Servant of the Gods Read online

  A squeal tore the air.

  Eres saw a man, a stranger, chase after one of the pigs. With the pig screeching and the man so intent on his task, he didn’t see her…

  In an instant, young as she was, she understood.

  Thieves. They were under attack by bandits intent on taking what little their poor village had.

  Reversing her shepherd’s crook, she barely paused but smacked it smartly and hard across the man’s neck at its weakest point, only slightly aware of the way he collapsed bonelessly behind her as she ran past.

  The piglet escaped as she darted between the huts.

  Other men were there.

  Margret lay still in the dirt, her brown eyes blank and unseeing…her skirt thrown up, her throat cut. There was so much blood. The air reeked of the dead, of death and dying.

  Cries and shouts rang out.

  A man reached for her almost as if from nowhere…

  Instinctively she thrust the end of her crook into his belly. His breath escaped with a whoosh even as she spun the other end around to bring the crook end up beneath his chin, snapping his head back.

  He fell, dead, although she didn’t know it.

  Eres saw her father across the square, blood gushing from his throat as he crumpled while within their cottage her mother screamed.

  Snatching up the fallen man’s sword, Eres shrieked her fury and grief and attacked…

  In the time that followed she would never be able to say or remember all that happened, only that she fought, not wildly but with a cold and unthinking wrath. Not thoughtlessly, either; it was just that there was no need for her to think. It was instinctive. She just knew. Understood. It was a blur of motion and intuition…

  As a rough sword came at her, she threw the borrowed one up to meet it, turned her sword and body in the same motion to dissipate the force and throw the thief off balance. As he staggered sideways, she put the sword through him.

  The other villagers came to help defend against the raiders, most armed with only rakes and hoes.

  In the end, though, Eres’s mother and father were dead and she was an orphan who hadn’t yet become a woman. She was all of eleven years. Too young yet to marry.

  Another mouth to feed for those who had little to spare.

  The Druid Priests and Priestesses consulted their oracles and took her in, raised her up among them.

  They fed her curiosity with knowledge of the mysteries, of wisdom, of language, even as they brought warriors to teach her to use the talents the Gods and Goddesses had given her. Her skills with sword and bow were honed as sharply as her mind, and so they sent her off too, as soon as she became a woman, finding a mercenary troop who would take her and let her use those abilities.

  The Captain of the band of mercenaries wasn’t a harsh man, else the Druids wouldn’t have put her in his charge, but he was a stern one and Eres’s native lightness of nature was sometimes a trial to him. And sometimes not. He was a tall man, broad in the chest, with a solid, plain, battered face and a wooly brown beard.

  Irisi/Eres remembered him with a smile.

  He’d had the right to use her as he wished but hadn’t. Instead, he’d educated her in strategy and tactics as his sergeants increased her knowledge of the use of sword and bow.

  His name was Childric and when he finally educated her in the ways of men and women, he did so with gentleness and kindness, awakening her body slowly so she would know pleasure before pain.

  It had been the night before her first battle and both of them had found solace and comfort in the act, if for different reasons. Only later would she understand the timing – so she would know pleasure first before she might learn the harsher lesson of rape and never learn to take pleasure in act again.

  The memory made her smile even as her body thrashed futilely, reflexively, within the confines of the stele.

  As the battle closed on them, at first she’d been afraid. The clamor had been terrifying. The fierce aspect of the other warriors had been daunting as well but there were those on each side of her she knew, that she’d drilled with, good friends who depended on her… Ehlbert and Grigg… Tall Aregunde, with her sword held in clenched hands.

  The shout had gone up, and then she’d been running with the others.

  Eres saw the warrior run toward her. His sword gleamed in the thin spring sunlight. Instinct and training took over…

  In a harsh and terrible way, it was glorious. As each moment of near dying passed, she had a tremendous sense of living fully in that moment. Her swords flashed. One opponent after another fell as she ducked, parried and spun. Without needing to look, to think, she was aware of Ehlbert and Grigg, of Aregunde nearby. She guarded their flank, held the line. She knew when Grigg fell and Aregunde was wounded, but then it was over…and to her astonishment night had fallen.

  She found she’d taken wounds she didn’t remember. A shuddering weakness went through her and she braced herself on her sword. Ehlbert and Aregunde took her to the Healers.

  Childric came while they sifted herbs into the wounds and stitched them closed. Her teeth were clenched tightly on a piece of leather, the taste thick in her mouth as her eyes burned from the pain. But she was alive. She’d survived.

  He shook his head, something strange in his eyes, and laid a hand on her shoulder as they patched the rest. And he’d sighed.

  Inside the stele, the struggles of her body faded as Irisi surrendered to her fate and took a long deep breath… Her lungs filled with the Waters of Life…fought it…tried to expel it and instead drew in more through her nose and mouth.

  Distanced from the struggles of her body, she remembered Childric’s look. She understood it now. Lessons she’d gained with the passage of time. Duty, responsibility…and love of a kind.

  They followed contract after contract eastward. Aregunde was wounded so badly in one battle they had to leave her behind as they crossed into the South, into new lands…sunnier, drier lands.

