Neither of the men came after her as she rode forward, nearly to the head of the column where Timon’s colleague Orpheus rode point. She stopped before she passed him, not wanting to call more attention to herself, and rode a little way off to the side, into the long, unsullied grass.
She let her mind drift as the gelding clopped along at an easy pace. The sun was warm on her skin, and birds sang from the marsh at the southern end of San Francisco Bay. Ahead lay the extensive ruins of San Jose and its outlying suburbs; once the party had gone beyond them, they’d be following old Highway 101 another thirty miles until they reached the junction where they’d turn inland toward the great Central Valley.
But Jamie was thinking about the end of the journey, and the great work to be done there. Work Eileen would have done had she not died twenty years ago.
You would have loved this, Mother, she thought sadly. We could have shared so much.
At least she had the journal. It was close to her heart, the words inside it a comfort to her when she was sad or confused. As she was now.
That night she sat some distance from the fire, not quite cold enough to surrender her privacy. She could see her godfather casting several worried looks her way; she couldn’t bring herself to tell him about her quarrel with Greg or Timon’s interference. Amos would be so disappointed...
“Good evening,” Timon said. He stood slightly behind her, making no attempt to sit, and gazed toward the fire.
Jamie knotted her hands together in her lap. “Hello,” she said.
There was no particular encouragement in the word, but Timon remained where he was. After an awkward silence, he said, “Do you want to marry him?”
Her muscles went stiff. Timon had no reason to bring the subject up again. Greg was right about that; it wasn’t any of his business.
“You won’t have to worry about our arguing anymore,” she said.
“You agreed to stay away from me?” he asked, his voice without inflection.
“That doesn’t seem to be possible,” she said.
“Do you want me to leave?”
She didn’t. That was the problem. Even now she could feel his vital heat at her back, imagine his strong, agile body standing relaxed and yet ready for any danger, envision his eyes glittering in the darkness.
“I wouldn’t have interfered if he hadn’t been hurting you,” Timon said.
“I understand,” Jamie said. She rubbed her arms. “You might as well sit down.”
Timon eased himself to the ground beside her, supple as a cat.
“Will you answer my question?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“You don’t know if you’ll answer it?”
“I don’t know if I want to marry him.”
“What is he to you?”
“A very old and dear friend.”
“Then you don’t love him.”
His statement was worse than just impertinent. He seemed to think he could see what was in her mind.
“What do you know about love?” she demanded.
Timon leaned back on his elbows, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “Marriage usually requires love, doesn’t it?”
“Your kind doesn’t marry, or even allow women to join your Brotherhood. I doubt that you’re any kind of authority on the subject.”
Low laughter hummed in his chest. “You’re right,” he said. “What I know I’ve picked up from a hundred missions to human Enclaves and mixed colonies throughout the West. But the love-and-marriage situation seems to be about the same in all of them.”
“And why are you so interested in something that will never involve you in any way? Don’t Riders usually stay Riders for life?”
“Yes.”
“And you certainly don’t have time to love anyone.”
“We’re not monks, Jamie.”
His voice was amused, but the words were pointed, and Jamie’s heart kicked inside her ribs.
“I don’t think we share the same definition of love,” she said, regretting the words as soon as she’d spoken them.
“But there can be so many definitions. You love your parents, don’t you?”
“My parents are dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
He sounded as if he meant it. Though Darketans had originally been raised in barracks as soldier-agents in the Citadels, never permitted to see their Opir mothers or human fathers, that had changed in recent years. Matings that had once been considered shameful in the Citadels were no longer quite so rare, and many mixed couples fled the Opir cities to raise their children in freedom.
It was possible that Timon had lived with his parents, grown up in something like a normal family. Jamie very much wanted to know. She wanted to know everything about him, all the personal things they hadn’t discussed.
But she wasn’t prepared to risk giving too much in return for what she might get.
“Please don’t interfere between me and Greg again,” she said, rising to her feet. “I can deal with him.”
“By letting him believe you feel more than you do?” Timon got up slowly. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about you, Jamie, it’s that you don’t play games. If you don’t want the man, let him go.”
They stared at each other, and Jamie could see a flame burning in the back of his eyes.
They’d known each other only a handful of days, spent a few hours riding together and speaking in generalities of her world and his. Until today, the question of any kind of love, carnal or otherwise, had never come up between them.
But Timon had made it very plain. We’re not monks, he had said. Greg had warned her. If she’d had any doubts before she’d left the Enclave, Jamie understood now just how vulnerable she was to the same physical desires that drove most other people, human or otherwise. Desires she hardly knew how to act on. She knew that Greg thought of her as an innocent, even though as a scientist she was not nearly as naive as he guessed. She certainly felt something for Timon, but she’d never made any attempt to appear attractive to him. She had no idea how to compel a man’s interest, let alone how to seduce one.
