“Shit! What if—”
Drayce’s suggestion was cut off by the arrival of someone they’d not seen since they were dropped around the campfire. A large man with broad shoulders and a face filled with blunted features stepped out of the largest of the yurts and walked with a kind of swagger that convinced Caelan he was the leader of this raiding party.
He squatted down when he reached them and stared at Drayce for several seconds before giving Caelan the same thorough perusal. The smile that broke across his face revealed a few missing teeth, but it was the four words he spoke that made Caelan’s blood run cold.
“King Caelan of Erya.”
His accent was thick and rough, but Caelan could still make out his own name and title. Someone had told this man that the leader of Erya was in Zastrad. This was starting to look very much like a kidnapping-and-ransom situation.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Caelan replied in a low, even voice while fighting to remain calm. If this guy spoke anything other than Zastari, his bluff wasn’t going to last long. For now, he just needed to buy time until Eno could find them or they could escape.
The man stood and pulled a knife from his belt. The silver blade was at least six inches long and curved toward the tip. It caught the firelight and winked at Caelan as the leader pointed it at him and spoke. Actually, it sounded like he was making demands, but Caelan couldn’t decipher a word of it. He played what he’d said over and over again in his head, running it through the few languages he spoke. It sounded nothing like Ilon’s home language or even Rosanthe. He even spoke some very basic Damardorian, but this wasn’t anything like it. He couldn’t understand him, and that sent his heart racing.
Caelan shook his head and said very clearly, “I don’t understand.”
The bearded man made his demands a second time, his voice growing louder and shaking with anger. What skin he could see under the hair was turning splotchy red. Did he think that Caelan was being stubborn? That he was pretending to not understand him?
This wasn’t a fucking joke. His men had incapacitated the one person who had even the slimmest chance of understanding him.
Caelan’s temper rose on that ugly thought. As they sat there arguing, unable to comprehend a word either was saying, Rayne could be dying on the other side of the fire.
A crackle of thunder rippled through his brain, and there was a shifting somewhere deep in his chest, as though the gods were attempting to rearrange his organs as they jockeyed for a better position.
Just kill him. Strike him down and call it done, Kaes whispered in his head. The longer you let this draw out, the higher the likelihood that Rayne dies.
Caelan clenched his teeth as he attempted to stomp on the God of Storms’ intrusive voice. He didn’t indiscriminately kill people just to get what he wanted out of life.
It’s not indiscriminate. This delay is hurting Rayne, Tula murmured. Her caress across his soul managed to pluck at deeper pains that still haunted him, people he’d been unable to save.
Wasn’t it bad enough that he had one god in his head trying to urge him to do things he really shouldn’t? No, they were now working in tandem to push him toward the edge, and what bothered him the most was that he didn’t get the impression that they were genuinely trying to help him. They had their own goals and desires they were attempting to achieve through him.
His captor shouted at him and Caelan tensed, waiting for the slice of the blade and even the impact of that meaty fist slamming into his body. Neither came. He glanced around the camp to find everyone else simply going about their business. No one was looking in their direction, paying the least bit of attention to the man and his demands. They were probably just grateful that the bastard’s attention wasn’t on them for once.
The wind whipped through the camp, ruffling the material that made up the various yurts and getting the canvas tarps flapping. Horses neighed and nickered. People shouted orders to each other, but he might as well have been alone with Drayce for all the attention that was paid to them. Just another set of captives. Another commodity to be sold off to the highest bidder.
The man shouted a third time, and Caelan lifted his head to shout at him. No, his captor might not understand what he was saying, but he might feel a little better getting his frustrations out.
But the words in his throat died when he found the bastard had moved over to Drayce. He had a big hunk of Drayce’s hair in his fist, jerking his head back so that his friend’s long, white neck was exposed to the sun. The silver blade sawed into the same soft flesh Caelan had spent hours wondering how it would feel under his lips and cut through. Blood welled up red and rich to run down his Adam’s apple and soak into the collar of his shirt.