Tanys Gladiatrix (The Chronicles of Tanys Book 2) (4 page)

"Tanys," Haru hissed through his teeth, "they'll kill me."

"Just keep your mouth shut," she whispered, "I'll think of something. Jorva, be ready."

The tattooed dwarf simply shrugged his massive shoulders. It was hard to imagine him ever not being ready for a fight.

The raiders watched as the travelers approached. The bandits' expression ranged from bewildered to amused. Tanys smiled, removing her head wrap to wipe her brow. "We're not late for the party are we?" she called out.

The raiders laughed. One of them, a tall, handsome lad with dark eyes and a stubbly beard, stepped forward. "As a matter of fact," he said, "you're just in time for the entertainment."

Tanys advanced on him with a leisurely stroll. Several of the raiders drew back, pulling their swords from their belts, but their leader stood his ground as Tanys approached. Reaching out, she took the wine cup from his hand and drained it in one swallow before handing it back to him. She sighed deeply, running her fingers through her hair. "Got any more of that?" she asked.

"Oh we've got plenty," the bandit chuckled, "but it isn't free." His eyes fell to where the yellow fabric of Tanys' robe clung to her breasts.

"We'll pay as much as you paid for it," she countered, her eyes flashing dangerously.

"Then you'll pay in blood, girl!" a nearby bandit brandished his sword.

Tanys shot him a disgusted look. "It's too hot for that."

"I was thinking of something else," the dark-eyed leader smiled, tossing the empty cup aside.

"Its too hot for that right now too!" Tanys laughed, "What do you say we find some shade and have a few drinks like civilized people?"

"But we aren't civilized people," the bandit said, "so I think we should just stick a knife in your master over there, and then you girls can thank us for... liberating you."

Haru shifted uneasily in his saddle as Tanys looked to him. "Oh, that," she said, "He's not my master. He's just some dim-witted goat boy I drag around with me when I have business in Cashuun. Keeps the locals happy to think he's in charge. He also dances quite well if you throw him a few coins."

The bandit grinned broadly, his eyes studying her. Finally he shook his head. "Nice try," he said, "I like your spunk, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to put you across my knee for lying to me."

Tansy sighed. "You really want to fight don't you?"

The bandit shrugged. "We take what we want. You might as well accept it. If you please me, you may even live to enjoy it."

"Then I challenge you!" Tanys said, stepping back as she flung open her robe to reveal the twin daggers strapped to her waist.

The raiders stared silently for a long moment. At last their leader guffawed loudly, and the others laughed as well. "You challenge me?" he laughed, "What do you think I am, the Bandit King?"

"Face me alone, or be called a coward!" Tanys hissed.

The bandit laughed merrily, turning to his men, "This girl called me a coward!" The raiders jeered in response. "I think she's looking for a fair fight! What about it, boys? We just love fair fights, don't we?" The raiders' mocking laughter was his answer.

Tanys glared at him as he turned to face her again. "Well, girl," he said, "it seems that..."

Tanys cut him off with a brutal kick to the balls.

Jorva leapt onto the nearest bandit, tearing out the man's throat with his jagged teeth. The screams of others soon followed. Tanys moved like a sand devil between the drunken raiders. Her black blades laid bare ribs and opened arteries like spigots. Dark blood splashed on the sand and men fell, groaning as they died.

A scimitar lanced through the skin of Tanys' shoulder. She cried out, losing the grip on one of her knives. The blade's twin avenged its fallen sister, dipping deep into the chest of the raider who had wounded Tanys. Another cut dragged across the back of her thigh, leaving a long, red gash in Tanys' robe. She staggered as her knee gave way beneath her, coming down hard in the sand.

Tanys grunted, rolling away, just as an enemy sword landed, kicking up a spray of sand, finding no flesh to cut. She kicked out with her uninjured leg as the man closed on her, landing a solid blow that double him over. Her knife was waiting to catch him as he fell, and hot blood sprayed across Tanys' face and chest.

