Lords Of The Dark Fall - Fabian (16 page)

“No, no, they’re leaving. The cowards are turning tail.”

“No way.” She risked a peek from the window. The group were mounted, already pouring through the gate to the yard. When Fabian raised the bow, she stopped him.

“Save the bolts. They’re already out of range.”

“Are they regrouping?”

She slumped down, back to the wall, the rifle across her knees. “I have no idea what they’re doing. Once they realised I had someone else here with me, they left. Very odd and a bit suspicious, don’t you think?”

Fabian twisted to sit beside her. “You think that was the purpose of their visit?”

“Well, they didn’t come for tea and cakes. And they obviously didn’t come to raid the farm, either. Even if they hadn’t got me, the Jura would have taken any spoils they could sell. Hell, even my pottery would be valuable to them and yet they left empty-handed. Doesn’t make sense.”

“Perhaps their leaving was a decoy. To draw us out. Is there a chance that some may yet be lurking out there?”

“Could be, I suppose. But again, the tactics are all wrong. Jura do things by the book, they never deviate. I’ve got to check something.”

Keeping low, she crawled to the nearest corpse and lifted one of his arms. Pushed back his coat and shirt-sleeve to reveal the wrist.

“Where’s the mark of Crolos?” She squinted her eyes, straining to see in the dark of the barn. “The Jura wear the mark despite there only being one official god, now.”

“Here.” Fabian drew a box of matches from the bag he’d brought from the house, scratched one against the rough stone wall and then scooted up beside her.

Didn’t matter how much light they had, the men weren’t Jura. Both bore the mark of the fish.

“This was a set-up. By someone who knew I was hiding something.”

“Hal?”

“He’s usually a bit more subtle, but who else could it be? Damn, if he’s shared his suspicions with Warrington, we are in deep shit.”

“An opportunist like Hal would not squander that knowledge until he’d gauged his own advantage. I should thank him for this.”

“Thank him? Why? Do you realise what kind of hold this gives him? Over us, over me?”

“I would thank him because he’s given me a reason to act.” Fabian rose from his crouch, unconcerned there may yet be raiders lurking in the yard. “I was becoming too comfortable here. Too soft. This is the signal for me to begin my glorious return home.”

Standing before her, naked to the waist, looking as if hewn from stone, she felt the chasm between them grow wider. Whatever comradeship they’d shared paled to nothing compared to his wish to return home and step back into the life he’d known.

Didn’t he care that Hal would extract a price from this? Why should he? Oh, it might trouble his conscience some, but not enough to stop him.

“You knew I would one day be leaving. I’ve always made that clear, have I not?”

“You have.”

“Don’t be angry with me, Tig. You know what I must do.”

His hand moved, gentle on her hair, almost as if conferring a blessing. She knelt at his feet, gazing up at the man towering over her. No, not a man, a king. For the first time, she saw the king he might have been. The king he might be once again.

His fingers lingered in her hair, as if reluctant to let her go. Or was he deciding her worth in this grand scheme of his? She already knew exactly how one version of this story went.

“Go home, Fabian. I know you want that. But don’t sell me out to Hal. Don’t do that to me.”

His gaze was fixed on the open window, to some far distant place she would never see. “He can protect you. Keep you safe. I would leave you safe, Tig.”

“But not with him. I saved your life. You owe me for that.”

She saw him recoil, feel the barb like a physical blow. “Then that debt will be paid. Hal will not have you. Not while I am here to stop him.”

“And when you’re not, I’ll be long gone.” She let him pull her upright. Dusted herself off. Pushed away Cafino’s enquiring nuzzle. She didn’t do martyr, and she didn’t do damsel in distress. She’d married Carson for her family and to protect the farm. You did things like that when you had people to care about. Well, now she had no one but herself.

“Go wash your face,” she said, shouldering the rifle. “You’re scaring the dogs. And next time you fall through that rift thing of yours, do me a favour and land somewhere else?”

“There will not be a next time.”

She had no one to care about except for this surprising, stubborn man who still claimed to have fallen from the sky. Who might still sell her out in a heartbeat to get what he wanted. Despite his protestations, he’d be tempted. She just had to make sure she was as far away as possible when that time came.

* * * *

They checked the house together, making sure none of the raiders had sneaked inside. They’d taken their wounded comrade, but the two corpses still lay in the barn. They would need disposing of before wild beasts came scavenging.

Satisfied the house was empty save for them, Fabian searched the yard and took a few moments to douse the embers smouldering at the edge of the log-pile. Only a few logs lost, the wall and air-vents blackened with ash. The fire had been laid to smoke them out rather than kill them.

Was this a warning, a challenge? A message perhaps?

Entering the house, Fabian saw Tig sitting at the kitchen table, head resting wearily on her hands. Now came his punishment for daring to consider her the price of his freedom. And he had thought it. For one brief moment he knew she might ease the first step on his return to power. Hal would ask for her as price for helping him.

Once he would have considered that a bargain. Now it was a price he could not afford to pay.

“You look exhausted. Go to bed and I will keep watch.”

“If Hal’s behind this, he won’t turn up till the morning so he can pretend that news of the raid has spread. You go to bed, I’m too wired to sleep.”

He pulled out the chair opposite, strangely unsure of his welcome after all this time with her. Still taut and tingling from the kill. A long time since he’d felt the satisfaction of sending an enemy to his own personal hell.

“By which you mean the excitement of the encounter has not yet left you? I feel the same. I will keep vigil with you.”

“So, how does it compare?”

“Fighting as a mortal? It felt altogether too real.”

She gave a snort of laughter. “One way of looking at it. Was your capture the first time you felt fear?”

“No.” He’d never wavered, not even in defeat. His pride hadn’t let him. “About a hundred years into the Fall, when it was starting to feel like it would never end. When the cries of my victims were starting to deafen me, when their pleas for mercy started to tear at my heart, that’s when I felt my first fear.”

“Will you give me the whole story to put on my plates? I’m leaving, taking my chances in one of the townships. Need to present something to get my artist licence and
the warrior who fell from the sky,
might just do it.”

“Of course. Take from it what you will.”

Little else to say. Tonight had drawn a line under the next episode of his story. Defeat, the Fall, learning what it was to be human. The hardest lesson of his long life. He had thought this to be a period of running in place, of waiting for something to happen. He had not reckoned on becoming a different man.

“Drink with me,” he said and rose from his chair to fetch two cups and the pottery jar of fermented grain spirit. In his world they would have used this to light fires. Here it was the finest Tig had to offer. He poured two generous measures and pushed one across to her.

“Drink. It will steady your nerves.”

She regarded the cup before reaching out for it. “My nerves are just fine.”

“Then drink for companionship. My people consider it bad luck to drink alone.”

“Companionship?” She raised the cup in salute, the brave mask still in place. “Now there’s a precious commodity. Worth a toast.”

She touched cups with his as was the custom on her world, said the words of salute and tossed back the fiery liquid. He did the same, draining his cup in one. Had he really just served her, like a common vassal? He who had only to think it and it was done for him? Tig’s shoulders drooped, her head lolled forward, exhaustion fast overtaking her.

“For two thousand years I thought I was alive. But I know now that I was merely existing. Growing richer in all the things I thought mattered until I became so wealthy, so powerful and so darned invincible, that I lost all perspective. My arrogance brought down a dynasty. And I know that Marcellus hates me for that. I wish…”

She’d fallen asleep, head on the table resting on her folded arms. Just as well since he spoke words that should never have been uttered. Quietly he rose and went to her. Pulled back her chair and hooked an arm under her knees, the other about her back. Her hair swept the floor as he carried her up the wooden stairs to her bed. His fierce little warrior had earned her sleep. She did not appreciate or care that it was the most high lord of Anxur who slid off her boots. That the most exalted one covered her with the quilt.

That’s what he admired the most about her. She had steadfastly refused to flatter him, to cajole with forked tongue. She did not fear him, yet she feared for him. With her he would always know exactly who he was.

