by Kyra Halland
As he had the night before, Silas let Fazar take the first watch. Lainie fell asleep as soon as she hit the blankets, even before Silas stretched out beside her, and when he woke her a few hours before dawn for her watch, it seemed like she had hardly slept at all. She was still so tired and sore and stiff she could barely move, but, even in the faint light of the stars, Silas’s face looked bruised and drawn with weariness, so she forced herself up and out of the blankets.
“Got your gun?” Silas asked as he settled into the blankets next to where she was sitting.
“Yeah. And it’s loaded.”
“Wake me if you see or hear anything.”
“I will.” She kissed him. “Get some sleep.”
The night was quiet except for the snores coming from Fazar, a couple of measures away on the other side of the camp, and the soft rustling and chirps of night animals down in the wash. The young moon had set much earlier in the evening; by the light of the stars, Lainie watched for any hint of movement while she listened for the slightest changes in the normal sounds of the night. She kept herself alert by scanning the length of the wash from one side to the other, then turning to survey the open desert behind her. And she glanced frequently at Fazar to make sure he was still asleep.
All at once, the sounds down in the wash fell still. Into the silence came a different, louder rustling noise. It was probably only a larger animal, Lainie told herself, maybe a coyote or a wild pig, hunting in the wash or just passing through. Surely not a grovik; they only lived in the mountains.
Still, she’d better make sure it really was only an animal.
She looked down at Silas; he was sound asleep. She doubted he’d slept at all during Fazar’s watch. It seemed a shame to wake him up, especially if it might be for nothing. She would go take a quick look for herself, she decided, and then wake him if there was any sign it was more than just an animal.
Fazar let out a loud snore, startling her, then subsided into mumbling and fell quiet again. Once she was sure he was asleep, she stood, gun in hand, and made her way silently over to the edge of the wash. Holding her breath, lest even that slight sound alert whatever was down there to her presence, she peered into the darkness, looking for any movement or variation in the patterns of starlight and shadow in the bottom of the wash.
Nothing moved. A moment later, the normal sounds of the night began to return. Lainie let out a long, slow breath. Whatever it was had passed on by. She started to turn back to the camp.
Without warning, arms seized her from behind and a rank, sour odor hit her nose. Fazar. She drew breath to shout, and his hand clamped over her mouth. With his other hand, he wrenched her gun out of her grasp and tossed it aside. In a surge of panic, she struggled, kicking and twisting around to try to free herself, but his arms held her like steel bands. High, mad laughter sounded in her ear; his breath was foul on her face. “I’ve put up a shield. He can’t hear or see us. Now, let’s have some fun.”
He forced her to the ground and onto her back. She kicked and thrashed with all her might, but, scrawny as he was, he was still much stronger than her. And much more powerful, if he could put up a fully concealing shield even without his mage ring. Grinning madly, he straddled her, his feet hooked back over her legs to force them apart. He pinned her right shoulder against the ground with one hand and started wrestling with the buttons on her shirt. She swung her left fist up to his face, but he jerked back and she missed. He laughed again. “That’s it, girl. You know the harder you fight, the better I like it.”
She did know, from his horrible tales about raping women. But she also knew better than to think that if she stopped resisting he’d leave her alone. She struck out at his face again, and this time she hit him.
He grabbed her arm in a painfully tight grip and scowled down at her. “Come on, now, baby girl, have some pity. I ain’t had a woman in months.”
The sound of his voice saying her Pa’s name for her made her sick with fury. She twisted and bucked even harder, trying to throw him off of her, but his weight on her didn’t budge. With a growl, he gave the arm he was holding a hard yank.
