The Last Warrior (19 page)

He felt himself reacting to her closeness, and shifted away a few inches out of respect. She'd set him ablaze, this woman had, but by Uhrth, he'd be an officer and gentleman until she was begging him otherwise.

Did Kurel beg?

In his dreams, yes.

At the top of a rise, he turned the horse around and stopped. Before them was the fortress with its four towers, each topped with banners of blue and white. “There it is. Our home, as it looks from beyond the walls.”

“There are no words to describe it,” she said softly.

“My point. No words, no pages, no books. Some things simply have to be experienced in person.”

 

T
HEY STOPPED FOR THE
day after traveling a comfortable distance away from the palace and its surrounding flocks, herds and their shepherds. They were atop a ridge with a view of the valley.

“We'll spend the night here,” Tao announced.

She caught him gazing out from under the leafy cover of a stand of lop-lop trees to where the edge of the palace lands met the horizon. “My kingdom for a
spyglass,” he said as if to himself. His army was out there, she realized. The sprawling encampment was visible if she squinted hard enough. The discovery seemed to fill him with poignant relief and yearning, until his jaw hardened and he glanced away.

He's glad they're located where Markam said they'd be, but wishes he were with them.

And not Beck.

Elsabeth shook the dust from her skirt and stretched the stiffness from her legs as she marveled at the beauty of their surroundings. The hush was deep, even overwhelming. A distant raptor screeched, insects buzzed lazily, along with the sounds of grass tearing as the mare grazed and, most pleasantly, those of Tao efficiently making camp, but there was no city racket, no clanging chaos. “It's so quiet,” she said.

Tao grinned at her as he measured and cut several long sticks. “What did you expect out here?”

“I…don't quite know.” She grinned back. “None of the authors said anything about what the wilderness sounds like. Or, doesn't.”

Nor did any mention the beauty of a well-built man working up a sweat in a white shirt, his sleeves rolled up, his skin golden in the late-day sunshine. His metal amulet caught the light, and his hair, grown longer since his escape, lifted in the breeze. She found a small boulder to sit on and hugged her knees close to watch him work. “What are you doing?”

“Seeking to end my hunger.”

“I can get the food from the sack—”

“No, Elsabeth. I mean I've got a hankering for something fresh and hot.” He flashed her a smile. “Hot—once we cook it over the fire.”

She hoped her blush wasn't so obvious in the golden light of late afternoon. A day with him pressed against her back had her taking all his words the wrong way.

He took three long sticks and tested their suppleness before tying them together in several places. He fastened a single, long string to one end, and bent the sticks to drop one more loop over the opposite end.

Finally, he lifted the curved sticks, drawing the string taut as he sighted down his arm. “Good,” he said. “Nice and tight. Now we have a finished bow. We need a few arrows. Help me find a few straight sticks, the straightest sticks that you can find out here. We need strong wood, because if the wood's too light, it's just going to fly away with little force.”

He used his blade to carve sharp points on the sticks. Then, setting each arrow on a boulder, he fashioned a small wedge at the other end of each arrow, which he told her he'd use to seat the string. She watched with wonder, and admiration, along with a warm, contented and almost primitive sense of being protected. All his years of living in the Hinterlands were evident in the casual way he went about ensuring they were fed and comfortable for the night. None of what he'd
learned had come from books. In the past, she'd have dismissed him as an illiterate savage, but his survival skills proved that opinion wrong. Centuries of wrong opinions had kept their peoples apart.

“There,” he said. “It fits nicely. That's how you make a bow and arrow.”

She heard a rustle in the grass. Tao spun around as a rabbit leaped across the field. In one smooth move, he fired the arrow and killed the hare. “Dinner,” he said.

 

V
IOLENCE IN
K-T
OWN
. Markam urged his horse as fast as he dared through the crowded streets. “Move aside!” he bellowed. “Move aside or be run down.”

In his urgency to reach the ghetto gates, he didn't doubt his capability to do just that.

Citizens fell away from him, allowing him through. “Hooligans,” some protested, shaking their fists. Others pulled their children close, their angry, resentful glares following him. None knew the dual role he played, seeing him only for what he appeared: a guard dressed in blue and white, an instrument of a king they disliked more and more. Xim's arbitrary rules and the intimidating Home Guards tasked with enforcing them had tried the patience of all of Tassagonia, not just Kurel.

