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Anhuset had heard worse remarks from better adversaries. “Where's my horse?”
“That's what concerns you? No worries for the great man himself or the rest of your party?” He shook his head, clucking his disappointment. A crowd had gathered behind him. He addressed them this time. “Aren't you lads glad you don't have this unfeeling cunt to lead you? More interested in her nag's fate than her comrades'.” A chorus of jeers met his remark. He turned back to her, his sneer aging his youthful features. “Your nag is unharmed, tethered not far from the margrave's stallion. You'll not be needing it.”
She had no intention of letting him see her worry for the others so he could use it against her. “You know who I am.” This time she allowed a matching sneer to creep into her voice. “I can't say the same about you. Why did you attack us?”
He waved another man over to stand with the one currently hovering behind her. “Sit her up. I'm tired of bending down to have this conversation.”
The pair did as he ordered, yanking her roughly from her recumbent position so that she sat, still hunched over, her back aching from the strain, her hands still numb. The bright sun making her squint hung in the sky, arcing toward the west. Early afternoon. She'd been insensate almost a day, brought down first by strangulation and kept that way by a sleep elixir administered via darts.
Her captor loomed over her, arrogant and bloated with triumph. She'd hand over a decade of her lifespan to a god for the chance to split him from throat to gullet with her sword, her knives, or her claws. She wasn't picky.
“I was paid a hefty sum to capture you and the margrave,” he said. “And expect an equally nice ransom for the enchanted monk.” His shoulders went back and his chest out. “I'm Chamtivos Havonas, lord of these lands.” He scowled. “Or so I was before the Nazim monks stole them from me.”
So this was the infamous warlord who wrought havoc in the Lobak valley and surrounding areas. A boil on the arse of many, if the gossip she'd overheard among the ferry crew was anything to go by. His revelations answered some of her unspoken questions. Serovek was still alive, though in what condition she could only guess. Megiddo was likewise somewhere in the camp, though from her limited vantage point, she couldn't tell if his body still lay in the wagon or had been removed. No mention of Erostis or Klanek, and she feared the worst.
“If we're still alive, then you want something,” she said. Captives were troublesome to hold, expensive to keep alive. Even paid handsomely to take them captive, Chamtivos said nothing about ransom for her or Serovek. She wondered who'd paid the warlord and why. Her first guess was Ogran, but a lowly tracker in the service of his lord didn't possess the funds needed to entice someone like Chamtivos to attack a margrave and hold him prisoner.
Chamtivos beamed his approval. “I like the way you think, Kai woman. Those bastard monks will pay a fortune to have their brother returned to them. You and the margrave? Well, he's someone's inconvenience, and you're a challenge. The two of you will offer me and my men a good bit of entertainment before we get rid of you.”
His foreboding explanation didn't surprise Anhuset. She was astonished he'd allowed her and Serovek to live this long, but their time ran short. If she didn't find a way to escape and help the margrave do the same, they'd die, and she suspected their dying would be prolonged and gruesome.
The warlord, frustrated by her indifference to his ominous hints, gave up his attempts to bait her. He walked away, pausing briefly to speak with another man, their voices too quiet and distant to make out what they said. They soon parted, Chamtivos toward the tent she'd spotted earlier, the other man toward her.
He carried a cup in one hand. She expected to see a weapon in the other, but there wasn't one. Like Chamtivos, he crouched down just out of striking distance in case she tried to lunge for him. Tall and rangy, he moved with a feline grace. Blessed sanity stared back at her from his eyes. As one of her captors, he was her enemy, but he didn't make her recoil the way Chamtivos did.
“Water,” he announced, holding up the cup. “Dasker poison always makes a person thirsty once they're awake. I'll give you a drink, but if you try to bite me, I'll make you eat the cup.”
His warning, issued in a mild-mannered tone carried no less impact than if he'd snarled it at her. Given half a chance, she'd kill him in her bid for freedom, but were their positions reversed, she'd have told him the same thing. And she was terribly thirsty, her tongue practically sticking to the roof of her mouth every time she spoke. “No biting,” she said. “I swear it.”
