“My helm was leaking rust again,” Robin was griping. “I was all but blinded by the sting in the last run.”
“Endeavor not to sweat so much,” Sparrow grumbled, glancing up. “More likely it is your vanity stinging at the thought of having to accept a lady’s favor with orange stripes running down your face. Fear not, Lord Cockerel. Timkin is wearing his feet to the bone rolling your tourney armour in oiled sand. By the time we reach Gaillard you should glitter and gleam enough to attract the eye of any a nubile young dove you choose.”
Robin glared and was about to voice a retort when he saw Brenna approaching and nodded a curt greeting. One look at his eyes told her it was not just the discomfort of his ribs causing him to seek a moment’s respite; more likely it was a head the size of a barrel of ale.
Sparrow, meanwhile, had clambered up onto a stool to fit the bulky mail hauberk over Will’s shoulders and was buckling the straps up the back. He was apparently in no better fettle, for his eyes were mere squints and his cherub’s nose was in full blush. Will simply looked green.
“Well, and a good morrow to you all,” Brenna said cheerfully. “I see the lot of you have come to the green well rested and full of vinegar.”
Will belched quietly and turned to offer a sarcastic smile but was prodded out of his intention by a pudgy hand.
“Pay heed, Will-of-the-Scarlet-Eyes, and try to recall the lessons we have striven to impart. Carry the lance thus, supported in the palms, not the fingers, with the shaft balanced over the left arm, not across the mane of the steed as you did in Poitou. If you are too weary to carry it with some measure of fortitude, seek out a bed and lay your head upon it, thereby saving us all the aggravation of dragging your cockles out of the mud.”
Will groaned and rolled his eyes in Robin’s direction. “Once,” he said. “I rested the lance once.”
“And you will hear about it until the day your toes turn up,” Robin assured him grimly.
“If you must rest it,” Sparrow lectured, pouncing on the slip, “rest it on the leg … thus!” He clapped a hand to his thigh for emphasis. “From here it can be regained quickly. Or rest it on your chest, putting your hand as close to your arm as you are able, and bent in such a fashion as to offer support. But take care not to twist or lean forward”—he did both by way of demonstration—“for it defeats the purpose of trying to catch the breath, and only leaves you gasping for more.”
“It would likely topple you out of the saddle as well,” Robin noted dryly, pulling on his gauntlets again.
“Toppling will not happen,” Sparrow decreed firmly. “Not if the lance is borne properly. Do not tilt the tip upward, especially if you have the wind in your face or if the horse is cantering. If you have no help for it but to be in a full gallop, press the heels down and squ-eeeze the legs tight, matching your body to the rhythm of the beast beneath you.”
“Somewhat in the same fashion as you did last week with that little black-haired wench,” Robin mused.
Sparrow threw his hands up in a gesture of defeat. “Lummocks, the brace of you. The saints should grant me martyrdom for even trying to breach the thickness of your skulls. Go then. Launch yourselves at shadows and see if you can hit the target at least once this day.”
“Which one?” Will asked. “I see three hanging from each pole.”
“No matter,” Robin added. “By the time you gallop over there, your lance will feel like it has three tips as well.”
Will pulled his bascinet over the flaming crop of his hair and managed a weak grin in Brenna’s direction before mounting the block and swinging himself on his charger. He hovered there a wild moment while he fought not to swing right off the other side of the saddle, but then he found his balance and snatched up the gauntlets and helm Timkin handed up to him.
“Five marks says the weight of his head brings him down before the end of the second run,” Brenna murmured.
“A fool’s wager,” Sparrow countered. “The pillock will be digging dirt out of his nose on the first pass.”
“Shall I hang you up somewhere comfortable to watch?”
His face swelled and flooded crimson to the roots of his curly black hair. He muttered something under his breath—something to do with the wisdom of drowning all females at birth—then stomped after Robin and Will, shouting last-minute instructions.
