WindBeliever (33 page)

Through the slits of the leather helm, Conar could see two infernally-lit black eyes glaring back at him. He could hear the man’s snorts of fury as he tried to drive his blade down. With a nonchalance he certainly didn’t feel at that moment, the Serenian stuck out his right leg and hooked his opponent’s calf, pulling his leg out from under him. Letting go of the man’s wrist at the same time, he twisted away from the curve of the Inner Kingdom warrior’s blade and stepped back to watch the man fall once more to the ground with a heavy thump.

“You aren’t showing me shit, pog,” Conar quipped, dancing away from the foot that lashed out at him to drag him down, as well. “You’re spending more time on your ass than on your feet.

Cry quarter and I’ll let you walk off this field intact.”

With a roar of insane fury, Sybelle watched as her lover bounded to his feet and stabbed out blindly at his enemy. The Kensetti princess knew Jaleel’s vision had to be obstructed by the sweat dripping from his brow and the limitations of the helmet he dared not remove. Her knuckles were white on the railing she clutched, her face scrunched into a hard worried frown.

She could hear her blood pounding in her temples and when Jaleel staggered from a shove McGregor gave him, she bit down so hard on her lip, she drew blood.

Catherine was not aware of her own hands clutching the rail before her. She did not hear her ragged breathing or feel the perspiration forming on her upper lip as she stood there in the gathering heat of the early morning. She could not look away from the combat, and she knew now without a doubt it was mortal combat taking place on her father’s field of honor. When Conar slipped on a patch of dew-drenched grass and nearly went down, she turned a pale, strained face to her father.

“Please stop this!” she cried, ignoring her mother’s instant shush and her brothers’ whispered commands to be still. “One of them is going to be seriously hurt, Father!” she told him.

“If we stop this now,” Misha reminded her, “he will not be happy with the one responsible.”

He stared into her face as she looked at him with pleading. “He is a warrior, Your Grace, not a WINDBELIEVER

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little boy.”

“He can bleed just the same!” she yelled at him.

Misha nodded. “Aye, that he can, and has many times, milady. He’s no stranger to pain.”

Catherine turned away from the man, furious with him as well as her father. She caught Sybelle looking at her and glanced at the woman, seeing the strain of what was happening on the field on Sybelle’s lovely face.

“Can you do something?” Catherine asked.

Sybelle shook her head. “Not alone.” She lifted her chin. “Can you?”

The Tzarevna’s face crinkled with hopelessness. “I don’t think so.”

“Then we will have to wait, won’t we?” Sybelle asked, understanding for the first time that she had both an ally and a foe in the woman standing before her.

Conar was panting, his body drenched and suffocating in the confines of the leather armor.

He was itching in a dozen places where sweat was running inside his cambric shirt and he was being gouged along his sides by the cut of the chain mail under the leather jerkin. But none of that discomfort mattered to him as he took a hardy swipe at the man in front of him and grinned as his blade snagged open a tear in his opponent’s left hand.

“You infidel bastard!” Jaleel swore, shaking his stinging hand, spraying blood as he sought to rid himself of the pain the cut had caused.

“Come on, pog,” Conar jeered, “let’s end this game. I’m growing tired of your insults.”

Jaleel jabbed at the Serenian, frustrated beyond endurance when the man stepped nimbly out of harm’s way, laughing as though the strike had been nothing more than an amusing gambit. He tried again and found himself on his knees in the dirt, his ears ringing from the vicious punch that had caught him on the point of his chin and clicked his teeth together.

“There you are on the ground again.” Conar laughed. “Can’t you keep your footing, you graceless pog?”

Prince Jaleel Jaborn of Dahrenia growled low in his throat and came slowly, menacingly to his feet. Blood was dripping down his chin, pooling in the cup of his helmet, and his eyes were stinging with sweat. He clutched his dagger with renewed strength and began to slowly circle to his opponent’s right.

“I’m going to gut you, McGregor,” he warned, his words coming from between tightly clenched teeth.

“You can try,” Conar taunted.