They studied each other before he nodded and carefully tipped the cup to her lips. She drank, resisting the temptation to guzzle the water and spill half of it down her chin. Once she emptied the cup, he set it aside.
“I'd give you more, but to drink your fill now will only make you vomit it all up later. Let the poison's effects fade a little more, and I'll bring you another. Do you have to piss?” Puzzled by and wary of his consideration, she nodded. He whistled and called out names. Three men answered his summons, all carrying either a bow or crossbow. Each one nocked an arrow as they drew closer. “I'm going to partially unbind her,” he told them. “If she even twitches toward me, shoot her.”
Grim nods and drawn bows aimed at Anhuset made her pray she only twitched in the right direction.
“Don't make me regret my kindness by kicking my ribs in or my jaw loose,” her dubious benefactor warned as he worked at her bindings. “Forget modesty and take care of your needs. Try anything else, and they'll turn you into a pin poppet.”
“Understood,” she said.
He worked the straps loose, freeing her wrists from her ankles. Blood rushed back to her fingers, and she stood on wobbly legs, still dizzy from the poison's lingering effects.
Relieving her bladder in front of onlookers didn't bother her. Running off into unknown wilderness just to hide your bare arse from others was foolish when you were on patrol or guard duty. She was no fine lady to worry over such notions, though the reality of having three broadheads trained on her while she answered nature's call wasn't to her liking.
Her partial freedom only lasted as long as it took her to finish. She was once more escorted back to her spot in the mud where Chamtivos's man retied her in the same position, though this time he didn't do it so tight that her fingers went numb. She glared at the gag cloth he held up. “Don't tell me you expected differently,” he said, one eyebrow arched. “If I had a mouth full of teeth like yours, I'd be gnawing on my bindings every moment I wasn't observed.”
He knotted the gag at the back of her head and left her with a pair of guards, taking the same path that Chamtivos had to the tent. Was Serovek in there as well? It was the only place in the camp itself big enough to hide a person. Everyone else had pitched small lean-toes hardly big enough to cast a square of shade or didn't bother with one at all. That tent served more than just the purpose of luxury for the group's leader.
She'd have to bide her time and strategize a way out of this dilemma before Chamtivos decided to enact whateverentertainmenthe had planned. It would mean leaving Megiddo behind, but the monk had something neither she nor Serovek did: value. He'd be safe for a short time.
Cramped, cold, and hungry, she shifted from side to side to keep the blood flowing through her limbs. Several escape plans played through her mind, each one ending with her either shot, skewered, or dismembered for the attempt and Serovek still held captive. She gave up temporarily, allowing her racing thoughts to settle. Her guards didn't talk to her or pay her much attention. She listened to their idle conversation. And learned.
For all his swagger and self-importance, Chamtivos wasn't particularly well liked by those who followed him. These were peasants and yeomen under the command of a nobleman's youngest son. They'd been loyal to his father and transferred that loyalty to Chamtivos out of respect for his dead sire. She wondered how many of them knew or suspected their current leader had committed both patricide and fratricide to seize the position he now held. The two guards set to watch her questioned whether the effort in attacking their party and taking Megiddo hostage had been worth the sacrifice of the seven men who'd died in the attack.
Anhuset could account for three of those deaths. She wondered how many of the remaining four Serovek had been responsible for. If he were lucky, none. Otherwise, whatever punishment Chamtivos chose to mete out to the margrave, it would be brutal.
She pretended to nap so her guards would assume her asleep and loosen their tongues even more. The remainder of their conversation was as dull as listening to grass grow, though she learned that the man who'd given her water was Chamtivos's second-in-command and named Karulin. From what little she'd gleaned from her interactions with both men, Karulin seemed more suited to the role of leader than Chamtivos, and she wondered why so measured a man had chosen to serve one so malevolent and erratic.
Made groggy by boredom and cold, she snapped alert at the approach of a new visitor. Anhuset lifted her eyelids enough to observe the man who greeted her guards and paused to loom over her, wearing a nasty smirk.