Brenna was still laughing when she turned and found herself standing face to face with Griffyn Renaud. He had not made a whisper of sound to warn of his approach or presence. He was simply there, leaning his shoulder against a wooden pole, his arms folded negligently across his chest, his mouth curved in a cynical smile. He was not in armour and obviously had not taken advantage of his host’s invitation to run a few practices course before Gaillard, He was watching, however, and undoubtedly noting every small nuance of Robin’s style and manner. A cheap means, Brenna thought, of gaining an advantage over one’s opponent.
It was the first time she had seen him without the disadvantage of shadows blunting his features. The purpling haze of dusk had softened him somewhat by the river, while torchlight and candlelight had proved inadequate for an honest evaluation in the castle and bath house. She was not exactly sure what more could have shocked her after last night, but shocked she was. In the bright, unflattering harshness of direct sunlight, he was quite simply heart-stopping. His hair was so black it glinted blue, his skin was weathered bronze, and where it covered his cheekbones and stretched over the finely chiselled flare of his nostrils, it was smooth and unmarked, stripping away the extra years intimated by his preference for shadows.
In the forest, Brenna had guessed his age to be higher than the twenty-four years he shared with Robin, but she thought she could see some hint of lost youth in him now, in the pearly gray-green sheen of his eyes and the small crinkles at the corners that seemed to be telling her they wanted to not be always on their guard but had simply forgotten how.
“God’s grace to you this morning, my lady. I trust you passed a restful night and are well at ease.”
Brenna watched his mouth as it formed the harmlessly polite words. He had shaved most of the rough stubble from his jaw and looked as refreshed as if he had spent the last few hours deep in sleep, not inciting a drunken night of debauchery.
“I am surprised you would even dare to mention last night. I am, in fact, surprised you are still here. Your kind usually skulk away under cover of darkness, do they not?”
“My … kind?”
She drew a shallow breath and released it on a brisk huff. “What term to do you prefer, sirrah, when you boast your profession? Routier? Brabançon? Hireling? Or will simple mercenary do?”
His face seemed perfectly composed, the mask of casual indifference had not altered in the least, but she thought she saw a muscle flicker in the angle of his jaw. “Are you always so quick with your judgments? What if I said I was none of those things?”
“You would,” she said evenly, “be adding liar to your vast repertoire of attributes.”
She gave him her best and coldest glare and walked past him toward the archery run.
Two boys, lounging on the green watching the knights practice, jumped quickly to attention as she approached the long, wide strip of grassy common. It ran from one end of the bailey to the other with straw butts and painted canvas targets placed at various distances along the run; the closest at fifty yards, the middle at a hundred, the last against the far wall, two hundred yards away. She leaned the two spare bows against a low wooden barricade and set her quivers on the bench, then produced a sticky-sweet confection for each of the boys, who would happily spend the next few hours fetching the spent arrows from the targets.
“May I?”
Startled, she saw a long, linen-clad arm reach past her shoulder and lift one of the bows. His sleeve brushed her shoulder with the motion and when she looked, he was standing close enough she could have counted each individual long lash that framed his eyes. Close enough she thought she detected the faint,
lingering scent of the camphor oil she had rubbed so dexterously into the broad, rippling shoulders last night.
While she watched, he tested the weight and balance of the longbow, holding it with a hand obviously familiar with all manner of weaponry. Without asking her permission, he leaned against the shaft and bent it to seat the bowstring.
“I would not have thought someone as slight as yourself could handle one of these things,” he murmured, glancing pointedly at her arms, “yet your brothers tell me you are quite the marksman.”
He passed the compliment as if he believed her shot in the woods the previous day had been mere luck.
“Do you shoot, sirah?” she asked through her teeth.
“Only if my belly has gone too long without meat.”
The comment drew her gaze downward to the powerful presentation of chest, shoulders, and flat, hard belly, and she doubted if he went without anything for too long a time. He was wearing a hunting green tunic of soft kid leather and a plain, loose-sleeved shirt beneath, but the casual ease with which he presented himself was deceiving. She had felt those muscles and found iron in those sinews; she imagined he could break half-grown trees in his hands if he put his mind to it.
