“Does he see you as a threat?” Magnus went on. “Does he know Christina is your sister?”
“No and no.” I think I am right in this. I pray that I am.
They ambled on, the pony weaving between trees, and Magnus allowing the beast to pick its own way. “’Tis so dark,” he said, after a space. “We should have lanterns.”
“Could we keep them lit in this?”
“I doubt it, but any light would be welcome. I have seen him, Elfrida. I have warred with him already, in my dreams.”
Startled as she was by his confession, she was more amazed still when he added, “I drove him back by means of the amulet you gave me.”
Staggered by his admission and his use of her magic, of his total faith in her, Elfrida took in a great gasp of air to reply, “Good fight!” or “Well done!” or even “Thank you.” The cold made her cough, and she pitched forward, her lungs burning as she struggled for a full breath.
“No tumbling off into a snowdrift, Elfrida!”
A powerful, muscular arm snatched her back and held her. The pony put back its ears and snorted at the anxious rider on its back.
“Now you know,” she said, through chattering teeth, “and will be right to despise me. I am afraid, Magnus. I am a coward.” In spite of the cold and the snow, she felt herself blush, hotly, and wished he would scold her.
I have earned his derision. I should be spoiling for this encounter!
“You are brave for a lass.” Magnus sounded as sunny as midsummer, quite unperturbed.
“But I am afraid. I, too, have seen this Joseph in my dreams, a tall, thin shadow—”
“That is so, skinny as an icicle and as ill favored.”
Elfrida clamped her teeth tight on the rest, for she was deeply ashamed. She dared not tell him that Joseph Denzil, the priest-that-was, the necromancer, the Forest Grendel, had claimed her as his bride. What would Magnus think of her then? By all the saints, what if he believes I somehow encouraged this creature?
“I do not know if I can stop him, Magnus,” she said presently.
Behind her, she heard a gentle sigh. “But you are still riding, my heart. You are still going to meet the challenge. That is courage, to fear and yet to keep going. In the end, we can do no other, you and I.”
He leaned into her, and she leaned back.
“How do you keep fighting?” she asked, planting a swift kiss on his arm. In the dark she sensed him smile.
“By thinking of my men, my friends, and those I would save.”
“What if he feels us coming and kills Christina for spite?” It was her greatest dread. “Look at what happened to Gregory Denzil, his own kindred!” The haggard, choking face of Gregory Denzil flickered briefly on the snow before her, and when she peered between the trees, she saw glimpses of closing shadows.
Magnus did not insult her fear by offering facile comfort. “We must draw him out, not pen him in. It will not be easy, but there are ways. In any siege, there is always a way.”
Elfrida said nothing. She could only hope that he was right.
Chapter 28
His good witch was right to be scared, Magnus knew, kicking aside a branch as the pony plodded down a slope decked out with blackberry thorns, holly horns, hazel and elder and, to add to the good cheer of the season, another dead blackbird, frozen against a tree stump. He knew she had stopped herself from mentioning her gown that he had tossed so casually to Gregory Denzil, but it was still on her mind, and rightly so. Joseph Denzil must have her gown and what magic, what mischief could he make from it?
“Nothing good.” Magnus growled, wishing he could have that time back again, do things differently. Dashing in Gregory Denzil’s brains much earlier might have been a start.
He had not said anything to Elfrida, but for all his high words, he loathed the idea of Joseph Denzil being a priest. He had seen a few priests and clerics gone to wickedness in the East, and with their learning and focus they were always trouble.
Never fret, Magnus! At least your lass does not know Joseph Denzil claimed her as his bride.
The cheering thought was like a swig of mead as he poked and threaded about the trees. Seeking threads and ribbons like a girl seeking a love token. But sometimes unpleasant tasks needed doing, and this was one of those times.
He never minded tracking, but this furtive grubbing through the undergrowth like thieves in the dark was not to his taste. He imagined Elfrida as a blonde, a little less pretty, less vivid, less tender—less like Elfrida and more like her kidnapped sister, Christina—and that spurred him on, made him keep watching out. His men behind rode in a sullen column but they, too, knew better than to grumble.
