by Jill M Beene
The night was still and cool. She fled to the stables, her cape billowing out behind her. The stable hand on watch was slumped in a blanket spread over a clean pile of hay. Samiris watched the boy’s even breathing for a minute before she eased the door open further and slipped inside. She led Behemoth out to the courtyard and saddled him there with shaking fingers.
The biggest obstacle in her path was the castle gate. She had passed numerous times, but always with someone else as her guide. Samiris tried to remember how Marla spoke to the guards, tried to remember what Aster said to them. Samiris hadn’t paid attention; she had always been too nervous at the thought of being discovered. She would have to wing it.
“Who is it at this hour?” she heard one of the guards call out as she approached. He sounded distinctly annoyed, and Samiris tried to bolster her courage.
“Lady Samiris Orellana,” she said, channeling the tone that Narcise used with servants, as if she couldn’t believe they would dare make her speak to them. “I’m going for a ride.”
Two guards emerged from the small stone hut that was little more than a room. One was short, stocky, with a lined face. He had his eyes narrowed at Behemoth. The other guard was younger, handsome, and was looking curiously up at Samiris’ face.
She addressed the younger one with raised eyebrows. “Raise the gate, please.”
“Now hold on,” the older guard said. “Where are you riding to at this hour?”
“That’s my business, but I will return in two hours by the same gate. I hope you won’t be sleeping.” She raised her eyebrows and gazed down at him imperiously.
The young guard shuffled his feet and rubbed the back of his neck. “My lady, we’ve had no notice of any of the Chosen leaving the palace, and certainly not with the Captain’s horse.”
Samiris chuckled. “Do you honestly think that anyone could steal Behemoth?”
As if on cue, Behemoth tossed his head and snapped his teeth in the general direction of the older man, who had taken a step forward. The man jerked back.
Samiris’ heart was pounding. Her entire escape depended on her ability to get past the gate. If they wouldn’t follow a direct order from her, she had to make them believe they were following an implied order from someone else. She wondered how effective the gossip mill at the palace really was...
Samiris batted her eyelashes at the younger man.”Artem...” She paused, gave a secretive smile and looked down as if she couldn’t believe her error. “Captain Trego lent me his horse for the evening. He’s busy with arrangements for the arrival of the Brizelle delegates next week and didn’t have time to... well, he knew I was bored and suggested I take a moonlight ride to the Crown Prince’s picnic spot.”
The older guard studied his feet with a frown. The younger guard blushed and said, “I had heard that you and the Captain were friends.”
“Yes,” she said, trying to look as stupid and flirtatious as these men believed her to be.
“Seems like you have lots of friends,” the older guard said, frowning. “I saw Lord Kinsley out of the castle not two days ago.”
“You can hardly blame me,” Samiris said, her insipid smile still in place. “All Northern men are so wonderful, and we see so little of them in the South.”
The younger guard smiled up at her, captivated by her rusty attempts at flirting. The older guard grunted and frowned deeper still.
“I don’t like it,” he grumbled to the younger guard.
“Oh, feel free to check with Art...Captain Trego if you like,” Samiris said, waving her hand flippantly. “I can wait. Although he was terribly grumpy when I left. Told the man outside his chamber that he wasn’t to be disturbed until I returned. I do hope he has work completed by the time I get back...”
Samiris forced herself to look up at the moon with a stupid expression on her face, as if she were lost in romantic thoughts. In reality, her heart was pounding and she felt sick to her stomach.
The older guard coughed and shuffled his feet once more.
“That won’t be necessary, my lady,” the young guard said, giving a gallant little bow. “We’ll raise the gate.”
“Thank you, kind gentlemen,” she said.
When the well-oiled gate had been lifted, Samiris forced herself to set out at a sedate trot instead of the wild gallop she wanted. She was sweating, fearful that at any instant, a great shout would sound from the castle behind her. The older guard had not been impressed by her performance. Her heart was still pounding, her stomach was gripped with painful cramping, but she was past the most dangerous part of her escape.