Xim ordering a search of the ghetto wasn't unexpected; Markam had stalled it for as long as he could.
But damn his dimwitted tool Beck for going in before the agreed-upon time, breaking the agreement they'd struck in the wee hours of the morning.

But when he reached the entrance to the ghetto, Beck was still on the outside, on Tassagon soil, his lean face sweating, his horse dancing nervously. His home guards milled around him. Not a Kurel was in sight, but a bow dangled from Beck's hand. Soldiers milled around the ghetto gates. His men—most of them still boys—were as pale as new snow, and as silent. Their expressions at Markam's arrival were more relieved than unwelcoming.

Markam pulled back hard on his mount. “There was to be no violence.”
My strangling of you excepted.

“I had to take care of a discipline problem.” Beck flicked a gloved hand at a couple of men. “Get that body out of here.”

It was then the soldiers moved apart far enough for Markam to see the soldier lying face down in the dirt, blood clotting in the dust. Two arrows were in his back.

Beck rasped, “Disobeyed a direct verbal order.”

“Which was?”

“He refused to ride through the ghetto gates.”

The rest of the guards listened in uneasy silence, clearly hoping they weren't the next ones ordered inside the ghetto, weighing mutiny over the threat of a sorcerer's curse.

A sense of hopelessness and remorse came over Markam. He himself had perpetuated the fear of the Kurel having the power to use disease as weapon. He'd put the fear of Uhrth into Beck in order to keep the man away from the ghetto. Now that decision had come back to haunt him.

Yet, a fighting force could not operate effectively if men refused orders, even when those orders frightened them.

Especially when the orders brought fear. He may never have served at the front in the war against the Gorr, but he'd shouldered the responsibility of keeping the palace and royal family safe. Fear grew each day as Markam saw more clearly that he might not survive to see his goal through.

“We can't execute soldiers one by one for the rest of the morning. We have to go in, Uhr-Beck,” he said. “You and I. We can't ask them to do what we won't do ourselves.”

The colonel coughed out a laugh. “Are you mad? Look at those deviants—those goddamn Kurel in there. Watching us. They don't even look human the way they stand there, no expression on their faces.”

Their horses pranced, head to head, sensing the tension between their riders and in the guards around them. “A cursory check,” Markam proposed. Then under his breath he added, “Just so we can say we ac
complished it. Then Xim's happy, and the Kurel are happy.”

Beck's narrowed eye pondered him first, then the streets on the other side of the ghetto gates. “They won't give us the fever?”

“Not if we don't provoke them.”

Beck's jaw slid back and forth, as if he were grinding his teeth. “I hope we find him in there—Uhr-Tao. What I wouldn't do to get a hold of that bastard. Six years I've waited for the chance. I've got his army, but it'd taste a whole lot sweeter sprinkled with his blood.” He kicked his mount. “Let's see if we can dig him up.” He waved at Markam. “After you, Field-Colonel.”

W
ITH THE RABBIT MARINATING
in salt, spices, wild onions and various other herbs they'd picked, and hanging from a branch in a waterproof sack high enough above ground to keep it away from any hungry visitors, they walked to the stream to wash away the day's dust and grime.

Tao stood guard to let Elsabeth bathe first. As she lifted her skirt and ventured barefoot into the water, she let out a gasp. “It's cold!”

“If you need help keeping warm, I can always trade in advance for the next reading lesson.”

“You're so considerate.”

He heard the humor in her reply. “You know where to find me.”

“Yes. Up there, covering your eyes.” She pinned up her hair, then splashed water in his direction. “Go on. And no peeking.”

He'd have answered that he wouldn't dream of peeking, but that would have been a bald-faced lie.
Chuckling, he turned around to give her privacy, one part of his awareness devoted to listening to his surroundings for possible danger, and the other trying to discern the difference between the various splashes, and just how she was using the cake of soap to sud her body. What he wouldn't have given to join her and help her get clean. To carry her, wet and eager, from the water to his bedroll and make passionate love to her—as he'd done over and over again in his mind since practically the first moment he'd seen her. He'd never waited so long for a woman he'd wanted so badly. He'd never waited at all.

You never hungered for a woman like this.

No. And he had the feeling his craving would grow even worse before the night was over.

