I could have lain in Taka’s arms for the rest of the day, his strong, solid body against me, his heartbeat in time with my own. For the first time since this spiraling nightmare had started, I felt safe and secure, comfortable and protected. But Taka instantly seemed to pull away from me, mentally, as well as physically. Rolling me aside, he stood up, pulling his tunic back over his head. His seemed unable to look at me and there was a gruffness about his face that seemed alien to the Taka I had so far gotten to know.

I decided to try and lighten the mood, to recapture something of what had passed between us. “Aren’t you going to say sorry?”

Taka looked back at me with a frown. “For what?”

I rolled over on his cloak to show my still glowing backside.

Taka shrugged. “No. You deserved it.”

“I was kidding, I was…”

“You think this is a joke?” Taka said, his voice raw with emotion. “You could have died back there. Would it still have been funny then? Get your clothes back on. And in the name of the gods, do as you’re told or next time I won’t go so easy on you.”

I dressed in silence and confusion. To me, something wonderful had happened, and although it had had an unconventional start, that hardly mattered because of where it had ended up. I had just assumed that Taka had felt something similar, that it had meant more to him than just sex. But from his attitude, I was no longer sure he had even enjoyed it on that level.

“Come on,” said Taka, when I was ready, and led the way back through the rocks.

“How did you find me?” I asked, somewhat timidly.

“I’ve tracked men who’ve wanted to be found a lot less than you.”

It felt like an answer designed to shut down further conversation.

“I’m sorry for wandering off,” I said, after a few more minutes of silence. “That is… not wandering off – I’m sorry for trying to escape.”

Taka’s face regained a little of its habitual composure. “I’d have done the same in your place. Obviously, I’d have done it better but… A captive wants to be free. It’s natural. To be honest, if you hadn’t tried to escape I’d have respected you less.”

“Are you going to tell the others?” I asked. “About any of it.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.” He was thinking of Luca.

“Do you mind if I ask something?” I ventured.

“Could I stop you?”

“You just said, a captive wants to be free. Seems to me you could have left the chain gang anytime you wanted. Especially if Luca and the others were hanging around to help you.”

“I was there for a reason.”

I had surmised as much from their conversation the night before. “Hob?”

Taka nodded. He was silent a moment and then seemed to come to a decision. “General Hob Soro was planning to spend a few days with his family. He was on his way home, spending a night in a town when that town was hit by the forces of Lord Vulpus. If they’d known who he was, they’d have executed him and sent his head to Lord Krius – Hob’s boss. So, he pretended to be a peasant, hoping they’d pass over him. Unfortunately, they were also looking for people to help build their road and the general was conscripted. Somehow, word of what had happened got to Lord Krius.”

“Why didn’t Lord Krius attack?” I asked. “I mean – he must have an army.”

“He does. But when an entire army attacks a chain gang, then what you get are a lot of dead people. Krius needed people who are a bit more surgical.”

“Like you.”

Taka inclined his head. “We’ve all served in one army or another; Luca, Kai, Rex and I. Fate brought us together and now we’re on no one’s side in this war but our own. And as long as we’re good at what we do, then the warlords tolerate us and tolerate the fact that we work for the highest bidder.”

“So, you got yourself arrested and put onto the chain gang?” I guessed.

“We didn’t know what the general looked like,” Taka explained. “I had to make contact with him and let him know what was going on. As well as learning the guards patterns and security precautions.”

“What about the other people who were taken from the town where Hob was?” I asked.

Taka didn’t meet my gaze. “No doubt, some got away after we set the stables on fire and killed half the guards.”

I didn’t say anything for a while. It wasn’t my world, I didn’t understand it, and this man had just saved my life.

But, as ever, I could only hold my tongue for so long. “It doesn’t seem fair.”

“War isn’t fair.”

“But you could have helped them?”

“Maybe. But the more we try to get out, the less likely anyone gets out. Can’t have a heart in this business. And it is a business. We’re in this to make money.”

“And after you’ve gotten rid of me then you’re off to make more.”

Taka had presumably picked up on my judgmental tone. “Everyone’s got to make a living somehow. I’d rather fight to fill my own pockets than those of some damn warlord.”

“Why fight anyone?”

“You should always do what you’re best at.”

