by Sue Wilson
Abruptly, he leaned back and pulled on the reins. His horse reared up on its hind legs and neighed, and Thea's body dropped solidly into Nottingham's embrace. With a sudden lurch, the steed leapt forward and galloped off through the meadow. Thea tried to look back, to see her cottage again and watch it shrink to a small dot on the horizon; there was nothing behind her but the Sheriff's black cloak flapping out behind them in the wind.
~*~
"Report, deLancey?" Guy of Gisborne favored the exhausted soldier with a withering look. "Please tell me these rumors of attack are the half-baked imaginings of castle gossip."
"God's blood, Sir Guy," the soldier panted, doffing his helm. "Not just attack-a massacre! They killed everything-men, horses."
"'They?' Who did you see, deLancey?"
"No one, my lord. Not a living soul. Couldn't see nothing for the fog. And then-arrows-coming from nowhere. The air was thick with them, as thick as summer rain and over as fast. It was like the ghosts of Sherwood themselves had loosed upon us!"
Gisborne looked at the soldier, at the pale line of skin that covered the man's forehead and ran the length of his nose, where the helm had protected him. Black grime and dried blood darkened the rest of the man's face. Only the forehead, the nose, and horror-filled eyes stared out at Gisborne, a skull-mask of bone bled white from fear.
"Survivors?"
"None, my lord."
"But you are here, deLancey. Or are you so uncertain of your own fate? If my cousin survived-"
The soldier bowed his chin to his armored chest and made a clumsy, cross-like gesture with his gauntleted hand. "God's mercy, my lord. I saw the Sheriff hit, saw his horse cut from beneath him-" The soldier swallowed convulsively. "There was no way he could have lived through what I witnessed."
Gisborne pierced the soldier with a cool, speculative stare. "You are certain of that? Don't underestimate him, deLancey. I've seen him survive worse. Seen him given up for dead and yet return, like some resurrected mongrel, to haunt the living further."
"Haunt he may, Sir Guy, but with Sherwood's own. There was none left from the battle to draw breath, that I swear. None but I," he added awkwardly.
"How fortunate for you, deLancey."
"Sir?"
"That you were spared to lead the troops to recover his body," Gisborne said, a sneer warping the edges of tightened lips.
"But, sir-"
"You don't think I'd leave him out there for those cutthroats, do you? My cousin, the Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham! Not fodder for the vultures, man. Now be gone with you."
"But, sir-"
"Gone, I say!" Gisborne's fist pounded the oaken table.
The soldier nodded stiffly, a reluctant bow of obeisance, and turned on his heel to leave the hall.
Gisborne waited until the man departed and the metallic clanging of mail and sword died to a mournful echo. He looked up slowly.
Dark, amber eyes, kohl-rimmed, peered back at him from across the table, and he studied those eyes, watching the shift of liquid gold within their depths.
"Do you trust the report?" A mellifluous voice floated on the air, sweet and intoxicating, like mead to the lips and mind.
"Do you?"
Long, tapered fingers plucked at a pair of gold tassels threaded through the neck of a kidskin pouch. The woman said nothing, but upended the pouch and let the carved runes spill out upon the oak.
Gisborne winced at the clatter the bone pieces made and rubbed his eyes with thumb and index finger.
"Answer enough," he heard his companion say.
He opened bleary eyes and focused on the pattern made by the runes. The glyphs swirled, meaningless in his ale-fogged vision. The woman touched a row of pieces, right to left, and came to rest on a single, uncarved square. The blank rune stared back at him-a stark promise of death.
"A lie!" he growled, sweeping the runes from the table. "I will not believe it any more than I believe that fool deLancey."
"Then another interpretation, perhaps," the woman offered coolly, thin hand at her swan-like neck. "A symbolic death. Or an ending. A portent of unknowable change."
"We need no changes here, Aelwynn. Only reassurance that our plan will go forward, that we will meet with success. Where are those signs?"
