Dark Champion

by Jo Beverley

  She remembered the chain she had selected for FitzRoger. Dear heaven, she had never given it to him.

  The men suddenly scrambled into action. One grabbed an armful of golden platters, another the whole chest of jewels. The third took the chest of gold coins.

  “Imogen . . .” Renald said again, but she just said, “Are we ready?”

  The men nodded.

  She led the way back into the castle. The idea of giving FitzRoger the emerald chain, of putting it on his live, healthy body, had become an obsession.

  They had not been secretive about all these activities, and rumors of events were beginning to spread through the castle. Renald hastily assembled his force of men, dressed for quiet dark work in the woods. Another party was to watch for Warbrick coming down the cliff. There were not that many men in the castle, though. About the same number as Warbrick had had to begin with.

  To Imogen it took so long, but the rescuers must be ready when she created her diversion.

  She suddenly thought of something. “Renald, I want a good knife. A useful one.”

  Without a question he brought her a long blade in a sheath and she fixed it on her girdle. It would not be noticed in the time they had, and she needed something.

  Knives made her think of her hair, and in the midst of all this turmoil, that almost caused her to weep. She felt the stubby end of it . . . She stopped being maudlin when she realized it could be noticed by someone. The short end came just past her shoulders. She tucked it into the neckline of her tunic.

  At last, at long last, they were ready. They all moved quietly out of the postern gate. They would have to work their way around to the east through the woods, which would take time. Imogen looked anxiously at the sky, but there was not even a hint of morning grayness.

  The woods were full of night life, and they slipped quietly through, trying not to cause a disturbance that might alert their quarry.

  Imogen was sure it was growing lighter and whispered so to Renald.

  “We have at least an hour, Imogen. It’s just that your eyes are growing accustomed to the dark.”

  Her eyes might be growing accustomed, but her body wasn’t. There seemed to be a limit to how long she could hold the power, and it was leaching away, leaving only fear. Sweet Lord, what would they find when they got to the camp?

  She was assailed with visions of FitzRoger bleeding, bruised, perhaps already dying of splintered bones.

  Then came the time when Imogen and her three men would have to part from the larger force, so as to appear to be coming from the castle. Renald grasped her and kissed her. “For luck, little flower. Don’t worry. We’ll do it.”

  She clung to him a moment before heading out of the woods, down the open slope. This was the time when they were most likely to be seen, but the approach of morning was bringing a hint of concealing mist.

  Then they began to climb again, heading toward where she thought the camp must be. Now the mist was a hazard. They could miss entirely.

  A sharp whistle from the left.

  They headed toward it and found one of Warbrick’s men peering at them in the gloom. “What’s going on?”

  This was the tricky part. It would be more logical for one of the men to speak, but their voices would give them away.

  “You have your treasure,” said Imogen angrily. “That’s what. So much treasure that Lord Warbrick wants more men to carry it down the cliff.”

  “That right?” asked the man of her “guards.”

  Her men grunted in agreement.

  “Don’t expect much of them,” she sneered. “They’re too busy clutching the choice items.”

  The man moved nearer, eyes glittering. “Let’s see then . . .”

  “I want to see that my husband is safe,” snapped Imogen. “Out of my way!”

  The man swung a fist at her, but halted it. “You’ll get yours from Warbrick, you shrew. I’m going to enjoy that, I am.”

  With a start, Imogen recognized the voice of the man who had guarded them at the cave, and almost broke into nervous giggles. Instead she plunged ahead to the camp, her men following. A quick glance showed her the guard following too. He was trying to keep an eye out behind as well, but clearly the lure of the glinting gold was too much for even a man of Warbrick’s.

  She silently praised the man who had picked up the platters. Those shining disks of gold were lures of the most potent kind.

  They stepped into the camp. There was a small, carefully shielded fire and it gave just enough light for her to see Warbrick’s men sitting around, and FitzRoger by the tree still guarded by the four club-wielding men.

