WindDeceiver (7 page)

And that made him frown even more.

“You have women among the Wind Force,” Balizar had protested when Conar had told him Rachel could not be allowed on one of the missions.

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“Not in the Cadre!” Conar had shouted. “This is not women’s work! It’s dangerous even for a man!”

“Rachel is one of the best archers we have. She has no equal with a crossbow,” Asher had protested, not knowing why their new leader’s stare had hardened and become fixed and glaring.

“I don’t give a rat’s pecker if she can hit an ant’s ass at a hundred paces ….”

“She can,” Balizar had laughed.

“Not in my cadre, she won’t!” had come the irrational response.

But despite his shouting and cursing, Balizar had let the damned bitch go and, much to Conar’s chagrin, she had saved the lives of two men with her quick thinking and expertly placed quarrels.

“She’s good, Khamsin,” Balizar had assured him. “She knows what she’s doing.”

“Aye, and some fool will lose his life trying to protect her one of these days!” Conar had grumbled.

It hadn’t helped when the woman in question had come storming into his tent, berating him for trying to keep her from doing her job.

“I have been going out on missions with the men since I was sixteen!” she’d informed him.

“I need no nanny to hold my hand!”

Her flashing eyes and angry face, even the way she had phrased her words, reminded him so vividly of Liza, it had cut him to the quick and he had lashed out at Rachel, wanting to hurt her as much as she was unknowingly hurting him.

“And what’ll happen if you get caught, bitch?” he had screamed at her. “Don’t expect one of the men to drop what he’s doing to come rescue you from some slaver’s cock?”

“I’ve endured it before!” she shouted back at him, shocking him to the core of his foundation. “I can do it again if need be!”

He’d watched her storm out of the tent, staring at the spot where she had stood, stunned by her words. When he’d asked Balizar about her cryptic remark, the older man had frowned.

“One of the few times Asher’s been caught was down near Abbadon. Rachel went with five of our men to rescue him. The others escaped; Rachel didn’t.”

“You left her there?” Conar has asked, shocked.

“No, but before Asher and Mahmed could get to her, she’d been brutalized. She doesn’t talk about it, but Asher thinks that is why she has no great desire to marry. She was sodomized.

The experience was humiliating.”

How well he knew, Conar thought as he sat watching the camp. He had no way of gauging how a woman must feel when she’s been raped in that horrid way, but he knew well enough how he, himself, had felt. The experience had been humiliating and soul-shattering. It had left him with a certain legacy of fear that he knew would remain with him forever.

Rachel, he sighed, seeing her talking to Rupine. The very sight of her angered him, drove him near to madness. It had become more than her uncanny resemblance to Liza. The two women were of the same age, build, even carried themselves in a like manner. Rachel’s phrasing of a sentence was almost identical to the way Liza would have said it, in the same off-cantered way.

Just hearing her speak in that same soft way made him want to strangle the woman. Her being there, reminding him so vividly of his lost love, was a torture he could barely endure.

“Why do you dislike her?” Asher had asked him many times. “What has she done to garner your dislike?”

How did you tell a man that you wanted to throw yourself on his sister and plunge into her until the need inside you was diminished? Sated? No, never sated. His need for Liza had never WINDDECEIVER Charlotte Boyett-Compo 32

been sated. It hadn’t even lessened from one thrusting to another. His lust for her body was as strong at that moment as it had been the last time he had taken her.

No, you could not tell a man you hated his sister because you wanted to hump her. There were limits to what a brother could hear.

Look at her, that insane inner voice crooned to him. Look at her, Conar. Doesn’t she walk like Liza? Doesn’t she laugh like Liza? Doesn’t she have that same tantalizing tilt of the head that Liza had?

“God,” he groaned, tearing his gaze away from her.

He wanted her. He knew it. His entire being ached with wanting her.

“What kind of man are you?” he had asked himself only the morning before when he had followed her, his gaze hungry, across the camp.

He loved Catherine, his lovely Catherine, who, no doubt, thought him dead. He had married the woman; he remembered doing that on board the ship. And he had to get word to her that he was alive.