Pain ripped through her shoulder and she cried out. Fazar let her arm drop to the ground. She tried to raise it, to hit him again, but it hurt too much to move. Still holding her other shoulder down, Fazar ripped her shirt open with his other hand in a single impatient movement. He pushed her camisole up and leered down at her with a feral grin spread wide across his face. “Look at that. You should be glad any man wants you at all. Scrawny, plain little thing like you, hardly any tits to speak of.” He pawed at her, his hand rough and grabby. Lainie shrank from his touch, but there was nowhere to go to get away from it. She bit back the sobs that were trying to force their way out; she refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing how scared and humiliated and helpless she felt.
“Take it from me,” Fazar went on, “Vendine’ll throw you over as soon as a real woman crosses his path. And then you’ll be begging me for what you’re missing.”
He started on the buttons of her pants. Panicked desperation shot through Lainie’s mind and her control over her power frayed. Her mage senses slipped loose; she could feel the power he was using to maintain the shield around them. With everything she had, she threw her own power against his, trying to shake it, to force him to let the shield go. Beneath the force of her sudden attack, his power gave way and she pushed it even harder, all the way back inside him –
Fazar’s head jerked up. “What –?”
She wrestled one leg free and drove her knee up into his crotch.
Fazar let loose with an agonized howl and toppled over sideways onto the ground, doubled over and moaning in a high, thin voice. A few heartbeats later, Lainie heard the click of a gun being cocked. She craned her head back to see Silas standing over her, his revolver aimed at Fazar.
Silas. She was safe. Hastily, she sat up, tugging her camisole back into place, and wrapped her arms around his leg, clinging to him as though he was the only place of safety in the whole world.
“You ain’t really going to shoot me, are you?” Fazar whined from where he lay curled up on the ground, writhing in pain.
“Are you crazy and horny?” Silas demanded. “Or just stupid and horny? I told you what would happen if you even looked at the girl wrong. I should just put you out of your misery.”
“No!” Fazar wailed.
Silas fired. The bullet hit the ground with an explosion of dirt right in front of where Fazar’s knees were drawn up in front of his crotch. Fazar let out another shriek, then seemed to realize he hadn’t been hit. “So you ain’t going to shoot me after all?”
“That was a warning,” Silas said. “If I shoot you now, you’ll bleed to death before I’m finished with you. And anyhow, I reckon Miss Lainie didn’t leave me much of anything to shoot.” He gestured with his gun towards Fazar’s blanket. “Get over there. Now.”
Fazar stood up, bent over in pain, and hobbled over to his blanket. Silas gently pulled himself away from Lainie and followed him, keeping his gun trained on him. “Take off your belt and lay belly-down.”
“Hey, wait!” Fazar protested even as he hurried to obey. “You ain’t gonna use me ill, are you?”
“Like you tried to do to Miss Lainie? You can only wish. I don’t go that way, and especially not for a sorry fleabitten piece of meat like you.” Silas knelt straddling Fazar’s legs. He yanked the renegade’s arms back and bound them with Fazar’s own belt, his left hand glowing blue as he pulled the belt tight. “You help me find this killer and get rid of him, with no more funny business, and maybe then I’ll take that belt off –”
“Hey!”
“And if you really behave yourself, I might even let you keep your stones.”
He turned his back on Fazar’s howl of protest and came back to where Lainie was still crouched near the edge of the wash. “That should take care of him for the moment,” he said as he squatted down next to her.
“What if he undoes
the belt?” Her voice shook so bad she could barely speak.
“He can’t. I spelled it so that anything he does to try to get it off will just make it tighter.”
He picked Lainie up and carried her back to the camp, then set her down on the blankets and knelt beside her. “Did he hurt you?”
The whole thing seemed unreal, like a bad dream. But her battered body and residual panic told her it was all too real. “My shoulder hurts.” She rubbed at it. “I think he popped it out.”
“Let me see.” He eased her shirt back off of her left shoulder and gently probed at it. “It isn’t dislocated, just sprained, I think. I can help that.” He pressed his left hand against her shoulder. Warmth flowed into the joint, and the sharp, throbbing pain eased somewhat. Then he took a spare shirt from his knapsack and fashioned a sling. “Better now?” he asked when her arm was secure in the sling.
