WINDREAPER (5 page)

And she had said to him long ago: "Beware the spinner's brew!"

She, who weaves the web of mischief and strife. She, who bears the burden of guilt from so long ago.

They called her a whore.

They called her evil, but the weaver spins a web around him that is meant to protect rather than harm.

And her magic was cast upon the still waters of midnight, her web settling gently over his shoulders.

"Ride, Conar, ride," she sang sweetly to the conjuring pool's still waters as she swept his handsome face from her view. Her green eyes tilted upward. "Your lady at your side."

In the beginning, Conar's purpose was clear. In the beginning, he knew his own soul, his own heart. In the beginning, he could see clearly the path he was destined to take. And in the beginning, he was his own worst enemy.

With his sapphire blue eyes hard and unrelenting on the future stretching out before him, his strong right hand gripping the pommel of his deadly sword, he stepped forth into the fight and his aim was true, his belief in himself unshaken. Those who rallied around him were of the same cut of cloth, of the same deadly purpose, and together, he and his men ventured into the realm of Darkness, took up arms against those who had destroyed.

His fury in the fight was becoming legend; his generosity to his people and to those he saved, the stuff from which the legends sprang.

His thoughts strayed often to the far crenellations of Boreas Keep and those who knew him well, those who listened not at all to his hard words of anger toward the royalty of Boreas Keep. Those who loved him saw the hurt playing along his sensuous mouth, and left him alone. They watched him, protected his back with flashing swords and expertly thrown daggers, but left him to his brooding.

It was not until word had come from the keep, from the King of Serenia, that the anger went beyond fury to cold, dangerous hate.

The night before Conar left for Boreas Keep, he decided to get rip-roaring drunk at the Green Horned Toad Tavern.

He had escaped the watch of his "guard dogs," as he called them, and sat drinking one ale after another until he was in a violent frame of mind. He turned an unforgiving glare to every newcomer to the tavern, warning away their company.

It was only by a miracle no one recognized him, for he had come to this smoke-filled tavern without his disguise. Only his bright blond hair was covered, a black kerchief wrapped tightly around the famed flaxen locks and tied just below his right ear. The jagged twin scars on his left cheek showed white through the bush of his thick, dark golden beard. In his left earlobe, a wide silver hoop caught the flare of light from the torch over his table. To those in the room, he appeared a man to be left alone. No one looked twice at him. No one, that is, but a giant of a man who sat deep in his cups not far from the Darkwind's table.

It was a shock to the giant. He, at first thought, he'd had that proverbial "one drink too many" and was seeing ghosts, but on closer examination, furtive and intense, he realized his ghost was, indeed, who he'd thought. The legend of the Dark Overlord of the Wind began to make sense to him then. With a nod of his shaggy head, the giant smiled into his tumbler of ale and his heart filled with absolute joy.

He watched silently, while what began as a drunken stagger against the Dark Overlord's table, became a living nightmare for the intoxicated man who just happened to stumble. He soon lay on the rush-strewn floor, with a lethal, double-edged dagger at his throat. The drunk had been imbibing someplace else, obviously, but coming to the Green Horned Toad had been the mistake of his life, as the Overlord of the Wind proceeded to tell him.

"Your mistake, sir, will be your last!" the bearded man said in a deadly, soft whisper. "You'll make no others this side of hell."

A trickle of blood oozing down his drunk's throat. "I meant you no harm, Your Grace!" he screeched in a wounded, terrified voice. "I surely meant no harm!"

Maybe it was the fear in the man's tone, or perhaps his obvious contrition, or the way his scrawny Adam's apple bobbed with abject horror, or maybe even the unconscious title of deference he used, but something stayed the blade at his throat, saved the wretch's life.

The bearded man withdrew the dagger. His cold blue eyes narrowed with a sudden flash of white-hot fire, and he returned the blade to the top of his boot. He stood up, then offered the drunk his hand. "Get up."

The man reluctantly put up a violently trembling hand. He winced as the strong sword hand closed around his own. Getting clumsily to his feet, he edged away, bowing deeply at the waist, repeating over and over again, "I'm sorry, Milord. Sorry."

The Dark lord's lip curled in, what the giant assumed, passed for a smile. The bearded man dismissed the drunk, turning around to swipe up his nearly empty tumbler of ale. He brought the brew to his lips, and over the rim of the vessel, saw a group of four men circling his table. They appeared to be the bullying kind, sneers of challenge on their meaty faces. They seemed genuinely surprised when he turned his back on them and reseated himself.

