Return of the Warrior (6 page)

Thomas pulled back the rough cover on the inhospitable-looking cot. Phantom laid Christian down carefully before he pulled the black robe off him to expose the suit of chain mail beneath. He quickly removed the sword and sheath.

“He’s been badly injured,” he told Thomas. “Is there a monk here who can tend him?”

“Aye. Brother Bernard. I’ll get him and let the queen know that Christian has made it.”

Phantom nodded while he started unlacing the mail pieces. He could see the bright red stains where the blood was seeping between the links, not to mention several gashes in the metal where weapons had cut through it. There were quite a few injuries, and in truth he was amazed Christian had gone so long before he passed out.

Then again, pain wasn’t anything new to either of them.

He pulled the mail hauberk and quilted aketon off, then paused as he saw the old scars that
marked Christian’s right shoulder. Unbidden, his memories surged.

Instead of the monastery where they were currently, he saw the old mold-covered prison walls. Smelled the stench of decay and death. Heard the echoing screams of pain and whispered prayers of the hopeless and dying. He could even feel again the heat of the fever that had ravished his body.

“Here, Phantom,” the boy Christian had said as he offered him a cup of rare bitter water to drink.

The sight of it had terrified him. To be caught with unrationed water meant a severe beating, which was what had given Phantom his current fever. “Where did…?”

“Shhh, fear not. Just drink. You need it for your fever.”

Phantom had barely consumed it before their guard found them.

Christian immediately took the cup and pretended that he was the one drinking from it.

“Thief!” It was one of the very few Arabic words that Phantom knew at the time. The guard grabbed the cup and then commenced to beating Christian for it.

Christian took the blows in silence until Phantom tried to tell the guard that the water was his.

The guard paused and asked Christian something that Phantom didn’t understand. Christian answered in Arabic and then was beaten even more.

Phantom wanted to stop it, but knew from experience that the guard would only beat Christian longer for Phantom’s interference.

When it was over, Christian crawled back to his side. His lip was split, his eye swelling. “Here,” he said, his hand trembling as he gave Phantom a small skin that had been tucked into his breeches. “There’s more water for you inside it.”

To this day, Phantom cherished that sacrifice. It had been the first time since the death of his father that anyone had ever shown him such kindness. Christian had had nothing to gain and everything to lose by helping him.

It was why Christian of Acre was the only man alive he’d give his life for. He was the only man alive who held Phantom’s cynical loyalty. The rest of humanity could burn in hell as far as he was concerned.

Forcing those thoughts away, he tore pieces of Christian’s robe into strips for a tourniquet against the worst of the wounds…a sword slash down Christian’s right shoulder and arm.

“What happened?”

He looked over his shoulder to see Adara entering the room. “He was attacked.”

She knelt by the cot. “What can I do to help?”

“Keep this pressed against the cut and let me see if there are any others as deep.”

Adara did as he said. She held the cloth with as much pressure as she could without hurting
Christian more and watched as Phantom removed the mail leggings and breeches. “Thank you, Phantom, for saving him.”

He responded with a subtle nod. If she didn’t know better, she’d think that her words embarrassed him.

Phantom had just covered him with the rough blanket when Brother Thomas returned with another monk, who looked as if he’d been asleep. Tufts of bright orange hair were standing on end as the rotund man squinted at them.

“Not good, not good,” he muttered as he neared the bed where Christian lay. “Brother Thomas, fetch my kit.”

“I already have it, Brother Bernard.” He handed it to him.

Bernard looked at it as if it were a stranger. Scowling, he took it into his hands and shooed Adara away from the small chest beside the bed. “Best take them out while I work.”

Phantom looked less than agreeable. “I think I should stay and—”

“’Tis God’s work I do. Now go.”

“It’ll be all right, Velizarii,” Thomas said. “He won’t allow anything to happen to Christian.”

“Velizarii?” Adara asked as sudden recognition hit her. No wonder she had thought this man looked familiar. She had known him well when they were children.

How could she not have realized it the moment
she glimpsed those pale eyes? “You’re not Velizarii yon Kranig?”

