Chapter 18

He fought them wildly, panic eating away at common sense, and they took him down, a tumble of men wresting him to the snow covered ground, twisting his arms behind him and keeping him down with rough hands and a knee to the back. The crunch of snow and he saw boots in his line of vision. Fingers curled in his hair and yanked his head back and he found himself looking up at a brother he hadn't seen in close to a decade.

"Little brother," Tered said softly, clicking his tongue in reprimand, soft voiced, as always, when he was the most dangerous. That remained the same, the rest was much changed. Ten years had thinned his hair, and lined his face as if the weight of leading house Lamar had taken its toll. Gods knew father had aged before his time. Caled wondered why he'd ever coveted the position.

"You amaze me, stepping foot within Ka Lamar, when you well knew the consequences." Tered crouched, canting his head to study him, reaching out one gloved hand and brushing damp hair from his face.

"It was a mistake," Caled panted, hard to talk with a man's weight on his back and some gnarled root digging into his belly beneath the layer of crushed snow. "Let me go and I'll not make it again."

Tered's thumb brushed a speck of dirt from his cheek. "No. I think not. I gave you your second chance years ago, I offer no third."

He rose, motioning to his men. They bound Caled's arms behind him, then jerked him up. He caught sight of the dog's dark, still form in the snow, paid for her loyalty in death. She'd been a good companion and he felt a wetness at the corner of his eye. At least Dharsha had had the sense to flee from overwhelming odds. Caled hoped he ran and never stopped. He'd endured enough at the hands of men, without discovering the breadth of Tered Lamar's hospitality.

It was close to full dark and no man with good sense would risk these trails at night and though Tered might be less than sane in some senses, he was practical. They found a sheltered place large enough for Tered's company and made camp. Horses tethered to trees and given over portions of grain, men clearing snow for a fire pit, for bedrolls, while Tered sat on a stump and stared at Caled, who they'd secured to a tree.

Tered's stare had ever been a thing to make a body cringe, when it was long and speculative, even when they'd been young. When mother had been alive, she'd proven a barrier that the elder brother never tested, but after her death, with only nurses and a father who paid little heed to sons when an dynasty demanded his attentions, even a younger brother felt the sting of his casual cruelties.

Caled did not like to think on it, those dark years of childhood, before the arms masters had taught him the way of weaponry and Tered had, of necessity, learned to be more circumspect in his amusements. Until that fateful day that the dynasty had changed hands and Caled had made a desperate and youthfully naïve bid for power . . .

It had ended badly. Terribly, horribly badly.

"Who is it, you travel with?"

Caled blinked, drawn back to present by Tered's query.

"No one. A traveler I met on the trail."

"That you shared a room with?"

"Coin is scarcer now than it used to be. Prudent to split the cost."

"You were never prudent, Caled, nor so good a liar."

"Times change. And I was never so good at fabrications as you."

Tered rose, walked over to him, boots crunching in packed snow, and stood looking down.

"So says the patricide."

Caled stared at him, shocked. Though he had been full guilty of attempting to kill his brother, no accusation of father-killing had been leveled at him. It had not occurred to him at the time that the death had been anything but natural.

"Murdered?" he asked.

Tered lifted a brow. "Well you know, little brother. A holy seeress detected the traces of the curse through the very walls of his tomb, when she came to deliver blessings."

"A curse?" No easy thing to accomplish, with the practice of witcheries outlawed by penalty of death. A pact made with a power dark enough to curse a man to death was no small thing. And though Caled had held a healthy interest in certain spelled items, he'd never researched or held congress with a practitioner of the blacker arts. Those sorts of interests seemed more in line with Tered's perversions.

"If some dark power was aimed at him, it was not at my behest. You're the one who gained a dynasty."

"And you're the one who plotted to take it from me."

"Call it a bout of insanity, brought on by the notion of living under the your thumb with no higher power to curb your predilections. No doubt the estate staff and the domestic animals lament my failure."

