Unbound Heart Read online

  Faelan was not sure what necessary letters were, but they looked like hard work. From where she lay on the large comfortable bed Duncan called a cot, she watched him bounce the feathered end of his pen against his cheek.

  Eamon played a lap-harp in the background. A new, older boy had replaced Roland. He busied himself in the outer tent moving tables and chairs around in preparation of the morning’s council meeting.

  “Eamon.” Duncan turned in his seat. “Send to Eoin, please. Have him ask Captain Fawr whether he has condolences for the family.”

  The elf stilled the harp strings between long elegant fingers. His eyes lost focus. Minutes passed. He blinked. “My captain says, ‘Gibb was the worst damn card player it was ever my pleasure to fleece. I’ll miss him.’”

  Duncan dropped his pen spoiling the letter he had struggled to write. “I cannot write such things to a man’s widow.”

  The elf’s eyes lost focus again. “My Captain says Gibb’s wife’s name is, Elsie. His son, Carl, turned eight this past spring and wants to be a trooper like his father. He says to say, they may stay on in garrison housing and draw Gibb’s pay for the duration of this conflict.”

  Retrieving his quill, Duncan dipped the nib into the inkwell and started scratching on a fresh piece of parchment. As if he felt Eamon’s gaze, he glanced over his shoulder. “Captain Fawr said something more, and you think I will not like hearing it?”

  The elf dropped his gaze and gave that odd half-shrug of his. “Take time to know your men.”

  Duncan caught his lower lip between his teeth, but said nothing. Faelan saw this was a familiar criticism, one the mighty field marshal could not answer.

  With both sides of the tent fly-rigged and the curtain partitioning off Duncan’s quarters pulled back, Faelan could see the troopers celebrating their fallen comrade with a sort of line dance. The elf eyed the dancing men with open longing. Faelan couldn’t fault him.

  “Join them. You know you want to.” Duncan did not look up from his writing. “Being stuck in here serves no purpose.”

  “You should come too.”

  Ignoring him, Duncan folded the paper and sealed the envelope with wax. “Tad,” he called. The new boy came running. “Post this, then you may join the bonfire.”

  “Yes sir.” The cadet hovered in front of Duncan’s desk. “Sir, I prepared water for your tea. Should I steep it before I leave?”

  “Thank you, no. I will do it.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The cadet took the letter from Duncan’s outstretched hand and bolted, but Eamon lingered in the doorway.

  “Come to the bonfire, Aimery Duncan. Be one of them.”

  Duncan rubbed his forehead. “I am not one of them. I am Captain Fawr’s Addiri philosopher, an exotic eccentricity, no different than his blooded racehorse.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I hold this command at Captain Fawr’s pleasure and no one else’s.” Duncan blinked his remarkable eyes. “I did not know Gibb had a son. Though I might wish it different, I am not one of them.”

  Faelan didn’t miss the edge of regret in his voice. She fought down an absurd urge to comfort him.

  “How can it be different, when you keep yourself from all but a handful of us? Come to the bonfire. It’s what My Captain wants.”

  “Captain Fawr wants me to win this war. He made his desire very clear when he bullied the council in Elhar into accepting my command. I will not achieve that goal by dancing the line. Get out, Eamon. I need to think.”

  ****

  Duncan stretched, rubbed his eyes. Bone weary, he could not sleep. His restless mind would not stop. Thoughts upon thoughts ceaselessly battered at him. He rubbed his temples. Shut up. Shut up. He was fundamentally flawed. He suffered from a blood born condition his family termed Dracosis. Lying awake in the fireproof stone nursery behind Drake House too tired to cry formed his earliest childhood memory. But insomnia was one of the milder manifestations of his inherited condition and, by far, the easiest to suppress. Duncan had learned to suppress them all. He had to if he wanted to appear normal.

  He dropped the tent flap cutting off the sight of the bonfire, and prepared the tea he’d been drinking most of his life, a pinch of chamomile, a dab of valerian, a touch of skullcap. He could mix this concoction blindfolded. A few cups guaranteed he would sleep and…dream of soaring on the wind and fire. Always fire. Everything had a downside. He smiled at his cynicism. Sometimes his dreams were sweet.

