“A broken heart?” he ventured.
“People don’t die of broken hearts, My Lord.” She took a step toward him. “Pull yourself together, Dye. I’m a Raith.”
“A Raith!” He scrambled to his knees as his eyes cut to her hair. “Henweed,” he groaned. “You use henweed to color your hair red. Why didn’t you tell me? I swear, Martigay. I’ll kill you!”
A wry smile curved the lush line of her mouth. “You’re welcome to try, My Lord. Death by sex would be my preference.”
By now their conversation had alerted the single guard outside the door. Slowly, the door inched open to reveal the started man. But the guard was not so startled as the staring king. “Do you take nothing seriously?” Dye shouted at the woman in the cell.
“I answered that question, before, sir.”
As the guard hurtled across the room toward Martigay, she dematerialized, stepped through the man, rematerialized with his blade in her hand and turned to slide it between his ribs. The man arched backward with a sharp scream of pain and collapsed with a rattling wheeze.
“Sex,” she said succinctly. Her smoky eyes were hot on the king’s volcanic blue gaze as she approached him. With a shackled wrist hooked behind her neck, he reeled her in and let her kiss him.
She had to fight her way out of his embrace. “Time to go, My Lord.”
As though in a trance, he resisted the idea. Clumsily, he held her head with his chained wrists and struggled to continue the kiss he drank from her lips like the most pathetic of drunks—the kiss he needed more than escape, more than freedom, more than life.
Eventually, Martigay fought her way out of his awkward embrace and, as though suddenly awakened, Dye’s eyes traveled to the door, then to the guard on the ground. “The keys!”
Martigay laughed. “Keys?” she snickered. “Where we’re going, we don’t need keys.” Taking hold of his arms, she pulled him through his manacles, drawing in a quick breath when she saw his wrists—and his hands. Her smoke eyes were wide as they settled on the brilliance of his blue gaze.
“Dye. How…who did this to you?” She faltered as she realized what he’d done. “Mithra,” she whispered. “Mithra, Dye. I’m sorry.”
He stopped her with a kiss. Catching her head between the two bloody heels of his palms, he stilled her face in his grip. “It’s all right, Martigay. It’s all right,” he told her.
She led him through the cell walls as easily as she’d drawn him through his chains. As they passed through the thick blocks of stone, a damp chill seeped into the core of his soul, penetrating him to the bone. Upon reaching the opposite side of the wall, he shivered and noticed Martigay did the same. At almost the same instant, he recognized he’d experienced a similar feeling, when standing in the river with her, shielding her from Behzad’s men. With a start, he realized she must have dematerialized as she clung to him in the river. The biting cold he’d felt in his lower legs was the water rushing through his body. She’d been trying to protect him at the same time he’d sought to shield her.
Once into the darkening city, Dye led the way through the streets. Having visited Amdahl before, he was familiar with the layout of the city. Sneaking into a stable located near the thick wall that enclosed Amdahl, they helped themselves to a horse. While Martigay led the gelding through the fence, Dye vaulted the barrier to land beside her. “You could do that with the pony,” he said, suddenly. “The path didn’t have to be clear for your paint. What he couldn’t jump, you took him through.”
Martigay smiled at him in the darkness. “And I thought you were slow.”
Dye gritted back the obvious retort. “Only when a woman requires it,” he told her. “But why, then, did you let me tie you? In my tent.”
She grinned. “I told you before. You didn’t do anything I didn’t want you to do.”
For at least two instants he stood staring at her back before he roused himself and hurried to catch up. As they made their way silently back toward the walls, Dye spent the time in cynical regret—for every instant of wasted guilt that had dogged him since tying her up and “forcing” her. The woman was just one wicked deception following another. Still, he had to admit, there was a certain measure of relief that accompanied his wry regret.
Thankfully, they reached the stone barrier without drawing any unwanted attention. “We’d better mount here,” Dye whispered upon reaching the wall. “The water’s deep on the other side.” Throwing himself up onto the gelding’s back, he pulled Martigay up behind him.