Only once she had passed the perimeter of the city did she press Behemoth into a gallop, letting him run at a moderate pace toward the towering forest before her. It was near-suicidal what she was attempting. No one traveled the forest road at night, and for good reason. Stories about encounters with Northern wolves were legend. But Samiris was past the point of reason, and she knew that if anyone could outrun the wolves, it was Behemoth.
The cool wind whipped past her face. Behemoth’s pace set a staccato rhythm that her mind outran. What if Tamrah was too sick to speak? What if she got cold? What if Kalan refused to help them anymore? What if Tamrah or her father died before she could reach them?
When she entered the trees, she let Behemoth set his pace. She didn’t want him to run too hard, too fast. He might have to sprint at any moment. The pain in her midsection was excruciating now. It felt as if her stomach was in a vise, as if it was going to be torn from her body. It will pass, she told herself, over and over. It will pass. What a terrible time to get food poisoning. It was just her luck.
She heard the wolves before she saw them. A shrill howl pierced the air to her left like an unexpected battle cry. Behemoth’s ears flattened back against his head, and before Samiris could even prod his large side with her boot, he increased his speed. The white trees of the forest were a blur beside her, and low-hanging branches slapped at her face and snagged her tidy braid.
Behemoth sprinted until his legs were a blur of motion, but they weren’t going to make it. Samiris saw a flash of white to her right, and then a monster was in their path. Behemoth lurched to a stop, nearly throwing Samiris from the saddle.
The wolf was enormous, easily half the size of Behemoth. It was white with beautiful gray markings along its brow, nose and chest. Its yellow eyes glowed ominously in the moonlight; its head was bent low between two widely spread front paws. Samiris could see the saliva glinting off of two bared rows of white teeth in its open maw. It lunged forward, its jaw widening until Samiris could see the blackish red of its tongue. It might have been her imagination, but Samiris swore she caught the faint scent of carrion on the wind.
As she reached for the handle of her hatchet, Behemoth reared up and stomped down violently. There was a sharp yip, and the wolf lay twitching, its blood a macabre ink blot of red in the snow. Behemoth jerked and whinnied, and Samiris turned to see two more of the beasts at Behemoth’s haunches. One had hold of Behemoth’s right hind leg, the other snapped at his left. In one smooth motion, Samiris slid from the saddle and unsheathed her large axe.
Her muscles remembered the motion even though it had been months since she felled a tree. The first wolf’s head disconnected smoothly from its body in a spray of gore that splattered Samiris’ face. The second wolf turned its eyes from Behemoth’s flank to growl at Samiris as two more wolves emerged from the blackness behind it.
With one hand, she loosed her hatchet at the farthest wolf. It met its target with a solid thunk, the beast falling to the ground without so much as a whimper. The wolf nearest to her lunged and secured its jaws around Samiris’ right calf. She cried out as she swung her axe clumsily. It found its mark but not as cleanly or strongly as she would have liked, hitting the wolf in the front leg. Still, it made the beast let go of her. She swung again, valiantly trying to ignore the searing pain in
her leg.
The wolves skittered back to avoid the blow, but snapped again at her ankles, circling her and growling all the while. She did her best to circle with them, limping as she was, trying to keep them both in her sights, but there were two of them and one of her. When the wolf in front of her darted in to attack her, she swung hard. Her timing was perfect, her aim was true, and another wolf head went circling through the air, spraying blood behind it.
A wall of snapping, growling fur rammed her from behind. Samiris went sprawling onto her stomach in the bloody snow, her axe flying from her hand. The beast was raking her back with its claws and had hold of her shoulder in its jaws. Its teeth pierced through the tough leather of her axe sling, into her flesh. She screamed, her face mashed to the ground, and her mouth filled with the iron taste of bloody snow.
