The Dark Throne (53 page)

I carried my pack over to the other side of camp, dropping it with a sigh at a fair distance from the fire. I unfastened my cloak and folded it by my pack, wincing as my sore ribs protested. My first attempt to unbuckle my breastplate ended with my hands braced on my knees as I tried to catch my breath and see straight again.

“You have bruised ribs at least,” Luca said, dressed in a fresh shirt. He tossed his own pack next to mine. He didn’t ask if I wanted help; he just stepped forward and began working on the buckles. That small movement alone made me wince. After he loosened the straps, he waited patiently for me to raise my arms. When he lifted the armor over my head, I simultaneously felt as though I’d float away and expand, both at once, without the slight compression and extra weight of the armor around my torso. We both looked down at the long furrows gauged into the breastplate by the claws of the
garrelnost
.

“If you’re going to tackle
garrelnost
every chance you get, I’m going to make sure you’re always wearing armor when we ride out,” commented Luca. I grinned and stopped myself from laughing in time to avoid the lancing pain from my ribs.

“Anything broken?” the
ulfdrengr
asked, serious now. His hands moved as though he wanted to check me for wounds just as I’d run my hands over Nehalim moments earlier; my face heated slightly at the thought.

“Not that I can tell. It just knocked the wind from me and bruised me a bit,” I answered honestly. I scanned the camp and spotted the area where one of the other healers had set up a station for dressing wounds. There were only a few fighters waiting; most had tended to their own injuries or enlisted the help of a friend. I picked up my healing kit and turned back toward Liam and his teammates. “I’m going to go see if I need to stitch any of them up. Want to help?”

“I doubt you need the help, but I’ll come along for the conversation,” Luca said.

As we crossed camp, I spotted one of the vanguard’s riders stretched out on the ground, seemingly asleep, hands folded neatly over his stomach. One of his companions sat cross-legged nearby, holding a stained shirt in his hands and examining a tear in the fabric, a needle and thread laid out on his knee.

“Our Walker?” I asked, but it was more of a statement than a question. I was vaguely relieved that I hadn’t had to use my abilities as a Walker on the journey thus far.

“Yes. He’ll probably be gone for a while, since Vell will most likely have orders for us.”

“Is Vell your commanding officer?” Quinn asked as we approached the small group. The four men had borrowed two cloaks and disassembled their rifles atop them. As I watched, Quinn tossed a small cog-like cylinder to Jess. Liam handed over the same part, and Jess now had four identical little cylinders lined up on his corner of the cloak.

“I guess you could say that,” I replied belatedly, watching with interest. “I thought you were out of ammunition.”

“We are,” said Liam.

“But we don’t know what yahoos are running around,” said Jess. He held up one of the cylinders. It was about as long as my pinky finger and it looked like it had a gear attached to one end. “Easy solution is to keep the bolts with us.”

“I still say we should go with the firing pin,” said Duke, holding up a needle-like silver part.

“You wanna carry around the firing pins, go right ahead,” replied Jess. “Just realize I’m gonna shove my hand up your ass and use you as a meat puppet when you lose mine.”

Quinn snorted. “He said
when,
not
if.
Remember last time?”

“Hey, that was
one time
and I
found it
.” Duke glared at Jess. I wondered how many cautionary tales featured the wiry Southerner. Every team had the kid who couldn’t do anything right, but it didn’t seem that Duke was the type who made mistakes all the time. He just probably couldn’t keep his mouth shut and that made him a convenient target, I decided.

“Those bolts are an important part of the firing mechanism of the rifle,” I explained to Luca. “If they’re missing that piece, then they can’t be fired, even if someone managed to steal them and find more bullets.”

“Look at you, Bug, remembering your rifle anatomy lessons,” Liam said.

I made a face at him. “At first hearing my nickname again was nostalgic, now it’s just annoying.”

My brother merely chuckled and turned back to his teammates. Jess produced a coil of olive-drab cord from his pocket, measuring out an arm’s-length and cutting it with his knife. He melted the ends of the cord with his lighter to keep it from fraying, a process that Luca watched with an air of professional interest. Jess threaded the cord through the hollow center of the bolts, tying each securely in place, and then he knotted the ends of the cord into a loop. He slipped the cord over his head and tucked the bolts beneath his shirt. “Can’t do that with a firing pin.”