It was the wrong thing to say, especially in the hearing of Tered's men. He realized that the moment, Tered's face went taught and his pupils tiny in rage. A fist lashed out, caught Caled against the temple. Another that smashed his head back against the tree, that made pain explode behind his eyes. More blows might have rained, that blended into one large pain, before the cold of snow roused him. Himself flung full face in it, as men of Tered's loosed his hands long enough to strip him bare, before they tossed a rope over a limb and jerked him up between them.

He fought them, then, desperately afraid of being strung up, helpless and naked and the focus of Tered's slow simmering rage. He'd been the target of that before and had nightmares still. But he was dizzy and going numb from the cold and outnumbered. They bound his wrists and yanked him up by them, till his toes dangled inches from the snow and his body swung to and fro, making the limb he hung from creak with his weight.

They amused themselves with him, then, under Tered's smiling guidance, blows to the body that stole his breath and his vision. A man's thick leather belt applied judiciously, until even the cold could not stop his skin from burning.

He screamed when they concentrated on his genitals, as he knew they eventually would, because Tered had a fascination for hurting a body in those most sensitive of places. And Tered stood close behind him, hands stroking his sides, holding his swaying body still, as a man of his came at him from the front with a burning ember and laid it lengthwise down the top of his flaccid cock. He screamed himself hoarse, sobbing for mercy Tered didn't have in him, while they seared him and Tered hummed and pressed his lips to the side of Caled's neck, biting gently while he shuddered.

A gurgling, aborted scream that was not Caled's echoed in the night. Every man in the camp froze, staring out into the night. The horses shuffled, nervous and pulling at tethers and out beyond them, lay a dark shape in the snow. It was hard to see from Caled's vantage and his wavering vision, but it seemed to be a man they turned over. A man bleeding all over the snow, his eyes wide with shock, his throat torn out. One of theirs.

They cried out amongst themselves, drawing weapons, nervous and scattering until Tered called them to order, and set them in pairs to search the wood. Four stayed to guard the camp along with Tered, and Caled hung naked from his limb, body throbbing, momentarily forgotten in the turmoil. Until Tered came at him, digging fingers in his hair and pressing a knife against his throat.

"Your chance meeting did this," he snarled. No question. "Where is he?"

Almost Caled laughed. If Dharsha had -- no one was more surprised than him. But then, he supposed it unlikely those lengthening claws and that inhuman strength and speed were for show only. His neko was a hunter born and a slave by misfortune only.

The blade pressed deeper and Caled felt a trickle of blood. But he knew Tered wouldn't slit his throat. That would be quick and easy and this brutal play tonight was only the least of what his brother was capable of. He wouldn't deprive himself of lengthy 'conversations' in the privacy of the family dungeon.

Caled said nothing, and after a moment, Tered hissed in annoyance and withdrew the blade.

Tered's men trickled back, having found nothing in the forest, save that one set returned not at all. They set up guards then, watchful, angry men that cast Caled dark glances where he hung.

He thought Tered might as well have slit his throat, for if they left him naked much longer the cold would take him. Perhaps Tered realized the same thing, for he barked at men to cut Caled down, and when he fell this time, there was no strength at all in his limbs, and when they dressed him, they might as well have been dressing a doll, for all the ability he had to help in it.

Beyond that, there was no kindness in his treatment. Arms bound tight behind him, elbow-to-elbow, wrist-to-wrist, ankles lashed and Tered himself stuffed a wad of cloth into his mouth and secured it tight. He lay there afterwards, one side of his clothing going slowly damp from contact with the snow, struggling to breathe around the gag, far enough away from the fire that its warmth was no comfort.

He feared for Dharsha, strained his hearing, as Tered's men no doubt did, listening for sound of an intruder creeping about the campsite. But no sound issued forth. Nothing human ears could perceive at any rate. Foolish, foolish neko to strike at such a force of men. He'd end up as dead as the dog and it would be on Caled's shoulders, having brought him into this affair.

