Taken: The Life of Uktesh Book 3 (15 page)

The man nodded.  Talia stroked the man’s shoulder and said, “But you’ll tell the Storm lord that while he is injured, it’s not serious.”

The man said, “I don’t care how good a piece of ass you think you are.  My life is worth more to me than you flirting with me.”

Uktesh said, “Well, no harm in trying, you tell him the truth if he asks. I’ll be fine.”

Uktesh limped out of the room and said, “Talia, I may need you tonight. Please make sure you’re given permission to come to me, if possible.” 

Uktesh headed to the kitchens where he ate as much meat as he could before he retired to his cell. He sat in a meditative position, though with his left leg extended, because bending it hurt.  He closed his eyes, and almost immediately fell into a meditative state.  He poured spirit into his wound as grand master Dayho had taught him.  He felt like if he added water it would help purify any infection so he combined spirit with water, and focused on the bone, muscle, and skin and pictured it knitting itself back together. 

He woke up and saw that the sun was out,
how long was I meditating for?  Where’s Talia?  Did she come and go without my noticing her?
  He unwrapped his bandages and saw that there was a bulge in his bandages.  As he unwrapped it completely he saw the maggots that had been in the wound, fall to the ground.  He looked at his leg to find that his leg was whole with only a long, thick, scar to show he’d ever been injured.  Uktesh smiled and put his weight on his left leg and found that outside of a small twinge of pain, it felt completely healed.  Uktesh rewrapped his bandages and limped to the kitchens to get some breakfast. 

When he arrived all conversation stopped. He expected some kind of continuation of the congratulations that he’d received yesterday, but the silence was ominous. 
Where’s Talia?
  Uktesh skipped breakfast and headed to find Ceftin. 
Oh that’s right I freed him!  Will he even be here still?  What is the process for freeing a slave?  I had planned on giving him some of my victory money.
  Uktesh walked out on the training sand and saw what had caused the other gladiators to stop their conversations.  Nailed to the west wall was the body of Ceftin. 

“No!”  He heard himself shout, as if from far away.  Uktesh Walked to Ceftin’s side and started pulling spikes from the wall.  Ceftin had been impaled by dozens of spikes, and as Uktesh continued to pull the stakes out, he felt his eyes begin to water.  “What did they do?”  Uktesh pulled out the stakes holding his snake-like body to the wall first and then Uktesh was blinded by tears as he pulled the last out of Ceftin’s hands.  Uktesh slowly lower Ceftin’s body to the sand. 
What have I done!  Where’s Talia?  Why didn’t she come to me last night?

Duktesh had an answer.
Because you told her you didn’t want her, and because you’re now clearly out of favor with the Storm lord. He ordered her to someone else’s bed, and there she was raped until she died. 
Uktesh tried to ignore his own dark nightmare thoughts. 

“This is what happens when you try to outsmart me, boy!”

Uktesh turned and saw the courtyard had filled with soldiers.  The Storm lord stood on his balcony and looked down at Uktesh.  Uktesh shouted, “I wasn’t trying to outsmart you!  They asked who I wanted to free, and I didn’t think I was an option!  So I said Ceftin, because I owed him the most, for all his help training me!”

The Dominus said, “Not your night-time wife Talia?  She couldn’t stop chattering about how you’d requested her to your bed last night.”

Uktesh stood, balled his fists, and said, “You better not have hurt her!”

The Dominus said, “Or what?  You may be a skilled gladiator, but I am the Storm lord!  Commander of all the armies of the Empire!  No.  Don’t try to threaten me. It’s like the mewling of a kitten.  And besides, hurt her?  Why would I hurt her?  To think that after spending every night with you for more than three months that she would still be a virgin!  Well we remedied that last night.”  The Storm lord was clearly enjoying this as he smiled widely.  “Though I think we, my sons and I, were a bit too violent for her first time.  You should’ve heard her crying and calling out for you, but you never came?  Did you?”

Duktesh chose that moment to gloat.
I was right!  To think if you had just banged her like we both wanted to from the beginning last night wouldn’t have been so rough for her.

