Treasures of Fantasy - Margaret Weis [6]
The main reason Skylan found Zahakis interesting was that there was no love lost between the Tribune and Raegar. Skylan had observed the animosity between the two the first time he saw them together.
Raegar had given the soldiers orders regarding the Venjekar. The soldiers had listened to Raegar, their faces expressionless. After Raegar had gone, the men had looked to Zahakis.
“Carry on with what you were doing,” was his order.
The soldiers, grinning, had obeyed Zahakis.
Skylan was not certain what use he would make of this animosity between them, other than he was glad to find someone else—even an enemy—who despised Raegar as much as he did.
Zahakis was watching in silence as the soldiers wrenched Skylan’s arms behind his back and bound him by the wrists, then thrust a wooden pole through the bend in his elbows, between his arms and his back, forcing his arms into an awkward and painful position.
This done, Zahakis said, “We have new orders. Some of you, come with me.”
The soldiers walked off after their commander.
Skylan sat hunched over, spitting blood and sand. He glanced at the other Torgun. The grim and dour Sigurd, friend of his father’s and now nominal Chief of the Torgun. Bjorn, prone to gossip and laughter, his best friend next to Garn. Erdmun, Bjorn’s younger brother, gloomy, never happier than when he was expecting trouble. Grimuir, friend and ally of Sigurd’s, he had never liked Skylan. Farinn, the youngest, quiet and withdrawn, mostly kept to himself. Aki the Dark; he had only recently come to the Torgun from another clan and Skylan did not know much about him. The warriors looked at Skylan, and then they looked away.
Skylan sighed. He didn’t know what he’d hoped for. Not love or friendship. But maybe admiration? Nothing. They despised him. They didn’t care if he lived or died. Perhaps they were wishing him dead. All he had to show for his trouble was a bloody gash on his head, throbbing pain in his ribs, and despair in his heart.
Skylan shifted his gaze to the charred and blackened spot on the sand that had been Garn’s funeral pyre. Tears filled Skylan’s eyes. He was ashamed of them and, fearing his men would see him weep, he lowered his head, letting his long, blond, lank hair fall forward to hide his face.
The tears mingled with the blood that dribbled into his blond stubbly beard. Skylan tasted salt and iron in his mouth. He would have prayed to Torval, but Skylan feared that Torval, like the Torgun, would look at him and then look away.
CHAPTER
2
* * *
BOOK ONE
The sisters, Treia and Aylaen, had been captured in the ambush. Treia had been presiding over the funeral pyres of the Vindrasi dead and had been horror-stricken at the sight of the black-haired, brown-skinned soldiers in their strange-looking armor. Treia was near sighted and in her bleary vision, the soldiers in their shining armor were gleaming retribution emerging from the smoke of death, coming to drag her off to the Nethervarld, where the God of the Talley, Freilis, would cast her to her daemons.
The soldiers had grasped Treia roughly by the arms, bound her hands behind her, and threw her into a tent they had erected with disciplined swiftness on the shore. Feeling their rough hands on her and smelling the stink of sweat and leather and listening to the crude talk, Treia had realized these men were flesh-and-blood and that she was their captive.
She had known fear, then, cold and sickening in the pit of her stomach, fear over what men did to captive women. She sat in the tent, trembling with terror, but all the men had done was drag Aylaen to the tent and toss her inside.
“The savage bitch bit me!” one had muttered, exhibiting a bloody bite mark on his forearm.
“You’ll soon be foaming at the mouth,” his comrade had predicted jokingly.
“It’s not funny,” his