"Afraid to take on real men, eh?" one scoffed, nudging one companion and winking at the other two.

These men didn't appear to concern him at all. He viewed the threat they presented as a nuisance and nothing more. With a dispassionate glance at them, he leaned back negligently in his chair and fixed them with a steady stare.

Somewhat taken aback by the bearded man's obvious contempt as he folded his arms over his wide chest, at least one of the four thought better of engaging him in combat. The others, apparently less attuned to the room's highly charged atmosphere, continued the insulting remarks, which were met with that same unwavering, dark blue gaze.

"What's the matter with you?" one snarled. "You a coward?"

"Afraid to talk to us, he is," another piped up.

"Maybe the cat's got his tongue," the third quipped. He placed his grimy hands on Conar's table and leaned over. "Maybe he's feeling a mite like a little doggie facing a pit bull. He yipped at that fool drunk, but he seems to be cowering away from us. Maybe all he can do is yip."

The bearded man's mouth stretched into a lopsided grin. "You keep pestering me and I'll show you that my bite is much worse than my bark."

When a man is challenged, the giant thought, he's like a canine who reacts first and then thinks. It's the nature of the male beast to be the aggressor. The object of their taunts was in a fighting mood, anyway, and nothing less than spilled blood would have satisfied him.

It took only a matter of minutes to dispatch the men who had made the fatal mistake of annoying him. He stood eyeing the room, wanting, needing, someone else to tussle with. He had downed three more ales and his gait was now unsteady, his hands shaking, his speech slurred almost beyond understanding, but he onbiously would have taken on anyone foolish enough to venture his way.

When the giant rose from the table and made purposeful strides toward him, the Dark Overlord crouched, dagger in hand.

"It's time to go home, Milord," the giant said softly. "I will accompany you."

The bearded man snarled, his mouth twisting bitterly. He tilted back his head so he could glare up at the man who literally towered above his own six-foot frame. "I'm not going nowhere."

"Oh, yes you are."

A hard right to the exposed jaw knocked the stars down from his sky.

* * *

Waking up in his room, ten miles from the Green Horned Toad, with a raging headache and blurred vision, sour stomach and a mouth that tasted of waterlogged timber, he used every coarse word and vitriolic curse he could on the men who gazed down at him. He tried to get up, failed, and let out an hiss of fury. Finding his head spinning as fast as a top, he fell back on the bed and drifted into sleep once more.

He barely feel the gentle hands undressing him, bathing the drink-sweat from his limp body.

* * *

"You have our thanks, sir," Roget du Mer told the giant as the big man wiped Conar's brow with a deceptively soft touch for hands that were four times the size of a normal hand. Roget smiled. "He might have gotten himself hurt."

The giant ran the rag down Conar's naked neck and chest. "I wouldn't have allowed anything to happen to him, Duke du Mer." The man's voice was heavily accented, foreign, mumbling.

Roget was stunned. This man obviously knew who he was, and if that was the case, might he not also know Conar, the man to whom he was administering with such loving, gentle care? He had been surprised when the giant punched Conar; even more surprised when he caught the young man as he crumpled, picking him up in his arms like one would a child, and telling Roget that he would "carry the little lord home." It had been the fierceness in the giant's broad face, beneath the craggy, low-slung brow, that convinced Roget the man meant to do just that. For some reason, a reason Roget as yet did not understand, he trusted this over-grown man. Now, he wondered just how far he could.

"You know me." Roget sat on the foot of Conar's bed. He nodded at the sleeping man. "You know him, as well?"

The giant nodded and eased Conar onto his stomach. The huge hands trembled as he took in the mass of criss-crossed scar tissue, the legacy of a brutal punishment. There came a low, keening groan from his throat; a groan of deep despair.

"It was a long time ago," Roget remarked, moved. "If you know who he is, you know how he came by that."

Tenderly, the man bathed the puckered flesh. "He didn't deserve this, Duke du Mer."

Roget brought up one booted foot and tugged at the rich brown leather. "No, he didn't."

"It was me, you know," the man said, his hands lovingly stroking the deepest of the wavering whip marks.

Roget pulled off his boot and looked at the man. "I don't understand."

"It was me." The man's voice was softer as he gazed at Conar's mangled flesh. He seemed to mentally shake himself after a moment's reflection. "It was me that scarred him."

