Townsend, Lindsay - The Snow Bride (BookStrand Publishing Romance)

by Lindsay Townsend

“Am I a bucket to be hung on a nail?” she demanded, with a toss of her matted hair, staring straight back at him with bright, amber eyes slightly reddened by flecks of tree bark. “I obeyed your instruction. For the rest, I was pursuing my trade, my lord, as you were yours.”

  Amused by her hearty indignation, he felt himself smile. “For that I must be thankful.” He supposed. “I have Gregory Denzil under guard.”

  The man had been an easy capture, clearly not expecting any retaliation after issuing that sneaking first volley of crossbows bolts and arrows. Denzil had been almost comic in his slowness, sitting like a wooden statue on his horse and scarcely moving as the counterattack swept over him and his bedraggled followers. I was able to charge him, on foot, and Denzil, a battle-hardened warrior, issued no orders and made no attempt to brain me with a club or skewer me with a sword. And I have not run so fast for years.

  Magnus frowned, recalling how the rest of Denzil’s troops had been equally motley and halting, almost as if stunned.

  So can I claim it as a victory, or is it something of Elfrida’s, something she did? If she was plying her trade, was she casting spells and charms from that holly tree? Who fought then, her or me?

  “Did you see the fight?” he demanded, his voice sounding harsh even to him.

  “No, sir,” she stammered, seeming unsure for the first time. “I had to...” She muttered a phrase in her own dialect and looked at him helplessly. “I do not know the words in the old speech. The garderobe—I had to find one, out of doors.”

  She stopped, and even in the gloom and tumbling snow, he could see her blushing.

  “Ah, well then.” Close to laughter, he gathered her in and hugged her, glad she could not see his face. It was a worthy thing to him that he had won the fight fairly, without her magic.

  Denzil has gone soft and rotten, too, him and his men together. What are they now but brigands and thieves? I was protecting my woman and myself, so right was on my side. Why fret? It was an honest fight.

  Relieved, in tune with the world again, he teasingly gave her hair a quick tug. “So what were you doing in the tree?”

  “My lord.” Mark plowed through the snow toward them, his face radiating a mixture of triumph, weariness, and concern. “We should not linger here.”

  Magnus raised a hand to show he had heard and drew back slightly from Elfrida. He felt especially indulgent to her again, now he could say he had bested Denzil himself. After all, I wear amulets for protection, including the one she gave me. If Elfrida helps in other magical ways, that is all to the good. “Is it something you do not wish to tell? Each trade has its secrets.”

  The corners of her mouth tugged up in a swift, grateful smile, and then she grew serious again. “I found this, high in the holly tree.”

  “A silk ribbon?” Aware there must be more to it than that, Magnus turned the damp trinket over and whistled softly. “I recognize the lettering as Greek, the same kind as we found in the tower, but what are these other symbols?”

  “Runes of magic and force,” Elfrida said quietly. “I know they evoke guardianship.”

  “Of a person?”

  “Or a place. Can you read the Greek? Does it make sense, real words, or is it simply names again?”

  He brought the ribbon closer, wishing for more light. “That word means ‘king,’ King of the North. There are strange names, yes, perhaps of spirits or demons, and a repeated phrase, ‘I conjure thee.’ Even on this brief strip, it repeats three times.”

  Elfrida received the ribbon back reluctantly, as if the slippery, fluttering item was alive. To his surprise, she draped it quickly back over the holly branches.

  Just in time, Magnus stopped himself from catching her arm and meddling. “What are you doing?”

  “I do not know what these ribbons mean,” she said, bowing to the tree before she turned back to him. “They are stretched in other trees. I dared not take this one away in case it changes things and works against us.”

  “Good idea.” He had once brained an enemy sentry in Outremer and left him propped against a wall, as if still watching out. Magnus cocked his head and craned up, thinking of climbing that prickly cage. “How did the fellow get them up there?”

  “I do not want to consider that,” Elfrida replied, visibly suppressing a shudder. “I would guess a nimble accomplice or worse.”

  She did not elaborate on what might be worse, but Magnus knew she meant familiars and such. “What do you think they are for?”

