The woman signaled to the hut she lived in for someone to come out. Two young males appeared. They were skinny and wore swords but didn’t make a motion to draw them. “We’ve seen your mother. We’ve spoken to her. She promised us your father would spare our lives if we didn’t kill her, so we let her live and helped her escape. Unfortunately Sulla recaptured her.” The two looked at each other and then back at her.
Gypsy wanted to cut them into tiny little pieces but she held her rage in check. “Where is she? Who the fuck is Sulla?”
The two men looked at each other then pointed up the road. “Two hours’ ride from here up this very road, in Rathara. Sulla is the village enforcer. You’ll know him when you see him because he has three scars down the center of his face,” the man said, using his fingers to make a raking gesture over his face. “But you’d better hurry. The doctor was kidnapped to care for Sulla’s injured brother and he’s not going to live much longer despite her efforts. When he dies, she dies.”
* * * *
Gypsy intercepted Gavin as he led the mercenaries up the trail. He reined his hyperia up and squinted at her. “Well?” he asked. “What have you found out?”
“We have encountered two men who say they’ve seen her recently. They say she’s being held in Rathara which is two hours’ ride from here.”
Gavin turned to face the group pulling up behind him. “We have a lead that says my wife is two hours’ ride from here,” he said. “We will make it there in one.” Then Gavin spurred his mount and took off up the trail at a full gallop.
* * * *
Harlan hit the river water with a clumsy splash. The cool water was sweet mercy on her sore damaged leg. She passed out for a moment but quickly came to again. This was going to be much harder than she thought. Her injury was almost two days old and a constant drain on her strength. Navigating as best she could, she held her crutch for flotation and let the current take her like a crystal green chariot downriver. Every so often her leg would strike something and she would have to muffle her scream on her forearm. For all she knew Sulla was riding along the banks looking for her. The cold water swept her past cliffs and rocks, hanging her up here and there on boulders and broken trees sticking up out of the water. The occasional fish nibbled at her fingers thinking them something good to eat. It was the least of her worries, because Harlan was having a very hard time staying awake and afloat. She was so cold that it felt like her extremities weren’t even attached anymore. Her thoughts turned to her husband, Gavin, and daughter, Gypsy. A deep sorrow squeezed her heart. I love you both so much. I’m so tired and weak and I just don’t think I can hang on anymore. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it, but I want you both to know I did my best. Darkness surrounded her and she couldn’t even see the riverbank anymore. Then a quiet calm engulfed the rest of her senses and blackness overtook her.
Chapter 30
They arrived about a mile away from Rathara just as the twin suns began melting into the horizon. Gypsy sat in a clearing with Gavin, Desmond and Trajan going over the last-minute attack plans and she had to admit, she was nervous. It wasn’t the fear of death or injury that made her jumpy but the awful knowledge that they were minutes away from finding out the fate of her mother. Their own numbers had also dwindled since they had embarked on the rescue mission. When they surveyed the destruction at Sanguar, Desmond had given Gavin an estimate that forty to forty-five men had participated in the attack. With their initial party of twenty-nine seasoned fighters they were pretty evenly matched. Now they were down to only nineteen and that gave her pause, even more so because they were on foreign soil. This being her first real field fight she really wasn’t sure what to expect. For his part, her father was calmer than she’d seen him in days and seemed to know the outcome of the battle already. In fact he acted as though the impending fight was nothing more than a minor inconvenience that distracted him from his true purpose. At least he was feeling better and that gave her an immeasurable amount of comfort. It was the first time since they’d left the empire that she felt as though she didn’t have to worry about him.
Gavin squinted at her through the building darkness. “Repeat your attack plan,” he said. He’d been making her go over it and over it to make sure everyone not only knew what they were supposed to do, but what the other combatants were going to be doing. There was a time a few short years ago when she would have given him some sarcastic answer thinking he didn’t trust her to remember. But now she knew why he did things and it made all the difference. She repeated the plan and listened one more time as Desmond repeated his and then Trajan his.
Satisfied that everyone knew their place, Gavin mounted up. Scarlet came over and stood by his hyperia, absently stroking the soft black flesh of its muzzle. “What am I supposed to do?” she said.
“You, my dear doctor, will stay here until we come back and get you. Harlan may very well be hurt and I can’t risk you getting killed,” he said.
Scarlet nodded, clearly unhappy with the idea of staying behind. She walked over to the small campfire and sat down cross-legged on the ground, staring into the flames. Gavin dismounted and came over to her. She looked up at him and draped a lock of red hair behind her ear. “I have something for you,” he said in a low confidential tone that only Gypsy could hear. He crouched down by her and handed her Harlan’s gun.
“But I thought…” she said awkwardly.
“I know,” Gavin said, returning to his mount. “But these are difficult times and you need some protection. I can’t afford to leave anyone here with you as we are already outnumbered.” He stared off into the forest as if he could see the future and didn’t like it one bit. “I never gave that to you.”
Scarlet nodded and pushed the weapon down into her pants pocket and out of sight. “Good luck, General.”
“Thank you, my dear, but I don’t need luck,” he said in a voice laced with cold doom. “I have experience, lots of experience in carnage.”
