THE KING BEYOND THE GATE by David A. Gemmell

She tried to stand, but the world spun and she fell to the snow. Tenaka made no move to help her. Glancing around for a place to camp, he spotted a likely site some thirty paces away to the left: a natural screen of trees blocking the wind, with overhanging boughs to halt any storm snow. He made his way to it, collecting branches as he went. Renya watched him walk away and struggled to rise, but felt sick and began to tremble violently. Her head throbbed, the pain a rhythmic pounding which sent waves of nausea through her. She tried to crawl.

‘I … don’t need you,’ she whispered.

Tenaka prepared the fire, blowing the tinder until tiny flames shivered above the snow. Then he added thicker twigs and finally branches. When the blaze was well set he returned to the girl, stooping to lift her unconscious body. He laid her by the fire, then climbed a nearby fir tree to hack away green boughs with his short sword. Gathering them he made a bed for her, lifted her on to it and then covered her with the blanket. He examined the wound – there was no fracture as far as he could tell, but an ugly bruise was forming around an egg-sized lump.

He stroked her face, admiring the softness of her skin and the sleekness of her neck.

‘I will not harm you, Renya,’ he said. ‘Of all the things that I am, of all the deeds I have done that shamed me, I have never harmed a woman. Nor a child. You are safe with me . . . Your secrets are safe with me.’

‘I know what it is like, you see. I too am between worlds – half-Nadir, half-Drenai, wholly nothing. For you it is worse. But I am here. Believe in me.’

He returned to the fire, wishing he could say those words when her eyes were open but knowing he would not. In all his life he had opened his heart to only one woman: Illae.

Beautiful Illae, the bride he had purchased in a Ventrian market. He smiled at the memory. Two thousand pieces of silver and he had taken her home only to have her refuse to share his bed.

‘Enough of this nonsense,’ he had stormed. ‘You are mine. Body and soul! I bought you!’

‘What you bought was a carcass,’ she retorted. ‘Touch me and I will kill myself. And you too.’

‘You will be disappointed if you try it in that order,’ he said.

‘Don’t mock me, barbarian!’

‘Very well. What would you have me do? Re-sell you to a Ventrian?’

‘Marry me.’

‘And then, I take it, you will love and adore me?’

‘No. But I will sleep with you and try to be good company.’

‘Now there is an offer that’s hard to refuse. A slave girl who offers her master less than he paid for, at a much greater price. Why should I do it?’

‘Why should you not?’

They had wed two weeks later and ten years of their life together had brought him joy. He knew she did not love him, but it didn’t matter. He did not need to be loved, he needed to love. She had seen that in him from the first, and played on it mercilessly. He never let her know that he understood the game, he merely relaxed and enjoyed it. The wise man, Kias, had tried to warn him.

‘You give too much of yourself to her, my friend. You fill her with your dreams and your hopes, and your soul. If she leaves or betrays you, what will you have left?’

‘Nothing,’ he had answered truthfully.

‘You are a foolish man, Tenaka. I hope she stays by you.’

‘She will.’

He had been so sure: But he had not bargained for death.

Tenaka shivered and drew his cloak about him as the wind picked up.

He would take the girl to Sousa and then head on for Drenan. It would not be hard to find Ceska, nor to kill him. No man is so well protected that he becomes safe. Not as long as the assassin is prepared to die. And Tenaka was more than prepared.