 

T
AO HAD ROASTED THE
rabbit to mouthwatering perfection. There almost hadn't been enough for the two of them. “A little hungry?” he asked, amused, watching her while she ate—with her hands. Like a Tassagon. Utensils simply wouldn't have worked as well to tear apart the meat.

“I don't ever recall being this ravenous.” She popped a finger into her mouth, sucking it clean, then did the same to the next, cleaning each one as delicately as she could manage.

Until she noticed Tao's keen regard. His lips had formed an appreciative yet almost feral smile that
caused a now-familiar inner shiver. “It must be the outdoors,” she tried to explain, “that makes a person so hungry.”

“It can do that, yes.”

It was suddenly awkward, being made aware of their attraction so acutely, and not knowing what to do about it, how to quench the heat, and her curiosity.

Their
curiosity. Yes, he was interested in her, too—experienced Tassagon Uhr-warrior that he was. Tao seemed to have to force his attention away to throw another log on the fire. It was a very satisfying realization. Quite. She turned back to the fire, secure in her knowledge.

The glow of the scattered embers matched the ribbon of fire on the horizon as Little Lume disappeared. Sunset in the wilds entranced her. The entire sky was a color show—peach, then orange, crimson and finally a deep purple sprinkled with the first stars. The dusk stretched on and on, holding off the night, her first ever to be spent sleeping out under the stars.

Tao disposed of the remains of the meal, tossing the cleaned bones from the rabbit into the flames. It made her think of the bones the palace shaman had used to incite Xim into ordering a search of the ghetto. “I wish we knew what was happening at home,” she lamented.

“I have confidence Markam will make sure the search is conducted properly. He's protecting your
people. And mine.” The firelight flickered in his suddenly somber eyes, and she knew he was thinking of Aza.

“Markam will watch over her,” she said.

“I hope not too closely. Not under Xim's jealous eye.”

Her head jerked up. “So it's true. Markam's in love with her.”

“That was as much of a guess as the shaman's with the moat bones. Markam didn't say. I only suspect it. Has Aza told you anything?”

Elsabeth shook her head. “No, but I see it in her eyes sometimes. The feelings. But she's careful to hide them, even from me.”

“Good.” He added another log to the fire. “Aza is married to Xim, and she cannot, and must not, take up with another man. It is her duty to be his queen.”

“You'd be proud of her,” Elsabeth whispered. “I don't think she's neglected her duties, even for love. Both of you were taught that marriage is a duty above all else. A deliberate effort. For Aza, unfortunately, that's proven true.”

Tao poked a stick in the coals. “You disapprove. Minstrels sing of true love. A page right out of one of your storybooks, Elsabeth. A notion with little applicability to real life.”

She sat up straighter, her hands flat on the log by
her hips, to keep from flying up to shake some sense into the man.

Or kiss some into him.

“I believe differently,” she said.

“That is one of the most charming things about you. Your naïveté.”

“I'm not naive!”

“Innocent, then.”

She opened her mouth to argue the point, but couldn't. “I'm less innocent every day I spend with you, Tassagon.”

He was laughing now. “As if that idea of kissing lessons was mine.”

“I didn't see much protest on your part,” she pointed out. “Do you want to know what my aunt and Marina told me about you when we left this morning?”

“I have a good idea…”

“They said to keep you close.”

“Ah, but with my hands and feet tied, I bet. The only safe Uhr-warrior is a hog-tied Uhr-warrior. Am I correct?”

She laughed at his ridicule. “Actually, they were worried about you. Worried I'd pulled you into my rebellion. That my vow of revenge against Xim could end up killing you.”

His smile faded into a frown of insult. “Those two elderly ladies were fretting about me? Do they not feel I can take care of myself, as well as you?”

“They think very highly of you. It's why they don't want to see you being too quick to give your life to protect me, and also them, when we very much need you alive.”

He sat back on his log, pondering what she'd told him. “Well. How about that.” Briefly, a second or two, he seemed pleased. Then his lips compressed with faint worry, as if her description of the elders' concerns had translated into a challenge to look out for her. He checked that his blade and the bow were within hand's reach. “Get some sleep, Elsabeth. I'll stay up on watch.”

Her ears strained to hear any possible danger as she peered into the deepening dusk. “Do you expect trouble?”

“Only if I think of you overly much,” he admitted, lower.

