I bowed my head and wept—for Nessie and for me for being forced into this choice.
“You will not ride today.” I heard the irritation in Gareth’s voice through my tears.
“And you will stop me how?” Marrok sounded strong. I sniffed away my tears in hope. Was he actually stronger now than what my eyes had seen?
“Leave off!” he growled.
When I looked, they were sitting, Gareth holding Marrok with one hand about his neck, tight enough only to make his point.
“When you can bear my hand on you, we’ll ride, not before,” Gareth said calmly.
“The wolves were merciful. Look down. See what part of me would happily bear your hand right now.”
Gareth’s sharp inhalation made me look. Under our stares, Marrok’s half-risen staff twitched higher. Surely Gareth wouldn’t…
I was wrong.
Gareth took him in his firm grip and squeezed him to full attention. Then he began to stroke. Marrok made encouraging noises at the back of his wrapped throat as three pairs of eyes watched his progress. A handful of strokes then Gareth dropped down, palms to the ground, and swallowed him.
I watched the play of Gareth’s shoulders as he laved and moiled Marrok, felt myself responding as though Gareth’s tongue and mouth were on me, in me, too. Marrok trembled. I cut my eyes to his to watch his pleasure.
“Look at me,” I commanded, begged.
Our eyes met and the smile that began on his lips turned to a grimace of ecstasy. “Annh,” he shouted out, and my mouth was there to catch the cry.
Then Gareth’s lips, slick with Marrok’s essence, joined ours.
After a noon meal of crisped bread and hard cheese, Gareth relented to Marrok’s insistent plea to ride. As a compromise to good sense, we put Marrok on the palfrey who had bolted with me and asked Marrok’s war horse to carry our packs. The mare had shown a level head since, and it seemed more evident now that she had been compelled to flee. Her gait, otherwise, was smoother and surer than the excitable stallion’s, and there was no doubt Marrok would ride her more comfortably.
We drew rein frequently to rest and Marrok grew in strength as the day progressed. During our third rest, I removed the bindings from his wounds, which were closing with remarkable speed. There seemed no further threat of bleeding or contagion, though for comfort he left off the wearing of his tunic. Neither Gareth nor I complained.
As the shadows lengthened, our thoughts turned to finding a suitable campsite. Tomorrow would see us to Ironside’s castle and we all wanted—needed—Marrok well-rested and as hale as possible by then.
I knew we were close now to Nessie—and to Nimue. I only underestimated how close we were. And how powerful Nimue truly was.
Chapter 32
Lyn
In the westering sun, rocked along by the palfrey’s traveling gait, Marrok sang to us to pass the time. His was a throaty bass, richly suited to battle marches and slow ballads. He was singing one such ballad—a bawdy lay about a blacksmith in search of a wandering jezebel—when Gareth suddenly pulled rein. “Don’t you ever tire of your own voice?” he snapped.
“Gareth—” I spoke his name only to soothe whatever tension had taken him.
“Don’t defend him! Or that thing he also is.”
Troubled, I reined my horse about to face him. “I thought that was behind us.”
“Perhaps you think too much.”
My eyes widened. Never had his voice sounded so cold toward me, even when I had assuredly deserved it. He was clearly agitated. Even his stallion felt it as the horse danced under him.
“Mind your tongue.” Marrok’s tone was sharp, not quite a threat.
“You seem to enjoy minding it yourself.”
That should have been playful, dripping with innuendo to come from Gareth’s lips.
“Whatever you have to say, say it plainly.” Marrok was so far holding control of his temper, though I doubted he could leash it long.
“Then hear this clearly. Lyn is not your lady and I am not your lord. You are a thing, not a man. An abomination. And Scripture is quite clear on what needs be done with demons and abominations.” He drew his sword. “They shall not be suffered to live.”
Horrified, I kneed my horse close and placed my hand on his that gripped the hilt. “What’s gotten into—” I broke off, recognizing the dead-eye stare above me.
Behind me, Marrok’s blade slithered from its scabbard.