His face hardened. “I’m no one of consequence.” He turned and left the room.

Adara rushed after him. By the time she caught him, he was halfway down the hallway, headed toward the refectory.

She pulled him to a stop. “Velizarii?”

“Velizarii is dead,” he said from between his teeth as he wrenched his arm free of her loose grip. “He died a long time ago.”

Tears gathered in her eyes as she heard the hatred in his deep, raspy voice. “’Tis indeed a shame, then, since I loved the boy I knew. Greatly.”

A muscle worked in his jaw as he glared down at her. He looked as if he were fighting within over whether he should talk to her or run.

She searched his face for some semblance of the pretty little boy who had once come to her palace with his father. While their parents spoke of politics and treaties, they would play in her back garden. There was nothing of that innocent child left in the man before her. He was hard. Callous.

And that broke her heart.

When he spoke again, his words were as harsh as his cold stare. “How could a princess have ever loved a peasant?”

“You weren’t a peasant.”

He laughed bitterly at that. “My mother was.”

“Your father was a prince.”

“And all that got him was an early death at the hands of his own brother.”

Her heart ached for him. She knew exactly how much his father had meant to him when he was a child. Never once had she seen his father Tristoph that Velizarii wasn’t with him.

Many times over the years, she had wondered what had become of her playmate. But no word of him had ever reached her and so she had assumed that he, like the rest of his family, had been slain.

“Does Christian know you are his cousin?” she asked.

“Nay,” he growled, “and he is
never
to know it.”

“Why?”

“What good would it do him to know?”

“You are all the family he has left.”

“Nay, Adara,
you
are all the family he has left. I am a felon and a ghost. Like Christian, I have no desire to return to Elgedera, where I live under a death sentence and where I will be reminded of how my father died, fighting for his life against his very kin. Our blood is tainted.”

She refused to believe that. “Yet you saved Christian this night.”

“I saved a man I owe my life to, that is all. Need I remind you who is out to kill both of you? Our family. Yet again they strike, and they will not rest until all of us are dead.”

Perhaps. But that still didn’t negate the fact that Velizarii had twice saved Christian this night.

“What happened to you, Velizarii?” she asked, desperate to understand how such a happy child could become the angry man before her. “When last we spoke, all you wanted was to make your father proud. You were going to join the
hauen gras
and be a captain someday.”

Bitterness darkened his eyes as he pulled down the leather piece that obscured his throat. There below his Adam’s apple was a deep, vicious scar, which explained his deep, gravelly voice. It was a gruesome mark that made her cringe in sympathetic pain for him.

“What happened? My father killed my grandfather, and in the middle of the night, under Selwyn’s command, the wasps descended on my dormitory and slew every man and boy there to make sure we didn’t retaliate against the bribed Sesari who had allowed the murders to take place.”

Adara remembered the night the
hauen gras,
the royal Elgederion knights who protected the country, were slain. “How did you survive?”

“Foolish persistence is ever the hobgoblin of fate.”

His flippant comment set her ire off even more. “How did you survive?” she repeated.

Releasing the leather piece on his neck, he shifted his haunted gaze to the floor. In the depths of his eyes, she could see his horror. His agony. “I crawled out from under the bodies of my friends while Selwyn’s men burned down our quarters.
Half dead, I crawled out the back, fearful that at any moment they would see me and finish me off. I found a place in the woods and hid until they were gone. I lay in a stupor for days until a farmer found my hiding place and took me to his wife to nurse back to health.”

“Then how is it you ended up in Outremer with Christian?”

“Dame Fortuna. She forever spits on even the most resourceful.”

Adara sighed. “Velizarii—”

“Don’t call me by that name. I’ve no wish to recount that part of my life, Majesty. The kindest thing that happened to me there was having my throat cut. Believe me, you’ve no desire to know what really happened to me after the death of my father.”

She patted his arm gently, wanting to console him, but knowing that nothing could. “Did they train you and Christian to be so evasive or is this a talent the two of you picked up on your own?”

