Boyett-Compo, Charlotte - WindTales 02 (13 page)

standing with her hands on her hips, glowering at him.

“Get up.” It was a curt, staccato burst of command.

He stared at her. “I can't."

“Aye, you can!” she retaliated. She nudged him again with her boot. “It'll be dark soon, and we're set to

sail at moonrise."

“Then go,” he told her. The thought of asking her to tell someone where he was crossed his mind, but he

knew she probably wouldn't do it. Eventually someone would come looking for him.

Genny's mouth dropped open and she sputtered. “I can't get up that incline by myself! You got me in this

predicament and you're going to get me out!"

“I got you in this predicament?” he asked in shocked disbelief.

“Aye, you did! Now get the hell up and get me out of it!"

“You followed me! Remember?” he snapped at her. Not only was his side hurting, his head was

throbbing. He put up a hand to his forehead, felt something wet, pulled his fingers down, and stared at the

crimson staining his fingers. “I'm bleeding."

“Oh, for the love of Alel! It's only a slight scratch!” She bent over and grabbed his wrist and tried to jerk

him up.

“Shit!” he screeched again, jerking his hand back, wishing he hadn't for the pain doubled in his chest. He

gaped at her. “What the hell did you do that for?"

“I told you to get up, Sorn!” She looked about the hole in that they had tumbled. “It's getting dark!"

“You're going to have to help me get up."

Genny snorted. “In your dreams, Sorn!"

No one had ever accused Syn-Jern Sorn of having a temper, he certainly never had exhibited one

before; but the infuriating demoness standing over him could bring out the worst in any man. He glared at

her in the late afternoon light and ground his teeth together.

“If you want out of this gods-be-damned hole, then you're going to have to help me up. It's your choice,

Lady Genevieve."

She didn't want to touch him. Just thinking of doing so made her flesh crawl. But she didn't think the

clumsy bastard could get up on his own. Chances were he'd need help getting up the incline, as well.

Sighing heavily, hatefully, she extended her hand. When he didn't immediately take it, she shook it.

“Well? I don't have all night, Sorn!"

He wanted to scream at the bitch, refuse the hand she was grudgingly holding out to him, but he couldn't

be so choosy. Instead, with supreme effort, a whole lot of pain, and a great amount of sweat, he

managed to grip her fingers, then clasp her slender hand in his own. He was surprised by her strength as

she dug her boots into the soft earth and pulled him up with a grunt.

“God, but you're heavy!” she snarled, stepping back from him.

He ignored her insult, only one of a hundred or more over the past seven months, and looked around

them. The incline wasn't as steep as he'd thought, but it would be hell climbing to the top with his ribs

throbbing and grating together as they were.

“Well?” Genny sneered. “What the hell are you waiting for? An engraved invitation, Duke Syn-Jern?"

He flicked his eyes over her before looking back to the clump of vines he'd been surveying. “I'm no

longer a Duke."

“Pity, that!” she snipped.

He walked gingerly over to the vines and reached up to tug on them. The effort brought fresh sweat and

pain to his face. He groaned again, putting his right hand to his ribcage.

“You're such a baby!” she snapped at him.

He squeezed his lips tightly shut to keep from shouting at her.

“Sorn?” she spat, the one word full of contempt.

“I hurt, woman,” he told her.

“Well, so did Paddy!” she reminded him.

He turned around and looked at her. When he saw the way she was staring back at him, he let out a

tired, defeated sigh.

“I'll hold the vine steady if you can climb up it,” she taunted.

“And then what?” he asked, not sure he could climb.

“Then you can pull me up."

He snorted. Another mistake. The giving in to his ill humor made his ribcage spiral with bursts of fiery

pain.

“Oh, for the love of Alel!” she shouted. Her footsteps were heavy and full of scorn as she tramped over

to the vine and jerked it out of his hands. “I'll climb it myself!"