Tanys came to her feet with her back against an overturned wagon. Casting aside her ruined robe, she stood, clad only in a short skirt and the stained linen band covering her breasts. Facing her stood four raiders, their swords poised to end her life. She reversed her grip on the dagger, turning it backward as she shifted her stance to protect her injured leg. Sensing an opportunity, a raider lunged. The tip of his sword drove deep into the splintering wood of the wagon as Tanys sidestepped his charge. The man tumbled dead at her feet as Tanys whicked his lifeblood from her blade.

The three bandits glanced nervously at one another then nodded. This time they came as one, three arcing blades descended upon Tanys simultaneously. She ducked, turning one cut with her blade, the second ripped painfully, but harmlessly through her long black hair. The third sword’s tip raked across her shoulder blades, and she stumbled, arching her back against the fiery pain of the cut. The linen strip covering her breasts fluttered loose, its severed ends wet with her blood. She fell against the wagon's skyward wheel. It spun, sparing her a deathblow as a scimitar fell on the spinning rim of the wheel where she had been a moment before. She slammed against the base of the wagon, one arm draped over the wagon wheel. She gasped, breathless, sweat dripping from her trembling naked breasts.

One of the raiders grinned evilly as he shifted his sword to his off hand. He pulled a slim dagger from his belt and lifted it to the level of his eyes. With a lightning flick of his wrist, he hurled the dagger directly at Tanys' heart. She leapt aside with a mighty shout of rage, and the dagger stuck, quivering in the wood of the wagon's frame. Tanys lay on her back in the sand, looking down at her chest where the flying dagger had traced a crimson track across the top of her breast. She glared up at the cowardly bandit, spitting a curse at him as she writhed, feeling the hot sand in her open wounds. The man licked his dry lips, drawing out another throwing knife.

"Where should I put this one?" he asked. His friends laughed as he drew back his arm to throw again.

Jorva's hand came up between his legs even as the dwarf grabbed him by the collar from behind, lifting him from his feet. The man howled as the dwarf's fingers squeezed, his genitals no more than a pair of ripened grapes in Jorva's crushing grip. The dwarf carried him over backwards, driving him headfirst into the ground. The two remaining bandits stared in dumbstruck horror at the twitching corpse of their companion, buried neck deep in the bloody sand. They looked at Jorva and then at one another and turned to run.

Jorva caught one of them about five yards away, and Tanys' thrown dagger dropped the other. Jorva looked up at Tanys with a red-lipped, exhausted smile as she dragged herself to her feet. Jorva glanced over at the bandit leader, hunched on his knees and wiping vomit from his lips. Tanys knew how Jorva felt about loose ends.

"What should we do with this one?" Tanys asked, flinching as Danella tended her wounds. The bandit leader looked up at them with fear in his eyes.

"Kill him and be done with it," Haru'Luk said from atop his placid ox.

Danella giggled at some private thought as she dabbed ointment into Tanys' cuts. "He's too pretty to waste. I think we should show him the same mercy he was gonna show us."

The bandit looked up with hopeful confusion evident on his face.

"Fair enough!" Tanys said, "Jorva, tie him up. Danella and I have some business with our friend here."

"If he pleases us," she added, "he may even live to enjoy it."

****

"Did you find any loot?" Tanys asked, tying her hair back as the night wind began to blow through the ruins of the caravan. The hot breeze caressed her body, drying the glistening sheen of sweat from her naked skin.

"Not much," Haru'Luk said. He didn't bother to look up from rummaging through a broken wooden crate. "While you girls were... amusing yourselves, Jorva and I have been searching for anything of value. The raiders didn't leave much."

"I thought these were the raiders?" Tanys kicked at one of the dead men with her sandaled foot.

Haru made a rude noise. "These were just the ones too stupid to leave the wine behind. All the gold and slaves were carried off by the main force. Nothing left worth... hang on, what's this?" The satyr stooped lower, rapping his knuckles on the bottom of the box. A hollow sound hinted at something hidden.

Jorva wandered up, chewing at a bit of leathery meat he had scavenged. He pulled the wet ragged end from his mouth and offered it to Tanys. "No, thank you," she answered, and he shrugged, continuing to chew. As he watched, Haru pried the false bottom from the broken box.

