And it had been nothing less than wonderful! Her screams and pleas and agonized whimperings had spurred him on to his complete pleasure as had never the moans and gasps and contortions of the slack-lipped tarts he had tried to bed. He could not even remember rolling off her quivering, bleeding, sob-wracked body. And how long he had lain on the crackling leaves, lost in a private nirvana of delight, he knew not.
But when at last he returned to the world, he had realized that the girl must assuredly be slain, else what had happened would get to the ears of the komees, and the certain consequences of that mischance were too horrible to bear contemplation. For, while the old lord had always been known as a lusty man, he would not countenance rape in his domain any more than he would murder or maiming or thievery.
It was with a chill of apprehension that Danos thought of that roving chapman who, nighting at Horse Hall, had accosted a serving wench on her way to the privy, punched her into unconsciousness, and been caught while having his will of her senseless body. The peddler had been haled before the komees at dawn, and since unlike most of his peers Lord Hari maintained no mercenary soldiers, the senior hunter and Danos had been set to guarding the prisoner, who had claimed drunkenness to be the cause of his attack.
But the old lord would have none of it, saying, “You be a well-built man and not unhandsome, so you might have had that woman, and many another here, for but a bit of frippery from your pack or even a few winning words; but you felt you must steal not buy, for a rapist be nothing less than a thief and a maimer.
“Well, master chapman, you chose the wrong county in which to commit your crime! Some lords might well let you off with a striping or the payment of a suffering price, but Hari Daiviz values his people more highly than that.
“In the Middle Kingdoms, where I soldiered years agone, they know how to deal with scum such as you. So rape be unknown, except in time of war or intakings.”
Danos well recalled how that husky chapman’s face had paled under his tan and dirt, how be had fallen to his knees on the flags, groveling and wringing his raised hands in supplication, his terror having frozen his power of speech.
And the komees had continued in the same tone. “Master chapman, you have dishonored your manhood. Were I a burk-lord, I’d have it off your body, leave you a hollow reed to piss through and seal the stump with hot pitch. But I think me IT! have done enough for the women of this world if I make certain that you’ll breed no more of your contemptible ilk.”
The nobleman then addressed the senior hunter. “Rai, you and young Danos drag this piece of filth into the courtyard, have off his breeches and lash him to the whipping frame. I’ll be along presently.”
They had obeyed their orders. The komees, the raped woman and all the men of the hall and the village had assembled in the courtyard, where Lord Hari had recounted the crime, his judgment and sentence, then had called forth the horse master. And Danos’ blood ran cold when he remembered the hideous cries of the hapless chapman when old Vintz stepped forward with his hooked knife and commenced the gelding.
So Danos had buried his hunter’s blade in the girl’s whip-wealed breast, dragged the corpse far into the forest and secreted it near to where he recalled having seen bear tracks. And when her pitiful remains at last were found, the komees, his neighbor, Komees Djeen, and several other nobles, with their hunters and retainers, rode out on a week-long hunt that bagged three bears and a host of other animals.
With his duties to offer excuse for frequent and prolonged absences, to explain bloodstains on his weapons and clothing, and with the wide-spreading forest to conceal his movements, Danes’ rape—murders had gone almost unremarked—since he had been careful never to strike the same domain twice in a row and had ranged over most of the Duchy of Morguhn and parts of the two duchies to the south and east—and his murderous role had never been suspected. Throughout the intervening years, many a bear or treecat or boar or wolf had been slain as bloodprice for Danos’ twisted sex drives.
The thoughts of those pleasurable deeds aroused Danos to an unbearable pitch of passion, so that when once more he found his traitorous hand straying toward commission of unforgiveable sin, he sat up, laced on a pair of sandals and donned a soft doeskin kilt. Leaving his door ajar, he crept past the rooms of the upper servants and ascended the narrow stairs to the roof, then headed along the wall walk toward the barrack, thinking to borrow a woman from one of the guardsmen, take her someplace apart and hurt her enough to gain such reaction as he knew he required for his sexual release.
But he had taken only a few steps along the wall when there was the twanging of a bowstring somewhere near the barrack and a blazing arrow arched high into the starry sky. What in hell, he pondered, are those drunken whoresons up to now? Aren’t dice enough to gamble with that they must waste good arrows? And they could fire the corn or the hay, as well!
Lips set grimly, Danos strode purposefully toward the south tower. Dawn would see those thoughtless, wasteful rogues well striped for this night’s lark. But in the shadow of the tower, only a few steps from the door, his foot struck something which sent him sprawling, all but tumbling into the courtyard twelve feet below.
On his knees, he made out the dim shape of a helmeted guardsman, stretched motionless across the walk, legs dangling over the edge. Snarling, he grasped the obviously drunken man’s shoulders and shook him mercilessly … without result. Then he became conscious of warm, sticky wetness on the miscreant’s tunic. He thought at first that, in his drunken stupor, the sentry had puked down his front But some atavistic sense sent his hands exploring.
His nape bristled as his trembling fingers penetrated the still-warm gash gaping under the guardsman’s chin. Leaping up, his blood-gummy hand sought the hilt of the sword he had left in his room and his mouth was opened, his lungs filling to shout an alarm.
Then came the creaking protest of the gate’s hinges, whereupon a dozen or more shadowy, wraithlike figures poured from the entry passage and trotted across the deserted courtyard toward the hall. And Danes’ throat choked off that shout. Shakily, he stepped over the dead man and tiptoed through the tower, thence into the deathly still barrack.
What he found there imbued him with such panic that he only took time to arm himself with belt and dagger, bow and case of arrows, ere he stole back through the tower, dropped from the wall and ran for the forest like a bunted beast.
VI
Sleep finally had claimed Mairee, but the throbbing of her feet made it a light slumber at best, and when the arms slipped under her body and the lips pressed down on hers, she instantly came to full, shuddering wakefulness. All that she could see of the face above her was as black as the hair. Then she became aware that those lips on hers were surrounded by a beard, a full beard! And she knew the feel of that beard … and those arms and those warm, tender lips. And she knew also that she was certainly dreaming. The knowledge that she could not live on and on forever in that blessed dreamworld, but must soon waken to the horror of her real existence, wrenched a groan from the depths of her being and flooded her eyes with hot, salt tears.
Beside her the snoring suddenly broke off, the bed shook to the lady’s ponderous movements. Then her strident voice shrilled, “A man! A dirty man! What are you doing in my bedchamber, you pig? Get your filthy hands off my girl!”
Ehrik’s deep bass rumble answered her, his tone hard and cold as polished steel. “Komeesa Hehrah, I done come to fetch back my wife.”
Lumbering her bulk half off the bed, Lady Hehrah turned up the lamp and stared in utter disbelief at the visitor, clad in dark-brown tunic and breeches, face and hands smeared with soot, wide dagger and shortsword hanging from his belt