“That’s not such a good idea,” Balizar had warned him when he had mentioned it. “If word gets out, and you know it will, they’ll come looking for you for sure!”

So he had not sent word to his beloved Catherine, the new love of his life, the woman who had made him come alive after two winters of bitter existence.

“Who are you trying to fool, Conar?” the voice sneered at him. “Look at Rachel. Tell yourself you don’t want some of that!”

Oh, he did, he thought bitterly. More than he could dare admit even to that painful inner voice. He wanted her, wanted to bury himself to the hilt inside her warm, sweet moistness. But he knew it wouldn’t be Rachel Stone he would be taking. It would be Liza. It wouldn’t be Rachel’s sweetness he enjoyed, but Liza’s.

“I hate you,” he whispered, watching as she turned to find him staring at her. For a long moment their gazes held and he clenched his jaw. “I hate you, Rachel.”

Then she turned away, seemingly to dismiss him, and he found himself clutching handfuls of sand beneath his fists. He pounded the sand, despising himself for the thoughts that would not stay out of his mind.

“You’re nothing but a rutting stag,” Legion had once accused him. “Any woman, any cunt, will do when you get like that.”

Legion had been right at the time. But that had been before Liza had tamed him. Before his sweet Liza had put her special brand on his heart.

“You betrayed her, too, Conar,” the damned inner reminder spoke up. “With Gezelle.”

“Leave me alone!” he ordered, flinging the sand away from him.

“You’re just horny,” came the taunt. “How long has it been, now, since you’ve lain with a woman? Two months? Three?”

The thought made him hard and he groaned, wishing he could be like normal men and control that eager libido that seemed to be a permanent part of him. Did every man go through this? he wondered. Did Legion?

He wondered what Legion was doing at that moment. If Legion was worried about him.

He had managed to send out a message to his family, a coded message that informed them he was all right, but he had no way of knowing if the message had gotten through.

He heard Rachel laugh, as able to pick that laugh out of a crowd of other women’s laughs as he had been able to pick out Liza’s. The sound of it put his teeth on edge.

He was going to have to do something about Rachel Stone, he thought bitterly.

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And

soon.

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Legion A’Lex slowly lowered the page of hastily-scrawled gibberish and looked up at Roget with wonder.

“He’s calling it The Samiel,” Legion said in an exasperated croak.

“What the hell does that mean?” Roget asked, taking the note from Legion.

“It’s a poisonous wind,” Marsh Edan answered. “It’s a Hasdu word.”

Legion glanced at the ex-Master-of-Arms of Boreas Keep who had arrived with the message from Conar. Marsh had been not been seen at the keep since the day Conar left with the Outer Kingdom warriors. When he had shown up that morning, the rolled parchment note from Conar in his hand, no one had paid much attention to him, so relieved to have heard from their errant Overlord.

“Where have you been?” Legion asked.

Marsh shrugged. “I went home to Kensett for awhile. Conar was off gallivanting with those brutes from the Outer Kingdom and so I decided to visit my mother.” He nodded toward the note. “You can imagine my surprise when a Hasdu walked up to me and handed me that note in Fealst. I was barely off the ship before the man grabbed at me to ask if I was traveling on to Boreas.”

“How he’d know your destination?” Cayn inquired.

“He must have overheard me speaking with one of the ship’s crew. I nearly fell off the dock when I unrolled that and found Conar’s hen scratching staring up at me.”

“So he’s started another elite fighting force, eh?” Cayn chuckled. “The Samiel. I like the sound of that. He’ll be poison for his enemies, that’s for sure.”

“I don’t understand what the deuce he’s doing!” Gezelle grumbled. “He’s suppose to be in that other place courting that lady.”

“If what I understand of this messy writing is correct,” Roget said, “he’s doing what comes naturally for Conar.” He looked up, grinning. “Getting his ass in trouble.”

