Conqueror (4 page)

Her champion backed up and stumbled. One knee hit the earth.

“Over here!”
she screamed.

Three pairs of eyes snapped to her. She started running.

One soldier stumbled to his horse and spurred towards her. De Louth and the other paused, momentarily distracted. In that pause, her saviour took his chance. Dropping to his other knee, he caught up his bow and launched two arrows in rapid succession.

The second hit its mark first, embedding itself deep in de Louth’s thigh. He dropped to the ground, screaming. The first hurtling arrow travelled further.

It punched through the boiled leather armour protecting the chest of the rider just as he leaned sideways to scoop up Gwyn. He jerked backwards, his hands a death grip on the reins. The horse flung its head madly, skidded to its knees, and collapsed. Gwyn tripped and fell.

From nowhere, her rescuer’s hand closed around her wrist.

“Come,” he rasped, pulling her roughly to her feet. At first they didn’t see the dagger wrenched from the last soldier’s belt and flung. There was only the soft
whoosh
. Everything dropped into slow motion. The iron blade tumbled and flashed through the air. Gwyn loosed a long, slow scream.

Her saviour shoved Gwyn one way and himself another, but the move made him vulnerable to the soldier hurtling towards him, standing over him, raising a sword. He twisted reflexively, taking the blow on his back rather than his chest, from a fisted hilt rather than a whetted blade. Still, it was a thundering impact that knocked him to his knees.

D’Endshire’s mercenary straddled his body and raised his sword again for the death blow.

Gwyn went streaking through the air, without a thought and with the rather dubious weapon of a raised slipper covered in muck.

The soldier glanced over in astonishment and spun to avoid the impact, sending his sword careening harmlessly into the earth. Gwyn nailed his forehead with her slipper, then landed square on his shoulder with the even more doubtable weapon of her belly. The bluntness of the attack was offset by the fury behind it, and the two went flying.

Gwyn groaned as they landed, her lungs crushed by an armoured shoulder. The soldier rolled to his feet, clutching his head with splayed fingers. Blood poured from between them. He stared blearily at his hands, then her, then back to the sticky mess dripping between his fingers.

This time, when he lifted his head, his teeth were bared around a roar that blew her hair back from half a yard away:
“Bitch!”

Dropping onto her prone body, he wrapped his gloved hand around her throat. “My lord is a fool for wanting a piece of you, hellion,” he rasped. “I’ll save him the trouble.”

Slow, hard pounding. No breath, only choking. Her chest was raw, her lungs screaming. She resisted the urge to pass out, fighting for her life. Strange images passed through her mind: her beloved Windstalker chomping hay, her father at dinner, the wardrobe where she kept the spices, undone chores.

The surprisingly calm query “Did I remember to freshen the rushes?” wafted through her mind, and it was then she knew her life must be over.

The thudding pain in her head meant nothing beside the pain of knowing she would die with a pounding Ache in her heart and a hundred dirty table linens on her conscience.

Fading into unconsciousness, Gwyn didn’t realise the weight was gone until the warrior stood above her, sword dangling in hand, blood streaking down the side of his face.

Beside her lay the bloody-headed soldier, rather more bloodied now. His skull was split in two. Already his innards were oozing out, a pulpy mass, mixing with the mud.

Gwyn’s mouth began moving but no sounds came out. In the distance, the sounds of running footsteps faded away. Her saviour spun as if to give chase, then, with a few muffled words, turned back.

“Is he dead?” she whispered, as if someone might hear her and somehow not have noticed the combat of a moment ago. As if the hacked body might still, somehow, hold life and be awakened by her words.

Dark, shadowed eyes flicked to the prone body. “Quite.” He kicked the body away and stretched out a gloved hand. “Come.”

“Completely?”

“All the way.” He held his hand in front of her nose.

“Truly dead?”

“Nay, he’s but half dead, and will haunt you for years to come. Now, come, get up.”

Flat on her back, Gwyn frowned. A gnashing pain crowded into the back of her head. “I am more afraid of being haunted if he is
fully
dead, sirrah.”

This brought a moment of quiet. “Are you getting up or not?”

“Have you killed so many men, that one more means naught?”