  Seated on the edge of his bed, Duncan pulled off his boots and stood them neatly at the foot of his bed. Socks followed, dropped into his laundry bag. Leaning back on a stack of pillows, he rubbed his bare foot along Faelan’s thick fur.

  Night stretched toward morning. Camp noises died down as troopers sought their beds. Duncan ruminated over the figures on the chalkboard set up at the foot of his bed and sipped tea. The texture of Azure’s fur soft and warm under his foot reminded him of a sandy beach. Eyes like the sky at sea, warm as a sandy beach…marvelous. I am homesick.

  Much as Duncan loved his family, much as he missed them and his island home, he never pined for home. Holder society caged him in when he had wanted to fly. Captain Fawr encouraged him to fly higher. Being a trooper gave Duncan the anonymity and the freedom to make his own choices. Captain Fawr used up all the air in the room, and no one noticed Duncan at all. He liked it that way. It was refreshing.

  Maybe he had flown too high. Duncan smiled to himself. No chance. More likely, this war, his current cage, loomed so large it made his old cage look cozy by comparison. Shut up.

  Resting his forearms on his knees, Duncan concentrated on the formulas written on the chalkboard. They represented a weapon that existed only in his mind, a defensive weapon so monstrous no one would threaten the peace of the Kingdoms again. Wars would become legends. Death notices, myths. Foolishness, Duncan knew. Men always found ways to make war. Aggression was human nature. But on nights like this, when his emotions were raw, he indulged his foolishness.

  The problem was his monstrous weapon did not work. So far, he had achieved an impressive series of catastrophic failures. Seventy-three catastrophic failures, to be exact, and Duncan was nothing if not exact. But still, he had confidence in the concept. The problem lay in engineering. He consulted his notebook. Given time, he would solve it.

  His sleeping potion tugged at his consciousness. Design possibilities floated on the surface of his mind murky as pond scum. Duncan snapped his notebook closed. There would be no leap of engineering genius tonight.

  He pulled a small wooden chest from underneath his bed and retrieved his personal journal. Shucking off his shirt and jodhpurs, he climbed back into bed. Recording his impressions of the day helped settle his thoughts.

  ****

  Faelan despaired. The man never slept. If Duncan kept such hours every night, she’d never be able to meet with Quinn and return before morning.

  Duncan closed the little book he’d been scribbling in for the last half hour, but instead of dousing the light, he took a worn leather pouch out of the chest and upended it on the sheet between his knees. A handful of gemstones sparkled on the white sheet. One by one, Duncan picked them up, studied them, smelled them, and even tasted a few of them. He sung softly as he did so. Faelan couldn’t understand his words, but she liked the sound of them. Once he finished serenading the gemstones, he returned them to the pouch, put the pouch and the book into the chest, and shoved it under his bed. Finally, he blew out his lantern, and slid down under the sheet.

  Faelan moved up alongside him, laid her head on his stomach and inhaled. The faint scent of oranges and chocolate made her mouth water. The man had the face and the form of a god, and the scent of her favorite confection, as explosive a combination as she’d ever encountered.

  Accepting her presence on his bed, Duncan stroked her fur and drifted to sleep, his hand resting on her side. Faelan watched his eyes moving under his eyelids; she shifted.

  With his face relaxed
, free of the strain command put on him, the field marshal looked very young. Faelan had taken him to be in his late twenties, perhaps a year, or two her junior. Now, as she brushed sun-streaked hair off his brow, Faelan doubted he was a day over twenty-five.

  Duncan’s hand moved slowly, trailed up her rib cage, and came to rest on her breast, his sleeping mind having incorporated the change of texture into his dream. His calloused thumb brushed her nipple. The rough feel of it set every inch of her skin ablaze. Faelan leaned down and touched a gentle kiss against his slightly parted lips. His eyes fluttered open, a flash of vivid fiery blue surrounded by long dark eyelashes. He murmured something that sounded like moie’ ani and drifted off again.

