by Nicole Locke
The thought was unbearably desolate. The fact that there could be a way to fell him, that anything or anyone could harm him at all.
A grunt from him brought her eyes back up. He held the cloth to his face. She watched him minutely move his arms as if he was adjusting his nose. It was swelling, but she didn’t think she’d broken it.
She wanted, needed, to know. As far as he was concerned, she was an enemy, but for her...she didn’t want him hurt. ‘Is it broken?’
Another huff of breath and he dropped the linen. ‘If it was, would you add it to your trophies?’
Trophies were for those who wanted to boast of their winnings. Trophies, like mementos of sentimentality, were kept around a house to fondly remember past days. She had neither friends to regale, nor a home to hold such things...even if she owned anything. Even if the trophy was a mere ring, she couldn’t keep it. Anything that wasn’t essential to her survival was forbidden. In truth, she didn’t expect to keep her own life to fondly remember any past.
If fondly was a way to describe her past, which she doubted.
No, his talk of trophies made little sense to her, but the bite behind Eldric’s words did. She knew why he raged and wished her dead. She’d known it the moment his friend fell because her arrow pierced him. Though she hadn’t meant to harm his friend at the time, she had.
She’d been ordered to kill Eldric, but of course she couldn’t. Unbeknown to her father, she’d already been immersed in the warrior’s music and laughter. But she had to appease her father...and something in her wanted to help her warrior as well. She’d notched the arrow, meaning only to skim his arm so he’d swerve away from her reach. Her intention was to tell her father that the target was too far away.
Cressida tried to stop the next memory of that day. Tried to cease the piercing ache of guilt from creeping into her thoughts. But she couldn’t stop either, just as she couldn’t stop the past. She’d timed the arrow and the warning shot with absolute precision...and then the English warrior flanking Eldric’s side had dodged another opponent and unerringly went into the trajectory of her arrow. She watched as the man fell, as Eldric roared and searched the field so he could make amends.
The absolute anguish on his face, the whispering of vows made. She knew then that the dead man wasn’t merely a fellow warrior. She’d killed Eldric’s friend without meaning to, but that mattered little. Death was final and intentions meant nothing.
Ever since, Eldric had searched for her...the weapon, the murderer. All so he could tear her down and exact his vengeance. He had a right to his wrath, but it pained her all the same.
Eldric turned and she realised she hadn’t answered his question. His gaze skimmed her features and seemed disappointed, before he raised the linen to his face again. The water couldn’t be cold enough to stop the swelling.
‘You need peppermint,’ she whispered through a throat closed with remorse. She had hurt him...again.
Throwing the linen in the basin, splashing the water out of the bowl, he said, ‘Poison. That’s not your way.’
She was a weapon and possessed many lethal skills. In fact, she was quite adept at poison; still, he was right that she preferred the more direct route. One that separated her from her enemy. More and more she found she used the arrow as her means to kill. She feared it had nothing to do with her proficiency in it, but rather that she was beginning to feel something for her victims.
‘I—I don’t know what you mean,’ she purposely stammered as if she feared him and his accusations. ‘Being a healer, I understand about poisoning, but I...would never poison someone. That goes against everything I am. I’m only suggesting something that could help you.’
‘This is the lie you come up with to entertain me? I will tell you this, it doesn’t. Attempt something else.’
She shook her head, knowing there was no answer for that. His presence was enough to make it difficult to keep the ruse that she was merely a woman visiting at the docks. She knew enough not to feign that she was the woman who threw up her skirts for coin and food, but she could be a traveller, one who was merely resting out in the open until her ship left.
But being around Eldric when he was so familiar made fissures in her ruse. The fact he refused to believe her even more. But he couldn’t know who she was, not really. He didn’t appear to recognise her from that night they had danced, when his hands had touched hers and her skirts had swirled between his legs.
Nor could he know for certain she was the Archer for her father. She’d maintained her distance from this man, from all men. No one saw her.