He caused Tansy to faint three times in his arms, Helvise had said. Three times …
He selected an arrow out of a quiver and gave it the same intense scrutiny as the bow. The shaft was ashwood, nearly three feet long, tipped with an iron broadhead, counterbalanced with three vanes of gray goosefeather fletching. He nocked it to the string and held the bow in a horizontal position, face-on to the target as someone accustomed to firing a crossbow might do. Braced with his feet wide apart, he drew the fletching back between pinched fingers and sighted along the shaft.
A child, if he had the power in his arm to draw the string, could have launched the arrow as far as the first butt, yet Renaud appeared to be pleased with himself for doing so. He had even managed to hit the target, near the edge of the butt to be sure, but bedded an inch deep in the canvas and straw.
“Awkward,” he pronounced. “But interesting.”
Brenna cast a derisive glance at the bold rogue knight before she took up her new bow and selected an arrow from the quiver. She paused to put on a specially made three-fingered glove, acutely aware of Renaud’s gaze on her as she did so. Was it her imagination, or did it just seem as though his mouth had taken a fuller shape in the daylight? The recollection of it, warm and possessive, moving over hers as if she were a sugared confection, sent a rash of pinpricks across the surface of her skin, and she averted her eyes quickly.
She turned sideways so that she stood at right angles to the target, her face sharply to the left, and, after expelling a soft breath to curse her own foolishness, raised the bow to a vertical position and fired, barely having to sight at all at such a paltry distance.
The arrow hiss-ssed straight and true to the center of the butt, but it was the explosive power behind the shot that caused the pale green eyes to narrow. The bolt struck the target with the force of an axe, sending the bale flying backward to crash and roll on the ground.
Renaud stared at it a moment, then touched a long, tapered finger to his eyebrow in a mock salute. “A fine shot. The target, like the tree yesterday, did not stand a chance.”
“Had it been a man,” she said calmly, “his leg would have been pinned to his horse and the bone shattered, even through armour.”
“At fifty yards,” Renaud conceded agreeably, “it is possible for a crossbow to accomplish the same thing.”
“If the horseman agreed to bare his leg and hold himself still while the bowman set his shot. Meanwhile, I would have fired ten times and skewered ten more limbs.”
“A confident enough boast, but would it hold true at a greater distance?”
“It might,” she said, her eyes steady on his. “If there were enough incentive.”
“That sounds like an invitation for a wager,” he mused.
“How much do you have to squander?”
“In coin? Very little.”
“I would settle for a few honest answers.”
He gave her a lopsided smile. “A higher price than you realize. What are you willing to wager in return?”
“What do you want?”
“I doubt you would be willing to pay it.”
“Try me. I have been known to bid recklessly.”
“Very well then.” He glanced away for a brief moment, and when he faced her again some of the tightness in his jaw had relented and the guarded look in his eyes had softened to something verging on boyish mischief. “My prize … would be a long, sweet, unreserved kiss. With your hair loose and”—he grinned faintly—“your feet bare.”
Brenna opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again to release a small, pent-up breath.
“Too much to ask?”
“What?”
“The bared feet… was it too much?”
Whatever she imagined she had seen in his eyes was gone, shielded again behind the hard, cynical gleam. His mouth was again set with a mocking curve and his brow assumed an ironic tilt that made her doubt she had glimpsed anything at all beneath the cold, impervious surface.
“The day you outshoot me, sirrah, I will lay naked on the grass and let you do what you will with me.”
“Brave words, demoiselle.”
“Backed by my oath of honor, I assure you.”
“I will hold you to it,” he warned gravely.
“I would expect nothing less.”