“Yeah.” A long shudder rippled through Lainie. Suddenly she couldn’t stop shaking. Silas wrapped his arms around her. “It’s all right now, darlin’,” he said in a low voice against her hair. “You’re safe now.”
In the warmth and safety of his arms, the dam that had held back the full measure of her terror and humiliation finally dissolved. “He called me baby girl,” she wept against his shoulder. “My Pa calls me that, and he ruined it. I don’t never want to hear those words again.”
He held her as she cried. “No more of this,” he said. “I’ll take you back to Ripgap and leave you there. You’ll be safe there.”
She clutched at him, terrified to let him go. “Don’t leave me!” she sobbed. “He said you would leave me soon as a real woman came along!”
“He did, did he?” He carefully moved her aside, then walked over to Fazar. The renegade whimpered and cringed away. Lainie felt a hot jab of satisfaction at seeing him so afraid. Silas jerked him up by his bound arms. “You don’t touch the girl, you don’t look at her, you don’t so much as say a single word to her. Understand?”
Fazar nodded frantically. “I understand!”
Silas dropped him and came back over to Lainie. “You lie down now, darlin’,” he said. “I’ll take the rest of the watch.”
Though it still hurt to move, she lay down. “Stay here,” she begged. “Don’t let him come near me.” Even if she had pushed back Fazar’s shield, she was no match for him, but Silas was. He had to be.
“I won’t. I’m sorry I let this happen – I don’t know why I didn’t hear anything sooner –”
“He had a shield up.”
He was silent for a few heartbeats. “He made a shield that strong without his mage ring? Damn.”
“I know.”
“But he wasn’t able to maintain it very long.”
“No. I pushed it back inside him.” She had done it, she thought all at once. A faint warmth came to life inside of her and began to push away the fear and humiliation. She had fought back against Fazar and won.
“What did you say you did?” Silas asked after a moment.
“I pushed his power back inside him.”
This time the silence dragged on longer. It wasn’t quite the reaction Lainie had expected. “Did I do something wrong?” she finally asked.
“It isn’t possible. What you did.”
“Oh.” Wasn’t possible? She found that hard to believe; it had seemed natural, instinctive. Easy. “Maybe it’s a Wildings thing, like how I’m able to suppress my power.”
“That could be. In any case, it’s also against the law to do anything to another mage’s power, unless you’ve been authorized to Strip him.”
Impossible. And illegal. Lainie looked at Fazar again, and Silas followed her gaze. “He knows,” she whispered. “About me. And what I can do.” She hadn’t even thought about the danger of using magic against him when she was fighting him off.
“Then we’ll just have to make sure he doesn’t tell anyone,” Silas said. Even though he also spoke in a bare whisper, the hardness in his voice sent a chill through Lainie, and she was glad it wasn’t meant for her. Whether Silas intended to kill Fazar, or Strip him, or do something else to make sure he stayed silent, Lainie couldn’t guess. Whatever Silas had in mind for the renegade, she knew it wouldn’t be good. But, she found, she couldn’t bring herself to feel any pity for Fazar at all.
Chapter 9
HOW’M I SUPPOSED to eat and drink with my arms tied?” Fazar complained while Silas and Lainie were eating breakfast. Silas responded by shoving a whole piece of flatbread into the renegade’s mouth. Lainie, feeling even more bruised and battered after a few hours’ sleep, thought that was awfully generous of him. She would have let the son of a bitch starve.
Fazar coughed and choked and finally got the flatbread down. “I’m thirsty.”
Silas dumped Fazar’s water flask against his mouth. Fazar sputtered and half of the water ran down his chin.
When they were ready to move on, Silas helped Lainie onto her horse, then swung up onto Abenar. “Get moving,” he said to Fazar.
“But how’m I supposed to take a piss?” Fazar whined.
“That’s your problem, not mine,” Silas answered.
“You’re a hard man, Silas Vendine.”