So maintaining she was somehow innocent was her only available option. It was a cover that couldn’t be maintained long term, but if there was the smallest chance she could cause doubt, convince him he had captured the wrong person, she would. Otherwise...
Otherwise, she’d have to be what her father made her. But even she knew she could never be a true weapon around Eldric. Didn’t even want to test the assumption. So she was left with falsehood or the truth. It was safer for Eldric if she lied.
‘Peppermint isn’t poison,’ she continued as if he’d answered her. ‘When crushed until its oil is released, it cools.’
He retrieved the linen and brushed it across his shoulders and arms, along his torso, as if he was bathing in his chamber alone. As if she didn’t exist. She watched the small linen as it was shoved brutally across his skin, sloughing off the embedded dirt from their altercation and from whatever journey he’d made to reach her.
How could she not know he was following her? In pursuing her father, she’d made herself vulnerable. Allowing her entire focus to be consumed with a rumour. Foolish mistake. No one had surprised her ever before. Eldric, a giant of a man who whistled, truly shouldn’t be capable of stealth.
Not that Eldric was her enemy, though she knew she was his. Or...at least, he thought her an enemy. And for his safety, it would remain that way until she was dead.
Another brush of the linen up his neck and around to his chest. He rubbed roughly there. She could imagine what it felt like, the water cool after the heat of the morning and their fight. She’d hit him hard and wished he’d turn completely so she could see the extent of the damage...if he needed peppermint or wrapping. After all, if she was bound and he injured, they would be at a disadvantage if they were attacked.
That was the reason she cared, not because of bruising, swelling or pain. If those existed, peppermint would help. Rubbed along his tender side, swirled to reach... Trying in vain to stop her errant thoughts of applying the oil herself, she kept up with her useless babble while that strange restlessness increased and she shifted her body to ease it. ‘I was a healer in my other village before I’d decided to take a ship to—’
Throwing the linen with such force the wooden bowl rattled against the table, he strode to the refreshments. Swiping the flagon in one hand, he didn’t bother with the goblet and drank straight from the curved jug. His profile to her, she watched his throat take in the liquid in one, two, three gulps before he slammed the vessel on the table. It toppled over, empty.
He didn’t bother to straighten it. She glanced to his strewn clothes, the washing area slopped over with his mud-and-blood-splattered linen. That was when his gaze acutely returned to her.
She swallowed. ‘I could make some for you. It won’t heal instantly. But it will feel better. You must be in pain.’
He rolled his shoulders and a harsh breath flared his nostrils. Pivoting, he took the two steps to his satchel on the floor and yanked out a tunic that he shoved over his head.
‘Perhaps comfrey,’ she continued as if they were carrying on a conversation. ‘That may help with the colouring of it all, though I suppose you’re not bothered with aesthetics. And it should be used sparingly. But it’ll aid with—’
He scraped a chair over to the bed, turned it around backwards and straddled it to face her. It brought th
e hulk of him perilously close. Enough to smell the fragrant ale and the saltwater he’d washed in. Enough to smell him...a scent like frost on evergreen.
Keeping his silence, he laid his hands against the back of the chair and leaned his chin on them. Like this, he looked...boyish. Draped on the chair, his body in repose, he could have been any mother’s son.
But the look in his blue eyes was a man’s. And the lethal glare told her he sat this way not to be congenial, but to barricade himself.
Since she was already bound, the shield wasn’t from her, it was to block his own action, his own reach. And some twisted thing inside her cherished his trying to protect her...even if it was she who aggravated him. No one had ever tried to protect her before.
Yet, for both their sakes, she must still provoke him. She must escape. ‘I don’t know what you want with me, what...you intend to do with me, but I feel we must have got off on the wrong foot. I’m a traveller, like you.’
He tilted his head, his blue eyes, already swallowed by the dilating of his pupils, darkened even further. His chin remained rested on the back of the chair, but now his hands clenched the seatback, the tips of his fingers turning white.
