Davik’s fist hung in the air, halfway en route to blackening Dye’s left eye. The spitting black fury that twisted his face was gradually replaced with grudging recognition and a return to his senses. With glowering reluctance, he sank back on his heels and dragged a wrist across his eyes.
Dye snorted. “Are you…crying?”
“You put your fucking elbow in my eye!”
Davik climbed off the Northman and held out his left hand, shaking his bloodied right, as tears poured down his face. “Mithra, Dye. I’ve really screwed things up, haven’t I?”
The Northman took the Prince’s hand and levered himself to his feet. “Yeah, you have.” Dye dusted himself off. “You and me, both,” he muttered. “Drink?”
“Anything but wine,” Davik agreed. Chest heaving, eyes streaming, he leaned back against his desk and took in the Northman’s flaming hair, his fair skin. “You don’t look anything like her.”
“She’s the black sheep in the family. Most of us are redheads.” The Northman shook his head painfully and glanced sideways at his companion. “I should have killed Kartin,” he said with keen regret.
“Yeah, you should have.” Davik gasped in a breath. “Why didn’t you?”
“She wouldn’t let me,” Dye muttered disagreeably. “She said you had to do it.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Warrik wasn’t the meathead some people took him for.”
A jug of ale had been delivered along with two wooden tankards. The two Khals sat across from each other, the Prince’s desk between them. With his feet propped atop an open drawer, Davik rocked back on the rear legs of his chair.
Dye crossed his feet on the desktop and nodded with interest.
“People underestimated him. Mithra, he could be funny. But he was more than that.”
“Nobody takes humor seriously.”
Davik returned a melancholy nod. “He was so big…strong. You see a guy like that and you think he just powers his way through life. But Warrik was brave, daring and bright. Only…”
“Only people thought you brighter.”
Davik sighed. “Not that I am, particularly. One time, when we were young…we’d boasted we could bring back lastmeal; the salmon were running and we thought we’d just kick a bunch out of the river, carry them home, and win the accolade we deserved. We were doing good too—had about twelve big steelhead on the bank—when this grizzly, huge grizzly, ambles out of the brush, sits down in the middle of our fish, and commences to devour them in bulk. Of course, by that time, we’d got up the further bank as fast as we could get. The bank was high, rocky, and steep and we might have been afraid of the climb if we’d stopped to think on it, if we hadn’t been so afraid of that bear.” Davik tipped his tankard to his lips then carried on.
“The bear finished off our catch and went into the river for his own. There we were, up a cliff with no fish and no way down; the bear was set smack in the middle of our way home and we were stuck there as long as he fancied salmon. Warrik wandered off down the cliff a ways, looking for I-didn’t-know-what, then next thing I know, he’s zinging rocks down at the biggest mammal on the continent. I’m backing away from the cliff edge, he’s pitching rocks as hard as he can, and the bear is getting pissed. In an instant, the monster turns on us and starts up the cliff.”
“The grizzly weighs a ton. Rocks are flying behind him—rocks the size of carts—and, for a moment, I think he’s not going to make it; he’s going down in a landslide. Then I realize he’s getting ahead of the rocks and he’s about to crest the cliff. I want to run, but I’m too proud at sixteen. At sixteen, I’m going to die alongside my brother.” Sardonically, the corner of Davik’s mouth curled. “Warrik’s standing at the cliff edge, almost nose to nose with the brute. He’s got a long, thick branch jammed into a crack—a crack running parallel to the cliff face—and he’s throwing his weight back on it. Half the cliff gives way.”
Davik took a long swallow. “Half the cliff goes down. When the dust clears, the bear’s at the bottom of the cliff, just about dead from the fall. Warrik looks at me and laughs, pulls his steel, and we finish him off with our knives.” Davik shrugged and smiled. “We had bear for lastmeal.”
“How was it?”
“Not bad. A bit greasy, I thought. But nobody complained.” He raised his tankard. “To Warrik,” he said. “The braver brother.”