Catherine held her breath, sensing a change in the two men out on the field. She knew Sybelle had felt the same eerie premonition enveloping her, for she reached out to grasp Catherine’s hand as though the contact would stay the terrible outcome that had been promised with that change in the ether.

Peter and Mikel Steffensburg looked at one another, knowing something was about to happen, hoping it wouldn’t be deadly, for their father had glanced back at them with a warning that said should things alter drastically out on the field of honor, they would be held responsible.

Sajin stepped away from the railing separating the place of safety and walked a few feet out onto the field. From where he stood, he could see the look of determination on Conar McGregor’s sweaty and tired face and he could see the rigidity of the other man’s posture, the way he crouched as though his very life depended on him striking the first blow. For the first time, the Kensetti prince grew worried.

Rupert Von Schlesendorf stood beside Yuri Andreanova. He could feel the tension in the air and in the man standing beside him. When he risked a look away from the field of combat, he WINDBELIEVER

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could see a heavy scowl on the Shadow-warrior’s face.

“They mean business,” Rupert remarked, returning his attention to the field.

“One of them is going to die,” Yuri acknowledged.

Sybelle’s fingers crushed Catherine’s but neither woman noticed. That each of them routed for a different male did not matter. They were aware of it, but it was of no consequence. They acknowledged the other’s fears and prayed for the best.

Rasheed saw Prince Guil at the far end of the field, watching the contest with a worried frown. He had as much faith in Prince Jaleel as Rasheed, himself had. Both knew the man could not win against McGregor. Few men, if any, could. The outcome had been destined long before either man took to the field.

The blade flashed brilliant fire in the sunlight and drew blood. The cut was deep, not to the bone, but deep enough to put a long rent in the chain mail and turn the links into tiny pools of crimson.

“Father!” Catherine screamed, seeing blood dripping from Conar’s left arm. She would have run out on the field to stop the fight if Sajin hadn’t reached her first and grabbed her around the waist, swinging her back against him.

“Be still!” he ordered, tightening his grip. “You’ll cause him to lose his concentration!”

“He’s been wounded!” she cried, trembling from head to toe as she realized she could not escape the Kensetti’s strong hold.

“Think you he doesn’t know that?” Sajin sneered.

Conar’s sapphire eyes hardened as he felt the pain in his forearm. He could see triumph behind the leather helm of his enemy and he shifted his weapon to his left hand, contempt lifting his lip as he snarled at the man before him.

Jaleel’s eyes widened as he saw the fool shift his blade from his good hand to his injured. He had only a moment’s thought of why the man, a seasoned fighter, would do something so foolish, but then his own ego leapt to the forefront and he struck out, thinking to end the fight, and McGregor’s life, with one swing of his blade.

Catherine screamed, seeing Conar stumble as the man went after him. “Sajin!” she pleaded, struggling to get free. “Father! Do something before it’s too late!”

The blade of Jaborn’s dagger struck outward, jagging upward to pierce his opponent’s belly, to disembowel the man, but with the miscalculations the Hasdu had always experienced when dealing with this particular enemy, McGregor struck first, with an almost casual, contemptuous sweep of his own weapon, and the master stroke came with a quick flick of a tired, aching wrist.

At first he didn’t feel anything. All he sensed was the wet flooding down his arm. He mentally shrugged it away, attempting to lift his arm to run his blade into the exposed, vulnerable expanse of heaving leather before him.

But his arm would not move.

Conar watched as confusion, then surprise, then slight worry entered the dark eyes behind the helm’s slits. He stepped back, waiting for full realization to hit as the quick-flowing blood spread over the front of the man’s leather jerkin.

Jaleel tried to raise his arm again and when he couldn’t, he glanced down, knowing full well McGregor was not going to strike again, that his blade had done all the damage the Serenian had intended. He looked at the rapidly-spreading scarlet wetness staining his chain mail and his leather and tried once more to lift his arm. It barely moved.

“I’m no Healer,” he heard McGregor say, “but it would be my guess I missed the place I was aiming for and hit an artery. That was not my intent.”

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A look of bewilderment flitted behind the leather slits as the dagger, stained with McGregor’s blood, dropped suddenly to the ground. Jaborn stared down at it, wondering why the pain was just then beginning to register. He flexed the fingers of that hand slowly.