“You realize you’re our Frodo now,” said Quinn. Jess gave him a sideways look. “You know, one Ring to rule them all? Except you’ve got our bolts. Like…four bolts for men, doomed to die.”

I laughed.

“See? Xena, Warrior Princess over there gets it.”

Jess merely stared at Quinn. “Doomed to die?”

“It’s part of the rhyme…forget it.” The tattooed man shook his head. “Uncultured savages, all of you.”

“Says the guy who killed a wolf with a screwdriver,” Duke pointed out in an undertone.

“It’s called a
garrelnost
,” I offered as I unrolled my kit.

“We’ll find a place to stash these,” Liam pronounced, looking down at the various components of weaponry laid out on the cloaks. “They’re just dead weight.”

“What about when we go back? We’ll get our asses handed to us for losing ‘em,” said Duke. Quinn touched the butt of his rifle almost lovingly.

“If you pack them into a couple of bundles, we could manage carrying them,” I said after glancing at Luca, who nodded. “If we have to drop them at any point, we’ll know that they can’t be used against us.”

“That’s a good compromise for now,” allowed Liam. “Make it happen.”

And with an efficient speed that left me staring with one eyebrow raised, Quinn and Jess stacked two rifles on each cloak, folding a layer of cloth between the weapons, and then rolled them into tight bundles, tied shut with a few more lengths of Jess’s handy cord.

“It looks like none of you have any major problems, but do any of you need stitched up?” I asked.

Quinn eyed the vials and pouches of my healing kit. “You a doc?”

“We’re all trained to an extent but yes, I’ve done some time as an apprentice.” I thought about telling the guys that most of the healers in Faeortalam, even the junior ones, had been practicing their art for a century or more; after amusing myself by picturing their reactions, I decided to ease them into all the details of their new reality.

“An apprentice,” repeated Liam.

“So proper. Are we sure we didn’t get sucked back into medieval times?” Quinn squinted at Liam.

I sighed. “First of all, if you’d please answer my question. And then I’ll show you why you didn’t travel through time.”

“Bossy. I like her,” commented Quinn.

“You’re only calling her bossy because she’s a chick,” said Jess.

Quinn tilted his head and considered. “True. I apologize. You are very…assertive. Bold. I still like it.” He grinned, his teeth white against his dark beard and brown skin.

“Anyone need stitches?” Liam steered them back to my question. The men checked themselves over.

“Negative,” said Jess.

“I’m good.” Duke gave Liam thumbs-up.

Quinn examined a long, sluggishly bleeding gash on his shin. “I got myself pretty good on one of those rocks, but looks like it should be fine.”

“Don’t try to be macho,” I told them, surprising myself at how easily the slang of my old world rolled off my tongue.

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Duke with a little salute. He looked at Luca contemplatively. “Don’t suppose you’ve got any dip, do you?”

“He doesn’t have any dip,” I answered for the
ulfdrengr
.

“Damn,” muttered Duke. “No dip in Valhalla.” Then he looked at my healing kit. “Any chance I could get one of those?”

“Team medic,” Liam explained to me in an aside. “Lord help us.”

“I
heard
that. And my stitches are the prettiest stitches you’ll see this side of Kandahar,” Duke proclaimed. My brother grinned.

“What’s the Dungeons and Dragons proof you’re going to show us?” Quinn asked. He hiked up his camo pants at the thighs in a practiced motion and sat down, the other three following suit, leaving me and Luca standing in front of them. I rolled up my right sleeve, exposing my war-markings; I dipped into the well of my
taebramh
and sent a spark rolling down the emerald whorls, igniting them into dazzling light.

“Dude,” breathed Duke, leaning forward. I smiled a little at his fascination.

Just for good measure, I wove a little ball of light and tossed it overhead. Duke’s eyes were wide and Liam wore a small smile. Jess’s expression didn’t change at all, and Quinn looked at me with consideration.

“Now my question is, how do I get a glowing tattoo? Because that’s wicked cool,” he said with a grin, flexing his forearm and making his own tattoos ripple.