Settling onto the horse behind him, Martigay clasped her arms around Dye’s waist and pressed her lips behind his ear. “I’ll get the gate,” she told him, as she smacked the horse sharply through the wall. “Get back as quickly as you can.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“What!”
For a brief instant, Dye felt the warmth of Martigay’s arms pass through his body—the next thing he knew, he was gasping in the cold water and his horse was swimming for the far side of the river. Frantically, he turned to search for her. She’d slid off the horse’s tail upon reaching the outside of the wall. As he turned, he just caught sight of Martigay’s back melting into the gray stone wall.
“Fuck!” Dye cursed at the wall after she had disappeared. As the horse dragged itself up the far bank, there was a cry on the wall. For a few more instants he stared at the blank wall while arrows began to thunk down around him like hard, heavy rain. Finally reacting, he grabbed up the reins with numb fingers, and dug his heels into the beast’s flanks.
He was still cursing when he arrived back at the walls, little more than an hour later. Although the night was black, his Westerman eyes cut through the inky shadows hugging the dark stone battlement. It was clear that the gate wasn’t down. His gut tightly wound with apprehension, Dye glared at the stone jetty jutting into the water from his side of the river—where the drawbridge gate should have been lowered to meet the stone quay.
“Fuck!” Where was she?
Sensing his tension, Dye’s mount jerked its head as he reined the horse in a tight circle. “Hold your men here, out of sight,” he commanded his lieutenants. “Move the cavalry to the rear and keep the horses quiet. You’re in command, Lieutenant Greegor. Watch the gate,” he directed, then turned to the scout at his elbow. “Brand,” he ordered, “you’re with me.”
As his men dismounted to muffle their mounts’ hooves, Dye guided his horse toward Prithan’s unit. “I’m taking Captain Palleden,” he told the lieutenant. The king’s eyes connected with Pall’s as he signaled the young soldier with a jerk of his head. Separating himself from his unit, Pall fell into step with Dye and the Raith as the king’s personal guard of fifty followed, wrapped in dark cloaks and as silent as the grave.
“Did you know she was a Raith?” Dye asked his two companions in a low voice.
Pall’s startled reaction answered the king’s question. The horses moved forward a few more paces before Pall’s slow smile caught up to his face. “That explains a lot,” he whispered. “That explains the shell game.” He feigned a look of outrage. “She cheated…at cheating.”
“She cheated at everything,” Dye agreed disconsolately, frowning at the scout.
The implacable Raith nodded at the king. “I knew. It would be hard for me not to know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean,” Dye voiced in a low snarl.
The Raith shrugged in answer, his haughty demeanor cool and arrogant.
“Fuck me,” Dye whispered vehemently, as he probed the man for emotion and discovered the man to be—a blank page. Dye could no more read his scout than he could read…Martigay.
He hadn’t had much contact with Raiths, but evidently there was a lot about the strange southern race that he didn’t know…and would never know—he couldn’t read Raiths. Dye tore his angry gaze from the scout to glare at the walls. “She’s had over an hour to open the gate. Do you think she’s all right?”
Brand shook his head. “It’s hard to kill a Raith…but n
ot impossible.” The Raith paused. “Obviously,” he stated. “Otherwise, she’d not have lost her family the way she did. Perhaps she’s still working on it.” Dye nodded as his mount jostled against Pall’s.
“Could Brand get us through the walls?” Pall queried.
The scout shook his head. “My Raithan blood was diluted in a human grandfather. I’m not strong enough.” He settled his eyes on the king. “I’ll go in alone if you order it.”
Dye nodded, somehow reassured by the Raith’s statement—the offer along with the fact that he wasn’t demanding to join her inside the walls. The Raith wasn’t in love with his Martigay. At the same time, it troubled him that both these men knew more about the girl than he did. That was his fault, he recognized with a pang. The time he could have spent learning about her, he’d spent keeping her at arm’s length.
“We’ll circle the walls as far as we can,” he told the men. “Perhaps she’s given up and she’s out there, working her way toward us.”
Abruptly, Pall reined his horse in and Dye had to wheel his mount to come back alongside his captain. The blond frowned, his eyes focused on the distant wall. “Do you see that?”
