Her Reaper's Arms (16 page)

Blackwind sat down on the creek bank and stared into the sparkling water. It had taken

her thirty years to find Bevyn Coure and now that she had, she intended to see he was

returned to Críonna and the fate reserved for him. How she would do that now that her

transportation had been destroyed was a major problem.

“Greedy bitch,” Penthe growled, thinking of the captain of the
Ostria
. Had it not

been for greed, things would not have gotten so out of hand. But the Amazeen captain

had taken a look at the fine, strapping lads of Lawler and had decided they would make

good breeding stock on Amazeen. Despite Penthe’s objections, Captain Antimache had

ordered the young ones taken.

“There are hundreds of such prime specimens of maleness scattered across Terra,”

Antimache had argued. “We can take them easily and come back for more!”

“You won’t be coming back from the arms of the Gatherer,” Penthe said with an

ugly snort. “Nor will those prime specimens of maleness.”

Angry that her transportation home had been demolished and with no guarantee

another LRC would be forthcoming, Penthe kicked at the sand beneath her bootheel.

Her anger was such that she felt the blood pounding in her temples. She had not only

the covetous Antimache to thank for her situation but the bastard Reaper as well.

Thinking of Bevyn Coure, Penthe stretched out on her back, her knees drawn up as

she glared at the lacy leaves canopied over her head. For days she’d been tracking the

Reaper—keeping close watch on him, waiting for just the right moment to throw a net

around his handsome head and draw him up. Had Antimache not overruled her, Coure

might well be on the LRC at that very moment, though Penthe had not counted on the

interference of the Triune Goddess in the matter.

“But you should have,” she chastised herself. “You should have known She’d not

give him up easily.”

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Realizing she might well be stuck on this backward world for the remainder of her

days, Penthe cursed fluently and sat up, slapping her wrists atop her drawn-up knees

and glaring across the bucolic creek. Her vow to bring Coure back for punishment

might never be fulfilled, but she would take pleasure in hunting him, causing him as

much irritation and grief as she could.

“I want him hurt,” Kennocha had said on her deathbed. “I want him completely

destroyed.”

Penthe had read the bitter memories boiling inside her great-great-grandmother’s

head as the old woman lay there wheezing for breath. She had seen the handsome

young priest as the flames had swept upward to devour him. She had witnessed the

unbelievable rescue that had plucked Bevyn Coure from his just reward and had

commiserated with Great-Great-Grandmere Kennocha that justice had not been served

that day. Truth be told though, she couldn’t have cared less about the alleged injustices

Coure had supposedly perpetrated against her kinswoman. She wondered at

Kennocha’s state of mind as the old woman continued to rail so vehemently against the

priest.

“Pain of the highest order,” Kennocha had decreed. “Give him pain he will feel

throughout eternity!”

Such things came when a woman allowed herself to become obsessed with a male,

Penthe scoffed, knowing that would never happen to her. She herself had no use for

what she considered the weaker sex. Men were born to be used until they were used up

and then discarded for a newer, better model. They were not meant to be kept and

cosseted as the priest had been at Rathlin. Nothing good ever came from sheltering the

dirty little beasts from life’s travails. To her way of thinking, Great-Great-Grandmere

Kennocha had gotten what was due her but family obligations were more important

than personal feelings, and she would do what was needed to avenge her great-greatgrandmere.

Not to mention, Penthe thought as she got to her feet, she had her own personal

bone to pick now with Bevyn Coure. Because of him, she was trapped, whether

permanently or temporarily, on Terra and he would be made to pay for his part in the

problem. Dusting off the seat of her jumpsuit, she bent over to retrieve her Dóigra,

thinking of the one that had been taken from Asteria Kleite, the Amazeen who had

accompanied Penthe to Terra to retrieve Coure.

Asteria and Penthe had been more than partners. They had been lovers for over

eight years and Penthe intensely mourned her loss. The rabid rogue who had brought

Asteria down had savagely bitten her, tearing Asteria apart. The
balgair
had died for his

sins but Penthe had been so devastated at Asteria’s death, she had not thought to

retrieve Asteria’s weapon and had been careless in not making sure Roy English could

not rise from his rabid state to kill more women. When she had gone back to the shack

where Asteria had met her end, dreading to see once again the atrocities English had

committed, Penthe had found it burned to the ground, the Dóigra destroyed along with

the deplorable contents of the shack. A scan of the area had brought Coure’s scent. She

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knew he had finished what she should have seen ended and that irritated her beyond

acceptance.

It was just one more thing for which Coure would be made to answer when Penthe

had him in her clutches.

* * * * *

Leaving Lawler behind, Bevyn drummed his heels against Préachán’s flanks,

urging the steed into an easy gallop. He rode with his right hand on the reins, his left

braced on his thigh, his uneasy thoughts drifting back to the Blackwind. He knew he’d

have to go after the Amazeen, take her down, but for now there was nothing he wanted

more than to find his woman and hold her, lose himself in her sweet scent.

The memory of what he had found in the shack had come back to haunt him and

was sitting heavily on his soul. He knew it always would for such things were an

abomination—once seen, never forgotten. He suspected the Triune Goddess had

clouded his mind for a few hours of brief relief but now the sights were sitting in his

mind’s eye like a canker. That too would be Her doing.

“Lord Kheelan?” he asked, reaching out to the High Lord.

“We are here,”
the Shadowlord replied.

“Were there any survivors of the crash?”

There was a long pause.
“No, Lord Bevyn.
Unfortunately not.”

“How many men died?”

“Fifteen.”

Bevyn closed his eyes. He wanted to ask how many had been married, how many

had fathered children, but a part of him didn’t want the burden of the knowledge

weighing down on his shoulders.