The Storm lord smiled, made a gesture, and Uktesh felt himself slam into the wall behind him
.
 
How’d he do that?
HH
  The Storm Dominus asked, “Cat got your tongue?”

Uktesh had seen Wyde the grand master of earth pull great slabs of earth out of the ground to form stairs.  He tried to use earth to pull a handful of the broken wall from the ground to his hand hidden behind his back.  That small amount of power use caused sweat to begin to bead on his forehead.  He used fire and earth to compress it.  The Storm lord said, “I might be willing to send her to you tonight if you apologize for trying to outsmart me.”

Uktesh continued to compress until it was one very solid, very dense, and very small ball.  Uktesh half knelt, half fell, on his, “injured,” leg, his vision was beginning to blur from the use of so much power.  He bowed his head, and said, “I apologize, Storm lord that you felt I was trying to outsmart you.  I know that I could never do so as you are much smarter and much more cleaver than I am.  Please let her come to me this night.”

The Dominus clearly hadn’t expected that and said, “Looks like you can learn.  Very well, she satisfied me and my boys enough last night, you can have her this night.”

Uktesh said, “Thank you, Dominus.”  He turned back to Ceftin’s body and while he was folding the naga’s arms he used the rest of his remaining power to throw the compressed ball into and through the Storm lord’s head.  Uktesh looked up at the sound of a crash from the balcony, but as he couldn’t see what had happened, he pretended he didn’t know.  Uktesh rested his hand on the naga’s shoulder and asked a guard, “What do we do with his body?  Where should we bury it?”

The man shook his head, and indicated that he didn’t know.  Uktesh grunted as he lifted the naga off the ground and staggered inside to the only place he knew the dead would be disposed of.  He was in the ludis when the first screams sounded from above.  As drained as Uktesh felt he couldn’t keep the smile from his face as he walked into the medic’s room.  Fortunately no one was there to see his smile.

1. Wait, I’m what
   

Five months and a few days apart from Uktesh

Laurilli would have thought that the few months that she’d been gone would have changed nothing, but somehow Abrym, Lana, and Heathyr, while they also kept the children safe, had fortified their little community.  There were wooden stakes in the ground that looked like they covered every part of the walls.  On every roof there was a chair, which Laurilli could only guess was for guard duty. 
But the watch tower is several stories taller than the houses?  Maybe the chairs are for archer who need to shoot down at enemies inside the walls?
 

Anan and Enan had left the company of the group hours earlier.  As the rest walked into the community they were swarmed by the five left behind, who came out to make sure that everyone had returned safe and sound.  Laurilli made eye contact with as many of her men as she could, and nodded a farewell as they continued down the road to their homes. 

Heathyr was sitting on one of the roofs, and had seen them in the distance. She stood up and jumped from the roof to a pile of hay stacked nearly as tall as Larut.  Laurilli could tell even from this distance that her mother had changed. She had a bow and a quiver of arrows at her hip, along with a rapier and a long dagger on the other hip.  As Laurilli walked closer she noticed that Heathyr was also thinner than she remembered.
Not that she’s ever been fat, or even chubby.
But her outline had changed. 

In a different house Laurilli saw Lana stick her head out the second-story window.  Moments later she was out of the house running toward Basam, with Heathyr following at a more modest pace. 

Laurilli was about to say something to Lana, when Lana slammed into Basam with a bone-jarring flying tackle.  She landed on top of him, and Laurilli saw Basam wince as Lana’s dagger hilt jammed into his ribs.  Basam wheezed for breath and Laurilli saw that Lana’s knee had come dangerously close to unmanning him.  Laurilli’s jumbled mind, couldn’t figure out whether to be happy that Lana cared so much for Basam; angry that she was physically assaulting one of her soldiers; or embarrassed that Lana seem content to kill Basam through mouth on mouth strangulation.  Basam came up for breath, but then he kissed Lana and one new emotion swept all the others out of the way; a crushing depression that Uktesh wasn’t there to treat her the same way.   

