A Triple Thriller Fest

by Gordon Ryan

  “Tess,” he said, “I made a mistake, I know that now. Maybe we should—”

  “Shhh. Don’t ruin it.”

  Peter stepped forward and she slid her hand into his shirt. She could feel his breathing, heavier now. And his heart, thumping. He bent his mouth to her neck. She arched her head, then pulled her blouse further down her shoulder when his lips trailed lower.

  His hands untied her belt and they were together on the bed. Tess pushed him down and sat on top of him while he fumbled with his own clothes. She swept off her gown with one movement. The cold shivered along her skin. Peter drew in his breath. He looked at her for a long moment until finally he pulled the blanket up around her shoulders. And then he was in her and she closed her eyes and took in her own, shuddering breath.

  She could feel Peter there, every bit of him, there with her. And if that had been everything, if every minute had been lovemaking, or conversation, or walks in Central Park, they’d still be together. But when they were apart, his attention melted like snow in water. It was genius, or maybe just insanity, or maybe a mixture of the two. Either way, it was a path where she couldn’t follow.

  “Oh, Tess,” he said.

  She look down at his face and lost her own thoughts. He was so strong and beautiful and she wanted him. She needed him.

  #

  Later, when they’d finished, Tess lifted herself on one elbow. “How long were the two of you together?”

  “Bit more than two years. About half the time the two of us were a couple.”

  “What did you see in Yekatarina anyway? She’s not that beautiful. And she seems cold. The kind of woman they would have cast as a KGB spy in the old days.”

  “She’s not cold. Reserved at first, and intense. The intensity draws you out. There’s this electricity in the air when she turns her attention to you. Sasha felt it too.”

  “Borisenko? He knows you were together?”

  “That’s how Sasha and I met, Yekatarina introduced us. But he doesn’t know about Nick, unless Yekatarina told him. But I don’t think she has.”

  “It’s a weird secret to keep. And you’ll have to tell Nick sooner or later.”

  “Maybe.” He sounded skeptical. “But what happens when some day he wants a relationship with his biological mother? And he tracks her down and she still doesn’t want anything to do with him. It’s better that he thinks she drowned.”

  “That’s the sort of crap story people have been telling themselves forever. But the kids always grow up and ask questions, and sooner or later they find out they were adopted or abandoned, or whatever. And they still want to find their so-called real parents. And they get pissed at the people who raised them.”

  He said nothing.

  “Tell me something,” she said. “Did you still have feelings for Yekatarina? Is that why you pushed me away?”

  “You mean, was I hoping we’d get back together, maybe for Nick’s sake? Not a chance. Feelings have a way of turning sour when you’re stabbed in the back.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “So I was done with her before the two of us even met. And I don’t want Nick to have anything to do with her. She’s too calculating, ambitious in a way that scares me. Sasha is blind to it. But I don’t know, maybe I did keep you at arm’s length, maybe a little.”

  “I didn’t feel it at the time. I don’t feel it now.”

  “You were never second to anyone, Tess. I’ve had a hell of a reminder these last few days. Seeing you at the chateau with Nick, and then watching you on the wall yesterday, shouting at the men. Absolutely confident and fearless. No helmet, your hair streaming behind your head, like a goddess directing her army. Damn, that was sexy.”

  “Sexy isn’t enough to build a life together.”

  “I didn’t say you were just sexy. I’ve realized these last few days just how much I missed you. How much I would love for you to be by my side in all of this.”

  It was a nice epiphany. Too bad it hadn’t come six months earlier. Rather too late now. Feelings, as he’d put it, had a way of turning sour.

  Chapter Twenty-six:

  The man they called Kirkov took Niels and Borisenko into the forest on the back side of the camp. Niels thought he was going to die, but started to rethink this position as soon as Kirkov ordered Borisenko stripped naked and hung over a tree branch by his ankles. Borisenko raged and cursed, and when Yekatarina came with three more men, he broke down and cried, then cursed some more.

  They bound Niels’s wrists behind his back and held him at sword point. Two men beat the bottom of Borisenko’s feet with the flats of their swords and made Niels watch.

