Westhaven, Rowan Erlking [large ebook reader .txt] 📗

say willingly, or I will drag you by chain back to the camp. Personally I prefer the first option since I am not fond of wearing chains myself.”

The brown-eye did not make another word of protest. Watching Key instead, he was forced to haul both dead bodies out of the ditch. Key then made them follow the ditch towards the source, taking out the dead as they went along. They did this until they reached the river from where the farmers had diverted the water. By then Key peered at the river, hoping there were no more dead in it. Noticing the fish swimming by, he sighed with relief. Thereon he took out his water bladder, crouched down, and filled it.

“Now get out of here,” Key said with a jerk of his head.

The brown-eye stared at him. “What? No. You’re just going to shoot me in the back.”

“Do you want me to shoot you?” Key rose, cocking his pistol and pointing it at him.

Shaking his head, the brown-eye backed off.

Key then lowered his gun. “I’m too tired to deal with a captive right now, so consider yourself lucky. But if I see you again, I will shoot to kill. Understand?”

Nodding, the Sky Child walked backwards to make sure Key was not lying. However, as soon as the demon got a good distance away, he ran, hurrying back to wherever it is he came from. As he did, Key filled up the rest of his water bladder and also the one he had taken from Tiler. With both, he turned back towards the canal and followed it until he found the medic camp once more.

“There you are!” Lanona jogged over to him, practically breathless. “Where did you go?”

“I was getting water,” he said, raising one of the bladders.

“We have barrels of water here.” Lanona waved towards the tent.

Key looked over her shoulder at them then blinked his eyes.

“What?” She shook her head at him, reaching up to his face. “Were you so tired that you didn’t even see it? Did you walk to the river?”

“The irrigation ditch first,” Key said, gesturing to it.

She gave him a chiding look. “That water is tainted with the dead. We keep pulling bodies out of it. I hope that water is not from the ditch.”

“No, from the river.” But Key sat down next to Tiler who had been sleeping soundly. He pulled out the stopper and tipped the contents to his own mouth first before nudging Tiler to offer him some.

Lanona crouched down next to him. “Sometimes you really are an idiot.”

He gave her a tired look, deciding it was best not to tell her the other things that had happened along the way.

She knelt down. Taking out something from the bag she was carrying, one of which was a cloth, she opened her own water bladder and tipped it on the cloth so that it was damp. Then she looked up to his face. “Hold still.”

“I’m fine.” He tried to brush her hand from his face, but she just went around it, dabbing off the dirt and blood that had caked there. Then she wiped more diligently until she reached his chin. There, he winced.

“Ah, I was wondering if any of this blood was yours. So far it seems to be only Tiler’s.” She dabbed his scrape, pouring more water on her cloth to clean the wound. She found another cut along his neck near his ear. Lucky for him it was too shallow to have done any real harm. Still, she stared at it, touching it with her finger to seal it up.

“Oh….” Key turned his head, feeling the skin pull together. He stared at her then cracked his neck. “That’s stings.”

She closed her eyes with a small laugh. “Yes. So they tell me. But that cut could have killed you if it had been any deeper.”

He nodded, cringing. “Oh, yes. And I remember the guy who gave it to me too. He thought he had killed me also. I jumped back in the nick of time.”

“I don’t like you relying on—”

“I didn’t say I relied on it,” Key snapped, shoving her hand away from his face again. “It just happened that way.”

She grabbed hold of his face with her hands once more. “Key! Did it ever occur to you that I worry that some day you will be the body I’ll have to seal up in that tent over there? Or worse, that I’ll find them bringing you in as one of the dead.”

He stared at her wide brown eyes. A shiver ran down his arms. He tried to muster a response.

She beat him to it. “Just like you worry about me, I worry about you. It has been over a year since Stiltson, and all I’ve seen of you are wanted posters for your capture. And when I heard they had caught you I….” She choked, ducking her head down while trying to fight back the tears as she let him go.

Lanona could hardly look at him when she said, “And when I found out that it was your friend, Telerd, I was glad it wasn’t you. But I knew you were hurting somewhere and I couldn’t make it better. I couldn’t be there to make it right. And when I saw you in that tent just now, covered in blood, I thought my heart would explode. I am ashamed to say I was glad it was Tiler and not you that was hurt. But at least now I could make it right. I could fix it. Then you wouldn’t have to lose another—”

This time Key did kiss her. He held her tight, sobbing inside with the realization that he had made her cry. When he let her go, she stared as like before, panting hard.

Immediately feeling ashamed, he pulled away. Only, Lanona grabbed hold of his face again and laid on his lips a tender kiss, her tears rolling down her cheeks. When she pulled back, she gave him a sad yet bashful smile. “Key. I’ve always loved you.”

