Maids with Blades

by Glynnis Campbell

  For no trot would touch his pole.”

  She gave him a chiding shove for his obvious vulgarity.

  “Trout,” he corrected, though there was no mistaking the mischievous glimmer in his eyes. “I meant trout.” His lips twitched as he continued.

  “The second two she proudly hooked,

  A-fishing from the rock,

  Though Colin did contend they must

  Have come from lesser stock.

  For the two of them, set end to end,

  Were no longer than his—”

  She gasped before he could say it and gave him another shove.

  He grinned and shoved her playfully in return.

  Then, with a wicked gleam of vengeance in her eyes, she pushed with full force, tipping him off the boulder and into the water.

  He fell in with a great splash. When he popped to the surface, his shocked sputtering was sweet reward.

  She stood up, looming over him in triumph. “That should cure your vile tongue, Norman.”

  He shook the water from his head and squinted up at her. “Don’t call me Norman.”

  Then, without warning, he began barraging her with splashes of water. Before she could even take a single step in retreat, she was thoroughly drenched.

  Her jaw dropped, and she gasped in awe, peering at him through the dripping strands of her hair. How dared he? And yet instead of feeling outrage, she was struck by humor.

  Men usually responded to her aggression in one of two ways. They shied away from a fight, fearful of either injuring her or losing to a woman. Or they attacked with uncommon rage, seeking to kill what they didn’t understand. This Norman…Colin, she amended, had no qualms about simply giving as good as he got. And something about that was…fascinating.

  So he wanted to spar? She’d spar with him. Gladly.

  A grin blossomed on her face, and she flexed her knees, preparing to dive into the stream.

  But just then she heard a branch move behind her, the softest brush of pine needles, yet enough to alert her to an intruder. Her hand shot instinctively to her knife, and she wheeled about with her weapon drawn.

  Chapter 8

  Shite!

  It wasn’t an intruder. It was five intruders.

  A cursory glance told her they were strangers. Foreigners. Miscreants. They were heavily armed, and their skin was dark with filth, as if they’d been traveling a long while.

  “Look, lads,” one of them growled as he slowly perused her from head to toe. “’Tis a drowned rat.”

  “Nay,” another chimed in. “She’s one o’ them Siren creatures, a mermaid.”

  They guffawed in chorus. Glancing at them one by one, Helena doubted they possessed a score of teeth between them.

  English. They were English. What the bloody hell were the English doing in Rivenloch?

  By the piecemeal look of their leather armor and the maces and swords and flails hanging from their belts, they were mercenaries. Not only that, but she could tell they were not the sort of men who shied away from a fight…even with a woman.

  Five ordinary men she could take. But these brutes warred for a living. Armed with only The Shadow’s knife, her odds against them were slim.

  She glanced briefly toward the pond. It was empty.

  “Are ye out here all alone, wench?”

  Her eyes narrowed to cold slits. Apparently so. Curse Colin! The cowardly knave had scampered away, leaving her to battle the English by herself.

  “She’s no common wench,” one of them realized. “Look at her. She’s a proper lady.”

  “Mm,” the first said. “I believe ye’re right. A proper lady out here all by herself.” He eyed her in curious speculation, pulling at his grizzled beard. “Are ye lost?”

  Helena might not have the advantage when it came to weaponry, but she had mettle, and in her experience, that could count for much. She eyed them grimly, each in turn, and spoke between her teeth. “Hear me well, you English bastards. I am not lost. I am one of the Warrior Maids of Rivenloch, and I am here with my army. If you do not turn about this instant and get off my land, I’ll summon them to finish you off.”

  For a moment her ruse worked. For a moment they froze, staring at her in awe.

  Then the grizzled man asked, “The Warrior Maids o’ what?”

  They exchanged a few nervous giggles, then dissolved into gales of laughter. All except for one man at the back, who suddenly found himself squirming at the point of a dagger.

  “Rivenloch,” Colin said distinctly as he pressed the tip of his knife against the Englishman’s throat.

