Seeing the camp confirmed his worst guess.
He knew the clans as stateless riders without settlements, fringing the hills. They were ruled by women and lived off wild meats, fish from the streams, sweet roots, and for the rest, they raided the villages.
These men were not that. This was an entirely masculine force, who had been riding together for some time, and knew how to use their weapons.
These were the men who had destroyed Tarasis—the men that he and Laurent had been seeking, but who had found them, instead.
They needed to get away, now. Out here, Laurent’s death would have a believability that might never be achieved again. And Damen was sickly aware of all the reasons why they might have been brought back to camp beforehand—but there was no form of fireside sport that didn’t end with them both dead.
He looked instinctively for a pale head. And found it to his left: Laurent was dragged forward, by the same man who had ordered him bound, and he hit the ground as Damen had done, shoulder-first.
Damen watched Laurent push himself up into a sitting position, and from there—with the slightly altered balance of a man whose hands are lashed behind his back—to his knees. He received a sideways blue-eyed glance at the halfway point, and saw everything he believed reflected in that hard single look.
‘This time, don’t get up,’ was all Laurent said.
Laurent rose to his feet, calling out something to the leader of the clansmen.
It was a mad, reckless gambit, but there was no time. Akielos was moving troops along the border. The Regent’s messenger was riding southward to Ravenel. They were now almost two days ride from these events, at the mercy of these clansmen, while the workings of the border spun further out of control.
The clan leader didn’t want Laurent on his feet, and strode forward, snapping an order.
Laurent didn’t comply. Laurent answered him back in Vaskian, but—for once in his life—Laurent got only two words out before the man simply did what most people wanted to do when speaking with Laurent: he hit him.
It was the sort of blow that had sent Aimeric sprawling against a wall and then to the floor. Laurent staggered back a step, paused, then returned his glittering gaze to the man and said something deliberately and liltingly clear in impenetrable Vaskian dialect that caused several of the onlookers to double over with laughter, clutching each other’s shoulders, while the man who had hit Laurent rounded on them, and started shouting.
It almost worked. The other men stopped laughing. They started shouting back. Attention shifted. Bows lowered.
Not all the bows: Damen had no doubt that, given a day or two, Laurent could have these men at each other’s throats. But they didn’t have a day or two.
Damen felt the moment when the tension threatened to burst into violence, felt that it did not have quite enough energy to push it over.
They didn’t have time for missed opportunities. Damen’s questing gaze found Laurent’s. If this was to be their only chance, they were going to have to make the attempt now, despite the unworkable odds, but Laurent, judging the odds and returning a different conclusion, minutely shook his head.
Damen felt frustration twist in his stomach, but by that time it was already too late. The clan leader had stopped, and swung all his attention back to Laurent, who stood alone and vulnerable, his pale hair marking him out despite the lack of light here in the dark space near the horses, away from the main gathering of the camp and its central fire.
It was not going to be a single blow this time. Damen knew that, from the way that the clan leader approached. Laurent was about to get the beating of his life.
A sharp order, and Laurent was restrained by two men, one at each shoulder, their arms interlocking around his arms, which remained tied behind his back. Laurent did not try to tear his shoulders from the grip of the men, or wrench himself from their hands. He just waited for what was coming, his body taut in a hard grip.
The clan leader stepped in close, too close to hit Laurent—close enough that he was breathing all over Laurent when he slid his hand slowly down over Laurent’s body.
Damen moved before he realised it, heard the sounds of impact and resistance, felt the burn in his veins. His faculties were obliterated by anger. He was not thinking about tactics. That man had laid hands on Laurent, and Damen was going to kill him.
When he came back to himself, more than one man was holding him down. His hands were still tied behind his back, but around him, there was chaos and physical disruption, and two of the men were dead. One had been driven onto the point of another’s blade. One had hit the ground and then had Damen’s foot applied to his throat.