Page 88 of The Champion

“Is anything amiss?” Kit asked.

“I...” Stryder shook his head as if to clear it. “I needs be taken to my tent.”

They all surrounded Stryder and led him back to his quarters. But though they were all relieved and happy, Stryder appeared less than pleased by his victory.

Rowena and Zenobia passed concerned looks while the men congratulated Stryder and shoved each other like playful children who had won a victory.

She and Zenobia waited outside the tent while Christian and the other men helped strip the armor from Stryder.

As soon as Stryder was free of his armor, he grabbed a clean linen and held it to his side to help staunch the flow of blood, while Christian poured him a goblet of ale. His friends were asking him questions, but to be honest, he heard none of it.

All he could hear was Damien’s accusation.

Hear the sound of Ganymede’s voice through the walls as the boy cried for someone to help him.

Then he saw Damien’s face the day they had fought.

“Who do you think you are to lead us? I’m the son of kings and I am born to it.”

After the death of their overlord and his knight, there had been six of them left behind. Raven, as the youngest, had been ten-and-three, but luckily, he was tall enough to pass for an older boy. The rest of them had been two and three years older.

To this day, Stryder wished he’d given the reins of leadership over to Damien. But too young and vain himself, he had refused.

So, Damien had left with two of their company to seek his own way. Like a fool, Stryder had gone after him, with Raven and Simon in tow, to bring them back.

And they had all ended up taken.

Because he was an idiot.

Now he saw that day clearly. The sun had been blistering over the dunes as they were fought down and taken. Bloodied and beaten, they had been forced to their knees in the hot sand. The Saracens had tied their arms behind them.

Damien’s eyes had been filled with hatred as he glared at Stryder.

“Tell no one who you are,” Stryder had said between clenched teeth. “If they learn who your parents are, they will make you suffer for it.”

“You’re just jealous,” Damien had hissed. “I am worth more than ten of you.” And so, Damien had announced his titles to all present.

The Saracen leader had laughed aloud as he spoke to his men in a language none of them had known at that time. Damien had been taken and thrown across the back of a horse. He and the leader had ridden off while the rest of them had been marched across the desert to the camp where the Saracens chained them together with other captives.

God and Damien alone knew what the Saracens had done to make him pay for that arrogance. In Europe, Damien’s position guaranteed him only the best of accommodations and care. At the hands of a nomadic people sworn to the eradication of a foreign army in their lands, such knowledge usually guaranteed death by impalement.

The look in Damien’s eyes as they fought today had told Stryder that Damien would much rather have met that fate than whatever one he’d been given.

“Are you addled?” Christian asked as Stryder took the cup from his hands and downed the contents in one gulp.

“Can you hear me?”

Stryder shook his head to clear it of the past as he realized his friends had been asking him a multitude of questions.

“I am...” he didn’t finish the thought. He couldn’t. Not while he doubted everything about himself and his family.

Kit never spoke of the past. Never. Since the night Stryder had found him in Canterbury, his brother had refused to speak of the years they had spent apart.

But then, Kit never spoke much of anything personal. Considering the pain of his own past, Stryder had never pressed the issue with him.

“Damien was lying.”

“About what?”