Sovereign's Gladiator (9 page)

An array of ornamental phials of scented oils had been laid out on a night table for the Sovereign’s pleasure. Xan chose one that smelled like sandalwood. Xan touched the glass phial to the back of Devon’s hand, as if Devon would smooth the oil on Xan’s sex.

Devon ought to be calling for guards. He turned his face aside and shut his eyes. A ridiculously feeble protest, but there it was.

Xan poured the oil for himself. Xan’s oiled hands on Devon’s cock coaxed a grunt from him with a hot shiver like walking through fire. Devon’s body quivered with lust. His heartbeat was a solid blur. His breaths came hard, as if he were running for his life.

Devon’s hands roamed Xan’s vast chest. Devon wasn’t sure how they got there. His hands just moved, feeling Xan. Devon’s fingers laced through Xan’s chest hair, feeling the hardness of muscles beneath his skin.

Xan lifted Devon’s hips off the mattress. The satiny glide of Xan’s cock in the cleft between Devon’s buttocks made him catch his breath. Xan’s sex penetrated him with silken hardness, slow and deep. Xan pushed his sex inside him to the hilt. His balls pressed against Devon’s buttocks.

Xan was out of bounds. Devon should resist. But he was way past that. There was no turning back. Xan was already
there
. Devon felt his soul falling. He let himself fall, his mouth open in silent cries.

The assassins came in the night.

Xan had left Devon spent, and Devon had fallen into a dreamless sleep. He woke to the clash of swords and fighting shouts. It didn’t feel like he’d been asleep long. The fire in the hearth was a ruddy glimmer under a coat of ash.

Devon’s chamber door burst open. The men who rushed in were not Devon’s guardsmen. They wore the green garb of Kani’s elite guards. There were seven of them. The Sovereign’s first guardsman, Xan, was not among them.

One guard dropped a peremptory genuflect, fist to his armored chest, his head briefly bowed, then he rose up swiftly to business. “
Ma dahn
, we must get you away from here.”

“Where are my men?” Devon said, while wondering what on earth he had drunk that he’d heard nothing before this moment. He didn’t feel at all groggy as he would if he’d been drugged. How could he have been sleeping through an attack on the citadel? He leapt out of bed, naked. He seized up his fine blue tunic from the floor and a pair of sturdy boots he’d left by the door. He gathered up all his rings scattered on the carpet and glanced around for a belt. The shadows cast by the low fire were dark upon darkness.

“Your soldiers are fighting the savages,
ma dahn
. Come quickly,” one man said, not giving him time to dress. Another guard crossed the floor in long strides, heading straight for the secret door. He lifted its camouflaged crossbar, opened the door, and held his lantern into the blackness of the secret stairway.

Devon stood still, hugging his boots, his tunic, his belt. “How did the savages get
in
?”

“They were
let
in.”

A traitor within.

The daring of the attackers was incredible. There was a force of two full Raenthe garrisons in the stockade below, and the wild men chose to break in
now
? It was terrifying.

Such people were not afraid to die.

No wonder Kani’s defenses were so strong. They hadn’t helped. These people had to be mad.

Devon shouted at the wall that separated him from Xan’s chamber. “Xan!”

He got no response except from the guard holding the whore door for him. “He’s not in there,
ma dahn
. No one can find him.”

Find him?
Just how long had they been looking for him? How long had this disturbance been going on? Where had they looked for Xan?

And where
was
Xan?

“Hurry,
ma dahn
!”

Kani’s men ushered him through the secret door and down the tight winding stone steps within the dank earth. It smelled like being buried alive.

The lantern in the leader’s hand gave off wobbling light. Devon felt his way along the moldering walls of the winding staircase.

The space widened at the bottom landing. A heavy door opened to the desert night and waiting horses. From the door’s threshold there was a drop of a couple feet to the ground. The forward guards jumped down in haste, urging the Sovereign to follow quickly, quickly.

Devon stepped aside, leaned against the rock wall to pull on his boots as the other guards spilled out the door. They were mounting up in a great rush to be away. They hissed at him to hurry, hurry, hurry. Devon stood up, moved to the doorway.

