Falling in Love (10 page)

The floor show wasn’t bad
either.

He munched his food in an unhurried
way and seemed to get it on some level, as he listened to the
inflections in her tone with what looked like approval. He looked
up and nodded, again with the sharp glint of intelligence and
something else—something feral, as the lady wondered just how in
the hell she was going to get out of this or even if she really
wanted to.

Not all that much, she
decided.

Not right now, anyways.

Hospitality had its rules in spite of
all language barriers and at least some effort had to be made. It
cost nothing to be polite and patience was a virtue.

She must find some way to repay
him.

***

It was dawn and the world was
glorious.

She stood, watching with interest as
he prepared the horse for riding. He didn’t have a saddle, she
realized. He strung the bow, and leaned it against a bush along
with the arrows. Its casing, once loosely bound, now fit it snugly
and there were tie-strings on the sides of it.

Jayne had had her morning tinkle in
the bushes nearby and so had he.

The fellow beckoned towards her feet
and said something. Interpreting correctly, she slipped off her
sandals and handed them to him. He put them in a bag and tied the
top securely. He put that down beside the bow, along with two water
containers and the quilted horse-blanket they had slept on, him
anyways, through the long vigil of the night. She gave him her
purse and he stuck that in the bag as well.

She might have dropped off just before
true dawn, although the birds were up and there was a dim glow in
the east. He slept with his arms around her, but was otherwise
scrupulously polite in his silent fashion. She’d lain there
blinking a lot and wondering what to do next. The half an hour or
hour’s worth of fitful sleep hardly rendered her amenable to new
faces and new experiences this morning. Not at first. She might
brighten up after a time. She was just praying he was taking her to
some nearby place where they would have a phone, and for the love
of God, maybe even a real bathroom.

The gentleman folded the larger,
thinner blanket into a long rectangle and then he put that on top
of the horse-blanket and smoothed them out on top of the big white
stallion. Surely the evidence of that was unmistakable, hanging out
there as big as a man’s arm for the world to marvel at, and then he
put a long leather strap around the horse, loosely cinching it by a
curved buckle of some bronze-like metal. There were rope loops for
stirrups.

He tied the bags on, and then the
quiver went on the left side up front, and the bow on the right.
His sword, wrapped in its own soft but close-fitting scabbard, hung
down his back as usual.

With the water bottles in place, one
on each side, slung across the back of the blanket after being tied
on by the necks, the man tightened up the cinch and took a look
around. He said something and looked at her. She looked around. The
place looked much as he must have found it. She saw a few scuffs on
the ground and a place where the grass and weeds was flattened.
They hadn’t forgotten anything, which she assumed was the
point.

He patted his chest.

“
Kenn’karr.”

She smiled sweetly as there was
nothing else for it.

She patted her breast over the heart.
Keep it simple, stupid.

“
Jayne.” Jayne Dickson,
last known address, Apartment Nine-Seventeen…The Berkshire
Building, Brooklyn, New York.

He nodded. Turning, putting a hand on
the thing’s shoulder and one foot in the loop attached to the
strap. He whipped up a leg and mounted the animal in one fluid
motion. It cocked its head to the left and took a long and sideways
look at her.

The man extended his arm. Taking his
hand, she put a foot in the loop on top of his, gave an awkward
hop, and with a strong pull from above, Jayne was quickly aboard,
sitting back on the tail end of the blanket and trying to avoid
banging her knees on the water-bottles which were right there. She
hitched her hem up a ways, as he couldn’t see much from that angle
anyway. Her legs looked pale and smooth beside the curly hair, and
deeply-muscled tan of his. A little shiver of something went
through her.

There was a lurch, coming as a bit of
a surprise, but she had taken a good grip on his abdominal ridges.
She almost giggled at the thought, and then they were
off.

With a sudden rush of guilt, deep down
in her middle, Jayne thought of the dratted condoms in a sly side
compartment of her purse. She had three of them in there, almost an
afterthought when packing for the trip, but one never knew. And
where else would you logically put them? Three, no more and no
less, three there were and there ain’t no more…

Her gentle rescuer said something over
his left shoulder.

Not sure what he wanted, Jayne
reluctantly wriggled her hips and bum so as to get in as close as
possible to him. She cussed the water bottles right there, cold and
damp on her thighs. That was an idea. If he said something, squeeze
in tighter. Anything at all happens, squeeze in tighter…and if he
puts his hand on your knee, rub up against him.

It was a thought.

Her knees stuck out but there was no
place else to put them. He gave a grunt of approval and seemed to
take a stronger grip with his knees as there were no reins and
bridle. He made another cluck and the horse picked up its pace with
a show of quiet, prideful eagerness.

Kenn’karr held onto its mane loosely
with his left hand.

Clearly they had done this
before.

With the movement of the animal under
them, and the proximity of her pelvic bone rubbing up against the
hard ridges of his tail-end, it didn’t take long. The entire effect
was stimulating, perhaps even a little bit disturbing. It was also
strangely comforting as she settled into a ride of perhaps some
distance. But all of this gave her something to think about, to
occupy her mind.

She’d heard of women getting off on
motorcycles—at the time she thought it was just stories, but now
she realized there might be some truth in it. It was an interesting
sensation, what with a big strong back and all those muscles inches
away. After a night in the open and laying beside a fire, his smell
was of nothing much but wood-smoke and a hint of
armpits.

She kind of liked it,
actually.

