by Renee Rose
“Ack. You know I always put my foot in it. I didn't mean—stop it, dammit!”
She'd started kicking at his shins to get away, twisting around in his grasp. He wrestled with her, grabbing her other arm.
“DANI!” he roared.
She froze, her eyes wide. He had never raised his voice to her before, and the sound of him thundering was as frightening as a bear at full snarl.
He took advantage of her inaction and grasped her other shoulder, pulling her in to face him. “Stop fighting me,” he said impatiently. “The last thing I want is for you to get hurt.”
She narrowed her eyes, trying to cover her fear, though she felt her face already starting to crumple into angry tears.
He started to pull her toward him, but she turned her face sharply away, rejecting any comfort he might be thinking to offer.
“Shite,” he cursed and released her. He stalked back to where he'd laid the buck down and heaved it over his shoulders, starting to walk without looking back.
She cursed him silently. Did he have so much faith she would follow? Mayhap this was her chance to escape. Except, as usual, she had no idea where they were.
“We can't leave for Umbria today,” he informed Phillip tightly, entering his tent at first light. The plan had been to pack up and head for their foster father's castle.
“What do you mean?”
“Dani's bleeding—seems bad. I don't want her to travel.” He had not been able to find the herb penny royal for her in any village, and now it seemed it was too late.
Phillip looked skeptical. “You mean bleeding, like a woman bleeds?”
His control was starting to snap. “I don't know, dammit. Yes! Or mayhap more like a miscarriage. She seems like she's in a lot of pain.”
Phillip still looked doubtful. “Ferrum, we need to keep pressing on.”
He lost his temper. “You go on, then, but we're not leaving!” he snarled. “This is your fault you know!”
“How is this my fault?”
“You wanted to keep a woman with the troops, you must suffer the consequences of it!” He knew he was not being rational, but the sight of a pale-faced Dani curled up that morning with her arms wrapped around her abdomen, the blankets soaked in blood had shaken him to the core. He had been perfectly calm and reassuring with her, but now that he was with Phillip, he was like a kettle boiling over.
Phillip had a cautious look on his face. “We're not leaving you behind. We will delay another day.”
For some reason Phillip's calm only further enraged him. “And if we're not ready in a day?” he demanded.
Phillip stared at him.
“If you want to help, you'll send someone out to find a midwife!” he shouted.
Phillip nodded. “I will do that,” he said mildly.
“Fine!” he yelled and stormed out, knowing Phillip would not have stood for such insolence from anyone else. He spent the day by Dani's side, stroking her back or her head, promising her everything would be all right. She was afraid, and he had no idea whether her fears were justified or not. He'd never witnessed a woman miscarrying before. Hell, he'd never been close enough to a woman to witness her monthly bleeding. But she didn't look well. Her face was too pale—even her lips were grayish, and she was weak with the pain.
A midwife was found, and it was her worry that frightened him more than anything. She gave Dani a draught of motherwort and shepherd's purse to slow the bleeding. Phillip wouldn't allow the midwife to leave the camp, since she knew their whereabouts, and they didn't know if she could be trusted. So he had to deal with soothing a second frightened woman in his tent. The midwife bedded down next to Dani, but there was no way he was going to be able to sleep. He stalked back to Phillip's tent.
Phillip and Edwin were not in bed yet. “How is she?” Phillip asked.
He couldn't find the words. She's going to die. He felt sure of it. She couldn't continue to bleed at that rate through the night and live. She would bleed out and die. He rested his knuckles on Phillip's table, needing to touch something solid, something to ground him. It felt good enough that he cocked his arm back and punched into the wood. The wood split with a crack that satisfied the beast within him. He punched it again and again.
