The rains began to fall just after dawn, waking them and soaking their clothes. It wasn’t cold—the rain or the air—and they stood out under the sodden sky and let the torrents wash them, cleaning their skin and rinsing their clothes. The horses had been gathered while they slept, and Kjell even retrieved his soap, using the opportunity to get as clean as modesty would allow. He shrugged off his shirt and soaped his chest, reveling in the natural shower and the woman who held her tattered dress around her shoulders and let the rain comb her hair. Laden and dripping, it reached the tops of her thighs, covering the scars on her back and sparing him the pangs of doubt that rose in him when he thought about them.
His men acted like children, scampering in the downpour with bare feet and wrestling in the long grass, and when the rain ceased as suddenly as it had begun, they built a makeshift tent to allow Sasha the privacy to peel off her ruined dress and don a new one. Traveling with a group of men in a landscape that afforded minimal natural cover was its own hardship, but they’d all managed, and she’d never complained. Kjell and his men did their best to get dry themselves, eating a breakfast of dried meat and hard bread, while they waited for the sun to dry the prairie so they could continue on their way.
Isak, the fire starter, approached him when he was checking Lucian’s hooves for rocks and thorns, the memory of the bolting mare still fresh in his mind.
“Captain, can I have a word?”
“Speak,” Kjell agreed, running his hands down Lucian’s legs, over his sides, and inspecting his teeth. The stallion let him, accustomed to his master’s attentions, but the fire starter waited for him to finish, as if he needed his captain’s eyes. Kjell released Lucian’s head and met the younger man’s gaze. A thin line of sweat broke out on Isak’s lip, and he cleared his throat once before proceeding.
“Captain, last night I drew second watch. I was weary, but I’d had no spirits.” His eyes shot to Kjell’s. “I know the rules. I saw . . . a woman. She . . . she was unclothed. At first I thought it was Mistress Sasha. And I looked away. I thought . . . I thought maybe . . . she . . . you . . .” he rubbed his hands over his face. Kjell waited, unable to tell where the story was leading and unwilling to steer it, even if it meant steering it away from himself.
“I looked again, Captain. I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself. But it wasn’t Sasha. The woman’s hair was dark and she was . . . fuller . . . than Mistress Sasha.” His hands created the outline of a voluptuous body, and he blushed furiously before scrubbing his hands over his face again. “My apologies, Captain. I have no opinions on whether Mistress Sasha is . . . full . . . or . . . flat.” He winced and Kjell ground his teeth. Damn Jerick.
“Focus, Isak.”
“There are no tribes here on the plain, are there Captain? Could she have been a tribal woman? She was there, naked, standing just beyond that fire.” He pointed to the fire pit nearest the tree beneath which Kjell and Sasha had slept. Kjell’s blood ran cold.
“Then she was gone. She just disappeared into thin air. I searched the area, walking the perimeter over and over. I almost stepped on a snake—a big, spitting adder that scared me half to death. I looked for prints this morning, but the rain has washed everything away.”
“What happened to the snake?” Kjell asked, eyes narrowed on the young man.
“I left it alone, Captain. That snake took off through the grass, away from the camp. I let it go.”
Kjell nodded, his lips pursed and his eyes grim.
“Do you believe me, Captain?”
“Yes, Isak. I do.” He believed him, and the possibilities made his mind reel. He turned away from the man, his eyes finding Sasha, the melon color of her fresh dress giving her the appearance of an exotic flower. She’d worked her hair into a fat braid that hung over her shoulder like a red boa constrictor. The comparison made his heart catch.
“We’re leaving,” he shouted to his men. “Mount up. And keep your eyes out for snakes.”
***
They traveled for two days without incident—no Volgar, no snakes, no naked women appearing on the edge of camp. But it was not unclothed phantoms or birdmen that concerned Kjell. He tripled the nightly watch and put a guard near Sasha while she slept. His men didn’t question him—Isak had shared his account of the black adder and his sighting of the tribal woman, carefully omitting any mention of Sasha and mistaken identity in his retelling.
“This was not like the snakes in the cave. This snake was aggressive. It spit like a cat and rose straight up into the air,” Isak marveled.
“They don’t like the herds. They shake the ground and make the snakes nervous. They don’t want to be trampled. Our horses are probably to blame for the adder’s irritability,” Jerick mused.
“Adders are deadly, but the captain could have healed you,” Peter chimed in, still awed by his own curing at the captain’s hands.
“Yes, but who will heal the captain?” Sasha rebuked gently.
Kjell’s men shifted in their saddles, chagrined, and Kjell sighed, wrapping Sasha’s thick braid in his hand and tweaking it gently. “You will cease trying to protect me, Sasha,” he murmured, speaking directly into her ear so he wouldn’t have to chastise her in front of his men.
“I will not,” she whispered, but raised her voice to include the guard, evading him and turning their thoughts from their captain’s vulnerabilities. “I know a tale about a snake . . . would you like to hear it?”
The men agreed heartily, but Kjell did not release her braid.
“There was a place, a land of great beauty, where the flowers grew endlessly and the air was soft and mild. Where the seas were fat with fish and the people flush with happiness. There was a good king and a young queen who ruled over the land. The king built his wife a beautiful garden and filled it with every kind of tree. But there was one tree whose fruit was more desirable than all the others. The fruit was white and sweet, but the man told his wife she could not eat that fruit. He told her she could eat the bounty from every tree in the garden, but not that one. She was forbidden to even go near it. Every day the woman would look at the tree, longing for a piece of the fruit, because it was the one fruit she could not have.
“The king knew that the queen desired the fruit from the forbidden tree, but instead he brought her grapes from the vines, firm and dripping with juice. He brought her apples and pears of every color. He peeled oranges and fed them to her with his fingers, trying to distract her from the fruit of the one tree she wanted.
“But one day, the young queen went to the garden alone, and she found herself drawn to the tree again, hungry for the fruit. She got closer than she had ever been, so close that she could see a snake, glittering and gilded with gold, wrapped around one of the branches. To her surprise, the snake began to talk to her. He hissed a promise to the woman, ‘If you eat this fruit, you will see all things. The king doesn’t want you to eat it, because you will be all-knowing and all-powerful, and you will leave him.’
“The queen scoffed at the snake. She would never leave the king. She just wanted to taste a perfect, white pear. She moved closer to the tree. Too close. She reached out her hand to pluck a piece of the fruit, and the snake struck, sinking his fangs into her arm.