‘I’m travelling to France, to meet my family.’ It was as much of the truth as she could muster. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you, you simply took me by surprise... I was defending myself. Surely you can realise that, you grabbed me and—’
‘Are you done?’ His deep voice resonated around the room like a sentence. It wasn’t a question; it was an order. ‘Because I’m done.’
‘I don’t know what—’
He made a sound of frustrated anguish and soared out of his chair so fast the heavy oak slipped and slammed on the bed. The carved back of it didn’t hit her, but she felt the heavy weight of it against the overstuffed mattress.
It was the man towering above her who was the true danger. His hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, his chest heavy. He seemed to want to get hold of himself and couldn’t.
If he picked up the chair, he could easily slam it against her. Bash her head in and there would be nothing she could do about it. This wasn’t even something she could arch her body to avoid. Nothing. But she did keep her eyes open, her mouth shut.
‘You lie,’ he growled. ‘You lie so terribly, that even if I didn’t know it was a falsehood, I’d know you weren’t telling the truth. And you know this. God’s bones, do you know this. You are tied to that bed and I could starve you to death. Slowly scrape my blade across every inch of your skin until you bled out. Or I could pick up a blanket and smother you in an instant. And still you defy me.’ He looked wildly about before his gaze swung back to hers.
‘You waste time,’ he said, ‘but remember it’s your time you waste, not mine. Perhaps I should demonstrate the dynamics between us. I am free. You are not. A day? Perhaps two? A sennight, a fortnight. Trapped in here, tied to this bed, how long do you expect to live?’
Without a backward glance, he stormed out of the room, the lock crashing into place behind him.
Chapter Three
He’d...left her.
She waited one, two heartbeats, but not even the stamp of feet could be heard from the hallway. Immediately, she worked to loosen her bindings, her fingers on her left hand just long enough to reach the wrapping around her wrist to worry the fabric enough to slacken it.
All the while, the room echoed Eldric’s wrath. Reverberated with the words he’d targeted her with. He wanted her dead and she believed him. She’d frustrated him with her lies and, knowing him as she did, she hadn’t left him with much else to do but to harm her. Starvation was a brilliant decision on his part.
She could have answered him because she knew how long she could last before she became delirious with dehydration. It was a lesson her father had taught her long ago. And if she went longer than that, she would die.
But she couldn’t. Not because she had a sense of self-preservation. A weapon didn’t care if it lived or died. Her father had long ago stripped that weakness from her. It also wasn’t because she felt an injustice of being kept against her will. A weapon did not reflect on rights and wrongs; it merely did what it was told to do.
That’s why she’d always remained faithful to him. The rumour of the other daughter must be a lie. For years, her father’s sole focus had been to secure something the Warstone family desperately wanted: the Jewel of Kings. A legendary jewel which had influence much like Excalibur in King Arthur’s realm. Except Excalibur was merely a story; the Jewel of Kings was truth.
Since England now fought with Scotland such a legend could sway many. Such power was enviable and the Warstones coveted it. Her father had lost it when, six months ago, she disobeyed and didn’t kill Mairead of Clan Buchanan. When, for a mere moment, she thought him wrong to harm a brave woman. So she’d released her arrow and shot him in the shoulder instead. Mairead and Caird of Clan Colquhoun had escaped while Cressida was exiled from the only person she knew.
Her father was angry with her, testing her, but he’d never abandoned her. He gave her messages still. Further, he continued his training by sending warriors for her to fight. He must care for her still. She needed to be free from here. She couldn’t die with the doubt her father no longer wanted her.
She arched her whole body, stretched until the bed creaked and her muscles ached, then she relaxed as much as she could. She hoped she stretched the bindings, but her legs were still bound too tight, her right hand unmovable. The left-wrist binding was reachable with her fingers, but she couldn’t get the right angle. She needed to wedge a finger under, but couldn’t.
