WindLegends Saga 9: WindRetriever (2 page)

Without comment, he lay down on his side, then stretched out on his back on the bench, grimacing slightly, for the wooden seat was not comfortable.

"This won't take long," Meghan pronounced as she went about applying a mild astringent to the numerous cuts and scrapes on his body. One or two caused her a moment's anxiety as he moaned with the sensation, but she hurried on, wanting to put him through as little discomfort as possible.

"Meg?" he asked, reaching out for her hand.

"Aye, lad?" the old woman answered as she gripped his hand between both of hers.

"Can you give me something to help me sleep?"

His request surprised her and she looked down at him with concern. "Don't you think you're so tired you won't need nothing as soon as we leave you alone to rest, son?"

"Please?" he asked, searching her face.

Meggie removed one of her hands and touched his forehead. "If that's what you want.

When we get you up to bed, I'll make up a little potion that'll bring you sweet dreams."

"You wanna stitch up this wound or do you want me to, Meg?" Meghan asked as she finished wiping the cut on his thigh.

"I'll be doing it," Meggie affirmed. "I don't doubt your ability, but I just don't like nobody laying hands to him but me."

Meghan understood. She handed the threaded needle to her Sister.

If the stitching caused him pain, he didn't show it. Not by a flicker of his eyelids or an intake of breath. He lay perfectly still as the old woman took four stitches in his thigh, three in his upper left arm, and four more in his right side. When she was finished, he let her pull a clean robe over his nakedness, place sandals on his feet, and help him to get up. He walked with the two women to the door and waited until they had made sure no threat waited outside for him.

Miriam and Rebecca went ahead of their Overlord and the four women who flanked him: the two elderly women at his side and the four other sentinels with their loaded crossbows in front and behind. When they reached the room Meghan had ordered for his use, they found four more armed women standing guard outside.

"His lady-wife demanded to be allowed inside his room, Mistress," one of the women told Meggie. "But we turned her away."

"Good," Meggie replied. "He don't need none of that now. Get him in the bed while I fix him up a little tenerse and water to help him sleep."

They put him to bed, fussing and clucking over him as though he were a little boy. They tucked him in, pulled the covers over him and made sure he was comfortable before Meggie came back, huffing and puffing from her climb up the stairs, to administer the potion that would sedate him.

"Here you go, lad," Meggie said, helping him to sit up. She put the tumbler to his lips and smiled as he frowned at the smell. "I added a mite of bitter root as a treacle so's to help them wounds heal the better." She cupped the back of his head as he downed the somewhat pungent brew.

He lay back down, disliking the instant numbing in his mouth, but welcoming the signs that told him he would not be long bothered by the thoughts that were torturing him. He knew he Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 8

needed rest, undisturbed and unburdened by the memories that had been flooding his senses all week.

"You sleep good, now, baby," Meggie said, bending over with a grunt to put a light kiss on his forehead. She tugged the covers up to his shoulders and turned to go.

"Meggie?"

Meggie June Ruck turned back around and looked at her Overlord. "Aye, lad?"

"Life isn't fair, is it, Meggie?" he asked her, his voice already slurring.

Her heart ached for him. "Nay, lad. Sometimes it surely ain’t." She waited, just in case he wasn't finished, but she heard his heavy breathing and knew he had fallen asleep. Very quietly, she pulled the door open and left the room.

Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 9

"I don't know that much about him, really," Prince Kalli Jaborn admitted to the men around him. "My brother told me only his side of things and, with Jaleel, the truth was often twisted to be what he wanted it to be."

King Shalu Taborn of Necroman looked down into the amber of his brandy and swirled the liquid up the sides of the snifter. "You knew he had been in prison."

"The Labyrinth," Sentian Heil explained. "One of the worse penal colonies in the history of civilization."

"Most of us," Prince Paegan Hesar said, looking about the room, "were interned with him there." He pointed at the tall blond lounging on a low divan, then moved his gaze to some of the others gathered. "Montyne. Loure. Ching-Ching, too, but that was long before any of us got to the Labyrinth."