  It was about time, Helena thought. Relief coursed through her. She wasn’t sure if it was because her odds had just improved or because Colin had proved no coward after all. The clever man must have floated downstream and slipped out of the water to steal up behind the intruders.

  “Do as the lady says,” Colin bargained. “Leave quietly, and I won’t have to mince up your friend here.”

  Helena frowned. She had no patience for Colin’s negotiations. These weren’t the type of men to negotiate. Besides, now that the Norman was here, the two of them had a fighting chance against the mercenaries.

  So with a bark of “Now!” to alert Colin, she swept up her fishing pole with her left hand and swung it in a wide arc before her, backing off the intruders.

  “What?” Colin replied.

  “Now! Now!” What was wrong with him? Didn’t he understand that battle was at hand? She took a step forward and swung again, this time catching one of the Englishmen alongside the head.

  “Bloody hell!” Colin cried, joining her. He shoved his captive away, but not before stealing the man’s sword. Then he spread his arms wide, sword and dagger in hand, to fend off the mercenaries.

  By then, the Englishmen had drawn a vast array of weapons. Even the man Helena had struck recovered. He jerked a studded flail from his belt and advanced on her, swinging it over his head.

  She hastily tucked the pole under her arm and jabbed forward, using it like a lance to catch the man in the belly. It would have taken the wind from him, too, if his leather breastplate hadn’t softened the blow. The buffet only slowed his advance.

  Meanwhile, Colin fought the remaining four.

  A quick glance told her he was a respectable enough swordsman. Still, she dared not rely upon his skills at fighting four at once.

  Retracting the pole again, she stabbed forward at a second man’s back. “Here, you stinking English swine! Turn and fight me!”

  It worked. Her goading effectively distracted one of the men from Colin. Now he faced her, with murder in his eyes.

  Colin’s first thought when Helena rashly shouted “Now! Now!” and started waving her fishing pole about was that she’d lost her mind. If only she’d had a little patience, they might have been able to talk their way out of a skirmish.

  His second thought, glimpsing the madwoman, armed with that feeble pole and a tiny knife, facing one giant with a flail and another brandishing a sword and a mace, was that if she survived this brawl, he was going to give her the thrashing of her life.

  And then he could watch her no more. The remaining three men attacked him at once, armed with a full complement of swords, daggers, and war hammers.

  He took one wide swipe with his blade, forcing his foes to retreat, and quickly decided that there could be no good end to this battle, not for him or for Helena. These Englishmen were clearly mercenaries, as practiced as knights, but with less honor. The best he could hope for was reasoning with them, as he’d tried to do before impetuous Helena had forced his hand. Unfortunately, he thought, blocking one man’s blade and ducking under a war hammer that missed his head by an inch, he’d have to do it while fending them off.

  “What do you want?” he shouted, using his dagger to deflect the point of a sword and engaging a second man with his sword.

  “Whatever’s in your purse!” replied a man with a scar across his eye as he swiped forward with his war hammer.


  Colin stopped the weapon at the haft of his dagger, and the resulting clang jarred the bones of his arm all the way to his shoulder. “I have no purse!”

  “Oh, aye, and we’ve no weapons!” one of them sneered, slashing out with his blade.

  Preoccupied with dodging two daggers, Colin suffered a cut as he tried to block the sword with his arm. He gasped in pain and retreated a step.

  Helena yelled, “You’re too late, you half-wits!”

  From the corner of his eye, Colin saw her spin and thrust with the fishing pole, effectively catching the flail-wielding combatant in the groin. Then she swung one foot around, faster than a well-oiled quintain, and kicked the other man in the ribs.

  “Another thief came before you!” she informed them.

  His opponents were only daunted for a moment by this revelation before they advanced again. Colin was forced to take up his weapons again and divert a sword attack from two sides. This time he managed to snap the tip of one sword with his dagger. But the second blade swung lower, clipping his hip. The steel cut through his surcoat, stopping short of his flesh, but it would leave a considerable bruise, he was sure.

  “Ye’re nobles!” the grizzled man fighting Helena cried. “Someone’s bound to pay a fat purse to see ye safely returned!”

