“You miserable barbarian!” I hissed, hitting him so hard with a fist in the side that it actually registered faintly somewhere at the back of his mind. “You know I’m at the point where I can’t bring myself to touch anyone without their permission! You’re cheating to make me obey you!”
“Indeed,” he said with a laugh filled with amusement, his grin so wide his face was in danger of splitting. “A man must use what is available to him if he is to hold his own with his wenda. Is the thought of parting from me perhaps becoming more attractive?”
I glared at him in disgust for a minute, seriously considering what my answer should be, but I didn’t have much choice there either.
“No, it isn’t,” I said with very little grace, knowing I would probably be stuck with that answer for the rest of my life. “You’re a beast and I hate you, but you have me trapped. ”
“And ever shall I keep the walls of that trap unbreachable,” he murmured, putting his hand under my chin to raise my face. “Without you beside me, wenda, I have not the will to go on, therefore shall I never free you.”
He lowered his lips to mine, then, giving me tenderness rather than passion, and I couldn’t help but think again how much better he would do without a monster at his side. He could have the will to go on without me, if only I had the courage . . . .
“Are we as yet prepared to take our meal?” Dallan asked in the middle of my beautiful kiss, the plaintiveness in his voice causing Tammad to raise his head with a laugh, and Cinnan to chuckle. “Should the meat not have burned itself to ashes in the fire, I will give fervent and very sincere thanks. ”
“And should it indeed have been burned, your saddle seetar will give thanks,” I told him, annoyed that he’d broken things up so quickly. “Already the poor beast weeps and struggles to bear you.”
“Your observation is scarcely amusing, wenda,” he said with a stare of annoyance while Tammad and Cinnan both laughed aloud. Dallan had been eating everything in sight ever since we’d started the trip, but he was still about as far from fat as you can get. His giant frame could have carried a good deal more weight than it currently did, and he still would have been trim, hard and well muscled.
“An urgent need for a great deal of food has been mine since my time as a slave in Aesnil’s palace,” he went on, shifting to an injured, put-upon air of silent bravery. “The healer tells me such a happening is not unusual and will soon disappear, yet am I to cater to it the while it remains. Would you have me disobey the healer?”
“Certainly not,” Cinnan said rather gravely, only his mind showing his amusement. “A man who wishes to regain his health and strength must ever obey a healer.”
“Indeed,” the barbarian agreed, also straight-faced, his hand on my neck beneath my hair. “We will soon be out of these mountains, therefore will it be possible to replenish our ravaged stores with little difficulty. I would, however, were I you, keep myself from that which is carried for the seetarr. Their understanding and compassion is most often great, yet not when they wish to feed.”
“I have not eaten that great an amount,” Dallan stated as he glared at all of us, annoyed again at being teased. “As the matter disturbs you all so, I shall be the first to hunt for us as soon as we are down out of this pass.”
“It would be best to locate something large,” I suggested, also keeping my face expressionless. “So that there will be some meat left upon it by your return to the camp, you understand. ”
My comment was too much for Tammad and Cinnan. The two of them threw their heads back and roared, nearly weeping tears of laughter at the thought of Dallan’s nibbling at his kill during the ride back to camp. Dallan looked at them in disgust, glared at me in disapproval, then dropped a subject he was beginning to find awkward by turning and leaving the tent.
By the time the rest of us made it outside, the meat was ready to eat. Tammad had put it aside away from the fire when he’d come after me, so it hadn’t been burned after all. Dallan divided it with his knife, very deliberately taking the largest piece for himself, and the other two men spent almost as much time chuckling as eating. I’d been faintly surprised that no one had yelled at me for starting to tease Dallan and then continuing with it, but then it came to me that that had to be part of the respect I’d earned. I’d shown what I was capable of and had been given full marks for it, and was now permitted to joke with the others as though I were one of them. It felt good to have that sort of freedom, but I still didn’t like what I’d had to do to earn it. I sat on the ground near the fire, my arms wrapped about me against the chill of the darkness, feeling the quiet background emotions of the others filter through the curtain over my mind. Why was it necessary to knock Rimilians down and stomp on them before they became willing to give respect? Why couldn’t they just take someone’s word for it the way civilized people did’?
“Ah, an excellent meal,” Dallan observed from where he sat, patting the material of his shirt that covered his flat middle. “I believe I shall now retire to my camtah. Come, wenda. ”
I looked at him blankly as he got to his feet, wondering what he was talking about, feeling the same reaction in Tammad, who sat to my left.
“For what reason do you summon my wenda, Dallan?” he asked, his voice puzzled. “I had thought to sit awhile by the fire before retiring to my furs, and the woman may do the same. ”
“Your intentions are certainly yours to determine, Tammad,” Dallan replied with pleasantness and amusement, his mind chuckling. “The woman, however, was earlier given to me for the darkness. Have you forgotten my request—and your own complete agreement to it?”
The barbarian stared up at Dallan with stunned shock, clearly remembering their earlier exchange when he thought he would be leaving forever, but I was more frantic. I didn’t want to spend the night with Dallan, I wanted to be with Tammad, letting his arms and lips and body help me to forget the doubts I was still feeling.
“Hamak, tell him it was a mistake,” I said at once to the barbarian, turning fast to put my hands on his arm. “Tell him it was a misunderstanding, and that I don’t have to go with him. You know how I feel about that, and you said you’d think about my side of it before doing it again. Please, Tammad. ”
“Hama, I cannot,” he answered heavily, speaking Centran as I had while he looked down into my eyes. “I agreed to the request which was made, and now cannot retrieve that agreement. I must honor my word, and you, too, must honor it. You must go to him and give him pleasure.”
“I hate the word ‘honor,’” I told him, furious that he felt bound to do such a thing to me, turning again to glare up at Dallan. He knew how I felt about being given to other men, and was deliberately trying to humiliate me.
“I believe you have been told you must accompany me, Terril,” the beast said mildly, grinning as he offered me a hand. “My camtah will be fully warmed this darkness, and other things as well. Come, now.”
I threw the barbarian a last-hope glance as I got to my feet, but his emotions told me I was wasting my time. He was disappointed that I would not be there to give him pleasure that night, but he was already shrugging off the disappointment with a sense of, “Well, what can you do?” Handing women around was a usual thing to those barbarians, but that didn’t make me hate it any less.
Dallan lit a candle in the fire, then led the way to his camtah. By the time I bent through the tent flaps he was already setting the candle firmly on a brace, and then he turned to me with a grin.
“How odd that your excellent sense of humor is no longer in evidence, wenda,” he said, looking down at me as he began to remove his swordbelt. “Have you no other amusing observations it would please you to make?”