The morning passed without further incident; midday brought the first appearance of the sun, a welcome change from the constant cloud and threat of rain that had followed them from Amboise. The wind, which had remained at their backs most of the time, shifted to cut from the east, painting the ground they rode over with a constant tumble of orange-and rust-coloured leaves. It carried the occasional hint of wood smoke to indicate a village or hamlet in the vicinity, but although they travelled across fields of recently harvested corn and wheat, they saw no one. It was to their advantage to pass anonymously through the countryside, but by late afternoon of the third full day of travel, the thought of another bland meal of bread, cheese, ale, and whatever the knights managed to skewer from the river or stop with an arrow, sent at least four sets of nostrils flaring in the direction of a sweetly acrid scent.
“Venison,” Sedrick announced, boasting the largest nostrils and therefore the most accurate perception. “Roasting slow and sure over a bed of … ash, be ma guess.”
Since his size and appetite gave no one reason to doubt his expertise, the next question concerned the identity of someone bold enough to cook royal game so openly. There were no châteaus in easy distance. The section of forest they traversed was too dense and hilly to attract any inhabitants but the four-legged kind, the river too wide and swift-moving to be hospitable to man-made traps.
“A witless poacher, be my guess,” Henry said. “One with intentions of falling asleep tonight with a full belly.”
Sedrick’s stomach rumbled so loudly at the notion, it caused Robin and Lord Dafydd to exchange a smile.
“What manner of lax lord allows poachers and foresters to run amok in their wardens?” Sedrick protested. “As knights, sworn of an oath to protect the realm from such thievery, would it not be our duty to investigate, nay, even to confiscate such ill-gotten gains?”
“We have a ready meal in our pouch,” Eduard reminded him.
“Aye, but can ye deny a bellyful of hot roast venison would suit better for the long, cold night we have ahead of us?”
Eduard shrugged. “You had best take care they are poachers before you act out your knightly vows, else you come away with a bellyful of arrowheads for your trouble.”
Sedrick grinned and searched the treetops a moment. “Where is that poxy elf when ye need him? He would be better able to tell us the whos and wherefores.”
As if by magic, a whoop of glee brought Sparrow swinging down off a tree branch, his arms and legs splayed wide to catch the air in the pockets formed by his clothes. He was the only one of the group who had disdained the need for a horse of his own, declaring he was slight enough to share a saddle when he grew weary of his own company, or to curl up in a contented bundle amidst the nest of supplies carried on the rouncies when he craved sleep. Several times, when the woods thinned and gave way to long stretches of meadow, he had swooped down without warning to land on the nearest horse’s rump, surprising the animal and rider with devilish glee. To everyone else’s relief, that rider was more often than not Sir Sedrick of Grantham, who seemed to have taken Biddy’s place as the favoured object of torment.
He flailed his arms and cursed as Sparrow splatted into him like a large bat.
“Did I hear you calling me, Sir Borkel?” he asked, standing on the destrier’s rump and peering forward over Sedrick’s shoulder. “Do I deduce you require more than your nose to point the way to a tasty dinner? Hah! I have already anticipated the roar in your gullet and can tell you there are four varlets dozing by a fire five, mayhap six of your paltry bowshots”—a finger cut across the front of Sedrick’s nose— “that-a-way. Robustious common stock,” he added, answering the question before Eduard could ask it. “Bumpkins by the look of it, for they are fast asleep. They should not argue overlong at the need to forfeit a portion of their victuals.”
Sedrick swelled his chest and drew his sword. “Bah! And here’s me thinking I’ve not had a good argument for days. Are ye with me, Henry?”
Henry drew his blade and looked in turn to Dafydd ap Iorwerth. “My lord? You, above all, must be missing the sweet taste of venison.”
The Welshman grinned. “No doubt ’tis sweeter taken from King John’s warden, but aye, the tongue does squirt for a taste of royal fare.”
FitzRandwulf declined, with thanks, leaving only Ariel and Robin unasked, the latter clearly aching to ease the boredom of the last three days.
