Her Every Pleasure (31 page)

Zacarias led the way with his rifle at the ready, hurrying them down toward the pine grove where the horses and carriage had been concealed among the trees.

The noise of the battle by the cave’s mouth grew muffled in the distance, the shouts and guns’ reports blunted by the soft mass of pine needles, yet the rock faces here and there did strange things with the sound. Intangible echoes seemed to reverberate from the wrong direction. Above, the indigo sky glistened with stars and a sharp crescent moon.

“Where are the horses?” Zacarias blurted out, peering into the shadows ahead.

“By the Prophet, I do not know! A little farther on! Keep going. It’s hard to tell in the dark.”

“Wait.” Ahead, Zacarias halted.

Sophia nearly stumbled into him again, but Osman yanked her to a rough halt. “What is it?” he demanded.

“I thought I saw something ahead.”

“The horses!” Osman said impatiently.

“No,” he clipped out. “Is your weapon drawn?”

“Of course. Would you move? We have to keep going! If we fail, Kemal will kill us.”

With a mutter, Zacarias pressed on, but now Sophia could feel it, too. A presence in the darkness.

They were not alone.

They were being watched.

She held her breath, her pulse a wild staccato.

Gabriel.

She knew now that it was he, as though her heart could see in the darkness where her eyes could not.

She could feel his presence. She knew him too well to be mistaken. No, he was here. He was very close.

And she could almost smell the doom that overhung these two unsuspecting fellows.

Any moment now, he was going to strike. She told herself to be ready…

“Move, girl!” Osman’s curt order cut into her thoughts.

“I tell you, there is something out here,” Zacarias mumbled as they pressed on.

“Or someone,” Osman corrected him uneasily. “Hurry up, then.”

“Man or beast? Or both?” Sophia whispered, taunting them to keep them off balance. “Maybe it’s a bear. Or a big…hungry…mountain lion.”

“She could be right,” Osman said uneasily, glancing around into the trees. “A catamount could have smelled the horses and come hunting.”

Zacarias stopped abruptly, holding up his hand and staring forward. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear wh—” Osman started impatiently, but behind her, his words broke off with a strange gurgle.

Sophia did not even turn to look. She ducked down, dropping to her knees to clear the route for Gabriel’s dagger. It flew through the air above her head like a lightning bolt, striking Zacarias in the base of his throat the second he spun around to see what was happening.

He crumpled and rolled a little farther down the rocky path.

The next thing Sophia knew, she was lifted, scooped up into Gabriel’s arms. Without a word, he hoisted her over his shoulder.

As she quickly held onto him, she caught a glimpse of portly Osman behind her, his eyes wide open in surprise. A bayonet was sticking all the way through his thick neck, the tip poking out beneath his ear.

Zacarias had hastened his own death by a few minutes, instinctively pulling the knife out with his last seconds of strength. Now a river of blood, black in the darkness, poured out of the hole at the base of his throat where he lay. It trickled down the stones like a tiny mountain rill.

Sophia could only stare at the carnage in shocked disbelief at how fast it had happened. Gabriel did not say a word, but secured her over his left shoulder as though she weighed nothing. Rounding the dying man, he began racing down the narrow path, his body angled to the side; leading with his right foot, he kept his left arm clamped across her backside, while using his right arm for balance, his big, black carbine cocked and loaded in his hand.

Sophia was no wilting flower, but she was a bit in shock. She held onto his waist for dear life, saying not a word, and trying not to move too much so as not to upset his balance. She did not bother asking why he didn’t let her just walk for herself—she was not about to question anything that he saw fit to do—but instead, she kept a weather eye out for anyone who might be coming down the path behind them.

The progress he made with his mountain-goat agility carried them down swiftly to the pine grove where only one horse waited: his. The rest were gone, the sentry assigned to guard the animals facedown in the pine mulch.

Gabriel didn’t even set her on her feet, but put her right on the horse. “Sit astride.”

She did, swinging her leg over the saddle.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Give me your wrists.” She turned to him but could not help cowering slightly from the deadly creature as he slid yet another knife out of a compact sheath against his ribs and quickly cut the ropes.