  He was slumped. Mary, Mother of all, don’t let him be unconscious.

  The man carrying the plate let one drop with a clang. It spun, flashing gold, near the fire. The second man tripped, and his chest of gold spilled. The third clutched his part of the treasure like a true miser.

  For a moment, no one moved, then one of Warbrick’s men reached to pick up a gold piece. Another man moved. Then another. In moments a madness took them.

  But the four guards by FitzRoger didn’t move. They twitched. They yearned. She could almost see their need to scramble for some of that gold, but they stayed by FitzRoger.

  Imogen spun on the last of her men. “Give me that chest, you oaf. That’s my father’s jewel chest. You shan’t have it!” She pulled it out of his suddenly lax grasp and it spilled, by her careful design, toward the guards.

  She had taken the time while they waited in the castle to empty all the pouches, knowing those men wouldn’t know how unlikely it was that such ornaments be all jumbled together. Precious gems sparkled through the air toward them.

  She scrambled after them, wailing.

  They lunged to get there ahead of her.

  Renald and his men stormed in.

  One man was cutting FitzRoger’s bonds before Imogen got there, but her husband was hardly free before a guard realized what was happening and swung viciously with his club. FitzRoger twisted and caught it awkwardly on the back of his shoulder, falling to his knees. After hours of bondage he lacked his natural, fluid grace and Imogen feared that blow must have done even more damage.

  She ran forward to defend him, pulling out her poignard.

  The guard swung again, this time going for the ribs. FitzRoger’s men were all around, but seemed so slow, and Imogen had all the time in the world to choose her spot. She remembered FitzRoger saying once, “Go for the neck.” She plunged her long knife to the unguarded side of the man’s neck. He screamed and arched as blood fountained out onto her.

  FitzRoger staggered to his feet and pulled her into his arms before the man hit the ground.

  “Truly a baptism of blood, my virago,” he said with a shaky laugh.

  Imogen used her tattered tunic to wipe blood and tears from her face, telling herself it was not so different from pig-killing time, but she was shaking head to toe. She stayed in her husband’s arms as the fighting swirled around them. She needed his comfort and protection, but she was also protecting.

  Like a vixen with one cub, she would let nothing happen to him.

  Renald ran by, laughing, and tossed FitzRoger a sword. He caught it left-handed, but awkwardly. Just how badly injured was his shoulder? He made no move to join the fight, but stood guarding Imogen and flexing his body carefully to overcome the stiffness.

  As the fighting dwindled, he released her to stretch more thoroughly, working his damaged body as best he could. He said just one word. “Warbrick?”

  “Is on the cliff or coming down.” The sky was definitely beginning to lighten. “We set some men to guard the way.”

  Those of Warbrick’s men not defeated were realizing that they had no chance, and were surrendering. FitzRoger’s men were efficiently disarming and binding them. They had brought torches and now lit them from the fire to light the scene of carnage.

  FitzRoger walked forward, arm around her as if he could not let her go.

  Renald
came over. “Your crazy plan worked after all, Ty.” His joy at his friend’s safety rang through the prosaic words.

  “Greed works every time.” There was something flat in FitzRoger’s voice that made them both look at him.

  “Warbrick?” asked Renald, almost with a sigh.

  “Where is he?”

  “I hope our other party has stopped him. He must have heard this.”

  “I hope so too.”

  “Ty, we can take him for justice,” said Renald. “Henry will see to him.”

  “Henry will probably only dispossess and exile him.”

  “That’ll get rid of him.”

  FitzRoger made no reply to that. He let Imogen go and walked forward toward the edge of the woods.

  Imogen looked at her husband with clear sight for the first time and saw what Renald saw. FitzRoger’s face was a mess; he had clearly received a few more blows after she’d left him. That wasn’t the important thing, though; his movements were awkward. The arrow wound must be hurting his right arm, and it would be a miracle if that cudgel blow to the left shoulder hadn’t cracked something. He was also favoring his right leg.