  “What’s the point of this?” Niels demanded. “Either kill us or tell us what you want.”

  Kirkov sheathed his sword and came at Niels while two men held him. Kirkov was a strong man, powerful in the shoulders, and he landed several savage blows to Niels’s ribs with a mailed fist. Niels bent over, gasping in pain, but held up by two men.

  Kirkov took a pair of pinchers to the big toenail on Borisenko’s right foot. The man screamed and bucked in the air. The toenail came out grudgingly, and left a bloody stump when it came. Kirkov brought the toenail and held it in front of Niels’s face.

  “Go to hell,” Niels said.

  Kirkov returned to the upside-down Borisenko. He seized the man’s thumb with the pinchers, gave a wrench and the thumb audibly broke. Borisenko screamed and flailed, but he couldn’t keep Kirkov from grabbing the other thumb and giving it the same treatment.

  They lowered Borisenko from the tree, but the man’s sob of relief died as they set about punching and kicking him, until he was just twitching and moaning. His face was unrecognizable when they dragged him away.

  “Put the German up,” Kirkov said.

  Two men grabbed Niels and stripped his clothes. He fought back, but others joined and moments later they had him tied up and strung him over the branch. The men punched him in the ribs and gut. He twisted and bucked under their blows.

  Niels wasn’t just a professor, a writer, and a student of medieval warfare. During his time in the military, he’d survived the notorious training regimen of the Kommando Spezialkräfte. He’d completed the ninety hour cross-country run through the Black Forest. He’d passed the Combat Survival Course. He’d spent a tour in Kosovo and seen ugly things. He knew he could resist better than Borisenko. But saw no reason to do so.

  “No, please, don’t, please. I’ll do what you want, just don’t hurt me anymore. For god’s sake, don’t. I’ll do what you want.”

  I’ll kill you, you bastards. All of you.

  “Let him down,” Yekatarina said.

  “I’ll do what you want.”

  “I know you will,” she said as the men lowered Niels back to the ground, then untied his hands and feet.

  Niels lurched to his feet, shivered in the cold until someone threw him his clothes. He put them on with difficulty. His ribs hurt like hell.

  There were others watching, also held at sword point. A couple of Kirkov’s men had guns with silencers.

  Kirkov and Yekatarina led Niels through camp and toward the larger of the two trebuchets. A pre-dawn gray crept over the eastern horizon. Bruised ribs or no, Niels thought he could take Kirkov, if he could get the sword, catch him by surprise. How many of Borisenko’s army were in on the take-over? Twenty, thirty? Could he rally the others? If it weren’t for those guns, he would try.

  “I want this done by tonight,” Yekatarina said. “Can you do it?”

  Niels looked at the trebuchet. “Yes, no problem. We’ll need more stones to fire. I’ve got twenty, thirty shots and then I’ll be out of ammunition.”

  “I’ll get them.” She looked him over. “Aren’t you wondering why?”

  “Why? Why you took over my camp, why you’ve brought real weapons? Why you are planning a real assault on that castle? Why you are going to kill your husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re Black Horse, aren’
t you?”

  “Yes and no,” Yekatarina said. “Black Horse, at its heart, is an idea.”

  “You should have given me a chance. I was listening.”

  “I did give you a chance. You kept playing me, digging. Henri thought you’d come around. I think you were milking me for information that you were going to take to Peter Gagné.”

  “I was being cautious. I don’t commit to battle without knowing all the variables.”

  Kirkov snorted. “He’s still playing you, Katenka.”

  Yekatarina said something in Russian to Kirkov, then turned back to Niels. “And do you know them now?”

  “No, I don’t. And I’m mad as hell. But you’ve got my cooperation. For today. You want it after tonight and you’ll either tell me everything, or you’ll come up with some better torture than kicks to the ribs and the loss of a toenail or two.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  “This is bullshit,” Kirkov said. “Just kill him. We can finish the trebuchet without him.”