  Faelan released the breath she had been holding and against all reason risked tasting him again. This time he kissed back. Shock burned through her. Heat and wetness pooled between her legs. No man’s kiss had ever fired her blood with such intent.

  Stunned, Faelan pulled away and watched mesmerized as Duncan’s tongue flicked across his upper lip. He smiled in his sleep, muttering Ika’i moie’ ani”

  Evidently, his musical sounding words meant something good because his arousal tented the sheet. Hardly daring to breathe, heart slamming in her chest, Faelan touched him. Heat and hardness stole her good sense. He flexed his hips, pushed his erection into her palm demanding strokes. Drawn to his flame, Faelan couldn’t resist.

  The weight of her hand provided just enough friction to bring him release. He slid deeper into sleep, and Faelan slipped off his bed. Shaken by her intense reaction to Duncan, Faelan touched her wet core the way she liked. God! She had never wanted a man as much in her life.

  Faelan pulled Duncan’s treasure box into her lap and rummaged through its contents. Besides the book he had been writing in and the leather pouch, she found a book filled with sketches of kites, some large enough to carry a man, and other wondrous things the uses of which she could not guess. Many of the sketches pictured a cylindrical object. Sometimes it had wheels, sometimes not.

  There were a number of iron marbles, a few feathers, some pressed flowers, a snakeskin rolled up in a piece of oiled cloth, and a dried toad in a jar. Faelan smiled as she fingered Duncan’s treasures. The fearsome field marshal was a boy still. At a sudden memory of his hard hot shaft beneath her hand, Faelan discarded that notion. Field Marshal Duncan was a man fully grown.

  Lifting a bundle of letters secured by green ribbon out of the box, Faelan thoroughly examined them. Some sheets contained nothing but printed boxes of unrelated characters, but elegant flowing script covered others. Both were equally incomprehensible. Descendant law forbade females the right to read or write. Not that Faelan needed to read. The letters’ elegant penmanship told her two things. A woman penned them, and Duncan treasured the lady’s correspondence. Faelan battled the urge to rip the letters to shreds. Did he have a sweetheart waiting for him wherever he came from? Was he—married? And why did she care so much?

  Wrapping Duncan’s extra blanket (imagine having extra blankets) around her torso, Faelan traced the stylized horse engraved on the hilt of his saber. The weapon’s honed edge gleamed so it almost seemed alive. She ran her finger along the sharp edge. Descendant metalwork did not compare. Hearing voices outside Faelan ducked behind the chalkboard.

  “I thought Tad had duty tonight?”

  “Duncan gave him the night off for Bonfire.”

  Faelan recognized the second voice as belonging to the man Duncan called Bird. Surely, they weren’t coming inside.

  “You think Eamon’s with him?”

  “He doesn’t sleep with Eamon.”

  “People say—

  “People say lots of stuff, most of it pure horse shit.”

  “I thought I saw movement.”

  “Lantern’s out, probably just a reflection.”

  “Shouldn’t we…check on him?”

  “You ever wake Shug up? No? He doesn’t respond well to surprises. Just trust me on that.”

  The voices faded in the distance.

  Faelan’s quick search of the outer tent yielded maps with notes written on them and more journals filled with Duncan’s neat handwriting. Anger flared. Everything her people needed was here, but she could not deliver it because she couldn’t read.

  Although Faelan couldn’t decipher Duncan’s notes, his maps were a different story. Faelan knew maps. Her uncle had been a mapmaker before he took on the role of general.

  What she saw on the map spread out on the center table left her cold.

  Chapter Seven

  Faelan’s first morning in Duncan’s camp came early. At garrison dawn, an hour before the actual event, while the infantry regiments slept, Duncan’s cavalry held saber drills. The awesome destructive force of their curved blades combined with their expert horsemanship left Faelan trembling. After their drills, the troopers washed and assembled into their individual units for morning mess.

  Duncan ate in the first rotation. He shared his table with his elf and nine blue-jackets. Pork, mutton, fish, eggs, gravy, porridge, and fruit weighed down the table. The cooks served more food at this one meal than Faelan’s people saw in an entire week.

