WINDREAPER

by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Their swords are sharp, their daggers black,

  And many a corpse have they made, have they made;

  And many a corpse have they made.

  So when the night is dark and the wind, it does howl,

  When the thunder of hooves shakes the ground.

  You'll know Lord Darkwind's on the prowl,

  Traitors' souls are being sent hellbound, hellbound;

  Traitors' souls are being sent hellbound.

  Ride, Darkwind, ride, the Wind Force at your side,

  Your whereabouts, we will hide.

  Ride on through the night, past the morning light,

  We'll keep you safe from the bounty hunter's sight.

  We'll keep you safe from the bounty hunter's sight."

  Chapter 7

  * * *

  Roget sat back in his chair, one booted ankle crossed over the other, and intently regarded his friend. Only an hour earlier, a messenger had come from Brelan, carrying a rolled parchment to be given directly to the Darkwind and no one else. Now, sitting in the common room of the nearly deserted Hound and Stag tavern, Conar had just finished reading it. There was a heavy frown on his face.

  "I take it Brelan got into the keep all right," Roget commented. "Is an answer expected?"

  Conar nodded, but didn't answer.

  "Do you want me to have the messenger brought?"

  Again the distracted nod.

  "Put on your mask."

  Roget waited until Conar was ready, then got up, opened the tavern door, and called for the outside guards to let the man in. Standing aside as one of Legion's personal men entered, Roget closed the door and placed his back against it.

  "When is this to take place?" Conar asked, not bothering to look at the messenger.

  "At the cresting of the moon, Lord Darkwind."

  Conar's dark sapphire orbs shot up to impale the messenger. He was sitting by the fireplace, wearing his black tunic, black leather breeches and boots, and the wide gauntlets around his capable-looking wrists, which still revealed the tattoo on the back of his sword hand. But what seemed to intrigue the messenger the most was Conar's black criss-crossed silk mask that hid all but his eyes from view.

  "I assume Brelan Saur trusts you or you wouldn't have known the password to get by my men or how to find me. Are you one with us?" He held up one hand. "Be careful how you answer. I will know whether you lie." His rasping voice came huskily from behind the mask.

  "My heart is open for you to see, Milord. I am as loyal as a man can be to you and the cause. You have no reason to doubt me. My cousin is one of your own. Storm Jale. I saw him outside. I would have recognized him even without that ratty beard." The man smiled, but the smile wavered, died as the midnight blue gaze regarded him steadily. He looked away from that keen probe. "I am Marsh Edan, Master-at-Arms at Boreas."

  "I know who you are," came the grating reply.

  "Then you know I can be trusted."

  "It would appear so. If I find you false, Storm will be minus one family member." Conar turned the parchment in his hands and began to re-roll it.

  "Is there an answer, Milord?"

  "I will think on it. Stay the night with Storm and get reacquainted. I'll let you know by morning what my answer will be." It was a dismissal and Marsh took it as such, leaving the room with haste.

  "What's in the note?" Roget asked as he locked the door behind Marsh.

  "A royal summons."

  "From Legion?" Roget du Mer was shocked. "Does Brelan really think you'd actually come?"

  "He knows I will." Getting up from his chair, Conar stood in front of the warm fireplace and unraveled the mask.

  "You can't go to the keep!"

  "I have to." He flung the mask to the chair and ran his hands over his face, plowed one hand through the fall of long flaxen waves, then shook back his hair. "I'm not being given a chance to decline, Hawk," he said in a strange voice.

  "What the hell's so important that Brelan would let you risk your life to return to Boreas?" A sick feeling formed in the pit of Roget's stomach.

  There was a long moment of silence, then Conar made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a moan. His voice was devoid of life or expression. "There's to be an initiation at the Abbey of the Domination. Her eldest son is to be accepted into the Brotherhood. He undergoes the Rites of Passage at the cresting of the moon." The voice lowered. "Brelan wants it stopped. He says A'Lex wants us to abduct the child from the Abbey and return him to his mother." A hot look of speculation crossed Conar's tired face. "Without the child, Tohre will lose what hold he has on the throne. Once the boy is safe within Boreas Keep, A'Lex can give us all the help we want."