Vaguely, he heard Phillip commanding Edwin to leave and whoever had shown up to stay out. He bent at the waist and smashed his head into the wood, breaking it in half. He picked up one of the halves and smashed it into the leg of the table, splintering it even more. He continued, feeling more and more relief as he destroyed the table, tearing it into the smallest of pieces. When he'd finished, he stood panting and clenching his fists, and then he met Phillip's eye for the first time. Phillip had stood back, his arms folded across his chest, watching dispassionately. He did not need Phillip to speak any words of comfort. Phillip understood him. He allowed him this—knew it was the release he needed.
“Nay, the prince said no one enters,” he heard Edwin's voice say outside the tent, but the flap opened anyway, and Danewyn appeared, dressed in her shift, wrapped in a blood-soaked blanket, her big eyes huge in her ashen face.
“Ferrum?” she said in a tiny voice, her lips cracked and pale.
He was flooded with emotion—guilt that he'd disturbed her with his tantrum, an aching tenderness and overwhelming need to care for her, and fear at her wan appearance. He rushed to her and scooped her up, the bloody blanket sticky on his arm.
“Little flower,” he said tenderly. “Did I wake you?”
“Ferrum,” she repeated his name, resting her face into his neck. The way she spoke his name tore deep into his heart—as if she were truly calling him out. It was like the way she looked into his eyes and not at his scars. This woman saw him for who he was and was not afraid. Nay, she even seemed to want him, or need him—he knew not which. Either way, he wanted to give her everything she ever needed. He wanted to be the one who answered her call. He wanted 'Ferrum' to be the only name she ever uttered again.
He turned with her in his arms to meet Phillip's eyes again, and the sympathy he saw there did not weaken him. Phillip's understanding reassured him whatever it was he was feeling was real. He gave him a nod and carried Dani back to their tent, gently laying her on her bloody bedding and curling his body protectively around her, holding her back closely against his front.
He left the candle lit, and both he and the midwife woke every time Dani groaned with cramps during the night. She continued to bleed and also to pass tissue. The midwife's tight, pinched face told him all he needed to know—Dani was not improving. Finally, the midwife made some sort of decision and pulled out a tiny clay pot of oil, pouring some on her hands and rubbing them. It smelled of garlic.
“I'm going to check her,” she said.
He didn't know what she meant but watched as she parted Dani's legs and slipped her fingers inside her. Though he knew it was necessary, he bristled at the invasion, especially when Dani whimpered and moaned at it. The midwife's expression was one of intense listening, which then turned to satisfaction, and she pulled her hand back out.
“There was something caught in the opening to her womb and I removed it. Hopefully its removal will help slow the bleeding.”
It did, in fact, seem to have an effect. Dani did not wake again till daybreak, and judging from the rags between her legs, the flow had slowed considerably. He stroked her hair and kissed her forehead while the midwife coaxed her into sipping some broth.
“How do you feel?”
“Better.” She leaned up on her elbows and looked up at him through her light eyelashes. “I Saw something,” she said in a low voice so that the midwife wouldn't hear. It took a moment for him to understand she was speaking about her Sight.
“What was it?”
“Tell…” her eyes darted toward the midwife “…our friend… he will be double-crossed.”
“By whom?”
She lowered herself back to the bedding, and shook her head, looking tired. “I don't know.”
; It hadn't been Sight exactly—it was more a sense of knowing that had come to her. She couldn't see any faces attached or how the double-cross would come, no matter how many questions the Prince put to her. It was not until a month later, when he sent for her to ask the whereabouts of a missing party of his men, including the knight Sir Godfrey, that she understood.
She was sitting beside him on a rock overlooking a lake down in a valley, Sir Ferrum nearby, melting into the background.
“Danewyn, I sent four soldiers to meet a contact in London. They should have returned by now,” the Prince said, looking down at the landscape.
She knew immediately—a sense of warning flooded through her. “It's the double-cross,” she said tensely.
The Prince's face sharpened. “Where are they? Are they alive?”
She closed her eyes but saw nothing but a swirled jumble of images. She frowned and tried harder.
As if the Prince could sense her confusion, he placed a finger between her brows. “Shh. You can find it. Just listen.”
