Dark Stallion (14 page)

The urge to cry swept over her again, but she tamped it. The guilt welled once more, but she couldn’t dismiss that or the feeling, almost of panic, that assaulted her when she allowed herself to think of how closely they’d all come to being a meal for those horrible things.

There was no point in dwelling on it, she knew. As they’d said, it didn’t happen. She should just be grateful that it hadn’t and try to put it behind her.

It had made one thing very clear to her, though. The fear of loss wasn’t something she could easily put behind her. She didn’t think she could keep lying to herself that she was only intrigued by Aydin and Colwin, sexually attracted to them, found them charming.

If she hadn’t begun to care, deeply, about them, would she have felt that awful sense of devastation at the possibility that one or both of them might have died?

Chapter Ten

“What do you think of this?” Aydin asked Colwin, tossing the staff he’d been whittling on to Colwin as they returned to the campsite. Colwin caught it, studied it for a moment and then slid his hands down the length. Grasping each end, he flexed the pole.

Caught by the flex of his arm muscles when he did it, Emma’s curiosity about the purpose of the pole was instantly supplanted by appreciation.

He shifted his hold after a moment to the center. “It needs a bit more work. Crude,” he said, “but I think it will work well enough in a pinch.”

Aydin caught it as he tossed it back, studying the pole with frowning intensity for a moment before he began whittling on it again.

Alerted to the fact that he was actually making something, Emma watched him, although she was far more fascinated by the play of muscles his labor produced. Colwin caught her attention after a few minutes. She thought at first that he was trying to rebuild the campfire they’d put out the night before, but since he was no where near it, she decided he was testing rocks to see which ones would give off the sparks.

When he kept striking the same rock, however, and knocking off chips, she gave him her full attention, studying the rock in his hand as it slowly took shape and became a stone arrowhead.

Pleased surprise went through her when she identified it. She got up from the pallet and approached him when he set it down and picked up another rock, looking a question at him when he lifted his head. He shrugged and she picked it up to study it.

It was nothing short of amazing. She didn’t think a machine could’ve produced a more perfectly shaped arrowhead. There was nothing crude about it and he proved he could produce one after another, each one perfect. She moved back to the pallet when her legs began to cramp and turned to see how Aydin was progressing with his project.

In the time she’d been watching Colwin, she saw that he’d shaped what had been nothing but a long pole into the graceful shape of a bow. He paused now and then to test the strength and flexibility.

He seemed dissatisfied, but she wasn’t certain why. Colwin had said it was crude, she remembered. It must not be made of the wood they generally used, she decided, or maybe he didn’t have the tools to make it the way they usually did?

When she returned her attention to Colwin, she saw that he was working on what looked like the blade of a knife. It certainly wasn’t an arrowhead and she didn’t think he intended it for a spear.

It dawned on her after a little bit that the day had brightened and neither of them seemed in any hurry to break camp and leave, although they had always left very early before, sometimes before it was even good daylight.

She supposed after the encounter with the ogres they’d decided they couldn’t afford to keep going without taking the time to fashion some sort of weapons. Or maybe it was because Colwin had had trouble getting food the night before?

She saw that Aydin was still limping, though, when he got up after a little while and disappeared into the woods. He was horribly bruised, too, from the rocks.

The bastards had hoped to kill him or at least bludgeon him unconscious, she realized, feeling her belly clench with dread all over again.

Colwin had more than a couple of painful looking bruises himself, but he’d managed to avoid most of the barrage Aydin had been caught up in.

She supposed at least part of their reasoning for holding off on leaving was because they weren’t really able to set out again and knew it.

It worried her—both the possibility that they were hurt worse than they wanted to let on and the fact that Aydin had said the king’s men were tracking them. How far behind them were they? Was it far enough that it was really safe to hold off continuing the trip?

She had a far better idea of just how close to them the men were when they finally did set out shortly after they’d eaten their noon meal. Neither Colwin nor Aydin had made any attempt to rush, despite the late start. They moved steadily, but at a brisk walk, not the jogging gait they’d favored for most of the trip. They’d been traveling for only a couple of hours when they heard sounds in the distance and every halted, lifting their heads to listen.

Even she didn’t have any trouble deciphering the sounds she could hear faintly in the distance—screaming, the sounds of fear and challenge, the clang of metal and dull thuds that were more of a reverberation through the woods than actual sound.

The hoonans had met up with the ogres!

Aydin and Colwin exchanged a speaking glance. When they began to move again, however, they were moving faster, making it clear to Emma that the king’s men were a lot closer than they’d thought they were.

She felt horrible for the thoughts that flickered through her mind. She hated and feared the hoonans. She’d never hoped something horrible would happen to anyone, though, and yet she found herself hoping harder than she’d ever wished for anything that the ogres would either kill them all or drive them back.

There was no way to tell what was happening from such a distance, but they either moved beyond range of hearing the battle, or the battle ended a short while later. Aydin and Colwin pushed on until it was full dark, not stopping to make camp until the moon rose. They didn’t make a fire, not that they’d spared the time to hunt anyway. Instead, they all ate the little bit of left over food they’d brought with them, drank the small amount of water Colwin had used the rabbit stomachs to carry and settled together on the bare ground.

Emma realized immediately that the brush they’d gather every night to make a pallet made a huge difference in comfort, but she still had the warmth of Colwin’s and Aydin’s bodies against hers and the sense of safety it gave her to be sandwiched between them. In spite of her discomfort and her anxiety, she managed to sleep for a few hours.

She was heavy eyed with exhaustion when they rose before dawn. She wandered around a few moments before it dawned on her that they hadn’t found a watering hole or stream the night before. Trying to ignore the discomfort of having no way to clean up even a little, she finally went into the brush to relieve herself and returned to join the men, who’d already gathered up everything and were waiting for her.