Kalli glanced about him. "I have heard the Labyrinth was a hell-hole."

"It was," Shalu snarled before draining his snifter of potent Viragonian brandy, thankful Serge Nickolayevich Kutuzov, the Captain of the Anna Katrine, had thought to bring a bottle with him when he and over two hundred Outer Kingdom warriors from four of Tzar Thomas' ships, had come storming into the fortress just after dawn that morning.

"How long were you there?" Kalli asked, knowing a little about imprisonment himself for until only a few hours before, he had spent over twenty years of his life shut up inside the walls of Abbadon Fortress.

"I was there about two years," Thom Loure answered. He stared down into his untouched snifter of brandy. "The others? About a year, as I remember."

"Conar was there for five," Prince Chase Montyne of Ionary said quietly. "None of us knew he was alive until we found him there."

"He had been sentenced to a flogging and exile," Wyn, the son of the man being discussed put in. "They beat him so badly, we thought he had died from it." The young man, soon to be twenty-eight years old in three weeks, looked up from cleaning his dagger. "The Tribunal told us he hadn't survived the beating and we believed them." His young eyes became haunted. "We didn't even question them."

"We weren't meant to," Holm van de Lar, the Captain of the Ravenwind grumbled. "Them bastards meant to make the boy suffer and he did."

"But he made them suffer when he got back home," Sentian Heil exclaimed. "He undid everything the Tribunal had done while he'd been in prison. He took back the land those sons-of-bitches stole and he stole the money from their coffers right out from under their noses."

"He destroyed the Tribunal," Thom Loure said, nodded. "And the Domination." He took a small sip of his drink and grimaced before setting it aside. "And nearly himself in the bargain."

"I heard he was married," Kalli commented. "That she died?"

"Elizabeth," Chase Montyne said softly. "She fell to her death."

"Along with Conar's brother, Brelan, who was trying to save her," the Tzarevna Catherine Steffonvitch McGregor injected.

"That is when we took him to the Outer Kingdom," Yuri Andreanova, the Shadow-warrior said. He looked at his Tzarevna. "And that is where he met our lady."

"And fell in love with her," Prince Sajin Ben-Alkazar added, smiling at the lady in question.

Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 10

"So much tragedy for so young a life," Kalli said. He shook his head. "I can see why my brother thought he could destroy McGregor's mind if he but heaped more personal pain on the man."

"It will take more than the deaths of a few of his closest friends to bring about the ruin of Conar McGregor!" Shalu hissed. "The man is stronger than that Hasdu demon realized."

"Yes, but Conar is wounded deeper this time than any of us may want to believe," Chase responded. "He may have avenged the deaths of our comrades, but he hasn't come to terms with those deaths, yet."

"Give him time," Balizar Arbra asked. "I've a notion when he's at himself, there's going to be hell to pay in Rysalia."

"I believe so, too," Asher Stone agreed. "He had started something before he was kidnapped that I believe he will want to see to a final end."

"You hope he will, anyway," Shalu snapped.

"We are fighting for the freedom of our homeland, Taborn," Asher argued. "He knows what that is like."

"Fighting for you almost got him killed," Thom Loure growled.

"We aim to see he goes home with us," Holm remarked, drawing agreeing nods from the men of the Wind Force and frowns of disapproval from the men of the Samiel.

"And should he want to remain here?" Rupine, the physician questioned.

"We won't let him!" Sentian snapped in answer.

"You could help us, you know," Asher protested. "You men came all this way to aid him and now you want to drag him back before he has finished with what he started."

"We want to keep his white ass out of trouble!" Shalu thundered. "Taking him back,
dragging
him back as you call it, to Serenia is the only way I know to keep him in one piece."

"Even if he doesn't want to go?" Rupine asked.

"It doesn't matter what he wants," Paegan Hesar, the sailor Prince of Virago grumbled.

"He's going back whether he likes it or not! I won't lose any more of my kin in this heathen place!"