She strained to See, but the jumble became even more chaotic along with her thoughts, which swirled around fears that she would not be able to See.
“Shh,” the Prince said, more insistently. “Relax. It will come to you.”
She cleared the clutter of images from her mind and imagined instead the clear blue lake below them. In the days of Avalon, the priestesses Saw by looking in scrying bowls, filled with water. She created a clear image of the lake in her imagination and stared at it, absorbing the peace and calm of its still waters. An image appeared of a struggle—then Sir Godfrey and his men being led away at sword point.
“They were attacked, led away… by the King's soldiers, I think.”
“Are they still alive?” the Prince asked.
She heard a yes quite clearly in her mind. “Aye.”
“Where?”
She Saw the men again, being forced into a dwelling crowded beside other dwellings. It must be London… unless there were other settlements that looked the same.
“London?” she said, unsure. Yes, she heard clearly. “Aye, London.”
She opened her eyes and looked at the Prince, who was wearing his battle face.
“Can they be rescued?” he asked tersely.
She was surprised that the Prince would risk the lives of more men to retrieve these few. She respected him for it. From what she had seen, his men would follow him into hell and back. And it seemed it was for good reason—he truly cared about them.
Yes. “Aye. They are still in London. I can't say where, exactly, but there are not so very many of the royal guard holding them. Less than a dozen, mayhap.”
The Prince looked at Sir Ferrum, who also had a battle face on. “You will go. Take Danewyn so she can lead you to them. Take a dozen men.”
He shook his head. “Nay, a dozen men will attract too much attention. I will take six.”
The Prince nodded. “As you see fit.”
“We'll leave at first light,” Sir Ferrum promised, and held out an arm to lead her away.
They rode out in the morning, and she felt sick and conflicted about returning to London. It was what she'd been wanting, except when she thought about it, there was nothing at all she missed from that life. Still, this was her chance to escape—the escape she'd been planning for more than two months.
She felt Sir Ferrum's eyes on her. He must sense the turmoil she was in.
They arrived in London at nightfall, and Ferrum arranged a room above a tavern. It was one she knew, though she'd never worked in it. She saw recognition from several men, and she watched Sir Ferrum's face turn black as some of them ogled her with lewd stares. She was grateful no one openly solicited her, or she feared Ferrum would have his throat. It was probably the hard stares he was delivering that prevented it. She ignored it all, though secretly felt warm at Sir Ferrum's jealousy.
She tried to listen for the whereabouts of their men. “They're still alive,” she told Sir Ferrum, when they reached the room. “The soldiers drink in some kind of tavern like this one. But they're keeping the prisoners where they sleep.”
“Are they sleeping in the tavern where they drink?”
She unfocused her eyes to listen to the question. “Nay. Somewhere else. If we just find them at the tavern, though, we could follow them back to where they're staying.”
Ferrum nodded.
“Let's go out looking now.”
His eyes narrowed suspiciously, and she felt a surge of anger that he didn't trust her. She was at his side, her thoughts only occupied by bringing their men back. But then, she'd always made it plain she wished to leave him. She felt a twist in her heart. Would he leave her tied up here whilst he went looking for the men? Was she still just the Seer they'd captured to use as they pleased, with no consideration for her? She pressed her lips together.
“Nay, we're tired,” he said, watching her closely. “Tonight we sleep. Tomorrow we can ask around.”
They bedded down on straw mattresses, and Sir Ferrum tucked her right against him with his arm around her. She lay there, her thoughts swirling, her belly sick from it all. The stubborn part of her wanted to leave immediately, just to prove she was not a mere piece of property to be taken at will. But she loved Ferrum. She'd known it since the day of the battle when she'd turned back from her escape to care for him. And though she hadn't planned it, she had grown loyal to Prince Phillip too. His men were suffering torture or worse right now, and she had the best chance of helping them.
As her thoughts turned to the missing soldiers, she had a clear sense of where to find their captors. It was a tavern she knew only too well.