He stared at her, unable to believe the words that were coming from her mouth. They seemed too fantastic to be real.

“When I first saw you and you were just a boy sitting among all those important people, I was amazed how you held your own—brave to speak to them so sharply what you were really thinking. I was not as brave as that.” She gazed into his eyes, touching his face with her soft hand. “I never dreamed that a man like you would even think to look at a woman like me.”

Blinking, he stared more, stuttering. “I…uh…what? Lanona, you’re beautiful!”

“I can also kill you with a touch,” she said with a twinge in her smile.

He cringed, his embarrassment returning at having said that once. The top of his ears turned a little red.

“I had thought you were saying how I frightened you,” she said, lowering her eyes a little. “It is painful to hear, you know. So many men when they know I am a wizard keep their distance. And I was so jealous of Lady Sadena who had brave Callen at her side. I thought it almost impossible for any other kind of man to—”

“Don’t think that!” Key took hold of her hand. He shook his head at her. “Why did you think that? You’re not like a demon, wanting human blood. You’re human.”

She gave him one of her lovely smiles. “Even humans can be cruel, Key. You know that. I’m sure you know it.”

He swallowed, just staring at her. The lovely way her mouth moved, the blush that rose to her cheeks, and how just hearing her voice made his heart pound. There was no way he could think and differently about her. He admittedly loved her.

Squeezing her hand lightly, he said, “I never thought that of you. Albeit, my mind has been mostly on the war….”

He then reached up and touched her face, brushing her hair from her forehead where her sweat had made it stick to her skin. He was thinking how rough seeing all the dead must have been for her. She seemed more careworn since the last time he had seen her over a year ago. “I have admired you since I saw you again in Wimanus, though I didn’t realize I liked you until after Kalsworth. I really am an idiot.”

She laughed and kissed him again. Sitting closer to him, she set her head on his shoulder. “I wanted to drown that girl in Stiltson, but you blasted got in the way. I had thought you liked her more than me. But you weren’t saving her at all. I couldn’t see it because I was so angry at the time, but you were saving me from myself.”

Key nodded. “I’d forgotten that. I only remember you being mad at me. You were always mad at me. How was I supposed to know that Sundri women expect to fight along side their men?”

With a grin, Lanona nudged him. “But you figured it out later, right?”

He rolled his eyes. “Men prefer just to be told. We can’t handle guessing games.”

“Guessing games?” She tilted her head as she looked at him.

Slumping over, Key moaned. “Please, Lanona. Don’t get mad at me again.”

But she chuckled, leaned into his face and kissed him on the nose. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t tease you like that. I keep forgetting you are of a tender nature.”

“A what?” It was his turn to tilt his head to look at her. But when he did he saw her face stiffen. Below in her chest, a sword point stuck out, covered in blood.

Looking up, he saw a human standing over them. Glaring down at them, dark anger on the man’s dirty face fixed on Key. The man jerked his sword out just as Key jumped up, drawing his weapon.

“You traitor!” Key slashed at the man.

The man parried and dodged, fresh for battle.

“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!” Key screamed. It was like a demon awoke in him.

Among the dead, Tiler had just opened his eyes. Taken for dead by the traitor and luckily so or he would have been the next dead after Lanona, he tried to back off even, watching Key fight with his enemy. Key’s strength already weak from carrying him across the battlefield all night.

However on pure rage, Key slashed and cut and swiped at the villain. He would expend all his strength to rid the world of him. Unfortunately his foe was full of strength. The attacker knocked Key’s sword away and stabbed Key hard in the shoulder.

Howling Key grabbed at the blade to jerk it out. Already weak, he couldn’t. Peering at it, Key’s mind muted and fuzzy, he saw that the sword was not one of his, but good and strong enough to do its damage.

The traitor then drew a gun, pointing it right at Key’s head.

Stiffening, though his anger dared him to still take on his foe with all he had left, Key waited for the shot.

“Oh, I’m not going to kill you,” the traitor said. He cocked the pistol. “I’m going to claim that award money. They’d pay high for the real Key, and I’m needing that gold to buy my way out of this war.”

“They won’t give it to you,” Key said, panting heavily as he still clenched the sword in his shoulder. “They’ll kill you and take me alive. That’s how it’s going to happen.”

“Liar!” The traitor snapped back, firing over Key’s ear. He cocked the pistol for his second shot. “You just don’t want me to bring you in.”

“You’d betray every last human being for a bit of gold?” Key panted out. He felt for his own pistol, though he tried not to move fast. But then he realized that he had not reloaded if after his encounter with the two Sky Children. He was entirely unarmed.

“Just you,” the man said, grinning with a lustful look of avarice.

Key snorted, though tears ran from his