Rogue (34 page)

I smiled back at him. "Didn't want anyone to jerk a knot in your tail, huh?"

"That has been attempted," he said suggestively, "but never during a battle."

Rolling my eyes, I went back to packing. He might have been in a few fights, but the "advisory capacity"

stipulation rang true, for I had an idea he didn't want his handsome face messed up any more than he did his tail.

Later that night, with the sound of the deep, even breathing of those around us, my lover kissed me. Melting into his embrace, I returned his kiss with a fervor that went beyond what it had before. I might not have been deserving of him, but he was mine, nonetheless.

I'd never known it could be possible to love one man as much as I loved him. He was the breath of life itself to me; my lover, my friend, and my solace in times of trouble. I did my best not to think about the fact that one or both of us might die tomorrow. We had this one, last night together, and we didn't waste it.

With a minimum of noise, I was able to slide down to take his cock in my mouth. He smelled good and tasted even better; delicious dick, succulent balls, fabulous body—and all this was aside from the fact that I loved him—what more could anyone want in a man? I could have lain there all night until I sucked him dry, but he had other plans for me. Pulling me back into his arms, Tychar rolled me over onto my back and slid his hot, thick cock into my wet, aching body.

I could see his eyes glowing from out of the darkness that surrounded us, isolating us from the others lying nearby. While they slept, we loved. He rocked into me, filling me with rapture with each stroke as the serrated edge of his cockhead raked my inner walls, coating me with his elixir of joy. I lay back in an orgasmic haze and watched as he climaxed but noted that his eyes stayed open, and he didn't stop, but kept on. The lack of euphoria told me he hadn't ejaculated, but was continuing on as though this orgasm was only his first of the night. He kept going; I could feel the sweat dripping from his body as he drove into me harder, deeper, slower, then faster, then stopping to sweep inside me with his cock, using every muscle he had to control its movement.

I wanted to scream in ecstasy, having to clamp my hand down hard over my mouth to stifle my cry lest I wake the others. I could scarcely believe what was happening and knew that any better feeling simply could not exist in this life or any other—but I was wrong. Gathering up my legs in his arms, he locked them nearly over my head as he continued to rotate his cock inside me. I was helpless to resist. He pushed me over the edge, and I felt the orgasm come, not from any chemical effect, but from the sheer stimulating action of his penis.

This time, I actually saw my own orgasm appearing as a flash of rippling blue light against a background of complete darkness. Whether it originated inside my brain or was something my eyes could actually see, I have no idea, but it reminded me of the image of a raindrop falling into a pool of water when slowed sufficiently for the human eye to visualize; that first undulating drop, which then expands out in circular waves. It was beautiful to behold just as it was, but with his own climax and the euphoria which followed, the color changed from blue to deep purple before slowly fading from sight.

As his kiss touched my lips—salty with the sweat of sweet love—and our bodies slowly parted, I knew that such a thing might never happen again in my lifetime.

And it was fitting that it had occurred on this, of all of our nights together—this one night that could very well have been our last.

WHEN WE WERE FINALLY READY FOR BATTLE, WE LOOKED

like the motliest crew of brigands you've ever seen in your life. As usual, the Darconians looked fierce without any help whatsoever, but with weapons and supplies strapped onto their dinosaurlike bodies and stones glittering on their breastplates, they appeared even more deadly than usual. The miners had cannibalized some of their equipment and were carrying various objects that looked pretty nasty, but I had no idea what they were planning to do with them. Perhaps intimidation was their only intention.

Lerotan and his men looked like they would just as soon kill you as look at you (which was nothing new for them), and the Edraitians were all carrying spears and shields which they had made out of whatever the miners had handy. In addition to that, one of them must have been carrying their theatrical makeup when we escaped from the palace, because they had put it on like warpaint and had banded sections of their hair near the scalp so that it stood up in bristling, red bushes above their heads.

Suffice it to say, they looked pretty scary.