  Here the folk were different, darker-skinned and fierce. Some fought with curved swords. Those swords were sharp, harder than any she’d known, and less likely to break from a single powerful blow.

  After the battle, Eres sought out a sword maker there. Tales were told of this man, of his skill at sword-crafting. With no family and only herself to feed, her coin and spoils of war were hers to spend as she would. She’d kept her coin close, save when she gave them to the quartermaster before battle. If she died then, her coin would return to the mercenary band, as it should.

  She told the man what she wanted.

  He simply studied her, and then he smiled.

  It would take time, he said.

  His eyes spoke different. It would be a challenge.

  Eres smiled in return and nodded. She understood the challenge.

  When she returned she found not one but two blades awaiting her.

  One was a sword, plain and simple, but crafted by the best.

  When your life depended on your weapon, it was better to have the very best. She’d seen lesser swords shatter when lives depended on them. This one would not.

  The other…

  Smiling, Eres clasped it.

  It seemed to run counter to all other blades, running backward, not forward. The broad finger guard protected her fragile fingers while the back of the sword – the dull edge – had been thickened and flattened along the rim. A cushion of padded leather ran half the length. Exactly the length of her forearm. As a rudimentary shield it would block a blow; as a blade she could jab it backward into an opponent behind her; a forward stroke with her arm would cut a man’s throat at close quarters; while a backhand would open his throat or belly.

  It was a unique weapon, hers and hers alone. Even now, it waited outside the stele for her hand to draw it once again.

  She spun both swords in her hands to test their weight, balance and handling, and smiled.

  Childric led his band south by sea, to the lands of the deserts, to where the air was drier still and
the sand in some places rolled seemingly endlessly. He’d heard there was work to be had there in the South and plenty of it. He’d been right.

  Stark and seemingly barren, it was an oddly beautiful country. It had strange tall trees with thick scaly boles and branches that swayed high above them, creaking and rattling. The heat had been intense, like standing before a forge when the bellows were applied, a sere dry burst of air. Water, so abundant where they had come from, was a precious resource in these lands, save for the great central river that ran to the sea.

  Eres studied their language, fascinated by the cadences.

  Childric was no fool; he learned from those around them and drilled his mercenaries in the heat so they became accustomed to it.

  They would do battle against warriors who came from the south and the west, from a mighty kingdom there that sought to bring these lands beneath its dominance and sway.

  Many of these folk fought on foot, but some fought from chariots with spear and bow. They fought in measured ranks and not in a line. They were skilled, practiced, trained and drilled.

  The day of the battle came.

  It was like no other battle Eres had ever fought.

  As the realization that they were losing came to her, she vaguely remembered screaming her fury as her swords glittered in the sunlight. Throwing her other arm up to shield, she thrust to defend, a throat gushed blood… Another came. And another.

  Childric was at her left, his strong, broad face determined. It was clear by the look in his eyes that Eres’s berserker instincts were their only chance of winning free, but his expression was empty, their cause nearly hopeless… She remembered the moment he fell and she’d realized she was alone.

  She stood surrounded by the soldiers of the enemy, startled that they hadn’t killed her.

  All around her were the bodies of her opponents and her compatriots, those who’d fought beside and behind her, using her as their last shield against the onslaught.

  Only she had survived.

  The captain stood in his chariot, held up his hand to restrain his people. She looked up to meet his dark, kohl-rimmed eyes. She eyed the strong but well-formed features of his face, the high cheekbones, the slightly aquiline nose. In appearance, he was a handsome man, but not a cruel one. Like many of these folk, his skin was darker than hers, tawny, almost golden. His hair was as black and as glossy as a raven’s wing, falling to his shoulders in thick waves. He was bearded but more neatly than she was accustomed to seeing, his beard trimmed far more closely than the men of the north. A narrow band of it framed his full mouth, traced his square jaw, but he was clean-shaven between.

  Like his men and officers he wore only a simple kilt but with the gold pectoral of his rank around his throat. His eyes were a dark deep brown with just a hint of gold. He was tall, well-muscled, and broad-shouldered. And foreign.

  She looked at him, at all the others that surrounded her. Her heart sinking, she crouched slowly and put down her swords for the first time since she earned the right to carry them.

  Chapter Three

  That was the first time Khai saw her, the last of the mercenaries hired by the conquered city to fall before the might that was Egypt and he the commander of those forces beneath General Akhom.

  She’d been both beautiful and terrible to watch, neither implacable nor merciless, more a force of nature. As she’d fought her hair had swirled around her like liquid sunlight and her body was as fluid for she twisted and turned like a snake, like an eel. Graceful and elegant, she spun and whirled. It was as if she’d been born to the swords in her hands.

  Perhaps she had.

  Then there were her eyes…as clear and blue as the sky.

  Her eyes and golden hair were at least part of the reason his people saved her, that and her liquid grace, her skill with her swords. They were the reason Khai did. One shouldn’t kill such a beautiful thing.

  A part of him rebelled at the thought of putting her in chains, but in chains she must be if they were to take her back to Egypt, to Thebes and the King. She was plunder, an object of value to be sold in the slave markets. He couldn’t deny that, not when so many had died at her hands – not his own folk, who’d been wiser, but those of another of Akhom’s commanders.

