Crimson and Steel (3 page)

***

That evening’s dinner was served in the garden. Similar to the atrium, the garden was an open space in the center of the manor where the roof tiles sloped to allow rainwater into the interior courtyard. Highly decorative concrete planters and painted urns were tastefully arranged about. Multicolored flowers bloomed in the gloaming and added their hues to the setting as well as their aroma. At the far end of the garden was a larger-than-life-sized depiction of the god Neptune, complete with a gilt bronze trident. The base of the statue was a fountain that was attached to the city reservoir. The thirteen concrete fish that ringed the sea deity spat water into the green tiled pool day and night.

Kell sat as straight as she could in the backless, U-shaped chair. The tinkling sound of the fountain was welcome, since Marcus ate in silence. Dining inches from him, she was too frightened to speak, and he had yet to offer any greeting since he had entered, sat, and began chewing on a crust of bread. Engrid had set out a small, square table and two chairs just for the two of them. It was a light dinner of fresh bread, mild cheese, and cut fruit. Being Roman, there was also a carafe of wine and a set of goblets. Marcus poured himself a serving and then one for Kell.

“I miss grapes,” he said almost wistfully. “In Rome you could find grapes nearly year-round. Never here. But we always can find wine. Drink.” He smiled at Kell and took a long swallow.

Kell eagerly obliged, nearly draining her chalice. She was visibly nervous, and she knew it. Her knees seemed to knock together of their own accord, and the backs of her thighs became damp with perspiration. Once a little heady from the alcohol, she was able to eat, mainly the crusty bread that Engrid had prepared. She had two more robust portions of wine and was happy to realize that her nerves had settled to the point that she surprised herself by speaking. “In my country we make wine from honey.”

“I have had your honey wine,” he replied with a smile. “I like it very much. My guards would be quite pleased with me if I could make that a part of their regular rations.”

“Why do men from my country guard your house?”

Marcus nodded as he rested his elbows on the table and tore a bit of bread in two. He considered her for a moment before answering. She did not look away from his eyes, even though the silence was awkward. The wine had stiffened her Nordic spine.

“Because I can trust them,” he answered finally. “They have no kin here and no other obligations, and that makes them loyal, particularly since they still have a sense of honor and duty instilled by their war king.”

“You cannot trust Romans?” she asked in a meeker voice.

“No,” he said plainly, “no, you cannot.” The praetor’s black eyes smoldered, and he bore into her with his gaze. He dropped his victuals, stood, and extended a broad palm. “Come, take my hand.”

Kell tendered his offer and rose to her feet, only to find she was more intoxicated than she thought. She fell into him, and he gripped her close. She inhaled his masculine scent and gripped his biceps in her tender fingers, steadying herself. Marcus throated a rumbling laugh and helped her to stand. She leaned into his body, and he wrapped an arm around her as they walked to his chamber.

Chapter Three

Asmin tangled her fingers in the pony’s mane and sat back, allowing the horse to walk for a while. She had raced for over an hour to get free from the city’s walls and away from people. Still in shock at what had taken place, she desperately tried to make sense of her situation. Where would she go? What could she do? It wouldn’t be long before Papaios found her. There was no way she could outride the Scythian. For that matter, there was little she could do. She was a pleasure slave and had been raised to be a pleasure slave. The sun was setting, and she began to quiver. Never before had the woods felt so menacing. All around her the trees and the sounds of birds frightened her. She prayed to Ishtar for strength.

Asmin allowed the pony to stop and eat some long grass growing on the side of the road. The Romans had a curious practice of burying their dead alongside the road, never inside the city gates. Being surrounded by so many dead exasperated her ill ease. Even an hour’s ride out of the town there were still headstones and memorials. The pony nibbled at clover and wildflowers that sprouted from a long decayed and cracked tombstone. Asmin looked at the writing, noting that its blocked shapes and sharp angles had been distorted. Rain had erased their memory from the realm of the living. Latin is so ugly, she thought, compared to the sweeping figures of the languages of the East. Even speaking it felt odd in her mouth. Yet the life of a pleasure slave was a life of change, and she had learned many foreign tongues.