Dye raised his tankard. “Braver? You’d not have done the same? Had you his size and strength?”
Davik mused on this a while. “Perhaps. If I’d thought of it in the first place, and if I were alone.”
“And otherwise?”
“I’d not risk another man’s life.”
“You’d not have risked your brother’s life.”
“I guess not,” Davik said slowly. He stared at Dye; the redhead’s pupils were tiny black pinpricks centered on intense blue. “You’re Westerman, too.”
“Enough to stagger home from the alehouse on a moonless night.”
“That’s how you sneaked up on Mavrik.”
Dye gave the Prince a slow smile.
“And do you share your sister’s Slurian traits as well?”
“Unfortunately not. At least—not the kind that could drive the opposite sex crazy.”
“You’ve no other brothers, Dye?”
The Northman shook his head.
Davik nodded slowly. “To your sister then.” The Prince’s face was melancholy as the men raised their cups together. “May she find happiness, despite…everything.”
Dye sipped his ale and gave the Prince a sly sideways glance. “You’re not going after her?”
“Why would I,” he said without energy. “She’s gone. And I am to be wed…to a Princess of Thrall.”
“Why would you?” Dye repeated. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because she’s taken your seal of office.”
Davik looked up sharply.
“You’ll want it to stamp that receipt.”
Davik’s eyes went to the table and he cursed softly. “She was in here?”
“You knew she was a thief. And she has a few connections in the palace.”
“Like you?”
Dye inclined his head.
Davik looked at the contract on the table. “I can have another seal made,” he tendered without conviction.
“I imagine she knows that.”
I imagine she knows that. The idea got trapped inside the Prince’s braincase and reverberated, growing in strength and volume as it cycled in his mind.
She wanted to see him.
Davik turned slowly in Dye’s direction, eyes wide as he stared right through the man. “Get me a tracker.”
Dye nodded, his eyes crinkled in challenge. “You can take a tracker if you like, or I could just draw you a map.” He dropped into a chair and drew a piece of parchment toward him.
Out of his chair and standing behind Dye, Davik watched the map grow on the paper. “How can you not hate me, Dye? After what my family has done to yours?”
“You’re not your father,” he replied. “Although you can do a fair imitation of him. You’re not your mother either—thank the gods—each and every one of them.” When the map was complete, Dye put the drawing in the Prince’s hand. “And I have a fair idea of what you’re feeling. So long as I’m within thirty feet of you.”
Davik started.
Dye shrugged apologetically. “Slurian blood—Nay—don’t be alarmed. Petra hasn’t my talent, no more than I have hers.” Dye paused a moment for effect. “And—Aye—I know how you feel about her.”
With the map clutched in his fist, Davik headed for the door. “I’m expecting twenty steer driven in today,” he threw over his shoulder. “Have one of my Northern units set up the pits and spits.” The Prince spun around and pointed at the Northman. “The South is going to show the North how to throw a barbeque.”
Dye watched the Prince through the door then stretched back in his chair—arms behind his head—and smirked. “You poor bastard,�
� he told the ceiling.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Petra watched the Prince as he threw his leg over the gelding’s neck and slid from its back. “You look tired,” she said.
He nodded.
“Perhaps you should just kill me and have done with it.”
He nodded again. “Either that or make you my wife.”
She smiled, took a few skirting steps before him without approaching him. “A man once said that to my grandmother.”
He frowned. His comeback had been somewhat cliché, an old line borrowed from one of the old ballads. Only, he couldn’t place which ballad.
There was a long silence between them. How would it end, he wondered. “I made a mistake,” he said quietly.
“In thinking you could be a complete asshole?”
“No,” he returned ruefully. “I think I’ve actually done a fair job of that. No, I made a mistake in thinking I hated you. I don’t hate you,” he said. “I love you.”
“I know.”
“I wanted to. I wanted to hate you.”
