Beneath the Forsaken City (3 page)

It took Daigh nearly twenty minutes to deliver the requisite twenty-five strokes, pausing between each to let the pain abate before he started again. Eoghan’s determination to remain silent disintegrated somewhere around number six, when he could no longer stifle his cries. By the end, his body was slicked with sweat or blood, and he sagged in his restraints until his arms felt as though they would be pulled from their sockets.

At last, two brothers lowered the ropes. Eoghan lay facedown on the ground, his muscles cramped and his throat raw, while calloused hands unbuckled the straps around his wrists.

“On behalf of my son,” Riordan’s voice whispered, “thank you.”

Eoghan managed to lift his head. “It is my privilege to serve Comdiu.” Then he collapsed on the hard ground.

Thirst, powerful and insistent,
broke through the haze of Conor’s unconsciousness, followed by an ache that seemed to come from everywhere at once. A distant roar sent his head into a furious hammering that squelched all thoughts of movement. He lay still and gritted his teeth against the pain until it passed.

Slowly, he opened his eyes to the source of the roaring, which was actually just the lap of low tide. He was sprawled on a sandy beach, sand in every last crevice: eyes, nose, mouth. It hurt to move or even blink, and it took every last bit of strength to push himself to a sitting position.

A level swath of shoreline stretched in either direction, long grasses marking dunes along the gentle slope. Not Seare. Amanta perhaps. But how had he gotten here?

Memories flooded back. The storm that stalked them from Seare, biding its time like a living thing. The massive waves. Aine struggling in the churning sea.

His heart nearly burst from his chest with its sudden pounding. He scrambled to his feet and scanned the beach. He’d
almost had her. Their fingers had touched just before something had knocked him unconscious.

But Aine couldn’t swim. The chances she had survived . . .

“Aine!” The shout cracked his salt-parched throat. “Aine, can you hear me?”

He stumbled up the beach, straining his eyes in the filtered light that shone through the clouds overhead.

She was dead. She couldn’t have survived that storm, not when she couldn’t swim.

No.
Conor shut his eyes to clear those dark thoughts. He hadn’t been able to swim when he was unconscious. If he had washed up on the beach, perhaps she had as well.

He trudged along the shoreline, hope battling logic in his foggy brain. The southern coast of Amanta was sparsely settled. He might walk for miles without seeing another living soul. But even as he called Aine’s name, he knew it was futile. If she had survived, she could be anywhere. The chances against both of them surviving and then washing up together on the shore were astronomical.

She’s dead, Conor.

I thought that before.

That was a dream; this is real.

But she can’t be dead.

That’s only your own wishful thinking.

Movement in the grasses caught his eye, so fleeting that he thought it was just his imagination tormenting him. But, no, there it was again. Hope swelled. Could she have wandered inland and, now that she heard him calling, come back to find him? He took a step toward the grassy dune.

Then the heads of three men crested the rise, followed by bulky, muscular bodies. Bleached hair fell around the shoulders of their brightly dyed cloaks, beneath which were knee-length
tunics and close-fitting trousers. Their movements as much as their weapons marked them as warriors, but he knew immediately that they weren’t Gwynn or Aronan. In Amanta, that left only one other possibility.

A sharp, humorless laugh slipped from him. He had escaped certain death in Seare, only to be captured by the Sofarende who plagued Gwydden’s southern coast.

Conor’s amusement was fleeting. A fighting man caught on foreign shores was too dangerous to keep as a captive and useless as a hostage. That left only one probable alternative.

If he were going to die, he would die on his own terms, not at the hands of some barbarian executioner. He reached over his shoulder for his sword and remembered he had left it hanging in the
Resolute
’s cabin.

He still had his dagger, though, secured on his belt. He would never get close enough to use it if he gave them any reason to see him as a threat. Deception was his only chance.

He waited for their approach, his hands open by his side, and put on a terrified expression. If he could just draw them in and convince them he wouldn’t fight, he might have a chance. When they were within speaking distance, Conor threw up his hands. “Please! I surrender! Don’t hurt me!”

The one in the middle said something, and the others laughed. He caught the word
coward
in Norin. Then the leader said clearly to him, “Turn around.”

Conor didn’t move. No need to show he understood their language. The man motioned impatiently to him, and Conor turned, his hands still by his ears.

One of the other men strode toward him with a length of rope, and Conor realized he was to be bound. The man in the middle, who seemed to be the leader, warned them that Conor
might be an Aronan spy. A second man approached from the other side.

In a split second, Conor’s course of action flashed before him. He freed his dagger and plunged it into the side of the man next to him, a killing blow to the heart. Before the others could react, he swiveled and sliced across the second man’s thigh. The warrior fell to the ground with a howl of pain. His hand clamped the wound to no avail
 
—he would bleed out in minutes. That left only the third man. Blood pulsed through Conor’s veins, fueling his exhausted body with a surge of energy. He yanked the sword free of the dead man’s sheath. But even as Conor lifted the weapon to block the last man’s sword, he knew he was too slow.

That single moment, that last breath, stretched into an eternity as he waited for the strike of the blade, that instant of pain followed by blackness. Faces, names, regrets all flashed through his mind.

Riordan. Eoghan. Liam. Aine. If he died, he failed them all.

Forgive me, Comdiu.

He sensed the breeze as the sword cleaved the air toward his neck, flinched before the bite of steel that would end it all. It never came. His eyes snapped open and looked straight into a pair of watery blue ones that appeared as shocked as he felt.

