Martyr's Fire (11 page)

Hawkwood had whispered to Katherine that at night, then, their ears must serve as their eyes, for if they failed to follow Thomas to his next destination, the plan would surely be doomed.

Tell me more of the plan
, Katherine had wanted to ask, but did not. She knew her duty, and what Hawkwood knew of the plan would only be revealed when he deemed it proper.

So she sat, shivering in the early hours of the third day. Despite her coldness, the discipline she had been taught since birth did not leave her. She did not let the shivers shake her body. Utterly still, she resembled so closely the rock around her that once a fox almost blundered across her feet. At the last moment, it caught her scent and leaped sideways to disappear into the dark jumbles of trees and rocks.

That was the only break in the monotony. Yet, except for the shivering, Katherine did not mind. In these quiet moments she felt at peace.

Soon, the rhythms of approaching day would begin, telling her that God’s order still remained in nature, even amid the confusion of the affairs of men and their struggles that had brought her to this quiet valley. Faint gray would brush the horizon first. Then tentative and sporadic chirps of faraway birds, as if they hardly believed they were to be given the gift of another new day. The rustling of the small night creatures would stop in response.

Each minute of growing light would bring her unexpected pleasures. Yesterday, it had been the careful and delicate stepping of a spider across large beads of dew on its web, across a branch so close to Katherine’s face that she could see each drop of water bend, but not quite break, with the weight of the spider. The day before, she’d seen a rabbit, trailed by six tiny bundles of fur, each intent on tumbling exactly into the mother rabbit’s footsteps.

Part of Katherine knew that she chose to focus on the hill around her because she wanted relief from the questions she could not yet ask Hawkwood.

She knew his urgency stemmed from those reports that Magnus had once again fallen, and with that, at least, she understood the need for action. Without Magnus … Now that she had been fully taught the history and tradition of the Immortals, she hardly dared contemplate how many centuries of careful guidance were on the brink of destruction.

But why the importance of Thomas? And when could she reveal her role to him?

Deep as her feelings for him might run, warm as the skin on her face might flush as she remembered him, Katherine needed to force
herself to remain objective enough to wonder why so much rested upon his shoulders.

Where were the other Immortals of this generation? Must Thomas combat the Druids alone and ignorant of battles that had been fought for centuries?

And why now the extreme urgency? After all, until Thomas had recaptured the kingdom the previous summer, Magnus had been under control of the Druids for twenty years. Surely the passing of a month, two months, could not determine the battle now?

Surely—

“Katherine.”

She turned her head slightly to acknowledge she had heard Hawkwood’s waking words.

“Day is nearly upon us.”

So it was. Despite her determination to contemplate the beauty of creation, those faint licks of gray had been banished by pale blue while her thoughts had wandered to areas that Hawkwood refused to discuss.

Katherine stirred, ready to pick her careful way back to the observation point farther back.

“Wait!” came the soft whisper.

She froze. And immediately understood.

Below her, Thomas had finally moved out of the cave and into sight. Without the sack of food he had carried inside. Without the leather bag for water. Without the puppy.

He wore the plain brown garb of a simple monk.

They followed him along an isolated path in the forest south of the small Harland Moor Abbey. Katherine and Hawkwood did not follow Thomas together. Rather, Hawkwood remained ahead. It was his duty to melt invisibly into the trees and keep Thomas in sight. Katherine, a hundred yards behind and less adept at stealth, simply kept Hawkwood in her line of vision.

At times, she lost sight of him completely. She marveled again and again at how silently he flitted from tree to tree, bush to bush.

An hour later, Hawkwood held up a hand of warning, then settled into a crouch.

Katherine responded by doing the same.

Five minutes later, Hawkwood was up again and moving ahead. This loose march of three, Thomas unaware and in the lead, continued for another half hour until they reached the road leading into the town of Helmsley.

Hawkwood waited for her at the side of the road.

“He is ahead of us, of course,” he told Katherine. “I have no doubt he is going to town, much as we, too, needed to stop there before going to the valley.”

Katherine raised an eyebrow in question. “His detour?”

“Gold,” Hawkwood replied. “He has retrieved some of the gold he had buried before leaving here with the knight for Magnus last summer. The gold he had earned from the gallows in Helmsley. And gold can only mean he has purchases in mind.”

Hawkwood’s prediction proved correct.

They next saw Thomas near the Helmsley stables where they had left their own horses a few days earlier. Watching discreetly proved to be no problem, not with the usual crowds around the market stalls.

Thomas engaged himself in conversation with the ruddy-faced fat man who tended the stables.

After five minutes, both nodded. The fat man disappeared inside the stable and returned with a small gray horse.

Thomas shook his head. The fat man shrugged. Another five minutes of conversation, this time with much animated movement of hands by both.

The fat man again entered the stable. This time he returned with a large roan stallion. Even from their vantage point, Katherine could appreciate the power suggested by the muscles that rippled and flinched as the horse occasionally shook itself of flies.

A few more minutes of conversation. A snort of derisive laughter from the fat man reached them. And yet again he entered the stables. He brought out not a horse but shabby blankets and saddlebags customarily placed on donkeys.

Thomas nodded and the fat man departed. Instead of swinging onto the horse, Thomas threw a blanket over it and cinched on the saddlebags. He remained on foot and led the horse away by its halter.