He straightened and glanced around the deserted road. When he turned back, she could see only the gleam of his teeth as he smiled grimly. “And you, lady, have you been on so few highways that you know not the danger of riding on them alone?”

She opened her mouth, shut it again.

“Know you so little of men that you would think one such as he is not better off dead?”

Again he gestured to the man’s body. His smile receded as he ran his fingers through his hair, ruffling the dark locks into damp spikes.

“Know you how weary I am, and that I wish only to be home?”

He towered above her outstretched body but she was not afraid. Certes, he’d just saved her life. Whyfore be affrightened?

Her mind catalogued the various and persuasive reasons: perhaps because he was such an imposing figure, all hard slabs of muscle and piercing eyes? Perhaps because he’d just killed four men in less time that it took to de-feather a chicken? Or perhaps because he held in his hand a sword that still dripped with raw blood.

“Get up.”

“I…I—”

“
You
—” He reached down and grabbed her hand. “Do not listen well.”

He lifted her clean off the earth, hauling her away from the body. The soldier’s split head lolled to the side and a thin trickle of reddish spittle dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Dropping to one knee, her saviour lifted his chin, as if inspecting his handiwork, then crossed to the other dead men and did the same before dragging them to the side of the road.

Her saviour’s next words came from the dense stand of trees, where he was depositing the still-warm bodies. “We’ve only a little time. D’Endshire will know as soon as de Louth reaches the gate, and then he’ll be after you.”

“Or
you
.” She ran her hands over her dress from collar to waist, fluttering. “Happens he might enjoy finding you more, at the moment.”

There were sounds of shuffling and earth moving, then he emerged with a costly steel arrow-tip in his palm. She stared in horror. It could only have been plucked from the dead man.

He picked up his sword. “As I have said, his pleasure is not my concern.” Lodging the arrow-tip in his belt, he walked towards her, sliding his blade back into its sheath with a whispery sound. He retrieved his bow, lying beside the oak tree. Then he whistled.

From nowhere came the sound of a snorting horse, and a raw-boned rampager appeared from between two giant oak trees. He looked like a furry error, all slanting edges and legs. He wore a bitless bridle inlaid with silver, though, a headpiece that would cost more than a bribe for the Nottingham sheriffdom. Costly finery for an error.

The warrior made a gesture with his hand and the horse started picking his way over. She watched as he ran an affectionate hand over his horse’s neck, murmuring in the tongue of the Normans to his obviously beloved mount.

Her gaze drifted aimlessly, then froze. Why, there was her slipper, huddled along the side of the road like a frightened child, half-hidden beneath the muck. She hobbled over and picked it up. By all the saints, how had she thought to save her saviour with
that
?

And what was she to do now? Her original destination, so swiftly planned as she tripped and ran down the streets of London, was St. Alban’s Abbey. But the monks were twenty miles away, and unhorsed, that had become an insurmountable distance.

She put her hand to her forehead. Everything seemed sinister. The mists, the dark, rutted road, and most especially the sword-bearing stranger who was watching her now with grey-blue eyes, his body motionless. What before had been red-hot fire in her blood became ice-cold fear, and it slid down her back in knife thrusts.

“So,” he said with a booming roar—at least that’s how it sounded—“what am I to do with you?”

The chill plunged deeper into her spine. What did that mean:
do with her
? Hadn’t she spent the whole first part of this evening assuring no man should do anything with her?

To this awful end.

She shoved her foot into her slipper. Cold, wet mud slopped out the sides. “My thanks for saving me, sir, but there is nothing you are required, nor invited, to do with me.” He lifted an eyebrow. “I am truly grateful for the risks you have taken here,” she added. “Not only to your person, but any reputation you might have.”

He didn’t appear overly concerned about that last, considering that nothing about his grey-eyed, taut-bodied regard changed. He didn’t appear very pleased. She didn’t have many choices. She cleared her throat.

“You wouldn’t be pilgrimming towards Saint Alban’s Abbey, now, would you?”

He shook his head.

“No, I didn’t think so.” She took a breath. There was one other option, much closer, although she did not know the way herself. But perhaps this knight did. Of course, it was not the safest option. Papa had always said Lord Aubrey of Hippingthorpe, who had estates nearby, was a man with a ridiculous name and a most dangerous temperament.