What else had Elfrida said just now about Christina? That she was secure in an ancient stone tower, set close to a Roman road to the north of here, deeper within the forest. That this would be one of her last remaining days alive.
He looked up and received a face full of snow from a lime tree. He shook it from his eyes and saw the thin, flickering ribbon, twisting round the trunk of a half-rotten oak.
“There!” Elfrida had spotted it, too, and was pointing, her outstretched arm a pale shadow in the gloom.
“We go on, eh?” he remarked, lighter for the brief victory.
This endless, tumbling, needle-sharp snow may be more than nature, may fall on our backs at Joseph Denzil’s urging, but we are closing on his lair. Christina must live! Today may be close to the darkest time of the year, but we shall find her.
He opened his mind to the rest, that finding Elfrida’s sister might find them Denzil, and he relished the prospect.
For all his fancy Eastern learning and friendship with devils, he will not stop my hands meeting around his throat.
Part of him knew this was wrong, that the necromancer would not be simple to vanquish, but he could be cunning himself, if need be. He remembered his stubborn, headstrong rush against the blue tower, when his great-hearted, anxious, determined little witch had scolded like a magpie—rightly so, he thought with a frown. This time his charge would be at the end, to swoop in swiftly from a clear, unblemished sky like a falcon, seize Christina, and crush her captor.
Surprise is the key. The creature is arrogant. Excellent! Let us use that pride against him. We have few hours to waste, but there are enough for us to throw down false trails. I have my wits and strength and loyal followers. And I have Elfrida.
* * * *
The night and the forest seemed endless to Elfrida as they roamed deeper into the woods, taking a route that seemed more south and east than north. She understood why Magnus had chosen this less direct approach, to disguise their real intent, but the slogging distance gnawed at her. She wanted to travel by the fastest way, to find the Roman road, to gallop along it.
And that would be as arrogant as Joseph Denzil himself.
When she could not stop herself from asking why they were turning east instead of north—although she already knew the answer—Magnus answered patiently, “We only have Gregory Denzil’s word that his kinsman is alone. And I dislike those hanging ropes and threads. You say we may track him to his place by them, but what if they are like warning leper bells to Joseph Denzil? You are not sure and nor am I. If we pass under them or brush them, does he know? Do his demons whisper news of our approach into his ears?
Elfrida shuddered, feeling cold then hot all over. “I cannot tell,” she answered, shamed and appalled by her admission. “I am half blind in this filthy weather.” The shifting snow confused her, made it almost impossible for her to pick out landmarks or to sense where she was in relation to others.
“Are the wolves his friends?”
Even in her frustration, Elfrida recognized the sense in his question and responded to it. “Wolves and wild cats, any beast that preys on decent people. They would howl and alarm for sure.”
“And we can hear nothing, so no alarm as yet. Could he be as blind as you, because of the snow and all?”
“I hope so.”
&nbs
p; “Good! Let it be so!”
“But I am half lost!” Elfrida grumbled, feeling Magnus’s chuckle vibrate in her slim frame. “We must find Christina within these next three days, before the solstice, when Joseph Denzil means to kill her. And the night is seeping away!”
“That does not matter,” he answered, calm where she was simmering. “We are making progress. This way we look like bewildered travelers, and no threat. Soon it will be daybreak.”
The next to last day of Christina’s life, Elfrida stopped herself from saying, disgusted at her own self-pity. Off to her left she saw a third ribbon hanging from an elder bush.
“I see it, too,” Magnus murmured against her ear. “We are well on the hunt, now, and Joseph does not know it.”
Elfrida nodded, touching her gold-coin amulet for good luck. Had she not been so anxious and sickened for her sister, she would have been amused at the way Magnus insisted on calling their enemy by his diminutive, as if to cut the man down to size. It helped, she realized. Forest Grendel or The Necromancer sounded great and terrible, but Joseph Denzil could have been a peddler.