  Colin stabbed forward with his sword, wounding the shoulder of one of the Englishmen, who cursed as the blade receded. But the man whose sword he’d cropped a moment ago now drew a vicious mace, replete with steel spikes. If ever there was a time for reasoning, it was now.

  “You cannot ransom me!” Colin exclaimed as he kept a keen eye on the man with the mace. “I’m already being held for ransom…by this lady.” As the man with the sword hacked forward again, Colin stepped in to bring the pommel of his sword down hard upon the man’s wrist. The sword clattered to the ground. “I cannot be ransomed twice!”

  “Aye!” Helena shouted. “He’s my hostage! Keep your bloody hands off of him!”

  “Your hostage?” the grizzled man sneered. “We’ll see about that!”

  The mace came toward Colin’s head, and he thrust up his dagger to check its path. The blade was no match for the sheer weight of the mace, and it snapped beneath the blow, but not before glancing the weapon away from Colin. Now he had but one sword against the three of them.

  The middle opponent thrust his blade forward, and Colin turned sideways just in time. But the first man’s dagger found lodging behind Colin’s shoulder blade. Colin gritted his teeth against the sudden gouge and lunged away.

  He glanced about to see how Helena was faring. Blood dripped down her dagger arm, but the cut wasn’t dire enough to hamper her movements. She lunged forward again with the pole, but this time the branch broke on her opponent’s leather breastplate, leaving her with a stick no longer than a short sword and far less intimidating. Nevertheless, she wielded it as if it were made of the finest Toledo steel. It broke, of course, under the onslaught of the flail.

  Colin meant to plunge toward her attacker, to defend her against the nasty weapon that could shatter her skull as easily as it had the pole. But because of that instant of inattention as he watched Helena, when he charged forward, it was onto one of the mercenaries’ blades.

  The sword sank deep into his unprotected thigh, and for a moment there was no pain, only thwarted movement. He tried to advance, stretching his blade out toward the man who was already swinging for a second strike at Helena. Then the man drew his sword back violently from the muscle of Colin’s leg, and Colin felt the breath ripped from his lungs with the same force. He staggered, trying to take his weight on his good leg and hold on to his sword.

  “Lucifer!” Helena spit, shoving the remains of her pole into the chain of the circling flail, tangling it and rendering it harmless. “You bastards!” She ceased fighting for an instant to stare at Colin, who felt the air swim before him. His eyes widened as he saw the man with the mace raise his arm behind her, but she stopped the attack as casually as a stable lad swatting a fly, spinning to drive the point of her knife into his wrist. The man screamed and dropped his weapon, clutching his bleeding forearm, and Colin didn’t know whether to be impressed or mortified. Above all, he was relieved. Until Helena glared at the remaining Englishmen, and said, “What have you done to my hostage?”

  “’E’s not yours anymore, wench.” The man who’d stabbed him held a dagger to his throat now, and Colin swayed on his feet. Damn his eyes! The threads of consciousness were breaking, strand by strand.

  “The hell he isn’t!” Helena shouted. “And now you dolts have ruined him. How much do you think I’ll get for a lamed Norman knight?”

  Colin had just enough awareness left in him to feel utterly betrayed. He’d risked his life to help the ungrateful wench, and she didn’t care a whit about his sacrifice or his pain. Her only concern, as his blood dripped steadily onto the ground, was his diminished worth.

  Helena bit the inside of her cheek and forced her gaze away from Colin, willing her bones to hold firm. She hoped the mercenaries couldn’t see her shaking. Seeing the noble Norman wounded so cruelly had affected her far more deeply than she dared show, and the sight of his lifeblood seeping out of him was dizzying. Black spots floated at the edges of her vision.

  Shite, she hated to surrender. She hated it more than losing. As her Viking father had taught her, it was better to suffer a grievous wound and fall to the ground with sword in hand than lower a blade and hang one’s head in shame. But when Helena saw the steel go deep into Colin’s thigh, it was as if the sword had pierced her own flesh. Her heart seized, and she knew if she didn’t stop fighting, Colin would die.

