Return of the Danu Read online

  “We don’t need you for that,” Elena said mildly enough. “But if you wish to try your skills in the true wilds rather than at the end of a barbarian sword, you can describe the person or persons who hired you and where.”

  Ansgar tightened his hold on the witch in warning, but she shook her head at him minutely. He allowed the interference, but if she thought he would allow a highwayman to go free, one who sought to take what was his to protect, she did not know him at all.

  “A stranger, black eyes, and pale skin, he visited the trading post. He wanted us to go into the wilds and bring back a Danu as we do the wild horses, but our leader refused him.” He looked at her with pleading in his eyes. “We would never be so foolish as to go against your people. But he came back a day later and offered more if we would take a female from the Southern Warriors that would be traveling the Western trek from Haven. That we could do.” His eyes went back to Ansgar. “He said nothing of the female being Danu, or that the warrior who claimed her was the blood prince.”

  Elena looked back at Ansgar and he met those glowing Green eyes. “Do you need anything else?” she asked quietly. They both knew who had commissioned the men to take her. His eyes lingered on her face, taking in the Green glow of those eyes. When had they stopped making him uneasy? He wondered. It was not as if he trusted her, it would be foolish in the extreme to trust a Danu witch, even one with skin that begged for his touch.

  “No,” he said and waited to see what she would do. If she thought the man would be set free, she had no notion of whom she dealt with.

  The vines whipped up and both the man and the mass of deadly vines disappeared into the Green.

  “You are not setting him free alive,” he growled, more a warning then a question.

  She did not answer, just tilted her head as if she was listening for something and then the Green faded from her eyes and they heard thrashing as the man ran blindly into the wilds to the south of their position. “No,” she said quietly. “He is not going to live.”

  Just then they heard a distant snarl, and a cut off scream that echoed and disappeared before any of them could pinpoint the position. Seems the beasts of the wild had taken their own revenge in retaliation for their Danu.

  “I thought you said that the Danu do not command the beasts of the wild.”

  “We do not,” she said. “That does not mean we do not know where they are.” She looked back and caught his raised eyebrow. She shrugged. “I don’t like horse peddlers, and highwaymen even less.”

  Lor and Beck exchanged a look. Then looked to catch his own reaction. Most of the time it was easy to peg her as a soft female with her gardening and her gentle touches to small children and animals. He felt protective of her, a need to keep her close. But then she would do something completely bloodthirsty and pragmatic, and he would want nothing more than to strip her bare and take her against the nearest hard surface, as hard and as completely as he could.

  He gritted his teeth against the close confines of his armor and nudged his horse forward. The scent and the feel of the woman moving with him on the horse only added to his troubles. He did not even entertain the thought of passing her to one of his men and giving himself some much needed space. If anything, he needed her closer not farther away. Even the thought of her in another man’s arms like she was in his, this moment, made his blood boil in a completely new way. For the sake of his men, and he admitted his own sanity, she would stay right where she was.

  “Shall we find the rest then?” His own personal plague asked mildly, her attention returning to the road before them.

  Lor snickered, somehow his men knew exactly what he was thinking at that moment, and looked both amused and as if he was missing brains.

  Ansgar made no answer for several moments. “When we get to the rest. I expect you to leave some for the rest of us.” He said mildly enough. “I feel the need for some action.”

  Lor laughed outright at that and Beck gave him an amused look. His witch just shrugged those dainty shoulders. Completely serene. “If you like.”

  He did like, he thought. He liked this female more and more every moment he spent in her company. More than the call of her body, her strength and pragmatism drew him as much as her floral scent and soft Danu hair. If she were anything but a magic user, he would have already made the decision to keep her, he admitted if only to himself.

  If she had no magic… the thought started and then stopped right there. He could not imagine her as anything but what she was. Take away the Danu in her and she would not be Elena and, he was forced to admit, it was Elena he wanted. Powerful witch and soft woman all rolled into one.

  Perhaps he had lost his senses, he mused, nudging the horse forward. His head dipping down to catch the scent of that red Danu hair so tightly bound in those elaborate braids they favored. He remembered it down around her hips and vowed no one else would get the privilege of seeing it that way. No one but him.

  Perhaps he was truly bewitched and was so far gone he did not even know it, because he liked the idea of keeping her all to himself. In every way he could manage it. The thought should have brought him to his senses, instead he vowed that if he was bewitched, he would keep the witch until it faded. And if there was a price to be paid for this…attachment, he was forming for the enemy, he would not be the only one who paid it. That he vowed on the conqueror blood flowing through his veins. If the witch was weaving spells, setting out to trap him with her magic, he would not be the only one ensnared.

  If it was not magic that made him ache to be closer to her, to feel her under his hands, to protect her and call her his, well, either way he vowed he would not suffer alone.

  Ansgar moved the escaping wisps of hair away from her neck with a nudge of his nose and breathed deep.

  Her little ‘eep’ of sound when she felt his lips brush her neck had a satisfied smile crossing his lips. If Elena could have seen it, she would have done more to put distance between them than straighten her back and attempt to elbow him into submission. A move he did not deign to notice, hauling her right back into him with a hand he wrapped around her waist. She huffed out an irritated breath and went back to pretending serenity. Letting her backside rest tightly in the wedge of his thighs where he wanted her.

