The Warrior by Judith E. French

Author:Judith E. French [French, Judith E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781477884638
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Published: 2005-11-30T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Ava glanced over her shoulder at the camp as she rode away on horseback with Targitaos and his followers. She wasn’t sorry to be seeing the last of the murdering Ish or ill-tempered Api, but every step taken her feel farther and farther from home and her family. Ish had been a hard man, but he had protected her. Targitaos might be as terrible as he looked. Even if she was the great-granddaughter of an Amazon princess, she couldn’t help feeling small, alone, and afraid.

There were about two dozen men in the group, all Scythians, but dressed in the slightly different style of clothing and boots that Targitaos wore. Most of the warriors had blue tattoos on their faces and hands and carried double-curved bows and longer arrows than Ish’s raiding party. The saddles on their horses had higher pommels and stirrups woven of willow. Ava counted six women and several children in the party, including Jun, the kind-faced woman who’d given her bread, and her little boy. None of the women carried weapons, other than short eating knives, and all were young.

Jun and her red-cheeked son were obviously of high status, because they were mounted on a fine dun horse with an elaborate saddle and blanket. The saddle was fashioned of elegant red leather, decorated with bells and red and green silk tassels. The dun’s bridle and harness bore tiny griffins and leopards fashioned of thin beaten gold.

Ava wondered if Jun was Targitaos’s wife, but couldn’t ask without revealing that she spoke the language. Her mother had told her that anything you knew that your enemy didn’t could be used against him. Ava thought she needed all the help she could get. And besides, her barnyard Scythian was poor. She would sound stupid if she tried to speak it.

Ava didn’t like the horse they’d put her on. The rawboned bay had a short, stubby tail, one walleye, and a mean disposition. His gait was hard, nothing like the sweet trot of her horse, Kai. She wished she had the black gelding now, but Kai was somewhere back in her mountains. Ish had captured Kai in the cave where she’d spent the night alone, but the horse had chewed through his tether the first night on the steppes and made good his escape.

One of Targitaos’s men had tied her wrists together in front of her. A lead line ran from the shaggy bay’s bridle to the neck of another horse ridden by a moonfaced girl with small eyes and red tattooed dots from the center of her bottom lip down her chin and throat. Ava guessed the woman was close to Shahi’s age and just as difficult. The tattooed girl never smiled at anyone but a warrior with a scarred mouth and finger bones knotted in his greasy hair, and she never glanced at Ava, even though they rode side by side for hours.

Clad in her own coat and attached mittens, Ava was warmer than she had been under Api’s wagon, but close to tears with worry.

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