Velvet Song Read online

  “Now,” he said, in the cool voice he used for her, “let’s see how strong you are. Lie down and push your body up using only your arms.”

  Alyx had absolutely no idea what he meant, and at her blank look he sighed as if greatly burdened, pulled off his shirt and doublet, dropped to the ground on his stomach and proceeded to lift his body repeatedly with his arms. It certainly didn’t look difficult, so Alyx assumed the same position. On her first try only the front half of her body came up and on the second try, her arms raised her half way and then collapsed.

  “Too much sitting!” Raine declared and grabbed the seat of her hose, pulling that heavier part of her up. “Now push! Do something with those puny arms!”

  With that, Alyx rolled away from him and sat up. “It’s not as easy as it looks,” she said, rubbing her shaking arms.

  “Easy!” he snorted, dropping to his stomach again. “Climb on my back.”

  It took Alyx a few moments to believe what she heard. Climb atop that great, bare, sweaty expanse of sun-bronzed skin?

  Impatiently, he pointed and Alyx straddled him. Using only one hand, he began to push up and down, her astride him, but the last thing Alyx was interested in was his show of strength. Never had she been this near a man before, and certainly she had never had one between her legs before. His sweat began to dampen the insides of her thighs, or perhaps it was her own sweat, but she certainly was becoming damp from someone. His muscles, popping out, straining as he lifted his own considerable body weight as well as hers with the one arm, rippled along the inside of her legs, sending waves of warmth through her body. Her hands, touching his hot skin, seemed very alive, very sensitive. His muscles and skin were making music, playing her body until it was singing a song she’d never heard before.

  “Now!” Raine said, rolling to one side and dumping her in the dirt. “Someday when you’re a man you’ll be able to do that.”

  Sitting down, looking up at him and all that lovely skin of his, her body still humming, she thought that the very last thing she wanted was to be a man.

  Behind Raine stepped Jocelin, his beautiful eyes alight, watching her, and it was almost as if he knew what she was thinking. Embarrassed, she looked away.

  “I think you’ve shocked your squire into silence,” Jocelin said to Raine. “You forget that people of our class aren’t used to your physical vigor.”

  “You’re too busy sitting around counting your money,” Raine said in dead earnest. “And what’s made you so happy today? Not enough work for you to do?”

  Joss ignored the jibe. “Just curious, ’tis all. I was on my way to practice with my bow.” With that, he left to go to the targets at the far end of the long field.

  “Are you going to take root?” Raine asked, looking down at Alyx. When she stood, he took a long sword from a passing man and handed it to her. “Take the hilt in both hands and come for me.”

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” she said instantly. “I didn’t even want to hurt Pagnell when—”

  “What if I were Pagnell?” he said archly. “Come for me or I will go for you.”

  The pain, so recent, so deep, made her raise the heavy sword from where its tip dangled in the dust and she thrust at him. When the blade was a hairs-breadth from his belly, he sidestepped, evading her. Again she lunged and again, again, and still she couldn’t touch him. She started for one side, changed in midthrust and made for his other side, but no matter what she did she could not hit him.

  Panting from her exertions, she stopped, resting the sword tip in the dirt, her arms aching, quivering from the exertion, while Raine, smiling and confident, grinned at her until she longed to ram him with the steel she held.

  “Now I will give you another chance. I will stand perfectly still while you swing at me.”

  “There’s a trick,” she said with such fatalism that he laughed aloud.

  “No trick, but you must lift the sword above your head and come straight down. If you can do that you will strike me.”

  “I could not hurt someone. To draw blood—”

  His face showed his belief in her swordsmanship. “Think of all my sheep, all the farmers I have caused to starve because of my greedy ways. Think of—”

  Alyx happily lifted the sword straight up, planning to bring it down on his head, but at the moment she reached up the blasted, uncooperative sword started pulling her arms backward. Already tired and weakened, her arms could not hold it and for a few seconds it was a struggle—and the damned piece of steel won. The smirk on Raine’s face as she stood there holding the long sword, its tip planted between her heels, made her furious.

  “You’re as weak a boy as I ever saw. What have you done with your life?”

  She absolutely refused to answer that question as she twisted the sword around to the front of her.

  “Lift it to the top of your head, lower it and do it again and again until I return. If I see you slacking, I’ll double your practice time,” he said as he left her.

  Up and down, over and over she lifted the sword, her arms screaming with the exercise.

  “You’ll learn,” said a voice behind her and she turned to see the scarred soldier, the brother of the man who’d brought her here.

  “Has your brother left? I wanted to thank him, although right now I’m not sure this is any better than what could have happened to me.”

  “He needed no thanks,” the man said gruffly, “and you’d better not stop because Lord Raine is looking this way.”

  With trembling arms, Alyx resumed her exercise, and it was several moments before Raine returned to show her how to hold the sword at arm’s length, one arm at a time, lifting and lowering it repeatedly.

  After what seemed like an eternity, he took the sword from her and started walking back toward the camp. Her arms and shoulders feeling as if they’d been put to the rack, Alyx followed him silently.

  “Food, Blanche,” he said over his shoulder on the way to his tent.

  Gratefully, Alyx sat down on a stool while Raine took another and began to sharpen the point of a long lance. With her head leaning against a tent pole, she was almost asleep when Blanche came in bearing crockery bowls full of stew and curds and whey mixed with soft cooked lentils and more of the heavy black bread, with hot spiced wine in mugs.

  As Alyx lifted her wooden spoon, her arms started to jerk spasmodically, protesting what she’d just done to them.

  “You’re too soft,” Raine grunted, his mouth full. “It’ll take months to harden you up.”

  Silently, Alyx knew she’d die if she had to take even a week of today’s torture. She ate as best she could, too weary to pay much attention to the food, and she was falling asleep when Raine grabbed her upper arm and pulled her up.

  “The day’s young yet,” he said, obviously laughing at her exhaustion. “The camp needs food and we must get it.”

  “Food?” she groaned. “Let them starve and let me sleep.”

  “Starve!” he snorted. “They’d kill each other for what food there is and only the strongest would survive. And you,” he said, his fingers meeting as they encircled her upper arm, “you wouldn’t last an hour. So we go to hunt to keep you alive as well as them.”

  With one jerk, she moved away from his touch. Stupid man, she thought, couldn’t he see that she was female? Without another word, he was out of the tent and she ran after him, following him to the edge of camp where the horses were kept. All along the way she saw the people of the camp, resting, digesting their food, no one continuing to work except Raine.

  “Could it be possible that you could ride?” he asked, his voice showing he had no hope.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “What have you done with your life?” he demanded again. “I have never known a boy who couldn’t ride.”

  “And I have never known a man who knew so little about the people outside his own world. Have you spent your life on a jeweled throne doing nothing but fighting with swords and riding great horses?”