“Is that such a bad thing?” She leaned forward on her log, inspired by her daring.

“You gave your word to the elders, and I gave mine—to keep you safe.”

Safe from the dangers of the countryside, or from him?

Turning a shoulder to her, he settled onto his blanket, reaching for the blade to whittle a sharper point on an arrow. He'd made it clear no answers would be forthcoming. Reluctantly, she lay down on her back on her own blanket near the fire. Sleep would be a long
time coming unless she gave up thinking of excuses to join Tao on his covers.

A scrape of boots on dirt and the sound of the mare blowing jarred her alert.

She sat up, her heart thumping. Tao brought a finger to his lips, and she nodded to let him know she'd gotten the message. He motioned for her to stay where she was. A glint of something in his hand. His blade.

Danger.
Who was here? Her mouth went dry. She'd been treating the trek like a fairy-tale adventure, when in reality they were in the wilds with no protection.

No, she had protection. This warrior.

And his backup was her.

Her fingers crept over the dirt to the blade he'd insisted she keep at all times. As Tao stepped silently toward the edge of the ridge, she combed it into her hand.

He stood in silhouette against a huge rising moon that cast the entire valley in silvery-blue light like a winter's dawn. He was so still he looked like a magnificent statue.

She rose to her knees on the blanket, the unwrapped blade in her sweaty hand.

Tao beckoned, whispering. “Elsabeth, come here.”

Barefoot, she joined him. He pointed. “Look there. By the streambed.”

She peered into the moonlit landscape. “I don't see anything,” she whispered back.

“See where the outcropping of rocks sits in the curve of the stream?”

She searched until three shadows she'd overlooked moved. The shadows coalesced into three riders on lean, gangly horses that looked bred more for speed than life behind a plow or wagon. Alarm flared like a burst of lightning. “Who are they?”

“Riders.”

“Riders of the Plains?” The third human tribe.

“Yes. There's a woman with them. See her?”

All three wore similar outfits with leather riding pants decorated with fringed seams and vests with painted designs. But sure enough, one of the riders was female, long legged with flowing white-blond hair, sitting as confidently as the males. The Riders noticed them then, as if their instincts told them they were being watched.

Tao brought his hand to his mouth and made a loud, warbling call. Her heartbeat accelerated as the same forlorn, warbling call came back to them after a definite delay. There was no doubt in her mind the trio of Riders were shocked to encounter them out here. Tao brought his fingers to his mouth and repeated the sound exactly, one more time.

The apparent leader of the group wheeled his horse around, galloping up the ridge to meet them, his bow drawn, his open vest flapping, the muscles of
his sculpted torso decorated with paint or tattoos that looked black in the moonlight.

Elsabeth would have squeaked and cowered behind Tao if the need to stand with her man hadn't been so strong.

Her
man? Yes. She sensed if she didn't give the appearance of a warrior's woman now, the chance would be lost.

The leader dismounted, his bow lowered but still fearsome as his lanky legs carried him closer. A shell bracelet encircled one wrist, a choker of more shells and glass beads was snug at the base of his throat. His hair was brown like Tao's but long, spilling around his shoulders. His eyes were blue like hers.

Tao's hand landed on her back, a firm, almost possessive touch. A sweep of his thumb told her he stood with her, and asked that she stand with him.

“Tao,” the rider said, the even teeth of his grin capturing the moonlight as he came forward, his hand extended. “Too long.”

“Too long, Pax.”

The men gripped each other in a brief but fierce embrace, moving back to smile some more. “You've gone Kurel?” Pax queried, running a curious but admiring stare up and down Elsabeth, head to toe. “She has hair like fire. I assume she has the personality to match.”

Elsabeth clamped her mouth closed lest she say
something to overturn this unheard-of encounter between the three tribes of humanity.

“Elsabeth, this is Pax, leader of the Blue Hills band. A brave warrior, and friend.”

Friends…with a Rider?

Reading her surprise, Pax said, “This is what happens when two parties, one of hunters and one of warriors, wait out an unexpected blizzard in the same cave.”

“A long three days,” Tao remembered.

“Made much warmer with the jugs of Blue Hills spirits.” As Tao laughed, Pax sniffed the air. “It smells like rabbit.”

“We had only one,” Tao apologized.

“We have six.” He turned and called to the other two riders. “Let us party by the light of the moon.”