  “Protection, perhaps, against evil, or they may work as alarms of coming trouble.”

  “Some brigands hang tokens and small bells in woodland to serve as advance alarms,” Magnus agreed. “Some of these ribbons may be belled.”

  He smiled, relishing the prospect. “It means we are close.”

  Elfrida did not smile. “The ribbons, I think, will make a circle. A circle of protection or of conjuring, one that draws evil onto others.”

  “I conjure thee,” Magnus repeated, stopping instantly as Elfrida put her hand to her lips. “I will say no more,” he reassured her. She was right. To speak the strange names on the ribbon might bring the owners of the names, and who knew if such creatures could be easily killed? “We have your sister to find first.”

  He had said the right thing. Elfrida straightened at once, offering to return him his cloak as she shook down her clothes and brushed flecks of snow out of her eyes. “I have a notion where she is,” she began then caught herself. “But what am I saying? You, my lord, have Gregory Denzil, alive and whole! That is wondrous!”

  “Keep the cloak,” Magnus said easily, basking in the warmth of her voice. “Yes, I have Denzil, as whole as he ever will be.”

  He held out his hand, feeling equal measures of pleasure, delight, contentment, and excitement as her narrow fingers slid around his palm.

  “He may not know much, or he may seek to disguise what he knows,” Elfrida was saying, hopping like a bird in the snow as she sought to keep pace with him.

  “Oh, Denzil will lie as much as he can, but we shall know the truth between us, you and me.”

  She squeezed his fingers as they pressed on. “I hope he has useful news,” she said. “What will you do with him after?”

  Magnus shrugged. “Lock him away in his own keep with the slave women as his jailors? Do you care, Elfrida?”

  She shook her head. “Only if he has great news of Christina.”

  “Do not let him sense that wish of yours!” Magnus warned, sorry he had to do so but knowing Denzil far too well. “Take care, for if Gregory Denzil even catches her name from your mouth, he would use your sister against you and take extreme pleasure in the act.”

  “I know,” she sighed. “I know.” She glanced up at him, then swiftly away.

  “Ask it,” Magnus prompted. He could almost guess what her question would be.

  “Will you take it amiss if I threaten him with curses?”

  Magnus smiled and shook his head, swinging her hand in his almost as if they were strolling through the woodland in summer. “Why should I, Elfrida? You did the same with the village widow, and I did not object.”

  “She was no knight,” Elfrida pointed out quietly.

  “Neither is Gregory Denzil, by my reckoning. I shall back you to the hilt.” He gave her fingers a final squeeze, released her, and strode toward to the bound, kneeling figure in the snow.

  Chapter 27

  “Why should I say anything?” Gregory Denzil demanded through cracked and bleeding lips. Coughing, he turned and threw up into the snow, remaining retching on his hands and knees until Mark and another of Magnus’s men hauled him back upon his feet.

  “For your life,” Magnus said quietly. “And the lives of your men.” With a long sweep of his arm he indicated other bowed and broken men, each one kneeling in the snow between three captors.

  “Pah! If that is all, cut my throat now, man, rather than leave me to starve.”

  Denzil did not plead for or even glance at his me
n, Elfrida noted, but Magnus did not seem disconcerted.

  “For your life and your castle, then. I will return the keep to you, sans prisoners, of course.”

  A sly look of calculation slid across Denzil’s bruised face. “Why would you do that?”

  Standing off to one side, following the conversation between Denzil and Magnus through their expressions and odd phrases that she was beginning to understand, Elfrida wondered how Denzil could even think. She had never seen warriors deal with prisoners of war before, and she did not like it. Denzil and the others had been struck and pummeled mercilessly. Sickened, she had said nothing, but Magnus had sensed her disgust and ordered the beatings stopped.

  Magnus said, in his own dialect and then the old speech, “For old times’ sake, when we fought together in the crusades. And I have no use for it. And, to my mind, the giving up of a kinsman should bring some reward.”

  “Betrayal, you mean.”

  Magnus translated Denzil’s answer for her, then remarked, “You have not always been so squeamish, Gregory. It is a good price. Tell me his name.”

  His men began shouting urgently, calling out, “Tell him, for pity’s sake!” Gregory Denzil spat a mouthful of blood and bile into a frosted bush and shuddered once, all over.

  “Will you give him some mead or ale, my lord?” Elfrida asked quietly. She did not pity Denzil, the slaver, the bully, but watching him writhe and sag between his present captors, she longed for this part to be over and for him to be released. “He may perhaps speak more readily.”

  Magnus growled an order, and a flagon of mead was produced. Some of it, a very little, Mark poured roughly down Denzil’s throat— most of the liquid splashed onto the man’s tunic and into his boots. When he had finished rasping and coughing, Denzil looked up at Magnus and shook his head.

  “It does you no good to be silent,” warned Magnus.

  Elfrida snapped her fingers, and Denzil reacted by glancing at her. She fixed him with her eyes and held his gaze. “He is a Denzil, is he not?” she asked in her own dialect, the tongue she was most easy with. “He lives apart, but he is still a Denzil. We know that much already, Sir Gregory, for we have seen the comings and goings of your servants on his bidding.”

  She smiled, putting all her charm into her cold, aching face. “To say his name would be a courtesy. Is he close kin of yours?”

  “A cousin on my mother’s side,” Gregory Denzil answered, scowling immediately after.

  Elfrida stepped closer. “Do you know him well?” she continued, in a soft, compelling voice. “Were you brought up with him?”

  “Joseph and I have known each other since boyhood. But that is more than enough—I can say no more!” he finished, his small eyes bulging and his narrow face bleached with alarm.

  “Look at me, Gregory,” Elfrida said as the man jerked his head to one side and stared off into the darkness. “You are among friends.”

  This was so shocking a claim that he glowered at her. She brushed snow off her face, and he mirrored her action, his eyes widening as she continued to look at him.

  I am your friend, she thought warmly. I can help you.

  “Elfrida, what are you saying to him?” Magnus demanded. She reached back and patted his flank, in part to reassure him, in part to apologize. At once she sensed his acceptance and was reassured herself.

  I will tell you all, my love, but it must be later, just a little later.

  “When you return to your castle, will Joseph be there?” she asked Gregory Denzil.

  “He has his own places,” the man replied in a calm, measured way quite unlike his normal quick, cutting speech. Silently, Elfrida thanked all the saints for making her task so straightforward—she had not needed the threat of curses after all, and Denzil, perhaps already stunned and certainly shocked by his double defeat, had been easy to beguile.

  “He lives alone, then?” she went on.

  “Joseph dislikes company.”

  “Even at Christmastime? He does not care for gaming or drinking or wenching?”

  “Women, yes, I never knew a priest who did not lust after women.”

  Denzil used the Latin word for priest and, a step behind her, Elfrida felt Magnus stiffen at this new information and the calm, almost studious way in which it was delivered.

  “Is Joseph a cleric still?” she asked.

  “I do not know.”

  Elfrida believed him, and she wasted no time on it, returning to more pressing concerns. “These places of Joseph’s, they must be close, within the forest.”

  Gregory Denzil nodded.

  “Do you know where?”

  At once another change swept over Gregory Denzil. He hunched his narrow, sinewy shoulders, and color flushed up into his face. “I do not.” He looked ragged again and mortally afraid.

  “I can help you,” Elfrida said softly, aware of her own pounding heart. She stretched out a hand, wishing, praying that Denzil would take it.

  For a warm, hopeful moment it seemed that he would. His whole arm trembled, and his hand rose, drawn to hers, but then it was all too late. Quick as a flea, he wrenched away from her and his captors and careered wildly into the dark. Magnus lurched after him, followed by a cursing Mark, but Elfrida knew it was too late. In the gloom, she saw Denzil topple like a snowbound tree and heard his gargled, “I did not tell!”

  Magnus stamped back a few moments later, limping in frustrated disappointment. “Deader than salted meat.” He kicked the snow with his foot. “Who is this Joseph Denzil, who can terrorize to death from a distance?”

