“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, beginning to feel angry and annoyed. “Not only don’t I know you, I’m certainly not going anywhere with you.”
“Ah, but we know you,” the man said, a grin spreading on his face. “The word about a flying girl has spread for miles around, bringing disbelief to most—and interest to some. There are those willing to pay to own you, you see, and we are the ones who will sell you to them. Now come along, for we want to be well away from here by dark. ”
“You’re crazy!” I sneered, knowing he was simple-minded as well. “I’m not going to let you take me, and I’m not certainly not going to let you sell me. I’m not even going to stay here and talk to you any longer.”
The fool’s eyes widened when I spread my wings, and his arm came up to guard his face and eyes when I began beating hard to rise up and away from them. The two behind him did the same, and I laughed as I began rising into the air—until the net flew over me. It came from my right where the four men had been, rose in an arc above me, and was caught by the three men to my left. I flew right into it and was dragged back down to the ground, my laughter immediately turning into screams of shock. They were using a net to catch me, and it wasn’t fair!
I struggled in the dust of the street as the weight of the men held the net down, screaming above the snarling of the spokesman directing the others not to break anything on me. Hands tried to silence my screams through the mesh of the heavy net, but even I was beyond silencing them. I struggled insanely as the net was wrapped around me and I was dragged to my feet, and then my screams cut off as I saw the figures racing toward us. My brothers and male cousins pelted along without any of the others, led by none other than him. They slowed as they came within ten feet of the men who held me, and then stopped to glare at them with chins thrust out.
“Release her at once!” my eldest brother demanded, outrage and fear mixed plainly on his face. “Release her and we’ll allow you to leave in place.”
“You’ll allow us to leave in peace?” the spokesman of the raiders laughed, looking around at them. “There aren’t enough of you to do anything else. We’d heard that there weren’t as many as a handful of people in this town who would lift a finger to help this little bird, and it looks like the rumor was true. You don’t look very eager to start anything yourself, boy, so why don’t you take your handful and go back to the others? If you’re smart, there’s no reason for anyone to get hurt.”
“Except her,” he said, stepping out in front of my brothers and cousins. “Even if everyone in this town says you can have her, I won’t allow it. Let her go.”
“You’re older than the others,” the leader of the raiders mused, staring at him. “You don’t look like a relative, so you trust be a suitor. Take my advice and find a different girl to court. This one has already been claimed.”
He started to turn away, as though done with the conversation, but he was only pretending. When he sprang forward in attack the leader was ready and waiting, and he whirled back to strike hard with the branch-cut he carried, over and over with all his strength. Two others of the raiders joined him, and when they stepped away there was nothing but motionlessness and blood on the dust of the ground. My brothers and cousins backed away in horror, their faces pale and shocked, and after a single glance at them, the leader of the raiders gestured to his men. The net was pulled down from my face and head, a terrible metal collar almost as wide as my hand was closed around my throat, and then the net was pulled away from me completely. Two heavy chains were attached to the metal collar, and by those chains I was pulled along the street in the direction leading out of town. I held to one of the chains to keep from sprawling in the dust and tried to look back at the still, red-covered body on the ground, but all I could see behind me, too horribly close, was the bulk of the leader of the raiders.
“Once we have you far enough away, you’ll be beaten for starting that,” the man said, his voice low and his eyes angry. “If any of the others had decided to join that first bunch, it could have gotten ugly for us. A good thing only that one decided to jump in, and I can’t say I blame him. I’m looking forward to tasting you before the others get their turns, and I probably won’t stop with once. You’re a good-looking piece even with those wings. ”
His free hand came to my wraparound, sliding in through the side slit to grope at my flesh, but the action did no more than cause a small shudder in me. I was numb through and through, so deep in shock that I didn’t think I would ever climb out again. A terrible thing had happened to me and worse things were going to happen, but none of that seemed to matter. I was wrapped in so overwhelming a sense of loss that nothing else in the world mattered. I’d thought I wanted nothing to do with him, thought I’d be happiest if I never saw him again, but he’d given his life for me as he’d said he would, and I couldn’t bear the thought. More than his life had been taken and more than mine, and although I didn’t understand what I felt, I wanted to lie down and die because of it. He’d tried so hard and I hadn’t tried at all, not even to understand the way he looked at things, and now it was too late to do anything at all. I’d never see him again even if I were freed, never see his smile or his arms opening in invitation, offering me a safe place to rest and be loved. He was gone forever, gone beyond apology or any other effort, and life was no longer worth living. The dust of the road rose up to swirl about me in clouds, causing me to cough in the collar about my throat, causing me to pull harder at the chain I held to. Hands came to pull my arms behind me and tie my wrists, but all that did was make me fall. I fell down and down into the dust of the ground, not caring that tears streamed down my cheeks; I cried as I fell through the dust of forever, and that was the way it should have been.
10
I coughed again at the strange smell that wasn’t dust and tried to force my eyes open, but I was surrounded so sharply with pain that I couldn’t do it. The strange dream I’d walked through had provided pain of its own, but purely physical pain surrounded me now, stabbing at me with skull-breaking insistence. I could hear the sound of thunder and felt the clawing of lightning that accompanied it, but that wasn’t all that was bringing me pain; I had to see what was happening, and the need quickly turned into compulsion.
Forcing my eyes open was a major feat, but once I had accomplished it I was sure I still had to be dreaming. The first thing I saw was Tammad and Dallan, tied by the wrists and suspended by the same lengths of leather that tied them, dangling like grotesque decorations from the cave ceiling, their bound feet a good distance from the floor. Their bodies were stripped of weapons and haddinn, but that doesn’t mean they were totally bare; whip marks clothed them in streaks of red, sharp and awful against the bronze of their skin. Although they were conscious, they made no sound, holding the deep, wracking flare of agony wrapped inside their minds. It was partly their agony that cut at me so strongly, that and the thunderstorm outside the open rock windows, and even through the pain and confusion I felt, I knew I had to do something. What that something consisted of I didn’t quite know, but there was something even more important that I didn’t know. I found it out, though, as soon as I tried to move.
If the men were tied vertically, the position given to me was horizontal, or at least nearly that. The awareness finally seeped through my confusion and pain that I was tied to a boulder of sorts, my head hanging back and down, my arms stretched tight and tied at the wrists beyond my head, my ankles restrained but not tightly. I could turn my head to see Tammad and Dallan hanging where someone or something had put them, and could also turn my head an equivalent amount in the opposite direction; aside from that I couldn’t move. Apprehension had taken its time reaching me, but when it came it was full-blown fear; I couldn’t think clearly through everything that was coming at me, but fear seemed very appropriate. What could have captured and hurt two l’lendaa so easily, and what was it going to do to us beyond that?