Reaper's Revenge by Charlotte Boyett-Compo Read Free Book Online

Revenge
    the back of his pony. Drumming his moccasin-clad heels into the beast’s side, he sped back toward the mountains.
    * * * * *
    Kasid Jaborn looked up as the red man appeared out of the night. In the glow from the campfire, dark shadows flitted across the Jakotai’s face and turned it even more savage than normal. There was a brutal cast to Otaktay’s features that had not been there when he’d ridden out to spy on the Reapers camped below. “You found your woman?” Kasid asked.
    “She is with the one called Cree,” Otaktay reported. He withdrew his knife and hunkered down before the fire. He stabbed the blade into the sand repeatedly, seeming to release the fury bunched in his brawny body with each thrust. Beyond the campfire the Ceannus were talking quietly amongst themselves. He—
    like his twin brother Khnum—hailed from Akhkharu and even though he spoke many languages, did not understand Ceannusian. Neither could he delve into the Ceannus’
    mind to discover what it was they were plotting.
    Otaktay turned his head and looked to where Jaborn was staring. He snorted.
    “They fashion their plans and it is up to us to see those plans to completion.” His mouth twisted into an ugly line. “They will not put themselves into danger.”
    Kasid nodded his agreement. He hated the Ceannus almost as much as he hated the Reapers. He had borne no love for his twin—the man Cynyr Cree had killed—but he was honor-bound to take the life of the bounty hunter who had murdered Khnum. He tore his attention from the Ceannus and leveled it upon the brave. “You delivered the shipment?”
    A sneer lifted Otaktay’s upper lip. “I did as I was instructed. What good such things will do is—”
    “You have no notion of how deadly that shipment is,” Kasid interrupted. “If you had not handled it carefully, believe me when I tell you, you would now have more respect for what you delivered.”
    Otaktay shrugged away the other man’s words. There was nothing he feared and the twenty-four strange black ovals he had placed near the edge of the white man’s settlement had held no threat to him.
    “No,” Kasid said quietly, holding Otaktay’s stare, “but had one of the ovals broken open, you would not be sitting there glaring back at me. You would know what evil truly is.”
    Otaktay snorted his contempt of Jaborn’s words and continued to stab his weapon into the sand. The muscles in his naked chest glistened from the sweat that ran over his flesh as he knelt before the roaring fire.
    Kasid studied the Jakotai carefully. Their skin was the same shade of burnished sienna and their hair of a similar texture and blackness. Even their eyes bore the 29
    Charlotte Boyett-Compo
    unmistakable shape of a common ancestor. They were both desert dwellers and carried within their breasts an identical hatred for white men and their ways. Both were cruel hunters and savage opponents, and neither had it within him to show consideration to an enemy. In another time, under different circumstances, they might well have been friends—though neither had ever wanted or sought out such an alliance.
    “How did you manage to kill Gibbs?” Jaborn asked the brave. Otaktay’s smile was brutal. “I had no desire to be in the same world with one such as he. The gods steadied my hand as I took the foul one’s head.” He looked over to his grisly prize perched upon a sharpened stave.
    “It’s not an easy thing to do to dispatch a fellow balgair ,” Kasid observed. “He must have let down his guard.”
    “He was no warrior,” Otaktay stated. “It was an easy thing I did.”
    “What of his parasite?”
    A shadow passed over the brave’s stony face. “What of it?”
    “Did you destroy it when you hacked off Gibbs’ head?”
    Otaktay shook his head. He stabbed his knife one last time into the sand then hunkered there with the blade buried to the hilt, his fingers tensing around the handle.
    “What became of the parasite?” Kasid