It was only after she had a moment to
look around, that she was stunned to realize there was not a single
drop of blue water as far as the eye could see. The island, the
lake, and the distant pale smudges of the lakeside villages on
distant hillsides were all gone. They were on a wide expanse of
arid flatlands, rising up in the far distant horizon into long
fingers of hills, with a fading suggestion of blue-green to
indicate that there might be trees and even water there.

This can’t be right.

This can’t be real.

This wasn’t real.

This isn’t happening to
me.

Her mind reeled, and she opened up her
mouth to speak, but it was no good. No sound came out.

Mouth open, she stared around,
wild-eyed in dismay. But there was no water in sight and the truth
of it was sickening. What in the blue Hades was happening
here?

Had she finally gone mad after
all?

It was all she could do just to hold
on.

The Sun Was High
Overhead

Time dragged on, four or five hours of
the morning, maybe longer considering their early start. The sun
was high overhead.

The reality of it quickly became
apparent and this wasn’t a dream. Even so, some of the dread had
worn off.

Any appeal due to sheer novelty the
situation might once have had, was gone now. The sun blazed in the
sky, and while the hills had gotten much closer, much bigger now,
the land between shimmered in the heat haze and the man Kenn’karr,
whether rescuer or captor, she knew not which, was conserving the
water for the horse.

It was a logical
explanation.

Her upper arms ached in the biceps
from holding on all frickin’ morning, and after a while her hands
dropped lower and lower. Finally, she had gotten somewhat used to
the horse’s odd gait, for occasionally it sped up for three or four
steps on its own mysterious initiative. She settled for keeping her
hands on his hips, or even grabbing onto the back of his belt. Her
curling fingers were held in place by the pressure of warm muscle
and skin.

It was no time for
squeamishness.

She was just stretching her back up to
her full height. They were cresting a small hillock, and she was
craning around for one last disbelieving look, to reassure herself
that the lake was indeed gone when a series of cries came from off
to the right and a decisive kick of the man’s heels sent the horse
galloping.

It’s a good thing she was clinging to
his belt, or she would have gone off the back, and his left hand
came around and gave her a quick haul forwards. Jayne grabbed on
for dear life, gaping off to the right, which she thought was
south, to an escarpment. It was crumbling at the base and
pock-marked with caves, split and opened by fissures and cracks and
small dry watercourses coming in from the side. They’d been angling
towards it for over an hour. There was another cliff half a mile,
maybe more, to the north.

Dull black figures, hideously painted,
almost naked they were, ran along the top of the cliff and poured
out of small hiding places along the boulder-strewn slope leading
down from the bluff.

“
Oh, my, God!” They were
all running pell-mell with weapons of various types, some had two
or three slender spears clutched in their hands and what looked
like throwing sticks.

They were coming straight at
them.

They were deformed men, with long arms
and short legs and they were painted like zebras, faces etched in
horrible, multi-coloured masks. The first spear fell short and she
said a quick expletive as the horse lowered its fine-boned head,
its legs went horizontal fore and aft in one solid blur, and the
thing really took flight.

Her barbarian friend ducked low over
the horse’s neck, arms wrapped around it, and all she could do was
cling low to his back, gasping and half-weeping, and trying not to
fall off. She thought her heart would come out of her chest. More
of the attackers raced out on an angle, trying to get out in front
of them, heading them off. She could see a notch in the valley wall
over Kenn’karr’s shoulder up ahead of them and that was the way
they all seemed to be pointed.

She shrieked when one ran up beside
them, yelling and grabbing at her and brandishing a wooden club
with short wicked spikes in the end, drools of some gooey substance
visible all over it…

The big man drew his sword in a sudden
motion, shrugging off her grip and she scrabbled for his belt
again, her nails, short as they were, scraping flesh. Whether he
noticed or cared; he made no sign and on a word the horse
side-stepped. With one quick swipe going past, standing up now at
full height in the primitive rope stirrups made for just this
purpose, he took the arm holding the club right off at the
shoulder. The tip of the horrid thing missed her right eye by
inches or so it seemed and then they were past the last half-dozen
of them.

The shriek of the pursuer, still
running but now clutching a bloody stump and spewing an amazing
amount of bluish-green gore, was awful to hear and then the
creature tripped and fell face-down in the dust. She tore her eyes
from the sight.

Their rabid cries faded off somewhere
behind them. She took another look back and saw them, slowing now,
but still coming on with determination.

Her benefactor gave a triumphant shout
as he twisted to look behind, and then he dropped down onto the
horse’s neck again, with Jayne sobbing and cursing and trying to
get some breath back in her body as she wondered what in the hell
had just happened here.

A spear landed to her left, sticking
in the ground with the butt end pointing up right at her as the
horse cantered by. She didn’t see that one coming.

It must have missed her back by less
than two feet, and so she stayed down until Kenn’karr sat up, took
a quick look back, and then made a serious assault on the narrowing
gorge ahead of them.

He held the mane with both hands now,
after she helped guide the dripping sword back into its case. She
wiped the blood from her fingers on the bottom of her dress. A bit
of a stain was the least of her problems.

When they got to the top, ten or
twelve minutes later, he whirled the animal aside from the trail,
and the pair sat looking back down into the valley.

There was not a sign of life, and from
up here she couldn’t even see their horse’s tracks.

“
Mogg-loks.” It sounded
like a curse.

He spat on the ground and said
something more, which sounded like it boded evil for someone. She
quietly panted and tried to work up some spit. She grabbed at his
arm and on a look from Kenn’karr, indicated the water bottles. He
nodded reluctantly and took a drink from her. Shit, he’d earned it
after that little episode, and so had she.