She nodded. “You loved your brother.” Her voice wobbled a bit. “How can you forgive me, Davik?”
“I might ask you the same thing.”
She was quick to defend him. “Dye told me what happened after you left my cell. It wasn’t rape,” she said, but her voice wobbled again and shattered. She turned from him quickly but not before he saw the tears. He watched her trembling shoulders.
If it wasn’t rape, he thought miserably, it was damn close.
“It wasn’t,” she sobbed. “Tell me it wasn’t Davik.”
“It wasn’t rape,” he said sadly. He couldn’t bear to see her broken. To see how he had broken her.
“I submitted, willingly.”
Or would have if he’d given her the chance. He watched her back as her shoulders shook and her hands went to her face. “It wasn’t rape,” he repeated. “I was just hot for you. I’m sorry if I was rough.” It was a sham, he knew, a lying façade. But it was what she wanted to hear. Somehow he had to retrieve his words; remake those words of violence into words of love. “One glimpse of your sweet, warm cunt and I went a bit berserk,” he said, his eyes full of pain and hope. “Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head.
“Your wrists?”
Her back was still turned to him. “I don’t know why, but I never got used to the shackles—my skin, I mean—not even after five years. Most prisoners develop calluses, but I never did. Maybe it was the metal. I’ve never been able to wear jewelry, other than pure gold; anything else irritates my skin. At any rate, the manacles rubbed my wrists and ankles perpetually raw. The pain kept me nauseated during the five years of my imprisonment. Just the thought of chains—makes me queasy.”
He looked at her skinned wrists, crusted with open sores, and felt a bit queasy himself. How could she forgive him? “I blamed myself for Warrik’s death. For being deceived. How could I have been deceived? By you?”
She caught at a sob.
“I think—now—it was because you weren’t lying.”
She nodded. “I loved you. It had been better if I didn’t. Perhaps then you’d have seen through me.”
“You tried to stop it. You did the best you could, under the circumstances. You couldn’t betray your men.” He took a breath and continued. “It was my fault. I should have given you my trust; Warrik would be alive today if I had.” He backed up to sit on a dry stump. “Wouldn’t he?”
She didn’t answer.
“You’d have called off the mission and thrown your support behind my brother. With your endorsement, he’d have been accepted by your Northmen.”
“Mithra,” he whispered hopelessly. “I’ve made so many mistakes.” He looked up at her, at her stiff back, her shoulders as they shuddered. “You’ve something of mine,” he reminded her, thinking to distract her and allay her tears.
Turning, she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, reached inside her jerkin, and produced the seal.
He looked at the seal in her hand and shook his head. “That’s not what I came for.” He raised his eyes to hers. “The ballad, Petra. Give me back my song.”
Hesitantly, her hands returned to slip inside her jerkin. She took the steps between them, handed him the thick wad of soiled parchment, then backed away. He opened it and smoothed it on his knee. It was creased, and stained, and damp, and smelled of the woman he loved. He read a few lines and grimaced. “Why did you keep it?”
“I hoped you might revise it…one day.”
He shuffled through the pages. “It needs work,” he admitted. “The ending in particular; it’s a bit morbid.” He attempted a smile but it probably didn’t come off very well. He lifted his face to her. “How does it end, Petra.” His voice broke. “Tell me how it will end.”
Her eyes met his bravely while she considered her answer. “They made love,” she said finally. “And that was just the beginning.”
His heart soared. It soared. This despite the fact that a man’s heart was never designed for flight.
She shook her head. “I’ll miss Warrik,” she said sadly.
He stared at her. What a time to be jealous, he thought, breathlessly.
He felt dizzy. It was the altitude, he thought, as his heart continued to spiral. He felt at that moment he could accomplish anything. And he knew what he wished to accomplish. He wanted to repair the damage he’d done when he entered her cell, wanted to restate his love for her, and he knew it was important to put it in coarse terms, for her sake; terms she would understand.
