Captivity (19 page)

Niall shook his head. “My betrothed,” he
said, hoping to comfort her, calling her by the pet name of their
teasing at home. He stroked her shorn hair. “My betrothed, you know
I would do anything for you, but I can only negotiate now.”

Reynaldo scowled at the word Niall had used,
taking it seriously. “So,” he said, “you think you can wriggle your
way into the Aranyi family, through the Margrave’s bed and into the
daughter’s.” He was in a jealous rage, confronting a rival over the
most valuable prize of all.

Niall rolled his eyes at the absurd
misunderstanding. “She’s only a child,” he said, in a mistaken
attempt at de-escalating the rage. “Margrave Aranyi has no plans
for her marriage, not for years yet.”

Reynaldo assumed Niall was trying to divert
attention from his own schemes. “You think Margrave Aranyi would
give his daughter to his discarded whore?” He snapped his fingers
and several bandits surrounded Niall and Jana. Reynaldo stared into
Niall’s face, attempting to examine his mind, and apparently
recognized some quality he had overlooked before. “Erebos take me,
perhaps he would,” he muttered to himself.

Reynaldo broke off the incomplete communion,
all pretense of good faith discarded. “He won’t get the chance,”
Reynaldo said, aloud for the benefit of the entire troop. “I’m
keeping the girl. Margrave Aranyi can bid for the wife and son, but
the girl is mine.” Reynaldo grabbed Jana by the arm and yanked her
away from her champion. Jana flailed her free arm, shrieking as if
Reynaldo had stated his intention to murder her.

Niall made a conciliatory gesture with his
sword arm. “Margrave Aranyi will be offering a substantial ransom.
There’s no need to frighten the child.”

Reynaldo endured with uncharacteristic
patience his latest acquisition’s attempts to free herself:
alternately jerking her body and digging her fingernails, like
peeling an orange, into the exposed flesh of his wrist where his
glove and the sleeve of his shirt didn’t quite meet. Her fear and
her fighting spirit were equally valuable, the one balancing the
other to keep her both alert and docile. “Be still, lass,” he said,
when the gouging drew blood.

Jana knew Reynaldo threatened worst when he
spoke most quietly, and gave up her struggles. “That’s right,” he
said, “You’ll learn soon enough who your master is.”

To Niall Reynaldo was dismissive;
negotiations were at an end. “Go back to your whoremaster.” He
pointed in the general direction of Aranyi as his men began nudging
Niall toward the door. “Tell him all of ‘Graven Assembly couldn’t
scrape together enough wealth to ransom this little filly.” He
watched as the bandits marched Niall to the entrance and out. “Tell
Margrave Aranyi he can buy back his wife and son, what’s left of
them. But the girl is mine.”

Reynaldo deliberately worked himself up to
heights of offensiveness, leaving no doubt that this had ceased to
be a simple kidnapping. As Niall was escorted across the threshold
he sent his parting shot of coarse humor. “Tell Margrave Aranyi he
can fight me if he dares, or he can go down on his knees to me, as
you do to him, and beg.” He grabbed at his crotch. “It makes no
difference.”

The door was shut and barred, the inner and
outer guards resumed their places. Niall would be conducted to the
far periphery of the castle’s grounds, until it was safe to leave
him to make his way to his own forces in their encampment. Reynaldo
looked down at Jana, rigid with horror at his words. “The girl is
mine,” he repeated softly.

Jana made a mighty effort and tore herself
loose from Reynaldo’s grasp. “Niall!” she screamed, running to the
doors that had already closed. “Niall! Listen to me!” There were
thoughts in her head, thoughts so strong they blazed out like
lightning flashes to any telepath close enough to read them.

In his fright Reynaldo had no time for
gentleness or persuasion. He ran after Jana, caught her by the
shoulder, spun her around and punched her in the side of the head.
Jana gave one loud yelp, suddenly cut off, and dropped to the
floor, where she lay still and silent. The scene went dark, my
vision now blocked by Jana’s closed eyes, although I could still
hear, even if Jana, temporarily senseless, could not.

Reynaldo picked up the limp little body, held
her gently. “No, my little Amazon,” he whispered. “You mustn’t ruin
things now. Not when we’re so close.”

