WindDeceiver (24 page)

“Get him! Do not let the infidel dog escape us this time!”

The words seemed to penetrate his mind like red-hot shafts and he managed to shake away the confusion clouding his mind in order to twist over and scramble to his feet. Digging his boots into the sucking sand, he pushed himself up and started to run for his mount. The animal was rearing up, pawing at the air with its deadly hooves, whinnying loudly as a stranger tried to grab its reins. The man was shouting at the animal, frightening it even more, in his attempt to control it.

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Off to his right, there were seven warriors bearing down on him, having caught sight of him as he came to his feet. To his left, five more were running as fast as they could toward him. He wondered where they had come from, how he could have missed knowing they were there, hiding behind the dunes, lying in wait.

“Because you have no power here, Conar,” that wicked inner voice reminded him.

He zigzagged away from a grasping hand and caused two of the attackers to run into one another. He heard the solid impact of their bodies and grinned malevolently as he managed to dodge a third attacker’s reaching hand. He knew if he could only make it to his horse and dispatch the bastard trying to grab Mistral’s reins, he might have a chance to outrun the men intent on capturing him.

Something hit him in the small of the back, making him yelp with pain, and he stumbled, going down to his all fours in an effort to keep from pitching face-first into the sand. He heaved himself forward, struggling crab-like to keep his forward momentum going. With concentrated effort, he was able to gain his feet once more and keep running, his backbone throbbing from the impact of whatever had hit him. He risked a look behind him and was stunned to see his attacker’s catching up to him. They were only ten or so feet away.

Putting his fingers up to his mouth, he whistled for his mount and he saw Mistral’s hooves crash downward, sending pale sand flying beneath its mighty forelegs as the horse lowered its head and plunged toward him. The animal was no more than forty feet away, coming at him fast.

“Catch him, You fools!”

Thirty feet and closing, Conar thought, pumping his legs faster in his attempt to get to Mistral.

“On your lives, do not let him escape this time!”

Twenty feet and he could hear the snorting breath of the steed.

“Get

him!”

Only ten feet away and he could see the foam on his mount’s mouth. It had the bit between its teeth, but was slowing, digging its massive hind legs into the sand.

He reached up as the horse came to a shuddering stop beside him. Grabbing a handful of mane, he swung himself into the saddle and yanked hard on the reins, knowing Mistral wouldn’t fight him even though he had the bit in his teeth. The horse’s head arched to the right and the hooves dug into the sand.

“McGregor!”

He kicked his heels into Mistral’s sides and the steed sidestepped a few feet before turning.

Escape was ahead of them in the open desert and he leaned over the horse’s neck, kicking it in the flanks to make it bolt.

Someone grabbed his leg and yanked. His head jerked around and he tried to kick out even as he felt himself falling.

“Alel, no!” he heard himself shout.

The horse slipped out from beneath him and he landed hard on his tail, an agonizing shaft of pain tearing up through his spine. Hands were all over him, grabbing at him, pulling, tearing at his clothing and he rolled away, trying to escape. Once more he was grabbed, held, and he bucked against the strong hold, landing a solid kick in some man’s stomach. The hold on his left side vanished and he managed to twist away from the hole on his right.

He came up off the sand like a madman, spitting and hissing, kicking and lashing out with expert blows that caught many of his attackers unaware. He broke one man’s nose with a spinning WINDDECEIVER Charlotte Boyett-Compo 114

back kick. Another fell as the base of Conar’s palm drove under a thrusting chin to dislocate a jaw.

Another kick felled a brawny attacker who was trying to toss a lasso over Conar’s head.

“
Watch him! Watch him!”

His sword came free of the scabbard and the Deathwielder lopped one head off, struck a hand from a reaching arm of another on the backswing. The deadly blade plunged into a soft belly and tore entrails, slid out to empty those entrails onto the sand. A lunge took the life of one attacker and caused another to back off in alarm.

“Come on,” Conar whispered, his sword point quivering as he jabbed at another opponent.

The attackers, twenty or so that he could count at a glance, began to back off. They had encircled him, had completely hemmed him in. There were too many for him to take on at one time. His best ploy was to cause a break in the circle around him and try once more for the stallion that was standing beyond the circle, its wide sides heaving.

He turned around, looking for an opening, seeing none and realizing he was in deep, deep trouble here. If they took it in their minds to rush him, he didn’t stand a chance. A few men would die before he went down, he thought, but not enough to count. They’d have him and there would be nothing he could do to stop them.

“But I’ll cause as much damage as I can before I fall,” he thought as he struck out at one of the men, annoyed when the circle moved further back, out of his reach. He was able to taunt them when the circle broke on his left and a man came striding into the enclosure of attackers.

Instantly alert, Conar swept a fleeting glance over the tall pike the man carried in his hands.

He snarled as this new threat twirled the pike in his right hand, then lowered the point to the ground in a dismissive gesture meant to tell Conar he viewed no threat.

“Yield, now, McGregor,” the man called out to him. “and you will not be hurt. Duel with me and you will be.”

There were murmurs among the attackers, nods of agreement. The men put away their swords, clearly confident this warrior would subdue him. The insult could not have been clearer.

“I don’t know who you are--“ Conar began, but the bark of this new man cut him off.

“I am called Belial,” the man answered, “and I am your defeat, McGregor.” He brought the pike up, point toward Conar.

There was something truly evil about the warrior who advanced on him. If he hadn’t known any better, he would have sworn the man was not human. He was big, bigger than Lydon Drake had been at the Labyrinth, and he was more powerfully built than that reprobate had been.

His head sat atop a massive, bulging neck and his naked chest gleamed in the bright moon glow overhead. As he circled Conar, moving in closer with each circuit, his glaring eyes did not waver from Conar’s. He advanced hunched over, his pike at the ready, a tight grin of challenge on his lips.