He held out his hand, inviting her to shoot first. Brenna selected another arrow and moved to align herself with the target placed a hundred yards down the run. She held her bow arm rigid, nocked the arrow and drew the fletching back to her cheek, sighting but a moment before she snapped her fingers away from the string and fired at the second butt. This time she not only struck the center ring of the target but sent the arrow clear through it and into the grass several feet behind.
She relaxed her arms and looked at him, her own eyebrow crooked upward.
“Damned fine shot,” he admitted reluctantly. “Difficult to match.”
“Not for a man who claims to have no weaknesses.”
“When in God’s name did I claim that?”
He looked so perplexed she almost smiled. “Last night at the castle gates. Do I assume it was just an idle boast?”
He frowned and picked out another arrow, fitting it to his bow as he approached the line. This time he altered his stance to match Brenna’s, and put all of the latent strength in his arms to good use, drawing, sighting, and firing with a fluid ease of motion that had her following the flight with a quick snap of her head.
The arrow struck the butt a finger’s width from the first hole and well within the center ring. It went through the bale of straw as well and left the tip buried in the grass alongside Brenna’s.
She stared at him and he accorded her a smile that would have had most women’s tongues sliding down their chins.
“Lucky shot,” he said, shrugging his big shoulders.
Beginning to suspect there was more than mere luck behind it, Brenna took half a dozen arrows from the quiver this time and stuck all but one upright in the dirt by her right foot. She fired all six, one barely leaving the string before the next was grasped, nocked, and drawn, sending all speeding in a slight arc toward the third and farthest butt, two hundred broad paces away. All six, the boys were quick to report, had struck in a cluster dead center of the target, the arrowheads jammed so close together the iron on some was bent.
“My compliments again,” he said, bowing slightly from the waist.
“A child’s trick. I could do it before I was ten.”
Something kindled in his eyes, she saw it a split second before he took up a single arrow and walked to the shooting line. He ground the heel of one boot into the dirt to set himself and raised the bow, the muscles across his back and in his arms bulging with the strain. At the last possible instant, the very moment
his fingers released the string to launch the arrow, his gaze flicked away from the target and found Brenna. She did not look away. She did not even follow the flight of the arrow, for she suspected, even before the boys ran panting back across the green, what they would say.
Renaud’s arrow, finding no space at the heart of the target, had traveled along the shaft of one of the earlier bolts, splitting it from end to tip and driving the arrowhead through the bale and into the wooden palisade behind. Proof was produced by one of the lads, a tow-headed, violently freckled youth who came scampering back with the split shaft and the two iron broadheads wedged fast together.
Brenna stared at the arrowheads, knowing on the one hand she had been duped, yet knowing also that no one—not Robin, not Will, possibly not even Gil Golden could have made that shot. Not at a hundred yards. Not even at fifty.
A gull swooped by, riding a current of air, screeching with laughter as it circled above the two unmoving figures. Higher up, a ragged veil of clouds passed across the sun, and cast a brief bluish shadow over the bailey.
Griffyn Renaud leaned on the shank of the bow to unhook the string and disarm it. He brought it back to the bench and propped it beside the other, and when he straightened, he stood shoulder to shoulder with Brenna and inclined his head so that only she could hear what he whispered in her ear. Two bright spots of color blossomed in her cheeks. She had not moved since he had loosed the arrow; she did not move now as he took the liberty of tucking an errant curl behind her ear before he strolled casually away.
CHAPTER NINE
He doubted very much she would come. He had whispered the time and place in her ear before he had left the archery run, and reminded her to come barefoot, but he had no real expectations of seeing her there, despite the oath of honor she had given. Brenna Wardieu was no scullery wench or serving girl eager to tuck an extra coin in her cheek. She was not even the type of woman who appealed to him these days. She was too outspoken, too brazen, too loose by far with her wit and her tongue. Griffyn preferred his women round and lush and eager, with open thighs and closed mouths. The plainer the better too, for they expected nothing from someone like him and showed their gratitude in ways that left his skin singed.
The Robin Hood Trilogy Page 98