The wise thing to do would have been to wake Sir Ferrum and tell him what she'd Seen. But she was still angry with him, and the idea of asserting her freedom and independence won out. She slowly, slowly slipped out from under Sir Ferrum's arm, freezing when his snores stopped. When they started up again she moved carefully, picking up her calf-skin boots and slipping out the door. She left the tavern swiftly, not stopping to put on her boots until she was outside.
She unwound her braid as she walked, formulating her plan. As she approached her old tavern, her belly clenched into knots. The smells brought back her old life with a rush. It was a life she no longer wanted. She felt clear on that now. Being there, thinking about what she was about to do, made her sick. Sir Ferrum had been right—she had no reason to return. She wanted to tell him so, and felt a pang of longing for him, wishing she had not come alone. But it was too late. She took a deep breath and entered.
She prayed Coenred wouldn't be angry she'd been absent so long, but he gave her his usual lift of the chin and disinterested wave as if she'd never left. Four of the King's men were there in front of the hearth, getting drunk. The way her skin prickled told her they were the ones she sought. She gave her long hair a seductive toss and sashayed up to the counter to talk to Coenred. She perched on a stool and leaned forward on her elbows.
“Dani,” he grunted.
“Hello, Coenred. Listen, I want you to make those soldiers an offer for me. Tell them they can have me for the whole night to share, in their apartment for 2 silver pieces. You keep half.”
Coenred grunted an assent. It took a while before he made his way over there, but it was just as well, because it reduced suspicion. Several of her old customers came over to her while she waited, but she told them she was busy and promised to come back and serve them the following night. Her heart pounded as she watched Coenred approach her quarry.
The soldiers looked over at her. She gave them her broadest smile. They stood up and one of them fished coins out and handed them to Coenred. Success. She slid off her barstool, collecting her silver piece from Coenred as she passed him and hooked her arms through the arms of two of the men. “Take me to your beds, men, and I'll keep you warm,” she promised.
One of them slapped her arse. “It's us who are going to keep ye warm, woman. We plan to use you all night long.”
&nb
sp; She forced a fake laugh and tossed her hair, following them back to their quarters, where the men drew lots to see which got her first. The soldier who won refused to let the others watch, sending them into another room. She lifted her skirts and straddled him where he sat on a chair, listening, as she moved, for the whereabouts of her men. She felt them below her. There must be a cellar.
At that moment, the door swung noiselessly open, and she stifled a gasp, her eyes widening in shock. Sir Ferrum was standing there—a giant warrior looking like he could tear apart a man with his bare hands. She pointed down and mouthed the word “cellar”, but Sir Ferrum was advancing stealthily toward her, his sword drawn.
In a single swipe, he lobbed off the head of the soldier she was riding, spraying her with his blood. She covered her mouth tightly with both hands to contain the scream in her throat, scrambling off and backing away from the dead man.
Chapter 6
There are times when a man's heart and head split in two—when the head knows something and understands it, yet the heart has plunged in another direction. This was one of those moments. Knowing Dani was working for Phillip—working on rescuing their soldiers rather than the escape he'd feared—should have pleased him. But the sight of her with another man made his blood boil with rage. He was going to rip every last one of the soldiers from limb to limb.
He left her there and headed farther back into the building.
“Be careful! There are several of them—”
He didn't wait to listen to Dani's urgent whisper, but entered the chamber with his sword swinging, gutting three men and slitting the throat of a fourth. He parried a blow from a fifth man and then threw his entire weight at him, tackling him to the floor before he caught his throat in his meaty fist and squeezed until the man stopped squirming.
He reemerged from the chamber. “Where?” he demanded.
Dani pointed a shaking finger toward a trap door, keeping the other hand still clapped firmly over her mouth. He opened the trap door and quickly descended. All four of their missing men were there, tied up. They had obviously been subjected to torture. Dani followed him down, and they both worked to cut their bonds. The men were not in good shape, but all were conscious.
