The Last Warrior (7 page)

T
AO UNSCRAMBLED HIS
thoughts enough to figure out he still had a grip on the lip of the drainage pipe, while his legs were consumed by pain so severe he almost screamed.

The water was churning. A dark form swept past, as large as a warhorse. And another. Blood in the water: prelude to a feeding frenzy. Like hell if he'd take credit for defeating humanity's greatest enemy only to end up a forgotten morsel for moat pets.

Up.
He had to get higher. He had to get inside that pipe.

The Sarcen Swamps were tougher.
He chanted the thought, silently, as his breaths hissed loud in his ears. Rung by rung, he hauled himself up the rest of the way, vaguely aware of the two Kurel reaching for him, attempting to drag him farther into the pipe.

He was in. His burning legs wouldn't support his weight. The side of his face lay on the cold curve of the pipe, the stink of the seeping runoff water strong,
his awareness narrowing to encompass only the gator bite, a blinding, blistering sun of agony.

“Tao. Nod if you hear me.
Tao.
” The press of a cool, smooth palm on his cheek. “The noise. People may see. You have to move out of sight.”

Hands pulled at him. With their urging, he low-crawled a few yards and collapsed again. His pants were soaked with water and blood. He felt himself going into shock, staying conscious only because of his battlefield experience. He was burning alive, his flesh popping and sizzling while imaginary saws dug deep, back and forth, flaying the seared flesh—it was so bad a part of him wished he would black out. Inside he was screaming, screaming until his voice had shredded away to nothing.

“Get up…Tao… Can't stay here.”

He heard her voice.
Elsabeth.
Pulling…pulling him out of a dark place where he sensed he ought not venture…

“General. On your feet. Do it now!”

Tao jerked back to awareness. Another ragged breath and he remembered why he was there.

The loading docks.

His escape.

The Kurel were helping him up to his feet. He leaned heavily on Navi, who was surprisingly wiry and strong.

“That's it. You'll be all right. Hold him, Navi! Walk, Tao. Walk.”

Tao focused on the fierce female voice directing him, following it like a torch in the dark. “Step, and step. One more. Keep going. We're almost there.”

A loss of consciousness in a battle meant almost certain death. This might not be a battle like he was used to fighting, but it was war all the same. He'd been betrayed by his king and now was in the hands of Kurel, who viewed his people as little more than savages.

Any enemy of this king is an ally of ours. That's why I'm helping you,
Elsabeth had told him, revealing in her tone a very real determination to see Xim dead. He'd remain a recipient of her aid only for as long as he continued to be of use to her. The thought struck him in between waves of agony. He'd long ago learned to think his way out of situations in spite of trauma to his body. He would do whatever it took to survive to see his sister and his kingdom safe, even if it meant giving the Kurel temporary control of his life.

He staggered, pausing every few breaths to crush the urge to scream, to fall to his knees. To die.

“Keep going. You'll be all right.” Elsabeth's voice again. “You're going to live.”

The pledge of a sorceress. “Swear?” he rasped.

A pause. “Yes. I swear.”

Good. He'd hold her to it.

 

T
HEY PLOWED OUT OF
the pipe into the muggy haze of night. A pair of bored mules jerked their heads up
from grazing. The air smelled of manure and waste-water, and crushed late-summer grass. “Chun,
help,
he's hurt,” Elsabeth said, Tao's weight descending on her as his legs folded yet again.

Chun vaulted off the wagon, his expression both alarmed and determined, a competent young physician knowing what to do.

The general's nose was bleeding, his hair matted with dirt and sweat. Lacerations and welts crisscrossed his quivering hands and arms, and his knuckles were scraped raw. His face was so streaked with grime his gold-green eyes appeared to glow like embers in his agony. She'd seen few people in worse shape in all the years she'd helped her parents in the clinic. “Gator bite,” she told Chun.

“Great arks. Why were you in the moat?”

“Navi went for a swim.”

“I fell!” Navi protested in a loud whisper.

“He did,” Elsabeth assured Chun. “He slipped. It could have happened to any of us. The general went in after him.”

Chun took her place under Tao's arm, and the two men walked him to the covered wagon. The general's lips pulled back over his teeth, as he seemed to be fighting the urge to writhe or yell, obviously aware they'd made enough noise already. Tassagator splashes weren't unusual, but on a night like tonight, they couldn't risk
any
notice.