Basam stroked Lana’s long hair.  When she broke off from the kiss she said, “Lana has missed you too.”  Her azure eyes sparkled with unshed tears and he reached up and hugged her to his chest.  “Lana doesn’t want to live without you anymore. You can’t leave Lana again.”

Laurilli felt her heart pounding wildly at the intimate confession.  She started to turn away to let their conversation play out as it would, but in a slightly less watched setting.  That was, at least until Basam said, “But Basam has to go back to Basam’s soldiers in two weeks.”

Lana lifted herself above him, but still straddling his hips and said, “Then you need to marry Lana!”

By this time Heathyr had walked up and heard Lana’s declaration, and cried out, “You two need to wait the year and a day before you can get married.”

Lana twisted on top of Basam and glared at Heathyr, while Basam, freed from Lana’s gaze, silently thanked Heathyr for her interruption.  Lana said, “What do you mean we have to wait a year and a day.  No one who has been married recently has waited that long.  Basam is in the army, and Lana has been,” she glanced at Basam, and said, “you know what’ing by Lana’s self for years.”  Laurilli suddenly wondered what Lana’d been doing by herself for years, and why that would mean she’s ready for marriage. But all the things she could think of were things that Lana wouldn’t do. At least Laurilli thought so, but she assumed that Lana must be talking about something else. Except that when Lana rolled off of Basam his face was beet red, as if he knew what, the,“what’ing,” was that Lana was doing.  In fact, all the adults were blushing furiously.  

Heathyr emerged from her embarrassment and said, “Just what do you think you’re doing?  Talking about something like that in front of children!”  Heathyr stood above them with her hands on her hips, in what Laurilli knew as her “thunder clouds on the horizon” expression. 

Lana, however, didn’t know how dangerous a situation she’d stumbled into and said, “Lana is trying to get Lana some.  Now Basam, what say you?  Will you marry Lana?”

One of the twins mumbled loud enough for everyone to hear, “Or at the very least bang her?”

Heathyr said, “I think that this is a private conversation for your home.  Basam, kindly escort your wet nurse home and discuss what you need to among yourselves.”

As they walked away, Laurilli said to Heathyr, “I noticed that you were up on the roof, in what I assumed was a lookout area or an archer nest.  Why didn’t you set up chairs in the watch tower?” 

She was still trying to figure out what the “what’ing” was that Lana was doing.  Laurilli tried not to grin, a little confused about why she was so determined to find out what the “what’ing” was that Lana had spoken of.

Heathyr said, “Oh those are archer perches. I’d just finished nailing that chair in, and I needed a break. That’s why I was sitting up there.  Where’s Thulmann?”

Laurilli said, “He had to stay back for a few more days and he will have to leave here earlier than in two weeks like the rest of us.”

Heathyr asked, “What about you?”

Laurilli asked, “What do you mean, ‘what about me?’”

Heathyr said, “Look at you,” and she gestured at Laurilli.

Laurilli felt her jaw drop, “You mean the weight I put on?”

Heathyr smiled and said, “Yeah, the, ‘weight,’ you put on.”

With that Laurilli turned, her hair whipping around her head, and stalked toward her house stomping with every step.  “What did I say?” Laurilli heard Heathyr ask.

Laurilli silently thought about what her mother had said as she stomped into her house. Laurilli knew that she had thought about her continuous weight gain more than she should have.  She had thought about it during the long runs, while eating, first thing in the morning, the last thing at night, and throughout the day, but she had never thought that she needed to worry that when she came home she’d be so obviously a changed person. 

She left her house to check on her horse in the barn.  When she got there she nuzzled her head against the bridge of his nose, cleaned him, checked his shoes, then got him some water and hay and thought about doing some chores instead of going over to her mother’s to eat, but with a deep breath decided to head inside.  She walked inside and followed the aromas into the kitchen where she sat down and watched Heathyr work.  Heathyr efficiently sliced a carrot and added it to the pot of stew she was making.  She took a spoon, tasted the mixture, and added some more spices.  It was then that Laurilli noticed that her mother was crying and she mentally kicked herself for being an idiot.