  Ansgar the Bloody smiled. He was about to go into battle and the woman he would have as soon as he could manage it was trapped inside the curve of his arms practically sitting on his lap. It was, despite all signs to the contrary going to be a good day.

  Chapter Eleven

  Elena did not need to tell the men when they were getting close to the ambush sight. She felt the shifting of the horse under them as the battle readiness infused the warriors. The gypsies were good at their nefarious purpose, making no sound and giving nothing obvious away, but the Southern warriors knew anyway. Perhaps the people of the South had their own kind of magic, she mused. Or Ansgar's connection to his Frendi horse was more solid than she had imagined, which she supposed was a magic in itself. Whatever the case, the gypsies did not stand a chance, even with their greater numbers.

  The battle cry slashed through the silence of the wilds and Elena reached out a hand and snagged a vine she called down to herself. A moment later she was whisked off the horse and out of the way among the high branches. For a moment she had wondered if Ansgar would fight to keep her, but after the slightest tug she was up and away, and he was in the thick of battle.

  The gypsies jumped at them from the rocky outcrop high above taking the advantage it offered them. Unfortunately for them the advantage was not enough to counter the cold steel of swinging swords in the hands of warriors born to use them.

  She watched from the safety of high above in the trees, only acting when an archer set his sights on one of the battling men in her party. Then both the gypsy and his bow and arrow would disappear in a quickly cut off screech of fear. Since he had asked her so nicely Elena left the rest of the attackers to Ansgar and his men. Hacking swords and spraying blood ma
de her glad she was well out of the fight. The men would need a bath when the fight was over.

  This closed in section of road was edged on one side by the start of the rock cliffs and a deep tight thicket of Green on the other side.

  To use those knives they were so fond of, they had to get closer than they were managing. She took out another archer hidden in the trees and sent beasts that had come in response to her call after one man who saw the error of their ways and tried to run. But the rest she left to the three warriors beneath her on war horses. The horses, she noted seemed to enjoy the carnage nearly as much as the warriors. The gypsy attack died a quick death.

  There was only one other of the enemy she bothered with, and that was the one who stood atop the rocks and directed the fighting. That one she identified and snapped up into a cocoon of Green before he could even cry out his surprise. That one she held on to until the rest of the battle was over, and all the rest of the miscreants were bloody pieces and silence reigned on the North road. Then she dropped the leader gently into the space between the three warriors that had fought as is they had battled together since birth. She did not think they would get any more out of him than they had the other one, but it would be foolish not to at least question the man.

  As one, Ansgar and his trusted men homed in on the swarthy gypsy who stood before them, knife held at the ready, sneering. The three warriors sat their horses speckled and surrounded my blood and gore and she could swear they were not even breathing hard.

  Ansgar did spare her one glance taking in all that was Elena. She perched securely on a slender branch that looked like it would have difficulty holding a child. His eyes trailed her searching, she assumed, for injuries before they snapped back to the man standing in their circle of death.

  “You led these men?” he asked abruptly. His cold eyes landing back on the man and chilling further.

  The gypsy must have read his death in those eyes because he did not even try to come out of the questioning alive. Instead he spit on the ground and sneered harder. “I do not answer to you, blood prince, or your false king.” He looked up to the trees at her and sneered some more. “Or your pet witches.”

  The foliage all along the side of the road and hanging above it shivered in warning. A warning the gypsy leader ignored. Though she caught the quickest flash of fear before the tall broad mountain of a man managed to conceal it behind derision and anger.

  He was hoping for a quick death, Elena mused. Courting one in fact, she realized when he looked from her to Ansgar and back again, speaking most unwisely. “I would have enjoyed taking your pet before I sold her to the stranger though. I have always wondered if they screamed like other women when they are far from their precious Green. I might even have kept her and trained her up to be my own pet witch.” He stopped ogling Elena to smile in the face of Ansgar’s ice cold stare. “Tell me, how young do you have to get them to break them to your will?”

  If he wanted to die, Elena thought as vines crept down closer to the man, and more than one beast turned gimlet stares on the man, as they waited in the cover of the trees for their chance at the carnage. Elena was holding them back, but when her own wanted were conflicted, she had less of a hold than she would have liked. And Ansgar was fondling his sword as it rested across his lap, still blood red from this man’s people.

  “The foreigner who hired you,” he said. His voice cold and dead betraying none of the rage Elena was sensing under the surface. “Where were you to meet him with the girl?”

  The big gypsy tilted his head and smiled again. “I do not think I will tell you anything blood prince, so what will you do?” he asked smirking. His posture changed as if he suddenly saw a way out. When he went on speaking his tone was less hostile and more smug. “Kill me? Then you get nothing from me and the threat to your female goes free.”

  “Tell me what I want to know, and I will kill you quick. Do not, and I will give you to my pet witch.” Ansgar kept dead eyes on the gypsy and it was clear to everyone that he had no real preference either way.

