Sovereign's Gladiator (6 page)

Xan rounded on Devon with a scold. “You know that running and hiding is often the best tactic?”

Devon answered, “Not in front of them.”

His men.

A Sovereign could not give a show of cowardice.

Devon could not diminish himself in front of his fighting men.

And not in front of you
, Devon thought at Xan.

“You are not making my task of defending you easy,” said Xan.

“Yes?” Devon cocked his head. “Marcus would have named someone else as first guardsman if he’d known this was going to be hard.”

Xan blinked at the insult. Then he pushed on to something else on his mind. “I know this tribe,” Xan said. “This is the Kiriciki. This act is not like them.”

“Apparently it
is
like them,” Devon said. “Seeing that they
did
it.”

Xan moved apart to retrieve his horse, which had wandered off in search of tasty weeds among the rocks.

Ignat, captain of the horse guard, moved in to advise his Sovereign. “Of course the savage knows this tribe. He told them to be here.”

“Did he?” Devon replied. “And why did he not slip a dagger between my ribs when we were behind the rocks and deliver my carcass to them? Xan could have had me any time.”

Ignat muttered, turning away, “So I hear.”

Shit.

It was out. Devon felt himself go pale, then burn. He was not so foolish as to think servants didn’t talk. Devon had not been quiet in his chamber his last night in Laklare.

The servants might have started the talk, but Devon would be damned if he would confirm any rumors. He spoke loftily at Ignat’s back, “If you have an accusation against my first guardsman, tell me something that makes sense and I shall listen.”

Ignat turned around again. “The barbarians were laying in wait for us,
ma dahn
. They knew we were coming. They knew
you
were coming.” He jabbed the air with his stubby forefinger. “First thing they hit was
your
litter.”

Devon went silent. He nodded, but kept his own counsel.

Devon’s men wearily gathered up the dead from the high rocks. The dead were all barbarians. The Raenthe soldiers set themselves to digging in the hard, hard ground. They had no love for the enemy, but they had a duty to the gods to return mortal remains into the earth.

Xan grunted, watching, not assisting, looking foreboding. He held his arms crossed, his muscles tensed, his hands closed in tight, massive fists. His look grew fiercer and fiercer. His thoughts were shouting.

Finally Devon had to command him, “Speak.”

“Why do you defile the dead?” Xan said.

Devon blinked, startled. “Do I? You must believe that is not my intent.”

“Must I? To put them in the dirt is an insult. It is—how do you say—sacrilege.”

A soldier nearby jerked up straight from the very shallow hole he’d dug so far. “It’s good enough for Raenthe!” he shouted at Xan. He made an apologetic salute to the Sovereign and growled, “Good enough for his lot!” He jabbed his spade into the earth. It bit no deeper than a dent.

Devon recognized that desert tribes saw things differently than Raenthe people did. And if yielding to native ways spared Devon’s own men from digging in this rock, all the better. “I don’t make war on the dead,” he told Xan. “If these men were yours, what would you do?”

“Burn the bodies, send the spirits home to the sky,” Xan answered.

Devon’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a wince. “That is not happening. I am not sending a party into these bare hills to scavenge for firewood.”

Xan glowered, a stormy look that could sweep entire coastal villages into the sea.

“Give me something else, Gladiator,” Devon demanded. He would really love some alternative to making his men hack at these rocks.

“Leave them,” Xan said. “Their own will come for them.”

All the diggers within earshot paused to listen, thrilled, hopeful.

Devon hesitated, “And that won’t offend your gods?”

“Their families will come to take them home.”

“Perfect,” said Devon. And to the men with shovels, he commanded, “Move these bodies off the road and out of the sun.” And just to be sure, he added, “Move them as if they were your brothers.”

The fallen were moved and posed respectfully. When Devon ordered blankets for them, a man obeyed, but paused, clutching his bundle, unwilling to let go of perfectly good blankets. He looked up to Devon on horseback, and said in a wail, “
Ma dahn!
They’re criminals!”

Devon nodded kindly. “They
paid
.” With their lives, they paid. Devon tilted his head for the man to go on and give the blankets to the enemy dead.