“Hold!” I cried to him. “It’s Nimue! She has him compelled. He knows not what he’s doing.” Frantically I reined around. If I couldn’t stop Gareth’s madness, I had to stop Marrok’s. “Hold.”
“Are you man to answer my challenge or beast to flee it?”
I shook my head toward Marrok in plea, then swung back around to Gareth. “A knight doesn’t challenge a wounded man.”
“I am not a knight.”
Gareth was beyond me, beyond my magics to help. Nimue was too powerful, and I had nothing but Sight to guide me. I could only appeal to Marrok and not even him if his wolf-brain took over.
“Go. Run. Please!” I begged him.
“I am not a coward.”
“Of course not! Don’t you see—that isn’t Gareth. Gareth would die before challenging you. By saving yourself, you’re saving him. You don’t want to kill him, and if he kills you, how can he live with that when Nimue returns him to himself? Fight him and the only one who wins is Nimue. Fight him and I lose you both. Please, for you, for him, for us—run!”
I prayed it was still Marrok to whom I spoke and not his wolf. I hung on the edge of eternity not knowing what the next moment held.
Then he turned his mare and whipped her away.
Chapter 33
Lyn
Gareth kicked his golden stallion, hard, and the horse sprang away in pursuit. They had tried to catch that mare before and failed, though this time she was carrying at least half again my weight. With patience, the stallion might could catch the mare, but with the way Gareth rode today, pushing the steed with uncharacteristic abuse, if they didn’t catch them in the first wild flight, they likely wouldn’t.
I let go Marrok’s stallion that carried the packs. Unwilling to be left behind, he trumpeted after the others and sprinted ahead of me. My Orkney mare caught the black stallion quickly enough and surged ahead, chasing Gareth through the woods as I clung low over her neck.
A tangle of vines amid the deadwood snagged at Marrok’s mare’s feet, slowing her, and Gareth’s golden stallion gained unexpected ground. As the woods thickened, it gained even more, until the thick growth brought both their horses to a walk.
As I gained on both of them, Marrok reined his horse around. No! I shouted silently. Don’t fight! Flee! He leapt from the saddle and, almost before he touched ground, he had his tunic thrown off and his leggings stripped away. He spared one brief soul-boring glance my way, then shifted.
“No!” I cried, bracing for the fury of his attack. The golden stallion neighed his war call—he had no fright of that single wolf the way I did.
But mercy of mercies, the wolf ran instead. Ran into the thickening trees where the horses could not follow, not at speed. I prayed Gareth would abandon the chase. Prayed he hadn’t seen the stain of blood widening at Marrok’s neck. Prayed—
In vain.
Without hesitation, Gareth abandoned his horse and raced on foot into the forest in relentless pursuit. I had no choice but to follow, though I trusted speed still to my horse. But as we stumbled into the thick growth, my skirts, even hiked to my knees, caught on every twig and vine, threatening to tug me from the saddle. With an unlady-like curse, I untied my belt and yanked the gown over my head, then threw it over a nearby branch.
Feeling every bit the madwoman in slippers and nothing else, I hurried the mare on to catch sight again of my champions. It didn’t seem God was hearing my prayers today, but I sent another one His way—that He would grant me magic enough to defeat the compulsion Nimue had conjured.
Stupid wolf, I thought, to throw himself in front of a madman’s blade. Especially when the madman possessed such skill as Gareth.
I urged my horse forward, meaning to run at Gareth and turn him away, to spoil his sword, to save Marrok’s life. Instead, the mare panicked as we closed on them. More than simply spoiling Gareth’s sword, the mare ran into him, her momentum driving him down to a knee, tangling him beneath her before I could rein her away.
That distraction was all Marrok needed. Not to flee again as I’d hoped, but to launch himself at Gareth.
“No!” The wolves Gareth had slain last night sprang to my mind, dead-eyed and bloodied. Wrenching the mare’s head around, I pushed her between Gareth and Marrok to break them apart.