  Faelan sat at Duncan’s feet accepting tasty morsels from his hand. It was hard to hate an enemy who fed her so well, particularly when the same enemy heated her skin with a glance, and turned her insides to molten lava in his sleep. He was dangerous on every level, but when she remembered the map spread on the table and what it meant, she simply couldn’t give up. So she was attracted to her enemy, it didn’t mean she couldn’t do the job. She’d be careful. No more touching.

  The group at Duncan’s table enjoyed an easy camaraderie, the first Faelan had seen between the field marshal and his troops. These troopers called themselves Red Fist. Apparently, Duncan commanded Red Fist before the war and he hoped to again.

  Their talk centered on their horses and on their absent captain whom they spoke of with unabashed affection. He was, Faelan gathered, somewhere training more cavalry. More cavalry, the thought made her blood run cold.

  ****

  Duncan sat behind his trestle desk, his mood black; his dog curled up at his feet. He had slept poorly, troubled by dreams such as had not plagued him since adolescence. Ashes. He had stained his linens. Linens he stripped off his bed with his own hands. Early in life, he had learned to control and redirect sexual energy toward more profitable pursuits. He could not imagine what triggered such erotic dreams now of all the inconvenient times.

  He was not immune to need. When the simple human need to touch and be touched overtook him, he took care of it in darkened rooms with women he paid well and never spoke to, lest his speech patterns betray him. Lust never ambushed him. Ever.

  But the woman in his dream had. She tasted of honey. She felt soft, warm, and real. She was different…wondrous…perfect right down to the light dusting of golden freckles across the bridge of her nose. There was just something about freckles that did it for him. He had a thing about freckles. He must have seen her somewhere. His imagination, while vivid, did not run in that direction. Just the memory of her made his cock thicken. Duncan shook his head, frustrated by his lack of control. He did not have time for carnal distractions.

  His prolonged brown study produced its usual result. His generals shifted in their seats. Eamon studied his fingernails. The cadets looked nervous. Duncan cleared his throat. “Forgive me, gentlemen. As I said, we will strike along the AOD’s northern flank driving them south toward the plains. Are there objections?”

  “You are a coward!”

  Faelan raised her head. The shouting general, a big man, red-faced, and balding, was in his late forties, barrel-chested, and brisling with rage. Faelan hated him on sight. “You said, wait for their general to draw down his raiding parties. Well, he’s done that, and I say we crush them now.” He waved his arms encompassing the assembled warriors. “Who’s with me?”

  Several men jumped up shouting agreement. From Faelan’s spot near D
uncan’s feet, his blistering scent drifted to her sharp as burned sulfur.

  Duncan’s nostrils flared. “No.”

  The older man sprang to his feet. “You’re a damned coward, like every other thieving Addiri ever born.”

  Nine blue-jacket officers scrambled to Duncan’s defense, their hands going to their sabers. Eamon lunged across the table, barely restrained by one of the more human looking Thallasi elves. Duncan rapped his fist on the desk demanding order. Red Fist subsided into their seats, grumbling.

  “Eamon sit, please,” Duncan said. The elf obeyed, but he did not look happy about it. Duncan breathed out slowly. “General Rickman, let me repeat, the attack you propose is not in our strategic best interest. I do not intend to rehash my reasoning with you as you have proven unable to grasp the simplest logistics.” He paused. “The AOD’s current position is unfavorable to cavalry. Adequate support for our infantry is not possible. Estimated losses are unacceptable. Therefore, we will move the enemy farther south. End of discussion.”

  “Coward.” The General spit the word at him. “Captain Fawr would attack.”

  Duncan spoke calmly into a fresh chorus of saber rattling from Red Fist. “I am not Captain Fawr.”

  General Rickman shot him a rude gesture. “Tell me something I don’t know.” He turned and strode toward the exit.

  “General, I caution you, if you walk out of this tent, you will leave this camp.” Duncan’s measured voice halted the man in his tracks. “Colonel Isem, prepare to assume command of the Ionian Regiment.”