  "So that's why Legion hasn't been able to do anything before now! He feared for Liza's son!" Roget nodded. "It all makes sense now, doesn't it?"

  Conar returned to his seat and sat down heavily. His long legs shot out before him and he laid his head along the chair back. He gazed steadily at the blazing logs, his pupils taking on the reflected light from the flames hissing in the hearth. His hard, callused hands lay idle in his lap, but his fingers flexed as though he itched to have something within them to strangle. The only signs of any emotional upheaval was the vein throbbing heavily in the column of his bronzed throat and a faint movement of his lean jaw, obviously silently grinding his teeth.

  Roget made a temple with his fingers and, with his elbows propped on the arms of his chair, he lowered his chin to the apex of his fingertips. "You're going to go after the boy yourself, aren't you?" he asked in a calm tone he didn't feel.

  "Do I have a choice? I couldn't live with myself if I let that evil bastard claim another innocent McGregor male child. Although being a child of Galen's couldn't make the boy all that innocent, especially not after having been with Tohre all this time."

  "How old is he?"

  Conar shrugged. "Eight, nine. What does it matter?"

  "What if you're caught, Coni?"

  There was a derisive snort. "I can get into and out of that keep better than any man alive. Have no fear."

  "But what about the Abbey?"

  Conar shuddered, although Roget could have sworn he didn't realize it. "I've been there, as well. I know the way out, so I know the way in!"

  "I'm going with you. I'll be at your back."

  Conar's lips stretched into a thin smile. "You've been there, too, haven't you, Hawk?"

  Roget nodded. "And Chase. And Jah-Ma-El. And Shalu. How many of us will you need?"

  "Three. Belvoir knows the way and I'd rather not pull Shalu and Jah-Ma-El away from Fealst right now." He took a deep breath. "I'm not sure Chase could handle going back."

  Roget understood.

  "It'll be risky, Hawk."

  Roget lifted a broad shoulder. "Since when does risk ever matter to us?"

  "It's not something I truly want to do." His voice was soft, more gentle than Roget had heard in a long time. "Saving the boy from consecration I can handle. It's the rest that troubles me. I'll have to see him, speak to him."

  Roget du Mer nodded, knowing his friend was speaking of Legion A'Lex.

  But it wasn't Legion that Conar feared seeing. Roget knew that.

  And he knew Conar did, too.

  Chapter 8

  * * *

  And she had said to him long ago: "Beware the spinner's brew!"

  She, who weaves the web of mischief and strife. She, who bears the burden of guilt from so long ago.

  They called her a whore.

  They called her evil, but the weaver spins a web around him that is meant to protect rather than harm.

  And her magic was cast upon the still waters of midnight, her web settling gently over his shoulders.

  "Ride, Conar, ride," she sang sweetly to the conjuring pool's still waters as she swept his handsome face from her view. Her green eyes tilted upward. "Your lady at your side."

  Chapter 9

  * * *

  In the beginning, Conar's purpose was clear. In the beginning, he knew his own sou
l, his own heart. In the beginning, he could see clearly the path he was destined to take. And in the beginning, he was his own worst enemy.

  With his sapphire blue eyes hard and unrelenting on the future stretching out before him, his strong right hand gripping the pommel of his deadly sword, he stepped forth into the fight and his aim was true, his belief in himself unshaken. Those who rallied around him were of the same cut of cloth, of the same deadly purpose, and together, he and his men ventured into the realm of Darkness, took up arms against those who had destroyed.

  His fury in the fight was becoming legend; his generosity to his people and to those he saved, the stuff from which the legends sprang.

  His thoughts strayed often to the far crenellations of Boreas Keep and those who knew him well, those who listened not at all to his hard words of anger toward the royalty of Boreas Keep. Those who loved him saw the hurt playing along his sensuous mouth, and left him alone. They watched him, protected his back with flashing swords and expertly thrown daggers, but left him to his brooding.

  It was not until word had come from the keep, from the King of Serenia, that the anger went beyond fury to cold, dangerous hate.