Even if it didn’t make any sense to her, Timon wanted her. If she gave in, if she let him see her feelings, she knew exactly where it would lead. They would end up together behind some tree or in the remains of some ruined building.
I can’t, she thought. She believed in logic, not in some kind of animal lust that couldn’t be controlled.
“Don’t be afraid of me, Jamie,” Timon said, perfect comprehension in his eyes.
“No,” she said, her mouth dry.
“Jamie, wait.”
Turning awkwardly, she strode away from the fire and into the wild shrubs and low trees to the west of the track. If she could just break contact with him for a few moments, clear her senses and regain her composure...
A hand clamped over her lips from behind. Instinctively she struggled, but the grubby fingers filled her mouth, and the body that held her was far too strong.
Still, she kicked, and the man yelped. She was free for an instant before the world went black.
Chapter 5
Timon heard the attack before he saw it. He’d gone into the bushes after Jamie when the first shouts came, and he turned back for the wagons with his rifle in hand.
This attack was not fake. Timon’s night vision showed him that the raiders bearing down on the delegates were almost certainly full-blood humans, tribesmen with long beards and animal-skin clothing. They rode toward the wagons with whoops and hollers, waving axes and a few rusted guns.
The battle was fully engaged before Timon joined it, and the delegate’s human soldiers were fighting alongside the Riders. Timon crouched near one of the wagons and took careful aim, downing an attacker
before he could grab the Senator’s aide.
They’re after the women, Timon thought as a second raider charged the young medic named Akesha. The male nearly had her by the hair when Orpheus slammed his horse into the raider’s, knocking the bearded man from his saddle. Timon faced down the two raiders who were still threatening both women, circling like scrawny wolves around a pair of yearling fawns. He raised his rifle again, while Orpheus loosed one of his arrows into a raider’s shoulder.
Then, all at once, the attackers were turning, fleeing, kicking their mounts into a frenzied gallop across the valley toward the hills in the west. The Riders chased them, firing their rifles and arrows, while Timon dismounted and plunged back into the brush where Jamie had disappeared earlier.
She wasn’t there. But Timon quickly read the signs of struggle in torn earth and snapped branches. He followed hoofprints for a dozen yards and then stopped, cursing himself for his own stupidity.
The raiders had been after women. And Jamie had been alone.
Timon rode back to the column to take reports from his men. Akesha had been wounded but not seriously. The two other women in the delegation, the Senator’s aide and one of the soldiers, were shaken but unharmed; Greg Cahill was berating one of the Enclave soldiers for failing to protect them well enough.
After gathering his gear and strapping it onto Lazarus’s back, Timon assembled his men near the front of the column. Amos Parks ran up behind him, sweating and pale.
“Where is Jamie?” he panted, drawing his hand across his forehead. “I can’t find her!”
“I think she’s been taken,” Timon said. Lazarus shifted under the pressure of his knees, and he tried to relax. “I last saw her off the side of the road, and there are signs of struggle.”
“Then you must go after her!” Parks said. “Good God, what they might do to her—”
“They won’t hurt her,” Timon said through his teeth. “Women are highly valued by these human raiders.”
“And how long do you think they’ll leave her untouched?”
Not long enough, Timon thought. Not once they’d established who among their foul tribe would own and have the right to impregnate her. A deep and unfamiliar rage made the blood pound in his temples, and he remembered his own kidnapping when he was a child, terrified of the strange Freebloods who had taken him from his father.
“I’m going after her,” he said.
“Timon, our brothers still haven’t arrived,” Orpheus said, controlling his own agitated mount. “If you leave, there’ll be only three of us to protect the column.”
“Our brothers may arrive anytime.”
“Or not at all,” Orpheus said. “Something has delayed them. They might even be dead.”
“How likely is that?” Parks said, a note of desperation in his voice. “She’s my goddaughter, but she also has skills valuable to the Conclave. You can’t expect us to go on without her!”
Timon met the eyes of each of his men. They hadn’t been blind these past several days. They knew this wasn’t merely a matter of weighing the safety of the group against the life of one of its members.
But they also knew what their leader should choose. The mission was all-important. Nothing could stand in its way.
Except the woman he couldn’t abandon.
“Orpheus,” he said, “you’re in command. Work with the human soldiers. You know what to do—take them through the pass to the Central Valley as quickly as you can, and watch for ambush. We’ll catch up with you when we can.”
No one spoke. Parks moved up beside Lazarus and gripped Timon’s hand.
“Thank you,” he said. “I know you’ll find her and keep her safe.”
Timon met his gaze. “Do as Orpheus says, Councilman Parks.”
Without another word, he turned Lazarus about and set out toward the western hills.
He rode slowly through the dark, letting Lazarus find his way, and listened for any sound of men.
Once he reached the spring-green slopes of oak-covered hills, he took the path of least resistance along a creek bed. The shoeless hoofprints of the human raiders’ horses were clearer now, pushed into the soft earth and leaving splattered mud to either side of a rough trail.