He started off strongly. “I couldn’t stand it when my brother took you. Right from the start, I couldn’t stand it…every time he took you. I wanted—and want—to be the only man who touches you, the only man who kisses you—your lips, your breasts, your warm, wet slot—I want to be the only man you spread your legs for, the only man you make love to and the only man you love. I admit…I admit my love for you is selfish, greedy, and even violent.
“I want to make love to you with my eyes wide open. I want to love you and worship you and fuck you to the core of your sweet warm depths, my cock buried to the hilt in your willing cunt, and hopefully do it…artfully…enough that I see love in your eyes again, just before you buck beneath me and rush to meet me. Do you understand what I’m saying, Petra?”
She raised her eyes slowly, a trace of smile on her lips. “I think it’s the most poetic thing I’ve ever heard.”
He went to her then and made love to her, gently, unselfishly, artfully; and it only got a bit violent there toward the end.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Davik woke with a shiver and raised himself on one elbow, looked down at the girl beside him. Between the two of them they shared almost no clothing. They’d fallen asleep in the comfortable twilight on a bed of grass. The near dawn was brisk. Thinking a cape of some sort should be in his saddlebag, he pulled on his breeks and headed for his horse. It was a bit of a hike as the horses had grazed off in the night. The gelding lifted its head and nickered at his approach. Anxious to return to the girl before the cold wakened her, he gave the beast a cursory pat and flipped open one of the saddlebags. Pulling out a small crumpled book, he started to tuck it under his arm before continuing his search. Frowning, he stopped in mid-action, a look of uncertainty on his face, then he started flipping through the pages of the book.
A crisp crackle spun him around. Automatically, his hand slapped his hip, but his steel lay on the ground back beside the girl. A full unit of Thralls materialized in the just-forming dawn. Fifty pair of pink eyes fixed on him. He backed up a step. Their weapons were sheathed, he noted. With growing resentment, he searched the lines for their captain and found the small man standing in Dye’s shadow.
With malicious glee, Dye grinned at the Khallic Prince. “Hello Davik. You didn’t think I was going to make this easy for you, did you?”
Davik continued to back away as denial filled his eyes. With a panicked glance in the girl’s d
irection, he started shaking his head.
The company of Thralls closed around him quickly.
“The Queen of Thrall And Etc. awaits your attendance on your wedding day, Davik.”
Davik looked dead horror at the tall redhead. “No! Dye. You can’t do this. You can’t do this to us. Let me—lt us—disappear into Northern Khal. Tien’s granddaughter can have one of my brothers.”
Dye shook his head and laughed. “The Princess isn’t interested in The Heir to Khal. She fancies you! Tien hasn’t come all this way to see her granddaughter humiliated.”
“You can’t do this. You can’t do this, Dye. To me. To Petra.”
“Petra will understand—better than anyone. Andarta and country, and all that nonsense. I intend to see you get what you deserve, Davik, and avert a war with Thrall at the same time.” Dye looked back in the direction the Prince had come from. “If you like, we can take Petra with us.”
Would she do that? Would she, in the end, betray him? For the good of her country? She had proven—more than proven—she was willing to sacrifice much for Khal.
Davik shook his head. “I don’t want her that close to my mother.” It was only half a lie; the girl would never be safe within his mother’s circle of influence. The other half, the lying half, he couldn’t face. Would she stand by and watch him wed to another woman?
“So be it, then.”
Davik gave Dye a look of hot-fired defiance. “I’ll get back to her Dye,” he said with hard confidence. “Somehow I’ll find her again and get back to her.”
The redhead laughed, his enjoyment absolute. “When did you become such a romantic? Did no one ever tell you, Davik, there’s no room for love in political weddings? You may love whomever you choose, My Prince—for the rest of your life—but today you’ll be wed to a Princess.”
Dye held the Prince’s horse as he swung into the saddle, then threw himself onto his own mount. Flanked by the silent Thralls, they turned toward the city.
Kingdom of Khal: Redeeming Davik Page 12