An infantry captain named Flacco moved in with a swagger, slapping dust off his tunic as he came. He rubbed sweat off his upper lip, which gave him a dirt mustache.

“
Ma dahn!
So the savages will come for their dead? You could take the column on through the pass. Leave me here with a cadre. We’ll hide in those rocks and slay the brutes when they come. They won’t expect that.”

“It will be their mothers and wives who come,” said Xan.

Devon told Flacco, “It won’t do. We normally give truce for our enemies to retrieve their dead anyway.”

Flacco stiffened. He gave a snarling sniff and spoke coldly, “I noticed your first guardsman didn’t kill any of your attackers,
ma dahn
.” His cold blue eyes narrowed at Xan.

“The first guardsman’s mandate is to keep his Sovereign safe,” said Devon evenly. “And he did that. He does not have orders to kill his own kind.”

“We were attacked. He
could
have killed one!” Flacco said sourly.

Devon had already noticed that.

Yes. Xan could have killed one or two.

Flacco’s broad features contorted. His voice was scornful, his eyes flicking toward Xan. “But you’re right,
ma dahn
. We shouldn’t wait in ambush. Maybe they
would
expect that.”

With that, Flacco all but accused Xan outright of passing information to the Kiriciki tribesmen.

Devon gestured for Xan to walk with him behind the rocks where Xan had sheltered him from the barbarian arrows.

Devon turned to face his first guardsman and asked him flat out, “Would they? Expect that?”

The sudden stinging in his cheek startled him. A slap. He’d been slapped. It was so unthinkable that Devon wasn’t sure it even happened except that his cheek was tingling. Xan’s blow hadn’t been hard, just enough to express outrage to his honor. And nothing more followed the slap.

Had it been done in public, there would have been nothing to do but have Xan put to death. Devon could have Xan put to death anyway. Xan knew that. Apparently his honor was worth more to him than his life.

Xan stood proud, awaiting whatever fate Devon chose for him.

No one had seen the slap.

Without apologizing or demanding apology, Devon said, “Since you are a being of honor, you shall live.”

* * * * *

Xandaras did not know what possessed him to slap the Sovereign. The mistake made him question his dedication to his mission. Xan could have been executed on the spot for that. Not even Xan could have fought his way out of the Sovereign’s garrison troop.

The Raenthe tyrant had insulted him, Xan told himself.

Then he argued back at himself,
So what if he did?

As if the opinion of a Raenthe mattered.

As if Devon’s words mattered.

As if Devon mattered.

Xan’s anger had flashed suddenly, deadly hot, out of control, and he scarcely believed it while his own hand was in motion.

Devon questioned Xan’s loyalty and Xan reacted with wounded honor.

The trouble was that injured outrage was not Xan’s to give.

Xan
was
disloyal.

Xan hadn’t been behind the Kiriciki attack here in the pass, but his purpose in accompanying the Sovereign on this journey was not to guard the man’s life.

Xan was here to turn the tyrant over to his own tribe for judgment.

Xan nearly bungled a gods-given chance for vengeance.

Then, almost worse, Devon called him a man of honor. Xan was having a tough time with that one. He felt the words burn in his gut like bitter poison.

Xan had to remind himself that his loyalty was, at it had ever been, to his own tribe. Not to the Raenthe conquerors. Xan was
not
a traitor. He was loyal. Just not to whom the Raenthe tyrant thought.

So Xan had given his oath to this man. Oaths sworn when the alternative is death were not binding in the desert. In the wild lands, word must be freely given. Xan had been carried off to a foreign land for fighting the invaders and he’d been sentenced to die in the gladiatorial ring for defending his tribe and his desert brothers.

He owed Devon nothing.

Xan had always thought the Sovereign soft and decadent. In his slave days, Xan used to look up from the dust and blood of the arena and see Devon there in his canopied box. Xan had never seen anything so fine in his life. Never before. Never since. So beautiful and so masculine at once. Devon used to watch Xan bleed.

