Outlaw. Part 20

Here was my savior, whom I must kill.

Wilam sprinted toward me, spear in hand, like a G.o.d bent upon rescue. His muscles were strung tightly, his jaw was taut, his eyes blazed. They'd found the guards dead and my hut empty, and in a fury Wilam had gathered his warriors and struck out to save me.

My memory of that morning is still thin. I remember Wilam's hot, heavy breath as he pulled me close. I remember his arms, already wet with sweat, holding me. I remember a sea of bodies swarming around us. I remember Wilam's voice demanding to know if I was safe.

I'd had no idea how I would react when I saw him, but I only nodded and clung to his neck and wept.

They had already come to a conclusion.

"He's taken the son!" a warrior cried. "Kirutu has taken Wilam's son!"

Wilam stood and silenced the outcry with a raised hand. I had never seen a look of such rage as the one that settled in his eyes as they swept down my body. His chest rose and fell like a bellows fueling a hot fire.

"Tell me he did not succeed."

Every fiber in my body screamed for me to tell him why Kirutu had taken me, knowing the knowledge would send him and his warriors into the Warik village to raze it to the ground. He would be too filled with rage to consider sparing the innocent, much less Kirutu.

Or he would follow the law and do as Kirutu had said he would do. I could not sentence my son to death.

Tears flooded my eyes. "Please, Wilam, please take me home. I'm safe, just take me home."

I saw the darkness in his eyes and I wondered what power lay behind them.

"Tell me!" he said.

"He did not," I said. "I still bear your child."

"He tried."

"Yes. But my muscles are strong."

"You bled?"

"No. Only a little."

Telling him any less would make him wonder why Kirutu had let me go before seeing blood.

"How can you be sure?"

"I did not lose our son!" I cried, filled with a deep denial that shook me. "I know!"

Wilam stared, unmoving, considering the meaning of my words, undoubtedly judging their truth.

I put my hand on his neck and brushed his cheek with my thumb. "They took me in the night and beat me, but I did not lose our son. He means to draw your rage. I covered myself in mud to hide my shame for having disgraced you by being taken so easily. Forgive me, my husband. I beg you..."

For several long seconds he stood in silence. Then his spear slipped from his fingers and he sank to his knees. Tears filled his eyes and his mouth opened in a cry. The silence was quickly swallowed by a terrifying wail as he bowed his head to the ground and dug at the earth with his fingers. I had been too preoccupied with my own anguish to consider the full extent of his own.

Kirutu had taken his most prized possession and sent it back bruised. My value to him might be judged only by what I could produce for him, but it was value, and having it I couldn't dismiss it.

Wilam stood, reached for me, took my face in both hands, and buried his head in my neck.

"Forgive me, my wife, forgive me, my wife," he cried.

His words cut to my heart.

"I have let that beast hurt you. Forgive me, forgive me..."

Seeing such a powerful man so undone by his failure to save me filled me with a new and dreadful pain. I knew that I couldn't kill him easily if at all.

The circle of warriors had taken to one knee, watching their fearless leader express the appropriate outrage. They knew already-this would mean war.

With a sudden grunt Wilam seized his spear, leaped to his feet, and swung the spear at the tree to our right, shattering its fire-hardened shaft. He sprang to the nearest warrior, seized his bow, and beat the tree in a rage.

Surrounded by his splintered weapons, he faced his warriors, eyes fiery. Silence gripped the clearing.

When Wilam spoke, his voice was low and certain. "For this, Kirutu will give his one life," he said. "His spirit is full of darkness. We will send his body to join it."

Immediately a familiar chant spread through the warriors as their dark, steely gazes turned down the valley toward the Warik. "Whoa, whoa, whoa..."

It wasn't a show of bravado, only simple resolution to defend honor without consideration for danger or consequence. I could only imagine the kind of bloodshed a battle with so many warriors would bring.

I couldn't let that happen. My son was down there.

"No!" I cried.

Wilam turned to me, glaring. "No man may do this and survive. Any threat against my seed is a threat against my rule!"

"My husband, I beg..."

"Silence!" he thundered. The vitriol in his tone set me back. A new kind of resolve had steeled his mind. In another context I might have been honored.

Knowing what I knew, I felt only fear.

He turned to his army. "We meet them in the Tegalo valley in three days' time. They wear the black grease but we are stronger and our numbers are greater." He paused, stalking before me, fists clenched, muscles strung like cords.

"Last night Isaka pa.s.sed from this life. I, the rightful ruler of all Tulim, will burn his body when we have burned Kirutu's. Send word. In three days' time we take what is ours."

Then he swept his arms under my knees and my back and lifted me as if I were but a leaf. The sea of warriors parted for him as he struck out for the village.

Chapter Nineteen.

MELINO AND her servants swarmed around me the moment we entered the upper courts. She tended to me like a mother hen, snapping orders for hot water and herbs to speed my healing, muttering her curses at the Warik and the spineless purum Kirutu, who would feel the wrath of Wilam as no living being had yet felt it.

She kept asking me if I was OK, was I sure that I was OK, and I could only rea.s.sure her that I was, though my words were undermined by my own conflict.

I could not bring myself to speak of what had happened in Kirutu's hut. I dared not speak a word of Stephen. The thin roll of poison lay against my skull, a haunting reminder that I'd imagined none of what I had seen or felt.

My son was alive. I had seen his face, had felt his arms around my neck, had heard his cry for me. My need to save him coaxed desperation from my heart like a winepress.