The woman's glance slid to the floor where the scattered runes lay among the rushes and leavings of an earlier meal. She shrugged her shoulders with a sensual languor that sent a thread of fire down Gisborne's spine to his loins. "Perhaps I should try again."
He reached across the table, rough hand weaving through the coil of braid at her nape, and drew her toward him, his mouth silencing hers. He drank in the taste of her, the bitter taste of the lips whose reading he dared not believe, and found less assurance there than in the runes. Abruptly, he severed the kiss, leaving the woman gasping, her lips still open, as if she had expected anything from his mood except sullenness and rancor.
She closed her mouth, teeth toying with the unfinished sting in her lower lip. "You need not fear," she murmured. "The bastard's quite indestructible."
Gisborne took a long draught of ale and tried to swallow the bile that had risen in the back of his throat. "Is he?"
~*~
Nottingham Castle loomed in the distance, rising from its rocky prominence above the city like a forbidding sentry. The stone towers were partly obscured by the fog, but ocher lights still shone at the narrow windows. Its brooding aspect did not bring one a sense of warmth or hospitality, nor had it been built with that in mind. It was a fortress, a stalwart protection designed more to intimidate than to welcome.
Town dwellers lived and worked in its domineering shadow, crouching slightly as they went about their business, as if burdened by its presence. The streets were filled with the usual hustle and bustle of a city, but people hurried on their way without lingering. The Sheriff's guard dotted the city landscape, unavoidable, garbed in mail and arms.
In truth, few citizens of Nottingham would have dared approach the castle gates. They made whatever rounds were necessary for their business, giving wide berth to the place they knew to be the Sheriff's residence.
On this morning, Nottingham felt an urgency to be home. He did not think of his domicile as particularly inviting, nor was he a social creature with intentions of making the castle an extension of the court. While Nottingham Castle housed lords and barons and even royalty on occasion, it was rarely at the Sheriff's invitation. He suffered the arrival of caravans of guests and their households as a supreme intrusion, and while he gave his visitors whatever hospitality their stations warranted, he did nothing to earn himself the fame of a gracious host or Nottingham Castle the reputation of a warm retreat.
The Sheriff was relieved that his home was not currently besieged with guests. He had great need of privacy.
There was, he was forced to admit, the damnable physical distress caused by his injury. While he was not ready to concede that he'd been in error to ride back to Nottingham when the healing woman had advised against it, the miles he'd traveled to reach the city had stretched out longer than he'd anticipated. His wound plagued him, a sharp reminder no matter which gait he directed his horse to employ. He had finally resigned himself to a slow, plodding walk, under pretense that he had not for some time made a thorough inspection of the fields they passed.
If his healer was fooled-and Nottingham felt quite certain she was not-she said nothing. Nor did she fuss over him with unwanted, solicitous behavior. She seemed aware of every uncomfortable movement, of the small grimaces of pain he let slip, of the occasional indrawn breath, but she remained silent.
A curious creature, he mused. She had been so forthright and outspoken before, a pleasant change from wenches who cowered before him and barely spoke when what he craved was something quick and sharp of wit.
As the ache of his injury became more of a distraction, she had quieted. Hers was not the silence of fear, for not once had he felt her tremble in his arms. It was instead the silence of good judg
ment, betraying an intellect and manner rarely found in peasant stock. She had been too intelligent to slay him, too quick to realize the utter futility of murder, although she had the spirit for it. Even now she evidenced, if not kind-heartedness, at least the uncommon discretion not to call attention to his incapacity, as if she knew somehow he could not bear her chatter and his pain at once.
The Sheriff could not describe the impulse that had driven him to bring her with him, but he hoped it was one spontaneous decision he would not regret. Her physic was crude, and the outcome of her ministrations was still dubious at best. He certainly refused to suffer the odor of the foul substance she had spackled into his gut much longer than would be required to order a bath.