“Come along, lad,” Sedrick shouted, wheeling his steed in the direction of Sparrow’s stalwart finger. “Ye can help choose the fattest haunch.”
“May I, my lord?” Robin asked eagerly.
“Go ahead,” Eduard agreed, reaching for the rope that led to Robin’s packhorse. “Tell the others to catch us up by the river.”
Ariel watched them ride away and scratched savagely at a faint burrowing sensation on the side of her neck. She had managed to pass the last day and a half without wasting a single word on the arrogant beast, nor had she allowed herself to be caught alone with him again. This begged for comment, however, and a look of utter disdain.
“If you are so worried about drawing attention to ourselves, should we not press on instead of stopping for such tomfoolery?”
“We have covered a fair distance today, under the circumstances. Perhaps the men, like the horses, need to burn off some of their excess energy.”
Narrowed green eyes sparkled out from beneath the brim of the drooping felt hat. “Are you insinuating you could have travelled farther and faster without the circumstance of my company to hinder you?”
Eduard acknowledged her scowl with one of his maddeningly insincere half-smiles. “Actually, I was referring to the poor conditions of the road, but if you think we travel too slowly …?”
Ariel’s glare turned brittle. In keeping with the tawdry raiments, she had been assigned a low-bred, knock-kneed, sway-backed palfrey that walked like a ship wallowing in heavy seas. Travel too slowly indeed. Had she the luxury of a Pembroke steed and her own riding clothes, she could have passed this clanking booby and left him splattered in mud all the way to St. Malo!
Regretting she had even ventured to open the conversation, she gave the brim of her hat a shove to push it off her forehead and followed him in icy silence, her eyes boring into the back of his neck. Her resentment ebbed and flowed in her cheeks with each new vision of torment she wished upon him: Hot irons crimped to his flesh. A bed of sharpened spikes with rocks heaped upon his belly one at a time. Lashmarks, oozing blood, enough to cover him head to toe …
A twig snagged the brim of her hat, dragging it off to one side of her head before she could free a hand to snatch it back. Recovering her balance, she spurred her palfrey forward and noticed they had veered off the main road and were cutting along the basin of a shallow gully. Rising on either side were gentle slopes covered in a thick carpet of fallen leaves. Ahead was the sound of the river, and above, the stripped lattice of tree branches allowed wide, clear patches of sky to shine through. The wind was stilled to a whisper and the air was almost liquid with bluing shadows. It was quiet, peaceful, secluded. And Ariel found herself glancing over her shoulder, wondering how long it took to convince a band of poachers to share their ill-gotten gains.
FitzRandwulf halted Lucifer beside the river. After a few moments of contemplating the lushness of the setting, he dismounted and stretched his arms and back, angling his torso this way and that to ease the tightness in his muscles. Despite what he had said to Ariel, he was pleased with the time they had made and the distance they had covered. They were perhaps a day’s ride from Rennes, a city large enough and crowded enough to afford them the luxury of spending the night in an inn. While he was well aware of Lady Ariel’s stubbornness and her determination not to complain or betray any sign of weakness, he was also aware of her soft groans at night each time she shifted on the hard ground.
He glanced over at her now and saw that she had not yet dismounted. It took a further moment for Eduard to discard the ridiculous
hat and ill-fitting byrnie and remember there was a woman beneath the disguise—a high-born woman who still deserved the courtesies that were her due, regardless of the pouting lower lip.
Without inquiring if she needed or wanted his assistance, he approached the palfrey and placed his big hands around her waist, lifting her down with an easy swing of his heavily muscled shoulders. The palfrey moved a skittish step to the side and Ariel had to grasp the folds of Eduard’s gypon for additional support. The gesture brought her more in contact with his body than she would have wanted, but luckily, he was distracted by the hooted exchanges of a pair of owls and did not take advantage. At the same time, he presented her with an unimpaired view of the scarred cheek—something he self-consciously avoided doing, especially in the unforgiving harshness of daylight.
