See Prologue (A) for Disclaimers

The Terron attacked a second time, swinging his sword in a deadly arc that came closer than the last one.  Tao, having arrived moments before at the edge of the wood, watched them carefully.  The girl was a safe distance away from them at this point, but the river was getting deeper and colder.  Tao judged a path that would keep him out of Dar's way as the BeastMaster fought and hurried towards the girl.  To his surprise, he realized that he recognized her from the Terron camp when he himself had been a slave there.  He searched his memory for her name and found it only when he got close enough to see the determination in her eyes.   Survivor.  Miren, that was it!

She apparently recognized him as well, for she smiled slightly as he reached the water and waded towards her.  "Come on," Tao said gently.  "Dar will take care of him, and this water's cold."

Miren chuckled and placed her hand in the one he extended.  "You never did like the cold," she answered.

Tao blinked and then grinned at her, surprised that she remembered that.  He recalled when he was first taken by the Terrons and had been tossed rather unwillingly into the lake when he asked about bathing.  The water had been frigid at that time of year.  Tao didn't even remember seeing Miren there.  But then again, most of those first days were a blur, and she was not one to make herself conspicuous.  That was, he recalled, one of the ways she stayed true to the name her mother had given her.  As he helped her out of the river, water soaking her robes so that they clung closely to her body, he saw with a start what Dar and Ruh had spotted earlier.

As often happened with the young Eiron, Tao's mouth moved before his brain could stop it.  "You're with child!" he gasped.

Miren raised a dark eyebrow at him, wry amusement in her gaze even as she shivered slightly with cold.  "And you always were observant."

Tao dragged his gaze away from her very rounded belly and up to her face.  His smile faltered slightly as he realized, almost for the first time, how very young she was.  That was another thing he had not truly recalled; all the women in the Terron camp were a blur as well, their faces and ages indeterminate.  Part of that was from pain and the use to which the Terron males put them, but part of it to Tao was also for the protection of his own heart and mind.  He had seen much during his time at the Terron camp, and if he had allowed himself to see the women as individuals, even as young or old, his heart would have shattered a million times over at his inability to help them.  He had closed his eyes to a certain point, but now he could not.

Gods, she can't be much more than eighteen . . .  my sister's age . . .  Gods help me, if anyone ever did this to Kili. . .

Tao knew perfectly well that the chances of the pregnancy being the product of either planning or affection were completely nil.  Affection did not exist in the Terron society.  But he pushed down his anguish and hate, pushed them behind those long-ago walls, and smiled at Miren instead.  He unwrapped his cloak/blanket from about his shoulders and placed it around her gently.  "Can't have you catching cold in your condition."

Miren smiled at him, the expression soft but strained, as if she were not used to it.  "You were also always kind," she said quietly.  "Thank you.  Your name . . .  it is Tao, no?"

Tao nodded.  "And yours is Miren.  Kintiri for "survivor."  I remember you from the camp."

Miren nodded.  She looked over his shoulder to where Dar stood a few yards away.  He was taking his staff apart and returning the halves to the unique holster on his back.  The last Terron lay on the rocks of the riverbed, unconscious.  "And he is the BeastMaster.  The one Zad wants so badly."

"Dar," Tao told her.  "The tiger is Ruh, the eagle is Sharak.  And the ferrets -- you'll meet them soon -- are Kodo and Podo.  Though I think Dar's the only one who can tell them apart."

Miren chuckled, then nodded at Dar in gratitude as he reached them.  "I owe you and your animals my life, BeastMaster."

Dar smiled, that disarmingly innocent smile that seemed in direct contradiction with the very mature and sensual look of the rest of him.  "They're not mine," he corrected.  "And you owe us nothing.  We have no love for the Terrons, or their treatment of defenseless women -- especially pregnant ones."

Miren smiled thinly.  "Pregnant yes," she said, slipping her knife back into her belt.  "Defenseless, no."  Dar and Tao both smiled in response and acknowledged the point.  Miren looked at the limp bodies of the Terrons with a cold gaze.  "Are they all dead?" she asked Dar.  The BeastMaster shook his head.  "If any of them return to Zad, he'll send others."

Dar smiled grimly as Ruh growled softly from where the men lay.  "I think Ruh has decided that won't happen.  He has cubs.  He wants to protect you."

Miren blinked, then smiled slowly.  "Then I am very fortunate."

Tao smiled.  "Come on," he said, putting a hand gently under her elbow.  "Let's get you into some dry clothes."

~*~*~*~

"How long have you been running from the Terrons?" Dar asked.

They were sitting by a small fire, Miren wrapped in Tao's cloak/blanket while her dress and robe dried on a set-up of sticks Tao had arranged a safe distance from the blaze.  Ruh had settled himself close to the pregnant girl, who showed no fear of the tiger, and was soaking in the warmth of the fire with a contented rumbling purr.  Miren, upon his invitation, leaned back slightly against the tiger, sharing in the warmth.

"About two months," she answered.  "And it's been more of a . . .  fast walk."

Tao chuckled.  Dar smiled but shook his head.  "Why risk the journey?"  At her raised eyebrow, he amended, "I meant, why not wait until the child was born?"

"I couldn't risk it."

Tao glanced at Dar and explained.  "The Terrons take boy-children from their mothers at birth, to be raised by the warriors."

Dar's eyes widened in understanding.  Miren noticed and smiled thinly.  "The girl-children are left with their mothers.  So they are easily available when they come of age."

Dar stared at her, his face paling and then flushing with anger.  He remembered what Tao had told him the first time they met.   There are worse things than death.  Only now, looking at Miren, did he truly understand -- allow himself to understand.  A Terron child had no choice in its future, nor did a woman have a choice in her role in the camp.  Kyra had been truly lucky; he saw that now.

"Had I stayed," Miren said with quiet anger, "my child would have been a slave like her mother, or a monster like the men who sired him.  I could not live with either of those possibilities."

"I'm sorry," Dar murmured.  He didn't know what else to say; there was too much rage in him at the Terrons.

Miren gave him a small smile.  "What could you have done, BeastMaster?  You are one man.  They are many.  Even with your Ruh, and Sharak, there is nothing you could do to save us."

Tao smiled softly, but there was bitterness in the expression.  "I remember those words."

Miren looked at him.  Her eyes were suddenly gentle.  "They were true then, as well."

Tao shook his head, but didn't answer.  Instead, he stood up and said, "I'm going to go look for some herbs to make tea.  Warm you up some more."

He turned and left before either Miren or Dar could speak.  Dar looked completely confused.  He knew Tao had been in the Terron camp for almost three months before making his escape, but the young man rarely spoke of those days -- though to be honest, Dar hadn't sought much information from him.  Tao's silence on the subject hadn't seemed strained, however, until now.  Dar watched his friend slip into the surrounding forest and frowned.  He started to stand, to follow him, but paused.

Miren shook her head.  "I'll be fine."

Dar looked at her and had the feeling that a soul far older than his was regarding him.  He nodded and stood.  "Ruh will watch over you."

Miren smiled slightly and nodded.  Dar followed Tao into the woods.

The young Eiron was searching out and picking herbs, as he had said, but his attention was on something else.  The plants could never have offended him so greatly as to deserve the hard plucking he was granting them.

Dar watched him for a while, startled at the anger in the other man's stride and on his face.  He had seen Tao upset, even angry, before but he had never seen him like this.  It was as if there was a great fury inside him, a prowling beast that wanted to lash out.  A beast that was haunting his soul.  Dar approached him quietly, then very purposefully snapped a twig under his foot, knowing how much Tao hated it when he glided up so silently.  The Eiron started and turned, but there was no teasing rebuke.  He frowned and Dar assured him, "Ruh and Sharak are guarding her."

Tao nodded and turned back to his herb-gathering, silent.  Dar's frown returned and deepened.  Tao not talking was something akin to the sky turning green.  After a long moment, during which it became clear Tao was not going to start any subject, let alone the one which was bothering him, Dar decided to speak.  The words he chose, however, surprised even Dar himself.  "You told me once that there are worse things than death.  What did you mean?"

Tao froze, his hand settling over a tender shoot with far greater force than intended.  For a long moment, Dar thought he would not answer.  Finally, though, he drew his hand back from the crushed herb and turned to face Dar.  His face showed a struggle for control, and his breath was uneven; his eyes remained on a spot on the ground.  Slowly, he said, "When the Terrons took me captive, almost six months ago . . . I wasn't alone.  I had been traveling for nearly a year, alone, and somewhere in the middle of the mountain-range to the west . . ."  He laughed bitterly.  "I got myself in trouble, like always.  Got my foot stuck between some rocks in a ravine.  Another traveler came along on the trail and took pity."

His eyes rose and he smiled slightly, the pain almost hidden in his tawny eyes.  "Her name was Aleye.  She was older than you and I by a few years, close to thirty, I think.  She was . . . beautiful in her own way.  Tall and sharp, with strange red hair, and black eyes.  Different.  I thought she was a sorceress at first."  Tao chuckled.  "I was close.  She was a witch.  She didn't have a lot of power, but it was enough to get my foot free of the rocks.  We stayed together after that, mostly I think so she could watch out for me.  She was very maternal, not at all the way she looked."

The humor faded abruptly from his face.  There was a moment of silence before he continued.  "We'd been on the plains for only a week when the Terron group found us.  Aleye tried to fight them, told me to run, but . . . I couldn't leave her.  I don't know, now, whether that was good or bad.  Maybe if I'd run she wouldn't have used so much of her energy later to protect me.  Maybe . . ."  He shook his head.  Dar remained silent, letting him work through the emotions that were so clear in his eyes.

Tao gathered his thoughts, struggling again to keep control over his emotions.  "Aleye's gift was the ability to manipulate minds.  She couldn't make them let us go, but . . . she . . . kept the warriors away from me and the other slaves when they were drunk.  Sometimes when they weren't.  She made them want her instead."  He looked at Dar and there was pain in his eyes so great that it made the BeastMaster's heart ache in sympathy, even as his mind tried to rebel against what Tao was implying.  The thought of anyone using the young scholar, his friend, in that way made him hate the Terrons all the more.  After a moment, Tao continued.

"They kept going to her.  They liked to hurt . . . and she let them.  To protect me."  The bitterness in his voice was overwhelming now.  Dar didn't know what to say.  "She was strong, but even the strongest of wills . . ."  He blinked back tears fiercely, once again fixing his gaze on a spot of turf.  "There came a time when she couldn't handle any more.  Couldn't protect me, couldn't protect herself.  She . . . she just wanted it to end.  So one day, three months after they took us, when I was too far away to stop her, and the Terrons took the women to bathe . . ."  Tao raised his eyes to meet Dar's.  "She went out to the middle of the lake, where the water was deep, and she drowned herself."

Dar's eyes widened, his breath catching in his throat.  His tongue seemed frozen as he tried desperately to take in this information and at the same time think of something, anything, to say.  The only thing that came was a hushed, "I'm so sorry . . ."

Tao smiled slightly, the expression bitter and twisted.  "So was I.  I saw them carry her body out of the water and throw it on the ground like . . . like meat.  Like something that had no value.  It was the only time they let me go near her, touch her.  I tried to breathe life into her again, the way my father taught me, but it was no use.  And all the while they were laughing.   Laughing."

His eyes hardened and Dar began to realize just how deeply Tao hated these people, how much of a struggle it had been for him to accompany Dar back into their midst not once but three times.  And why it had hurt him so deeply when Milina, the girl they had rescued and taken to the Amazons, had crept closer and closer to a poisoned death.  But Tao wasn't finished yet.

"I wanted to attack them, tear their throats out," the scholar continued.  "I tried to, I think, but Miren . . . I remember her and some of the other women grabbing me, stopping me.  They felt they owed her, I think . . .  And Miren told me that I would do Aleye's memory dishonor by getting myself killed now.  That night, she told me that there was nothing I could have done to save her.  That it was better this way.  I remember asking her how she could say something like that.  And she just . . . looked at me.  And asked me how I could  not say that.  She told me, then, that there are worse things than death, and that I should be glad that Aleye was free of them.  That others were not so lucky."

Dar looked away, remembering his own preoccupations that had kept him from seeing before what that meant.  Tao saw his expression and nodded.  "I didn't think about it, then," Tao said.  "I didn't really want to.  It would have hurt too much, I think.  Because Miren was right: there was nothing I could do to save them.  But now, seeing her . . .  That child was neither a choice nor a gift of love, Dar."

Dar swallowed hard and nodded.  "I know," he whispered.

Tao nodded again.  "And I will be damned if I let any Terron ever lay his hands on her again."

Dar looked at him, still partly surprised at the vehemence in his friend's voice.  But not as surprised as he might have been even a day before.  He understood him now, or was beginning to.  Tao had a healer's soul and it hurt to him see someone in pain without being able to ease it.  His agony over Milina's worsening state while Dar searched for the fire-lily made so much more sense now.

It must have hurt even more with Aleye's death still weighing on that healer's soul, Dar thought, seeing his friend with new eyes.   Once again he had been helpless, seen himself as a failure to someone he wanted so desperately to aid and protect. There were a great many things Dar did not know about his friend, and he flinched as he thought of how close he had come to simply sending the man off without ever knowing him even this much.   No more.  I won't underestimate him ever again after this.  And I won't fail him in this task, for his sake and  the girl's.

Grimly, Dar nodded.  "As will I," he said quietly.  A moment passed and he stepped forward and placed a hand on Tao's shoulder, almost awkwardly.  "I'm sorry, Tao.  It took great strength for you to go back with me to that camp.  I never appreciated that before.  I do now.  Thank you."

Tao blinked and focused his thoughts on the more recent past, and the present.  He shook his head, some of the shadows lightening in his eyes.  "You're my friend, Dar.  That's all there is to it."

Dar shook his head.  "Not that first time.  You could have just run.  You didn't -- and I didn't thank you for it before."

Tao smiled slowly, his expression showing that same dawning of the realization that this man was actually his friend that Dar had seen before.  "You're welcome," he said simply, softly.

Dar smiled.  "Now.  Let's see about getting Miren and her child to somewhere safe.  Sharak says he has a few ideas."

Tao smiled back.  "He should.  He's been around long enough."

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