Few men, ordinary men Conar clarified in his mind, had ever caused him real fear. Tohre had, but there again, Kaileel Tohre had been no ordinary man; he was a demon in human form.

Tolkan Coure had. Tymothy Kullen had. Kullen had nearly killed him; had caused him more physical pain than any man alive, Tohre included. Lydon Drake had to some degree, as had Appolyon Kiel, but the fear he had had of them had been during a time when he was not really at himself. All of those men were dead now and, with them, any fear he had of ordinary men.

Until

now.

Belial jabbed out with his pike, catching Conar off guard, but the Serenian was able to jump back away from the vicious poke.

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“Wool gather on your own time, McGregor,” the man crooned. “I am as unlike those puny shits as you were unlike your worthless twin.”

If Conar was surprised by the man’s knowing his innermost thoughts, he did not let it show.

His grip tightened on his sword and he sidestepped, just as his opponent was doing, coming ever closer to the pike and the man who held it.

“Who sent you?” Conar asked, close enough now to stare into eyes that were completely devoid of mercy.

“Your master,” Belial replied.

Conar turned his head and spat in the sand. “I have no master!”

“You will soon learn that you do,” came the smooth answer and once more the pike was thrust out, its contact neatly blocked by Conar’s sword. Calm speculation entered the man’s beefy face and his grin widened. “You have quick reflexes, McGregor, but they will prove useless against brute strength.”

Conar had no doubts that the man was strong. His bulging arm muscles and the ridges on his upper abdomen gave evidence of that. The cords of this man’s thighs stood out so sharply against the turn of his hip and ankles, he might well have been able to strangle a man between his legs.

“Would you care to find out for yourself?” Belial quipped, easily catching the vague thought that had flown through Conar’s mind.

He struck out with his sword and the parry was neatly blocked with the pike. Conar was thrown back, pushed easily away as Belial flicked his wrists. There wasn’t even a nick in the thick pole the man held so negligently in his hands to indicate the Deathwielder had done any harm to the pike.

“Petrified wood,” Belial laughed. “Indestructible.” He swung the pike to the left and the wood connected hard with Conar’s right wrist, sending a numbing pain all the way up to the Serenian’s shoulder.

He was outclassed, he thought as he watched the man closing in on him. There was no way he was going to be able to win in this. Even should he lay down his sword and surrender, he thought this bastard might still beat him to the ground just for the pleasure of watching him bleed and hearing him beg quarter.

“You are right,” came the amused reply.

From somewhere in his soul, Conar dredged up all the hidden reserves of his courage and lashed out at the man, in an attempt to overpower him just long enough to break free.

He didn’t succeed.

The pike went low, in an arc that swept his legs out from under him and he fell, rolling away from the pike as it drove down into the sand only inches from his face. He heard the whoosh of the hit and felt sand spraying into his face, but he managed to come to his feet and turn, expecting the man to lunge at him with the pike. He wasn’t prepared for the wood to beat against his shins once more in an excruciating hit that toppled him once more to the ground. This time the blunt end of the pike jabbed viciously into his hip and caused his right leg to go instantly numb, the pain not even registering. He tried to scramble away, but the pike caught him his left thigh, causing instant agony before it tapped him hard on the right shoulder with enough force to make him drop his weapon.

The pike jabbed him in his upper back and he gasped for breath as the air was knocked from his lungs. Gagging, trying to fend off the next hit that took him high on his left ribs, he doubled over in the sand, trying to cover his head to keep the heavy pole from caving in his skull.

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“I’m not going to kill you, McGregor,” he heard his attacker drawl. “I’m only going to punish you.”

Once more the pike jammed into his hip, flipping him over to his back and he stared up into calm, deadly eyes that regard him down the length of the pike as the tip of the pole settled in the hollow of Conar’s throat.

“Do you yield?” Belial inquired.

He tried to shake his head, to deny the defeat, but the pole pressed harder, cutting off his air.

“Do you yield?”

He was aware of the other men closing around, standing over him, staring down at him with laughing faces. He tried to curse them, but the pole’s weight went deeper into his flesh.

“Do--you--yield--?”

the man above him stressed.

There was no air left in his lungs and the pain of the pole’s point being pressed into his flesh had already caused a slight trickle of blood to seep from the wound and run down the side of his neck.

The tip went further into his flesh.

“Do you yield?”

“Aye,” he gagged, wincing with the pain the one word brought as it was forced from his lips.

The pressure lessened.

“Say

it.”

He looked up at the man’s face through a red haze of pain and anger and humiliation. He wanted to deny the words, to throw them back in his tormentor’s face, but the point once more pressed hard into his aching throat. He groaned with the pain.

“Say it, McGregor,” his enemy demanded.

Conar knew he would be no good to anyone if he were dead. As much as it shamed him to say the words, he knew he had no other choice. He said what he had never, ever said to any other man.

“I yield,” he croaked.

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Jaleel Jaborn paced the confines of his throne room like a caged panther inspecting his lair.

He had been waiting for well over two hours for the Warriors of the Abyss, his personal elite fighting force, to return with Conar McGregor. Just twenty minutes before, Rasheed and Tjorn had ridden through the steel gates of Abbadon Fortress with the Tzarevna Catherine Steffenovitch. The memory of it made Jaborn pause and smile.

She had been bound securely within the confines of a luxurious Bersian tapestry, her wrists and ankles tied with silk scarves so as not to damage the tender flesh. Rasheed and Tjorn had to hold her up to keep her from falling forward because of the restraints. She had been gagged with another silk scarf and the first thing she had done upon being relieved of the constriction around her mouth was to shout out her hatred of him.

“I mean you no ill, Your Grace,” Jaleel had told her. “If my men have dared to harm you in any way ….”