to the fact that he must drink this yucky stuff or go without.

  The rest of the evening passed happily enough. Val continued to complain, but he was too hungry and weak from fever to let loose in the real tantrum he would otherwise have enacted. He consented to eat some bread and nibble some cheese, and he decided he could drink water from a skin because, as he explained in the face of our obstinate ignorance, “Water comes this way.”

  As night began to fall, I discovered that indeed all my body’s systems were functioning. “Dominic,” I whispered, had merely to think my needs to receive his prompt assistance. He carried me and Val, Jana following, to the latrine, a series of holes dug far from the camp’s living area, where the smells and the insects would not trouble us. Dominic braced me while I relieved myself, and watched Jana open and refasten her breeches as if she had never worn anything else. He convinced Val by demonstration that urinating standing up was the manly thing to do and would make his entire family very proud. “It’s true,” Dominic sighed, not unhappily, as he shoveled earth over our leavings, “a soldiers’ camp is not designed for women.”

  When it was almost full dark everyone was ready for early bed. The night’s snow had begun to fall, large fluffy flakes drifting down in air that was only just cold enough to keep the soft, wet snow from turning to raindrops. The men left off drinking and polishing weapons around the campfire and crawled into tents, moving the wounded men in first. Dominic and Niall lifted me, Dominic at my head, Niall at my feet and, shuffling on their knees, maneuvered me into the largest tent. There was a thick groundsheet for a floor, sturdy canvas above. My blankets provided bedroll and pillow. Jana quickly made her own bed, nestled beside me back to back, while Val rested naturally in the curve of my arm.

  Dominic and Niall kissed us all goodnight and crawled into a smaller tent next to mine. The fire was banked down for the night, the crackling sound reduced to a low muffled sizzle. Its faint glow shone through the wall of the tent like the earth’s inner flame, a sign of life’s eternal renewal. The murmur of low voices faded, replaced by hoots and the scurrying of nocturnal animals. It is the natural sound of the woods and, to humans, peaceful. Jana and Val were asleep at once, and I was not far behind.

  Something woke me in the small hours: a shock, a loss, an absence. I sat up in a panic and I fumbled at my waist for the sheath with my prism-handled dagger. All was silent, dark and still. From the safety of the tent I sent my mind to investigate.

  Reynaldo was gone! Left out in the cold, not fed or watered, my enemy had died, loss of blood and exposure completing what his terrorized mind could long for and imagine, but not accomplish on its own.

  Footsteps crunched in the damp snow. No, Dominic, I thought. Wait, please, for my sake.

  Dominic examined the still-warm body, reported to me in thought what I already knew. His mind wrapped mine in comfort, any madness or cruelty undetectable, smothered by our love. What do you want, beloved? he asked, guessing my choice but careful to hear it for himself. What is your pleasure?

  I didn’t have to think. Revenge, I said, as a crushing weight lifted from me. Saying the word, knowing the longed-for desire was become reality, drained the horror of the past days from me like infection from an opened wound. Give me revenge, Dominic. Don’t let him die so soon. I am ‘Gravina Aranyi
, wife of Dominic-Leandro and mother of his children. We belong together, locked in unbreakable union, because we have found in the other what we see in ourselves.

  Even as he asked the question, Dominic had his dagger out, the prism in the handle facing up. He bent moonlight and starlight and the light from the campfire into his eyes, leaning over his prey that had almost escaped, and resurrected the bloody corpse that had known ultimate freedom for so short a time.

  Dominic has a strong gift, if unconventionally trained, and so difficult an operation did not pose a great problem for him. He asked me only one or two technical questions, but he did the work himself. Reynaldo had been brain dead less than five minutes, and he retained his full mental faculties on his return to life. The dreadful moans as Reynaldo understood that even his death would be at our pleasure threatened to make further sleep impossible, but Dominic took pity on me and the rest of the camp and gave his victim unconsciousness until morning.

  Still I could not go back to sleep, but shivered and chafed my icy feet. Dominic, unable to escape my discomfort, kissed Niall in apology and spent the rest of the night with me, pressing close, chest and hips against my back, his arms wrapped tightly around me and Val, his thighs parted to accept and thaw my frozen feet, until my shaking slowly eased. Jana worked herself slowly and sinuously into a position somewhere on top and between us. Eventually Niall, too cold all by himself, joined the huddled group on Dominic’s other side, and the five of us crammed the tent, fogging the air with our breath and condensing the moisture on the taut fabric walls.

  The morning dawned bright and warm, the scant snow melting quickly. The tents were struck and folded, the camp dismantled, the fire extinguished and the ashes buried. The men ate a hurried breakfast while feeding and watering the horses and saddling them for travel. Dominic helped me as before. This morning I could manage not only milk, but some bread and cheese as well. Val, astonished to find that the cruel privations we had forced on him last night still prevailed, consented to drink some sheep’s milk, making it clear he did not expect to have to put up with this sorry state of affairs once we returned to Aranyi.

  Dominic jabbed Reynaldo awake with crypta, a slash of jagged edge against exposed raw flesh, and the body was loaded back onto the animal that would bear him down the trail. The sobbing and moaning rose and fell in my mind, but I was learning now how to adjust the volume. My husband had done as I asked, would always consult my wishes. I entered his mind—the honorable ‘Graven lord and Royal Guards officer in the front and the gloating torturer in the back—and found I could recognize in both places the man I had married. My love, I thought to him, hearing his affectionate reply to me simultaneously with his goading of Reynaldo and his controlled commands to his men.