He had just enough time to get out of her way before she dug the toes of her boots into the soft slide of

the incline and began to climb up with ease. He stood there, staring at her, watching her pull herself up

with hardly any effort.

“You little imp,” he said under his breath. He was still staring at her as she gained the top and looked

down at him with triumphant. Genny could see the anger on his face and it pleased her. She hadn't really

been sure why she was taunting him so for she was perfectly aware that he'd been hurt in the fall. Her

motives had seemed clear to her at first: torment the man as his family had tormented hers. But his

obvious hurt tempered her vengeance. When he didn't seem inclined to get up, she began to realize that

only insults would penetrate the self-pity the man seemed to be steeped in.

“You intend to stay there all night?” she called down to him. “Coward that you are?"

Maybe it was the scoffing in her voice or the put down that made him grip the vine and try desperately to

ignore the excruciating agony in his ribs. Or maybe it was just the thought of letting another woman get

the best of him that made him try to climb out of the hole. Whatever it was, it worked. Despite a great

deal of panting, sweating, grunting, and whimpering with pain; slipping and sliding more downward than

going upward, he managed to reach the top just as the sun was bobbing on the horizon.

“You ought to get someone to teach you how to climb!” she spat at him as he staggered away from the

lip of the hill and sat down heavily on a fallen palm trunk.

“Can you find your way back by yourself?” he asked, having had all he could take of her vitriolic tongue.

“Would I have been waiting around for you if I could?” she asked, knowing full well she could have if

need be.

He sighed, pushed himself up with some difficulty, and with a slight grunt, flung out his left hand in a

gentlemanly manner. “Then allow me, Mam'selle.” He called on his last reserves of strength and began to

walk toward the path that had led him into the grove.

* * * *

“I hear it, but I don't know which way to go,” Patrick grumbled. He and Weir had been following several

different animal paths into the heart of the mango grove, but all of them had ended up leading into

dead-end walls of thick, impassable foliage.

“It's getting dark, Paddy,” Weir said in a worried voice. “Maybe we should go back to the village and

see if they're back."

Patrick nodded. All the two of them needed to do was get lost in the overgrowth and have to have the

village out searching for them as well.

“If they're not back by the time we to sail, we'll just have to come looking for them with torches,”

Patrick advised.

* * * *

It had taken him over two hours to reach the waterfall, he thought as he led the way down an almost

non-existent path then another hour on the top running after her. He totaled that up and figured he was

right in assuming that by the time he fell into the hole, they'd been in the jungle nearly two and half-hours.

“How long was I out?” he managed to ask her through the pain stabbing into his side.

“Two, three hours, I guess,” she shot back, her voice letting him know she'd been very unhappy about

him sleeping so long.

He nodded. That made five hours. They'd been walking for thirty minutes or so now for the sun was

barely on the rim of the horizon. He could just make it out through the lush fronds. That meant they had at

least an hour to an hour and a half of trekking through a dark grove, unable to see their way.

“You've screwed us royally, haven't you?” she taunted.

Never had he wanted to strangle a woman in his life. If truth had been told, Syn-Jern was afraid of

women. They'd made him afraid of them all his life. But this one he could make an exception for.

“Did you hear that?"

“I heard you,” he mumbled. He was sweating fiercely and without thinking began unbuttoning his shirt.

“Listen!” she insisted.

“All I hear is your wicked little mouth flapping!” he pronounced, stripping the shirt from his body.

“No, stupid!” she hissed, reaching out to pull on his belt. As she did, her fingernails dug into his flesh.

“Damn it, woman! That hurt!” he groaned, twisting away.

Genny's eyes widened as she took in the heavily muscled chest only a foot from her face. Unconsciously,

she licked her lips.

“I think you drew blood,” he mumbled, craning his neck to look at his back. “I'll probably get gangrene

and—"

“Shut up and listen!” she told him, trying to ignore the crisp hair between his nipples.

He let out a long breath. He listened as he had been ordered to do and heard faint voices.