He noted her momentary fear of him with a grim glance. Sophia tried to hide it as she threw the loosened ropes aside and rubbed her chafed wrists. But she could not help staring at him, rather wide-eyed.

A fleeting memory of her first meeting with him sailed through her mind. That morning in the old barn, she had pulled her knife on him with no inkling of how she had been taking her life in her hands by threatening him.

“Are you all right?” he clipped out as he passed a hard, assessing glance over her face.

Sophia nodded, but suddenly, from her vantage point astride the horse, she saw motion farther up the path.

“Gabriel, they’re coming!” she whispered, pointing.

He sent a piercing glance over his shoulder, then turned to her with a cold, silvery gleam in his eyes that was downright terrifying. “I’ll take care of them.”

“Can’t we just go?” she breathed, touching his hand.

“No. I don’t want them following us. Move deeper into the trees,” he ordered in a low, hard tone. “Wait for me. I won’t have you going off by yourself. If I should fall, then ride. Right here is a knife and a pair of loaded pistols, should you need them.” He showed her the additional weapons strapped to the horse’s gear. “Hopefully it won’t come to that, but if it does, you’ll need to ride hard to get down the mountain. Take the road—these hillsides are too treacherous. Ride as fast as you can go. As soon as you’ve crossed the little bridge across the stream, turn west off the road. A hundred yards up the next slope into the woods, you’ll find a cave with supplies. Have you got that?”

“Yes.” She knew she could not stop him. Her hand atop his tightened. “Gabriel—be careful. Please. I need you.”

He captured her fingers lightly and gazed at her for a second. Then he closed his eyes with an impassioned look and pressed her knuckles to his lips. “Princess,” he breathed against her skin. When he released her hand, she touched his face ever so briefly, but he pulled away and grabbed hold of the horse’s reins, starting the animal in the right direction. “Out of sight, now. Hide,” he ordered, glancing quickly over his shoulder.

Farther up the path, there was activity but very little sound. It seemed that the other Janissaries had just discovered their dead comrades.

Gabriel looked at Sophia again, his jaw tightening. By the moon’s glow she could see the sheen of sweat on his face. “Do not come out under any circumstances.”

“But—”

“I am just one man, Sophia. You must think of your people.”

“You’re more than that to me. You’re everything…”

“Go,”
he whispered fiercely.

With one last, searing look, she obeyed, urging her horse deeper into the thicket while he prowled off with stealthy speed to get into position for whatever dreadful fate he had planned for the new arrivals.

She guided the horse quickly down a little slope, but she could still see into the clearing where Gabriel now lay in wait for the enemy.

Now it was
his
turn to ambush them.

Prayers surged through her mind as she scanned the darkness, trying to pick him out.
Please, God, keep him safe. Make him win. Don’t take him from me…

Where did he go?

Once more he had dissolved into the darkness. Then she caught a glimpse of movement across the grove. He had turned back into a terrible figment, a shadow. As she watched, wide-eyed in the darkness, she saw the shape of him separate from the trunk of a tree and then jump up onto a lower branch, climbing with easy agility.

He disappeared up into one of the great pine trees.

Sophia petted the horse with one hand to keep the animal calm, but the other she pressed to her mouth to silence herself as Kemal and two of his men came prowling down from the path. Barely making a sound, they stole into the grove, their muskets at the ready.

Sophia waited as they crossed some twenty yards away from her, moving in a triangular formation, Kemal ahead and in the center.

She held her breath. Her heart pounded so loud in sheer terror that she feared they would hear it. Her horse stood in uneasy silence, his ears swiveling toward the smallest sounds the men made.

Her nerves stretched thin, she squeezed her eyes shut for a second, unable to bear it as Gabriel waited for them to come closer, to come right to him.

With barely a snapping twig under their feet, the Janissaries progressed through the grove, their heads turning as they scanned the woods in all directions while still moving forward.

The only way they did not look was…up.

Even if they had looked, she doubted they’d have seen Gabriel. For such a large man, he had an uncanny ability to make himself all but invisible.

