Page 20 of Prize of the Warlord
His hand leaves my waist, clapping roughly across my mouth. “Show me.”
I lurch ineffectually in his grip.
“Your strength won’t help you, since you have none. Find my weak points,” he says.
I try slamming my head backward, but he’s too tall for my skull to strike him in the face. I end up knocking my head against his breastbone, and when I squeal with pain and frustration, he chuckles.
Next I try kicking upward with my heel, toward his groin.
“A good thought,” he says. “But now you’re off-balance, see?” He lets go of me while I’m still kicking at him. I sway and tumble into the snow. He’s on top of me in an instant, his enormous frame braced across mine, caging me. “And now I have you pinned. You should have used your elbow to jab my stomach or side. You should also twist your head into my elbow and then duck your chin and wriggle down. Jab, twist, duck.”
“And that will work?”
He stares down at me. “No. Not against someone like me.”
“Then why should I try?”
Leaping to his feet, he says, “Again.”
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We try the same hold again, several times, and I don’t have much better success. Once I manage a glancing blow to his groin, but he only says, “Mm, that tickles,” in a mocking tone.
I have no idea why he’s doing this. Why would he teach me to defend myself? Whatever his motives, the training is completely ineffectual, because I have no chance against a brute like him. Maybe that’s his plan—to discourage and dispirit me so I’ll be more compliant.
He retreats, opening distance between us, then paces while examining me from top to toe. He’s not wearing a cape or coat, and his loose shirt gapes wide in the front, showing those massive collarbones and boulder-like pectorals.
The Warlord pulls an enormous dagger from the back of his belt. It’s as wide as my palm, with gleaming razor edges and a keen tip. The hilt is intricately carved like the head of a hawk.
He flips the weapon casually and holds it by the blade, reaching it toward me. “Attack me with this. Try to kill me.”
“What?” I cringe, clasping my hands to my chest. “You’re unarmed.”
He laughs, a sound as richly golden as his hair, or the sun itself. A quiver of delight pulses through my heart.
“You think you’ll be able to touch me with that?” he scoffs. “Take it.”
I accept the knife gingerly, horrified by the sheer size of the blade, its power to destroy tissue and organs. That keen edge is honed for spilling copious amounts of human blood. “I don’t like knives, or any weapons, really.”
He snorts. “Such brazen privilege. What kind of world do you think you live in, Mouse? A safe one? No. Do you think your people cower and whimper when I come for their goods, when I burn their homes? No, damn you, theyfight. They resist. So fight me.”
He takes a fierce step forward, and I swallow, falling back. His eyes snap with a riotous hunger and a lust for conquest. A new fear forms inside me.
“My mother says your men rape our women sometimes,” I whisper.
His mouth tightens. “I am not the only warlord of the north, and I do not control all the raiding parties. I don’t take women in that way, but it is a war tactic employed for generations by many armies. The act of invading the body as well as the land breaks the enemy’s spirit more quickly.”
“It’s horrible.”
“Yes. War is horrible. Loss is horrible. The way my people were uprooted and forced out of their own land was horrible. The way your father’s men mutilate my people when they capture them, and hang their dying bodies from the outpost towers—that is horrible.”
“But you perpetuate horror,” I manage through my trembling lips. “You embrace it and inspire it.”
He strides forward until the knife I hold presses to his chest, and he tugs on the braids at the back of my head, forcing my face up. “I took you so I could bargain for my people’s rightful inheritance, rather than killing for it.”
“So this is you being peaceable.” I choke on a laugh.
“Never.” He snarls the word in my face. “I will never be at peace with one of your kind. When I look at you, I see blood and pain. I see my people starving through long winters, dying in the cold while thieves enjoy the bounty of our ancestral land. When I look at you,” he hisses, his mouth nearly brushing mine, “I see an enemy who deserves to die.”