  He was in no condition to fight anybody, least of all Warbrick.

  She knew it would be pointless to say that. She prayed that someone had had the sense to kill Warbrick as they took him prisoner. If she’d anticipated this, she would have ordered it.

  She peered into the dense wispy grayness at the base of the cliff, but it was impossible to tell what was happening there. Nor could she hear. The activity in the camp blocked out more distant noises.

  They began to descend the slope. Imogen stayed anxiously at FitzRoger’s side, Renald just one step behind. Some of the men brought torches, creating pearly pools of light.

  “That was a nasty blow on the shoulder,” Renald said.

  FitzRoger ignored him.

  “Is something wrong with your leg?”

  “Mere stiffness.”

  “You seem to have some stiffness in your sword arm, too.”

  FitzRoger ignored that, as well.

  “He has an arrow wound in it,” Imogen said.

  “Ty . . .” Renald protested.

  “No.”

  It was all FitzRoger. The sort of command no one ever disobeyed. Imogen prayed that Renald would knock his friend out before he went on with his madness. He’d done that in the passages, after all. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to occur to him now.

  They found Warbrick pinned at the base of the cliff like a maddened bear surrounded by mastiffs. And like a baited bear, he had drawn blood. A body lay nearby and Warbrick’s great sword glinted red in the torchlight.

  FitzRoger pushed forward and Imogen went with him. When Warbrick saw FitzRoger, he cursed viciously. “I’ll have my men’s guts around their necks.”

  “They tried,” said FitzRoger almost sweetly.

  Warbrick straightened. “Well, Bastard. What now?”

  “Now I kill you. You deserve to die for your many sins, but you will die for touching my wife.”

  Warbrick laughed. “I did more than touch her! Has she told you what happened up there? Of course not. She’d lie about it.”

  Imogen would have protested, but FitzRoger’s hand gripped her arm, telling her to be silent.

  “She wouldn’t lie. But no matter what happened, only you will suffer. Shield.”

  The one-word order immediately brought him a kite shield.

  “And for him.”

  More reluctantly, one was passed to Warbrick. Imogen took some comfort from the fact that it could not possibly cover his bulk.

  Imogen pulled FitzRoger back a little, and he allowed it.

  “This is madness,” she hissed. “Hang him. He deserves it.”

  “I promised to kill him for you,” he said quietly, flexing his shoulder.

  “Then use a rope.”

  “No.”

  “I take back my request. Let the king deal with it.”

  “No. He must die by my hand.”

  She wanted to hit him. “You’re in no state!” she protested. “You’ve that wound, and it’s a miracle that blow didn’t break your shoulder!”

  His hand covered her mouth, and not gently. His eyes were almost cold with the killing fury that possessed him. “You will be silent,” he said. “You will stand here where it is safe, and watch in silence as a good wife should.”

  When he released her, she snapped, “And what am I supposed to do if you lose?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll have to take to beating you, won’t I? If I lose, at least don’t give yourself to the victor.”

  She watched him limp away, filled with exasperation. Merely a stiff leg? She doubted it. If she thought she had any chance of accomplishing it, she would order his men to tie him back up to a tree while she hanged Warbrick herself.

  They’d never obey.

  The idea came to her.

  It terrified her.

  But these past days she’d done so many things that terrified her that one more hardly seemed to matter. Before she lost her nerve, she picked up a fist-sized rock and swung it hard at her husband’s unprotected head.

  She’d not wanted to kill him and she thought for an awful moment that she’d not hit hard enough. He staggered and turned, rage blazing in his eyes.

  Then he crumpled at her feet.

  Chapter 19

  Christ’s wounds!” Renald expressed the horror on the faces of all the men.

  All the men except Warbrick. He guffawed. “Know he can’t beat me, eh?”

  Imogen turned to look at Warbrick. “Kill him,” she said coldly to the men. “I don’t care how. Kill him.”