“You’d better have it seen to,” McGregor told him. “If you stand there much longer, you’ll bleed to death.”

Jaborn looked up into the face of his hated enemy and finally began to understand what the man had said. He saw pity in the sweaty face staring back at him, saw compassion in the guilty look.

“It was not my intent to do real harm to you,” he heard the Outlander repeating. “I meant only to disarm you.”

Doctor Talebov hurried toward the men, glancing quickly at the Serenian before turning to the man who was bleeding so freely and who was standing so still in the harsh morning sunlight.

“I didn’t mean to cut him so deeply,” Conar said.

At first the words meant nothing to Jaborn. They were mere sounds. Even as the physician’s gasp of sympathy finally registered, the Rysalian did not move. He turned his head within the confines of the helm and looked down at the deep, ugly gash knowing the scarring would be horrible, disfiguring beyond acceptance. He stared at it, feeling nothing but a spreading agony in his being that he was wounded in a way he could not overcome. Slowly, he looked toward McGregor.

“It isn’t over,” he said, watching the surprise flit across the scarred face of his enemy. “We will settle this one day. You’ll pay for doing this, McGregor.”

“I’ll be waiting,” the Serenian said quietly. He tossed the bloodied dagger into the dirt and turned his back on Jaborn.

“It isn’t over, McGregor!” Jaborn bellowed at him. “It isn’t over! Death would be too quick a punishment for you!”

Conar saw Catherine in Ben-Alkazar’s arms and wondered why he didn’t feel jealous.

Maybe, he thought, as he neared them, it was because there was such concern on both their faces.

Maybe, he sighed, it was because the moment Sajin let her go, Catherine ran to him and threw her arms around his neck, plastering her body so close to his it would leave the imprint of his chain mail on her arms.

“Are you all right?” Sajin asked him, seeing the blood dripping from his left arm.

“Aye.” He brought up his arms to push Catherine away, wincing as he saw his own blood on her gown. “I am well, milady.”

She searched his face, nearly groaning at the fatigue she saw glistening there. She clutched as his right arm. “You are hurt.”

He shrugged, holding up his arm. “Nothing a little sewing won’t remedy.” She surprised him with her quick answer.

“I’ll do it.”

Conar shook his head. “Lady, no, I ....

“I will do it!” she snapped. She pulled on his arm, making him stumble against her. “Now!”

Sajin stood where he was, watching with bemusement as Catherine led a protesting Serenian Windwarrior to the medical tent and pushed him none-too gently inside.

“Prince

Sajin.”

Sajin turned and found Yuri pointing. He looked to where the Outer Kingdom man was indicating and saw Prince Guil walking with the physician and the unknown Inner Kingdom warrior, helping to support the wounded man from the field. He quickly glanced back at Conar.

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“I would not speak with him if I were you, Your Grace,” Yuri warned. “I have a notion who that man is and if it is him, Conar will go after him the moment he knows for sure.”

The nagging feeling of knowing who the unknown warrior was finally settled in Sajin’s mind and he felt the blood drain from his face. “Jaleel Jaborn?” he asked.

Yuri nodded. “It is my belief that is who he is.”

Sajin looked from the Shadow-warrior’s face to the medical tent, then quickly looked back at the injured man being helped into the back of a wagon.

“Conar would try to kill him, Your Grace,” Yuri said.

“The Prophetess help us,” he mumbled and headed for the wagon.

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Conar watched her threading the needle and couldn’t help but think of another time, another woman, another wound, and a sad smile touched his lips. That woman hadn’t been willing to suture close his knife cut. Catherine seemed almost eager to do so. His smile widened.

“I see nothing funny about this, Conar,” she snapped, making a knot in the thread. She laid thread and needle into a bowl of antiseptic. “Don’t you dare laugh.”

The smile slipped away. “I am not laughing, Mam’selle,” he answered. “Actually, it hurts like hell.”

“Not surprising,” she said.

She helped him take off his leather jerkin, eased him out of his chain mail, clucking her tongue at the dried blood clinging to the links.

“Some protection this was,” she murmured.