“It was a necessary skill we cultivated so as to survive.” He turned and headed toward the refectory where she had left Lutian eating before she went to see to Christian.

“You’ll have to forgive him, Your Highness,” Thomas said from behind her. “Both of them, for that matter. Neither of them has ever known comfort or solace. They’ve seen enough tragedy to make any man mean.”

She smiled at the old monk. “And yet both men have your loyalty.”

He nodded. “They were mere boys when I met them and yet they fought like seasoned, fearless champions. I was lucky to be a man full grown before I was taken. They grew to manhood under the lashes and abuse of our tormentors.” He motioned for her to join him. “Come, and I shall talk Brother Bernard into letting you stay with Christian. He needs the tender touch of a woman to comfort him.”

Adara returned to Christian’s bed, where Brother Bernard was finishing up the dressing of Christian’s wounds. His skin held a grayish cast to it. The wound on his shoulder was already bleeding again.

“How does he?” she asked Brother Bernard.

He harrumphed at the question. “Somebody wanted him to die, that’s for certain. God’s will be done in these matters.” The monk made the sign of the cross over Christian before he gathered his kit and headed for the door.

He paused beside her. “If you wish to aid him, my lady, you can bathe his brow this night and make sure his fever doesn’t rage too wildly. If he begins to thrash, send for me immediately.”

“Thank you, Brother Bernard.”

He nodded and headed out of the room.

“I shall be with Velizarii if you need me,” Thomas said.

Alone now with her husband, Adara approached the cot slowly. She pulled the small stool that Brother Bernard had left closer to the man who, even while unconscious, looked imposing.

He was a prince who refused his throne. It was inconceivable to her. All her life, her royal responsibility had been impressed upon her. She’d never once considered just shrugging it off and turning away.

Christian had and she wondered what it must feel like to live that way. To not have the constant, nagging weight of making the wrong decision hanging over her head. She was all that stood between her people and tyranny. Her people and slavery.

At times that burden was more than she could bear. She was still considered a young woman, and yet in the dark of night when she was alone she felt ancient.

But then, Christian didn’t know his people. He’d never seen the beauty that had been Elgedera before the bloody coups that had left his family completely destroyed. There in the green hills and golden valleys was more beauty than the very Garden of Eden. Like her parents before her, she would ride through the villages that surrounded Garzi in disguise so that she could talk to her people, meet them as one of them, and know their troubles.

Christian had no idea of their customs or their skills. They were faceless strangers to him.

Just as she had always been.

Her heart heavy for him, she went to the small bowl where Brother Bernard had left water and a small cloth. She wrung out the cloth and took it to Christian. The instant she touched his forehead, he came awake with a curse as he grabbed her hand and held it in a powerful grip that bit into her flesh.

“Easy, Christian,” she breathed.

Christian blinked as he recognized the face of a dark angel…His wife.

“Adara?” he asked, wondering when they’d arrived at the monastery.

She covered his hand with hers. “Aye, now please release me. Your grip hurts.”

He let go immediately. “Forgive me, my lady. I don’t wake well to touch.”

“I noticed. How do you feel?”

He grimaced and forced the pain away as he lay back down. “Truthfully, I’ve felt better. How long have I been unconscious?”

“Not long.”

She placed a cool cloth to his head. Christian savored the warmth of her touch. The gentleness of her actions. It’d been years since he last had a woman touch him like this. For comfort.

She still wore the gown of a pauper and yet only a fool would fail to recognize the inherent nobility of the woman before him. She was graceful and kind.

“Where is Phantom?” he asked.

“I believe he went to eat.”

“Have you eaten?”

She nodded. “Would you like me to get you something?”

“Nay, I am fine.”

“Really, you should eat. We didn’t have time to even taste the pies I bought.”

She was so close to him that all he could do was stare into her eyes. They weren’t a simple brown color, but rather they had specks of gold in them. Her long black hair fell forward over her shoulder, down to his hand. The silken ends of it tickled his flesh. Before he could think better of it, he let the sable strand wrap itself around his finger.