Scent of the wolf drove her mad. She reared, striking out at Marrok, her sharp hooves flailing. She whinnied her fear. In a moment, she’d bolt. But she wasn’t going to take me with her. I slid, naked, over her rump, staggering when I hit the grass.
That was enough to send the horse off and away. But one threat removed only gave Gareth and Marrok easier access to one another.
The wolf crouched low to spring. Gareth drew back his sword for an ungainly thrust.
Unthinking save to stop them, heedless of any danger, I threw myself between them. Trusting to what to keep me safe, I didn’t know. Neither the wolf nor our bewitched madman had thought of civility or chivalry in their head.
I prayed only to win through to them by whatever vestige of magic I possessed, by love, or by God’s great mercy.
The wolf lunged. The sword thrust forward. I screamed in despair, in failure, certain only of the teeth and steel about to rip through me to get to the other.
My whole body went numb when the wolf slammed into me. Committed to his thrust, Gareth’s momentum flung him into us even as his blade skittered by my ear.
I fell to my knees between them, the breath knocked from me but unravaged by the wolf and untouched by the sword. I was alive. More, Gareth and Marrok were alive too. And in a blink, Gareth was staring at me with eyes gone wide with shock.
The wolf’s snarl beside me resolved itself into words only a human throat could utter. “Dearest God.” Men’s hands circled my bare waist and crushed me close to the naked plane of a chest as Marrok, wolf no more, knelt beside me.
Gareth could have had us both then in that moment, unguarded, vulnerable, both resolved to do him no harm no matter what Nimue might command of him. Instead, he threw his sword down, quickly as though its touch burned, and he sank to his knees beside us, trembling as he wrapped his great arms around us.
Gasping in air, I squeezed my eyes shut in gratitude and against the tears that surged.
“Thank you.” They might have been my own words, but it was Gareth who breathed them.
“For what?” I murmured.
“For being there—in my head—with me.”
I shook my head. “Nimue—she was too strong.”
“No. You were stronger. We were stronger. In the end when it mattered.” His arms tightened, hugging us to him like a desperate thing, afraid to let us go.
Why he ever would again I didn’t know.
Why we would ever let him…
I smiled. “Love and devotion, it seems, are our best defense against Nimue. Perhaps it’s time we make our bond stronger yet.”
The agreement nuzzled in my ears was all the assent I needed.
Chapter 34
Gareth
I kissed each of them slowly, softly, ever mindful that I had nearly slain them on this spot. They deserved all gentleness from me now, no matter what my body might urge. So I set about to re-win their trust with kisses that fell as gentle as butterfly wings.
I dropped my lips to the bruises on Marrok’s neck to kiss them well. The wounds he’d reopened in our mad flight were already closing again, while the guilt of what I’d done opened a chasm in my soul.
“Forgive me.”
Was it too much to ask, too soon?
Marrok sighed. “What is the thread that stitches our bond if not forgiveness? It is what we are. It is why we are.”
“The question,” Lyn added, “is whether we can forgive ourselves, for all that we forgive in each other.”
I thought a moment on that. Marrok and Lyn were prepared to forgive my behavior, to hold me blameless. Marrok slipped the hands that would have killed him—my hands—into his. He kissed the mouth that had slurred him.
Why then was it so difficult to forgive myself?
“Forgiveness,” Lyn whispered, “is why we need each other… Because we wouldn’t know forgiveness on our own.”
I kissed the words from her, made them my own. It was enough, for now, that they forgave me.
Lyn’s hands on the hem of my tunic encouraged it up and over my head. I blinked. When had she shed her gown? I slid a slipper from her slender foot. When I turned to the other, she laid the arch of the first foot over the bulge in my breeches. Her nimble toes played at the laces.
“Mmmm.” She watched my eyes as she rubbed her foot over me.
I slid free her second foot and it joined the first, she flexing them now in turn over the bulge rising obediently beneath them, all the while keeping her eyes on mine.
