Destined for a King (21 page)

Heart in her throat, thighs burning, Calista clung to her palfrey's back as she pelted across the bailey. The postern. She stared at it, but men stood in the path. Armed men. She dug her heels into the mare's sides, determined to ride them down. A form loomed out of the night, grappling for the reins.

Calista slammed her heel into the man's nose.

“Go, go, go,” she urged the mare on.

Something whooshed past her cheek. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a bolt vibrating in the ground. Men shouted. Arrows whizzed. Hoofbeats pounded behind her.

Where was Torch and how was he going to get out of this?

Do not look back.
The admonition echoed through her mind, but she could not help herself.

As the thunder behind grew louder, she turned. A mass of horseflesh erupted from the stables. Smoke poured from the open door. Flames leapt toward the night sky. But Torch was nowhere amid the conflagration.

The rising sun's rays topped the trees that ringed the clearing. Calista dug into the graininess in her eyes and forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand. Boiled stream water and a few none-too-clean strips of fabric to bind a shoulder wound, but they were all she had.

If she'd stopped to think beyond the hour of escape, she would have brought supplies. At home, a stillroom full of remedies lay at her disposal—water of life and dragonwort and fragrant unguents to heal. Here in the woods, she only possessed the very opposite of what she needed—a wineskin full of poison.

She met her patient's gaze, hard and alert. Hawk, if she recalled correctly through the fog of sleeplessness. He would be fine, as would the others. They'd met with little more than a skirmish with the castle guards before the alarm sounded. Before Hammerfell's finest were called to put out the raging flames in the stables. Before they were needed to subdue their panicking horses.

Torch's Brotherhood and the remnant of Blackbriar's men-at-arms, who had decided to chance their fortunes to the wild rather than face accusations of treason, would survive. Torch, on the other hand…

She straightened, jamming the heels of her hands into the small of her back, raising stinging eyes toward an impossibly blue sky. He'd sacrificed himself. Created a diversion so his followers could escape. Was that really all that remained of his dream?

This wasn't how the old tales were meant to play out. The hero always overcame impossible odds. Right triumphed. Did this mean Torch's claim was false despite his overwhelming belief in his cause?

“We're safe enough for now, my lady.” Hawk's voice broke in on her despair. “You ought to rest.”

As if she could, despite the fatigue that had seeped into her bone marrow. She didn't want to lie down and do nothing. That was when the thoughts would invade. The memories. The recollection of his roguish smile, his searing kisses, his stirring touch. The soul-stealing pleasure he'd drawn from her. And if she thought of all that now, if she relived it…

A sob clawed its way up her chest. Clenching her fists, she swallowed it back. “Surely there's someone else I must see to.”

With a wince, Hawk shrugged back into his jerkin. “I was the last of them, and it seems you've been through enough.”

Not nearly as much as Torch. She brushed her hands against her skirts, creased and filthy from the stillroom and muddied in their escape. A red-brown stain on her sleeve looked suspiciously like blood, although she could not say if it had come from one of these men or the dead guard whose keys she'd stolen.

The weight of Hawk's hand settled on her shoulder. “He'll find us. He knows this place.”

She turned to study Hawk's face. Furrows of experience lined his forehead. Threads of silver streaked his dark beard. But his brown eyes remained steady on her.

“Why do you follow him?” She asked the question as much to stave off her emotions as to satisfy her curiosity. Hawk had to have known forty summers, at least. Why should he place himself under the command of someone younger? “Why do you believe?”

“It's the hope, I suppose. Hope for something better.” He glanced about the makeshift camp, as if taking stock. “You ask any one of our Brothers, and they're like to tell you they have a bone or two to pick with the Usurper.”

“Do you?”

“Not with Magnus, no.” He caught her gaze. “You've grown up in a world where you could ask for whatever you wished and your father would give it to you, I suspect.”

“Not everything.” She might be aware of her privilege as the daughter of a Stronghold lord, but she wasn't spoiled.

“I'll wager you've never gone hungry a day in your life.”

She pressed her lips together. He had her there. “No.”

“Because you were born into the right family. Cottars and simple farmers, now, they don't have it so easy.”

“My father makes certain everyone under his care does not go without.”