She eyed the heavy oak chair he’d abandoned against her bed, but it was out of reach to be used as any kind of leverage. Arching again, she curled her limbs in with all her strength. When she flopped against the bed again, she expected the chair to slide to the floor, but it was a heavy oak thing and refused to budge. As did her bindings.
It was her turn to huff. To simply rest against the bed, which was one of the most comfortable ones she’d ever lain on. Certainly, the ones in the abbey had never been well filled or secured with thick linens so that none of the straw was felt beneath her back.
The entire room was opulent, if sparse. Not that she could see that much under the chaos he had left, leaving the contents of the room as they were. The askew chair, the basin and flagon. Had he been this messy before? She wondered if it was a sign of his frustration, or a shortcoming in her observations of him. That night in Swaffham last winter, when she laid her arrow on his pillow...the bed had been unmade, the quilt crumpled on the floor.
She saw Eldric’s sloppiness as a weakness. One of her keys to self-preservation was to leave behind no trace she’d occupied a space. If a chair had been shoved under a table at an odd angle, she made sure to leave it so. If a mattress was so soft that the indent of her body could be noted, she slept on the floor.
Eldric left a wake of wreckage and he’d only been in the room mere moments. Water splashed against stone would be impossible to cover up. For a moment, she entertained the conversation she’d have with him on the subject, simply to offer survival help, and imagined how it would proceed. Poorly, no doubt.
A man secure enough to whistle wouldn’t care who found him. She couldn’t fathom being so cavalier, but then an arrow didn’t imagine itself a table. If she stretched her imagination, she could see herself as a sword, but that was only another weapon. To be a warrior and welcome an enemy instead of hide from one was too strange a difference to comprehend. Eldric lived and behaved so differently from her.
Unfortunately, wondering on their differences without knowing all of them wasn’t enough to fill in the time before he returned. Another deep breath as she waited...and waited again. When he didn’t storm back in, she started to count the objects in the room and to count the time she tapped her toes in her boots.
Whatever she could do t
o not fall asleep. It spelled her doom if she slept. But she hadn’t slept properly in weeks; her rest in the tree had been too brief and the exhaustion in her limbs from straining against her bindings had drained her. However, as angry as he was, surely he’d return. He’d left food here. Surely he’d want to eat. Surely...
* * *
Eldric stood over the sleeping form of the Archer. Hours had passed since he completely lost his temper. He didn’t even know he had one. In battle, he had unnatural strength and, certainly since he’d targeted the Archer, his rage had weathered and tightened to splintered wood within him.
But a temper where the rage burst from his being with no target to aim it towards? Never before. Only this time. With this enemy. With this woman who lied.
He expected those he captured to lie and, over the years, he’d learned what to do about it. Now, he could do nothing. Nothing. Threats wouldn’t stop her; she was too resilient for that.
And being in the room with her ever-watchful eyes? Even if he could get over their colour, the way she looked at him... It was as if she was waiting for something. Or knew something of him.
So he’d left, knowing that, no matter how strong she was, she couldn’t break her bindings. Remembering, too, to never underestimate her, he’d paid two boys to watch the room so he could walk the docks and come to terms with what was revealed to him.
To what he knew. On the battlefield, he’d held his friend as he died and made a vow to avenge his death. He vowed again to God now and burned a candle in church. He’d made another vow when he’d accepted a hunting horn from King Edward of England. Some would argue that vow could be the most important one of all. One that couldn’t be forgiven or altered as could be done with a deity or the dead.
With certainty, that meeting with Edward might prove the most fateful. For there in the monarch’s chambers he’d agreed to obtain the Archer for the King.
Eldric knew he’d made a deal with the devil and agreed to pay the price. And why not? The King’s wants and his own were the same. They both desired the Archer’s head. But it went further than that. Because by pledging this vow and loyalty to the King, he could also conceal the disloyal act he’d done.