Aydin grasped her arm and swung her up onto his back. She’d already settled her cheek against his back before she remembered his ankle. “You’re sure I’m not too heavy?”

He glanced back at her. “I am well enough now. How are your ribs? Does it still hurt to breathe deeply?”

She tested it. “A little twinge. It’s better, a lot better.”

He didn’t seem convinced and it occurred to her to wonder if the time they’d lost was because of her—again. She realized almost immediately that that was why they hadn’t been in a hurry to leave. They’d seen how banged up she was and had ignored the danger to allow her a little time to heal.

Their thoughtfulness warmed her. At the same time, it made her feel awful that they kept taking risks they wouldn’t have had to if not for her.

She was going to get them killed, she thought despairingly.

They began seeing more of the giant statues, or totems as they’d called them, the first not long after set out and then another a few hours later. Emma grew more and more uneasy as Colwin and Aydin stopped to examine them, wondering what new horror the damned things were warning.

“It’s more warning, isn’t it?” she asked when they’d stopped the third time.

Aydin glanced back at her. “These are different.”

Emma chewed her lip, wanting to be reassured. “It isn’t more warnings about the ogres?”

He shook his head.

She would actually have felt better if he’d said yes, that it was warnings for people traveling in the other direction. “What do they mean, then?”

He glanced at Colwin. Colwin shook his head. “I am not certain,” he admitted.

“Guess!” Emma demanded.

He sent her a look of amusement mixed with irritation. “It is warnings to go back.”

Emma felt like the bottom dropped out of her stomach. “Really?” she asked weakly.

“I am not certain. I cannot read these symbols. You asked me to guess.”

She glared at him. “But you think that’s what it might mean?” she persisted.

“It is clearly a warning. That is all I am certain of.”

“Maybe we should try to find a different route?”

Aydin scanned the rocky cliffs that now hemmed them in on either side. “Even we could not scale these canyon walls,” he said finally. “We would have to return to the territory of the ogres and try to find a way around and I am not anxious to do that.”

Emma swallowed a little sickly. “Me either,” she muttered, tightening her hold on his waist. He patted her hands, cupped his over both of hers reassuringly.

“We are better armed now. There are few who can outshoot Colwin with a bow.”

Emma glanced at Colwin, or specifically the arrows he’d made, held in the carry he’d fashioned with a piece of their dwindling supply of fabric. He’d made a couple of dozen, but she thought there’d been at least a dozen ogres in that attack. To her mind, they weren’t nearly well enough armed against whatever might be ahead of them, but she kept her peace. What was the point of complaining when he’d already pointed out their choices? Bad and worse. She thought worse was going back through ogre territory, but then who knew what lay ahead?

They discovered it when they halted at a trickle of water to drink. Emma hadn’t even managed to slide off of Aydin’s back when he stiffened, abruptly pulling his sword. Colwin had unslung his bow from his shoulder and fitted an arrow into nearly as quickly and yet they were surrounded so swiftly by a dozen centaurs that that was as much as they managed. Emma was wrenched off of Aydin’s back and bound by arms that felt like steel.

The blade that pinched into her throat
was
steel.

“Not one move unless you want to see her pretty little head separated from her body,” the man holding her growled.

Aydin’s gaze met hers for a prolonged moment, but they both knew there wasn’t a chance in hell that he could strike before the man holding her could. His expression twisting with fury and disgust, Aydin dropped his sword.

The centaurs surged around them, snatching up Aydin’s sword, relieving Colwin of his quiver and bow. The man holding her didn’t ease his grip until the centaurs had bound both Colwin’s and Aydin’s arms behind their backs.

Emma gaped up at the centaur who’d been holding her when he removed the knife from her throat and swung her around to face him. He was dark like Aydin, maybe even a little darker skinned, and clearly several years older. He studied her assessingly for several moments and finally nudged his chin at someone behind her.

A blindfold descended over her eyes. She flinched instinctively but even as she lifted her hands, her wrists were caught in a steely grip. “You will wear the blindfold, little hoonan, unless you prefer that I slit your throat and leave you here.”

Emma swallowed convulsively. “I’m not a hoonan,” she said a little hoarsely.

He shifted his grip to her upper arm when the man behind her had finished tying the blindfold and swung her up onto his back. She grabbed blindly for a hold to keep from falling off but he grabbed her wrists, yanking her forward as he pulled her arms around his waist and tied her wrists together.

Ignoring her comment if he even heard it, he launched into a brisk trot that nearly unseated her as soon as he’d finished tying her hands. The blindfold was more effective than she’d expected, but then again no one had every blindfolded her in anything but a game. Still, she could see a sliver from the bottom edge, enough to see they left the little stream immediately.

She was tempted to tilt her head back to try to see where they were going, but the warning he’d given her was enough to squelch the urge. She couldn’t even lean away from him. He was broader even than Aydin and her arms felt like they were going to be wrenched out of the socket by the stretch to reach around him.

Realizing fairly quickly that there was nothing she could do when she was tied up, blindfolded, and surrounded by what was clearly an enemy tribe of centaurs, she focused instead on trying to manage the fear struggling to become full blown panic. They’d only been moving a few minutes, she thought, when darkness descended over them. The sounds of the centaur’s hooves echoed back to her eerily. She lost the feel of the sun’s heat on her skin.

A cavern?

Flashes of light from time to time against her blindfold seemed to belie that but, they were certainly following something with the feel of a tunnel—with a stone floor and rocks hanging over them much of the way to block out the sunlight. The sound of their hooves rang in her ears. They slowed. Her heart instantly began to hammer with renewed anxiety as the thought leapt into her mind that they were about to meet their fate.