Free The Mark of Ran by Paul Kearney Page A

done, the sinking realization that there would be consequences.
    Rowen’s hands twitched. Her mouth opened but only an inarticulate groan came out. He bent over her face and took her restless fingers in his own.
    “What? What is it? Tell me.”
    A tear fled from the outside corner of her eye and trickled down to her neck. Rol leaned farther, until they were sharing each other’s breath and he could feel the butterfly-kiss of her eyelashes on his cheek.
    “Fool,”
she said, and pushed him away.
    He straightened, looking down on her in bewilderment. “Get dressed,” he repeated mechanically.
    “Go,”
she said, baring her teeth.
    “I came here to—to help you,” he whispered. “Look what they were doing to you. He was going to let them have you another whole
day.
”
    That made her pause. They stared into one another’s eyes, burnished steel meeting a sea-storm. At last her fingers fastened upon the garments he had set atop her abdomen.
    “Help.”
    With one hand at the back of her fluted neck, he raised her up and began to dress her. As they wrestled with her shirt his wounded forearm bled down her stomach, the blood trickling into the matted hair between her legs. With the shirt on he set his arm behind her knees and swung her feet over the side of the bed. She could sit up by herself, though her head still lolled forward, the magnificent black mane of her hair falling down over her bruised breasts.
    Rol stopped to listen. Still that murmur of talk and laughter from the main chamber. But it would not be long before others came down for their turn at the night’s sport.
    He bent and retrieved the knife that had scored his forearm. It was a thick-bladed, slightly curved weapon with an ivory grip, well made and wickedly sharp. Tucking it into his belt, he took Rowen’s arm and hauled her to her feet. “Come. We must go now, right now.”
    She demurred, mumbling, but he dragged her out of the room as a man might support a drunken comrade. She was not heavy, and he swung her up into his arms, some part of him relishing even at that moment the taut feel of her flesh under his hands. She stank of the men who had been abusing her, and of the drug by the bedside. For a moment she struggled in his grasp, trying to make him set her down. Then she gave up, and put her white arms about his neck, hiding her face in the hollow of his shoulder like a child afraid of the night. With that, something of his earlier detachment and calm returned. His heart slowed, and he seemed to see more clearly in the guttering dark beyond the candlelight. He walked along the passageway as sure-footed as a prowling cat, bent under and stepped over the warning wires as though performing part of some slow-stepped dance, and then picked up speed.
    The warehouse was tall, echoing, and it stank with the debris of decades. Rol picked his way like a dancer, some adrenaline still singing through his blood. But after a while the reaction began to set in. Away from the voices, in a corner of the evil-smelling blackness, he went to one knee and set Rowen’s weight atop the other to rest his injured arm, his heartbeat a rushing susurration in his throat. She raised her head, her mouth tickling his ear.
    “Put me down. I can walk.”
    He let her slip out of his arms with an odd reluctance.
    “Do you know a way out?” Her eyes seemed to shine faintly in the dark as she regarded him. Her speech was slow but clear, as though it was an effort for her to make each word distinct.
    “Yes. A window. Not far now.”
    Kneeling, she swayed and leaned against him. Then she turned and vomited. He felt warm liquid spatter his boots. She wiped her mouth on the shoulder of the short-sleeved shirt he had put on her. Only three or four buttons held it closed over her breasts—the rest had been ripped away. She spat, then straightened, and began tying her long hair back from her face.
    “Let us go, then.”
    He rose to his feet. She climbed up him as though he were a