Dye flicked his gaze at the wall then back at Pall. “What is it?”
“Just a tiny glow of light…in the middle of the wall…where there shouldn’t be a light.”
The men stared at each other. “Her glow stone,” they said together.
“Do you see it?”
Dye shook his head, unable to see the tiny speck of light that Pall could see shining on a black backdrop that didn’t exist for him. “But I can see the rope,” he answered softly.
* * * * *
Martigay was glad she’d thought of the rope, and taken the time to install it. Skimming along the inside of the city walls, passing through a menagerie of lesser dividing walls, she finally found a small, unguarded window large enough to admit a man. Wearing the dark cloak she’d appropriated, she’d dodged through walls and rooms, and was fortunate enough to have avoided detection. Her glow stone was tucked between her breasts, in a small net, hanging from a long loop of cord she wore around her neck. Using the cord, she tied the net holding her stone to the length of rope she’d picked up in a stable. The tiny storage room was locked when she threw the rope through the window and anchored it to a heavy stool too large to slide out through the casement. With her backup plan in place, she left the door unlocked behind her.
She was glad she’d thought of it, now that she had a clear view of the gatehouse, the number of soldiers guarding the gate, and the heavy twist of rope holding the gate up and closed. Dye’s disappearance must have been discovered, she reasoned, as extra units of soldiers marched toward the walls and the men within the gatehouse worked frantically to reinforce the gate rope. From Martigay’s hidden vantage point, she saw the men with a heap of leather arm shields on the floor at their feet. In an effort to protect the cable from internal attack, they were fastening the arm shields to the rope.
Taking into account the thick diameter of the tough gate rope and her own small strength, Martigay realized it was going to take some time to saw through the cable, all the while surrounded by the enemy. She could only dematerialize for as long as a person could comfortably hold his breath, at which point she had to form up again. With over a dozen men intent on taking her life, they might very well succeed. Biting her lower lip, she peered behind her. Perhaps Dye would find the rope in the darkness. And perhaps he wouldn’t.
Taking several steadying breaths, she walked through the wall.
She very nearly got the damn thing cut through. As she stepped through the wall, a very startled Saharat dealt her a cleaving blow that passed clean through her, fortuitously slid between two greaves, and bit half through the toughly twined cords of the gate rope.
A long fight for life followed, Martigay only just keeping ahead of the slice and cut and jab of scimitar and dagger. Challenged with the decision of whether to cut or kill, she chose to concentrate her efforts on the rope—which did nothing to reduce the number of blades that sought her life.
The only upside was that no more than a dozen men could fit into the gatehouse to attack her. A crowd of eager candidates clamored just outside the narrow door, obviously keen to enter the fray, but unable to fit within the small gatehouse room. Eventually, recognizing the girl’s determination to cut through the rope, the gatehouse guards gave up on trying to kill her and kept their steel slicing along the cable in lines parallel to the armored rope.
Chest heaving, Martigay rematerialized in a corner, gasping for breath as well as inspiration. The Captain of the Guardhouse grinned at her with a mouthful of stained teeth as she sucked for a breath.
“Give it up, girl! The gate stays closed and your army outside the walls. Push off, little Raith. Next time, tell the King of Thrall to send a man should he want a man’s work done.”
The screaming clamor of soldiers continued just outside the door.
“I’ll have that gate down,” Martigay insisted, using the back of her hand to push her damp hair out of her eyes.
The captain laughed, a harsh sound. “You, and whose army?”
At these words, there was a sudden still silence and Dye stepped through the gatehouse door. A small army of Thralls stood at his back.
“It’s funny you should ask,” the king grated in a cutting voice.
The room was still, the crowd of Saharat frozen in shock, staring at the weapon the king held, knowing their defeat would follow instantly on a curving edge of steel. In that breathless moment, Dye’s gaze connected and locked on Martigay’s.
“Here’s the man you wanted for a man’s work,” he shouted. Swinging a long, double-edged axe in two bandaged mitts, Dye brought the gleaming curve of steel around in an arc that ended at the tautly stretched rope.