  Elfrida said nothing. She disliked—had disliked—Gregory Denzil, but his sudden death closed in on her like a shroud. The sheer, ruthless cruelty of Joseph Denzil struck at her core. How can you, a fellow worker in magic, abuse your power so? She longed to shout it into the woodland, even though she knew she would get no answers. But how could he sleep? She closed her eyes and the stricken, pallid face of Gregory Denzil hovered in her mind like a gathered storm.

  A warm hand clasped her shoulder, and she shuddered. “He was so afraid,” she murmured. “I could do nothing against his fear.”

  “Think no more on it,” Magnus said, gathering her firmly into his arms. “Hush now!” He stroked her hair as she stifled a sob. “My men will bury him and say some Godly words—we have done it often enough, on crusade. I owe Gregory Denzil that much.”

  She rubbed at her burning eyes, angry that she was close to tears. “I have eased the dying and kept watch over the dead, so why should this death touch me so?”

  “A poor death is always a horror. Would you rather feel nothing?”

  “No,” she said and meant it.

  “Come, then. We must make haste to find your sister now.”

  Magnus had said the right words to free her. She forced some iron into her spine and moved back to the holly tree.

  “We must follow these tokens,” she said, pointing at the long, thin rope of silk. “He lives alone, Magnus.”

  She did not add that they should hurry. Magnus already knew that. He had already said they should search, even though it was night. It was now only two days to the final day, the solstice day.

  “Better and better. How long do we have?” he added, mirroring her thoughts.

  “Tonight, tomorrow, and the day after, at least until nightfall.” A wizard of dark magic would wait until twilight before beginning any major work.

  “We have time, then.” Magnus cleared his throat. ‘‘’Tis good, very good.”

  He is wary, Elfrida thought as he helped her to mount one of the captured horses and swung up into the saddle behind her, but still he is coming with me.

  Had she not been so afraid, she would have smiled.

  Magnus pressed her foot with his. “Does this Joseph know we are after him?”

  She nodded, hating the admission. “Had you not helped him—” she began in a mutter, before biting down hard on her tongue. It did no good to remind Magnus of the gown he had so blithely passed to Gr
egory Denzil.

  “What was that?”

  She squeezed his arm, relieved he had not heard her. “Only that it is good to be moving again.”

  “Humm,” Magnus said before calling back to their escort. There were a half-dozen warriors riding with them, red faced and raw knuckled in the biting cold. Elfrida wondered if Magnus had asked for volunteers and was glad there were only six. Fewer of the brutes to worry over. Wit and faith will be our defenses, not manly brawn.

  Does my lord Magnus understand that yet? By Gog and Magog, I hope he does!

  “Does he know how close we are?” Magnus asked, draping his huge cloak over them both and giving her the ends to grip.

  “I do not think so.” Elfrida was not certain, but from the signs that Joseph Denzil had left in the blue-door tower and in the ribbon she had found in the tree, she saw a confidence bordering on arrogance. “I do not feel he expects any serious pursuit. He knows someone looks for him, but he believes himself hidden and invulnerable.”

  In dreams and visions he has called me Snow Bride, but never a witch. Perhaps he does not know I have such wisdom, or he discounts it. That may be his mistake, arrogance again. I trust that it is, that he has not some final weapon that I have no answer to.

  She tried not to think of Gregory Denzil and his last, pawing moments of terror.

  “And we have his name now, at last. Joseph.” Magnus rolled the name out as if unfurling an inferior piece of cloth and clicked his tongue. “Joseph! The name a doting mother gives her son, a mummy’s-boy name. It cuts him down from the Grendel we first thought him.”

  The rough-coated, short-legged pony they were riding shied at a broken-winged blackbird lying dead on the snow in front of them. Magnus calmed the spiky-maned beast before it could bolt and gentled it into an easy canter then a slow trot.

  “Perhaps some thoughts are best not spoken,” Magnus remarked, giving their mount a final pat. “Are these woods so completely his?

  “Still, we need to go slowly to spot tracks and those webs of threads,” he went on, before Elfrida could respond. “We should go carefully.”

  Sitting astride the pony and feeling Magnus’s arms and legs snug about her, keeping her secure in the stiff, unyielding saddle, Elfrida allowed herself to relax a little. However brazen some of his remarks, her warrior was no fool.