  So, resisting every impulse she had to continue the battle, putting on a brave face despite her quivering nerves, she surrendered her last weapon, lodging it in her attacker’s wrist, and turned on the mercenaries with defiance in her eyes.

  “You bloody swine! What good is a dead hostage,” she hissed, “to any of us?”

  “’E’s not dead,” the man supporting Colin said. “’E’s not even damaged. Not that bad.”

  He was hurt badly. Nausea rose in her gorge as she watched blood well from the wound. But she dared not reveal her concern for Colin, for that might prove her undoing.

  As the mercenaries seized her, it taxed all her instincts not to fight back. Even now, she thought, she might have been able to take them with a kick to the ballocks. A well-placed sweep of her foot. A hard punch to the leader’s bulbous nose. But while Colin’s life hung in the balance, she couldn’t risk any of it.

  She told herself it was for selfish reasons. If Colin returned to Rivenloch damaged or, God forbid, dead, Pagan Cameliard would hold her accountable.

  And yet within her heart, something had taken seed, some small bit of respect for the Norman, a respect that bordered dangerously on affinity.

  She put up little struggle as they bound her wrists behind her, then wrested her through the forest, though she was tempted to make the journey as difficult as possible for them by dragging her feet and twisting in their grasp. Her attention instead riveted upon Colin, who had grown as silent as death.

  “If he dies…” she said tightly.

  “He won’t.”

  “But his leg…”

  “Will mend.”

  “Not if it doesn’t stop blee—”

  “God’s eyes! Ye sound like my bloody mother.”

  One of them snickered. “You mean your bloody dead mother?”

  “Aye.”

  The second man leaned close to her and gleefully confided, “Otis here, he got tired of the wench’s flapping jaws and shut her up for good.”

  The man had hoped to shock her. But Helena wasn’t shocked. Men like these who roamed the countryside, hiring themselves out to the highest bidder, their loyalties as mutable as the wind, did so not by choice, but by circumstance. Most of them had criminal pasts too grievous to absolve.

  Which gave all of them something in common, she thought ruefully, wondering if
Pagan Cameliard was readying the gallows for her even now.

  For several hours, the English forced them to march. They journeyed perhaps ten miles west, deep into the woods, past the border of Rivenloch, where Lachanburn land began. By late afternoon, Helena’s belly was growling like a wild boar. The mercenaries had gathered up their morning catch of trout, but it didn’t seem they ever intended to eat it. Not that Helena’s mind was on food, despite what her stomach told her.

  Her thoughts centered on Colin.

  His face had grown as pale as alabaster. Sweat beaded his brow and stained his shirt. Thankfully, the bleeding from his wound appeared to have stopped. But he hovered between waking and sleep, grimacing every time he put weight on his leg.

  Helena knew enough about wounds to realize he might lose that leg if he didn’t receive proper treatment. It was clear these mercenaries didn’t know the first thing about caring for injuries. One of them had a crooked arm that had been broken and healed badly. Another wore a broad scar across his cheek where he’d neglected to close a knife slash. Otis was missing the tip of a finger. They weren’t going to dress Colin’s wound unless she intervened.

  “Aren’t you going to do anything about that cut?” she asked as they stopped in a clearing where they apparently intended to set up a crude camp.

  “What are you jabbering on about now?” Otis groused.

  “The Norman. He’s losing value every moment you delay.”

  “What’s it to you? He’s not your hostage to ransom.”

  She smirked. “Oh, aye, good luck there. You don’t even know who to ransom him from.” Not that that would help, she thought. She certainly hadn’t had any luck with ransoming him.

  Otis peeled his lips back in a sneer, exposing his three front teeth. “I’m sure you’ll tell us what we need to know.”

  “Indeed?” She spit pointedly on the ground. “And where’s the advantage to me?”

  She should have expected violence, but it caught her by surprise. Otis nodded to the brute beside her, the one whose wrist she’d mangled with the knife, and before she could flinch, he clouted her with his good fist, exploding stars across her vision as he caught the top of her cheekbone.