I shook my head. “Can I be honest with you?”

“I don’t know why you ask these questions. You’re just going to say what you want. I could stop right here and take my belt to you - give you the hiding of a lifetime - and I think you’d just pick up with the questions before I’d gotten my belt back on.”

I felt a shiver that combined fear and excitement tremble across my body at the thought. Did I want him to do that?

“I just don’t understand how someone who protected me from the convicts back at the camp and from his own comrades, someone who wouldn’t hurt a bear that was trying to kill him because it was just defending its cubs – I don’t understand how that same person can be so mercenary.”

I had been fully prepared for Taka to carry out his threat there and then – perhaps part of me had even been hoping for it – but instead, he gave a little half smile, something that was very Taka, and shrugged. “When you figure it out, then you let me know.”

We arrived back at the campsite and I went back to where I had been sleeping. Meekly, I held out my hands for Taka to tie me back up, but he dismissed the gesture with a wave.

“If you run, you run. I’ll take the heat from the guys. It’s your ass on the line. Literally.”

“Thank you,” I said, and meant it.

He just grunted, reverting to the gruffness that had characterized his demeanor after we had made love.

“I just don’t understand why you fight,” I said, almost too quietly to be heard.

Taka eyeballed me sternly, closing the subject. “Because I never want to be poor again.”

The guys returned from their hunting expedition with a decent haul of game, along with goats’ milk and some foraged roots and herbs.

“We’ll move on and find somewhere safer to spend the night,” said Taka.

“Why isn’t she tied up?” asked Luca.

“She knows the score,” replied Taka.

Luca didn’t look particularly happy about this but let the subject drop without further argument.

Getting back into the saddle with my ass still smarting was not comfortable, but I tried to act normal and not wriggle too much as we rode up higher into the mountains. The journey was slow, the horses forced to pick their way up the narrow, steep paths, made dangerous by loose rock beneath and the threat of avalanche from above, but it gave me my first real opportunity to have a proper look at my captors. Or, perhaps, it was the first time I felt inclined to do so. The afternoon with Taka had changed the way I looked at, not just him, but all of them. I no longer feared them in the same way, even Luca. Up to now, I think I had purposely avoided looking at Luca for fear that he saw me looking and took offense. Now, I was brave enough to look him in the face, what I saw surprised me.

I think I had developed a picture of Luca in my mind, but the face I saw when I looked at him by the light of the waning afternoon sun, was far from the weasel I had imagined. His hair was sandy blond, his complexion an almost golden tan, and his eyes sky blue. At moments like this, there was a quality to his expression that I could only call ‘kindness’, which seemed to vanish as soon as he became conscious of it. There was something self-aware about how Luca held himself, like a man who had been bitten once and was now unwilling to let his guard down. Physically, he was not as thick set as Taka, though they were about the same height, and I would have placed him at a few years younger. He had a swimmer’s physique – long, smoothly muscled limbs – and wore a long sword strapped across his back.

Kai and Rex I would have guessed were about the same age, in their early twenties and they seemed close friends, riding together, sharing jokes – or, at least, Kai telling jokes and Rex laughing in his booming tones. But any similarity ended with their age. Kai was the shortest of the quartet – though still around six foot – and the least built, his muscles rangy and compact in his slight form as befits an archer who has to be quick on his feet.

By contrast, Rex looked like he had been hewn out of a mountain. He towered over his friend, and the double-headed axe he carried probably didn’t weigh that much less than me. His chest was broad, a muscular acreage that threatened to burst out of his tunic at any time. His arms were massive and when he flexed a huge bicep, it looked about the size of my waist. Rex’s hair was thick and jet-black while Kai’s was light brown; Rex had a beard while Kai was clean shaven; Kai’s eyes were green while Rex’s were dark brown. In manner, too, the pair differed.

Kai was quick-witted and chatty, keeping the company’s spirits up as we climbed higher. Rex was good-natured but preferred to laugh at Kai’s jokes than make ones of his own. He spoke in a slower more considered fashion. They were both, I found myself thinking – and somewhat admonishing myself for doing so – very good-looking, though, again, in different and contrasting ways. There was something safe and protective about Rex, for all his size, he no longer struck me as frightening, there was a sweetness that showed in the shy smile that peeped from behind his beard and twinkled in his dark eyes. He seemed to me, now, a gentle giant, but one with an edge of danger that would flare into life if those he loved needed his protection. Kai’s attractiveness was more obvious, I supposed, he was youthful, energetic and bright, an enthusiasm infusing everything he did. His smile was quick and, like his eyes, full of mischief – the type of boy I would have loved to get into trouble with when I was a kid, and I found myself eager to get into trouble with him again now.