  “Sure you can,” Niels said. “And I’ll bet you can fire it, too. Twenty, thirty times at the same spot to open a hole. And the rest of the men, I bet every single one of them will follow you, right? Especially if you keep killing people, that’s always great for morale.”

  “You’re a goddamn genius, all right,” Kirkov said. “Couldn’t even count to four, could you?”

  Niels remembered how they’d taken him. Pathetic. What would his SKS mates have said?

  Kirkov continued his appeal to Yekatarina. “We don’t even need his stupid siege engines. We’ll take the castle today, finish it.”

  “But what if it doesn’t work?” Yekatarina said. “You have no backup plan. They’re behind a castle. And they’ve got a keep. And we don’t know what Peter’s got in there, a few emergency measures, I’d guess.”

  Supposedly she and Peter Gagné had once been lovers, but she didn’t know Peter very well if she thought he was in this thing half-way. Peter had searched the men at the docks in Burlington for modern weapons, satellite phones, and the like. He’d picked this spot on Lake Champlain in large part because it was a dead zone in cell coverage and the castle was out of sight of shore. Niels had helped Peter search Europe for a good six months and they hadn’t found an available location as isolated and authentic. Only in the States.

  Peter wouldn’t cheat. Not if Niels knew him at all.

  Back in the camp, sheltered by tents, and in the light of the campfires, Kirkov gave instructions to the captives. “Most of you are in this for the money, I know. Fifty thousand, a hundred thousand for every week you’re on the island. Bad news, you don’t work for Peter Gagné anymore. Good news, I’m paying two hundred thousand a week.”

  Nobody spoke. If they had doubts, they were wise enough to keep them to themselves after seeing what had happened to Borisenko and Niels.

  “And I’ve got lots more work when we leave this island. You’ll be rich men, all of you. Those of you who are already rich men, well, we’ll have a conversation about that later.”

  Niels looked around and couldn’t see Chang or Santini, or any of the other rich men in the camp. Were they dead? Tortured like Borisenko? Or just kept away so Kirkov could make his pitch to the hired men?

  “What the hell are you planning, Kirkov?” someone asked.

  “A trap for our friends inside the castle. Everything works out perfectly and we’ll take the castle in the battle. If not, or if it works halfway, we’ll finish it with Niels’s trebuchet. In the meanwhile, it will be all swords. We’ve only got a few guns, and they’ve got silencers, which makes them too weak to reliably penetrate armor.”

  Niels noted that it wasn’t an answer, not exactly. It answered the what, but didn’t come close to answering the bewildering question, why? He had strong guesses about Black Horse itself, but couldn’t figure out what taking this castle had to do with that plan.

  “You want to kill them all?” Niels asked.

  “Not all of them. I want Peter Gagné, and I want some of the other men in that castle. I’ll give names. Anyone else, you can kill.”

  Niels looked around and saw from their expressions that most of the men would go along with the plan. They might not see a choice. It had gone badly for Borisenko, and for Niels, so long as he was resisting. The rest could be controlled by a combination of stick and carrot.

  “Alright, now here’s what we’re going to do.”

  #

  Yekatarina Borisenko came into the castle the next morning. Tess was at the wash basin, splashing her face with ice-cold water when she heard the trumpet, muffled as it came through the glass window. Peter was long gone; he’d rolled out of bed just before dawn.

  Tess moved with sudden urgency. She threw on pants and boots, a tunic and her cloak, and was still belting on her sword when she took the stairs two at a time. She entered the bailey just as the inner gates opened and Yekatarina entered, flanked by two men in armor. Tess’s own men spilled into the courtyard. Many of them looked bleary, hungover and disheveled.

  That would change. No more Peter, no more distractions with his collection in the basement. She would bring both this castle and its men into top form.

  “Where is Peter?” Yekatarina called. Her voice rang across the bailey like the trumpet that had warned of her approach. She eyed Tess’s approach with narrowed eyes.

  Tess ran her finger through her hair. The snow already turned slushy, but at least the bailey had firm sod and good drainage. From the looks of Yekatarina’s boots, she doubted Niels’s camp was in as good of shape.

