Blood of Wonderland (Queen of Hearts Saga #2)(24)
Morte. She was on Morte, but what was behind her? She managed to turn her head. The Spade was sitting behind her, one arm wrapped around her waist, the other one clutching the red leather reins with desperation. She could see why. Sir Gorrann had been blindfolded. Dinah’s head dropped forward, and she could see that she was bound with a heavy white rope, its texture not unlike the branches of trees. In her mouth was some sort of fabric gag, and she forced herself to breathe through her nose before she choked. The side of her head felt like a blunt object had been shoved through it, and there was dried blood crusted over her eye and nose. She tried to move her mouth and felt the Spade’s hand feel its way up her face and gently remove the gag. His lips brushed against her ear, an angry rush of words pouring out.
“Do not say a word, not one godsdamn word. Yer lucky that I found a rock, otherwise you would be strewn about that field in a thousand pieces.” Dinah felt the waterskin brush her lips. “Drink some water now and yeh go back to sleep. I imagine we have more than a few miles to travel before reaching Hu-Yuhar.”
Dinah could barely nod her head with the thundering pain in her temple, but she managed to swallow a few gulps of water. Sir Gorrann had thrown a rock at her? Her thoughts were confused, cloudy. There were the mushrooms and the Yurkei and their arrows and then . . . she couldn’t remember. Why had the Spade taken her this way in the first place?
Morte’s easy lilt rocked her back to unconsciousness, and when she awoke again, the dusk was settling. She looked around. They were in a vast field of waving pale green grass, as tall as most men, interspersed with curling lavender trees that whirled and leaped from their roots. The wind rippled the grass violently from side to side, and when she tucked her head to avoid a lashing, the Yurkei didn’t even seem to notice.
A line of Yurkei warriors stretched out in front of them, and Dinah noticed that she was surrounded on all sides by Yurkei guards, eyeing her and Sir Gorrann with obvious loathing. She stared back unabashedly at the warriors, so different from anything she had ever seen before. Their skin was a glowing brown, the color of wet sand. Stripes of thick white paint ran from under their eyes down their entire body, covering their arms and bare torsos. Each one had vividly blue eyes that radiated out from their dark faces. They each had white hair that came to a point in the middle of their forehead. Most had short hair, cropped to just below the neck, although Mundoo’s was longer and braided down his back with stripes of blue. Each warrior wore pants (if one could call them that) made of white feathers that sat low and snug around their muscled pelvises.
They were handsome and moved with a graceful ease that eluded every human Dinah had ever known. Their horses were pale tan with white manes, smaller than the mares she had seen in the Wonderland Palace stables. Horse and rider moved as though they were of one mind. Altogether, the Yurkei created the impression of an incredible mass of terrifying skill with their quivers hanging flat across their backs, full of white arrows flecked with gray.
Mundoo rode at the front, the heavy footsteps of his Hornhoov echoing across the quiet landscape. He was taller than the rest, and Dinah could see from the rippling of muscles across his back that he was an impressive specimen. It was strange to look upon Mundoo, whose name struck fear into the heart of every Wonderland girl and boy, and see that while he was no doubt a fierce man, he was still just a man. Stories of the Yurkei ran rampant in Wonderland—stories of the horrors they inflicted upon innocent towns, of how they beat their women, of how they sacrificed their children and gnawed on human bones. It was said that they mated with cranes, and that their offspring were the terrible white bears of the Twisted Wood. Dinah had always been skeptical of the Yurkei stories—mostly because she was skeptical of everything she learned—but she could see now with her own eyes that the stories were grossly exaggerated.
These men weren’t so unlike the Cards. They dressed differently and spoke in a language that sounded like the flowing of water, but they were just men, not monsters. She had learned some basic Yurkei language in her studies, but the true lesson had been unspoken: they are the enemy. Know the language of your enemy.
Dinah struggled against her restraints as her arms fell asleep and her spine raged in protest from being bent forward for so many hours. “Yeh best quit moving,” noted the Spade quietly. “Don’t call attention to yourself.”
“How are you riding Morte?” she mumbled through her gag. Even with the blindfold, she could feel Sir Gorrann’s disappointment boring into her.
Finally, he gave a nod. “He let me climb up—probably because I was carrying yeh. He’s heavily drugged from the mushrooms—he probably isn’t even aware what’s happening right now. He’s just walking. Otherwise, I think he would have killed a great many today.” The Spade paused. “I want to warn yeh that Morte might not live long once we get to Hu-Yuhar. Yeh must understand that he has killed many, many Yurkei.”
Dinah felt her eyes blur with tears and the blood dripping from her head wound. She strained against her gag. “Whhhh . . .” Sir Gorrann pulled it out again. “Why . . . why did you lead me here?”
“Don’t yeh worry about that quite yet. It will all play out.” Dinah closed her eyes again, half-reassured, half-alarmed by the Spade’s presence behind her. “Sleep. I’ll wake yeh when we arrive. Best get yer wits about yeh. And don’t try to kill the chief again, otherwise we’ll both end up riddled with arrows.”