As soon as he was safely out of sight, Katherine and Hawkwood approached the stable man.

Hawkwood flashed a bronze coin.

The stable man grunted recognition. “The two of you.” He looked at the coin and sneered. “I thought you’d both died. I’ve kept both your mounts in oats for three days. You expect that to pay the fare?”

“No,” Hawkwood said. He pulled a tiny gold coin from deep within his cloak and handed that to the man.

The fat man bit the coin to test for softness, then said, “It’s barely enough, but I’m not one to take advantage of strangers.”

“It’s a third more than you expected,” Hawkwood said quietly. He then showed the bronze coin again. “And this is yours if you tell us what the little sparrow heard.”

“Eh?”

Hawkwood fluttered his hand skyward. “The little sparrow flitting around as you spoke to that monk’s assistant. What harm could there be in telling us words from a sparrow’s mouth?”

The fat man leered comprehension. “Ah, that sparrow. Now I recall.” He leaned forward and widened his leer to show dark stumps for teeth. “Unfortunately, that sparrow’s a shy one.”

A second bronze coin appeared in front of the stable man.

“The monk’s assistant told me he wanted a horse that could outrun any in York,” the stable man said quickly. “That was all.”

“York?” Hawkwood repeated.

“York.” The man nodded.

“You spent ten minutes in conversation,” Katherine protested. “And that was the entire exchange?”

The stable man looked at her darkly, then back at Hawkwood. “It’s a sad day when a woman interrupts the business of men.”

Katherine rose on her toes to answer, but caught the slight warning wave of Hawkwood’s hand.

“I’ll see she learns her lesson,” Hawkwood said. He then stroked his chin. “York. Hasn’t its earl fallen from power?”

“It’s what I said too.” The stable man nodded again. “I told him what even the deaf and blind know. The Earl of York now rots in his own dungeon.”

The fat man paused.

“Yes?” Hawkwood prompted.

“It’s peculiar. When I said that, the assistant told me that’s exactly why he needed the horse.”

Katherine knew Hawkwood had no appreciation for foolishness, so she waited an hour to ask her question. By then they had traveled five miles along the road to York. By then she had sifted through enough of her thoughts to know which question to ask. Even if she would not start with it.

“We have not reached nor passed Thomas yet,” she began. “This means one of two things.”

“Yes?” Hawkwood asked in good humor. Katherine knew it lifted his spirits when she applied her training.

“Either he mounted his horse as soon as he was out of sight of the town and has ridden it fast enough to keep the distance between us as he travels to York. Or—”

“How do you know it will be the second and not the first?” Hawkwood interrupted.

Katherine smiled. “Because he wants to appear as a lowly monk’s assistant leading a master’s horse from one town to the next. He doesn’t dare ride, because too many travel this road, and many would wonder at someone dressed so poorly mounted on such a fine horse. Since we have not yet reached him, he does not first travel to York.”

Hawkwood clapped approval. “Instead, he has …”

“Thomas has undoubtedly returned to the abbey to retrieve what he needs from the cave, to fill those saddlebags.” Katherine paused at the thought and what it meant. “He is arming himself.”

“Yes, my friend.” Hawkwood said nothing more, and they passed the next hundred yards with only the
clop-clop
of the horses’ hooves to break their companionable silence. A breeze at their backs kept the dust from rising, and Katherine let it lull her thoughts away from her question.

She turned her gaze downward as the minutes passed. Not for the first time did Katherine stare at the road and wonder at the Roman soldiers who had set the stones more than a thousand years earlier, even before the time of Merlin himself. York had been an outpost in the wild interior, Hawkwood had explained five days previous as they had departed Scarborough. Scarborough, forty miles northeast, had been the coastal watch post, and from its high cliffs, the Roman sentries could easily spot enemy ships. The efficient road to the interior made it easy to shuffle legions of soldiers back and forth between Scarborough and York. And now, hundreds of years later, it carried the everyday traffic between the towns along that route.

“Katherine.”

She pulled away from her thoughts.

“What question do you have?”

“You can read me that well?” Katherine said.

“You had no need to impress me with your guesses. Except that I am sometimes impatient with meaningless prattle, and it seemed as if you sought to discuss Thomas more.”

Katherine felt her face color as she noticed Hawkwood’s tiny grin of comprehension and the twinkle in the old man’s eyes. He knew too well her thoughts of Thomas.

She also knew Hawkwood did not like false modesty or coy games, so she simply asked her question with no further hesitation.

“Why York?” she blurted. “Thomas knows, as do all, that the Priests of the Holy Grail rule it as surely as they rule Magnus. Why enter the lions’ den?”

Hawkwood spoke so softly she could barely hear. “I’ve wondered that myself. Perhaps he has decided if he frees the Earl of York, they will swear a pact of allegiance and together fight these Holy Grail priests. Perhaps he simply wishes to observe the priests without fear of recognition by the townspeople as would happen to him in Magnus. After all, he knows, as do you, the first maxim of warfare is simple: ‘Know thine enemy.’ ”

Another hundred yards.

The riders swayed to the rhythm of the slow plodding. With less urgency now than during their previous travels, there seemed little purpose in taxing the horses.