WindBeliever (5 page)

Despite his intention to be disagreeable, Conar was intrigued by the twisting, winding roadway upon which they trod. He glanced at Yuri. “It would be hard to get an invading army through this section of landscape. Is there an easier way to get to the Palace?”

Yuri shook his head. “The Palace of the Tzars is as difficult to assault as is your own keep, Highness. There is a wide fjord that circles the Palace and empties into a smaller tributary of the Saint Steffen River. There is only one way over to the Palace and that is by ferry. The walls are heavily defended and there are warriors garrisoned around the fjord to protect the access to the WINDBELIEVER

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water. I have been told there are land mines between the garrisons and the fjord itself, but I don’t know that for a fact.”

“Land

....?”

“Land mines,” Yuri offered. “They are a type of bomb.”

At his companion’s confused expression, Yuri explained. “A type of explosive that will detonate if pressure is applied to it. You step on it, your horse steps on it, your carriage rolls over it and ....” He shrugged. “You explode.”

“Impressive,” Conar muttered to himself. He caught a glimpse of the pride on Yuri’s face.

“But any keep can be taken.”

Yuri flinched, knew he was being baited and tried to ignore it. “Anything can be tried,” he said softly.

Conar smiled to himself and looked up at the towering cliff wall beside him. Atop the highest crag a vulture sat watching them. He flapped his wings at their intrusion and then flew off, his scrawny neck arched before him as though it had been put on as an afterthought at his creation.

“Is everything in this country ugly?” Conar remarked.

“No more so than everything in your country!” Yuri snapped. He could have groaned at the look Conar sent his way, holding his breath for the reprimand he saw looming on that handsome face, but what came he could not have anticipated.

“I grow weary of your company,” Conar said in a dry, bored voice.

Yuri’s hand tightened on his reins. “I am sorry you will have to put up with it for awhile longer, Highness.”

“Not if I don’t wish to,” Conar answered. “Go away.”

“What?” Yuri turned his head, his brows drawing together with confusion. “I don’t ....”

“Try this on for size,” Conar thought to himself as he dug his heels into his mount’s flanks and shot ahead of the fuming Outer Kingdom warrior.

“Highness!” Yuri called out. He looked behind him at one of his fellow warriors, saw the man hunch his shoulders in fatalistic acceptance, and then grimaced. “Damn it!” He tapped his own horse’s sides and bolted forward behind the glistening palomino Conar McGregor rode with such reckless abandon.

Conar could hear the palfrey lumbering behind him and knew the glorious thoroughbred he was astride could easily outdistance the clumsier, heavier mount upon which Yuri rode with even more clumsy, awkward, and heavy seat.

Not that that was Conar’s intent. After all, he had absolutely no idea where he was going, but aggravating the older man had become a game with him and retaliation was its name. He heard his name called out in disgust, smiled to himself and urged his steed on to a greater speed. There was a sharp turn in the road ahead and he thought to make it, halt his mount, and turn to face the charging palfrey. To be just sitting there, wrists calmly crossed over the pommel, waiting, would set Yuri’s teeth sharper on edge.

Yuri yelled, but the golden horse and its golden-mane rider disappeared around the turn in the road in a blur of tawny light. “Son-of-a-bitch!” Yuri spat, digging his heels into the palfrey’s side for more speed, something the wide-flanked animal neither appreciated nor was willing to provide.

Another sharp turn in the road, a switchback curve to the left, awaited Conar as he took the first turn and he pulled his reins to turn his mount’s head. He was laughing, his face alive and happy for the first time in a long time as the palomino entered the second turn.

Then the smile was wiped from Conar’s mouth.

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The laughter stilled on his lips.

The happiness died on his face to be replaced by a stunned look of surprise.

Yuri galloped heavily into the first turn, heard a piercing shriek of an animal in distress, heard a shout of warning, a muffled scream, a loud crash, and drew in on his mount’s reins, further annoying and upsetting the charging palfrey who reared up on its hind legs in protest of such rude behavior on the part of its rider.