Her ears strained for telltale noise coming from
the kitchen. The docks were still deserted, but with each fleeting minute their escape window shrank. The kitchen staff would arrive at midnight, clanking pots and pans, lighting the fires as they prepared the kitchens for the morning meal.

“Let's go, get him in,” she urged. Chun jumped in first, pulling the general into the wagon after him. Straw covered a wood floor. Empty produce crates and high wooden sides provided cover from passing Tassagonians. A tarp was thrown over the open top of the cargo area.

Navi nimbly jumped into the driver's seat, then held his arm out to her. She grabbed his hand, and he hoisted her up to share the hard bench. A snap of the reins and they were off, the brims of their caps pulled low over their faces. A small lantern swung from the front rail and provided just enough light for Navi to steer. Then, laughter.

She jerked her gaze up. On a balcony high above, revelers partied, appearing blessedly ignorant of the fact that the general had escaped. Nor did they seem too concerned about their hero rotting in jail.
Xim's loyalists,
she thought, sickened by their disregard for anything other than their own personal advancement. The lives of anyone outside the palace, let alone in the ghetto, meant nothing to them. News of her parents' deaths had probably dropped into the muddy puddle of their ignorance with nary a ripple to account for it. It made stealing Tao from under their noses suddenly
more satisfying, the first measurable victory over the king since she'd come to work at the palace.

And not the last.

She turned narrowed eyes back to the moat bridge ahead. “Easy, Navi. Not too fast.” The urge to cross it at top speed was almost too fierce to resist, but it would draw too much attention. Curiosity was the last thing they could afford. If they were caught, Xim would have their heads, and quite likely everyone else's in the ghetto.

Across the bridge they rolled, as fast as they dared. The waters below were as smooth and opaque as a piece of charcoal silk. A leaf broke free of a tree and floated down to the water. A small splash as a fish rose to investigate, and Navi's filthy hands shook. “You all right?” she asked.

He hung his head guiltily. “Sorry about what happened is all.” His eyes slid sideways. “And thankful.”

She rubbed his arm. “Me, too. I thought we lost you.”

“I mean, I'm thankful for him—the general. He saved my life.”

“I know he did.”

It seemed the people's hero was now theirs, too. Tao had jumped in to save Navi with no hesitation, an act of raw heroism. It was obvious, looking at the man, that war had hardened him on the outside, but she now understood his toughness reached inside, too.
Navigating the pipes with gator venom in his blood, something described as being burned alive by the few who'd survived to tell about it, would take a superhuman strength of will. That kind of inner strength was likely the reason he'd survived to return home from the Hinterlands in the first place, surprising all of Tassagonia.

Especially Xim.
She tightened her jaw, remembering her vow to see the king deposed. Tonight, she'd come one step closer by rescuing Uhr-Tao from his clutches.

Yet, as much as general's feats kindled a burst of awe, they served to remind her that he was used to taking charge without consulting others, as willing to risk his life for the Tassagonian Kingdom as he was to save a young, insignificant accountant from the ghetto. Admirable, yes, but not when it was
the general's
life on which everyone's future balanced so precariously. He mustn't risk that life to save anything—or anyone—other than the kingdom. And the Kurel.

How was she going to be able to control such a man? She had to. No question. General Uhr-Tao's life was no longer in his hands; it was in
hers.

T
HE WAGON ROLLED OUT
the palace gates toward an old, rutted merchant road. They approached Kurel Town via the growing-fields and orchards along the capital's southern wall. While Navi drove the wagon at a deliberately normal pace, Elsabeth crawled over the driver's seat to join Chun, ready to assist with the general's medical care any way she could.

The physician's skilled hands hunted over Tao's body. “Bite wounds left thigh…and the right calf,” he said, having already sliced open the shredded trousers with bandage scissors. The punctures and gashes on Tao's legs were deep, discolored and seeping fluid as the angry, ragged edges swelled. “Without antivenin he'll lose his legs.”

Tao went rigid. “No, Kurel. Don't you take my legs.”

“No one's going to take your legs,” Elsabeth blurted out. Whether it was true or not, she didn't know, but she knew they weren't going to keep the warrior in
this wagon if they threatened him with the loss of his limbs. “There's antidote in the clinic.”

Chun reached into his medical bag. Made of black leather so worn it felt like the softest cotton, it had been her father's. Doc Ferdinand's satchel. Every time she saw it in Chun's possession, it brought tender memories pierced with a poignant sense of loss, and bitter anger. Always that.