Magnus brushed her shoulder and jerked his head. Following his movement, she saw a lighter grayness in the dropping snow.
“We shall go faster by day,” he said.
At first Magnus’s forecast proved disastrously inaccurate. One of the horses in their straggling column stepped on a frozen pine cone and went lame as a result. Banks and ditches and pools of snow that seemed innocent and harmless had dangers lurking beneath their smooth, white mantles, traps for the wary and cautious alike. A rider was unseated and left clinging desperately to his horse’s neck when his mount ploughed into a ditch and slipped on a patch of hidden ice. Convinced he had spotted another hanging cord beyond a stand of young birch trees, a beardless yet balding squire urged his piebald pony into a mound of snow. Heedless of Magnus’s warning shouts, the lad cantered off, spraying snow until the pony reared, its flank slashed by a snow-buried spar of ash. Then the weather changed. From big, soft flakes, soft as duck down, the snow became smaller and harder, bouncing off the horses’ coats like hail, trickling down the back of Elfrida’s neck.
She was wretched and grindingly cold, despite the pale glimmer of dawn off to the east, but Magnus remained sanguine. He kept the lead through the murk, going on foot and prodding the way forward with a branch. He took the reins so she could tuck her throbbing fingers into the cloak and encouraged the rest of the riders to guide their horses to follow his. Had she not loved him so much and he striving so hard for Christina, she might have found his cheerfulness irksome. As it was, she wished only to match him and be no burden.
“You would have done well in Outremer,” he remarked at one point, steam gushing from his mouth like a dragon’s breath. “You keep going and do not complain.”
“I would know more of your summers there,” Elfrida begged through chapped lips. Tales of sunshine would be welcome, she thought, and to imagine a thing was a way to create it, so they might all be warmer in the telling.
He told of Eastern deserts where the sand moved like a sea. He told of armor hot enough to bake an egg on. He spoke of silks and spices, music and chess, Arab learning and the traders of Africa. As he spoke, Elfrida felt the cold retreating from her limbs. She looked about and saw more color in the land, glimpses of red berries, brown hazelnuts, early yellow primrose buds peeping above the snow. She suggested they make a game of counting holly trees, and the young warriors with them went to it with a will, riding a little straighter, signaling with their hands so they did not call out and reveal their presence so easily.
“You give them heart,” Magnus said.
“As do you,” she answered. “And I know we are going north now and no trouble.” For the first time in days she had a flash of foreknowledge, a picture of a track, high in the forest, running north, straight between the trees. “We are almost at the Roman road,” she said.
“Good! We shall go faster there.”
They reached the road as the sun was breaking above the younger, smaller trees, and the snow had finally stopped. Elfrida expected Magnus to remount and storm along the road, which in parts still had its ditches and whose good level stones were still visible on its wind-free side. Instead he halted the column.
“We shall rest for an hour, have a fire and warm mead,” he said before she could protest.
We have no time! Elfrida felt light-headed with a mix of fury and anxiety. Magnus was choosing again, and yet it was her sister who was in danger. When Magnus turned back after ordering a squire to fetch kindling, she was ready with her arguments.
But so was he. “No need for that, my heart, we are on Joseph’s doorstep.” He pointed northwest, and she saw a slim stream of dark smoke rising.
“If you are weary enough to miss that, you need to rest.” The gleam in his eyes showed he was enjoying her discomfort, but then his face grew serious and grim. “I need you at your fighting, warrior-magic best, Elfrida, and strong for Christina. I will do all necessary to ensure it.”
“How would you like it if I plucked you away from the verge of battle?” she replied, incensed that he was right.
“Not much, but I would make the best of it.”
“What if that is not his place?”
“Then we shall know in under an hour and carry on and our horses will go faster for the rest.”
She swung down from the pony to continue their dispute and almost lost her footing, slithering on a mess of damp leaves. Flailing, she was caught by Magnus, who set her neatly on her feet.
