Page 2 of Prize of the Warlord
But I’m jogged hard against the pauldron as the ruffian halts at the window, preparing to descend by the chain he climbed to get to my room. The other two are already gone, vanished into the dark.
With one burly arm around my torso, the ruffian swings us both out into the hissing sleet. My breath stops at the painful chill that soaks instantly through my soft nightdress, trickling along my spine, slicking my hair to my cheeks and neck. I can’t scream, and I can’t fight. I have only enough strength to feed slivers of icy air into my lungs so I don’t pass out. Shards of cold pierce my lungs, and the pain is enough to keep me partly alert.
Blinking through the freezing drops on my lashes and the matted locks of my wet hair, I can see parts of the stronghold burning. The fires don’t look too big—the sleet will quench them soon. Around the fortress is an outer ring of stonework, and more fire-bombs keep blasting against that wall—but they’re a distraction, to keep my parents’ soldiers from noticing what’s happening.
To keep them from knowing I’m being stolen away.
My captor is running now. With every ponderous stride my body slams against his metal-covered shoulder. Pain shoots through my ribs and stomach.
We pass through a smashed portion of the outer wall, and then we’re in the fields beyond the fortress, running across broad plains that slope down to the river.
My captor stops and slings me off his shoulder. I’m flung into the thick grass, where I hunch over, desperately trying to scrape a deep breath into my battered lungs. But every breath is too shallow. I can’t fill my lungs all the way to the bottom, and it’s making me panic.
“This is the one?” says a deep voice from somewhere above me. “You are sure?”
“It’s her. Look.” The ruffian grabs a fistful of my hair and jerks my head up. A knife scrapes against leather as it’s unsheathed, and then the cold edge of the blade jabs my skin, right in the groove above my collarbone. That’s where my mark is—the delicate blue tattoo that identifies every ruling family in our Confederation.
3
For a long moment the man with the deep voice—a monstrous black figure astride an equally monstrous black horse—sits unmoving. Staring at me, maybe, though I can’t see his face in the dark.
Sleet stings my face, and I shut my eyes against it. I’m shivering helplessly, conscious that my white nightdress is probably soaked to transparency.
The deep-voiced man grunts. “She looks like a drowned woad-rat.”
I don’t know what that is, but it doesn’t sound very nice.
“Do you want her or not?” asks the ruffian. “Should I put her back?”
“Put herback?” snaps Deep-Voice. “After all we did tonight to capture her? Idiot. Bring her here.”
The ruffian drags me over to Deep-Voice, who reaches down and grabs me by the shoulder, hoisting me bodily as if I weigh no more than a tankard of ale. Clumsily I manage to get my legs astride his horse—no point fighting unless I want to fall off and break an ankle. My bare feet dangle on either side of the horse’s massive body, and my rear is tucked against Deep-Voice’s groin. I nearly pass out right then, because I’ve never been this close to any strange man.
Deep-Voice reaches backward and procures a large animal pelt from somewhere—from a saddle-bag, maybe. He drapes it over me.
I’m shaking against him, trembling like the feathers of a songbird in a high wind. He’s a boulder at my back, all armor and thick hides, and his two great arms are like walls on either side, holding the reins, hemming me in.
Earlier Deep-Voice spoke in the Common Tongue, but now he shouts something in a language I don’t know, and with a rumble of hoofbeats, he and his men charge across the plains, toward the river.
I’m being carried away from the only home I’ve ever known, the place I’ve rarely left in all my twenty-three years. When I did leave, it was with my family, and we were always headed south, or west.
The raiders are taking me northeast. That way lies a string of border villages and outposts, scattered through the foothills. Then there’s the Altagoni mountain range, like a ridge of broken teeth.
And beyond that sprawls the domain of the northern warlords, the expanse of savage wilderness we call the Bloodsalt.
My captors take the river bridge boldly, galloping past the lumpy forms of slain guards. They killed their way into the heart of my father’s territory, and now they’re racing back out of it the same way they entered. Which means their primary objective was to kidnap me. Somehow they knew I’d be alone in the fortress, and that most of my father’s soldiers would either be accompanying my family to Cheimhold or stationed along the north border.
My father doesn’t have enough men at his disposal. They’re stretched thin along the north line, barely able to keep out the raiders. That’s why my marriage to Havil is so important. Maybe these men know that, and maybe that’s why they’re trying to prevent the wedding. Or they want to hold me hostage, to bargain with my father for money or land.
If they planned to kill me, they would have done it immediately, in my room.
Cold as I am, it’s hard to unclench my jaw and manage enough muscle control to speak through my numbed lips. “What do you want?”
Deep-Voice doesn’t answer.
“My feet are going to freeze and fall off,” I say.
“Then you will not be able to run from me.” His voice rolls through my back, a vibrating force that sends more chills over my skin.