He sent his own mind out as best he could,
terrified that Niall had heard those loud warnings. He prodded
around in the mental landscape, feeling for Niall, for Dominic, for
anyone who might have learned the secret, the terrible thing that
Jana had wanted to tell.

Nobody had. Nobody but me.

Arrows!
Jana had shouted into the
mental world.
Arrows and– and the thing you shoot them with
.
Even in our martial household the words for a forbidden weapon were
spoken infrequently, heard only in ancient ballads or read in
histories. Jana, in her fear, had frozen on the word, but the image
in her panicked brain had shone bright and clear. She must have
seen the bandits practicing with their deadly weapons that
Eclipsis’s strictly enforced Armaments Convention prohibits anyone
from owning or making or bringing into our world. The picture of
more than forty men with simple short bows, quivers full of arrows
on their backs, shooting at crude straw targets in the shape of
human figures, was as vivid in my mind as if I had watched it on a
Holonet screen.

Feverish in my cell, I wet myself with
terror, both at this new thing I had learned and at Reynaldo’s
mental search. The psychotic waves of his
crypta
swept over
me and passed through without registering, my inert body giving off
no signals. My active mind was hidden in my daughter’s
consciousness, leaving little for Reynaldo to perceive here. After
seeing me sick and exhausted Reynaldo had all but forgotten me, and
his clumsy explorations now, in his trembling haste, convinced him
I was incapable of receiving thoughts, or making sense of them.
Soon I would be dead, either through the natural progress of my
disease or during the course of tomorrow’s evil work. The “sibyl”
‘Gravina Aranyi, who must be starved into submission and
powerlessness, was a distant memory.

Satisfied, Reynaldo slumped with relief. I
felt motion as he carried Jana to his own place near the fire and
laid her down. “When the lass wakes up,” he said to Michaela, “give
her supper.” There was resentment in his voice as he addressed the
woman. He was suspicious of her motives now but had no one else to
trust. “But keep an eye on her. If the lass tries anything, or if
she escapes, you’ll answer for it.”

Slowly, with infinite caution, I extricated
myself from my daughter’s mind. Reynaldo had not so far noticed the
presence of another, adult, consciousness there, masked as it was
by the child’s less developed mental pattern. When he had explored
my brain just now in his frantic apprehension, I had not been there
to alert him to my continued survival. Now I must inhabit myself
again to think over Jana’s warning and decide what to do about it.
If I was careful not to emit any signs of activity, Reynaldo might
not check with me again, at least not anytime soon.

Back in my own mind, I returned to the pains
of sickness, the lethargy of mind and body, the headache that
dulled the thoughts. The hunger and fear resumed their dominance,
the fever disordered my judgment, the rash distracted my attention.
Jana’s warning echoed and reechoed in my brain, adding a topping of
terror to the layers of misery.

Bows and arrows. That was the “swift spear” I
had sensed in the bandits’ thoughts, the reason for Reynaldo’s
seemingly insane confidence. For all Dominic’s abilities as
swordsman and strategist, he would be killed in an instant, he and
any force he could raise, no matter how great their number, if they
came up against just a few trained archers. In a world without
firearms, the bow was as deadly and efficient as a machine gun. A
practiced archer could shoot several arrows in just one minute and
be certain of hitting his target. The weapons were easy to make,
where wood for bows and shafts was plentiful, where animal sinew
for strings and feathers for stability were the detritus of the
skillful trapper’s every meal. Serviceable arrowheads could be made
of bone or stone. If the bandits were lucky, if they had taken
enough valuable booty, they could trade for worked metal spear
points.

Tomorrow Dominic and his forces would
approach the ruined castle and invest it for siege. They would
surround the walls at close range, knowing they faced nothing worse
than rocks and boiling oil, if the defenders could spare any. The
work of assault would be done with battering ram and ladders, and
would not take long, since time and weather had already
accomplished most of their objective. No doubt Reynaldo had been
delighted to have Niall get a good look at the crumbling walls, the
fallen roof, the hollow watchtowers. Back at the Aranyi camp, he
would report on the poor defenses, giving Dominic the last evidence
he needed that the attack would be a walkover.

