The Tyrant by Eric Flint and David Drake

She lifted her tear-blurred eyes and looked up at his blocky face. Smiling for the first time in hours.

“I’m not sure exactly how I feel about men in general, right at the moment. But I’m partial to fathers, that’s for sure. And you remind me a lot of my own.”

Jessep returned the smile with a little grimace. But it was a relaxed sort of wince. Even a bit of a serene one.

“Don’t know as I’ve got his spirit. Sure as anything don’t have his brains. But I’ll do my best, young la—Helga.”

She lowered her head and nestled it into his shoulder. “Tell me, Jessep. What do you think of vengeance?”

She felt his thick chest rise and fall, twice, while he considered his answer.

Then: “It’s like this, girl. A bit of vengeance is a fine thing. Useful, now and then. But I think of it like a honing stone. You just want a little, when you need it, to keep the blade sharp. And that’s it. Too much and . . . you’ll wear the blade away in no time.”

“I think that’s good advice,” she murmured. “And I think I’ll take it from now on.”

They said nothing further for perhaps ten minutes. Then Helga lifted her head again and gave Jessep’s chest a little push. “Enough. Your Ilset will be getting fidgety.”

Jessep chuckled. “She’s not the jealous type, girl. And even if she were, I wouldn’t have to lie anyway.”

” ‘Jealous’ be damned!” snorted Helga. “I know the two of you. I should, having to listen to it every night.”

Jessep flushed. Helga chuckled again. “So be off. Another ten minutes and she’ll be so horny you might not survive the night. Old and decrepit as you are.”

The speed with which Yunkers scurried out of her partition gave the lie to that last jibe. Not that any was needed.

Helga lay down and tried to find sleep. It wouldn’t come at first, though. Jessep’s advice was still rolling through her mind. Her brain seemed fixed on the image of a blade being sharpened to nothingness on a stone of hatred. After a time, the image of a blade shifted and she found herself remembering the face of Adrian’s brother Esmond. A handsome face, it was. Very handsome, in fact—much more so than Adrian’s, truth to tell. Even leaving aside Esmond’s demigod physique, which Helga had seen more than once clad only in a loincloth, during the time she had spent as Adrian Gellert’s “captured concubine.”

But there was no attraction in the memory. There had always been something wrong about Esmond. Always, whenever he looked at her, something evil and hollow in the stare. As if he saw nothing in the woman her brother had taken for his own than just another hated Vanbert.

That’s what Jessep’s talking about, she realized. A splendid blade, worn down by endless honing. Such a waste.

But she didn’t spend much time on the matter. By now, one thought following another, her mind was focused on the brother himself. Adrian Gellert, in whose arms she had spent many a night lying naked—and enjoying every minute of it.

New images came to her, then, of naked male body parts and a male face seen in focus—all of it and not just a leer. But there was no horror in these images. She thought she was done with that horror forever.

She hoped so. The problem she faced now was a problem she hoped she would always face, whenever she had trouble falling asleep. For which there was a simple and practical solution, even if she had found masturbation a poor substitute for the real thing, since she met Adrian Gellert.

Dammit, beloved enemy, if you’re not there when I arrive—

I’ll kill you. I swear I will.

* * *

She finally managed to get to sleep then, wafted away on new thoughts of vengeance. The methods by which she planned her possible murder of Adrian Gellert varied quite a bit, in their precise details. But all of them involved death from exhaustion.

Chapter 13

Demansk’s “tomorrow” had actually turned into four days before he was ready to strike against Governor Willech. He was learning that, in political as well as military maneuvers, logistics was always the lynchpin. It was easy to plan what amounted to a provincial coup d’etat, but actually implementing the deed required time to move the needed bodies around.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *