The Centurion's Woman

Chapter 15

(Six and a half weeks out of Bonna)

ALEX WOKE UP in the familiar dream, the water pressing around her. The sun shimmered on the surface waves, dancing the opposite of shadows on the sandy lake bottom. Alex didn't feel any fear this time because she knew how to swim and was simply floating freely in the cool lake, admiring the underwater view. She could see Ixillius on the dock above, and decided to swim up to him as it had been over a week since she'd last spoken to him. She'd been missing him these nine days. Perhaps she could persuade him to join her in the water...

        The water made a strange tearing sound as she surfaced.

        Alex jarred awake, the sound still in her ears even though the dream snapped and disappeared. She rolled toward her sword and started to shout Verus's name as hands clamped down on her shoulder and mouth and another set of arms wrapped around her legs. Her fingertips brushed the scabbard as she was yanked out through the cut hole in the tent.

        Alex twisted hard in the grips that held her, fighting as best she could in the circumstances. The arms that held her loosened enough that she could cry out and then the hand clamped back over her mouth. The hand that had been holding only her shoulder slipped around her body and pinned her arms tightly as the grip on her legs redoubled. There was a flurry of strangely quiet activity around her of men whose faces she couldn't see quickly dispatching the sleepy Legionnaires emerging from the tents around Verus's to see what her outcry, and the quietly suspicious noises, were about.

        Then they were moving fast between the tents. Alex struggled harder against the men that held her, managing to free one leg and start using it. There was a satisfying crunch as she correctly gauged the placement of the face attached to the body still holding her other leg, and then both her legs were loose. She tangled her feet easily into the strides of the man still carrying her, twisting and jerking her body free as he was sprawling to the ground.

        Alex bolted into the first opening she saw. One of the men without a face loomed at her side, his hand grabbing at her arm. He screamed as a well-aimed kick bent his knee ninety degrees sideways, then suddenly stopped screaming as she broke his neck.

        "To arms!" Alex roared, hearing swords immediately come loose from their sheaths inside the tents of the Legionnaires nearest to her.

        She made it three strides at a run when the next hand clamped high on her arm. Using the man's momentum as he jerked her back, Alex spun into his body and drove her elbow hard into his gut. His grip on her arm didn't relax, but his other arm was slow trying to grab her, so she changed the angle on her next hit and threw as much of her weight as she could into slamming her loose elbow up where she judged his throat was. Not a perfect hit, but it was hard enough that it didn't matter. The grip on her arm relaxed and she shook it off as the choked gasping started.

        "To arms!" she called again, the cry being taken up by men's voices after sword clashes started ringing behind her. Alex angled her mad dash around the tents back toward the Training Ground, calling out for the Legion to wake the entire way. Verus and Marcus were back to back nearby Verus's tent, the First File yelling crisp orders even as he battled. The pair were well outnumbered, but nowhere near outmatched, and more Legionnaires were running to them. Alex was two strides onto the Ground when suddenly she was lying in the snow.

        The sounds of the battle were distorted, and she looked in the direction of where someone was calling her name. Her view elevated as she was lifted off the ground and her dazed stare landed on Verus, his attack shifting from controlled to infuriated at the wall of faceless men between her and him. Alex reached out a hand to him a moment too late; she couldn't stop the blade from one of the faceless men slashing her brother's leg. Verus knocked the sword away and killed the faceless man, then he was behind a tent and she couldn't see him anymore. Too bad, she thought. He'd looked like a severely pissed angel and she'd wanted to keep watching him.

        Her vision and hearing faded in and out as she was carried out of the camp and into the forest. At some point a heavy fur cloak was tied around her shoulders, fur coverings tied onto her feet, and a rope tied around her wrists. She fought weakly at the rope, earning a slap that drew blood at the corner of her mouth, but it was enough of a distraction to twist the ropes so they looked tight without the man tying her up noticing that they weren't.

        Heavy hoof beats crashed through the undergrowth and a small herd of about fifteen familiar horses joined the group that had stolen Alex. She could see the walnut bay mare and her own big red stallion among them. Without a second thought, Alex lunged at one of the men driving the horses and knocked him over backwards into the snow. Using the new ropes on her wrists to choke him, she called the required orders to Max. Alex rolled clear as soon as she heard the familiar canter, leaving Max to do the thing he was trained to do best.

        The man she'd knocked down didn't even get a chance to scream as the brute pummeled him into the snow. Alex surged to her feet and caught the nearest confused mare, turning her hard by her ear, and sent her running back toward the camp through the hole in the herdsmen's ring that the dead man had left. All but two of the horses charged after the mare that Alex had turned, mowing over at least another two herdsmen – or warriors, it was hard to tell by just screams – on their frightened and angry stampede back to what they considered to be home.

        Then her head exploded and it all went black.

                                                                ***

        Alex woke up after what she guessed was less than an hour later. Her head hurt like a mild concussion, but her eyes focused okay and her hearing was back to normal. She was getting pulled along behind a man on some kind of sled that she was tied to, Max trotting faithfully beside her in the early dawn light, the walnut colored mare she'd befriended beside him. The hushed statements around her were all in the local language, and the communications short and pointed. The men were running through the snow in a very specific direction that was very much away from Minerva's 1st.

        Alex took a deep breath and let out a whistle that made her head feel like it was splitting in half. One of the startled men tried to slap her, and instead ended up being in Max's kick radius. The man's chest seemed to collapse against his spine as he was lifted into the air on Max's back hooves. He crumpled to a broken heap where he landed, the walnut mare close behind the body's trajectory, stomping it into a paste until Max whinnied at her and she rejoined his side. Alex took the opportunity to laugh madly, hearing it as barely better than cackling in her ears, then whistled again. This time she only received a couple of short, angry shouts from the men around her, but once that quieted she heard Hades' distinctive caw answering her from a distance.

        She started her mad laughter again, and was still cackling as she blacked out.