  The night before Conar left for Boreas Keep, he decided to get rip-roaring drunk at the Green Horned Toad Tavern.

  He had escaped the watch of his "guard dogs," as he called them, and sat drinking one ale after another until he was in a violent frame of mind. He turned an unforgiving glare to every newcomer to the tavern, warning away their company.

  It was only by a miracle no one recognized him, for he had come to this smoke-filled tavern without his disguise. Only his bright blond hair was covered, a black kerchief wrapped tightly around the famed flaxen locks and tied just below his right ear. The jagged twin scars on his left cheek showed white through the bush of his thick, dark golden beard. In his left earlobe, a wide silver hoop caught the flare of light from the torch over his table. To those in the room, he appeared a man to be left alone. No one looked twice at him. No one, that is, but a giant of a man who sat deep in his cups not far from the Darkwind's table.

  It was a shock to the giant. He, at first thought, he'd had that proverbial "one drink too many" and was seeing ghosts, but on closer examination, furtive and intense, he realized his ghost was, indeed, who he'd thought. The legend of the Dark Overlord of the Wind began to make sense to him then. With a nod of his shaggy head, the giant smiled into his tumbler of ale and his heart filled with absolute joy.

  He watched silently, while what began as a drunken stagger against the Dark Overlord's table, became a living nightmare for the intoxicated man who just happened to stumble. He soon lay on the rush-strewn floor, with a lethal, double-edged dagger at his throat. The drunk had been imbibing someplace else, obviously, but coming to the Green Horned Toad had been the mistake of his life, as the Overlord of the Wind proceeded to tell him.

  "Your mistake, sir, will be your last!" the bearded man said in a deadly, soft whisper. "You'll make no others this side of hell."

  A trickle of blood oozing down his drunk's throat. "I meant you no harm, Your Grace!" he screeched in a wounded, terrified voice. "I surely meant no harm!"

  Maybe it was the fear in the man's tone, or perhaps his obvious contrition, or the way his scrawny Adam's apple bobbed with abject horror, or maybe even the unconscious title of deference he used, but something stayed the blade at his throat, saved the wretch's life.

  The bearded man withdrew the dagger. His cold blue eyes narrowed with a sudden flash of white-hot fire, and he returned the blade to the top of his boot. He stood up, then offered the drunk his hand. "Get up."

  The man reluctantly put up a violently trembling hand. He winced as the strong sword hand closed around his own. Getting clumsily to his feet, he edged away, bowing deeply at the waist, repeating over and over again, "I'm sorry, Milord. Sorry."

  The Dark lord's lip curled in, what the giant assumed, passed for a smile. The bearded man dismissed the drunk, turning around to swipe up his nearly empty tumbler of ale. He brought the brew to his lips, and over the rim of the vessel, saw a group of four men circling his table. They appeared to be the bullying kind, sneers of challenge on their meaty faces. They seemed genuinely surprised when he turned his back on them and reseated himself.

  "Afraid to take on real men, eh?" one scoffed, nudging one companion and winking at the other two.

  These men didn't appear to concern him at all. He viewed the threat they presented as a nuisance and nothing more. With a dispassionate glance at them, he leaned back negligently in his chair and fixed them with a steady stare.

  Somewhat taken aback by the bearded man's obvious contempt as he folded his arms over his wide chest, at least one of the four thought better of engaging him in combat. The others, apparently less attuned to the room's highly charged atmosphere, continued the insulting remarks, which were met with that same unwavering, dark blue gaze.

  "What's the matter with you?" one snarled. "You a coward?"

  "Afraid to talk to us, he is," another piped up.

  "Maybe the cat's got his tongue," the third quipped. He placed his grimy hands on Conar's table and leaned over. "Maybe he's feeling a mite like a little doggie facing a pit bull. He yipped at that fool drunk, but he seems to be cowering away from us. Maybe all he can do is yip."

  The bearded man's mouth stretched into a lopsided grin. "You keep pestering me and I'll show you that my bite is much worse than my bark."

