45. Clash of Stone and Steel #2
Samhail shook away the thoughts as his pants became painfully tight.
“Your father was perimortal?” he asked, trying to steer the conversation toward topics that wouldn’t arouse him.
“I assume so,” Talyn said. “Both my sister and I were unplanned pregnancies from my mother’s work.
She takes at least two kinds of contraception, but as you probably know, it’s more effective when both partners take it, and many of her clients don’t bother.
” She paused. “On the other hand, I suspect the madame may have tampered with my mother’s contraception occasionally.
I think she wanted my mother to get pregnant so she’d have children with masquing abilities that could grow up to work in the pleasure house. ”
Samhail looked at her aghast, but she only shrugged.
“My porting ability may come from the man who sired me,” Talyn went on, “or it might be a power buried deep in my mother’s line that decided to manifest.”
Samhail nodded absently. He couldn’t get the idea of Talyn working as a courtesan out of his mind.
He hadn’t visited a pleasure house in quite some time because he was usually able to find a willing partner that he didn’t need to pay, but he couldn’t help wondering what he would’ve done if he’d walked into one and found Talyn working there. He’d probably become a regular.
Or would he? There was no doubt she was beautiful, but a significant amount of her appeal for him was wrapped up in how dangerous she was, how lethal and strong and stubborn she was.
She didn’t back down from a fight with him, even when most men did.
Would her beauty have been enough to make him want her as badly as he did now, or would Talyn as a courtesan have been merely a passing fancy for him?
He felt a hollowness in his stomach at the idea that, if her life had gone differently, he might’ve been content to fuck her once and move on, never having a clue of the potential fire that smoldered inside her.
“Do you smell smoke?” Talyn asked.
Samhail jolted and his eyes widened at her words. She couldn’t possibly know what he’d been thinking.
Then he smelled it too.
Samhail reined up his horse and sniffed the air. The acrid smell of something burning was faint, but it was there, and he looked around for the source.
“There,” he said, pointing to plumes of smoke billowing over a hill in the distance.
Talyn turned to where he pointed. “Should we-”
“Yes,” he said and reeled his horse around to spur it toward the smoke. He didn’t wait to see if she’d follow, but the pounding of a second set of hooves behind him told him she had.
It took them twenty minutes to reach the source of the smoke, and they reined up just outside a small village.
Samhail tied his horse to a tree and pulled his swords from his back. Talyn had just finished tying her horse, and she unsheathed the daggers from her belt. Together they walked carefully into the town, looking for an enemy that no longer appeared to be there.
Samhail surveyed the area. Several buildings burned around them, and a film of smoke hung in the air.
It was a familiar sight to ones he’d seen before.
He’d accompanied Bressen to several towns recently where there’d been attacks.
In all cases, they’d arrived too late to help.
They’d found buildings on fire, several people injured or dead, and – more recently – some of the villagers had been taken, mostly men.
Now, as Samhail looked around, he noticed two things.
The first was that there seemed to be fewer bodies on the ground than normal.
It was possible there would be more as they got further into the town, but for now the casualties seemed minimal.
On the other hand, he didn’t see many men.
Several women ran for cover with children, and a few elderly villagers huddled where they could, but he didn’t see any men of fighting age just yet.
They might find differently as they made their way further into the town, though.
“It seems fairly deserted,” Talyn observed.
“That’s my impression as well,” he said.
They walked on further, but the few people they saw fled from them.
“We need to get someone to talk to us, to tell us what happened,” Samhail said. He looked expectantly at Talyn, and she raised a brow.
“You think they’ll talk to me?” she asked.
“They’re more likely to talk to you than me,” he said. “In case you haven’t noticed, people don’t normally gravitate toward me.”
She looked as though she might argue with him, but she bit back whatever she’d planned to say.
“Fine. Stay here then,” she said. “No one will come near me with you hovering around.”
Samhail stopped walking and forced back a smile.
He had to admit he liked the idea of no one coming near her when he was around.
Not that it had worked that other night at the tavern with those three men.
It still made him see red to think about them kissing her, but they hadn’t known she was with him at the time. Next time he’d be sure they knew.
Talyn broke away from him and headed toward where they’d seen two women and a child disappear into a building. He followed at a distance, unwilling to let her completely out of his sight.
Before Talyn stepped inside the building, though, a woman darted out from behind a wagon, seemingly to find a better hiding place.
“Wait!” Talyn called to her.
The woman didn’t stop, but Talyn ported in front of her. The fleeing woman screamed, but Talyn quickly sheathed her daggers and grabbed her by the shoulders.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Talyn assured her. “We’re here to help.”
“We?” the woman asked, then screamed again as she saw Samhail.
Talyn put her hand on the woman’s face and turned her head away from him.
“We’re here to help,” she repeated. “Can you tell us what happened?”
The woman didn’t speak right away as she tried to calm herself. Finally she found her voice. “Soldiers. They came up over the hill and attacked.”
“Soldiers?” Talyn asked. “You’re sure?”
“I didn’t recognize where they were from, but they all wore dark blue uniforms,” the woman said. “At least, some of them wore uniforms. The others were…”
“Were what?” Talyn prompted when the woman didn’t go on.
“They weren’t human. They were…some kind of blue monster. They had glowing eyes and long claws. There were maybe fifteen of them.”
“What happened then?” Talyn asked.
“They attacked,” the woman said, “but they seemed to be trying to round up the men.” The woman’s look turned pleading. “They took my husband. Please, can you get him back?”
“Which way did they go?” Talyn asked.
The woman pointed west. “That way. They had large wagons with cages that they herded the men into. The men they didn’t turn, that is.”
“Turn?” Talyn asked. “What do you mean by ‘turn’?”
“Those monsters,” the woman said, “when they clawed some of the men, the blue seeped off them into their wounds and…It turned them into whatever those things were.”
The woman shuddered, and Samhail didn’t blame her. He’d seen the things up close, and everything about them was disturbing, even for him.
“How long ago did the wagons leave?” Samhail called out, and both Talyn and the woman looked at him.
“Maybe fifteen minutes ago?” the woman said.