War (The Four Horsemen Book 2) Read online

  Like a bloody mess.

  I lift a shoulder. “Better,” I say begrudgingly. Very, very begrudgingly.

  His gaze sweeps over me. He gives a short nod. “Then we will pack up and ride out tomorrow—after your attackers face their judgement, of course.”

  With that ominous final line, he leaves.

  Chapter 21

  The next morning, War wakes me from my new tent.

  I know it’s him from the moment his warm, firm touch meets my skin. I still jolt at the sensation. It’s going to take a while to completely erase the attack from my memory.

  “Rise, Miriam,” he says, already retreating from my tent. “The day has come.”

  I frown, rubbing my eyes. “What day?”

  But then his words from yesterday rush back in.

  I’m going to have to face my attackers. That thought makes me both hot and cold at once.

  I sit up, running my hands through my hair. I take a deep breath, wishing for a cup of Turkish coffee. I’d drink it, sludge and all, if it could ready me for this day.

  Pulling on my boots, I step outside, squinting against the brutal glare of the sun. War is several meters ahead of me, and he’s walking like he knows I’ll follow. The bastard. I hate being predictable.

  The horseman leads me to the clearing at the center of camp, where most of the horde has already gathered. The crowd parts like the sea to let War and me through, closing seamlessly behind us.

  It’s only once we get past them that I get a clear view of the three men who stand bound and beaten, several armed phobos riders spread out behind them.

  The wind is nearly knocked out of me.

  My attackers.

  I can still feel their hands on me and hear the rip of fabric as they tore through my shirt. I was so helpless then.

  But now the tables have turned.

  My gaze moves from one bound man to the next. I recognize one of my attackers as the man from the first day, the one who called dibs on me. The others are strangers.

  Looking at their faces in broad daylight makes them far less frightening. Maybe it’s that they’re the ones who look terrified, or maybe it’s the fact that they can’t be much older than me. In a different world, they could’ve been the men I went to school with.

  But that’s not this world.

  A phobos rider breaks away from his comrades, coming forward to hand me a weapon. I take the sword he gives me, then stare dumbly at it.

  “What is this?” I ask War.

  His upper lip curls in distaste as he stares at the men. “Wedāw.”

  Justice.

  It takes several seconds for realization to dawn on me.

  “You want me to kill these men?” I ask the horseman.

  In response, War folds his arms, saying nothing. Whatever gentleness he showed me over the last few days, it’s gone. This is uncompromising War, whose will reigns absolute.

  I glance back at the men.

  They’ll try it again. If not on me, then on another woman. They probably already have before. They are an open threat, and they will continue to be as long as they live.

  But isn’t that what War believes about all of us? That we’re all evil and unchanging? It’s just not true. Even though we are all capable of wickedness, it doesn’t mean we’re doomed to it. We’re also capable of goodness.

  I stare down at the weapon in my hand, and take a deep breath.

  “I won’t kill them,” I say.

  Not now, and not like this.

  After a long and heavy pause, the horseman says, “Ovun obē tūpāremi ātremeṇevi teri, obevi pūṣeṇevi teri epevitri tirīmeṭi utsāhe teḷa eteri, obeṭi vuttive iṭuvennē næppe?”

  They invaded your tent, they sought to rape you and defile you, and you will not mete out justice?

  “This is revenge,” I say.

  He narrows his eyes. “Kē kahatē, peḷivænīki sehi vuttive eke sā sekānevi.”

  Right now, revenge and justice are one and the same.

  “I won’t kill them,” I repeat.

  I know I must seem like a hypocrite. I’ve killed before, and these are no innocent men. If we were out on the battlefield, I would easily fight them to the death. If they cornered me on a dark night in Jerusalem, I would’ve shot them dead then too. But seeing these men lined up, their wrists bound—this would be an execution.

  I am no executioner.

  War stares at me for a long time. Eventually he makes a sound low in his throat and gives a shake of his head, like I’m the damnedest thing.

  “Abi abē vuttive eṭu naterennē nek, keki evi abi saukuven genneki, aššatu.”

  If you will not take your justice, then I will take it for you, wife.

  The horseman prowls towards the men. Seeing him move I remember that this is who War is. And unlike humans, I’m not entirely sure the horseman can change. He certainly doesn’t want to.

  My attackers shrink back from him, but there’s nowhere for them to go. They’re hemmed in by the crowd and the phobos riders.

  As War approaches the three men, he withdraws a sword from its sheath at his hip. It’s not the massive sword he wears on his back. This one looks lighter and narrower.

  “Avā kegē epirisipu selevi menni.”

  You get my unclean blade, War says, his voice building on itself.

  “Gīvisevē pī abi egeurevevesṭi pæt qū eteri, etækin abejē kereṇi pe egeurevenīsvi senu æti.”

  In life you were dishonorable, and so your deaths too will be dishonorable.

  The guttural sounds of his words make him all the more terrifying.

  “Please,” one of the men begins to beg. “We didn’t mean it.”

  The one on the left is noticeably trembling.

