Page 72 of Tristan
“Fight with them? Aren’t you afraid I’ll escape?”
“Let me see, how shall I put this delicately without hurting your pathetic, Markaytian pride? No.”
“No? I took down eight of your Elves.”
“It was three actually, and it was with a magical sword, which I might add, you no longer possess.”
“I could do it,” I say. “Without that sword.”
“We shall see, Warlord. But for now, there is something we musttake care of,” he says as he grabs my hair by the nape. I hear the ring of steel as he draws his sword.
“I thought it wasn’t your wish to kill me?”
The tip of his sword is at my neck, and he laughs. “No, Warlord. I shan’t kill you, not today anyway, but you can thank me for every day you live. I only mean to take this.”
In one, clean, slice, he shears off my beloved hair and my head snaps out of his grasp when the hair he holds is no longer attached to my skull. I want to cry like a child when I look at it hanging there from his hand, still shimmering in all its glory.
But I’m not a child, even if I can be a fucking brat sometimes. Instead, I begin to plot my revenge. I struggle in my bonds.
“Will you let me go, now?” My head feels much lighter.
“Aren’t you wondering why I did that?”
“What difference does it make?”
“All the difference. It is the mark of your new station. Only royals may have hair as long as you once possessed. Now it will be kept no longer than mid-neck, and no shorter either. You are aroyal concubineafter all.”
So now manservant means also acting as concubine? Figures.Bloody, horny Elves.“I am not your concubine. I belong to Corrik.”
His eyes light up and glow like the blue at the center of a flame. “Corrik is no more—and no, you are not my concubine, you belong to my brother. You will be his concubine now.”
I swallow, but I won’t be frightened, and I won’t put any stock into what he’s suggesting. I look away from him. He laughs without mirth.
“No matter, Warlord. It is time for your first lesson.”
“Lesson?”
“Yes. It is time for you to learn that you are defenseless. Moreover, you will do as you are told, willingly.”
“Is that so?”
He motions wordlessly to one of his guards.
Andothair’s warriors are not dressed like the warriors ofMortouge. They’ve less clothing. I didn’t think one could be dressed any less than the warriors of Mortouge, but they are. They wear thick black skirts made from the hides of some kind of animal I don’t recognize with leather belts that criss-cross in an “X” over their torsos. I doubt they wear anything underneath. The women’s breasts are in plain sight, with the leather of their straps cut to accommodate the weight of them and fashioned to hold them fastidiously in place. Other than that, and their fine weapons, these Elves are naked.
I stop admiring their beautiful warriors when I see who they’re dragging by his arms, my heart stops—I can scarcely believe what I’m seeing.
“Diekin.” He looks terrible and barely alive. He’s pale—even for a Mortougian Elf, struggling to breathe, and only just this side of conscious.
“What is it you want, Andothair?”
“I have told you all I am going to for now. The only part you need be interested in, is the part where you are to be my brother’s servant. If not, I will kill your friend. However, if you agree to be my brother’s and obey him in all things, I shall ensure he lives and that you are taken care of.”
“You can still save him, after four weeks of him being in this state?” Diekin is surely between worlds right now, between the world of the living and the world of the dead.
“It is I that has been keeping him alive until this point—an act of good faith. All I have to do is withdraw my power from him and his life force will be extinguished like a flame.”
“I want more than your power holding him conscious if I’m to become your brother’s slave,” I say calling it like it is, instead of using another one of Andothair’s euphemisms like “manservant.”