“Tell your Seiklord I accept his surrender,” Dye roared—and the gate went down.
Chapter Twenty-Three
A fire crackled on the hearth but it wasn’t that wrinkle of sound that woke Dye to the dawning’s gray light. Languidly he stretched, thinking how pleasant it was to awaken to warm lips on his morning erection. His eyes were half-closed as he gazed down his body to find Martigay’s mass of dark hair spread over his groin. The thick, dark waves stirred just before she lifted her head to give him a warm, sultry smile.
Although his army had taken the city three days earlier, those three days had been long ones—for him at least. He’d fallen into bed at the end of the each day with barely enough time for a little rough-edged sex before falling asleep with Martigay beside him. There hadn’t been time for words, explanations or answers. There hadn’t been time for questions. And he had a lot of them.
“Why do you hide the fact that you’re a Raith?” he asked her.
Pushing herself up to sit, she curled her legs beside her as she smiled down at him. She was dressed in only the very tiniest of silk chemises. The scrap of pink fabric was barely long enough to hide the fragile peach of her nipples.
“You have to ask me that? You? Commander of Greater Thrall’s Army?” She tilted her head to one side. “What was Morghan’s famous maxim?” Dye nodded in agreement as she recited the famous words attributed to his great-grandfather. “When your adversary underestimates you, you’ve gained the element of surprise.”
“Why did you hide the fact from me?” he asked quietly.
“My Lord! Up until recently, you were the adversary.”
A reluctant grin curled his mouth at the same time that his blue eyes narrowed in stubborn disapproval.
“I…wanted to make my mark in your army,” she confessed. “And I didn’t want to wonder if my advancement was due only to the fact that I was a Raith and my ability to…walk through walls.”
“You shouldn’t have gone back in for the gates,” he stated.
She considered her answer. “One of us had to fetch the army,” she said finally. “One of us had to stay and open the gates. Finding ourselves inside the wall
s, it was too good an opportunity to throw away.
“With your night vision, you could go faster than I,” she told him, “and…I didn’t think I could make the ride—it was so dark.” She looked at his hands, wrapped in linen. “I didn’t think you could hold a set of reins, let alone a knife or sword. I didn’t think you’d be able to hack through the gate rope.”
“I’d have managed,” he told her. “At any rate, we might have discussed it first. You needn’t have kept your intentions secret, slipping off the back of that horse without warning.”
She shrugged as though it was all a fine joke. “You don’t need to know all my secrets, Dye.”
“Secrets?” he asked without smiling. “What secrets? What other secrets to you have, Martigay?”
She smiled a teasing challenge at him. “You’ll never know unless you stick around to find out.”
There was no humor in his eyes or voice when he answered. “Bruthinia.” He spat the word out as though he’d found a bug in his mouth. “I can’t do it,” he groaned. “Mithra and Donar help me, I can’t do it.”
Pushing himself to the edge of the bed, he left Martigay in the rumpled sheets as he padded over to the shuttered window. The cold morning was a wakeup call, a chill smack in the face as he opened the shutters and regarded the palace yard below. It was going to rain, he noted absently. The weather had been deteriorating for days—overcast, dull and threatening.
In the yard below, his army had moved aside, doubling the ranks of their tents to make room for the princess’s entourage. Dye blinked down at Bruthinia’s pavilion tent, flying the Vandal standards.
How could he have let it go this far? Tomorrow was the day of his wedding.
With a sigh, he closed the shutters and turned to lean against them. Dressed in only the thin scrap of silk, Martigay sat in the large gilded bed, regarding him silently. She looked good in pink, he decided, the silk chemise only one of several sets of underclothing he’d bought her upon taking the city. She looked good in the young king’s bed, he thought warmly. This room had been King Berri’s royal bedchamber, before he’d died and left his Kingdom to the Skraeling outlander—Morghan, Dye’s great-grandfather. Shin had slept in this room, he realized—Morghan’s governor to Amdahl, Tahrra’s long-time advisor, and Berri’s lover.
Dye's Kingdom: Wanting It Forever Page 17