  But it’s the man I recognize who lifts his chin defiantly, his eyes on me. He doesn’t look repentant, he looks angry. “Whatever that bitch told you, it’s a lie. She wanted it.”

  War closes in on the man, and he grabs his jaw. “She wanted it?” This time when he speaks, he doesn’t bother speaking in tongues. We all hear the words perfectly enunciated.

  The man glares daggers at the horseman, but he doesn’t respond.

  After a moment, War lets the man go, and begins to rotate away.

  In a flash of speed, the horsemen turns back on the man, and with one vicious stroke, he sinks his blade into the man’s stomach, impaling him with it.

  I jolt at the sudden violence.

  My former attacker lets out a choked cry, and his two co-conspirators shout in surprise.

  War releases his grip on the sword, letting the hilt jut out from the man’s abdomen.

  The man sways for a few moments, then falls to the ground, a growing patch of blood blooming from the wound.

  “Does that feel good?” War asks, again making himself understood. He looms over the man, the blade still sticking out of his victim. “I hope it does. I bet you wanted my sword shoved inside you just as much as Miriam wanted yours shoved in her.”

  Dear God.

  I’d forgotten about the horseman’s savagery.

  The man’s mouth moves, but all that comes out is a strangled moan.

  The warlord’s attention turns to the two remaining men. As soon as his ferocious gaze fixes on them, they both visibly wither.

  War grabs the hilt of his sword from the dying man’s abdomen, and jerks the blade out, the action making a wet, sloshing sound.

  The horseman steps up to the most frightened of the remaining two, and without ceremony, stabs him in the stomach. Almost mechanically, he withdraws his sword and moves to the next, repeating the action until all three of my attackers lay dying in a pool of their own blood.

  I gaze down at them in horror as they writhe and moan on the ground. The horseman mortally wounded them, but he didn’t instantly kill them, leaving them instead to suffer.

  War casts his violent eyes on the crowd. “Anyone who lays a dishonest finger on another woman will suffer the same fate.”


  He turns to me and gives me a nod.

  Revenge and justice are one and the same, he said.

  Perhaps this is the very reason the world is burning. After all, if this is War being just, then his God’s justice makes sense too.

  I don’t immediately return to my tent. Instead, I make the familiar journey back to my original quarters. Call it morbid curiosity or call it closure, but I want to see the place where I was attacked. I want to see if the earth is stained red with the blood that was spilled, or if the ground has already returned to normal.

  I don’t know why, but the urge presses on me.

  About ten meters from my tent I notice something is off. The tents in this area flap forlornly in the breeze. No one is around, and it’s silent. So silent.

  A chill runs over me, despite the heat of the day.

  I continue toward the original location of my own tent, acutely aware that the usual noise and bustle of this area is now gone.

  My old neighbors might just be lingering in the center of camp. There were still some people left …

  When I get to where my tent should be, all that’s left is an empty patch of earth and some faint bloodstains. As soon as I see those stains, the night once again comes back to me in all its vivid terror. The men’s hands on me, pinning me down, beating me.

  I take a deep breath, trying to unmake those memories. I don’t want to feel frail and afraid.

  I take a step back, and that unnerving silence swarms in again. I look around at all the empty tents, their flaps snapping in the wind. There are a few overturned baskets scattered about, but there’s no life, not even a whisper of it.

  When you cried, no one came. No one but me.

  War’s justice touched more than three men, I realize with a shiver. The people that once lived around me are now gone.

  I’m resting next to my broken down tent, whittling another arrow shaft when I hear commotion nearby.

  I glance up just in time to see phobos riders closing in on someone.

  “Let me through!”

  I knit my brows at the vaguely familiar voice.

  “No one passes by without War’s approval.”

  “His wife would approve!”

  I set my work aside and head over to the phobos riders, one who now has his hand on his weapon. Beyond the two men is Zara.

  As soon as I recognize her, I call out, “Let her through!”

  One of the men frowns at me and spits.

  Apparently he’s super fond of me. The other one, however, the one who brought me the sword at the execution this morning, gestures for Zara to pass by. His comrade immediately starts arguing with him, but he ignores the other man.

  My new friend slips by, two heaping plates of food in her hands.

  “I’ve been trying to see you for days,” she complains when she meets up with me. “And for days those assholes kept sending me away.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know.”

  I lead her back to the packed remains of my tent, aware of the many sets of eyes on us. Apparently the phobos riders don’t take kindly to just anyone entering their section of camp—even when their section of camp is getting packed up for traveling.

  “It’s fine,” she says. “I knew I’d get through eventually.”

  When we get to my things, she hands one of the plates to me. “I wanted to return your earlier kindness.”

  That … that hits me harder than it should.

  “Thank you,” I say, taking the plate from her, a lump in my throat.

  “How have you been doing?” she asks, her eyes moving over me. Most of my visible injuries have healed up; I don’t know if she can see what’s left of them.

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  Today, I feel like our roles have utterly reversed. Zara seems to be in good spirits, and I’m the remote one.

  “That night,” Zara says, “I heard so many screams. To think one of them was yours …” she shakes her head. “I thought they belonged to the other people, the ones who had killed …” she shakes her head.