There were no more words from the Citadel. He knew the Shadowlords would be

discussing him still again and another tick would go on the healer’s chart—one more

thing about which to counsel Coure when he came to the bastion.

He reached up to take off his hat, armed the sweat from his brow and then pulled

the hat back on low over his forehead to shield his eyes from the sinking sun. Once

more his head was throbbing with pain. He needed the cool strength of his woman.

His woman
, he thought as Préachán dug its hooves into a hill and climbed

effortlessly. It felt good to know there was someone so special waiting for him, someone

who wanted him, who loved him. Her bright smile, her open arms were like a beacon

toward which he traveled.

Another smiling face flashed across his memory and he frowned.

“Kennocha,” he whispered fiercely.

Her false smile and clinging arms were a curse from which he had fled, only to find

himself caught in an unbreakable trap.

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

The past rose up before him to blot out the last of the sun’s dying rays, casting him

into a bleak landscape he had never wanted to travel again…

“You will go to Rathlin,” Archdeacon Janus had decreed. “There you will assume

the position as junior prelate for that district.”

There had been much talk of Rathlin at the monastery and the talk had not been

good. Over the years, the keep there had gone through priests like a sharp blade

through hot butter. Those assigned had simply vanished, never to be heard from again.

Where they had gone was the stuff of wild speculation—much of it centered on the

mistress of Rathlin, the Countess Kennocha Tramont.

“They say she is a witch,” the brothers whispered among themselves.

“The count holds his lady-wife hostage at Rathlin,” Archdeacon Janus had

explained to Bevyn. “They say he captured her in battle and keeps her chained on the

third floor of the keep.”

“Is that not wrong, Your Grace?” Bevyn had asked.

“What a man does with his lawful wife is no concern of the Brotherhood,” the

archdeacon had replied. “Our only mission is to tend his mortal soul. If he is true to the

Teaching—and Count Culbert is—that is all that matters in this life. What do we care

what he does with his woman?”

Completely unaware of what a man and woman did within the confines of their

marriage, Bevyn had pushed aside any worries he might have pertaining to Count

Tramont’s lady-wife. It was the man and his knights whose souls would be the thrust of

Bevyn’s interest and attending.

But upon arriving at Rathlin Keep, Bevyn had found great turmoil and strife.

Tramont was at war with a neighboring duchy and the lord of the keep had been sorely

wounded in the fray, lying on his death bed with wounds too numerous to heal. His

body as white as the sheet upon which he lay, he had weakly grasped the front of

Bevyn’s robe and drawn the young man nose to nose with him.

“She set this ill-begotten war into motion,” the dying man whispered, his voice

hoarse, blood gurgling in his throat. “She is the cause of it.”

Culbert Tramont had taken one last wheezing breath and had lain still, his eyes

wide, mouth ajar, drawing flies to the mortal cuts and holes that peppered his corpse.

Every knight sworn to Rathlin had been slain in the battle, their squires as well.

Only the foot soldiers who had turned and fled the melee escaped the hacking deaths

that had turned the fields around Rathlin crimson.

With no captain of the guard left to countermand the order, the countess had

demanded she be set free from the imprisonment her husband had forced upon her.

The household staff had responded quickly, afraid of what the countess would do if she

were ignored.

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“She’s a witch!” the chief steward had told Bevyn in a shaky voice. “A daughter of

the Abyss!”

Upon meeting the woman who was now mistress of Rathlin, Bevyn had seen the

fires of hell gleaming in Kennocha Tramont’s gaze. He had felt a shiver travel down his

spine the moment her hand had touched his cheek, her pale pink tongue sweeping

across a thin upper lip as she assessed him.

Despite his vehement protests, she had put her hands to his arms, his shoulders, his

thighs, had ordered him stripped naked, staring avidly at his utter humiliation as he

was held steady for her perusal.

“Good legs,” she’d remarked, walking around him. “A goodly sized staff.”

“Milady!” he had gasped, his face flame-red.

“You’ll do,” she’d declared, and turned her back on him, going back to the chamber

in which her husband’s still body lay upon its death bier.

He would learn a few days later that she had taken a war ax and had chopped her

dead mate into a hundred pieces, venting her rage upon him until his bedchamber was

a sea of gore.

Held captive in the dungeon for over a week—as naked as the day on which he had

been born—Bevyn had finally been brought before the countess and once more she had

put her hands to him. This time it had been his staff she had wrapped her fingers

around.

“Give yourself freely to me and I will let you live,” she had told him. “Deny me and

you will meet your doom in the bonfire.”

Bevyn had reminded her he was a priest, a man of the cloth who had taken vows of

poverty and chastity, but she had merely laughed at him.

“If you want to live, Bevyn Coure, you will give yourself to me and service me as I

wish to be serviced. Unlike your fellow priests, you will be mine and not Cul’s.”

The whole of the tale would be told to Bevyn on the night before his torment began.

Those who had come before him had been nothing more than playthings to the lord of

the keep. Count Culbert had sodomized and tortured the men then murdered them to

keep the news of his atrocities from reaching the ears of the Brotherhood. The dead

were dropped into the moat to feed the denizens that slithered and snapped there, all

traces of their existence wiped away in the scaled bellies of the crocs.

“You will meet the same fate, boy, unless you give her what she wants.”

“I am a man of the cloth,” he had protested. “I can not—”

“Make her yours,” the jailer had cut in. “Please her and you might live a day or so

longer.”

“I will not do that,” Bevyn had sworn.

“Then you’ll die a terrible death,” his jailer had declared.

For weeks on end he had been tortured, and at the end of each session had come the

question—“Will you give yourself to me now?”

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo