Stormrider (14 page)

Raptor had known Tanith would turn up here, at the camp of the
Jaiqi
, one way or another. His grin masked the apprehension he felt seeing her helpless, an indecipherable play of emotion sweeping her face, and in The Maven’s hands. This was not the way he had anticipated it and the dangerous turn of events sent an icy chill down to settle in his belly. He didn’t allow the mask of his slow grin to slip from his face and continued to play the game. In time he would have his hands about the Maven’s throat, but it would have to be the right time. For now he prayed she’d hold her own council as he had when pinned by the warriors back at her camp.

He shifted his gaze from her to the boy, recognizing him as Song Dog, the youth who had spied on her camp and brought the men of The People down on them with accusations of his being
Jaiqi
himself. He saw the condemnation in that young man’s eyes. Here was the proof the youth had sought. Here was Raptor among the hated
Jaiqi
. Raptor gave a short shake of his head, doubted Song Dog would get the message or accept it if he did, and turned his attention back to Tanith.

She was lost to him for the moment, staring past him into . . . into what? Then it came to him. The wolves. Where were the wolves? He frowned. She would have more sense than to draw them to the camp, but what if they came without her blessing?

By the Blue Moon of Nashira, he could rescue one woman, Janissary or not, but what was he to do about three wolves? He began to wonder if blood debt included wolves.

Raptor glanced quickly around the camp, and hoped, since Tanith and the boy had been brought into camp in a flier, that the wolves were a good distance away from the camp of the slavers and their leader.

The Maven stood up abruptly. “Release her,” he rapped out the order. He threw Song Dog a glance. “The child too.” His attention remained on Tanith. “While it might be more satisfying to have her kiss my foot while she lays in the dirt, I want her on her feet.”
 

Here it comes, she decided, the tightrope between resistance which could keep such a slime creature as The Maven interested and total defiance which would cause him to kill her out of hand. A cool mist of sweat broke out across her forehead as one of the slavers bent to release the taut wire bands. She drew a deep breath. She could not risk her own death for satisfaction. She was a trained Janissary on a mission, which could affect millions of lives. She had to keep a cool head, a logical mind. Anger was a luxury. Control a necessity.

Tanith got to her feet, the rush of renewed circulation sending the prickling sensation of many needles through her feet and hands. Song Dog rose as well, stumbling on numbed feet, staring wide-eyed at her. She ignored the boy for the moment, glancing around.

From this angle the camp was a much clearer place. Several slavers stood nearby, watching. All were men.

A couple of others, women, were closer to the new captives and a number of faces among the captives were familiar to Tanith.

Those she recognized were from Grey Wanderer’s camp. There were a few others. Freed of her metal bindings, Tanith said nothing, waiting for the sensation in her extremities to change to normalcy. Meanwhile she fixed the slaver with a glare.

The Maven smiled wickedly and stood very near using all of his overwhelming size in an attempt to intimidate her. He stood so near she drew in his dark, earthy scent with her breath. “You’ve grown into quite a beauty, little one,” he said very softly, his voice more of a croak than she remembered. Perhaps someone had tried to strangle him since her escape. Pity whoever it was had not succeeded. “Did you believe I would not recognize you now?”

Tanith answered with silence.

“No words of greeting for your old benefactor?”

More silence.

He sighed like a wounded boy. “It was very difficult to lose such a one as you . . . but perhaps best. We have no use for such clever slaves. That is a compliment you know.”

Tanith didn’t cringe, but took a deliberate step back as he reached out to caress her face again. She felt an almost irrepressible desire to vomit over the fancy ceremonial leathers of The People which he wore so casually tossed over his baser clothes. She remembered those hands. She remembered her youth and innocence being torn from her by this thing before her, which she would not call man. Her mind remembered clearly. All the details. Her soul remembered the pain. She wanted nothing more in that instant than to kill him.

“Still no words?” Another sigh of regret. “Perhaps it is best to kill you and be done.” A long pause. “Perhaps I will. But, right now, I am curious. Curious as to why you are here, right here in Nashira. Who would have thought to look for you here after you were exposed to the delights of Antaris?”

Something must have slipped past Tanith’s guard because he smiled. “Surprised I know about you? Where you were? It doesn’t matter really, now that you are among us again. Now that you are back where you belong. I think I will include you in my count . . . for a little while.”

Tanith stiffened. “I am a slave no longer.”

The Maven spread his hands in a graceful beckoning, shaking his head at her denial. “We have you now—you are a slave. You were a slave before. You are a slave now. What happened in between is of no matter. You were with us long enough. You understand the law of the
Jaiqi
. There is no end of slavery save death.”

“Or combat,” Tanith returned evenly. “I am not a girl any more Maven; I will fight for my freedom.”

The words almost made Raptor jump.

They made The Maven laugh.

“You have no right. I have no desire.”

Coolly, Raptor’s surprise at Tanith’s immediate challenge was wrestled into control. He gave The Maven a wan smile, as if it was, in the end, really of no concern to him, and said, “Then I will fight for her.”

Chapter 12

That remark got everyone’s attention. Slavers drew nearer from all corners of the large camp. One of the women, beautiful but hard-faced, sauntered closer, walking in a beckoning, challenging sway. Taller than average, she wore a lean and hungry look when she cocked her head, eyeing Raptor like she would greatly enjoy devouring him.

Tanith eyed him as if she would greatly enjoy sending all three wolves after him.

Blood debt was no picnic on a greensward, certainly not from the debtor’s viewpoint. Raptor kept smiling at the slaver.

The Maven returned Raptor’s grin. He too was aware of the close proximity of the
Jaiqi
woman. “Sreca is not woman enough for you?”

That was a risky question. Raptor held onto his grin. If he wasn’t careful, he might end up fighting Sreca, the woman of the
Jaiqi
who had shared his bed the past nights since his arrival in the camp.

“Sreca is very much a woman, but she is not a slave. She is
Jaiqi
and she will remain when I leave. I like the idea of having a woman with me—until I tire of the novelty. And I know this slave. We have met before and she has taken something from me. I will have it back.” He thought of his missing ship and it was not difficult to project some good healthy anger into his declaration.

He hoped Stormrider-Tanith would not fight him on this. Hoped she would hold her peace and allow him this graceful exit from blood debt. Hoped urgently her pride would not put her at odds with the most direct, simple solution. Hoped she had gotten to know him well enough to read his intent and not interpret his proclamation as insult. For it was not. He would be blind and stupid not to recognize the fact that she was perfectly capable of waging her own battles. Maven, no matter the face he put on it, knew the same.

“And you would be willing to kill for a woman—a slave?”

The smirk on the Maven’s face, the silky softness of his words was enough to give most men pause, but not Raptor. There remained little in life which gave him pause.

Instead he shrugged. “I am a bounty hunter. I do what I do for amusement or profit—in this case both.”

“I doubt that Sreca is amused,” The Maven offered.

With another careless shrug, Raptor grinned. “For my amusement. In this, Sreca’s amusement does not matter.”

Sreca’s stance—tall, lithe-limbed Sreca—made it abundantly clear she didn’t care for Raptor’s answer. Still, it was an answer no different from that which she would hear from any of the
Jaiqi
around them. Her face was as rigid as a glacier, her eyes like chips of amber glass. The set of her body was spread-legged and inflexible, a stance similar to Tanith’s.

The Janissary was smaller than the woman slaver, but there was no give in her. The beautiful, fluid lines of her face had gone hard. Her heavy hair, wild and free, gleaming and glinting in the sunlight, lent her a wilder appearance than the perfectly groomed Sreca, whose almost-white blonde hair was split into two braids and restrained even further by the headband circling her brow.