And when all Dominic’s men were exposed, the
bandits would rise up from behind chunks of fallen stone and
sections of ruined wall, arrows already nocked onto bowstrings, and
let forth a silent volley that would kill or wound just about
everybody. For the few miraculously untouched another barrage would
follow in a second or two, before anyone knew what hit him, much
less had time to run or find cover. Survivors could be finished off
with swords and knives, or left to die in agony where they lay. The
bodies would be stripped of armor and weapons, and clothes, the
ransom Dominic had brought appropriated at leisure. By the time
others learned what had happened, assuming they cared and could
coordinate their forces, the bandits could be over the mountains
into the renegade Andrade Realm, enjoying the good life that
treasure would buy.

The only hope was a warning, as Jana had
tried to give Niall. She was too young to have active
crypta
and had only hoped that Niall would use his to see what was inside
her mind. But my gift was fully developed and active, or would be,
if I were not sick and weak and under guard. I had two choices: I
could try to find Dominic, gambling that Reynaldo would not pick up
on the signals I was sending until I had achieved communion with my
husband; or I could simply wait. Dominic must be coming in
tomorrow, as Niall had implied and Dominic had hinted to me. Once
Dominic was nearby, I could warn him as soon as we made
contact.

Which was the right answer? If I warned
Dominic now he would have time to devise an alternative plan and to
find a way around the deadly ambush. But I would risk Reynaldo’s
vengeance if he overheard me. I trembled—literally, physically
shook—when I understood the full meaning of what form that
vengeance would take. Reynaldo would kill me. He would race down to
the cell and kill me, and Val, with a sword, as soon as he was
aware of the telepathic communication between me and Dominic. We
were still alive now and unmolested, as Reynaldo had admitted to
Niall, solely because we would lure Dominic to his death, and were
sick enough not to pose any threat. Once Reynaldo had the least
hint I was still alive and mentally alert, I was dead.

I would wait, I decided. Perhaps Dominic
would come to me in communion during the night or early in the
morning, with a brief message of his love, to hearten me and give
me hope, before beginning his rescue attack. I could warn him then.
Until then I would rest, if not in sleep, at least at peace.

Another fit of ague shook me out of my
complacency. If I waited, I might prevent ambush. But Dominic would
have no time to think up a replacement plan for the simple assault.
And while he thought and worked, Reynaldo would kill me just the
same. It would take only a minute for him to come downstairs and
unlock the door. I would save Dominic and Niall, and all the Aranyi
men who had joined up to help, but I would bring death down on
myself, and Val.

Despair overtook me; my thoughts would not
coalesce. The prospect of certain death did not concentrate my mind
in the least. All I did was vacillate, weak and sick, between the
two positions: death now, from searching for Dominic, or death
later, from waiting. I cried and moaned, facing the same death
whichever way I turned. I thought of my dagger and Dominic’s
lessons, how I should protect my honor. It was all meaningless. I
didn’t want to die, although I would accept my death willingly
enough if I could save my children. But my death only ensured my
children’s death, and worse. Val would certainly be killed. And
Jana? I couldn’t bear thinking of Jana’s fate, Reynaldo calling her
“mine.”

She’s not yours, you fucking maniac
, I
thought, careful not to project the emotion outwards.
She’s
mine, and Dominic’s, and I must find a way to save her
.

Light penetrated the darkness, sounds came in clearly
again with a muffled roar. “…don’t need to play that bullshit game
anymore!” I recognized Reynaldo’s voice, loud with bravado.

I awoke as if from one nightmare into a
greater one. It was Jana who had awakened from her unconscious
state and, in my strong maternal tie, I had entered her mind as
before, when I had located her under the stairs. Once again I
observed the activity in the room above. In the firelight in the
great hall I saw the faces of the bandits and heard their voices,
as Jana watched and listened from her place at the front of the
room where Reynaldo had left her.

“Why, brother?” One brave man dared to
question Reynaldo. “Why stop the negotiations? That was only their
first offer. They’ll have iron and steel, lots of it. Maybe even
glass.” He spoke with kind patience, as if Reynaldo were unfamiliar
with the ritual of bargaining.