He shut his eyes and swore silently. There'd been a reason he'd kept himself apart from humanity these past years, a man with a price on his head and the wrath of a great family to keep him from honest work in other civilized places. No reason to drag an innocent into a mess of his making. And yet he'd done just that. Hadn't been able to stop himself with Dharsha. Pity first, then outrage at treatment that brought back old nightmares, then something else, undefined and undeniable.

His own damn fault. Dharsha was an innocent here, and Caled should have damned well known better.

Dharsha crouched motionless on a limb forty feet off the snowy ground, listening to the human men below try and tread silently through the wood. They failed. He could hear their breathing, the rustle of their clothing, the muffled beat of their hearts, so heightened were his senses. The taste of blood had done it. Had sent him over the edge from frightened scavenger to something else.

He hadn't crept up to the camp with the intent of killing a man. Had only been drawn close by the sound of Caled's screams. But what he'd seen from his vantage, inspired cruelty of man against someone he deemed as clan, had sent his blood racing and his vision tunneling with red around the edges. There had been a man, lingering at the edges of the campsite, a guard, distracted by what they were doing at the center of it, a man with a grin on his face as he watched his comrades make another man scream.

And something possessed Dharsha that had never possessed him before, the surging instinct of the predator. Body took over from mind, and he'd sprung forward, two silent bounds and the guard didn't even hear him set down, didn't realize he was there at all until he swung him around with one hand and tore out his throat with one swipe of the other. Half a scream and the prey was down, gurgling out his life's blood in the snow. Dharsha was gone before he hit, two-dozen feet into the wood before he took to the trees and left no trail for them to follow.

And the blood on his claws had tasted - - heady, and made his own trill in his veins. He'd listened to their frantic search, saw their clumsy figures as they stomped through the wood seeking him and made a decision. Shed the heavy coat and the cap in the foliage and dropped down to snowy earth unencumbered, shadowing the closest of them with them none the wiser.

The first had been an act of impulse, but now he trailed a pair of men with intent and even through the thud of bloodlust, fear tickled the back of his mind. Lunacy to hunt armed men, when he ought to know better. Men were cruel and vindictive and could make a body hurt so bad death was more attractive an option that life. Men were to be feared.

Except for Caled. Except for the one he'd torn the life out of. That man had never had the chance to draw his blade. That man had been too slow and deaf to defend his own life. The ones he followed, silent as a wraith, were too numb to the forest around them to realize they were being hunted. So perhaps a man was only dangerous when he had a body caged and bound and beaten into submission.

Karl's face flashed before his eyes, cold and cruel, small eyes flashing amusement when he made a bound body squeal. The shadows of the others crowded round, and Dharsha hissed, extending his claws, surge of revulsion making his blood pound the harder.

Never again. Not him. Not Caled.

He saw his chance, one man trailing behind the other in the dark, surged forward and disposed of his prey. Silent and bloodless this time, neck broken with one sharp twist, the second man oblivious to the fate of his companion.

Dharsha left him in the snow and continued on. Moved forward in the shadows as if he belonged there and when the other man turned, his eyes were too weak in the dark to tell friend from foe.

"Ain't nothing out here this side of camp," was as much as he got out before Dharsha pounced, bore him back into the snow and ripped out his throat.

This time the blood spattered his face and the warmth of it, the glassy horror in the prey's eyes as he died chased away some of the red circling his vision. Made him swallow and push himself back and off the man when some primitive instinct suggested that feeding off fresh killed meat might not be so bad a thing.

But this was no wild pig, no fleet footed forest deer, but a man, who was close enough to a neko to be sacrosanct, at least as far as partaking of flesh went. He swallowed back bile and stared about the wood, spooked now by his own urges. He heard no sounds of other men and that was just as well, for the hunting fever had left him and now he was simply cold.