  Still she had been magnificent to watch, fighting alone on the battlefield. Blood splattered, with her yellow hair streaming like a banner in the hot breeze, and wearing only a band around her breasts and another around her hips, sandals, her swords flashing in her hands.

  Then she’d put them down. Surrendered.

  Khai gestured, reluctantly.

  His men surrounded her.

  Eres didn’t protest the rough iron shackles they put on her, there was no point. They would simply punish her if she tried. Her heart sank, though, as they did it.

  She’d been on the other end of this more than once, had watched others take this first step into slavery, and pitied them. Somehow she’d never thought that one day this might be her fate, that someday she might be the one to wear the chains. It was what it was. It was the risk every mercenary soldier took – win and walk away, lose and die, or survive to live in chains.

  Deliberately, she lifted her chin. She wouldn’t be cowed before these. She wouldn’t show her fear.

  Watching her, Khai couldn’t help but admire her strength, her courage…and her pride.

  Never once did those shoulders slump, nor that proud golden head bow. There was no defiance in her, simply acceptance. She met her fate with the same courage and determination she’d demonstrated on the battlefield, along with the will to survive it well.

  If nothing else, though, Khai would spare her one thing. As a slave like any other, male or female, she would be made available for the use of any officer, any soldier, in whatever manner they wished to use her...unless Khai took her for himself.

  He rarely took advantage of the privileges of his rank, too aware he was a foreigner among folk not his own. Few native Egyptians fought outside of Egypt itself, for to die on foreign soil was to lose the afterlife. So men like him joined the army of Egypt to fight the wars that would bring the upper and lower halves of Egypt together.

  This time he did. He took her, but not for himself.

  For her.

  In the aftermath of the battle it was some time before he could retire and even then he’d nearly forgotten his order. Until they’d brought her to his tent, prepared as any slave would be to service the commander, as servant, body slave, or simply a receptacle for his desires.

  They’d washed her, dressed her in a simple shift, bound her wrists behind her and left her in his tent.

  It was clear the slave-master wasn’t happy about it although he said nothing. It was obvious from his expression that he’d wanted the female warrior to himself first. As with all his kind there was a necessary cruelty to the man’s nature that was essential for him to do his job well. That job was to break the spirit, to resign his charges to their fate. With this girl, Sebi had clearly anticipated enjoying his duty, especially knowing her skills in fighting. It would have pleased him to have her bound and helpless before him.

  With an effort, Khai restrained the urge to cuff the man and simply dismissed him instead.

  It was only then that her sheer beauty struck him, when she wasn’t sweat-drenched and covered in sand and blood.

  Her face was truly lovely, exotic in its fairness, in the pale gold of her skin. Her nose was a little crooked from some ill-timed blow, but it didn’t detract from her attractiveness, not to him. A bruise colored one cheekbone, her lip had been split, and she bore assorted other marks and wounds from battle. Even so, she was intriguing. Her eyebrows arched perfectly and naturally over those remarkable eyes and she had a finely shaped, firm and tempting mouth. Her body, too, was finely formed, young, well-muscled and strong beneath the thin, coarse shift, full in the breast and round in the hips.

  Then there was that hair, streaming over her shoulders like rippling sunlight, brilliant in the lig
ht of the torches.

  His body reacted predictably to an attractive female as he examined her.

  The slave eyed him, her expression wary…and Khai was suddenly certain that if he were to take her she would give him nothing. He would use her body only, to scant satisfaction, save of his most primitive urges. There would be nothing of her in it. He found he had little taste for that. He wanted fire.

  He circled her.

  Keeping still, Eres watched him, moving only her eyes, waiting to see what he would do.

  If it was her body he was after, well…she’d heard enough stories from the few men who’d taken advantage of slaves in the same manner. It was hard to justify rapine to the women who stood next to you in the line of battle, so few of Childric’s band had taken such advantage. She’d learned that unless one enjoyed being used so carelessly – and none did – it was best to give them little satisfaction. So she wouldn’t struggle or cry out. She had no desire to be a whore or to be sold as one. If she didn’t act as one, though, they might not treat her as one. That must start now, however attractive this man was.

  And he was dangerously attractive.

  It surprised her that he didn’t try to use her that way, simply studied her for a time and then went about his business.

  She listened to him talk to his lieutenants, his aides, even his body-servant, listened to the cadences and the rhythms as they spoke. He had a natural air of command about him, this man.

  At the end of the evening as the torches were quenched, she hunkered down in a corner out of the way, watching him in curiosity.

  Her breath caught as he prepared for bed, removing even the pleated cloth around his hips, stripping down to naught but tawny skin. Even before then she’d known he was a strong, well-built man. Now she knew just how well built he was. In that moment, she was tempted in a way she hadn’t been in the past.

  However, to her relief her fortitude wasn’t tested. He left her be.

  Instead she curled into a corner of the tent and slept. It had been a long day and she was weary.

  At daybreak they took her out to be herded along with the other slaves of the fallen city as they marched west and south, through the lands now conquered.