Shoot them!
her mind screamed to him as Kemal stalked under the very tree where he waited, but still nothing happened.

Two steps, three…

He waited until the two men flanking Kemal were right underneath the tree. A flare of orange exploded up among the branches as he fired his carbine downward, killing one man instantly; almost simultaneously, he dropped to the ground and knifed the second man before the latter was quite sure what was going on.

At once, Kemal spun around and brought up his rifle, but Gabriel stopped the second man from falling, and used his meaty body for a shield.

The man let out a garbled cry as Gabriel tossed him aside and went toward Kemal, drawing his cavalry saber, the one that she had found back at the farmhouse, notched with its wicked tally of deaths.

No mercy.

Kemal answered in kind. With no time to reload, he slid his curved Turkish scimitar out of its sheath and brandished it as he retreated a few steps, getting into position.

The terrible, arced swords that both men wielded were made for slashing. The points were sharp, but the cruel curve of both terrible blades was really designed for severing limbs and heads from bodies.

Sophia was rather glad of the darkness and the branches shielding from her a full view of the proceedings. How she kept from screaming, she simply did not know.

The two were still for a moment, sizing each other up.

Sophia felt sick to her stomach, knowing that this would be a duel to the death, and chilled, as well, to realize that the sounds of the distant fight up by the cave’s mouth had subsided.
Were they the only ones left alive?

She stared, her heart in her throat.

Without warning, the battle erupted.

She heard the clash and ring of metal, saw the whirl of furious motion through the trees as they slashed and swung and flew at each other, their swords like a churning metal wheel.

They parted, circled, lunged again, trying to hack each other apart with brutal speed and force in every blow. Metallic clangs reverberated through the pines. She could feel each man’s intense concentration.

Time seemed to have stopped.

They fought their way out into the clearing from among the trees. Gabriel was giving ground; Sophia watched with her heart in her throat. Seeing him back up like that terrified her. Was he weakening, pained by his scar—or was he simply moving the fight to more open terrain?

He ducked with lightning agility as Kemal’s blade swooped in a vicious arc above his head, then Gabriel struck back from below, delivering a backhanded blow that slammed the edge of his blade deep into Kemal’s right ribs.

It went into the center of him, only stopped by his spine.

Sophia jumped and stifled a cry as the Tunisian staggered backward, hunching over what was surely a terrible wound.

But her violent flinch startled her horse, in turn, which moved just a little, causing a few twigs to crackle.

Clutching his side, Kemal looked straight over at where Sophia was hurrying to steady the horse. Seeing her outline through the underbrush, he reached inside his vest and pulled out a pistol, aiming it at her.

Before he could pull the trigger, Gabriel let out a roar and brought down his saber with such force that the hand holding the pistol fell to the ground separately from its owner.

Kemal screamed and toppled to earth, writhing briefly; Gabriel loomed over him, keeping the tip of his sword against the Tunisian’s throat until he was certain the man was dead.

Sophia knew the moment this occurred because Gabriel’s entire posture changed.

His massive shoulders slowly loosened, he lowered his head, his chin dropped toward his heaving chest, and he placed his left hand vaguely on his scar.

She watched him in welling tenderness, part of her wanting to jump off the horse and run to him. But another part, instinctively, didn’t dare.

He would come to her when he was ready.

Having steadied the horse again from its skittishness, she sat in the saddle, barely able to wrap her mind around all that had just occurred. With a shudder, she closed her eyes and thanked God for keeping Gabriel safe.

Just then, from across the grove, a familiar voice called hesitantly to Gabriel. “Colonel?”

Yannis.

Sophia opened her eyes and turned to look. It was he!

“Yannis!” She leapt off the horse and grabbed the reins, pulling the animal toward the men.

“Sophia?” Gabriel barked, sounding slightly shaken.

“I’m all right!” she assured him, pulling the horse out into the clearing. “I’m here. Gabriel. Yannis!”

Gabriel turned around with an air of weariness as her easygoing bodyguard came running toward them. “Your Highness!”