“Blessed Askr,” the warrior cried, looking down at the sword in his straining hands.

The moment stretched as they both stared at the Sofarende’s blade, fixed in place as if the air had turned to mortar. Before Conor could regain his wits enough to strike, the warrior knocked the sword from his numb fingers. A booted foot crashed first into his chest and then into his head. Conor struggled to hang on to consciousness while blood poured into his eyes, but the light was like the slipping of the tide, receding by inches until only dark remained.

“You should have killed him.”

“We can’t kill him. Haldor will want to question him.”

“He killed two of our own. Do you want to tell Haldor why we let him live after that?”

The sharp argument just at the edge of Conor’s hearing was the first indication that he wasn’t dead, though at the moment, he very much wished to be. If he had thought he felt bad waking up on the shore, it was nothing compared with the pain he felt now. He lay still, waiting for the pain and nausea to pass, and then pried his eyes open. Blurry images shifted and overlapped, angling over each other like the facets of a prism.

“Enough. He’s awake. Get him up.”

It took Conor a few moments to recognize the addition of a third voice, even longer to comprehend they were speaking Norin. If he still understood another language, he couldn’t be too badly injured, could he?

Hands pulled him up from where he lay on the hard ground and sat him on something even harder, a bench perhaps. He could smell burning pitch, the close odor of sweat, and the metallic tang of his own blood. No air currents. He must be indoors. He wrenched his eyes open again and made out the blurry shapes of men around him. Just that small action taxed him so much that his eyes drooped closed again and his head lolled forward on his chest.

A fist yanked his head up by the hair, and a hand slapped him hard across the face. The low throb in Conor’s skull escalated to the pounding of skin drums.

“Ask him his name,” the commanding speaker said.

An accented voice asked in the common tongue, “What’s your name?”

Conor opened his swollen eyes long enough to take in the new speaker’s rough-spun tunic and clean-shaven head. A slave. Through his split, swollen lips, he rasped, “Conor.”

“Your clan name?”

Conor considered, his thoughts coming slowly through the pain. “I have none.”

“He’s lying,” the Sofarende murmured in his own language. “He’s no commoner. Prompt him.”

A fist collided with Conor’s cheekbone, bringing another explosion of pain. Something told him he shouldn’t identify himself as a Mac Nir. He gasped out his answer. “No clan name. Fíréin.”

Silence settled over the room. Quietly, the slave said, “The Brotherhood of the Faithful. Warrior priests. Like your Wolfskins, just better educated.”

“Who sent him?” the Sofarende asked.

Fading in and out of consciousness, Conor mumbled an answer before the question could be translated. “No one sent me. Shipwrecked.”

The slave interpreted his answer, and snorts of derision rang out around him.

Conor sensed someone bend down, his face right in front of his. The Sofarende’s tone was low and dangerous. “You speak our language?”

“Aye,” Conor whispered.

“Who sent you? Olaf? Ingvarr?”

He gurgled a laugh, pain and despair making him reckless. “If you think I’m a spy, reports of your intelligence are greatly overrated.”

The blow did not come in the form of a fist to his face this time but rather some sort of object to his ribs. A cry sprang from his lips, and he panted through the waves of agony. He reached
for the trick he’d learned long ago to distance his mind from his body until the pain slackened its grip. When he had himself mostly under control, he forced open his heavy eyelids.

The warrior leaned close to him. “You stopped my blade. How did you do that?”

Conor’s pulse sped, setting off another round of throbbing in his head. He licked his cracked lips. The answer to this question would determine whether he lived or died. What
had
happened? One moment, he’d realized he’d never be able to stop the arc of the sword in time. The next, he was staring into the eyes of his enemy, who looked at him as if he were a spirit
 
—or a god.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “Perhaps the favor of Comdiu was upon me.”

Silence fell over the gathering, only the quiet rustle of clothing betraying movement. The air around him grew thick with consideration.

“Kill him,” the warrior said finally. “In the square.”

They fell on him, tearing clothes from his body. When they’d stripped him naked, they wrenched him to his feet. He stumbled forward, determined to stay upright on his wobbly legs. Should he fall with his hands bound behind his back, he would be kissing the dirt.

Another round of inappropriate laughter welled up. They were taking him to be executed, and he was worried about stumbling.

The warriors propelled him from what he now recognized as a timber hut into glaring day. He squeezed his eyes shut against the sunlight, focusing instead on the breeze that cooled his battered face. His bare feet thudded on wood planking, but his head throbbed too fiercely to come up with a reasonable explanation.

He wrenched his eyes open when the first piece of rotten
produce hit him. It exploded in a wet, putrid mess on his chest before sliding down his skin. He closed his nose against the smell and turned to the child he assumed had thrown it. Whatever his gaze may have held, the boy stepped behind his mother. Conor only got the impression of apron, skirt, and a steely glare. The boy might fear him, but the woman did not.

And indeed, why would anyone fear him in this state? He was naked, bound, covered in dirt and blood, and barely able to walk under his own power.

They think you have magic.

He tried to hold on to the thought. It was important somehow. But it slipped away in the spinning of his brain. Norin words flowed around him, no longer making any sense, just lulling him into the peaceful arms of the dark.

And then he was being forced to his knees. A moment of clarity came back at the touch of a blade to his neck.

I don’t want to die.

He focused on those words to keep the darkness at bay. If he died, there would be no one to help Aine. If he died, Seare would suffer beneath the druid’s rule without anyone to deliver them.

They think you have magic.