As she pondered her next step, she huddled her arms around herself for warmth, and looked back along the highway toward the setting sun. It shone an ominous red-orange that eve, and the tree limbs that crossed its path were black and skeletal. Then she saw a silhouette rise into view, a shadow of a rider in a spired helm. Papaios.

Stifling a scream, she gripped the palomino by the mane and kicked it with her heels. The weary pony trotted down the cobbled road, puffing heavily through its nostrils. Asmin cast a glance over her shoulder, and the silhouette had grown larger. He would be on her in no time. Her equine salvation had served its duty, and she could ask no more of it. She slid from the horse’s back and paused to rub its face for a moment before swatting its rump and sending it straight for her pursuer. Perhaps, she hoped, seeing the horse heading back to the city without a rider would cause some confusion for the Scythian.

With her pulse pounding in her ears, Asmin ran headlong into the woods. Acorns and twigs crunched under her feet as she ducked and stepped over felled branches. She had a mind to get as deep into the forest as she could before her hunter could reach the point where she entered the woods. If night fell before he reached that point he would not be able to see where she’d made ingress, and she could have several hours on him if she traveled all night.

And so she wandered in the inky twilight, lost and cold, often falling and ever in fear. The textures and terrain of the deep woods were so foreign to her that simple things such as briars, tree lichens, and spider webs caused her terror. Stumbling into a frog pond elicited a shriek, which she immediately regretted, clamping her hands over her mouth. An army of amphibians leaped around her in the darkness, surrounding her in a cyclone of frog flesh. She began to sob and then weep, bumbling her way down a thickly wooded bank and into a clearing, where she sat for a long while. Once she had regained her composure, she moved on. Her limbs ached and burned, begging for a reprieve, but she would have none. She knew she must keep moving if she would escape her fate.

***

When the first light of dawn came, she allowed herself to rest briefly. The terror of night was over, but that did little to lessen the overall horror she still faced. She thought she had heard running water in the night. Once the sun had come up she saw that she was on the top of a ridge, and a stream flowed below her down a ravine. Easing up from where she had sat on a tree stump, she stretched and began to make her way down the declivity.

Then she heard it—hooves splashing along the stream. Her heart caught in her throat, and as she jerked her head to the direction of the sound she lost her footing. Slipping on a patch of fungus, Asmin fell down the ravine, tumbling through bushes, and landed awkwardly in a pool of water.

She rested on her hands and knees for a few moments and coughed before she raised her head and looked on Papaios and his destrier. The Scythian sneered down on her, his spired helm gleaming in the morning sun. Asmin felt so small in that moment. She was dwarfed by the massive horse and the massive scar-faced manhunter astride it. Running all night had done nothing. Running in any sense had done nothing. Her face burned with failure and fear.

Shivering with cold and hunger, she stood in the pool of knee-deep water. Then she realized she was completely nude. What was left of her silks had become tangled in the briars during her fall. Her hands went to cover her breasts and her sex.

Papaios pulled his tulwar from his sash and grimaced at her. Asmin then did something almost incomprehensible. She urinated. The sight of his sword combined with her fear, hunger, and overall state of mind had caused her to void her bladder. Her cheeks flushed all the more crimson as she peed, unable to stop the flow. Fat teardrops welled in her eyes as she heard her release trickling into the stream, and she felt like a child. She was utterly helpless and alone and soon she would be dead. Papaios would either kill her now or Braxus would torture her to death later.

The Scythian laughed at her, a mocking laugh; the laugh of a drunken man who had just heard a hilarious and filthy joke. The tightly knitted scar on his face turned white with his extended mirth. He urged his destrier to step closer to her, and as he did he titled her face up with the tip of his tulwar. Tears streamed down her dusky visage, and she felt utterly defeated. Papaios opened his mouth and drew in a breath in preparation to speak, but only he knew what those words would have been.

Gray fletched arrows sprouted from his neck and chest. First one lodged in his throat, and then two more quickly in either breast. The curved sword fell harmlessly from his hand and into the pool of water. Eyes bulging, the horseman clutched at his throat as blood began to sheet down his front. He used both hands to wrench the barbed arrow from his neck, ripping a large chunk of flesh from his person. This action only caused his wound to grow and more of his life’s essence to seep from him. In a few moments more he was dead, and he pitched from his saddle like a child’s doll, dropped and forgotten.