Scalia's former slaves (aside from the tigers) were equipped with weapons from Lerotan, body armor which they had fashioned for themselves out of some kind of flaky stones, and they'd borrowed some warpaint from the Edraitians and had written "Down with Dobraton!"

on their shields. Sladnil had painted white circles around his bulbous eyes and had used his little sucker fingertips to put red and white dots all over himself. I took one look at him and screamed.

I opted for the Joan of Arc look, myself, wearing a lightweight vest over my flowing desert robes. Lerotan had given me the vest—swearing that it would stop anything short of a bomb—along with a helmet which didn't fit too badly. I couldn't see a damn thing when I had it on, but I'm sure the overall effect was as intended. The two tigers were similarly dressed—envision Lawrence of Arabia meets Spartacus—appearing simultaneously sexy and dangerous. With pulse pistols and rifles slung across our backs, we were ready for anything Dobraton could throw at us—short of a missile attack, which was something Lerotan assured us she did
not have.

"Nice to have the arms dealer on our side," I commented to Tychar as I donned my armor. "Too bad we can't get to his ship and get even more of this stuff."

"Aw, we don't stand a chance, anyway," Trag said cheerfully. "This is what you call a desperate battle against overwhelming odds. What good would more guns do?"

"My, aren't we confident?" I said dryly. "Are you saying we should just hole up in the mines forever?"

"Naw, that's not what I meant," he replied. "That was just a little prebattle black humor. You know, something to break the tension."

"Well, then, here's another one for you," I said, getting into the spirit. "T think it is a good day to die.'

That's straight from Sitting Bull or some other chief, I forget which one—he was Native American, anyway— and I believe it's appropriate in our case."

"Ooo, I /iAethat!" Trag said appreciatively. "I think I'll paint it on my shield real quick."

Lerotan, who was eavesdropping on the conversation, commented, "Too many words. How about: 'Die, Dobraton! Die!'?"

As I had written "Kill the Bitch!" on my own shield, I thought this was much more appropriate, as did many of the other refugees who had straggled in over the past couple of days. Just having to escape with little more than their lives and then cross the desert had made them mad enough, but they brought with them tales of perse-cution and oppression. It appeared that Dobraton was not making many friends; at least, not among those who joined up with us.

This was good for our side, because we certainly needed all the help we could get, and, as anyone who is any good at taking over command of anything will tell you, the one thing you need to avoid doing at the outset is making any changes that will turn your constituency against you. Be nice, give them plenty of support and perks, and then later on, when you start initiating other, less popular policies, they won't mind quite so much—theoretically, that is.

Dobraton had obviously never taken that class in basic leadership. Not wasting any time, she'd rounded up as many offworlders as she could find and had them executed, along with a few Darconians who had been harboring them. As you might guess, this was
not
a popular move!

To Dobraton's credit, I believe she intended these actions to instill fear in her new subjects and guarantee their submission. However, I had done a bit of study since my discussion with Wazak the day he'd scooped me up off the floor, and I knew that the people of Arconcia had enjoyed a very satisfactory life under Scalia's rule; the crime rate was low, no one went hungry, there was medical care and education for all, and everyone was entitled to the same basic freedoms and opportunities. Scalia had added contacts with other worlds to the simple life in her realm, but most of her subjects had seemed to welcome this change.

Unfortunately, those who had supported Dobraton must have had a fair amount of clout—possibly wealthy merchants who didn't want offworlders horning in on their business, as well as ministers in the government who, like Dobraton, wanted to keep things just as they had always been—because seizing control the way she had done wasn't an easy thing to do. It took lots of money and planning to pull off something like that, and it also took a certain amount of gall. Running against an incumbent in an election was one thing, but killing someone to take their place was quite another!