Tanith shifted her gaze slowly from Raptor to the
Jaiqi
woman. Sreca met her eyes steadily and allowed a slow cat-smile to curve her lips. The Janissary was neither impressed nor amused. She was in a cold, calculated fury. Her eyes flicked in a dagger-slash over Raptor.

She saw through him as if he were a crystal goblet. He sought to end his indebtedness. She needed no champion. She would live and she would escape. It would take planning, but she would succeed. Raptor could do as he pleased. So would she. The bounty hunter obviously knew she had taken his flier and just as obviously knew he had not located its hiding place. It was one small thing to be thankful for. As to the rest, there were The People, captives of the
Jaiqi
for her to worry about. And there were the wolves. The People were here, where they should not be. The wolves simply weren’t anywhere as far as she could determine from her attempts to reenter the pack-bond. There had been nothing from any of them since Strongheart’s last outburst from the empty city of the Ancient Ones. She dragged her thoughts from there to the present and an amused Maven.

“This is a situation well worth thinking over.” Everyone else’s lack of humor seemed to kindle his own. “You truly are much more beautiful than you were as a child, more than when you blossomed into young womanhood,” he marveled. “And don’t think I haven’t kept track of you. I know much about where you have been during the past years—about your life as a Janissary. I don’t doubt you would love to do battle, but it may amuse me to allow the bounty hunter to fight for you as a reminder that slaves have no rights.”

That surprised Tanith and, for an instant, it showed.

His face, cruel, hard and pitiless, blurred into a bright look of eagerness contained by the dark perimeters of his arrogance. “I should have suspected,” he went on, “that one who would risk slitting her own throat for freedom, however fleeting, would turn to such a life, given the opportunity. Yes, you are really quite remarkable. I’m not sure I want to risk losing you.” He paused. “Then again, ultimately, I will be forced to kill you.”

“You do not have me,” Tanith returned, her words honed to a knife’s edge, “and you will find I am not so easy to kill.”

Maven’s good humor took on an edge of its own. “The Janissaries of Antaris are to be admired . . . in their way, but do not for a minute think you are the stronger of us. You have raised yourself above them,” he gestured toward the group of captives, beyond them, restrained and docile. “But your fate is the same. Your life, its direction and whether or not it continues is up to me. You are of Antaris now, not Nashira. You are of The People, yet not of them. That cripples you. It has depleted your strength and delivered you back into my hands.”

Tanith raised her chin. “I am Stormrider. I am of Nashira. She is my mother as she is theirs. If you believe me crippled—then
you
try me.”

A dark silken eyebrow raised. “More and more interesting,” Maven spoke the words softly, then flicked a harder glance toward Raptor before breaking into a fresh broad grin. “Come,” he said to the bounty hunter, “we will eat and drink and you will tell me what it is of yours she has stolen and I will decide.”

Slinging an arm across Raptor’s shoulders as if they were brothers, The Maven called to the other
Jaiqi
who had circled Tanith and Song Dog as he walked away with the bounty hunter. “For now keep her and the boy together, but distant from the others.”

His final remark, coming quickly on the heels of the previous, sent the ice of old knowledge, old understanding, racing up the length of Stormrider’s spine. It was, simply, “add them to my count.”

Tanith saw Raptor’s back stiffen and knew The Maven would have been aware of that unguarded instant as well with his meaty arm slung so casually across the other man’s knotted shoulders. Raptor didn’t look back, but that would not fool the leader of the
Jaiqi
.

Abruptly, Tanith’s feet were taken out from under her. With a gasp she hit the ground hard, on her back, effectively pinned by a number of the
Jaiqi
who had gathered earlier to see the fun. She did not fight as Song Dog did. For now, there was no stopping it. She saw the instrument of the count in one of the men’s hands and cringed inside her flesh. He wielded it like a small gun, bending over her swiftly while she was held immobile, wrapping a large rough hand in her thick hair to bare her neck. It crossed her mind that she would now have a second scar beside the first, but her last thought was of the wolves.