They obviously didn’t expect anyone to come after them, Timon thought. Their tracks wound higher to the crest of the third ridge of hills and then sharply down into a narrow valley, a dry creek bed running along the bottom.
Timon dismounted under the cover of down-swept oak branches and rested his hand on Lazarus’s muzzle to keep him quiet. There were horses below, and smoke rising from beneath the creek-side trees. He could smell cooking meat and the scent of infrequently washed bodies.
This was their encampment, then. If it was like most that Timon had seen in his wanderings, it would be a temporary dwelling with tents taking the place of permanent buildings and a rough way of life.
If he was right, these people were bent on increasing their numbers, and they were perpetually short of females. They would raid where they could, and when they’d exhausted their supplies of game and possible captives, they’d move on.
He knew Jamie was down there—afraid but undoubtedly defiant. But the sun was rising; it would be foolish for Timon to approach now, when the raiders would most likely shoot him on sight.
He couldn’t get Jamie out by any direct approach. There would likely be a scout or hunter or two roaming around these hills, and if he could find one of them, he’d be able to gain more information about the camp and any weak spots. By sunset, he had to be ready to strike.
Mounting again, he guided Lazarus back down the hill and into another narrow valley, this one barely more than a cleft between two steep slopes. He fed Lazarus a little grain and then ground-tied the horse before climbing the hill again on foot. He lay on his belly and observed the camp through his field glasses, noting when people emerged from beneath the cover of the trees, men tending horses or patrolling the borders of the camp.
Timon only had to wait an hour before a mounted man left the camp and urged his horse to climb the hill on the opposite side of the valley. The sun was still angled low, and the shadows were long. Timon slid back down the hill, mounted Lazarus and worked his way up the side of the cleft until he reached the top of slope at the northern end. Seeking the cover of the nearest trees, he dismounted again and led Lazarus in the direction the scout had gone.
He found the man soon enough. The raider was tall and gaunt, festooned with leather and the furs of raccoon, fox and bobcat. Unlike most of the raiders Timon had seen, he was clean-shaven—a sign of lower status—and wore a deerskin hat with a fox’s tail trailing down his back. His horse stood a little distance away, tied to the branch of a tall shrub.
As Timon watched from cover, the man removed a stick from his mouth and swung his well-worn rifle up to aim at some animal moving in the brush to the west.
Timon drew his knife and crouched low, stalking the man as the raider stalked his prey. The human never heard him. Timon grabbed him from behind, covering the man’s mouth with one hand while batting the rifle away with the other.
The human fought back with wiry strength, biting down on Timon’s hand with brown teeth. Timon’s gloves took the worst of it, but the man’s jaw was strong, used to eating tough and stringy meat. Once he freed his hand, Timon punched the raider in the face, snatched up the rifle and threw it as far away as he could under the trees. The raider opened his mouth to call out.
Timon struck him in the temple with the butt of his knife. The raider collapsed, still breathing but too dazed to fight. Timon sheathed his knife and dragged the man into the trees, then ran back to collect the human’s uneasy horse.
Lazarus knew better than to greet the other animal with more than a brief touch of muzzles. But he had a soothing effect on his fellow horse, and Timon was free to c
oncentrate on its rider.
The man stank, but Timon had been exposed to worse many times in his years as a Rider. It was the thought of Jamie in the clutches of a creature like this that fed his rage. He used rope from his gear to bind the man’s hands and feet, and then waited for him to regain full consciousness.
Timon’s knife was at the man’s throat when he opened his eyes.
“Quiet,” he said, careful to prick just the skin of the man’s neck. “I need information from you. If you give it to me, I won’t hurt you.”
The raider puckered his lips and spat in Timon’s face. “Bloodsucker,” he whispered.
Timon wiped the spittle from his face. “A woman was brought to your camp,” he said. “Is she all right?”
With an abrupt shift of his body, the raider tried to butt Timon’s head. Timon leaned back, rocked forward again and gave the man another taste of his blade.
“You will tell me what I want to know,” Timon said, shifting the knife much lower, “or I’ll do worse than slit your throat.”
As Timon had expected, the raider feared losing a certain part of his anatomy more than death. He talked.
Jamie was safe, for now. She was being held in the tent of the man who had taken her during the raid, but he was being challenged by several members just as eager to claim a mate.
She would have absolutely no say in the matter.
“You have no woman,” Timon said to the prisoner.
The raider turned his face aside.
“Were you planning to challenge for her?”
Maintaining his silence, the man stared into the woods. But Timon understood his position perfectly. This young male’s only chance of increasing his status was by gaining a mate.
If he hadn’t challenged yet, it still wasn’t too late.
Chapter 6
Night had fallen again by the time Timon rode into the camp, a deer’s carcass slung over his borrowed horse’s back. In the hills above, his prisoner had been bound and gagged. Lazarus, however little he liked being parted from his rider, remained where Timon had left him.
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