I smiled a little self-consciously as the emerald fire racing down my arms faded. “I don’t think you’d like the process much. It was involuntary.”

“So what
are
you?” Jess asked. There was no rudeness or even curiosity in his voice, just a blunt forthrightness.

“Tess is the Bearer of the Iron Sword,” said Luca, imbuing my title with a sense of mystery and power that I felt I couldn’t have replicated. The four men remained silent, obviously waiting for one of us to expand on Luca’s statement, so I took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to escape their scrutiny that easily.

“The Iron Sword is a weapon that was passed down through an ancient line of mortal priestesses,” I explained, touching the hilt of the Sword at my shoulder. “It was lost for hundreds of years. Only a mortal, or one with a lot of mortal blood, can wield the Sword because of the nature of its power. It can be deadly to Sidhe. The Queen of the Unseelie Court summoned my best friend Molly into the Fae world because she was the subject of a prophecy. Which turned out to be true, but not in the way that they thought…because
I
came through the veil with Molly.” I waited for exclamations of surprise or disbelief, but the men just watched me and waited. It was like staring down a pack of wolves. “Long story short, I was the first mortal in this world in five hundred years. And after a while I figured out that
I
was the heir to the Sword.” I spread my hands. “And here I am.”

“Tess makes light of her triumphs since she has come into this world,” said Luca. I scowled at him. He grinned and put up his hands. “Yet her story is not mine to tell.”

“Is that why they wanted you?” Quinn asked Liam. “To use as collateral against your sister because she has this magical sword?”

“Partially,” said Liam. He looked up at me and then back at Quinn. I frowned. Hadn’t he told his teammates about his ability? “Look, this is a lot to absorb. Let’s just go get washed up and eat some real food for once.”

“We’ve been here for over three weeks, brother,” said Quinn. “We’re not going anywhere. We can wait on a bath for five minutes so you can tell us what’s really going on.”

“We can tell when there’s something you’re holding back from us,” Duke added, his demeanor now serious.

Quinn and Duke stared intently at Liam, who shifted, his eyes flickering to Jess. The older man nodded slightly. Quinn frowned but he kept his silence while Liam took a breath and spoke. “I have…abilities.”

Quinn pointed at my arm. “Like glowing-tattoo abilities?”

“Not exactly, but it’s because we’re of the same bloodline. The priestesses or whatever.” Liam paused. “You know how sometimes I’m a little too quick, or a little too good at guessing what’s going to happen next when we’re in the middle of a shitstorm?”

I pressed my lips together to keep from smiling at my brother’s expressive profanity. I was surprised I hadn’t heard more expletives from the other men, but I suspected they were actually trying to be polite.

Duke jumped up. “You can see the future. I
knew it!”

Jess raised an eyebrow as if to say to Liam,
Told you so
. I surmised that Liam had probably told his senior team member but for some reason he hadn’t felt it necessary to tell the younger two. Though before today, I reasoned, they hadn’t had any interaction with the Fae other than with the creatures they might have encountered in the mountains. Without any tangible proof that they were in another world—maybe he hadn’t even been completely certain himself—my brother had focused on keeping his team alive and in good spirits.

“You could have told us,” Quinn said quietly, his dark eyes fixed intensely on my brother’s face. “It’s not like we trust each other with our lives or anything.”

“What would your reaction be if someone told you they could see the future?” Jess interjected, matching his volume to Quinn’s words.

Quinn pressed his lips together. “Probably the same as if someone had told me we’d be sucked through a damn portal into another world. But here we are.”

Liam ran one hand through his hair. I wondered if I should leave him to talk to his team privately. It felt a little bit like I was trespassing on a sensitive conversation.

“You’re right,” he said to Quinn finally. “I should have told you. You’re my brothers, and I was wrong to keep it from you. I just didn’t want you to think I was crazy. Hell, sometimes
I
thought I was crazy.”

Quinn’s look turned to one of consideration. Then he smiled, his teeth glimmering white between his full lips. “We already knew you’re a special kind of crazy.”

Jess chuckled and Duke grinned. I got the feeling that it was a private joke between them.

“Yeah.” Liam rubbed his chin, smiling ruefully. “A special kind of crazy and a special kind of dumb, sometimes.”