  “He’s busy,” Tess said. “Peter wanted me to help you.”

  Truth was, she had no idea where Peter was. Thankfully, he’d set men to covering the hoardings she was building inside the castle walls; there was no sign of the previous afternoon’s work, or any other clue that Yekatarina could take back with her.

  “What, no fake Arabic accent today?”

  “Not today. Come on, Peter said I should show you to your room.”

  “You look like you just rolled out of bed,” Yekatarina said.

  “Warm bed, warm room. It was hard to get up this morning. How did you sleep? Your tent warm enough? That was one cold wind last night.”

  Tess didn’t wait for the answer. She turned to one of her men. “Get some rags for Lady Borisenko’s boots. The mud out there made a hell of a mess.”

  “Where is our hostage? My men will escort him back to the camp.”

  Tess saw Henri in the crowd and gave him a nod. The Belgian stepped forward. He gave a half bow to Borisenko’s wife and Tess spotted a flicker there. These two knew each other already.

  “So, a challenge,” Tess said to the Russian woman. “I was surprised your lord had ten extra men he was willing to surrender.”

  “Oh, I don’t plan to surrender anyone. They said you’ll be doing the fighting.”

  “I’ve beaten Niels twice already. I’m sure I can manage once more.”

  “That might mean something if you were fighting Niels. He’s a clever general, but I have another man who is better with the sword.”

  Tess felt a nervous twinge. Not just that she’d let Yekatarina bait her into admitting her ignorance, but over the potential opponent. She taught sword-fighting clinics; she’d faced a lot of men. Early on she’d learned she could rarely compete with a man’s strength, and so she’d perfected her technique. Niels was one of the best she’d faced and she’d still put him down.

  But it was a lie to say she’d never been tested. There was a Japanese guy who’d given her a thrashing three years earlier at a demonstration in Prague. He was fast, good, and strong. There was another time with an Australian who made swords with traditional techniques and could swing a mean one, too. He was about sixty, but his reflexes were quick and he never made a mistake. She’d fought him once, nothing serious, but his skill had frightened her. If anything, he’d been better than the Japanese.

  Neither man was here, so far as she knew. Bu
t if there were two who could beat her, there would be others.

  “Oh, really?” Tess asked. “Now you’ve got me interested.”

  “Interested is not what I’m seeing in your face. I’m just a woman, but the men tell me that fear is a bad thing to suffer before combat. Makes you stupid, weak. Almost as bad as overconfidence.”

  Tess smiled. Multiple digs in the same snarky comment. Nice.

  “I’d love to keep chatting if I weren’t so busy,” Tess said. “Dmitri will take you to your room. We’ll even draw up hot water and you can take a bath. Wash all that sweat off. And the smell of the campfire. Ladies hate that, I’m told.” Her smile broadened. “I’ll be too busy thrashing your man to check up on you, but if you get tired of bathing, brushing your hair—that sort of thing—send a message and I’ll find someone to take you out for a breath of air. Just be careful on the walls. They don’t have railings.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven:

  Tess, Peter, and Lars stood on the gatehouse wall and surveyed the tournament field. “It looks like a trap,” Tess said.

  The enemy had staked a muddy field some thirty feet by thirty. A flag with a double headed Russian Eagle flapped on one side. On the other was a white flag with a black horse. Borisenko and Niels had pitched a tent some fifty yards from the tournament field, on a slight rise. Farther back, the first of Niels’s trebuchets rose from the ground like arm of a giant praying mantis.

  Peter would come with her, together with five other men. Lars and a handful of defenders would watch from above the gatehouse, while the rest of the men would mass behind the gatehouse.

  She had every man in reserve except Dmitri and one other guard who stood outside Yekatarina’s quarters. Tess had given her a room on highest floor of the keep, where she could watch the fighting outside the castle walls.

  “I don’t see a trap,” Peter said. “What are you talking about?”

  “Look how far Borisenko’s tent is from the battle. Why not take ringside seats? Look how close your guys pitched our own tent.”

  “I’m sure they’ll come closer when the fighting starts.”