said. "You’ll be safe from the Afghulis there”
"Yes, on a Vendhyan gibbet.”
"I am queen of Vendhya,” she reminded him with a touch of her old imperiousness. "You have saved my life. You shall be rewarded.”
She did not intend it as it sounded, but he growled in his throat, ill pleased.
"Keep your bounty for your city-bred dogs, princess! If you’re a queen of the plains, I’m a chief of the hills, and not one foot toward the border will I take you!”
"But you would be safe” she began bewilderedly.
"And you’d be the Devi again,” he broke in. "No, girl; I prefer you as you are now—a woman of flesh and blood, riding on my saddle-bow.”
"But you can’t keep me!” she cried. "You can’t”
"Watch and see!” he advised grimly.
"But I will pay you a vast ransom”
"Devil take your ransom!” he answered roughly, his arms hardening about her supple figure. "The kingdom of Vendhya could give me nothing I desire half so much as I desire you. I took you at the risk of my neck; if your courtiers want you back, let them come up the Zhaibar and fight for you.”
"But you have no followers now!” she protested. "You are hunted! How can you preserve your own life, much less mine?”
"I still have friends in the hills,” he answered. "There is a chief of the Khurakzai who will keep you safely while I bicker with the Afghulis. If they will have none of me, by Crom! I will ride northward with you to the steppes of the kozaki. I was a hetman among the Free Companions before I rode southward. I’ll make you a queen on the Zaporoska River!”
"But I can not!” she objected. "You must not hold me”
"If the idea’s so repulsive,” he demanded, "why did you yield your lips to me so willingly?”
"Even a queen is human,” she answered, coloring. "But because I am a queen, I must consider my kingdom. Do not carry me away into some foreign country. Come back to Vendhya with me!”
"Would you make me your king?” he asked sardonically.
"Well, there are customs” she stammered, and he interrupted her with a hard laugh.
“Yes, civilized customs that won’t let you do as you wish. You’ll marry some withered old king of the plains, and I can go my way with only the memory of a few kisses snatched from your lips. Ha!”
"But I must return to my kingdom!” she repeated helplessly.
"Why?” he demanded angrily. "To chafe your rump on gold thrones, and listen to the plaudits of smirking, velvet-skirted fools? Where is the gain? Listen: I was born in the Cimmerian hills where the people are all barbarians. I have been a mercenary soldier, a corsair, a kozak, and a hundred other things. What king has roamed the countries, fought the battles, loved the women, and won the plunder that I have?
"I came into Ghulistan to raise a horde and plunder the kingdoms to the south—your own among them. Being chief of the Afghulis was only a start. If I can conciliate them, I’ll have a dozen tribes following me within a year. But if I can’t I’ll ride back to the steppes and loot the Turanian borders with the kozaki. And you’ll go with me. To the devil with your kingdom; they fended for themselves before you were born.”
She lay in his arms looking up at him,