Roget gawked at the man, full recognition falling into place. He put up a hand and plowed his long, tapered fingers through his hair. He had also once been an unwilling subject of this giant. "You're Bent, the executioner."

The answer was not a brag, nor a simple statement of fact. It was a curse on his lips. "Not anymore. Not since this."

Roget had reason to hate the man, for he had felt the sting of Bent Fontaine's whip on the day he had been condemned by the Tribunal of Serenia. But he recognized true contrition in the man's ravaged voice, and he knew, too, that it had been his job to torture, flog, and kill men the Tribunal had tried in those days. Roget could never forgive the Tribunal for what they had done to him, but he could forgive this man who lovingly touched the flesh of his friend.

"I am sure he forgave you," Roget said. "He wouldn't have blamed you for what was done to him."

Bent nodded. "He forgave me before the first lash ever struck him, Duke du Mer. That was his way." He tugged the kerchief from Conar's bright blond hair. A gentle smile touched his huge mouth. He laid down the kerchief, then stroked the gleaming head of hair. His large head cocked to one side. "I never forgave myself, though."

"You know he's the Darkwind?"

Another smile, this one warm and secret. "Only
he
could have been. I thought the Dark Overlord might well be one of his brothers, Prince Dyllon, maybe, or Prince Coron. No one knows where they are." He peered intently at Roget. "Are they safe, Milord?"

Roget nodded, not sure just how much he could trust this man.

Bent seemed to understand. His massive shoulders slumped and he took a deep breath. "I care not who he is now except that he is alive, Duke du Mer. All I care about is him. His secret is safe with me, but if you think I pose a threat, that I can't be trusted, kill me, Milord. I will not be the reason he is harmed again. Through no fault of mine will I ever let that happen!" The man's voice was strong, full of honesty. He shook his lank brown, shoulder-length hair. "No, I will not see him harmed ever again."

Roget regarded Bent for a long time, then an idea struck him. He stood, thinking his slightly shorter than six-foot stature looked child-like beside the eight-foot Bent Fontaine. "How good are you at protecting yourself?"

His smile obviously confused Bent. A deep frown appeared on the broad, wrinkled face. "I do well enough."

"And do you think you could protect this poggle-headed boy?" Roget asked, thrusting his chin toward a sleeping, snoring Conar.

Understanding lit up Bent's hooded eyes. "He needs a bodyguard?"

"What do you think? Tonight is not the first time he's done something so patently stupid. With you as his bodyguard, I wouldn't worry about him." He put out his hand. "Do we have a deal?"

Bent's giant paw completely covered Roget's hand. "Consider him safe, Duke du Mer." He vigorously pumped Roget's hand.

Roget cringed. The man's strength was torture. When he recovered his hand, he flexed it, opening and closing his fingers. "If you're going to be one with us, Bent, you'd better learn to call me by my code name: Hawk. Duke Roget du Mer exists no longer."

Bent grinned. "It will be my pleasure, Lord Hawk!"

* * *

"Make that colossus leave me the hell alone, Hawk!" Conar glowered up at the man hovering near him. "He thinks he's my damned twin!"

Roget shook his head. Conar's temper was worse than usual this morning, due to the vast amount of ale he had consumed the day before. Twice Conar had tried to leave the room and twice Bent blocked his way.

"You're staying until it's time to leave for the keep." Roget didn't even look up when the snort of rage blew from his friend's mouth.

"I will not be dictated to!" came the thunderous reply. A tumbler of water sailed across the room, landing with a resounding crash against the hearth.

Roget smiled. Conar was like a little boy when thwarted. In a reasonable voice, Roget explained the situation. "In less than an hour we leave for Boreas Keep. You can't go into Boreas with a fogged brain. Bent will see that no liquor makes it way to your empty belly. Not this morning. Not this evening. Not tomorrow. Or the next day. Not until we have accomplished what we go to Boreas to accomplish."

"I don't need this ugly bastard guarding
my every move!"

Roget shrugged and looked at the book in his lap. He scanned the page, ignoring the angry hiss of warning from Conar. "He'll stand guard over you whether you like it or not. You can't be trusted to look after yourself, so you have acquired a nanny."

"A nanny!" The shout made the windowpanes rattle. Another object flew across the room and hit the wood paneling. "I'll not have it, Hawk!"