“Yeah. And I’m also not the one who tried to rape Miss Lainie. Now, move.”
Fazar staggered forward. Lainie was glad to see that he was clearly still in considerable pain between his legs.
The morning passed in a misery of heat, humidity, and lingering aches and pains as they followed the wash north and east towards the hills, bushwhacking their way across one feeder wash after another and listening to Fazar complain. It was so hot that Silas even shed his duster coat and braved the thorny brush without it. Though they had replenished their water supplies just the other day, they were trying to ration out the water sparingly; the creek beds had dried up again, and you could never know for sure when the next rain would come. But Fazar whined constantly about being thirsty and the only way to shut him up was to let him drink. Lainie kept an eye on the clouds building over the hills, hoping for rain to fill the canteens and waterskins and to break the heat a little, but also worried that they would be delayed by flooding in the washes and have to spend that much more time in Fazar’s company.
With all the water he was drinking, Fazar’s begging to be allowed to attend to nature’s call grew more desperate until Silas finally gave in. He hobbled Fazar’s feet with a length of rope and belted his arms loosely in front, then the renegade lurched off to water the brush along the creek bed.
While they waited for him to do his business, Lainie said to Silas, “You’re being right charitable. I’d have just let the son of a bitch wet his pants.”
“Me too,” Silas answered, “except then we’d have to live with the smell and him complaining about it.”
“Wouldn’t smell any worse than he already does.”
He laughed and put an arm around her, careful of her injured shoulder. “How are you holding up, darlin’?”
“I’m pretty sore, and my shoulder still hurts. But I’m okay.” And she was, she realized. “I hope he’s pissing blood over there.”
Silas chuckled. “I hope I never get on your bad side, Miss Lainie. It sounds painful.”
“Behave yourself, Mr. Vendine, and I won’t have to teach you any hard lessons.”
He laughed again. “I’ll keep that in mind. Now, tell me, what were you doing wandering off by yourself when I told you to wake me up if anything happened?”
“Last night?” Lainie cringed, both inwardly and outwardly; that really had been a foolish thing to do. “I, well, I thought I heard something in the wash. I didn’t want to wake you up over nothing, so I went to take a look myself. I thought he was asleep. He was snoring loud enough.”
“I appreciate the consideration, darlin’. But don’t do that again, you hear? Wake me up, no matter what.”
“I will, I promise.” And she meant it. No more taking stupid chances, not with Fazar and a murderer around.
&nbs
p; When Fazar was done relieving himself, he returned meekly to where Silas and Lainie waited. Silas tightened the belt, leaving his hands bound in front. “What about my legs?” Fazar asked. “Ain’t you going to untie them so I can walk?”
“You can walk well enough,” Silas said. “Going nice and slow will rest the horses.”
With a grumble, Fazar set off again, leading the way along the wash that would eventually take them to the killer’s hideout.
Just past mid-day, the gathering thunderstorms finally broke up in the hills. Though the cool downdrafts stirred up the dust, they also brought blessed relief from the heat. Slowly, the gray sheets of rain over the hills thickened. A trickle of water in the wash turned into a steady flow, then, in the space of only a moment, a surge of water filled the wash to the banks.
The next feeder creek they came to was nearly overflowing as well. While they waited for the flood to subside so they could look for a place to cross, Lainie and Silas dismounted and walked around, stretching. With all the hours of riding and climbing up and down through washes, Lainie’s muscles had gone even more stiff and sore. She took her arm out of the sling and moved it; at least her shoulder felt a little better, though it still hurt and didn’t have a full range of motion.
The sheets of rain in the hills lightened. A while later, the water in the creek started to recede, but at the same time the rain over the hills got heavier again. “It might be a while yet before we can cross,” Silas said, looking from the storm to the wash. “I’ll top up the water bottles while we have the chance.” He slung his water flasks around his neck by their straps, then collected Lainie’s and Fazar’s canteens as well as the horses’ waterskins.