Asmin turned about, her eyes wide with panic. Had they been accosted by bandits, she wondered? Still attempting to cover her voluptuous nakedness with her slight palms, her seeking gaze fell on Papaios’s slayer. On a large boulder jutting out over the stream, a giant of a man stood erect and proud.

Clad in only a raggedly flapping breechclout, nearly every bit of his sculpted body was exposed to the elements and to Asmin’s senses. His calves and thighs were thick and sturdy, like sinuous tree trunks bound with cords of muscle. Powerful shoulders cut down to a trim waist, giving his silhouette a V shape. His chest was deep and broad and so taut that even from a short distance away Asmin could make out the striations of his muscles. Slinging his bow across his back, he gripped the edge of the boulder in his large hands and swung down into the water with nary a splash.

As the giant advanced on her, Asmin again quaked, but she also began to feel a familiar sensation. Her pussy lips were swelling. Blood was rushing to her sex, and soon she would be leaking honey in preparation for a good fuck. Terrified and aroused, her knees knocked together, and she cupped her sex as she stood in the pool lest he see her nectar dripping down her thigh.

Her cheeks burned.
Ishtar,
had he seen me pee like a little girl?
He was almost on her now, and he hadn’t said a word but his eyes were fierce, sparkling, and emerald. His long, sandy hair rustled as he confidently strode, and her body betrayed her all the further as her nipples stiffened under her palm as she struggled to conceal her breasts.

Asmin drew in her breath and nearly cried out as he strode up to her…and continued past with only a glance. She whirled around and watched as he went to his felled enemy. He inspected the black destrier that had since been drinking and chewing on verdant weeds. The barbarian searched through the saddlebags, examined the goods, and seemed pleased. He then retrieved the arrows from the Scythian’s floating corpse and reacted angrily when he found one could not be reused. Squatting low, he reached into the pool and closed his hand on the hilt of the fallen tulwar. As he rose he cut the sword through the air, making it sing and sending an arc of water to splash on Asmin. She cried out, half in distress and half in surprise, and this made him laugh.

“Do not despair, girl. I mean you no harm.” He was still chuckling as he stowed the sword with the rest of the goods on the horse. His voice was harshly accented, yet not unpleasant as he spoke the local dialect of Latin.

She remained frozen in place and watched as he went about the rest of his business. After packing away his vanquished foe’s iron helm, he hefted Papaios over his shoulder, and carried him out of the stream and into the woods, only to reappear a few moments later. He stooped near her and washed the blood from his shoulder and arms.

The man stood and stepped into the pool with Asmin.

“You have something that is mine,” he said gently in his weird accent. He leaned in until Asmin could feel his breath on her face. With the tip of his finger he tilted up her chin to force her gaze on him. She looked into his smoldering green eyes, on his weathered visage, and her hands drifted away from their protective stance. Her back arched as she leaned toward him.

Something sharp bit into the fleshiest part of her hip, and she cried out. The barbarian gave a hearty bellow and leaned back, holding up a fish hook attached to a bit of line.

“This snagged you when you tumbled into my fishing spot, but you never noticed it in your shock,” he chided as her cheeks burned, and she resumed covering herself. “I only meant to take it before you knew it was there. You might have fretted over its removal.”

Chuckling to himself, he went back to the boulder and gathered his sheaf of arrows as well as his fishing kit. He then lifted a stringer of fat, flopping fish from a deeper pool. Laced together at the gills with a length of rawhide cord, the argentine-scaled creatures were a feast in waiting that made Asmin’s stomach cramp with anticipation. Still locked in place, she gazed longingly at the man and his bounty as he strapped what he could on his new destrier’s back. With a stringer of fish in one hand and the lead to a black stallion in the other, he looked back to her.

“As frozen and silent as a statue,” he called to her mirthfully. “You’ll be dead like one too if you stay here.”