  Elena laughed, a low wicked laugh drawing the eye of every man there up to her. The gypsy was not the only one who shuddered.

  “What you could do to me away from the Green doesn’t really matter when we both stand inside it, does it?” she asked with blood thirsty satisfaction, nudging power along the weave until all the animals that waited at the edge of the wilds for their meal stepped out on to the road. Some of them looked like normal wolves, foxes and one bear, but a few were of the new breed, all teeth and skeletal armor over strange misshapen limbs that no longer resembled whatever beast they had started out as before they were morphed by magic. “How long do you think I could keep you alive while they feasted? I wonder if you will scream like all the rest.”

  The swarthy gypsy lost both the color in his face and his sneer. He turned to Ansgar. “I was to bring her to the Inn at Roads End. He would have someone watching and join me when the job was done. That is all I know.”

  Elena believed him. Ansgar must have as well because a second later his sword flashed and the last gypsy head rolled off his shoulders and into the animals lined at the edge of the road. One great armored thing that must have once been a boar grabbed it in its huge jaws and turned to dash back into the Green. The rest waited silent and still.

  Beck and Lor looked at the beasts and then back up to Elena.

  Beck was the one who spoke. “Are they waiting for the dinner bell?”

  “Something like that.” She smiled at them and then dropped, flipping backward off the branch and landing on one directly above Ansgar and his horse. She looked at the General with a raised brow. “Satisfied with your little battle?”

  He said not a word out loud just held up a hand. She looked at it, then back at him. It might have been a polite gesture to join him, if the command was not so flagrant on his face. She shook her head at his tyrannical ways and swung down to the horse, twisting to take her seat once again. He caught her with both hands on her hips and guided her to where he wanted her. Elena tried not to show the heat reaction his touch and closeness caused.

  Without another word, they left the clearing, and the waiting horde of beasts behind. Elena felt the moment when the men finally relaxed, and it was some distance from the clearing and the feast they left behind.

  They were a good half day from the carnage before Ansgar spoke again. She was drifting off with the steady feel of the horse’s gate under her and the firm hold around her.

  “You said the Danu do not control the wild beasts.” His words were so mild it took her a minute to focus and hear the accusation back in his voice.

  She sighed. “I did not lie if that is what you are thinking. Most Danu steer well clear, and we have no control over them, not like you are thinking. But as some Danu have gifts with the planting unrivaled by the rest of us, so to do some of us have other gifts.”

  “And yours is what?”

  She thought of a way to answer truthfully without giving away everything and sighed. It was past time for at least one of them to begin to trust. She gave him more than she would have yesterday, and less than she could have. “I have an affinity with animals from the wild. If I am close enough I can direct them, even command them, but only as long as I am close. I cannot for instance give them a directive and expect them to follow it when I am gone from the area. But I can keep them from attacking when I am with you.”

  “What else?” he asked. “You knew the gypsies were hiding, where and how many.” He said it, not like it was a question, but as if he already knew how she had done it.

  “I can in a limited way experience what some animals experience, if I am close enough to them in the weave and they allow the connection.”

  “Tell me, Elena, what animal did you experience my father and I’s conversation with?” He asked the question mildly enough, but his arm turned into a steal band at her waist. “Another mouse?”

  “Actually,” she said matching his tone. “It was the sam
e mouse. Once I healed it the connection was there.”

  “And your brother, what kind of special abilities does he have that allowed him to get into the city without detection.”

  Elena sighed. Knowing he was not going to like her answer, but she had only one she could give him. “My brothers secrets are his own to give or keep. I give you mine in good faith. It will have to be enough.”

  “Good faith?” the question was mild enough, but the doubt behind it might as well have been a sneer. Yes, she was right. He had not liked her answer.

  “Yes, good faith, with the intention of trusting you with secrets while you hold tight to your own.” She raised her chin and looked straight ahead. “As ambassador for my people I should have been included in the meetings about the accord. You know it and I know it, but you were deep in your power plays and doing your best to keep me as in the dark as possible, so I don’t think you can argue about full disclosure.”

  “You never said you wanted to be in on the meetings.”

  Elena could hear him gritting his teeth.

  “You never gave me the chance,” she shot back. “What I don’t know is if it was your father’s idea or yours.” Her voice quieted. “Neither of us has been entirely up front in our dealings.” She sighed and turned to meet his angry eyes. “Do you even want to change that? Full information sharing with a magic user?”

  She saw his jaw clench and his eyes shutter. Elena nodded, turning back to face the front again a painful lump in her throat. She did her best to swallow the sadness that followed so her voice was cold and lifeless when she spoke into the weighted silence. “That is what I thought.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The inn at Roads End was nothing more than a two-story building with barred windows and reinforced doors. The only reason it did not have a moat and a wall was because there was no room for them between the wilds and the road. Nothing more than what the name suggested, it was the end of the great North Road and the beginning of rock cliffs on one side and true wilds on the other. No one knows why anyone set up the Inn so far from any industry, but the same family had lived there for generations. Making their living as best they could on the few traders that made it this far into the wilderness before they turned and headed back with their goods to trade.