She scrabbled the ground with her hands, blindly searching for the handle of her weapon, her legs kicked and tried to find purchase to roll or push to her feet, but the beast upon her weighed several times what she did, and it knew, as she did, that it had her. It sensed the kill and would not let up.
Above the growling of the wolf, the pounding of her heart, the slick scrabbling of her useless feet, and her own whimpers, Samiris heard another beast draw near. I am dead, she thought. I cannot survive another. Samiris flailed harder, her eyes winced shut against the pain of the wolf biting into her shoulder and the anticipation of another beast tearing into her flesh. They will eat me alive.
Samiris gasped as the wolf released her. She heard its high yelp and her feet finally were strong enough to push her over onto her back. The wolf was prone on the ground right next to her. She swore she saw the light go out of its yellow eyes as Behemoth reared and stomped it to death. Before the great hooves came down with finality on its skull, Samiris saw the reason it had let her go. Behemoth had bit off the wolf’s ear, sheared it off clean down to the skull.
In the sudden silence that followed, Samiris lay looking at the stars. They were clear above her, ringed by a fringe of white branches. Her breathing was a comforting whoosh in and out of her lungs that produced a cloud of fog above her mouth. The wolf’s ruined head seeped blood into the small space between them. It mingled with the blood from her shoulder until she and the wolf could have been lovers sharing the same scarlet pillow.
It was not the pain that finally rousted her, nor the gentle prodding of Behemoth’s velvet muzzle against her cheek. It was an errant thought of Tamrah that brought her thoughts and vision back into focus. She groaned and rolled to her side, using her uninjured arm to push herself to her knees. She came to her feet shakily and rested, steadying herself with a hand against Behemoth’s warm flank.
She limped around the clearing and retrieved her axes, one sprawled in the snow, the other far more difficult to pull from the skull of a white wolf. She braced her boot against the wolf’s head and jerked until her hatchet came free of the skull with a sickening squelch. The pain in her calf was bearable; her boot had taken the brunt of that injury. The pain in her shoulder occupied a fair amount of her attention. She could feel the warm trickle of blood down her back and over her chest. Combined with the bruising that resulted from being tackled to the ground by a huge Northern wolf and the stomachache that had only intensified during the altercation, Samiris felt like she had been run over by all the carriages in Teymara.
Behemoth waited patiently while Samiris checked him. In spite of the violence of the attack, the massive war horse had suffered only a shallow bite on his right leg, and a scratch on his left flank that was already scabbing over. She did her best to wipe the blood from his muzzle from where he had bit the wolf, but he shook his big head and snorted at her.
“Ticklish, fickle beast,” she said, patting his neck. “But I swear I’ll feed you all the apples you can stand for saving me.”
It took her several deep breaths and many moments of mental self-encouragement before Samiris had the courage to try and pull herself up into Behemoth’s saddle. Though she was successful on the first attempt, the action ripped a deep groan from her throat. Her calf screamed at the pressure she put on it, her shoulder muscles felt as if the wolf had never let go, and there was a roaring in her ears that made her dizzy and threatened to send her toppling to the ground again.
Samiris closed her eyes and focused on breathing deeply to clear her head. When she finally regained her balance, she opened her eyes, and laughed. She and Behemoth stood in the center of a circle of gore. Blood splattered the white tree trunks, and had melted the snow beneath the fallen wolves. White and red and dead wolves and darkness. She was grateful that she couldn’t see what she looked like.
Samiris was turning them to go, and almost didn’t hear it--a sharp yelp from somewhere in the distance behind them.
Another wolf? Behemoth’s ears pricked, and Samiris had lifted her foot to set the horse flying forward again when she heard the second noise. It was the unmistakable, horrifying noise of a horse’s scream. Samiris yanked the reigns and wheeled Behemoth around toward the noise. Who else would be foolish enough to travel these woods at night? Samiris had no other option, but everyone in the country knew it was near suicide to stray from the city past sunset.