“If he’s mixed up with the underground seaway in the Inner Kingdom,” Marsh warned them, “he’s not only getting his ass into trouble. He’s putting himself at risk.” Edan frowned heavily. “He’s got powerful enemies in Rysalia.”

“But he’s not in that place,” Gezelle said, heaving a sigh of relief. When no one answered her, she looked around her. “Is he?”

“I’d wager my last copper that he’s up to his ears in a whole heap of trouble in Rysalia,”

Marsh told her.

“What do we do?” Legion asked, searching Marsh’s face for an answer, but it was du Mer who gave him one.

Roget sighed. “We go help him.”

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The sweep of the keeper’s eyes flicked over Storm Jale with disdain.

“You will be taught what punishment is. You will learn what it means to defy your masters!”

The pain was horrible. It coursed through his body with such exaction, it left no part of him wanting for attention. Never could he have imagined agony so intense, so pervading, and he wished with all his being that he could die.

“When I am through with you,” the keeper yelled, “I will feed your soul to the evil you dread most!”

They had isolated him from the rest of the slaves. From humankind. He had become little more than a beast, straining to pull a sled full of timbers three times his weight. The heart inside him was no longer beating to keep him alive. It beat to punish him, just as the whips lashing down on his defenseless body punished him.

“Let me die,” he had begged, but the mirthless laughter had only tormented him more.

Pain. Such an easy word to say. Such a hard concept to endure.

“Let me die.”

In his shivering late at night, when the rest of them were asleep, he had tried to make a covenant with the Wind that swept icily around him. He had begged of it to end his life, his misery, his dehumanized existence. But like his keepers, the Wind ignored him.

“Let me die.”

The pain increased until he was howling mindlessly with it. Nothing he had ever experienced had prepared him for the excruciating agony ripping through his flesh.

“Conar!” he screamed, calling out the one name that had always seemed to sustain him when things grew bad.

“As your obedience grows, so shall your pain be lessened,” the keeper had said, but Storm didn’t think he would be able to stand much more.

Soon, he hoped, he begged, he prayed, his heart would give out.

The keeper stood back and enjoyed the spectacle. Already the Infidel had endured more than could have been dreamed he would. Smiling, the screaming music to his ears, the keeper looked on with excitement. His was a vile need, a dark, insatiable bloodlust, a hunger that was not easily satisfied. To corrupt, to pervert, to destroy, gave him immense pleasure, and to have an Infidel at his mercy, made the keeper ecstatic with pleasure.

“Let me die.”

The voice was weak, almost a whisper and it pleased the keeper immensely to hear it waver with such hopelessness.

“Not yet,” the keeper assured the object of his torture. “Not for a long, long time.”

Storm’s soul shattered inside him and he threw back his head, screaming for the one man in all the world who could release him from the horrible, horrible pain.

“Conar!”

He came fully awake, his heart pounding, his body soaked with sweat. He was trembling, not understanding why, and he put up a shaky hand to plow it through his thick blond hair.

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“Storm?” he heard himself asking. He looked about the tent, found no one with him, and wondered why he felt Storm Jale’s presence so clearly.

“Khamsin?” Asher asked, poking his head through the tent flap. “Did you call me?”

Conar stared at him, realizing the two names, Storm and Stone, sounded so much alike. He shook his head. “No, I was just dreaming. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“I wasn’t sleeping anyway,” Asher answered, coming into the tent. “I’ve always found it difficult to relax the evening before a raid.”

“Me, too,” came the heartfelt answer. “There was a time when I would have drank myself into a stupor or drugged myself to keep from thinking about it.”

“Why?” Asher asked, sensing the other man wanted to talk.

Conar shrugged, reaching over to light the lantern by his bed. Once the flame was steady, he replaced the chimney and leaned back against his pillows. “I think it was because I always feared I’d screw up and get myself or someone else killed in the bargain.”

“Yes,” Asher agreed. “I’ve felt that way since Rachel was--“ He looked away. “I’m glad you insisted she stay behind tomorrow when we go to Kilnt. I’ll feel better knowing she’s here.