A man waited for him down below, holding the headstall of a horse that was saddled and ready for him. Low, urgent, he pleaded, “
Ma dahn
, there is no time!”

Devon stopped dead, movable as a mule.

He counted the animals. Three loaded pack horses on traces. There were seven mounted riders warily wheeling and glancing about for anyone approaching. There were eight more saddled horses, with seven guards on the ground anxious to mount up and be away if only his Sovereign self would move his ass.

The secret door led out to a secluded place behind the fortress where the mountain spur joined the mountain. The massif rose up a sheer forbidding black hulk, guarding the back of the citadel. Only narrow trails led here.

The moon was nearly full, fat and bright.

The saddled horse being held for Devon was getting restless. The horse tried to toss its head. The tattooed hand had a firm grip under its muzzle. Devon was delaying their flight to safety. The men were desperately impatient to be away. Devon could tell if they could have laid hands on his Sovereign person, they would have.

He should go out there and mount. Something inside him rose up in a balk.

All his thoughts were spinning too fast for him to hold a single one of them. Something was wrong. Something was wrong. He couldn’t place what he was sensing. Something was just wrong.

He turned back.

“
Ma dahn!
” voices cried behind him.

Devon called over his shoulder, “Wait for me!” And he pelted up the pitch-black stairs.

He wasn’t coming back. He just wanted the men to stay where they were.

He climbed as if winged, one hand groping for each next step. His nostrils narrowed against the dank air. His heart galloped.

He burst into his chamber, slammed the secret door and bolted it fast. He pulled his tunic on over his head, secured his belt, made sure there was a dagger in the sheath. He put on his rings and searched for his crown.

A motion at the door made him gasp and reach for his dagger.

Then he was in Xan’s arms. It was a brief, desperate embrace. Then Xan seized up a heavy cloak and led Devon out through the chamber’s front door onto the walkway that overlooked the great entrance hall.

The torches were out. The great room below lay hidden in utter darkness, but the large space felt empty.

The guard’s stations on either end of the corridor were vacant. The guards who had come to Devon’s chamber had left no one back here as rear guard.

There was no one here at all. No enemy. No friends.

Devon followed Xan close as a shadow down the wide stone steps. Xan halted at the bottom, where dragon-headed finials of the bronze railing were frozen in silent roars.

There were people here. Not lying in ambush.

Lying dead.

By the lurid glow from the dying fire in the great hearth, Devon could make out bodies.

They were barbarians. All of them.

Xan led the way across the great hall, moving carefully around the bodies of savages and their barbaric weapons. Devon watched for blood pools so he wouldn’t step in one, but there were none. Did savages not bleed?

Devon recognized a man—the slave who had poured the wine at dinner. And another—the slave who had brought firewood to his chamber.

The barbarians’ weapons were strewn around them. There was a spear decorated with ermine tails, and behind it a battleaxe with a jagged barbed head. A quiver beaded with savage designs lay beside another body. Devon almost tripped, stepping in the loop of the quiver’s beaded strap.

No Raenthe lay among them and no wounded. These barbarians were all slaves and they were all thoroughly dead.

Devon picked up a sword.

Shouts and an uproar arose, with metallic clashes elsewhere in the fortress telling of a fierce battle. The noise came from the eastern end of the compound.

Other sounds came from the outer stockade, roars of soldiers. The attackers must have flanked the front guards and stolen in through the sally gates at the fortress’s mountainous rear.

Raenthe voices from below bellowed to be let in, as sounds of raging battle carried from the east wing. Devon’s first impulse was to charge down to the stockade to let the clamoring soldiers in.

But he didn’t really know who was behind those doors.

He could not organize a campaign when he had no idea what was happening. He could end up trying to put out a fire with oil.

This was Kani’s fortress. Kani must know how to defend it. Until Devon knew what was happening, he should stay out of Kani’s way.

Xan seized Devon’s wrist and led him at a run toward the west wing, where all was quiet. They passed through the kitchen, which was tidy, quiet and empty. A low fire burned in the hearth. The poker hung on its hook. Polished pots sat in a row. Knives stood in their racks.

