Lords Of The Dark Fall - Fabian (31 page)

“So, you will help me with the madjina?”

She shook her head. “I may love you, but I won’t be your pushover. The answer is still no.”

A look of surprise quickly replaced the flash of disappointment.

“You love me?”

She smiled wearily. How could he look so surprised, after all they’d been through? At least, she hoped that was surprise. What if it was shock and she’d misinterpreted everything?

No, he’d already said his feelings ran to more than like. No man touched a woman the way he did without feeling something for her.

“I was planning to tell you in one last grand gesture before you disappeared off home. When it wouldn’t look as if I was trying to influence you. This doesn’t have to change anything—“

His fingers stopped the rest of her babbling. He let them linger on her bottom lip before stroking them lightly over her cheek. He was silent for so long she thought he must surely be composing her a dear Jane letter.

“How can it change things when we are only voicing what we both already know?”

“You knew I loved you?” Widening her eyes, she kept her tone flippant, a little embarrassed now at having spoken when she’d been so determined to hold back.

“I was speaking of us both. In matters of the heart I am but a child. This feeling though, here inside of me.” He took her hand and guided it to the centre of his chest. “When I look at you, my heart clenches and I soften inside in a most alarming manner. Is that love?”

“Oh, Fabian.” His cheeks had taken on a decidedly pink tinge. “Only you would find love alarming. But now you mention it, isn’t it always? I’ve never worried more about anything since the day I realised my feelings for you. My hair will be grey by the time this is over.”

“No. You will be old and wise when your hair turns. As it should be.”

“And you won’t be here to see it.”

“If I win my fight and find my magic that may be the case.”

Honest to the last.
She couldn’t ask more than that.

“So where does this leave us?”

“Us?”

He mouthed the word, as if testing the sound of it, the implication. She’d stepped over a line with that word and there was no going back. She wasn’t martyr material, no matter how much she fantasised about giving everything up for love. Of watching him walk into his sunset while she waved him off with hidden tears.

Women spent entirely too much of their time sitting around waiting for men to notice what was under their noses. For them to make all the decisions. Nothing wrong with letting a man know you wanted him.

As long as you were strong enough to deal with the rejection.

A small voice in her head urged caution. From the look on Fabian’s face, she’d said enough. The rest was up to him. Giving voice to her feelings had at least clarified the thoughts jumbling her mind.

She wasn’t letting him go without a fight.

Us. Not a word that figured large in his vocabulary. Some rulers used the royal “We” to denote they served and acted for their people. He’d preferred to hog all the glory for himself.

Asshole would be the word Tig used to describe that man. He was beginning to agree with her.

She’d left him to his thoughts, busying herself with the business of eking out an existence from this thing she called a life.

Stay. Why not? Build a life here with this woman who would excite and entertain him. Who would love and nurture him. All that stood in the way was the no small matter of pride. The blaze in his heart had died down to embers, but it was still there, a small burning need to prove himself in this strange world. To go home and salvage his family honour.

Now he knew about the madjina, he could do no less than meet her and test her ability. Then he would decide what to do with that knowledge. How better to show his love for Tig than walking away from the opportunity to go home?

Would a return to his immortality merely condemn him to an eternity of worrying about the woman he left behind?

Humanity was indeed a curse. This growing conscience a weight about his neck, dragging him back to unanswered questions when he wished to move forward and act.

“Want to come for a ride?”

Tig called from the middle of the yard, wiping soil from her hands after sowing seeds he would never see grow.

“We need to get out of here for a bit, and I want to show you something. Let’s take out the Sunday rig. Go out like a proper lady and gentleman. What do you say?”

Her abundant hair hung in a rope at her back. Clothes that might once have fit her hung from her bony frame. Her eyes made dark shadows in the paler oval of her face. And yet he desired her. He who had never looked past the physical found in her a beauty that startled him. How many women like her had he missed over the years?

Fabian pushed to his feet. Thinking that way would drive him insane.

“Will we not be seen?”

“We’ll not go far.”