“These clothes are strange to me,” she said, smacking her youth’s tunic in disgust. She did not meet his eyes for fear she might wish to kick his calves, or worse, laugh at her own folly.
Still, should he have chosen for me? Is that fair? Yet he acknowledges my power, so that is something.
“An hour?” she demanded, still without meeting his eyes.
“One hour only,” Magnus answered. “So we may scout and plan. I will send a rider or two out first, so we know the lie of the land, be sure we have our man.”
She closed her eyes and nodded.
Not expecting to relax, she sat down on the road in a circle with the others, tending the small fire that one of the squires had lit. Within moments, thawed out by the warmth and the mead, she fell asleep, her head resting against Magnus’s shoulder.
She opened her eyes. She lay on a great bed, its covers and canopy stretching off into the distance, and the white sheets were softer and paler than thistledown. Christina slept beside her, her thumb in her mouth and her blonde hair heaped over the pillows. She looked healthy, with a faint pink glow to her cheeks and lips. Her brow was smooth, her hands white as a lady’s, and she snored slightly, in comfort. She was robed in a black gown, dyed a rich, costly black, the black of princes. The scooped bodice and tight sleeves and short train looked lovely on her, Elfrida thought.
She lowered her head and kissed her sister’s fingers. “Wake, my darling, you are safe. I am so glad to see you, so very happy.”
A lark felt to be singing inside her breast, and summer had come. A sweet, fresh scent of herbs—“lady’s bedstraw”—drifted across the bed. Elfrida brushed Christina’s hair, shyly aware of her own work-reddened hands. “Wake up, darling.”
“Not until I signal her,” said a new figure by the bed, “But she was the honey to snare you, and now that I have you—”
Elfrida clung to her sister and prayed to the Virgin Mary, prayed for both of them to be safely carried away, but when the scene changed it was far from her liking. She was still on the bed, but she was prone on the slippery, shimmering sheets, bound hand and foot to the bedposts, and nude.
“Do not touch me,” she warned, straining and thrashing against the tight knots at her ankles and wrists. She was facedown on the covers, her head pressed into a pillow, her breath half smothered in her throat. She shook her head and shrieked as she felt her hair almost yanked from its roots by an unseen fist, b
ut she kept shifting and kicking out, determined to break free, determined to fight.
“Face me, coward!” she howled, gagging as her face was hammered harder into the slimy cloth. A fat cushion was thrust beneath her hips, raising her bottom, exposing her secret parts, and she could not squirm off it. Crooked and spread fingers raked across her back and up her legs, marking her.
A thin hand and whip-like fingers dropped onto the tops of her thighs, the half caress scraping along her flesh and painful as a fresh graze. She spat out a mouthful of cloth and hair and reared up again.
“Stop it!” The witch in her ached to do battle, the woman in her was horrified by the brutal shock of this intimate attack. Appalled by her own helplessness, she almost froze for an instant, before anger boiled in her afresh. “No! Stop, I say!”
Coarse laughter punched into her ears, ignoring her denial. “You are mine, Snow Bride.” The bed creaked as the figure sprawled beside her. “I am going to take you and enjoy you...”
“Elfrida!” Magnus called to her, and she struggled to open her eyes, shed herself of the nightmare. “Elfrida, it is all right, you are safe. You are safe. You are with me.”
He was holding her close, lifting her to gather her onto his lap. “Just a bad dream, beloved,” he reassured, stroking her arms and stiffened limbs. “Only a dream.”
“He was going to rape me.” Elfrida felt clammy and sick and could not stop shuddering. “He boasted of it.”
She felt Magnus start, then shudder, although his voice when he spoke was mild. “It was a night terror, brought on by dread for your sister.”
Elfrida nodded, forcing herself to believe it. She did not want to consider what would have happened had she not woken when she did or if Denzil had succeeded in having her, even in a dream. “I fought as hard as I could. I kicked him! I would have bitten him, too.”
Townsend, Lindsay - The Snow Bride (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 24