  She listened to those screams and she thought it was some sort of perverse justice.

  Zara picks at her food. “I didn’t find out it was you until word got around that a woman had been harmed, one the horseman was fond of. I put two and two together … “Her eyes meet mine. “I’m sorry I didn’t come.”

  “It was your first night. I wouldn’t have.” Not to mention that she didn’t live anywhere close to my tent.

  We’re quiet for a few minutes, and I pick at the food Zara brought over.

  “What’s that?” she asks out of the blue, nodding to the carving knife and the piece of wood I was working on.

  I pick it up and inspect it. “The beginnings of an arrow.”

  “You’re making one?” I’m not sure if it’s judgment or awe in her voice. She takes the piece of wood from me and looks at it. “I never learned how to shoot a bow,” she admits. “I’m okay with short blades, but that skill doesn’t much help me here since I don’t actually own a blade.”

  “You don’t have a weapon?” I ask, shocked. But of course she doesn’t. Zara was stripped of her weapons when she arrived, and she won’t be offered another one until the next battle.

  If the same men who attacked me had chosen Zara’s tent instead, she would have been utterly defenseless.

  The thought sickens me.

  “Wait right here.” I get up and go into War’s tent, which is still standing. The horseman isn’t inside at the moment, which is probably for the best.

  Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

  I grab one of the sheathed daggers War has scattered about, then leave his tent, returning to Zara. Several nearby phobos riders track my every movement.

  “What’s that?” my friend asks when I extend the weapon to her.

  “Put it on.”

  “It’s not going to fit,” she says, unwinding the leather belt that’s wrapped around the sheath; it was clearly made to fit a much larger waist. She loops the belt around her, doing the best she can to make it fit.

  Zara stares down at it. “Is War going to kill me for this?” she asks, glancing warily at the phobos riders who watch the two of us. They’re undoubtedly going to report that I’ve lifted a dagger from the horseman’s collection.

  “I’ll talk to him. It’ll be fine.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “You’re going to talk to him?” She says skeptically. “And that’ll work?”

  “It has so far.”

  She huffs out a laugh. “What sort of talking will you two be doing? The horizontal kind?”

  I make a face even as I laugh a little. “No. The normal kind of talking.”

  She shakes her head. “Either you’re the world’s most convincing woman, Miriam, or these favors are going to eventually cost you.”

  You are my wife, you will surrender to me, and you will be mine in every sense of the word before I’ve destroyed the last of this world.

  Zara’s right. Nothing these days comes without a price, favors especially. And War has done me many favors.

  At some point, he’s going to make me pay.

  Chapter 22

  I’ve broken Rule Three.

  Avoid notice.

  To be fair, War seems to have always taken notice of me. It’s now the rest of camp who is very, very aware of who I am.

  I feel their stares as I mount Lady Godiva, a new horse that is way less interested in kicking me than Thunder was. The camp’s collective gaze makes my skin itch. It’s impossible to blend in, and I hate it.

  Just like the horseman promised, today the army packed up. Ashdod has been eradicated, as has all the satellite communities that surround it. There’s nothing left for War to kill, so it’s time for us to go.

  Like before, War and I ride at the head of the horde, putting enough distance between us that I can forget for a time that there’s a murderous army following in our wake.

  The horseman drives us so
uth along Highway 4. The land is too flat for me to see the ocean from here, but I swear I can smell it. It’s mere kilometers from the road. And by the conversations I overheard back at camp, we’ll be sticking close to the coastline over the next couple of days.

  I try to keep my thoughts preoccupied on the journey itself, but inevitably they swing back to my travel companion, just as they have ever since we left camp.

  For absolutely no logical reason whatsoever, today I’m unable to ignore him. Or maybe there is a reason; maybe War’s barbaric justice earlier today broke something in me.

  Whatever the reason, now I can’t help but notice the sharp cut of his jaw; his dark, almost black hair; and those curving lips. I take in his red leather armor and his powerful thighs.

  I’m having thigh fantasies. About my enemy.

  I’m a fucking moron.

  Naturally, of course, that doesn’t stop me from continuing to glance at War, and the longer I look, the more certain I am that I want to run my fingers over his strange, glowing markings and smear the kohl that lines his eyes. I want to taste those lips again.

  I want it all, and I’m not supposed to, which makes me want it all the more.

  “Why haven’t you been with any other women since we met?” The question just slips out, but as soon as it does, I want to die.

  People who are into each other ask these sorts of questions. I’m flagrantly making him believe that this matters to me. And it doesn’t, it really doesn’t. I’m just curious. I mean, doesn’t everyone want to know about a horseman’s sex life?

  No? Just me?

  Shit.

  War glances over. “Who told you I’d been with other women?”

  “People talk.”

  I remember when I first came to camp the women made it sound like War had a revolving door of women entering and exiting his tent.

  “Ah,” the horseman says. “Humans and their foibles.” There’s a long stretch of silence.

  “So?” I press. I’ve already embarrassed myself. I might as well see this question through. “Why haven’t you?”

  War fully turns to me, his brown eyes glittering in the sun. “I am committed to you, wife, and you alone.”