The physician went to work cleansing the general's wounds. Sweating profusely, Tao was panting, almost too fast, his great fists opening and closing with each wave of pain. No man should have to endure such misery, even General Uhr-Tao. “A strap,” he gritted out, seeing her crouch down next to him. “Get me one.”

“A strap?”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “Between the teeth.”

Mercy. The man wanted to bite down on a leather strap to blunt the pain. It probably wasn't the first time, either. Primitive, when there was real pain medicine. Sad. “He's suffering,” she told Chun. “Do something.”

“I will, Beth. Hold on.”

Navi hit a pothole in the road. The wagon rocked. Tao grunted harshly, his first real expression of discomfort. Instinctively, she grabbed hold of his hand as she had for countless patients in her younger years. “I'm sorry. Chun has something to ease the pain.”

“Had worse.” Tao panted some more. “Took an arrow once. In the shoulder. Went straight through. Compared to that, this is like a fleabite.”

“If that's the way fleas bite in the Hinterlands, I hope none rode back with your soldiers.”

That drew a ghost of a smile, although his palm was sweaty in her fingers. If bravado helped him, so be it, but it was inconceivable that anything was worse than the horrific effects of the gator bite.

Another sharp jolt. Tao grimaced, his teeth bared, his hand clamping over hers. “Navi, please,” she said over her shoulder, pitching her voice just loud enough to be heard through the tarp. “Try not to hit every bump in the road.”

Chun told Tao, “Give me your arm, and hold it still. It's hard enough to keep my balance in this bouncing wagon, let alone get some medicine in you.”

Tao's expression was instantly suspicious. “Why my arm? It's my legs they got.”

“The medicine has to go in your arm to reach your leg,” Elsabeth explained, and he made the sign of Uhrth over his chest.
The Tassagons fear us as much as we do them.
“You can trust us, or you can lie here and suffer your fleabite—” The wheels hit another pothole and they bounced hard.

“Navi,” she scolded in the general direction of the driver's bench.

“Do it.” Tao's expression was resolute. “Wherever it needs to go.”

Chun cinched a band around Tao's forearm. Into a bulging vein he emptied one syringe, then another, taking pains to stow both out of sight in his pocket. Such items were preciously guarded. Possession was considered evidence of sorcery, a charge that carried a punishment of death. “I gave him drowse with some mondosh,” Chun told her.

Sedative and painkiller. It would act fast. “Better?” she asked the general, gently.

Tao's wary but surprised eyes found hers. In them she read clear relief, telling her the medication had helped some. “A magic potion.”

If only magic did exist. She shook her head. “Medicine.”

Tao's eyelids drooped. He was too wrung out and now too drugged to argue their methods. “Elsabeth,” he whispered thickly, his speech slurring, causing her to move closer. It seemed jarringly intimate, her face this close to his, their hands so tightly clasped—this man, this stranger, this enemy of her people who was also to be their savior, if all went as planned. “If I die, watch over Aza. Don't let her fight Xim over this.” Swallowing, he closed his eyes. “Over me.”

“I will,” she whispered. Just as she'd promised the queen she'd protect Tao. Her life was becoming a web
of promises; sticky and overlapping, they could very well entrap her.

Only then did Tao surrender to the drugs, his fingers relaxing in hers. A conscious decision to let go.

Maybe he trusts me.

It would make everything easier.

She sat back on her haunches, hanging on as the wagon bounced along. He'd looked so very noble in the homecoming parade, dignified and confident with his broad shoulders, perfect posture and lean athletic build. Even now, stripped of all the trappings of his profession, he looked no less noble lying on hay in muck-covered tatters.

No less a warrior.

“He's got a lot to learn if he's going to impress the elders,” she admitted to Chun. “Asking for straps to bite. Calling a painkiller ‘magic.' He knows nothing about our ways.”

“You're a good teacher. He'll pick it up fast.”

She sighed. “He'll have to.”

Both of them fell silent, their minds full of what they'd done. Tassagonia's greatest war hero lay wounded in the back of a mule-drawn produce wagon driven by a Kurel, sleeping off the effect of drugs he considered sinful. In all of history, nothing like this had happened. Not only was she witness to it, she was participating in it. She'd even instigated it.

When she was a child, she'd hungered to be like
the characters in the stories she loved, always out on another adventure, a circumstance far removed from the reality of the dull, quiet, studious life at which she'd constantly, secretly chafed.

How things had changed.

She'd wanted excitement.
Well, Beth, now you've gotten it.