“Someone from the village?” she asked.

He listened closely. He couldn't make out the words, but he could make out the accent. He turned

toward the sound.

“What are you waiting for?” She prodded his bare back with a stiff finger. “Call out to them or I will."

“No."

His answer wasn't at all what she wanted to hear. Disgust at him roiled in her gut and she opened her

mouth to shout, but found her lips firmly covered by his hand as he pulled her to him, slamming her body

into his, and dragged her back into a thick clump of bushes.

He was in agony as she squirmed against him, her elbows digging into his stomach as her fingers pried at

the fingers he had clamped tightly over her mouth. He was panting from his effort to control her and

couldn't speak, couldn't warn her. It was all he could do not to scream when her teeth bit into the fleshy

part of his palm.

Genny could feel his sweaty chest against her own damp shirt and the touch was too much to bear. He

smelled of wet, rotting leaves and a manly odor, not all that unpleasant a smell, but something she didn't

want on her. She could taste his blood on her lips and his warm breath in her ear only made her clamp

her teeth into him deeper.

“Leave off, woman!” he hissed, dragging in his breath. Pain was now eating into his palm as it nibbled at

his ribs. “Those aren't our men out there!"

She stopped biting him, but kept his flesh in her mouth, not letting him pull his palm free of her teeth. She

also stopped moving in his grasp and cocked her ear toward the sound of voices that were closer now.

Syn-Jern didn't dare pull her any further back into the camouflage of the bushes. The men advancing on

them would hear any sound they made now. He prayed the girl would heed the warning in his voice as he

whispered to her once more.

“Serenians."

Beside herself and Weir, Tarnes was the only other Serenian on Montyne Cay. If these men were

Serenians, and she knew now they must be for she could hear the accent of her homeland, they were

invaders.

Or worse: part of the armada the village had always feared would one day arrive.

She let go of his palm, heard his sigh of relief, but could still taste his blood on her lips. The bite must

have gone deeper than she'd realized for her lips were slick with a salty wetness.

“All right?” he whispered as he moved his hand slightly away from her mouth.

Genny nodded and his hand came away. She was about to turn her head up, to try to speak to him,

when the bushes moved only a few feet from where they hid, and she saw five men pass their hiding

place. With the luck of the gods, none of them looked their way.

“Ain't nothing on this, Commander,” they heard one of the men grumble. “We've made reconnaissance

runs over this way before. If there was a village, we'd have found it by now."

“There was a jolly boat beached back there, mister!” a gruff, uncompromising voice snarled. “If there

isn't a village, there is a survivor from the Tamarind. We can only hope it was one of our men."

Syn-Jern tensed. These were not invaders, an advance unit of the armada. These men were Tribunal

Transporters.

Genny realized the spot they were in, as well. Tarnes had warned Weir not to tow home the three

Tamarind jolly boats that were seaworthy. Weir hadn't listened. He'd awarded one to each of the three

highest bidders and no doubt the one these men had found on the western shore of the peninsula was

kept there by a man wanting an escape route if the armada ever came to Montyne Cay.

“Well, keep looking for anything that might suggest we've a survivor. The light will be gone soon and

we'll go back to the ship to make the tide."

The voices and the footsteps moved further away from Genny and Syn-Jern, but neither moved, too

afraid that the least sound would give them away.

Syn-Jern's heart was thundering in his chest. He knew a fear so dark, so primitive, it was like being

buried alive. He had forgotten the pain in his ribs and the throbbing pain in his palm. Here was another

pain: the pain of memory; the pain of ten long years at hard labor; of terrible humiliating abuse, starvation,

and inhuman loneliness.

Genny could feel his heart against her back. The man was clammy with sweat; he was trembling from

head to toe. She could hear his quick little intakes of breath, the panting of an animal gone to ground.

And she almost felt sorry for him.

The voices died away; the sounds of movement ceased. A cautious turning of their heads found no

prying eye looking for them.