He patted her back as he held her. “I’ll teach you to swim,” he said.
She wrapped her chubby arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder. “I don’t like water anymore,” she said.
He didn’t blame her. He wasn’t as enthusiastic about it either at the moment. “Even if you don’t, you still need to know how to swim. This way if you fall in again, you won’t need my or anyone else’s help to get out.”
Though many people hailed him as a hero, they also questioned him as to how he’d managed to literally catapult out of the water with Luda.
“I don’t know,” he said, answering the question several times with the truth. His memory of those moments were hazy, and fragmented, terrifying and not just because he’d almost drowned. The rippling equine face with dagger teeth and a gleaming dark eye filled with ravenous hunger haunted his nightmares, leaving him shivering and gasping when he woke.
He’d told only Disaris what he’d seen, afraid he’d be ridiculed for being fanciful. Even if she didn’t believe him, he trusted her not to mock him.
Her face had paled when he described what he’d seen. “I don’t think you imagined it,” she said. “People forget some of the old tales or refuse to believe they’re more than just stories. There are things that live in the rivers and lakes that hunt more than fish. Just because most of us haven’t seen them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.” She shuddered. “Maybe we shouldn’t fish or swim in that creek anymore. You can just say the waterweed there is thick and acts like a trap.”
Warmed by her unwavering faith in him, he asked her another question. “What did you see when I came out of the water?”
She grew animated at his inquiry. “None of us have ever seen the like,” she said, waving her arms about in a grand gesture. “Iwas about to dive again to search for Luda when the two of you…erupted from the water as if the creek spat or sneezed you out of it and flung you to the shore.” She tapped her finger against her lower lip. “Do you think that creature tossed you out of its territory?”
He shook his head. “No. Whatever it was, it did its best to keep us there.”
As the weeks after Luda’s rescue passed, so did people’s interest and curiosity in the event. Visitors from other villagers sometimes pointed to Bron when they saw him and gossiped about the strange way he’d rescued the little jin Gheza girl, but for the most part the days resumed their normal routine until one day a squad of Daesin soldiers descended on Panrin and changed Bron’s destiny forever.
The squad leader had asked the whereabouts of the jin Hazarin household. When Hazarin opened her door to his knock, he didn’t give her a chance to greet him or offer a greeting in return. “Is this the house of Bron jin Hazarin?” And with those words the boy who wanted to become a scholar became a battle mage instead.
“A butcher of men,” he told Disaris a year later when he returned to Panrin after his first battle. He lay on the hill adjacent to her house, his head in her lap as he stared up at the star-filled night sky and wondered if and when he’d stop seeing the blood and hearing the screams of the dying every time he closed his eyes.
Chapter Seven
Disaris listened to the tumbling lullaby of the river as she trailed behind Bron. The first village near the Hayman lim-stone lay beyond the line of trees ahead of them, an hour’s walk north and less than that by horseback. She wasn’t sure either of them would make it that far without stopping. And if they did stop, she doubted they’d start again.
Bron hadn’t exaggerated when he said the four-day journey from the Nesting Grounds to the Hayman stone would be a challenging one. Fueled by fear and relief that they’d managed to escape the encampment and Cimejen’s clutches, they’d raced across the plain that night with Bron in the lead, serenaded by the howl of wolves and the laughter of jackals.
They hadn’t gone too far before Bron slowed their pace to a steady trot. Without the full moon’s light, the plains were a sea of rippling black water, with no border or definition, only the whisper of bluestem grass that purled like the tide in the ceaseless wind. Even with the light, it was difficult to see details, and Bron had employed his sorcery to alter his vision so that he might see better in the darkness. She’d jerked in the saddle hard enough to make her mare shy when he turned to stare at her overhis shoulder. The combination of kohl-smeared face and the radiant green eyeshine that looked more vulpine than human gave him an otherworldly appearance.
“Stay behind me,” he said. “And don’t veer from the path I take. I’ll act as a wayfinder while we ride at night.”
She’d followed his instructions, hands tense on the reins as she waited for her horse to inevitably step into an unseen hole or crevice and fall.
They rode through the night with brief stops every few leagues to rest their mounts and give them water once they’d cooled off. Dawn saw Disaris yawning in the saddle, and her buttocks and thighs were on fire from so many hours of endless trotting. She didn’t ask Bron to stop longer so they could sleep. She feared what lay behind them more than she craved rest and wanted as much distance between them and the eunuch battle mage as possible.
Daylight revealed the track of flat plain, extending in every direction as far as the eye could see. Disaris felt horribly exposed and silently thanked the gods when they crossed into a section of sward where the bluestem grasses grew as tall as a man and even higher. She was about to ask Bron if he wished to stop when he raised a hand and called a halt.
“We’ll rest here for a few hours,” he said when she rode up alongside him. The kohl he’d worn to change his appearance had rubbed off on the edges of his hood and smeared in multiple places around his eyes and forehead from perspiration. It gave his pale features a ghastly aspect.
“I didn’t think you could look any scarier than when you pulled me out the wagon, all painted for either war or sacrifice,” she teased. “But I think you’re even more frightening now with it smeared all over you.”
One variegated eyebrow rose as he helped her out of the saddle. She groaned and leaned on his arm as needles ofsensation returned to her numb backside and legs. His hands flexed on her waist. “You’ll make me vain with all these compliments you’re showering upon me.” He swiped at his forehead with the side of one hand, frowning when it came away dark with kohl.
Disaris pushed his hand down. “Stop. You’re making it worse. We’ll be here for a while. I’ll clean your face for you.”
While she rummaged through the provisions bag he’d brought with them, Bron unsaddled the horses and staked down their lead lines so they could graze on the lush grass. Seated within the feathery shelter of the lofty bluestem, she only saw the top of his head as he went about his tasks. When he returned to her side, he shouldered off his cloak and spread it on the ground.
“Sit here,” he said, folding his tall frame until he sat cross-legged on the garment.
She joined him, bringing a waterskin with her and a scrap of fabric she’d cut from the lining of her borrowed skirt. She’d have to be careful with how much she hacked away in the future. The frock and shift she wore underneath it were her only pieces of clothing.
“Hold still,” she ordered, positioning herself so that she faced Bron. “I’ll make you pretty again.”
He snorted but didn’t move as she wet the cloth and began to wipe away the smeared kohl. Each swipe across the contours of his face reminded her of how she’d once explored them with her lips. He’d grown even more handsome as he aged from gangly adolescent to a powerful man in his prime. His looks were thought unusual by most, but to her, he was sublime in every way.