“Then it is a good idea. I’ll fetch a shirt.”

“Also a good idea. Cafino needs a run out. If we’re careful we shouldn’t be spotted.”

Oh, to be able to walk free without the need to skulk and hide.
Soon,
he thought,
soon.
Become warlord and walk proud and without fear. 

Even if he decided to remain here, the challenge would still have to be met. Would Warrington allow a man of his bearing to quietly make happy families with Tig? Not a chance.

Bend his knee and declare his allegiance to Warrington? He poked through the wardrobe looking for a clean shirt that fit him. Throwing in his lot with the warlord would solve so many problems. And throw up a slew of new ones. No warlord would trust a stranger who turned up out of nowhere with some of his past plain-written on his body, in the way he spoke and acted.

No clean shirts. Tig had neglected the washing recently. A quick search through the trunk parked beside the wardrobe revealed neatly-folded knit garments, soft with age and a little musty, but some looked large enough. He pulled out a blue collarless jerkin that reminded him of the oiled sheep-wool tunics worn by the fisher-men in the world he’d left behind.

No longer his world. Resign to that and save everyone the pain that was surely to come. A quick sniff of his armpits told him he did indeed reek of his earlier training-session. Quickly, he wrung out a cloth in the wash-basin on the dresser and made a quick swipe of each. Then he pulled on the jerkin and was unable to resist a quick peek in the mirror. The man reflected looked a little more comfortable with his lowly state. Blue suited his dark complexion and short hair had its advantages, especially when living so primitively. Pity though. It would have been good to feel Tig’s hands combing through the black strands that once reached past his waist.

He finished the ensemble with her father’s best jacket. The Sunday rig required a best jacket.

By the time he made it downstairs, Tig had changed into a no-less shabby, but slightly cleaner pants and shirt over which she wore a light jacket he hadn’t yet seen. She was leading a restless Cafino from the barn. Fabian sympathised with the beast. A bit of freedom would do them all some good.

“Here,” she said, pulling a length of striped cloth from her jacket pocket.“ Wind that around your head and face in case we’re seen. Can’t do much about the size of you but at least they won’t see your face.”

Pushing down the hint of disappointment at still having to hide, he wound the scarf into a d’hash, leaving only his eyes free. The damp earth smelled rich and alive. New leaves on the spindly trees lining the fence quivered under the weight of bright raindrops. Long-winged blackbirds dived and danced against the blue of the sky.

Together they harnessed Cafino and hitched him to the rig.

“You don’t mind riding shotgun?” she said emerging again from the barn with the rifle. “Will look better if I drive. That won’t upset your manly sensibilities?”

“I had little need to ride in carriages,” he said accepting the weapon. “And I always had a driver when I did.”

Tig jumped into the driver seat of the four-seat conveyance with the practiced ease of someone who’d done this all her life. “It’s not likely, but if questions are asked, you’re my cousin over the valley.”

“You have cousins so close?” He climbed up beside her. Hid the gun in the well at his feet.

“No, but Warrington may not know that. Doubt he’s got round to a census of all his subjects yet. “

“He will not get the chance. With the madjina in the picture, I see little need to wait. I aim to challenge him soon.”

The slight slump of her shoulders told him he’d spoiled the mood. Too used to speaking his mind with no thought for the feelings of others. The honesty he’d promised her he must now learn to temper with tact. 

With a flick of the reins, she urged Cafino forward. They both swayed at the sudden lurch of the conveyance, and then they were out of the gate and bumping along the dirt-track that served as road to her property, the wind blowing their hair.

He was at a loss as to what else to say to her. So far, everything was going to plan. The bid for power, the discovery of a mage. The chance to realise his dream of going home. All except for the no-small detail of falling in love and giving himself the biggest reason to stay.

By Jopra, of all the things to keep him from home, he’d not expected this.

“That’s the Gerrely’s place over there.” Tig pointed the whip at the burnt-out skeleton of a farmhouse at the far end of the field skirting the track. “Some say the old widower borrowed too much from the wrong people. They killed him and took the children. No one’s seen hide nor hair of them since.”

“I would have done the same.” Fabian inspected the ruin, visualising the screams, the pleas for more time to repay. The cold mercy in the hearts of the debt-collectors. A familiar scene.

“But not any more.”

Tig squeezed his thigh to show she meant it as a statement of fact rather than a question he must consider. To his relief, he did not have to think about his answer.

“No, not any more. What of the protection? Why did Carson allow this?”

“He’d been losing his grip for a while. One of the reasons I petitioned for a divorce. He let me go because he knew a challenge was brewing. He was good like that.”

“I thank him for it.” Fabian looked keenly around, taking in it all in. Nothing like the lush wooded valleys and lake-lands of Anxur. Here were flat, open spaces covered in brown dirt. A few scattered patches of scrubby grassland. The occasional rise of stone forming a higher ridge. Through it all ran the unmade road that appeared to form the main artery joining the farms and population centres. The road they may have taken to Warrington’s camp.

Tig took a left, turning the rig onto a narrower track running at right angles to the burnt-out farm. The warrior in him could not help scanning the ruins for vagrants who might rush them and try to steal the rig and whatever else they could get their hands on. He found himself instinctively touching the rifle with his boot.

“It’s okay. No danger there. Place is deserted.”

“In my world it would have been occupied by at least three families by now. Why did Carson let it lie derelict with land to be farmed?”

“Because everyone thinks it’s haunted, that’s why.”

Her look dared him to challenge the tale. The site of traumatic death often harboured restless spirits.

“I can see why,” he said as they passed. Too still. Too quiet. Even the wind had ceased to blow, as if it did not wish to disturb whatever spirits lurked here.

“You’re a believer then? Some folk swear they’ve seen old man Gerrely sitting on the remains of the porch, others say they’ve heard the squeak of the rocker. Never seen anything myself. Anyway, with all the superstition, this is the perfect place for you to meet your madjina.”

“You would condone a meeting?” He couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. Nor stop the quick race of his heart at the feeling that events were about to overtake them all.

The rig clattered past the derelict building and made towards the remnants of what must have been the barn. One half lay in a heap of wood and stones, the other was relatively intact. Tig pulled up Cafino and put on the brake.

“No. But since you’re doing it anyway I’m going to do my damndest to make sure the bitch doesn’t take your worth and send you straight to hell. You can meet her here with me at your side and that rifle in my hand. She says anything I don’t like, she gets a bullet right between the eyes.”

Tig jumped down before he could answer, beckoning him to follow her into the whole part of the barn. “Of course, it’ll cost to get her to come out here. Hal’s financing it?”

“As part of his investment, yes.”

Grabbing the rifle, he jumped down after her, feet crunching on the loose gravel scattered about the yard. Tig moved without caution, so, barring any undead, he guessed the place must be as safe as she’d implied. He pulled back the bolt, arming the rifle just in case. 

This close, the aura of loss and grief seemed amplified. Every corner filled with silent echoes. A sudden shudder shook his whole body and for a moment so brief he thought he’d imagined it, Tig, the barn, the ruins beyond, all faded and then just as quickly came back into focus.

“Are you okay?”

Tig’s anxious face looked up at him. He steadied himself, his mind still trying to make sense of what had happened. Throwing out an arm, he tested the space in front of him, to the side. Everything back to normal. Still firmly grounded here on this plane.

“Yes, I think so. For a moment I was somewhere else.”

“What? Something spooked you. Did you hear something?”

“No.” Pulling the scarf away from his face, he pivoted slowly, trying to pinpoint the anomaly. “For one brief moment I thought I was still falling. And now, nothing.”

Instinctively, Tig caught hold of his hand, anchoring him in place. Had he imagined it and become caught up in the dark atmosphere of this abandoned farm?

“Are you a sensitive? Is that what you were feeling?”

“I was sensitive to places where the veil between dimensions thins and bleeds. All my people are. The Dark Fall is once such place of which we were the guardians. On this world, though I have felt nothing. Until now.”