The Slave (Free Men Book 1)(39)

Master was lost to us, or so I thought. I'd had a split-second to make a  decision and I'd acted. Knocking Tam out had been a kindness; even if  the men intended to kill us, at least he wouldn't see the final blow  coming. I'd dropped my weapon and sank to my knees, throwing myself on  the mercy of my countrymen.

That's how I found myself bound and shackled, chained to the cart in  which Tam's senseless body had been thrown. In that moment I almost  regretted leaving him alive. Then they had carried Master out of the  wreckage of his home, placing him more carefully beside Tam. I reached  through the bars, felt the weak pulse fluttering in his wrist, and my  legs all but gave out under me. Against all the odds, he was alive.

The soldiers-mercenaries-whatever they were, led us from the burning  compound as the first sun reached its zenith. The compound was on the  outskirts of Otiz, a small outpost crouched on inhospitable ground  between the desert and the mountains at the extremity of the Thirskan  lands, and I looked hopefully in the direction of the marketplace, where  the army had recently erected a temporary base. If I'd expected help  from the outpost, I was sorely disappointed. The base had been  obliterated, bodies strewn in the streets, and smoke rose in black curls  from buildings in every direction. If any of the residents remained,  they huddled in the ruins of their houses, hiding.

How had the mercenaries accomplished such a thing without rousing the  compound guards? The attack had been calculated and decisive, but I  didn't understand why it had happened. Otiz was an outpost of no  political significance, the army presence there small, even given the  increase in troops stationed in the centre since an apparent suicide  bombing a few weeks earlier, and Master was nobody in the grand scheme  of things. One of a hundred other minor underlords controlling the  outlier regions of the Thirskan Empire. It didn't make sense.         

     



 

We marched into the desert, the men around me moving without hesitation.  Granthia lay to the west, many days' journey through the sands. Surely  they didn't expect to make the other side alive? Both factions  considered the desert a barrier, protecting Otiz from involvement in the  conflict which had waged for generations. If the Granthians had found a  way to cross it, the Thirskans were in danger of a second front line  opening up behind their existing defences. They would be overwhelmed.

The realisation left me with mixed emotions. My first reaction was  horror, my second, following almost immediately on its heels, shame. Had  I been so indoctrinated by a few months' kindness that I was prepared  to forsake my people for their enemy? Until recently, I had been a  soldier in the Granthian corps. Victory in this endless war had been all  I-or any of us-wanted.

As a soldier, I'd seen men die, watched them torn limb from bloody limb,  and I'd hated the Thirskans for fighting back. I'd seen the man I  thought the love of my life murdered before my eyes, but I hadn't  thought of Maal in weeks. Was I so fickle in my affections?

Maal's death had killed something inside me. I'd lost hope, lay down on  the battlefield with his ruined corpse, and waited to be found and  dispatched alongside him. I had been found, but not killed. They'd sold  me instead, a play toy for the wealthy underlords of Thirsk. Nobody  expected me to survive above a few weeks, but then they hadn't reckoned  on Tam being the one to purchase me.

The hot sand blistered my bare feet as we trudged through the endless  desert. The suns heated the metal shackles around my wrists, burning red  rings onto my flesh. Every step I took was agony, the sharp, searing  pain of the surface sinking into the cooler, soothing layer beneath. A  false relief, for each step required extra effort to dig my foot out  from the greedy earth. I wished it would swallow me, wished I could  disappear completely beneath the surface and sleep the eternal dreamless  sleep.

A warm wind blew from the west, casting sand into my face. The suns  scorched my bare shoulders, my head ached, and my mouth was cracked and  dry from thirst. The muscles in my calves and thighs screamed from  strain and, to compound my misery, when the mercenaries attacked, I had  thrown on the nearest clothing I could find to cover my nakedness, and  Master's trousers slid down my hips, requiring me to hold them up by the  waist or risk losing them.

By contrast, the mercenaries seemed prepared for our journey. Leather  boots saved their feet from the worst of the sand, and as the wind  picked up, they wrapped scarves about their heads, protecting their  faces from the stinging blast. Each carried a bladder filled with water,  from which he regularly sipped. I looked longingly at the one the man  nearest me carried but received only a swift kick in the back of the  knee for my trouble.

I fell with a startled cry, and the men laughed as I was jerked along  behind the carriage before I could find my feet again. I scrambled to  standing, spitting sand out of my mouth as best I could, the grains  sticking in the gum collecting at the corners of my lips. My eyes stung,  but I refused to let them see me cry.

At least the top of the cage was covered by a dark cloth, which  prevented the worst of the sunlight from landing on Master and Tam.  Flies swarmed around them, settling along the bloody wounds on Tam's  forehead and Master's torso. I prayed they wouldn't lay eggs, that  somebody would clean the wounds before they festered and began to rot.  I'd do it myself, if they would allow me.

I doubted they would. Men in Granthia were not permitted intimacies with  one another. They wouldn't understand the relationship the three of us  shared, how we tended and bathed and, yes, loved one another. Tam had  been Master's personal pleasureslave for fifteen years, and he had  slowly initiated me into the intimacies two men could share. Intimacies  of which I hadn't dare dream on so many cold nights with the Granthian  army.

In those dreams, on the rare occasion I permitted them, it had been  Maal's hands on my body, and mine on his. Even had we lived in Thirsk,  however, I don't know that he would have ever allowed such a thing.  Instead, it had been Tam who seduced me.

I glanced into the cage. Neither man had stirred, and I was beginning to  fret that the blow I delivered to knock Tam out had done more lasting  harm. His long blond hair was tangled and matted, rusty orange with  dried blood. His skin had darkened from mornings spent outdoors while I  taught him to swim in Master's pool, but he still looked impossibly pale  and innocent lying slumped on the wooden floor of the cage. His  tattoos, a swirl of inky dots and stripes which adorned his limbs and  torso, made him look foreign and exotic in this land, surrounded by so  much dark, unmarked flesh.         

     



 

Master was lying beside Tam, his face obscured by his hair, too dark to  show stains but crusty with blood. His skin was splattered with the  stuff, although most of it wasn't his own. He had fought well before  being overpowered; he had looked magnificent, whirling his scimitar over  his head, bold and fearless and resolute. Now he lay broken, his  brilliant robes tattered and torn, fallen open to expose his legs.  Something about his bare thighs made him seem startlingly vulnerable,  and I longed to cover him up.

The suns set in a bloody blaze as we trudged on through the desert. I  welcomed the respite from the blinding light and blistering heat, my  temples pounding and my skin rough and sore. The planetary rings glowed  in the sky like pale ghosts, silver rainbows which lit the desert in  stark monochrome. The sky was full of stars, winking coldly at us  through space, as empty and lifeless as the desert itself. The horizon  in every direction showed nothing but black mounds of great dunes. And  still we marched on into the unforgiving landscape, as harsh and silent  as the grave.