Chapter 31
Just outside the village, Gypsy raised her hand to halt the six mercenaries who accompanied her. The town was relatively quiet with a central fire pit and several smaller ones in the distance. About sixty dwellings of various sizes and in different states of repair spotted the hilly landscape above the river. Waiting for the signal, she chewed her bottom lip and rubbed her thumbs back and forth along the braids in her reins. As she watched the opposing terrain she noticed a few armed men wander around the village center exchanging some conversation. Although they carried swords, she didn’t get the impression that they were on any kind of watch. Her eyes strained through the darkness searching for any sign of her mother. Watching as the village men shared a laugh, the cauldron of fury that had been simmering in her mind began to boil over. It took every ounce of self-control that she had left not to tear in there and cut them down. Then across the way a beam of light flashed twice and the time had come.
Gypsy pulled her saber and tore into the village at a full gallop with her father’s mercenaries close behind. The evening air was mercifully cool and chilled the building sweat on her skin beneath her armor. The scent of blossoming flowers caressed her nose as she thundered past a small cottage with a garden out back. The serenity it evoked was in stark contrast to the destruction that was about to unfold.
As Gavin had predicted, no one was expecting them. Gypsy galloped over to the men she’d been watching and separated the first one from his head before he even knew she was on him. Jumping from her mount she engaged the other two men killing them with such ease that it surprised her. Then another male attacked her from behind and as soon as she dispatched him another came. Apparently being the only female made her a desirable target for the males who were willing to fight, and she happily went through them like a buzzsaw until she stood in the town center surrounded by dead enemies.
It was very purging and Gypsy’s blood was ignited with a newfound source of energy. The desire to kill rushed through her being as though each dead body contributed to a wa
ll of protection around her emotions in case the unthinkable had happened to her mother.
Gavin and her brother, Desmond, quickly destroyed what little resistance they encountered, killing their enemies even before the villains had time to pull their sabers. The rest of the villagers raced for shelter, some of them searching in vain for weapons, but there was no need. They were hopelessly outmatched and the battle was all over in minutes.
Gypsy approached a group of village males standing in a circle with their hands in the air and their weapons at their feet. They watched her approach as though she was engulfed in flames. The fear etched permanently into their features. “Where is the doctor you bastards kidnapped?” she growled, gripping her saber and pointing it at them. They all gestured over to a broken down shack where another male with three disfiguring scars knelt before her father. Desmond was binding his hands behind his back and hobbling him.
Before she knew what she was doing, she raced over and slammed her boot into the prisoner’s gut. He gave a satisfying grunt of pain and shot her a nasty look.
“Where the fuck is she?” Gypsy spat at him then pulled her fist back to punch him. Gavin seized her by the arm before she could attack the prisoner again.
“Lieutenant,” he said grimly. “Go and secure the other men of the village and bring them here. If this piece of filth doesn’t tell me where she is, we’ll just start torturing the rest of them in front of him until he does.”
“My name is Sulla and I already told you!” the man screamed. “I don’t know where she is! If she’s not in the shack, she must have escaped again!”
Gypsy had never seen her father so furious. His eye blazed with potent hate and his anger carried an infernal heat that radiated outward and burned everyone present. Without warning, Gavin pounded his fist into Sulla’s face and a distinguishing crack filled everyone’s ears. The prisoner spat a tooth onto the ground and blood seeped from his nose and mouth. Gypsy walked away stiffly to get some other males for Gavin to torture. She returned to the circle of village males, lined them up, and marched them over to where her father was interrogating Sulla. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Desmond mounting up. She came over and blocked his way before he could ride off.
“Where are you going?” she asked curious.
“I think he’s telling the truth about Harlan being gone. There’s a dead man in the shack who looks remarkably like Sulla, minus the three beauty marks. I’m guessing that’s his brother. He doesn’t appear to have been dead more than a few hours. If Harlan knew her life would end when his did, she would have nothing to lose by attempting another escape. I’m going to take Trajan and see if we can pick up a trail,” he said. “You stay here and keep an eye on Gavin. I’ll be back soon if I find something.”
Gypsy wanted to join him but she was afraid of what Desmond might find. She couldn’t face finding her mother’s body in a shallow grave somewhere. She decided just to stay here and enjoy the show.
* * * *
Desmond and Trajan had been searching through the village for about twenty minutes when they decided to check down by the river. If she did escape, it must have been recent because Sulla didn’t even know she was gone and he’d probably been keeping close tabs on her since her last escape.
After only a few minutes Trajan called out that he’d found something. Desmond rode over to where the other man was crouching on the ground a few feet from the water’s edge. The halo from his light illuminated a portion of tracks in the damp ground.
“I’d bet your soul that these are hers,” the other man said while pointing at the strange looking tracks.
“Why are the footprints single file?”
Trajan shook his head. “Not single file. She’s only got the use of one leg. This other circular indentation is parallel to each print. Some kind of crutch would be my guess. Also the tracks are going into the river and none are coming out.”
“How old are they?” Desmond asked as his hyperia sidestepped nervously.