The barbarian strode barefoot through the shallows of the stream, leading the horse along a path he seemingly knew well. The banks of the stream were thick with trees and undergrowth, yet his footfalls bespoke knowledge of exactly the best course to take along the meandering waterway in order to avoid deep holes. Asmin followed, but with trepidation in her strides. Her feet were not used to treading on river rock or on muddy banks. She fell so often that she no longer tried to cover herself, because she needed to hold her arms to the side for balance. While she was glad that he had killed Papaios, she did not trust him and could not be sure that he would not do the same to her, even if her body rebelled and moistened under his gaze.

Rounding the very last bend in the stream, Asmin came out into a clearing. Here the stream forked off into two smaller creeks, and in the middle of that area was a rocky crag of a hill with a broad, flat field before and beside it. At the base of the mound was a dark, asymmetrical opening crudely hung with a deer hide. Near there was a veritable mountain of cord wood stacked neatly along with an ax lodged in an oversized tree stump. As she neared, she noted a large and well-tended herb garden, a small smokehouse smoldering in the distance, and furs stretched on frames for tanning. All around were the skulls and antlers of the many beasts he had hunted, mounted on prominent rocks and ledges of the mound. This, she realized, was the home of the barbarian.

She didn’t know what to do. Famished, exhausted, and without options, she clasped her arms close, and her eyes welled up once more. She was soaking wet and shivering. She had been humiliated over and over again. Her life was forfeit. Now she was at the whim of this…what was he? She couldn’t think clearly; her mind was a haze of thoughts that she couldn’t string together coherently. Sobbing great rivulets down her dirty face, she crumpled down next to the cold fire pit and wept.

The barbarian returned to his warren, having tied up the destrier in the adjoining field, to find Asmin in near hysteria.

“It was but a jest woman.” His face creased with concern. “Would you rather I had yanked it out painfully? I had to get close without scaring you.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she rebuked through chattering teeth. “Can you not see I am freezing? I’ve been running all night.”

He stirred up the white ashes on top of the pit to expose the still-smoldering coals with an iron poker and tossed on three sturdy logs. Soon the fire was crackling, and flames were licking up into the morning sky. Slipping into his den, the barbarian gathered a large blanket made of rabbit furs. He wrapped it about Asmin’s shoulders as she huddled close to the fire.

“Hold it open, allow the warmth in, and the fur will trap it. You must be close to having cold sickness. Here, chew on this herb; it will relax you.”

Asmin accepted with no hesitation. Exhaustion had lowered every defense, and she was grateful for any kindness. She opened her mouth, and he tenderly placed a leaf of bitter herb on her tongue with his calloused thumb.

“Tell me, girl, who was the man I killed?” the barbarian asked. “And why did he seek you?”

As Asmin unveiled her tale and unraveled each thread of her existence, he went about cleaning and cooking the fish he had caught that morning. The tender white flesh roasted over the fire as they finally exchanged names. He was called Ulf, and that brought a meek smile to Asmin’s lips. When she had finished her telling, Ulf presented her a bowl fashioned from a turtle shell that was brimming with deboned fish. The seductive and cultured pleasure slave devoured the meal with the grace of a tavern ruffian. Now warm and full, Asmin’s eyes became heavily lidded.

“You are…property?” he asked, rooting at the fire with a stick.

She nodded drowsily, pulling the furs closer.

“Men aught not be property,” he said to the winds, nodding in affirmation of that wisdom. “I have seen it often, and I like it little. Women neither.”

Asmin was silent. Her gaze fixed on the dancing flames and coruscating coals.

“In my warren you are not property,” he uttered with satisfaction, smiling with self-approval. He looked to her, and she had closed her eyes. “Sleep overtakes you. You must rest. Come, lie in my den.”

“You have been so kind, Ulf.” She spoke slowly, lifting her leaden lids. “You rescued me from a cruel master, you have fed me, and now you offer me a place to sleep. I will repay you.”

“Come now.” He lifted her into his arms as one might carry a child. “Stay you wrapped in these furs. The herb you chewed will ensure you sleep this day.”

Ulf ducked under the deer hide covering of his cave and lay her down amid a mat of other padded furs. Squatting next to her for a moment, he looped some loose hairs behind her ear and watched her slumber for a while before leaving on his daily hunt.