  There was an eerie stillness, then a man with a bow coldly nocked an arrow and let loose. Cursing, Warbrick caught it on his shield, but another man had a bow and stuck him in the arm. Imogen watched as her enemy became bristled with arrows as FitzRoger had once been, but this time without the protection of mail.

  Warbrick was not a coward. He charged his attackers, but cold-eyed men drove him back to be victim to more arrows.

  He was roaring and staggering about, threatening his assailants like a maddened animal. Then at last an arrow took him deep in the chest and he crumpled with a last cry of agony and defeat.

  Silence fell.

  Sickened back to her wits, Imogen turned away from the man’s final twitching moments, wondering just what her husband was going to do to her. Bone-rattling shudders began to rack her. She had actually knocked FitzRoger out to prevent him from taking part in what he probably regarded as a duel of honor.

  She half expected to find him facing her, rage still sheeting from those green eyes, but he was on the ground and trussed up. He appeared to still be unconscious.

  “I had to give him another little tap,” said Renald, shaking his head. “By the thorns, Imogen. I don’t know . . .”

  “N-nor d-do I,” she stammered, hugging herself. “You haven’t t-tied him too tight, have you? H-his wounds . . .”

  “He’s tied tight enough to hold him,” Renald said. Grimly he added, “I hope. I’m working on the belief that he’ll regret it afterward if he throttles you with his bare hands.”

  Imogen covered her mouth with her shaking hand. “H-he’ll be that angry?”

  ““I have no idea how angry he’ll be. Nothing like this has ever happened before. My plan, however, is to escort you to Cleeve while the men put him in a bed with a strong sleeping draft. Then we just hope that he’s too wounded to set out after you until he’s cooled down a bit.”

  Imogen desperately wanted to tend her husband with her own hands, but she had some sense left. “Yes please,” she said meekly. “But please untie him as soon as possible.”

  Renald gave his orders, and those for disposing of Warbrick, then escorted Imogen around to the gate to get horses. Her knees were weak, and her head as misty as the gray morning. She shivered constantly and not just with cold.

  What was going to happen to her? If s
he was lucky, he’d just beat her half to death.

  Her terror was that he’d cast her off.

  Renald took time to find her some wine and a thick cloak, but then he and six men carried her off to Cleeve at an urgent gallop.

  Imogen managed to stay on her horse, but when she dismounted she collapsed, and the next thing she knew she was in a bed at Cleeve, sore from head to foot, and miserable as the devil.

  Given the situation, she rather wanted to keep her eyes closed forever, but she opened them a crack, then wider to search the room. She had expected FitzRoger to be there, waiting to visit his rage upon her. When she realized he wasn’t, her heart sank and her mind immediately conjured up the worst.

  He was too wounded to move.

  He was dead.

  He never wanted to see her again.

  Imogen turned and wept heartbreaking tears. She could clearly hear him once saying, “I hope at least that you never cry because of me, though I suspect you probably will.” She didn’t think either of them had expected her to cry at his loss.

  Imogen slept again, the sleep of exhaustion, and woke in the evening no better in mind or body. This time, however, she did not weep, but started wearily to put together some sort of existence.

  When she sat up, aching in every part of her body, she found ale and bread by the bed. The bread had begun to harden, and the ale had caught a few flies, but she ate and drank anyway.

  Then she assessed her physical hurts. Her feet were sore again in places, and when she inspected them, some of the worst wounds had been revived. No matter. She had nowhere to go.

  She had an alarming number of bruises and scrapes with no recollection of how she had acquired them, but the sorest spot was her face. She gingerly felt her jaw, which Warbrick’s blow had made very painful; she had no doubt she was black and blue there. Her fingers found another hurt, and traced the jagged gash in her cheek made by the flying piece of the lanthorn.

  A thin wail escaped her when she realized she would be scarred. She shut her mouth on that weakness, but she could not stop the tears that rolled down to drip off her cheeks.