Well, Gwyn decided, pushing her foot deeper into the cold muck filling her slipper, danger was really quite relative now, wasn’t it?

She looked up at her saviour. “You wouldn’t be able to direct me towards Hippingthorpe Hall, would you?”

The smallest flicker altered his gaze. “Are you to name every stop along the road to York?” he asked coldly.

She drew back, hugged her tattered cloak around her shoulders, and lifted her chin a little bit. “No. Of course not. My apologies for all the…troubles. May I recompense you?” She began fumbling with the bag of silver tied around her waist.

“No.”

“Are you certain? Your tunic was torn, and…?” She drifted off as he crossed his arms over his chest and regarded her like he might some heretofore-unknown insect.

“Well, then,” she remarked brightly and turned on her heel. With great dignity, she began hiking down the highway, a lone, dark, limping figure, damp skirts clinging to her knees, which she kicked away on every alternate step.

“For certes, I stepped onto a strange path when I left the house tonight,” she muttered, pushing unruly strands of muck-covered hair out of her face. “If I thought life was a thing in my control, I have been proven wrong.” She fumbled to remove the heavy clump of fabric that edged its way higher and higher between her legs. “And I do not like that.”

Behind her, Griffyn ‘Pagan’ Sauvage stood for a long time, staring down the road. A breeze crept up and blew persistently around the hem of his cape.

The last thing he needed, the very last thing in all the world, was another burden. Tonight of all nights.

Griffyn’s mission was clear and uncomplicated: Prepare England for invasion. Lure the powerful, enlist the merchants, persuade the wise, and bribe the fools, but come hell or high water, clear the way, because Henri fitzEmpress, Count d’Anjou, Duke of Normandy, and rightful king of England, was poised to blow through the country like a tempest and conquer it from Sea to Wall.

Landing in secret on the English coast six months ago, Griffyn had met with dozens of war-weary lords since then, men balanced on the edge of a knife, and convinced them Henri’s blade was the sharper. He had done things no other man had been able to do, and he was planning to do them one last time, tonight, in the most vital meeting of his entire mission. At a remote hunting lodge half a mile off the king’s highway. One carefully-arranged meeting with the most powerful baron in Stephen’s realm, the earl of Leicester, Robert Beaumont. Turn him, and they had the country.

The name of that hunting lodge? Hippingthorpe. The very place she’d asked to go.

Could she be more in the way? Literally, in his path.

The fate of two kingdoms rested on this meeting. Turn Beaumont and England would fall like chaff.

And Griffyn could finally go home.

A flash of pain eddied into his chest. Dimmed by time, it was always there, a burning ache: home. Sweetly scented hilltops, primeval forests, and heather bracketing the everlasting moors. Mountains and seas. Wild, windswept,
home
.

He did not need a distraction. Not tonight, not ever.

He watched her lone, dark, limping figure diminish in the distance for a moment longer, then cursed softly and swung away.

Gwyn sniffed and peered optimistically up the highway. Then she scowled. St. Alban’s did not appear to be any closer. Then again, she’d only been walking for about ten minutes.

“I suppose I’ll have to sleep in a hollowed tree stump tonight, and hope no wild boars find me too tempting to resist.” She wrinkled her nose. “With the way I smell, I’ll attract them from all around.”

She glanced up at the sky. Clouds were moving in. Her brows came down in an angry glare. “Perfect. I could have predicted a storm. Of
course
it would rain. Why not send a cloud of locusts and splay me with boils next? ’Twould be a fitting end to this wretched night.”

She was trembling from head to soggy foot, chilled from the outside in. Her fingertips were numb, her knees trembling from cold and spent emotion. Lifting a hand, she wiped her nose and scrubbed at her eyes, which were beginning to leak. “No crying,” she ordered in a furious whisper. “You brought this on yourself. Headstrong, foolish, wretched girl.”

She kept walking, stumbling through mud puddles and over a small crest in the road. Her legs wobbled and threatened to give out fully. Part of the reason became clear when she looked down: the heel of her slipper had given out completely.