It effectively dampened her own urge to maim. The wound, she surmised, must have been very painful in the earning, for the flesh had been torn from the base of his jaw to the indent of his temple. It was not so much the ugly, mottled, festered tapestry of misshapen gore she had aggrandized in her mind’s eye, but a pale, ragged weal of raised scar tissue that was thickest in the hollow of his cheek and might easily have been camouflaged, or at least blunted, by growing a full beard over it.
Not that he impressed her as a man dictated by vanity. He wore the scar as comfortably as he wore his masculinity, giving little credence to those who might judge him by either.
“Most women find it repulsive,” he said quietly, letting her know he was aware of her close scrutiny. He gazed directly down into her eyes and she could see that he expected some comment—an apology, perhaps? Or a stammered excuse for staring that he could slough off as easily as he sloughed off the reasons that made her stare? He was smiling, baiting her with a worthless little gesture that was scarcely more than a slight thinning of the lips, and she felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather or the sudden, stark silence suspended between them.
“I doubt the reaction is caused so much by the wound as it is by the man who bears it,” she said with a breathless attempt to undermine the power of those eyes.
“Strong words … for someone who so recently sought my opinion of her own desirability.”
“I sought no such thing!”
“No? Does that mean you always have to ask a man to kiss you?”
“I do not … did not ask you to kiss me!” “Nor did you enjoy it, I suppose.” “Certainly not!”
He leaned closer and the air went out of her in a gust. A moist, heated shudder rippled deep within her, a reaction to his closeness, she supposed, and one she was uncomfortably unable to control … just as she was unable to control the slow, measured steps that forced her against the flanks of his enormous rampager. He was going to kiss her again. He was going to kiss her and there was nothing she could do to stop him.
“When I tell you to,” he murmured casually, “I want you to take the horses and move back behind those trees.”
Ariel blinked in surprise. “Wh-what?”
“Lucifer might try to fight you—he has less patience with women than I do—but you will have to try to hold him. Do you think you can manage?”
Ariel started to gasp another protest, but he was no longer looking at her. He was staring instead at something over the top of her head, and when she attempted to turn and determine what it was, she caught only a glimpse of forest shadow and mottled sunlight before a calloused thumb and forefinger were pinching her chin, forcing her to look up at him again.
“What is it? What is wrong?”
“Owls usually sleep in the daytime,” he said calmly, “yet we seem to have attracted a few lively fellows around us.”
Ariel tried to look again, and again was manhandled forward.
“Will you just do as I ask? Get behind those trees and keep your head down.”
“I am not completely witless, you know. I can use a sword and a bow to good effect. I can help”
With one hand, Eduard lifted and fastened the protective flap of the linked iron camail that covered the lower half of his face and throat. While he did so, Ariel suffered the full, unleashed power of his eyes.
“If I find I need your help, my lady, I will call upon it. Until then, just do as I say, by Christ, and with no more of your arguing, or—”
The threat was never completed. A low, whining rush of air passed over their heads and a split second later, a solid whonk left the pair staring at the short, iron-tipped crossbow bolt quivering in the tree trunk behind them.
Chapter 10
Without standing on ceremony, Eduard pushed Ariel toward the trees and smacked the rumps of the horses, startling them into bolting for the river. He snatched his bow and quiver from the sling on Lucifer’s saddle, then stepped behind a clump of bushes—a sight met with a distant, muffled guffaw of laughter.
“Aye, run and hide, Graycloak. You would fare far better just to pay us a toll and pass along the road without further ado.”
Eduard cursed and clamped the shaft of an arrow between his teeth while he leaned his weight into the strong arch of yew to tighten the slack of his bowstring. Common outlaws. Deserters … or men paid by the French to disrupt the flow of traffic through Normandy. They travelled in small packs like dogs, robbing, killing, plundering … taking hostages to ransom.