"Have any of you stopped to think of how he might feel about the lot of you so blithely making these decisions for him?" Catherine, Conar McGregor's second wife, asked quietly. As heads turned to her, she shrugged delicately. "If you know anything about the man at all, you know he will make his own plans and carry them out in his own way."

Ching-Ching, the Chrystallusian martial arts expert who had been silent up until then, spread his small hands. "The lady is right. It is Conar's decision to make and I believe we should let him make it."

"Let him make it?” Shalu bellowed. "That is the last thing we should do!"

"I agree," Sentian said, nodding. "We should just do like we've had to do before: put him on the ship and keep him there until we can set sail for home."

"What if he refuses to go, Senti?"

Every head in the room snapped around at the soft question and men leapt to their feet, staring at the man whose life they had been so neatly arranging.

Catherine's heart thudded painfully in her chest as she looked at her husband. The baby in her womb kicked in greeting and she put her hand down to smooth the shifting in her belly. She saw his gaze travel to her and then stop. She smiled, but there was no answering smile in the sad, tired face which looked back at her. He seemed to beg her pardon for that before moving his gaze about the room.

"When will you men ever learn?" he asked. His voice was weak, toneless, and as he came Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 11

further into the room, those gathered could see the effort it took for him just to lower himself into one of the gathering room's chairs.

"We want what's best for you, Papa," Wyn said, coming to hunker down by his father's chair. The young man put his hands on Conar's knees and looked closely at him. "Should you be up so soon?"

Looking from one face to the other, Catherine could see the fierce resemblance between the two men. If she had not known they were father and son, she would have sworn they were brothers. Their hair was the same ripe shade of golden wheat. They both had deep clefts in their slightly rounded chins. They were of the same height, physique and coloring, and both had striking blue eyes, the older man's a deep sapphire blue, the younger's, a pale azure. Only the looks in those eyes were vastly different. One set had seen little trouble and strife. The other had endured torments no less exacting than those the inhabitants of hell experience.

"I am fine, Wynland," Conar told his son. He looked around him at those gathered. "Tired, but otherwise all right."

"You can rest on the ship," Shalu said, his dark cinnamon gaze fusing with the Serenian Prince's. "We have decided to leave tomorrow."

Conar nodded. "As good a time as any for you to leave," he agreed.

"ALL of us to leave," Shalu corrected.

"I'm afraid not," Conar told him. "I'm not leaving until the last of the slave trade in Rysalia has been abolished."

Asher Stone and Balizar Arbra exchanged a look of relief, then both men smiled at the grimace of stubbornness which immediately formed on the Necroman's face.

"YOU are going back with US!" Shalu barked. "In chains, if need be, McGregor!"

Conar sighed and shook his head. "When do you intend to let me grow up, Taborn?"

"When you show some sense," the King of the dark continent stressed. "As yet, I have not seen such a phenomena where you are concerned."

"I'm not going to argue with you," Conar said.

"GOOD!" Shalu spat, nodding emphatically.

"But I'll not be on that ship when you sail, either," Conar warned.

"Then we won't sail until you are," Chase said quietly, gaining himself his boyhood friend's attention. "If you stay, Conar, the rest of us do, too."

Wyn had to move back as his father pushed himself out of his chair. He stood there, seeing the anger gathering on his parent's face, watching the spark of rebellion beginning to take hold, and he glanced over at Sentian, the one man he thought just might be able to reason with his father.

Sentian stood up, too, and walked to his Overlord. From years of close friendship and hardship with the man, he reached out to put a steady hand on Conar's shoulder.

"We didn't come ten thousand miles to be turned back, milord," Sentian told him. "We came to bring you home and barring that, to help you do whatever it was you were trying to do here BEFORE taking you back with us. Freedom fighting is something we all know quite a bit about.

If you are going to stay here, then we'll stay here with ...."

"No you won't," came the reply. "Not this time. This time you men are going to do what I want you to."

Several voices interrupted with heated denials, but Balizar's shout, brought the argument to a sudden stop.