As we found a secluded and easily defensible spot in which to spend the night, I found myself looking at all my companions in a different way. A way that made me feel uncomfortably warm and flushed. That couldn’t be right, could it? They were my captors. But then again, they had also rescued me from my captors, in a way. Unlike when I had been with the chain gang, I did not feel like a captive. More pointedly, there had been this afternoon’s encounter with Taka. Although it had started in the heat of the moment, for me, at least, it had turned into something more.

But how could I say that about Taka whilst simultaneously assessing the attractiveness of his comrades in arms? There were some questionable spots in my romantic past but I had never been that sort of girl – it was something I was very proud of. The problem was that, right now, looking at those four guys and not knowing which way to look, I found myself really, really wanting to be that sort of girl.

Part of the problem was that – call me crazy, but I was sure they were starting to look back at me in a similar way. When my horse struggled to clamber up a steep slope, Kai came back to take my reins and guide me up. His hand brushed against mine, we both glanced up, and our eyes met and I saw a heat entirely uncharacteristic of the light-hearted, happy-go-lucky, Kai. He looked away on the instant, tugging hard on the reins to encourage my steed up the incline.

Later, when I dismounted, I caught Rex shyly looking at me. There was an almost confusion on his face, as if he was struggling to deal with what he was seeing or what he was feeling, or how what he was seeing was making him feel. I doubted that he, or any of these men, were strangers to women – they were soldiers, they had been around – but something about me had seemed to elicit this curious response from Rex. When we all bedded down for the night, I felt that prickling sensation you sometimes get when someone is looking at you. Opening my eyes a crack, I saw Luca, his features thrown into attractive relief by the fire, staring at my face, his eyes smoldering to match the fire itself. There was something in the set of his features that told me he did not want to be staring like this and yet, he seemed unable to tear his gaze from me.

It could have been my imagination, or just wishful thinking, and yet…

I had expected to be shaken awake early, ready to travel on, leading our pursuers further and further from Hob, but I was allowed to sleep and wake of my own accord. When I did so, I saw the men in earnest discussion, their voices too low for me to overhear. As I watched, Kai noticed me and pointed. I waved a good morning and saw Taka look in question toward his comrades. Kai and Rex nodded firmly, Luca took a moment longer but nodded as well, and Taka came over to squat beside me.

“Get yourself up, there’s food over the fire but we need to be moving soon.” As I did as I was told, he spoke again. “Where are you from? What’s the name of your village?”

“South of the mountains,” I replied, as I hastily wolfed down some freshly cooked rabbit. “Stenheim.”

“And Lord Vulpus’s men took you from there?”

“Not exactly. It’s a long story. I was chased by bandits, I went to a pair of soldiers for help and…”

“They turned out to be guards with the chain gang.” Taka nodded. His eyes once again flicked over to his friends and, though I noticed little change in their expressions, something seemed to pass between them. Taka looked back to me. “We’ll take you back there.”

I gasped, wondering if I had misunderstood. “You mean…?”

“We’re trying to lead these idiots on a wild goose chase. Stenheim is as good a direction as any. They won’t follow us much further south, so your village will be safe enough.”

“It’s out of our way,” said Luca, in a level voice, not suggesting that this was a good or a bad thing but simply stating it.

“But an extra week of travel won’t hurt us,” added Taka. “Our money isn’t going anywhere.”

“The job might,” muttered Luca, more negative this time.

“Lord Krius said he’d have work for us. I don’t think that will change for the sake of seven days.”

Luca did not reply and I guessed that the discussion had taken place before I awoke.

“Thank you.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say at that moment, though it seemed inadequate to the situation. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say. I can’t thank you enough.”

Yesterday, I had started to look at these men differently, as I became more aware of their physical attractiveness. This morning, the way I saw them changed again as I realized that there was more to these mercenaries than met the eye.