His surgeon's methods would have been no mystery to him. The leech demonstrated a propensity for invocations and incantations and, if the moon were right and his ruling planet in the proper house, Nottingham knew he would be bled. He had accepted this matter-of-factly. The surgeon had served him for years, and his practice of the healing arts had settled predictably into the commonplace procedures of the day, sprinkled with superstition to render them more impressive. Now the leech was gone, and this other option-
The Sheriff looked down at the woman in his arms. At some point in the tedious journey, she had fallen asleep, lulled by the sun's steady heat and the sonorous drone of insects. Her body slumped against him, warm, limply relaxed, her hips moving rhythmically with the motion of the horse. No, she was not his competent, skilled surgeon, but the thought of the healer's hands stroking warmed honey salve on his belly was nearly consolation enough.
By journey's end, to the merciless ache in his side was added a relentless throbbing in his temple and the slight nausea that presaged a violent headache. Yesterday's attempt on his life had left him with a solitary feeling of fear and dread, more real, less easily cured than the wound in his side. But for good fortune, he would be dead now.
Nottingham thought of the arrowhead the healer had dug from his gut. The castle forge, she had said quite clearly, as if he did not recognize his own armory's mold. While he fully conceded the public loathed him, he was surprised to find such a lethal attitude among his own men. Surely some of them shared a moderate contempt for him, but none would have taken the initiative, or had the mettle, to ambush him. None he knew, at least.
Who would dare betray him? A single, disgruntled soldier annoyed by low pay, hard work, and ill-fitting boots? The cuckolded husband of some scullery maid he'd bedded and long since forgotten? Maybe a woodsman, after all, with an inside supplier of castle armaments?
But how could that be? One of his spies would have informed him, or Gisborne would have picked up on some unrest from which such violence might have sprung.
There were never any answers in this unending hell where he found himself.
The Sheriff shuddered, suddenly cold despite the heat of the day. The healing woman woke with a start, turned slowly in his arms, and regarded him with an unspoken question. Nottingham pointed ahead to the city gates. "There."
She made no reply, but the Sheriff noticed she sat slightly forward now, away from him, sparing him the weight or movement of her body.
An odd feeling encompassed him. He had traveled the entire morning and well into the afternoon, and was now arriving at a destination he was not at all certain he wanted to reach. With effort, he straightened in his saddle and did his best to ignore the odors and sounds of city life that assaulted him.
As he wended his way through the town, people scurried out of his way, or bowed and scraped in an obsequious manner, their faces written with shock as much as fear. Clearly he was not expected to return. A day's absence had already fueled suspicion, if not hope, of his death. He ignored the sea of surprised townspeople and held his face in impassive stoniness, his gaze fixed on the crenelated towers of Nottingham Castle.
His murderer was within that castle-he felt it. Somewhere in its depths or along one of its dimly lit corridors, within the heart of the fortress that should have been his sanctuary, his assailant would strike again.
A cold sweat enveloped him. His shirt clung to his skin, and he wanted nothing more than to shrug off the pretense of invincibility he wore, along with clothes suddenly too damp and heavy.
He did not acknowledge the guard's dutiful "M'lord," as the portcullis opened to admit him, then clanged shut, trapping him within the castle's stony embrace.
He could see Gisborne striding toward him, his cousin's face mirroring the same astonishment he had seen in the city. So even Gisborne had not anticipated his return, although he covered his unpreparedness with a barrage of orders shouted across the bailey to stable boy and servant alike.
With considerable effort, holding his bandaged side, the Sheriff dismounted. He felt the pressure in his temples explode across his brow. For the briefest of moments, he let his forehead rest against the saddle's leather, then abruptly he straightened, unwilling to allow his fatigue or pain to show. The very motion sent the world spinning around him. He held tightly to the horse's bridle, thankful that Gisborne reached him at just the moment a stable boy came to hold the horse.
The Sheriff watched, curiously detached, as his cousin lifted Thea down. He saw the glint in Gisborne's eye and noted the way his hands brushed up her sides and across her breasts before he released her. The woman shoved him away roughly, not bothering to disguise her hatred.
Gisborne laughed, a hollow show of nonchalance. "Well, I see you've not come back empty-handed," he said to the Sheriff.
