Chapter 10 #3
closing her lids. The hand let go of her hair and she let her head
flop forward.
“The oil of dreams has over taken the bitch,”
the Wolf said, kicking her boot for good measure. “She’ll be
sleeping it off until morning.”
“Which gives us the night to play,” Taweel’s
voice answered.
Perhaps it was the dream flower, or the fact
that she’d been watching every move they made and listening to
every word they spoke for the past two days and nights, but
something in the tenor of Taweel’s voice had changed. As did the
Wolf’s sultry laughter.
“It has been too long, my randy cock,” he
chuckled.
“Indeed, my prince,” Taweel’s voice grew
closer, lower. “I’ve missed your mighty sword these past
nights.”
“If you two are going to be rutting all
night,” the Jackal said from across the camp, “I’m going to sleep.
You have the first two watches, wake me for third watch.”
Sahar was a virgin, but she was no innocent.
She’d heard of men lying with men, and women with women. A person
couldn’t reach maturity living among a palace full of people and
not be aware of such differences.
In her father’s kingdom they were left to
their own preferences, but she knew that was not so in many other
kingdoms, the Ox’s among them. Perhaps that was why the Wolf was so
good at hiding his true self, and not only his sexual preferences.
He’d fooled her for a time, though never Aleksandr, who had accused
her of falling for the Wolf’s flattery. Aleksandr had been right
about the Wolf’s insincere flattery, about his cunning nature, and
the need to protect her from him. He’d likely lost his life because
of it. Because of her.
Stop it. You’re not doing yourself or
Aleksandr’s memory any good by wallowing in self-pity. Stay awake.
Wait for your chance.
It didn’t take long for the sound of Yago and
Taweel’s muffled laughter to move beyond the edge of the camp. Not
much longer before she heard the Jackal’s soft, steady snore. Now
was her chance. Listening to Yago’s and Taweel’s low murmurs, she
bent her mind and body to shaking the stone from her boot one slow,
painful movement at a time while trying, and failing, to stop
imagining what exactly they were doing, her half-drugged mind
filling in the lurid details.
Concentrate on what matters. Focus on
getting this cursed stone out of your boot.
Which was no small feat with her upper arms
tied to her sides. Years of riding and blade fighting had kept her
limbs strong and agile. After much twisting and contorting she
finally managed to drop the stone onto the ground between her
booted feet as a man cried out as if in pain, or more likely
release, followed immediately by another. Laying a booted foot over
the stone, she hung her head low and mimicked the Jackal’s snores
as Yago and Taweel returned.
She heard the flap of bedrolls being unfurled
and peeked out from under lowered lashes, watching with a perverse
fascination as both men lay together, forming a two-headed lump
under the covers. Their voices lowered to intimate whispers and
then the quiet snuffles of early sleep mixed with the Jackal’s
steady snore, who they’d not woken by choice or forgetfulness. She
propped the stone between her boots and splayed her knees, scooting
the stone closer and closer, until she could reach it with her
wrists and began to saw the rope back and forth over the rocks
jagged edge, ignoring the fresh blood and the piercing pain as the
rope cut into the open sores on her skin.
To keep her mind from the pain, she counted
to ten as she sawed, stopped for another count of ten to look and
listen for movement, and then repeated the entire process. By the
time she had sawed a decent sized niche into the rope, her neck was
cramped, her shoulders were screaming, and her wrists were numb,
but she had to keep going, her life depended on it.
“What are you doing there?”
Sahar stopped sawing at the sound of the
Jackal’s voice and hung her head lower, barely breathing.
“Don’t think I don’t see you, Princess,” he
warned as his voice grew closer. He stopped and stood toe to toe
with her boots, and then reached down and ripped the rock from her
hand.
She bit her lip to keep from crying out in
pain and frustration.
“Look at me.” He threw the rock down, hitting
her on the top of her head with it. “I said look at me.”
She lifted her gaze, her hatred blazing in
her veins.
“Do not give me that haughty glare, you royal
cunt.” He sneered down at her. “Your Aleksandr is dead. There’s no
one left to save you. You are at my mercy now, and if you think a
few yanks on your rope will satisfy me, you’re mistaken.”
He unbuckled his waist belt and tossed it to
the ground, and then he leaned over and untied her gag.
“Your virginity might be the King Ox’s to
take before he kills you,” he said, still leaning over her and
fumbling with the laces of his breeches, “but I’ll have my
satisfaction, you bitch.”
“Whip your tiny worm out,” she croaked, “and
I’ll bite it off.”
“I like me a little nip,” he said, slapping
her across the cheek with such force that the back of her head
struck the tree. “But bite me and you’ll lose your teeth.”
She tasted blood and spat at him, refusing to
cower as he raised his hand up and back, readying for another blow.
A shadow moved from behind her, and then the Jackal’s face slammed
into the tree with a bone-crushing crunch, and his body slid to the
ground at her feet, his forehead split open above the bloody,
mangled pulp that had been his nose. She tried to focus on the
grotesque mask that had been his face, but her vison swam and her
ears were filled with a distant ringing.
The shadow moved, and spoke in a ghostly
whisper. “Sahar?”
She tried to lift her gaze to the spirit
looming over her, but all she saw was a thousand blinking lights
and then complete darkness.
Aleksi placed his fingers to Sahar’s neck and
dragged in a deep breath as he felt the weak but steady beat of her
pulse. He had been following their trail when he saw the glow of a
campfire about a league up the mountain’s eastern face and had
urged Zolotoy on, thanking the gods for the Wolf’s arrogance and
conceit.
Tying off Z in a thick glen downwind from the
fire’s beacon, Aleksi had continued on foot, walking along the tree
line of the path they’d taken, and had been no more than a hundred