The Outworlder Read Online Free Page A

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for two. He glanced over at her. She was still sleeping, but on her
side now, and anguish had formed a faint knot between her
eyebrows.
    Suddenly her hand tightened convulsively into
a fist, and tears slipped from underneath her lashes. Her lips
moved as though she was speaking, but no sound came from them. Then
her face was quiet again. Peace smoothed the furrows from her
forehead and dried her tears, and she slept on.
    Jared sighed and rolled over, closing his
eyes. There would be time for questions and answers soon enough,
but the time for sleep was almost gone.
    His eyes snapped open some hours later. The
torches had guttered out, but the cave wasn’t totally dark. It was
morning.
    Jared got to his feet and opened the door of
the cave. The violent night winds had stilled into a gentle
breathing, and the eastern horizon trembled with light. To the
west, the last of the night stars were ending their dance, drowning
in the glow that was spreading across the sky. He inhaled deeply as
the dawn breeze stirred his hair, and then he turned back to wake
Sahara.
    To his surprise, she was already up, sitting
with her back against the wall and her knees drawn up under her
chin.
    “How long have you been awake?” he asked.
    Sahara shrugged.
    “Do you feel better?”
    She shrugged again. Jared arched an eyebrow
but said nothing more. He drew a cupful of water from the jar and
drank it down in one draught and then drew some for Sahara.
    “Here,” he said.
    She moved stiffly, wincing when she put
weight on her right foot, and reseated herself near the copper fire
bowl. She took the water and Jared watched with amusement as she
tried not to drink as greedily as she obviously wanted to.
    “We have some distance to go today before we
get to the city,” he added, “so the sooner we begin the less we’ll
suffer the heat of the day. Are you hungry?”
    She drank down the rest of the water,
watching him over the rim of the cup. When she finished, she said,
“No.”
    “You should eat something anyway,” he told
her. “You walked a long way yesterday with nothing to eat.” He took
a piece of flatbread from one of the baskets and placed a handful
of dried fruits, some nuts, and a long strip of dried meat on it.
“It’s not much, but it will sustain you until we get to where we’re
going.”
    She took the food mutely. Jared heaped up a
trencher of his own and sat across from her, watching her examine
what he’d offered her. She gingerly put one of the dried fruits in
her mouth, but when her teeth closed on it her expression
changed.
    Jared grinned to himself. He remembered the
first time he’d tasted them himself. He’d expected them to be sour,
the way they were shriveled up. But they were spicy-sweet and still
juicy.
    The taste of the dried fruit seemed to waken
her ravenous hunger, and she greedily shoved an entire handful into
her mouth. She barely finished chewing them before she started
gnawing on the dried meat.
    Jared grinned. “So you were hungry after
all.”
    Sahara glanced up at him, her cheeks bulging
with meat and bread, and there was a smoldering in the depths of
her eyes. Jared shook his head and swallowed his laughter with a
draught of water.
    They were ready to leave the cave within the
half-hour. By the time they stepped out into the desert, the sun
had just risen above the horizon and the sands glowed like molten
gold.
    Jared set an easy pace, following the rim of
the foothills into the rising sun, but they hadn’t gone far before
Sahara began to lag behind. He glanced back once to see her
limping, but as soon as she saw him watching her, she straightened
up and glowered at him. He shrugged and kept the pace for a few
more minutes, until he heard her stop. He turned around and saw her
sitting on the sand.
    “We haven’t gone far enough for a rest yet,”
he said, jogging easily back to her side. “We’ve got to get to the
next ring of foothills first.”
    She glared up at him, her face smeared