Three, perhaps four more voices echoed the sarcasm of the first, their jibes accompanied by a brief hail of stubby crossbow quarrels. Only one came anywhere near the first; most of them plunked harmlessly into the soft earth, well short of their targets. The villains were either extremely poor shots or they were in too much of a hurry to show strength over caution. One foolhardy fellow even danced a small jig, hooting and hollering when his bolt came close enough to shave a strip of bark off the tree Eduard stood behind.
Almost contemptuously, Eduard stepped out into the open. He raised the graceful sweep of his longbow and nocked the arrow to the string. With the siring and feather fletching drawn back to the curve of his jawbone, he straightened his fingers and snapped the arrow free, sending it into the distant greenwood with the impact of a thunderbolt. The dancer was lifted back and thrown off his feet, the steel-tipped arrow piercing clean through his chest and protruding half its length out the back. A second outlaw, farther along the gully, jumped up to gape in horror at his fallen comrade and, too late, heard the soft hiss-s-s of a second ashwood arrow streaking toward him. This time the lethal tip passed through the width of the man’s neck and struck a tree some twenty yards behind, still carrying enough speed and power to become embedded deep in the wood.
Yet another fool stood to rearm his crossbow, a costly necessity in the handling of the clumsy weapon. Placing the stirrup of the bow on the ground, he slipped his foot through the metal ring and, with a heave and a grunt of air, pulled back on the resined gut until it fit tautly over the metal hook of the trigger. He died where he stood, his face showing more surprise than pain.
Eduard pulled two more arrows from his quiver, his eyes glinting coldly as they scanned the slope of both hills for the next target. He ducked, and missed by inches, the barbed tip of another bolt that was fired from the cover of a large pine tree. His verbal response was muffled by the iron link camail, but there was nothing to mute the hard blaze of anger in his eyes as he fired both arrows into the dense growth of boughs. A cry of pain sent two more outlaws scrambling for thicker cover, one of them doubled over and clutching a skewered arm.
Any thought of celebrating was quashed as a shout parted a curtain of evergreens and two more men came hurtling down the slope, their swords raised and sparking in a flare of sunlight. Eduard tossed his bow aside and unsheathed his own blade, bracing himself as the first man slashed for his head and met the broad side of cold steel instead. The villain was not nearly as tall as FitzRandwulf, but he had the power of a bulldog in his arms. He wielded the sword in both hands, windmilling it close enough to be a threat, far enough to avoid Eduard’s blade while his companion sought to maneuver himself into a
position to strike at the knight’s back. The outlaws hacked at knees, thighs, belly, and shoulder … anything that looked vulnerable, testing Eduard’s instincts and his skill at sending their blades scraping at steel and empty air. They did not find him lacking.
The sound of clashing swords echoed through the trees and along the gully, drawing the attention of the two bowmen Eduard had flushed from behind the pines. The one with the arrow jutting from his arm showed no interest in turning back to join the fray, but the second one, armed with a crossbow, stopped, grinned, and started running back toward the river.
Ariel, observing from behind a tree, saw the villain stop to rearm his weapon. He was well within the crossbow’s ideal range. Close enough, in fact, to pierce through the mail links of FitzRandwulf’s armour. The swordsmen were aware of this and kept Eduard’s back to the gully; he, on the other hand, probably was not even aware the danger existed.
Eduard’s bow was lying in the leaves where he had thrown it, the quiver alongside. Not stopping to think of the danger to herself, she ran out from behind the shield of trees, retrieving both, then dashing for the protection of a large oak. The longbow was enormous, larger and heavier than any she had used at Pembroke, but she was not unfamiliar with the weapon itself, having practised with the Welsh style of bow more often than the shorter, lighter type favoured by the English.
She nocked an arrow and sighted along the shaft, drawing the string to her chin with an effort that almost peeled the flesh from her fingers. She let loose at the crossbowman, who had seen her as the easier target and had aimed and fired his bow in the same length of time. While her arrow carried more speed, it also carried well over his head and was lost somewhere in the greenwood behind him. His bolt, meanwhile, thudded into the trunk of the oak with a distinctive enough bite to send bits of bark flying in Ariel’s face.
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