We began our desert crossing about an hour after it was fully dark—though with three moons and rarely any clouds, it was always light enough to see where we were going. The desert was quiet, though there was noctur-nal activity wherever you looked, and distant Arconcia gleamed in the moonlight. Some sort of night-flying bird or bat flew overhead in varying numbers, occasionally swooping down from the sky, as if trying to encourage us to turn back. We marched on in spite of them, some of us on dray Is, some on foot, and a few of the later arrivals in hovercars, which they had brought with them— though whether they'd been stolen or not, I didn't know and didn't care. Hardly anyone spoke as we traveled, which might have been due to fear or a desire for secrecy, but it also added to the eeriness of the journey.

Never having gone marching off to war before, I couldn't have predicted the way I would feel, but, surprisingly, the thought that I might not live to see another day wasn't first and foremost in my mind. I was more concerned with the danger to my friends, and the fact that Tychar or Trag might be killed terrified me more than anything Dobraton might do to me. I did my best to put such thoughts out of my mind, but they kept creeping back to torment me.

While our preferred plan might have been to retake the palace from within, with the coming of dawn it became apparent that engaging in a desert battle was to be our fate. As we drew nearer to the outskirts of the city, we could see Dobraton's army massed out on the plain, ready to advance. There was no hope of infiltrating the palace now, and unless Dobraton was leading her own army, there was also no hope of taking her out without killing anyone else. We should have sent a party ahead, I thought ruefully, sending them circling around to the opposite side of the city to get to her. It might have taken longer with the more circuitous route, but that way they wouldn't have known which direction we were attack-ing from. As it was, we were marching right straight into the jaws of doom.

I could hardly believe just how large an army it was.

How had Dobraton managed to amass such a force?

Surely not all of those men could have wanted the Princess as a prize! The city itself had a population of only about two hundred thousand and comparatively few of them were military men. Who
were
these guys?

Lerotan had some really cool binoculars, and while I was pretty sure I could see Dobraton at the center of the column, I could see nothing else which would provide a clue to their identity.

I handed the binoculars to Wazak. "That
is
Dobraton, isn't it?"

I'll swear he smiled. "Yes, it is she," he replied.

"Well, this doesn't look a bit good," I remarked to no one in particular. "Guys, are you
sure
about this?"

No one said a word. I'd been gung ho enough earlier, but my enthusiasm was fading fast. "Well, what do you want to do? Keep on marching, or try for a parley?"

"Parley?" Wazak inquired, as if he'd never heard the word before.

"Oh, you know," I said. "You ride out carrying a white flag and then discuss terms of surrender or a truce—or give your opponent one last chance to back down."

"I don't think they're gonna back down anytime soon," Trag remarked. "We aren't
that
terrifying."

"But we have better weapons," Lerotan pointed out while patting his grenade launcher—or whatever it was.

He'd never said, exactly, and I'd yet to see him use it, but he never seemed to want to part from it, either.

"Maybe so," I admitted, "but unless we can kill them all from here, I don't think it'll do much good."

If Lerotan's smirk was anything to go by, he was just waiting for the word from Wazak to do just that.

"How did they know we would be coming today?"

Tychar mused.

"Well, we're not invisible, you know," Trag said reasonably. Glancing around at the surrounding tumble of boulders, he added, "Dobraton probably has a bunch of spies out here somewhere."

"But we came in the middle of the night!" Zealon said. "And we have seen nothing."

"It is the business of spies to remain invisible," Tychar pointed out.

"Either that, or somebody ratted on us," I said darkly.

"And I'd sure like to know who it was, too!" I figured it was probably some of the men we'd recruited from Dobraton's gang, though I didn't suppose any of them would confess.

Of all people, Wazak was the one who spoke up. "I wished to engage Dobraton in an open battle."

"You did it?" I exclaimed in disbelief. "Wazak, are you insane? It's suicide! They'll kill us all!"

"I do not believe so," Wazak said evenly.

"What? Which part?" I asked. "That you aren't crazy, or that they won't kill us?"

I received only a speaking glance in reply, but knowing Wazak, if he didn't have some tricky little plot up his sleeve, I missed my guess, though putting his children's lives at risk seemed downright foolish to me.

"Well, I'm not going to go marching on to my death just so Dobraton can go ahead and be queen,"