Then a shout, unmistakably male. Samiris lifted her foot to kick Behemoth into a gallop toward whatever fool had wandered into these deadly woods, but it was unnecessary. Behemoth left her no choice-- they were flying, flying through the trees toward the source of the noise...and Samiris instantly knew who was in danger.
There was only one other person Behemoth loved more than Samiris.
When they came upon the scene, Samiris saw the horse first. Still clinging to life, still panting and neighing in terror and pain, but mortally wounded and thrashing on its side, its intestines spilled from a horrible gash down its belly. Samiris winced and forced her eyes to the violent tableau before her.
Artem wielded his sword and dagger like a dervish, the silver of both blades catching the moonlight wickedly as he thrust and parried. But his efforts were doing little against the four massive wolves that surrounded him.
Samiris slid from Behemoth’s back as the horse was still moving forward. She landed hard on her injured calf and went down to one knee heavily. But her hatchet was hurling through the air toward the nearest wolf before she even regained her footing. It sank into the wolf’s neck cleanly. The wolf stumbled, fell, and did not get up again.
“To my horse!” Artem cried, and Samiris saw that two of the wolves had turned their backs on Artem and had sunk their jaws into Behemoth’s front legs.
The horse whinnied in terror, unable to shake two of the beasts off at once. Samiris was up and running, her large axe in her hands before Artem’s voice left the air. She ignored the screaming pain in her shoulder as she brought the heavy tool up and then down in a smooth semicircle, once, then twice. Two solid thunks, two high-pitched yelps, two sprays of warm, iron-tasting blood across her chest and face.
Samiris pivoted, axe raising again to help Artem, but he had already skewered the remaining wolf through the heart with his sword. She let her axe drop to her side and leaned against it, her chest heaving. She closed her eyes as Artem dispatched the fallen horse, listened to him murmur comforting words to Behemoth as he soothed and checked the frightened animal.
Samiris only opened her eyes when the crunch of snow told her that Artem was approaching her. His visage was contorted in fury, his eyes wild with rage. His expression combined with the gore splattered across his face and neck made him look like a fearsome warrior who wished to kill her.
“What were you thinking?” he roared.
“I had to,” Samiris said, her voice shaky. “My sister...”
He cut her off with a slashing motion of his hand, and yelled, “I don’t want to hear it! You stole my horse, almost got him killed. Not to mention the fact that you are turning your back on your sworn duty to the kingdom. And for what? You didn�
��t feel like wearing dresses anymore? The other ladies are mean to you? What?”
She swayed slightly where she stood, but managed to extract the letter from the front pocket of her breeches. “My sister,” she tried again, holding the scrap of parchment out to him.
“Your sister has plenty of food, and I daresay she is better off without your pernicious influence!”
Samiris’ eyes fluttered closed, and a dull roaring started in her ears. It was too cold out here; she should have worn a thicker cloak.
“You stupid, selfish woman! Look at me when I’m talking to you!”
He grabbed her roughly by her injured shoulder. Samiris cried out and her world tilted as her vision went black.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
She was floating in warm water, so comfortable, so peaceful.
“You came back for me,” he said, his voice quiet, haunted.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Who else was going to save you?” she mumbled.
She was slipping back beneath the waves.
Right before her ears went deaf, she thought she heard him say, “Who else, indeed?”
Samiris woke to a red glow behind her eyelids. She was warm and comfortable, although her mouth felt as though someone had shoved it full of cotton while she slept. She stretched reflexively, and gasped at the bolts of pain in her shoulder and leg that resulted from the action. It took a lot of effort, but she opened her eyes in slow blinks.
“There you are,” Aster murmured. “I thought you were going to sleep past dinner.”
Samiris was tucked back into bed in her castle chambers. Slumped in the overstuffed chair in the corner, one muddy boot propped on the ottoman, was Artem. He was sleeping, his head lolled back, his mouth open. He was dressed exactly as Samiris remembered him from last night, his clothes encrusted with dried wolf’s blood. Only his hands and face looked clean.