  When a man is challenged, the giant thought, he's like a canine who reacts first and then thinks. It's the nature of the male beast to be the aggressor. The object of their taunts was in a fighting mood, anyway, and nothing less than spilled blood would have satisfied him.

  It took only a matter of minutes to dispatch the men who had made the fatal mistake of annoying him. He stood eyeing the room, wanting, needing, someone else to tussle with. He had downed three more ales and his gait was now unsteady, his hands shaking, his speech slurred almost beyond understanding, but he onbiously would have taken on anyone foolish enough to venture his way.

  When the giant rose from the table and made purposeful strides toward him, the Dark Overlord crouched, dagger in hand.

  "It's time to go home, Milord," the giant said softly. "I will accompany you."

  The bearded man snarled, his mouth twisting bitterly. He tilted back his head so he could glare up at the man who literally towered above his own six-foot frame. "I'm not going nowhere."

  "Oh, yes you are."

  A hard right to the exposed jaw knocked the stars down from his sky.

  * * *

  Waking up in his room, ten miles from the Green Horned Toad, with a raging headache and blurred vision, sour stomach and a mouth that tasted of waterlogged timber, he used every coarse word and vitriolic curse he could on the men who gazed down at him. He tried to get up, failed, and let out an hiss of fury. Finding his head spinning as fast as a top, he fell back on the bed and drifted into sleep once more.

  He barely feel the gentle hands undressing him, bathing the drink-sweat from his limp body.

  * * *

  "You have our thanks, sir," Roget du Mer told the giant as the big man wiped Conar's brow with a deceptively soft touch for hands that were four times the size of a normal hand. Roget smiled. "He might have gotten himself hurt."

  The giant ran the rag down Conar's naked neck and chest. "I wouldn't have allowed anything to happen to him, Duke du Mer." The man's voice was heavily accented, foreign, mumbling.

  Roget was stunned. This man obviously knew who he was, and if that was the case, might he not also know Conar, the man to whom he was administering with such loving, gentle care? He had been surprised when the giant punched Conar; even more surprised when he caught the young man as he crumpled, picking him up in his arms like one would a child, and telling Roget that he would "carry the little lord home." It had been the fierceness in the giant's broad face, beneath the craggy, low-slung brow, that convinced Roget the man meant to do j
ust that. For some reason, a reason Roget as yet did not understand, he trusted this over-grown man. Now, he wondered just how far he could.

  "You know me." Roget sat on the foot of Conar's bed. He nodded at the sleeping man. "You know him, as well?"

  The giant nodded and eased Conar onto his stomach. The huge hands trembled as he took in the mass of criss-crossed scar tissue, the legacy of a brutal punishment. There came a low, keening groan from his throat; a groan of deep despair.

  "It was a long time ago," Roget remarked, moved. "If you know who he is, you know how he came by that."

  Tenderly, the man bathed the puckered flesh. "He didn't deserve this, Duke du Mer."

  Roget brought up one booted foot and tugged at the rich brown leather. "No, he didn't."

  "It was me, you know," the man said, his hands lovingly stroking the deepest of the wavering whip marks.

  Roget pulled off his boot and looked at the man. "I don't understand."

  "It was me." The man's voice was softer as he gazed at Conar's mangled flesh. He seemed to mentally shake himself after a moment's reflection. "It was me that scarred him."

  Roget gawked at the man, full recognition falling into place. He put up a hand and plowed his long, tapered fingers through his hair. He had also once been an unwilling subject of this giant. "You're Bent, the executioner."

  The answer was not a brag, nor a simple statement of fact. It was a curse on his lips. "Not anymore. Not since this."

  Roget had reason to hate the man, for he had felt the sting of Bent Fontaine's whip on the day he had been condemned by the Tribunal of Serenia. But he recognized true contrition in the man's ravaged voice, and he knew, too, that it had been his job to torture, flog, and kill men the Tribunal had tried in those days. Roget could never forgive the Tribunal for what they had done to him, but he could forgive this man who lovingly touched the flesh of his friend.

  "I am sure he forgave you," Roget said. "He wouldn't have blamed you for what was done to him."