She turned onto her side, taking the quilt with her. Small and feminine, but there was nothing delicate about her. With or without him, a survivor, he had no doubt of that.

“I wish I could take you with me.” He too was feeling the crash. After the high tension of the evening, his spirits were plummeting and he wanted nothing more than to sit around a fire and drink himself into oblivion while singing sad sagas and songs.

He would allow himself the feeling for this one night. Indulge this human melancholy, sink a few more drinks and keep vigil like a squire contemplating his impending knighthood.

Back downstairs, he took the jug and his cup and threw himself into the armchair by the hearth. Dogs at his feet, he tipped back his head and turned his thoughts to home. To his golden palaces and silken bed-sheets. His harem filled with the most beautiful women in the land. His stables of the finest thoroughbreds. The only things missing from the picture were he and his brother. And try as he might, he could make neither himself, nor Marcellus appear.

She awoke to the sound of singing, which chased away the last fragments of dreams already forgotten. Too deep to be her brother Jan, who would sit on the porch steps with his guitar and sing for them after supper. Too deep even for her father, who only sang when drunk.

Untangling herself from sleep, Tig pushed the hair from her eyes and wondered why she was in bed, fully dressed. The voice sang on and she remembered Fabian and the raiders who’d left without taking anything but the knowledge that she was hiding someone here on the farm. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, shook away the last of the cobwebs in her mind and stood, shivering in the chill of the early morning.

Silly man, the last thing he needed right now was a hangover. With the quilt wrapped around her shoulders, she padded down the stairs and stood for a moment watching him pour another drink and raise the glass to the two dogs who were watching his every move with rapt interest.

The words were strange, the tune soulful and full of longing. She’d tried so hard not to fall for this man. Had given herself stern lectures and debated the consequences of developing feelings for this stranger who’d appeared from nowhere. All to no avail. Her head pulled one way, her heart the other. She couldn’t stay away from him.

When he finished his song, she crossed the room to his chair. She couldn’t blame him for the wary expression with which he regarded her. He was used to women falling at his feet and staying there, whether by choice or by force. These past few days, she must have confused the hell out of him.

“What was the song about?”

He took a moment to answer. Maybe feeling the same awkwardness as she. “About a man who finds himself far from home.”

“You made it up?”

“No, it’s a very old song.”

“Sounds kind of sad.”

“It is.”

“You look tired. Let me take over watch, and you go get some sleep.”

He rubbed a hand over his eyes, shook his head. “I’m not tired.”

“Lord, and I thought I was stubborn.”

“Are you still angry with me?”

“No, just at myself for wanting what I can’t have.”

Fabian raised his dark eyes to hers. “You anger, you hurt, but you always find yourself again.”

“I sulk and I get over it. Earlier on, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. Hal made his intentions clear long before you arrived. You’re just a convenient leverage. If you weren’t here, he’d find some other way to persuade me.”

“You’re saying this to spare my feelings?”

“Partly. He asked me again to marry him while I was visiting Sunas. Only way to be free of him is to leave and start a new life in the town. Want me to fetch you a shirt? You must be cold.”

In response, he extended an arm, took her hand and tugged lightly.

“Sit with me and we will each warm the other.”

She closed her eyes. “We keep telling ourselves this is a bad idea, but we don’t seem to be listening.”

“Because I seem unable to resist you.”

She swayed, turning to liquid in his arms. “Nor I you. Every time I jump off this carousel, I jump right back on.”

“You have the strangest turn of phrase.” His voice, pitched at a low whisper, sent shivers racing over her skin. And he wasn’t cold at all. An astounding heat radiated from his solid body. She felt his fingers sifting through her hair, lifting it from her neck. Warm lips placing light kisses on her nape, sliding round to the lobe of her ear, to the angle of her jaw. Kisses that gave but asked for nothing in return. They were both too tired for anything more than this.

Twisting in his lap, she framed his face with her hands and placed a kiss of her own on his lips, tasting the lingering fire of the grain spirit.

“The kiss you promised me. I guess this is afterwards?”