Not expecting the horse to react in such a manner, and not all that expert at riding to begin with, Yuri’s grip on his reins loosened, his backside began to slide off the mount’s rump, and he hit the ground amidst a cloud of dust and stomping hooves. He would later thank his god that he had at that moment enough presence of mind to roll away from the kick the palfrey aimed at his head before the flashing hooves could connect with his noggin. He flipped over in the dust, came to land up hard against a jutting stone that gouged a small hole in his back, and yelped in surprise and pain.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” he bellowed, putting a hand to his injured back.

The palfrey, well rid of her rider and free to make her own statement, reared up once more, her hooves waving a fare-thee-well, and then came to ground with a thud that Yuri later swore shook the ground beneath his rump. With a nicker of disdain, the animal switched her tail, turned around and cantered back the way she had come, leaving Yuri cursing and spitting dust.

“Bitch!” he yelled after her. “Get back here!”

The palfrey nickered and continued on.

Wincing with pain, Yuri gingerly pushed himself from the ground, cursing Conar McGregor soundly as he did. He began to hobble his way to the second turning in the road, slapping at the dust on his pantaloons, his face set in a fierce scowl.

Boris Mavolachek, one of the Outer Kingdom warriors who had shadowed Conar McGregor for over five years, saw the palfrey trotting sedately toward him and the other men and reined in his mount. A look of worry, mixed with a look of coming trouble to be dealt with, flitted across his coarse features. He looked past the horse to the turn in the road and sighed.

“Get that mount, Alexi,” he told one of the other men. He nudged his own horse forward, shaking his head, wishing he had become a farmer instead of a warrior. He could be plowing a field in the Uralap foothills right about now instead of cantering into the good Lord only knew what kind of trouble. If his sixth sense had taught him anything over the last thirty-nine years, it had taught him when trouble was just around the corner. That sixth sense was yelling to him at that moment and Alexi felt a shiver of dread go down his spine.

Yuri stopped, leaned against the stone wall beside him and winced with pain. He put his hand to his back, felt a sticky wetness on his fingers, and then held them up to see a smudge of blood on his fingertips. The rock had done more than gouge him. It had broken the skin. With a curse on his lips that would have turned the air blue had it not been filled with dust, Yuri pushed away from the wall and made his way around the second bend in the road.

He came to a stop, mouth open, eyes wide, a grunt of shock pushing out of his wide chest.

“Don’t just stand there!” Conar yelled at him. “Do something!”

As Boris Malovachek walked his mount around the second turning in the roadway, he groaned. With a sigh of weariness, he swung his leg over his horse’s head and slid deftly to the ground. He looked to where Yuri was standing, mouth agape, and knew the warrior couldn’t have budged if someone had set a firecracker under his ass.

“One moment, Highness,” Boris said. He tied his mount’s reins to a scraggly pine sapling that had pushed its way through a crack in the cliff wall and then strode forward.

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“Get this thing off me!” Conar yelled, but stopped when Boris walked past him to a hay wagon that was lying partially on its side, propped precariously up against the jagged cliff wall.

“Hey!”

Boris flinched at the shout, but continued to make his way to the hay wagon’s driver who was half-lying, half-sitting in the wagon’s seat.

“Are you all right, Highness?” Boris asked, beginning to unhitch the traces which held an old nag to the hay wagon.

“Hell, no, I’m not all right!” Conar bellowed at him. “I’ve got a damned crate pinning me to the damned ground, as if you haven’t noticed!”

“I’d like to pin his damned ass to a damned barn wall,” came a muffled snort from the hay wagon’s buckboard.

“Don’t move, Highness,” Boris advised. “You could be hurt.”

“Could be?” Conar screeched at him. “I’ll be damned lucky if my damned legs aren’t broken!”

“He’ll be damned lucky if I don’t break his damned head!” the driver said loud enough for Conar to hear.

“Go to hell, you son-of-a-bitch!” Conar roared. “You and that piece of shit mule could have killed me!”

“I might yet!” was the just as furious reply. “And my horse isn’t a mule!”

“Why you lily-livered ....”

“Highness, please,” Boris said, wincing as he led the old nag away from the wagon. “There is no need … “

“Is she hurt?” the driver cut him off, trying to look up from such an uncomfortable position to see the horse.

“I’ll check,” Boris answered as he ran his hand over the old nag’s legs and withers.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Conar yelled, staring open-mouthed at Boris’ actions. “I’m lying in the middle of the road with a wooden crate on me and you’re checking that goddamned nag first?”

“That goddamned nag is worth a hell of a sight more than you, you loudmouthed, uncivil bastard!” the driver shot back.

Yuri blinked, groaned. “Oh, Lord,” he breathed.

Struggling furiously to get out from under the heavy crate, Conar pushed and strained, but he couldn’t budge the weight. His face was red with fury, sweat running down the livid features to make runnels in the dust covering his complexion. His mount stood behind him, snorting softly, pawing the ground, rolling its expressive eyes at his predicament. Stretching out its long neck, the palomino butted Conar’s shoulder gently and nickered as though to urge him to get up.

“Go away!” he hissed, pushing the stallion’s golden face from his own as the horse nuzzled his neck. “Go!”

“The nag isn’t hurt, Highness,” Boris stated.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass if it is or not!” Conar hooted. “Get this damned crate off me!”

A heavy sigh of contempt could be heard from the seat of the hay wagon. “Who is that loudmouthed bastard, Boris?”

Boris risked a look at Yuri, found that warrior still standing in the road, face pale, lips pursed tightly together. He shrugged and turned his attention back to the driver.

“Prince Conar McGregor,” he answered.

“I should have known,” was the stiff reply. “Get me down from here, Boris.”

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“Not before he gets me…”

“Go to hell!” was the driver’s immediate shout.

“Why you little ...”

“Be careful what you say, Highness,” Boris warned. He gripped the side of the hay wagon and began to pull.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Conar yelled at him, watching as the big man got the wagon to rocking and then stepped quickly out of the wagon as the contraption began to tilt downward.

“Hang on, highness!” Boris yelled as the wagon started to right itself on the roadway.

The wagon crashed to the ground with a splintering sound. The driver flew sideways, jerked away from a tight hold on the buckboard’s high rim as the axle broke. Boris rushed forward, grabbing the driver before the momentum of the fall could carry them both to the ground, but he misgauged his footing and the two of them fell heavily to the hard-packed dirt. A loud whoosh of air was forced out of both their lungs as they landed.

“Serves you right!” Conar laughed, pointing at the sputtering, coughing pair. “I hope you choke on that damned dust, you peasant bastard!”

What came at him over the crate brought Conar’s laughter to an immediate halt. A flying fury of flashing white teeth, drawn back over snarling red lips--sharp, wickedly-pointed nails curved into talons of destruction, gleaming hazel eyes that glowed with absolute fury were like something out of a nightmare. Had those portends of lethality not been attached to a rather pretty, all too-feminine face, Conar would have sworn he was being attacked by a were-tigeress. As it was, the nails that gouged the undersides of his arms as he put them up to block his face, and the spitting fury that sent honey-flavored saliva into his astonished face, the soft body that barreled into his own, knocking him flat beneath its weight, left no doubt in his mind that this little harridan was intent on blinding him, maiming him, or both.

“Highness!” Boris shouted, hurrying forward. “You must not do this!”

“I’m not doing anything!” Conar yelled back as he twisted his face away from the fingers driving toward his cheeks. He managed to get a fairly good grip on the woman’s wrists, but she was strong, mindless rage giving her more strength than a woman should have had who was half-lying atop him, her feet and legs draped over the wooden crate, her upper torso wiggling against his chest.

“For the love of god, Yuri, help me!” Boris yelled as he grabbed the woman’s feet and tried to pull her back.

Yuri flinched, saw what was taking place and shook his head. “Oh, Lord.”

“Let me at him, Boris!” the woman screeched, kicking out at the hands which were trying to pull her backwards over the crate.

Conar stared into her eyes, eyes wild with her anger, and wondered if those gleaming, hell-bent orbs were really hazel or green. He couldn’t tell. All he knew was that her squirming on him, the tips of her heaving breasts burning live hot coals through his sweat-dampened shirt, had given him one hell of an erection beneath the covering of the wooden crate on his lower body.

The knowledge did little to improve his own temperament.

“Get this bitch off me, Makalovek,” Conar hissed, avoiding the spittle she aimed at his face.