Marrok slid in behind her, sitting, his hips straddling hers, his long legs embracing hers, resting his feet against my inner thighs. He filled his hands with her breasts, kneading them for my pleasure and his, rubbing his thumbs over their lengthening peaks for hers.
He laid his chin on her shoulder and his left hand dropped to her lap. Curling his fingers, he ran the backs of his nails between her legs.
“Unnh!” Her moan accompanied a twitch of her hips that shivered her feet against me. Her toes curled into me and my own hips twitched in response.
My breath caught at my predicament. Me straining at my lacings, desperate for my leggings to be off, but unwilling to divorce myself from the arching feet that teased me so.
Then Marrok’s hips nudged Lyn, firmly, insistently. She dropped her hands to the ground to either side of her as Marrok cupped her hips and lifted her up. His heels dug into my thighs as he adjusted himself under her. Then she was sliding down with a sigh, her eyes still locked to mine, the growing passion aflame within them.
Falling back to one elbow, his other hand stroking the delicate flesh between Lyn’s thighs, Marrok began to move, his heels and the arches of Lyn’s feet drumming their rhythm against me.
She bounced on Marrok’s lap, her breasts firmly riding the sway of her chest. Then with a muffled squeal she went still atop him, squeezing, straining, pointed toes digging painfully into me.
She threw back her head in ecstasy and Marrok’s lips immediately covered the white arch of her throat, growling into her, jerking under her, beating against me.
Then Marrok fell back into the grass, Lyn sprawled over him until he wrapped his arms about her and, still inside, rolled her under him, nuzzling her cheek and kicking away from me.
He looked back over his shoulder with a wicked grin. I needed no second invitation. In a breathspace I was up and my leggings shed. Too hard and close to my own peak for any sort of foreplay, I fell over them, knees uncomfortably spread, and plunged into Marrok, widening him as I went.
“Ah, sweet Jesu!” he cried.
Lyn’s cool arms folded over my back, her hands clutching at the muscles over the blades of my shoulders.
I moved inside Marrok while Lyn’s hands played over me and she murmured encouragement from below. I felt as though I could spear them both, find my joy inside them together if I were just a little longer, could thrust a little deeper. Backing up, I shuddered with anticipation.
“Cry for
me,” I begged them both.
Then I plunged in, burying deep, seeking the sweet chasm that was Lyn on the other side.
The oath I ripped from Marrok had nothing to do with my plea. He rocked under me as I rode him and Lyn to ecstasy, pouring all my guilt, all my shame, all my love into them.
Later, as we lay on the grass, spent, curled around each other like a litter of contented pups, Lyn gently reminded us, “I need you strong for tomorrow.”
“No worries there,” I murmured into her ear before I gently bit it. “I have never felt stronger.” Cupping her intimately in my hand, I smiled into her eyes. “Come. Make me stronger yet.”
Chapter 35
Lyn
Nessie. She was my first thought when we woke to a distant abbey’s bells pealing the hour of Prime. Rosekirk Abbey. Not so distant really if we could hear its bells in the stillness of the dawn.
Today, whichever way Fate fell, I would be reunited with my sister. Anticipation sickened my stomach as both joy and dread curdled there. For Nessie, though, I would be brave—as brave as she.
Marrok was my next thought, though I needn’t have worried for him. Even in the few short hours that we slept, he appeared to have recovered strength and haleness. Not that he hadn’t demonstrated vigor last night, and more than once at that—he had, in fact, been quite vigorous throughout the night—but this day I needed him to be a champion in other ways. To complement Gareth in his prowess.
Looking to Gareth as he rose like a god of old in the morning light, I knew I could be no better championed.
With eyes anew I marveled at their every muscle, remembered the feel of each under my questing fingers. Hard as iron, solid as stone, with hearts and stamina to match.
Ironside would need the strength of seven to have any chance against them. That was my belief, my conviction, my strength.
Gareth took my chin in his slayer hand and tilted my eyes to his. “I swear we will not fail you,” he vowed. “We will win your sister to your side.”
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