A woman who has been violated only wants to withdraw to a safe place in hope of recovering her dignity. But memory only withdraws with her, smothering her with every detail.

The true savagery of Kirutu's violation had nothing to do with my body.

When Melino had finished cleaning me, she demanded one last a.s.surance from me that I was resting comfortably, then hurried the servants from my hut with the strictest orders that I be left alone to sleep.

The moment she was gone, I ripped the poisonous leaves from my hair and shoved them behind the thatched wall. Then I lay down, curled up into a ball, and cried. Exhaustion pushed me into a deep sleep full of horrible nightmares.

It was late afternoon when I awoke in a haze to find Melino sitting on the floor beside my mat. Only when sharp pain flared through my belly as I tried to stand did I recall the events of the previous night. I gasped as much from the memories that flooded me as from pain.

"No, you must sit," Melino demanded. "You must not move quickly if this wound is to heal. And it must."

I leaned back against a bundle of sago leaves. Her eyes searched mine and then fell to my abdomen. "You are sure the child is still with you?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm sure."

"Wilam questions, but I've a.s.sured him. What do men know of these things? A woman knows. And if the child doesn't grow, we will know."

"No," I said. "The child will grow."

"Yes. Of course it will." She offered an empathetic smile, then spat to one side and mumbled a curse.

"That beast will pay with blood. To kill the child of any prince is punishable by death."

Any child? I had to verify Kirutu's representation of their law.

I saw the opening and asked my question.

"Have any of the prince's wives given birth to children from other men?"

"This is impossible," she said. "No woman would be so foolish. The child would have to die."

I hadn't really expected any other answer.

"A prince would choose only a pure vessel, not a woman who has any living children," she continued.

I recalled her questions of me before Kirutu's wedding ceremony. She'd asked if my son was dead. The question was a part of her vetting.

"No, of course not," I said.

Melino poked the embers with a stick.

"I've never seen Wilam so distraught," she said. "He's thrown everyone but his three ranking warriors out of the Muhanim. He refuses to speak to even me." She paused. "I fear the valley will be filled with the blood of all the Warik. They underestimate the full wrath of my husband."

And this was the man I was to kill. My great defender, who would rend the heavens to save me and the child he had placed within me.

For a moment any thought of harming him fell from my mind. I wanted my warrior to rip the enemy limb from limb for what he had done to his cherished bride! I wanted him to descend on the Warik with a roar and sever Kirutu's head from his body with a single stroke. I wanted him to save my son and defend my honor.

But I knew that none of this was possible. I wasn't his cherished bride any longer-he just didn't know it yet. And he couldn't save my son-Stephen was a stain upon his honor. He just didn't know that either. Not yet.

Mistaking my anguish for self-pity, Melino placed her hand on my knee and offered me a faint smile. "You will heal and give Wilam a beautiful son, Yuli. You must not worry."

"How can you know that Wilam will defeat Kirutu?"

She studied me for a moment. "No one can know all things. But my husband would level these mountains to save his people. If Kirutu thought he could defeat Wilam, he would have tried many times. Many will die, but Wilam cannot be killed so easily."

I lay on the mat for hours after Melino's departure, drowning in a sea of misery. I tried to think of a way out for my son, but I couldn't. And as day gave way to dusk, my despair set its hooks into my mind, like a vicious cancer.

Wilam did not visit me. No, he would not, Melino said. His mind was on war. Lela did not visit me. No, she could not, Melino said. I was to remain sequestered with the lords.

I must heal. I must keep pure. I must not endanger myself in any way.

But how could I heal Stephen's broken heart?

How could I keep pure what was torn?

How could I remove myself from danger when I was already dead?

That night I could not eat. I could barely sleep, and then only when exhaustion drew me under.

The next day the village filled with the sounds of warriors running, eerily crying out the call to war. Where the sound of children's laughter and soft songs had once filtered through the jungle, I could hear only death's haunting voice.

It wasn't merely my own disposition, though I knew I was seeing through a dark gla.s.s. Fear had settled in the valley, so thick and heavy that no sound of joy could penetrate it.

And I alone held the truth secret in my heart, where none of them could know.

I was to blame. I was the stain. I was the ruined heap huddled in my hut, a fruitless bride who held no true value. A failed mother who'd delivered her own innocent children into the arms of a fiend.

There in that hut I cursed G.o.d, because any promise I had once clung to had proven false in this valley of death.

Three days, Kirutu had said. I had three days to kill Wilam.

Two of those pa.s.sed, and as each hour crawled by, my heart slipped deeper into the abyss. I tried to smile when they brought me my food, and at times I think I may have, but their minds were on war and my deep melancholy was understandable, so they paid me little attention. I was only recovering from a terrible brutalizing.

The only way to save Stephen was to kill the man who'd saved me. I tried to tell myself that he hadn't saved me, only the person that he thought me to be: a pure vessel who carried his child. I was neither.

But my reasoning offered me no desire to kill him. I could not bring myself to murder another human being.

Wilam was, in fact, my only hope. He was the one who could kill Kirutu before my son was discovered. He was the one who might then offer me mercy and allow my son to live. He was the one who might yet find a love for me that extended beyond the laws that governed their beliefs.

I clung to that terrible hope alone, knowing deep in my soul that it was insanity. Wilam would not step beyond the beliefs and laws that had guided his understanding of all that was right, any more than I could rise up and walk on water.