“Not every Stronghold lord is as generous as Belwin Thorne. Some take so much of the harvest that most don't make it through the winter without resorting to outlawry.” Bitter experience rang through his words. “And when you can't stand the sound of your little ones crying because their bellies are empty, it's all the easier to damn the laws to the Faceless One.”

He pulled his jerkin aside, revealing the gnarled flesh just below his collarbone. She'd noted it as she tended him, but an old scar had not claimed her attention the same as a fresh wound. She saw it now. White ridges pulled his skin into an intricate knot—too intricate to have occurred by chance. The scar formed a rune, the symbol of a poacher.

“I got the easier end of the bargain,” Hawk went on. “Lord Tarr felt I ought to repay him for the stag I took. I had nothing, so he declared I could pay him in kind. I still had nothing—beyond my wife. It was her or our children.”

Calista gasped. A sickening sensation roiled in her gut. Thank the gods she'd had nothing to eat, for surely she'd have spewed the contents of her belly over the ground.

“Torch, now, he's known hardship. He's hard but fair. Not one to take more than a person can give.”

“Merciful,” Calista murmured. Beyond the initial battle to take the keep, he'd killed no Blackbriar man, not even Rand. Another man might have cut out Rand's tongue for his insults, but Torch had simply locked him up. And Torch had allowed the remnant of Blackbriar's guards to escape with his Brothers, rather than leave them to face Hammerfell's ideas of justice.

“I don't reckon Torch will stand for such doings once he's regained the throne.”

“If he's alive, you mean.” There. She'd spoken the worst aloud, forced the words past the ache in her throat. Given them voice, and the sun still shone on the clearing. Birds still twittered among the trees. Her own heart still beat in her chest until she wanted to tear it out with her bare hands.

“He's still alive. Have faith.”

Faith. It was all anyone had asked of her since the day Torch had ridden into her life, and look where it had brought her—exiled from her home and raked with pain over the loss of a love she hadn't realized existed until it was too late.

Oh, gods.

She loved him—her husband, her lord, her king.

The tenderness cut keen and unbearably bright. Nothing but love was powerful enough to cause her this level of suffering. Her heart fairly burst with the immensity of her emotions.

And Torch still believed she'd betrayed him. Nothing else could explain his words to her when she'd opened that cell door.

I suppose you've come to finish us off.

He might as well have said
me.
The echo through her mind still stung like a slap. That cursed sob rose again, scrabbling and tearing like a wild animal. This time, she was powerless to hold it back. She doubled over, pressing her hands to her mouth, while Hawk's fingers tightened about her shoulder.

But she wanted more than just fingers. She longed for a pair of strong arms, a muscled chest, the familiar scent of Torch. She yearned for his shoulder, his presence, his fingers threading through her hair, his low rumble of a voice telling her everything would turn out fine in the end.

Even at the last, he'd hardly touched her. Only the briefest rough grappling to get her on her palfrey. Perfunctory. No gentleness. Nothing but the desire to see her gone. And that was the last memory she kept of him.

She buried her face in her hands, hoping the storm would soon pass. Hawk's reassuring grip turned into a series of awkward pats.

“It's all right.” She squeezed the words past the tightness in her throat.

“You keep telling yourself that, and it will be.” She'd meant that Hawk didn't have to keep up his attempts at comfort, but clearly he thought she was referring to Torch.

“Do not despair.” Another voice had her straightening, spine stiff. Brother Tancrid. He stood a couple of arms' lengths away, barefoot, unkempt. A coating of grayish dust covered his rough, brown robes.

All during their escape, she'd managed to maintain her distance from the Acolyte, but he'd crept up on her while the storm of her emotions raged.

She took a step back.

He extended an arm. Ringed with grime, that one unnaturally long nail pointed straight at her, an uncanny echo in her mind of their last encounter. “There is no need to fear me.”

Reflexively, her hand rose to cover the swaths of linen about her throat. The scratch on her neck throbbed. She ought to deny his statement—she ought to lie—but she could not summon the energy.

Brow furrowed, he followed. One step. Too close. “What is it?” Sadness tinged that question. “What has happened to you?”

Good Mother, it was as if he didn't remember his attack. Though he'd come back to himself at the end, he'd still been in some sort of trance in that little room. Had his mind blocked out what had transpired? Or had she imagined his shocked reaction? Maybe she had seen what she had wished to see—the beloved tutor from her childhood and not the monster he'd become.

Shouts from the camp saved her from having to reply. She turned in the direction of the noise. A rider emerged from the woods, tall on his beast of a white warhorse, broad-shouldered, his face blackened with soot, his gear singed.

Torch. With the morning sun glinting in his hair, setting it afire, he'd never looked better.

Calista's knees buckled, but Hawk caught her before she fell. “Thank the gods, thank the gods. Thank all the gods.”

In the midst of the camp, Torch dismounted and handed the reins to Aimery. Then his gaze settled on her, pinned her to the spot more surely than Hawk's supporting arm. Long legs ate up the ground as he stalked toward her.

The impulse to launch herself into his arms and take the comfort she'd yearned for burned hot in her chest. She stumbled toward him, and took a deep lungful of the smoke and fear that overlay his usual masculine scent. But the arms that encircled her and the muscled chest beneath her cheek remained stiff.

She pulled back. “You got away.”

A hot blush crept up her cheeks. Yes, and wasn't that an astute observation?

“I got away.” He echoed her statement in an unwelcoming tone that sent a shiver through her. “A stable full of heavy warhorses running about the bailey creates an effective diversion.”

But just as quickly the chill blazed into frustration. Damn him, if not for her, he'd still be shackled in that stinking cesspool of a cell, he and all his men. The least he could do was express some gratitude. “Do you have nothing to say to me?”

“I have a great deal to say to you, but not here and not now. I've too many other things to order first. Including our escape.” His words were curt, abrupt. Just as abruptly, he turned to Hawk. “How many are wounded?”

Hawk had the grace to clear his throat, his ruddy cheeks reddening. “A handful, no more. And those lightly. One broken leg in the lot. Your lady wife has seen to them.”

Torch turned to her and nodded once, a simple jerk of his head. Hard but fair, Hawk had called him. Well, right now, it appeared she was seeing all of the hard and none of the fair.

“Order the men to disperse into the woods. Small groups. Blackbriar men are free to return to Hammerfell's mercies or to seek shelter at any Stronghold of their choosing.”

“Yes, sir,” Hawk replied with a nod. “But we have few horses. There's yours and the lady's. Everyone else is on foot.”

“Put the injured on the palfrey. Horses won't travel much faster, at any rate.”

“And where are we to head?”

“Into the wild. To our sanctuary.”

While Hawk and Torch worked out the company's next move, Calista felt the uncomfortable weight of an unwanted gaze settle on her shoulders. Brother Tancrid was studying her—or more accurately, the linen about her throat. She covered the bandaging with her hand and turned her back.

What has happened to make you one of us? But we are Sons. There has never been a Daughter in a thousand years and more.

She jumped back with a cry, her heart hammering. Brother Tancrid's voice had sounded in her mind as clearly as if he'd spoken.

Torch broke off his orders to Hawk to stare at her. “What is amiss?”

Before she could reply, Brother Tancrid stepped in. “If it would be easier, the Sons of Earth might hide your fellows for a time.”

“My thanks.” Torch bowed his head. “My men have taken to the wilds before and can do so again. If you wish to take in the Blackbriar guards, you may. That leaves only the matter of my wife.”

“No.” Please let him look at her. Let him see. Beyond the fact that she did not wish to be near the Acolytes—the Sons—she could not fathom the idea of their being separated. No matter that he was behaving like an utter clod. “I go where you go. I will not stay at the cloister.”

With a wave of his hand, Torch dismissed Hawk. Then his eyes raked her with appraisal, assessing, no doubt, her soiled clothes, smudged face, and tangled hair. “The paths I mean to take and the ways I mean to survive are unfit for a gently bred lady.”

She'd never looked less like a gently bred lady, even when she'd dressed up in boiled leather to defend Blackbriar. “I joined my destiny to yours. I stood before the altar and made a vow.” She cast a wary glance at Brother Tancrid. “I will feel safer with you.”

Oh, how she hated to admit that after the coldness of his return. But what alternative did she have?

“What's this?” Such a simple question, but Torch posed it in a low, lethal voice that gave her hope.

She faced him straight on, forcing her expression to hardness—just as hard as his. “You have yet to ask how I came by my wounds.”

Everything about his stance became alert. A palpable tension coiled in him, ready to unleash at any moment. “Do you imply…”