  Litters had been made up, with blankets and carrying straps, for the two wounded men and me and Val, and we were bundled into them, ready to set off within an hour of sunrise. “Home,” I said to Val. “We’re going home.”

  PREVIEW: RETRIBUTION, Book Six of Lady Amalie’s memoirs

  Can’t wait to find out what happens next? Here’s a preview of Retribution, Book Six in the Eclipsis series of Lady Amalie’s memoirs:

  I opened my eyes to soft light. It was the evening of my third day after my rescue. Dominic sat on a chair beside my bed in Lady Ladakh’s guestroom. He knew when I woke, felt the change in my mind immediately. Amalie, he thought to me. Amalie, do you know me? He thought the words; I could sense his consciousness so close to mine, but it was Reynaldo’s mind and voice that I felt and heard.

  I shut my eyes against the horror, as if that would help. “Dominic,” I said, feeling for his hand to form communion. “Don’t send thoughts. Speak to me instead.”

  Dominic obeyed me without question, clasping my hand. “What terrible dreams were you having?”

  The temptation to unburden myself, to relax, as I was used to, in Dominic’s strength, was too great to be resisted. “The shithead,” I said, refusing to use a name that would give him a semblance of humanity. “The shithead keeps speaking to me. With crypta. In my mind.” Surely Dominic would have prevented that if he had known.

  Dominic’s stood up at my words, striding across the room, his hand on the hilt of his sword. The image he projected to anyone with the least telepathic ability was terrifying. His hair stood on end, electricity shooting out and creating a halo of blue fire. The red of his retinas’ blood vessels showed through the clear glass of his inner eyelids like fire engulfing the walls of a stormed castle. From my position on the bed his great height seemed extended, his head almost touching the ceiling. The sword he brandished at arm’s length was dripping blood, and white fireballs of rage shot from him to explode noiselessly against the stone walls. Yet he was, in reality, merely pacing softly in the room, his sword clean and safely sheathed.

  “I warned him,” Dominic said, coming to a stop near the head of the bed. There was the hint of a smile, a leaping of flame behind the clear eyelids. “He will pay dearly for such an insult.” The words came out through lips that barely moved. He was excited in an anticipatory, almost sexual way. The fact did not displease me.

  Dominic drew his prism-handled dagger and returned to the chair at my bedside, sitting straight and still, all his energy of his gift focused through the prism, touching the bandit mentally. His mind formed a series of rapid images—first the notched blade of a dull knife, then a flaming torch, next a many-tailed whip with leaded knots, and finally a skewer, the tip glowing red from being heated in the fire. That was stupid, insulting ‘Gravina Aranyi, Dominic thought to Reynaldo. Every stupid thing you do will increase your pain. We will try the effects of all of these implements, see which you enjoy the most, and which the least.

  I reached for Dominic’s consciousness, feeling carefully before entering so dark and forbidding a place as it had become, yet responding as always to my husband’s arousal. Dominic-Leandro, I thought to him, my love, take me with you—

  The knock on the door shook me out of the violent communion I was not yet ready for. Lady Ladakh had come to check on me, but seeing Dominic with me she moved to withdraw.

  Before she could leave, Val burst in through the open door, pursued by a harassed nursemaid, and climbed up beside me. “I’ve been resurrected!” he said. “I was dead and now I’m resurrected.”

  Lady Ladakh shut her eyes in pain and gestured with her left hand, touching her forehead and chest, then each shoulder in turn—the sign of a devout Christian.

  “Hush, Val,” I said, stroking his flushed face. “I was forced to use the crypta-death on my son and myself,” I said to Lady Ladakh. “I used the word with him the other day. I’m sorry; I meant no offense to your religion.”

  Lady Ladakh opened her eyes and looked, not at me, but at Dominic. “Margrave,” she said, “my faith has been put to the test. Not by the innocent words of a child, but by the sins of adults.”

  She paused. I could feel the strong moral sense in her, compelling her to do what she saw as her duty. Confronting Dominic, her lord and her guest, was a greater trial than all the uncomplicated dangers she had faced alone over the last fifteen years of her widowhood. When she spoke next it was in the harsh voice of conviction. “My faith teaches many things, but the most important lesson is this: to love our enemies. And I can no longer ignore what has been going on under my roof, or allow it to continue.”

  Dominic had risen politely when Lady Ladakh entered the room. After her outburst Dominic stood looking down at her, a sympathetic expression on his face. “It’s that thing in the barn,” he said, one person of sensibility to another. “It would upset a vulture’s stomach to be within smelling distance of such filth, and I sincerely apologize for inflicting it on you and your household.”

  Lady Ladakh took another deep breath. She had already reached a turning point, had chosen the path of righteousness. “My lord, that thing is a man. Whatever his crimes, however wicked his deeds, he is a human being. And my faith does not permit the punishment you hav
e chosen.”

  Dominic and I were silent in the face of such passion.

  Lady Ladakh fixed first Dominic, then me with her intense gaze. “The Threefold God has shown his everlasting mercy to that man, the mercy he extends to all sinners. He has granted him death—the ending of his life in this world, the beginning of his true life in the next world. Yet you have repeatedly denied this man what God has given him, forcing him back into a life that is over. It is no longer his life, and certainly not yours, to prolong.” She lowered her own silver eyelids, met Dominic’s glassy stare without blinking. “I know you are not of my faith, but you are an honorable man, an upholder of justice. It is for you to set the example in your own land. Yet you, Margrave Aranyi, are guilty of the greatest crime of all, of playing God. And that is blasphemy.”

  Her voice deepened to a command. “Let him die. I am not asking you to forgive. Just let him die.”