Nottingham put a shaking hand on Gisborne's shoulder as if taking his cousin into his confidence, hoping Guy did not sense the weakness that in truth made the gesture necessary.
"Oh ye of little faith," he managed, his irritation with Gisborne's folly only slightly less than the fire stabbing through his rib. "Have you caught the bastards that ambushed us?"
The lieutenant shook his head. "Only deLancey made it back, and he was raving like a lunatic. Muttering about ghosts and spirits-"
Nottingham silenced him with a forbidding look. "With real enough arrows, damn you! Keep looking! I want the vermin found!"
"Hood and his people?"
The Sheriff swayed slightly, the remembered image of the telltale arrowhead doubling, blurring, before his eyes. "If not Locksley-"
He stopped, lips tightening over the remainder of his suspicions. "Of course Hood," he spat. "Aided by his outlaw army. Spirits, be damned! They're mortal enough. Flush Locksley out of his wooded lair with as many men as it takes-but find him!" The brief bellow of rage quickly exhausted him.
"Your surgeon, Cousin-there's been no report of him."
The Sheriff fought back a scowl as he reached instinctively toward the source of slicing pain. His hand came away bloody.
"No," he said, wearily subdued. "I assumed not. But no matter, Gisborne. She is to tend me." He held out the blood-covered hand to Thea. He was not sure which surprised-or gratified-him more: the shocked look on his cousin's face or the way the healer took his hand and laced her fingers through his.
CHAPTER FIVE
It happened far too quickly for Thea to absorb. Only moments before, the Sheriff appeared conquered by weakness; now he summoned a veneer of vigor about him. He took her arm and pulled her along behind him, into the castle and through its dark corridors.
The passageways of the castle were a blur of stone and torchlight, of servants and soldiers pressing their backs against the walls to let the Sheriff pass. He acknowledged no one as he climbed the spiral stairway to his lair, his stride long and impatient, as if he could not reach his destination soon enough.
When at last they paused on a landing at the top of one of the castle towers, Nottingham snarled unintelligibly and shoved the lance-bearing guard aside. He kicked open the oaken door and hauled Thea in behind him. Only then did he release her.
She stood panting, rubbing her raw wrist, a thousand retorts on her tongue and not one she had breath to fling at him. They'd entered da
rkness, relieved only by the hearth where flames lapped lazily at a bed of hotly glowing coals.
Thea glanced from the fire to the stone walls, where their shadows stretched overhead to the vaulted ceiling. Rushes gilded by firelight covered the floor, and the faint aroma of woodruff battled with that of candle wax, smoldering oak, and an unfamiliar incense.
The Sheriff's harsh breathing echoed within the chamber. He removed his cloak and peeled off his shirt, flinging them on the long table that dominated the room. Blood soaked his bandages, but he paced around the room with such frenetic motion that Thea dared not approach him. At last, he climbed the four stone steps, two at a time, to a separate alcove and flung back the faded tapestry that hung there.
In the middle of a large bed, a woman sat amid rumpled bedclothes. Candles played over a cloud of auburn hair and pale, naked shoulders.
"Out of here, woman! Get the hell out of my bed!"
She frowned petulantly, but slid off the bed with the sheet clasped insecurely to her. Seeing Thea, she drew herself to a posture both proud and fiercely territorial.
"So that's how it is," she said, her words clearly meant for the Sheriff, but a gaze of evaluation directed at Thea.
Thea suffered the inspection and the woman's disdain in silence, feeling as much the unwelcome intruder as unwilling guest.
"Aelwynn!" Nottingham's voice rang out sharply.
The woman's angular face filled with a cool, haughty intensity. Gold-flecked eyes traveled to the sodden bandages wrapped below the Sheriff's ribs, observing in silence the damage done there. With a huff of indignation at her dismissal, she turned and left the room.
The Sheriff whirled around, sank his hands into the down-filled coverlets and furs, and tore them from the bed, wild movements punctuated with an angry roar. "Damn the she-wolf! Can she not spare me tonight?"