“It’s hard to say exactly,” he said, tracing the footprint with his fingertip and pressing on the ridges left by the sole of a boot. “Probably made not too long after the brother died. So a few hours at most.”
Desmond frowned. Great. The river could have carried her twenty miles away by now. “Well we better start making our way downstream. This may take awhile. I’m going to cross and search the north bank. You ride back and let the lieutenant know what we’re doing and see if you can confirm the leg injury with any of the prisoners…if the general hasn’t killed them all by now. When you’re done, start working your way down the south bank.”
Trajan nodded and mounted up. His hyperia took off at a dead run up the trail and back toward the village. Desmond’s own hyperia had no desire to cross a wide, rushing river in the dark and began stomping his feet and hissing as Desmond urged him forward. Come on, idiot, not now. He firmly pressed his spurs into the animal’s sides and said, “If you don’t cross, you don’t eat. In fact I’ll just turn your worthless ass loose and maybe the remaining villagers can eat you.” His mount stood rigidly for a moment then plunged into the cold river and began to frantically swim to the other side. They made it in about ten minutes. “See? Was that so hard?” Desmond said, patting the animal’s neck.
The moons weren’t high enough to provide any light so Desmond pulled a microlight from his saddlebag and shone it along the bank. Not wanting to miss her if she’d washed ashore. He moved painstakingly slow checking every bush, pile of logs and cluster of trees.
For over an hour he rode feeling the hope he’d been carrying begin to fade. If she had drowned it could be awhile before she floated to the surface. Not wanting to venture into that territory he focused all of his energy on scanning the banks for disturbances, tracks, clothing or anything that gave an indication that she was still alive.
As he approached the two hour mark the waters were getting much more treacherous, much less survivable. Then he spotted a dark shadow up ahead on the bank. He had, of course, seen a lot of dark shadows along this river and they usually turned out to be boulders or broken logs that had washed ashore. Nudging his hyperia into a trot he rode over and swept his light over the dark mass. The first thing that registered was the radiant color of ivory flesh. He’d found her. There, lying in a tight ball with one leg stretched out at an odd angle was Harlan. Desmond held his breath as he dismounted and knelt down by her, praying to any gods who would listen that she wasn’t dead. Pulling his glove off, he placed his fingertips against her neck and felt the strong steady rhythm of her pulse.
He exhaled the breath he’d been holding and carefully uncurled her.
The worn, tattered clothes she was wearing were fairly dry so she’d been lying here awhile, but her face was hot, damp and very pale. She was definitely sick and hurt and they were almost two hours away from the camp and Scarlet. Desmond retrieved a blanket from his saddlebag laying it out next to her. Sliding his arms under her shoulders and thighs he gingerly lifted her a few inches off the ground and moved her onto the blanket, wrapping her in it. Now he just needed to get her back across the river where he could meet up with Trajan and send him for Scarlet. Bringing his mount right up next to her he knelt down to pick her up again. He hated having to move her but what else could he do?
“I’m sorry if this hurts you, Harlan, but I don’t have a lot of choices,” he whispered into her ear. Her long lashes fluttered open and her mouth twisted into a painful grimace as he mounted up with her. Those dazzling emerald eyes blinked a few times in recognition and then she gave him a weak smile.
“Hello, Desmond,” she whispered in a raspy voice. “You’ll never know how happy I am to see you.”
Desmond grinned back down at her and brushing her long black locks away, softly kissed her on the forehead. “Not nearly as happy as I am to see you.”
Chapter 32
Harlan awoke in the pitch black to stiffness and a horrible pain in her leg. She had no idea where she was and
the only thought that occurred to her was amazement that she was still alive. Wondering if Sulla had recaptured her, she shifted slightly and a bolt of agony shot up her leg right into her hip, making her cry out. In the darkness someone knelt down by her, moving her with powerful hands to a more comfortable position. The scent of her companion was rich, warm and familiar—it was Gavin. Please don’t let me be hallucinating.
Without a word, she reached out with a trembling hand and touched the hard lines and rough skin of her husband’s face. She could hardly believe what she was experiencing. A desperate joy filled her heart at the realization that it must be him. “Gavin,” she whispered, hoping beyond reason that it was true.
He took her hand away from his face, kissed her palm, and squeezed it. “Yes, my darling.” His voice carried a note of deep sorrow and boundless love. Gavin had found her at last. After all the fear and mistreatment it was almost too much for her brain to absorb. I waited so long for you to find me and now finally you’re here.
Harlan tried to sit up but the pain in her leg made her dizzy. “Be still, Harlan,” Gavin said in the darkness. “You’ve been badly hurt and you’re ill.”
“What happened?” she said when the pain had subsided a little.
“We located the village where Sulla took you and luckily Desmond found you on the bank of the river after your escape attempt. Scarlet has tended to your leg and given you medication but she says you will need surgery. You’ve been in and out of a delirious consciousness for three days but we’re close to the empire now. I’ll have you back to the clinic by evening.”
“What time is it now?”
“A few hours from dawn. Try to sleep some more,” he said, wrapping his powerful arms around her and burying his face in her neck. The warmth of his body was a comfort Harlan had been longing for.
“Where’s Gypsy?” she asked.
“She’s with us.”
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