Haru pulled a number of clay tablets from the box, shuffling through them like playing cards as he read the glyphs stamped into their surfaces. A look of wild exuberance spread over his hairy face. "Hah, hah!"

"What is it?" Tanys asked, stripping a length of purple silk from a dead raider's gear to fashion a new head wrap for herself.

"Tanys, my dear girl," Haru said, "We've just moved up in the world!"

"Is it money?" she asked.

"Better than that!"

"Knowing you, it must be a stack of brothel tokens then," she said.

Haru laughed. "No," he said, "but, we're not going to be sleeping in any flower mill when we get to the Holy City. We are now... and by that I mean I am now... the owner of a luxurious villa on Fountain Street."

"Ooh!" Danella called out as she walked, a little dizzily, toward them. Apparently she had finally finished with the captured raider. Tanys wondered for a moment if the man had survived the girl's rather rapacious appetites. Then she caught a glimpse of the bandit limping away toward the dunes, clutching a headscarf over his privates, bare-naked but for his boots. She thought of sending Jorva after him, but the handsome lad had earned his freedom many times over in the past hours.

"It seems that Fortune has turned her dripping teat to our hungry lips once again!" Haru rejoiced.

"Fountain Street!" Danella said, "You can't even get in there without a written invitation."

"Now we'll be the ones writing the invitations!" Haru said, "Come along, oh ye most favored of slaves! Let us ride to our sweet reward!"

Ride indeed. Tanys looked toward the tethered horses. To hell with walking.

A week in the bathing pools of Fountain Street had washed the last of the sand from Tanys' hair. Even the slaves here enjoyed their own private bathhouse attended by slaves of their own who catered to every need or whim of those lucky enough to become the property of a Fountain Street satyr. Tanys had wondered at first how Haru was going to pay for their new, lavish lifestyle, but the faun was nothing if not clever.

What Danella had said about the written invitations was true. Only a resident, or someone invited by a resident, of Fountain Street could visit its many bathhouses where the satyrs conducted the most lucrative and shadiest of business. Writing such invitations had proven a source of no small income to the crafty young satyr, and many enterprising outsiders had been all too willing to trade coin for opportunity. Haru even enjoyed the scandal that his new game had caused among the noble houses that had long maintained a class-based chokehold on commerce in the old city. Haru'Luk was swiftly becoming a very wealthy, and very unpopular, new addition to the upper ranks of satyr society.

Tanys and Danella strode, naked and proud, along the shadowed walkway between to sun-drenched bathing pools. The wet marble felt deliciously cool beneath their bare feet. Slave girls looked up at them from the pools and wrinkled their noses, whispering. The two girls arrived at the steaming, circular pool at the end of the row, pausing at the edge. Tanys locked eyes with a trio of blonde girls already in the pool. Their conversation abruptly ceased. The silent contest lasted only a moment before the blonde girls' lips curled in matching sneers, and they rose, dripping from the pool. Their feet flapped wetly on the stone as they moved away to find another bath.

Tanys and Danella smiled at each other as they eased into the hot bath. Tanys preferred to be left alone anyway, and, for whatever the other slaves thought they were denying her by treating her as an outsider, she felt no sense of loss.

"Don't worry, Tanys," Danella said, "I won't leave you!"

"I don't know," Tanys said, "That skinny one looked like she wanted you to follow her."

Danella cast a mocking glance after the retreating blondes. "That bony little thing!" she laughed, "You know I like a little meat on 'em."

Tanys felt Danella's toes, wriggling up the inside of her thigh under the surface of the steaming water and swatted them away with a splash and a curse. Danella looked up at her with a bitten-lipped grin as she sank low in the water, her dark breasts just breaking the surface. Stretching out her foot again, she slipped it behind Tanys' knee and gently stroked the taught skin along the back of the warrior girl's thigh. Tanys rolled her eyes and settled in to enjoy the bath. Letting the healer play a little seemed to make her happy, and, Tanys admitted, she enjoyed the girl's soft touch. She leaned back and closed her eyes, letting the heat fill her body.