Xan had been brought to the daunting capital in chains like a raging ox, condemned and angry. He remembered being astonished by the outlanders’ technology and their wonders. Calista City looked like a home for gods, with huge buildings, marble fountains and water tamed into channels. Raenthe soldiers carried weapons that hurled bolts and balls and darts past the farthest dreams of the best desert archers. Xan used to look up from his death pit at that beautiful Sovereign in his cushioned box and dream about fucking him blind. And he would ask the gods why they had gone deaf to him.

Fate turned, as fate will. Now Xan was now assigned to the Sovereign’s person and ordered to
take him to the wild lands
.

The gods listened after all.

And the chance to fuck him had come even sooner than that.
Not
the way Xan had imagined it. That fuck had not been the humiliation he dreamed of.

Xan had been gentle. He needed to be gentle to get here. He’d taken Devon with great restraint. It was his chance to bring that crowned head under his control. Xan had put his cock into the Sovereign’s mouth. And Devon loved it. Xan had put his sex inside the Sovereign’s tight ass and had him sobbing for joy. Devon was really beautifully built, with that splendid hard body, that taut, narrow ass. He was extraordinarily sensual and touchingly innocent.

Xan thought he may even have been Devon’s first.

Devon had the smooth bronze skin of the Raenthe kind. He smelled good, and not just because of the spices and oils he used on his body. Devon’s musky essence was enticing. His tongue was exceptional. He must have learned the art from some very costly whores. Devon was the finest thing Xan had ever had.

Devon wore no paint. Jewelry, yes, and fine clothes, but no other art. Out here on the march with the army, Xan could see how very little the ornament added to Devon’s beauty. He was youthfully slender and beautifully muscular. A few flecks of scars on his skin were but flaws in the diamond. His nails were short, neat and blunt-honed.

Xan watched Devon ride. There was an elegant subtle curve to Devon’s back. Devon rode as he stood—tall, never rigid. He moved with a natural grace.

There had been no mistaking that look of stunned lust on Devon’s face when the regent Marcus first presented Xan to Devon as first guardsman. Devon had paced away from him like an agitated mare with her nostrils full of stallion. Devon’s desire had been so hot that Xan was surprised the chamber did not ignite. It was so obvious what no one else seemed to notice.

Devon wanted Xan. Xan knew he could make use of that desire.

The gods were very strange.

The Sovereign was turning out to be complicated, surprising. And now unnerving.

Xan had thought the pretty dictator ordered the burial of the mountain dead out of disdain for the barbarian kind. Xan had wanted to kill the Sovereign right there. The tyrant was putting desert men into the dirt!

But no. It hadn’t been intended as insult. It had been an ignorant blunder. Devon had thought he was respecting the enemy dead, treating them as he would his own, even if it meant laboring to dig holes.

So the Sovereign wasn’t evil.

He was, however, ignorant. Not someone you want ruling your kind. Devon was trying to lord over people he knew nothing about.

To his credit, Devon was trying to correct that ignorance with this journey.

It was too late. Xan reminded himself he was on a mission of vengeance and liberation.

He had the tyrant by the cock. Things were going better than he’d ever expected.

They were.

Truly.

Here Xan was on the very threshold of the wild lands and he’d almost squandered everything over a word, a Raenthe insinuation that he was doing exactly what he was doing—delivering the Sovereign to his enemy.

Devon had questioned Xan’s loyalty. As well Devon should.

The Raenthe tyrant who moaned in Xan’s arms was keeping a firm grip on
his
duty.

It was Xan who was losing his grip.

Xan felt the war within.

I like him.

Xan could not allow that feeling to continue.

Xan had a duty to deliver the tyrant into the hands of the desert people for judgment.

Still, he was going to feel it keenly as a bleeding wound, the look in those fine eyes when the time for truth came.

Chapter Four

The narrow mountain pass opened into the wild lands. It was a different world on this side of the barrier ridge. Devon felt the enormity of the sky here, the desert’s bleak beauty. It was hard, stark, vibrant in its fashion.

And it was dry. Fragrant herbs that thrived in harshness grew here. They grew thick and leathery, and exhaled piquant scents when men stepped on them. The herbs perfumed the army’s advance.

Trees were contorted into artistic windblown shapes, their branches armed with thorns. Bright flowers clung to the rocks.