Xan grabbed a woven sack and loaded it with some foodstuffs, apples, cured meat and bread.

Then he led the way out the small door which slaves used to haul out the ashes.

There were no intruders on this side of the citadel. No guards either. Everyone must have run toward the sounds of fighting.

Xan and Devon followed the narrow goat path that led along the rock spine at the foot of the mountain. They skirted a sheepfold. A guard dog came out snarling. It stayed on its side of the sheep fence, slavering, its fangs bared, hackles raised, daring them to take one step into his pen.

The shepherds themselves were not here.

The path zigged and zagged a tortuous route over the shoulder of the fortress rock down to the level plain several
stadia
to the west.

Xan took off at a trot across the level ground.

Devon followed Xan. It was like being in an earthquake. Devon needed to get himself out of the building and wait for the world to stop shaking before he could go back inside find how things fell. It was the right thing to do. But running away never went down easily with him.

It was torture for him to resist his soldier’s instinct to charge into the thick of battle. He hated being of a rank at which his head was of more value than his sword arm. Older rulers were sage to this sort of thing and accepted it. Devon was young enough to want to fight. Duty demanded that he run. A fine general he would be who plunged into battle knowing nothing of the battlefield, the numbers, the enemy,
anything
.

When he’d been a soldier, there were always code words to separate friend from foe. He didn’t know the words. He could get killed by a friend. He could kill a friend.

Knowing the enemy was vital. Devon did not know his enemy.

He followed Xan.

They stopped in a grove of ancient olive trees on rising ground at a distance from the citadel. The trunks of the gnarled trees were wider than ten men around. Narrow leaves drooped from their contorted limbs. It was a good place to go unseen.

Xan tucked olives away in a pouch at his belt, as if he expected to be out here for a while.

Devon could see the dark hulk of the citadel from here. It looked impenetrable.

The desert night was cold.

Devon was shaking, not from the chill and not exactly from fear. It was a dread deeper than fear. And it was anger.

He lay down to wait for dawn. He had a battle veteran’s ability to force sleep in hell.

Xan lay down with him and pulled him against his heat. He drew his rough cloak over them both.

Devon slept a few hours under the stars.

Dreams came to him. Things below his awareness bubbled to the surface.

He was on a battlefield. His comrades were dead, clutching their swords and crossbows. He heard moans of the wounded.

He sat up in a wide-eyed sweat.

“Horses,” he said.

He heard Xan stirring. He was not sure if the gladiator had ever fallen to sleep. Xan’s voice sounded from under the cloak. “Are you dreaming,
ma dahn
?”

“Yes,” Devon said.

Devon stood up and walked to the edge of the grove. He saw the citadel. Firelight winked in the tower windows. Night air moved Devon’s hair. He spoke without turning.

“Xan, where were you when they came to my chamber?”

“I was led off.” Xan sounded angry. “Chasing lures. Just like everyone else.”

Xan, the Sovereign’s first guardsman, had left Devon alone.

Devon looked to the westering moon. Dawn was maybe an hour off.

“We’re going back,” Devon said.

“No,” Xan said.

Devon’s knife was not in its sheath in his belt. Not a surprise. Devon had already figured out he was being kidnapped.

Chapter Six

Devon was always quick off the mark in a foot race. He let no fog of disbelief or indecision hold him back now, so he got a quick lead, dashing through the olive grove at full speed.

It didn’t last. Fleet footsteps with long strides caught up, and suddenly Devon was slamming forward onto the ground with a
woof
of expelled breath.

Devon twisted before Xan could pin him. Devon kicked and thrashed and wrenched under Xan’s pressing weight. Devon brought a fist up under Xan’s chin that made him bite his tongue, but nothing worse than that.

Xan caught Devon’s hands trying to claw his eyes, and he pinned Devon’s wrists over his head, pressing Devon flat on his back under his greater mass. Devon had an erection, but it really was a fighting hard-on this time.

Xan wedged a knee between Devon’s legs to keep him from kicking and twisting out of the hold. Devon’s chest rose and fell, pressing against Xan’s chest.