Page 19 of Prize of the Warlord
I wince at the coarse words. “Turn around.”
“Why? I’ve already seen your body.”
“But you haven’t seen me do those messy things, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“My people and I do it in each other’s presence all the time. It’s part of living out here. Part of war.”
“So you walked me out here to give me privacy from your people, butyouwant to watch?” I cringe. “You’re disgusting.”
“I don’twantto watch,” he grumbles. “But I—faen, Kaja—youwatch her.” He stalks a few paces away and then stops, keeping his back turned.
The white tiger eyes me blandly while I relieve myself and clean up with snow and leaves. It’s not ideal. I would much rather have a privy.
When the Warlord returns me to the tent I wash my hands and then step back to the post, ready to be chained again.
But I don’t like the way he’s grinning at me, as if he just had a very good idea.
“We’ll be waiting here today for word from your father,” he says. “And I think, while we wait, I’m going to punish you.”
21
The Warlord lets me gulp down some porridge and orders Jili to braid my hair with bones before he takes me outside again. I’m glad to see Jili, though I’m not sure what her role is in camp. She’s tough and wiry, but doesn’t seem to have the fighting power of the others. And her dark eyes sparkle with a merry, innocent light. With the Warlord’s ominous presence in the tent, she doesn’t speak to me, but when I thank her for doing the braids again, she smiles.
As usual, the other warriors eye me with a kind of antagonistic interest—not exactly threatening, but not friendly either. Some of them are eating, others are sparring, and others are washing up in the bright, cold air. I wonder if I could persuade the Warlord to have someone heat water for me so I can bathe. He’d probably sneer and tell me to do it myself. Of course he’s probably going to chain me again after my “punishment,” so heating water myself won’t even be an option. Not that I could lift and carry heavy containers of water for as long as it would take to fill a tub, if they even have one around, which seems unlikely—
“Mouse.” The Warlord is standing several paces ahead, between the red-veined trees. Impatience tightens his handsome face, but the limpid gold of the morning light bathes his features too, softening them. He braided his hair while I was eating, and the woven locks catch the filtered rays of sun in the most distracting way. When I first saw him he was clean-shaven, but now he has blond scruff along his jaw, partly concealing the bruise I gave him. Why didn’t the healer fix that injury when he mended the thigh wound?
“Your face is still bruised,” I say.
“I told him to leave it. To remind me not to trust you.”
Bars of blue shadow fall across his tall figure—shadows cast by the strange trees of this forest.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Not far.”
“Are you going to hurt me?”
He walks back toward me, each step deepening the prints he already made in the light powder of snow on the ground. He takes my chin in his hand, pulling at my lower lip with his thumb like he did last night. “Yes,” he says quietly. “I am going to hurt you.”
I shiver in spite of myself, my flesh and bones cringing, recoiling. “Please don’t. I won’t try to run again.”
“I can’t trust you, little mouse. You broke your word, and you tried to steal my horse. If another warrior did those things to me, I would kill them. Now walk, before I make you crawl to our destination.”
Trembling, I follow him until we’re so far from camp I can’t see it, or hear the jangle of bridles and the rough, merry voices.
He must be planning something truly terrible for me, and he doesn’t want his people to witness it.
The Warlord prowls the edge of a wide clearing. “Stand in the center, and close your eyes.”
Swallowing hard, I obey. With my vision darkened, I focus on the fresh scent of the snow-sprinkled forest, the whispering rasp of the skeleton leaves, the icy breath of the breeze on my cheek.
Then a burly arm slams across my throat, and a massive palm cups my waist. The Warlord has me from behind, in a headlock. I freeze, terrified and thrilled by the power of his grip. My eyes pop open.
The Warlord growls into my ear. “Self-defense is about using your enemy’s weak points against them. Sometimes even strength can be a weakness. It can make a man so bold he forgets to be careful. Now show me how you would get out of this hold.”
“Wait,” I gasp. “Are you trying to teach me—”
