Nothing Else Matters (22 page)

The only flaw to Lars’ perfection was the black eye he’d said he hadn’t received on the melee field. Though he declined to explain how he’d received the injury, Eleanor didn’t think she had farther to look than her husband’s bruised knuckles to find the answer.

“For shame,” she said as she passed him the cup. “You are a brawling lout,” she explained to his questioning look.

“Aye,” he said. “What of it?”

“I told you to let me deal with the two of them.”

“You said no such thing.” He took a sip of wine and passed the cup back to her.

Though the two of them were not seated at the high table, their rank entitled them to a silver-rimmed cup and a wooden trencher at the first table below the salt. Stian preferred the thick bread trencher the food was served on at home.

“Remind me not to eat the platter,” he said to Eleanor as he picked a piece of meat off the plate. Jesu, how he wanted to go home! “Think you we can

leave tomorrow?” he asked.

Eleanor looked around the torchlit meadow where the banquet was being held. It was a wel -organized affair with roving minstrels, jugglers and an

abundance of servants seeing to the needs of the guests. The earl’s large household was dressed in rich clothes, ful of clever conversation. She’d heard more gossip in half an hour from the lady seated on her right than could reach Harelby in years. She was having a wonderful time. She knew this sort of entertainment would come as a rare treat as the wife of Stian of Harelby and she wanted to savor it. But Stian was hating every moment of it.

It took an effort but she managed to put some sort of smile on her face when she said, “Why not? If your business is done, we might as wel leave. But someday,” she added sternly, “I’m going to make you take me on a proper
balade
to your family’s southern estates and maybe even to the ones across the Channel.”

“My father can take you,” he answered. “I’l stay home and go hunting.”

“You would.”

“As for business,” he went on, “never mind the taxes and lawsuits, it was concluded the moment I showed up with you and Edythe. Introducing Harelby’s

women to the world was al the purpose he real y wanted to serve.”

“I see. Of course,” Eleanor concurred. “He’s a clever man is Roger of Harelby to marry women with parents in each royal camp in these troubled times.”

She glanced once again at Edythe and Lars. “Getting the two of them back home would be best, I think.” Not that it was going to be easy to get them to go, she added to herself. Instead she tried for a more genuine smile this time and said, “Yes, let us be gone as soon as may be.”

Stian put his arm around her shoulder and kissed her cheek. “If we hurry,” he said. “We can be at Harelby in four days.”

“No!”

Stian was the first to see the smoke, though the shout the sight ripped out of him was enough to bring the other riders hurrying up the hil behind him. He was the first to see it because he’d ridden ahead of the cavalcade and so reached the top of the rise across the val ey of the Harl from Harelby Castle wel ahead of the wagons with the women and baggage. It was a clear, bright late afternoon without a cloud in the sky. Somehow, the gentle blue background

made the rising pil ar of darkness al the more ominous and out of place. It gave the lie to the air of peace that had surrounded the day until now.

There were woods, the narrow river, more woods and the fields of the manor between where Stian brought his horse to a halt and the place he cal ed

home, but he knew without a doubt where the smoke was coming from.

“Oh sweet Jesu,” he whispered, the reins tight in his tense hands. His eyes closed as he leaned forward in the high saddle, momentarily immobilized by pictures his imagination carved from he dark column of smoke. “My home,” he whispered. “My life. Harelby.” Then his head came up, eyes snapping

open. “Father!”

He spurred the horse forward on the word, everything else but the need to reach Harelby forgotten. Voices cal ed questioningly behind him but he paid

them no heed. He rode hard down into the val ey, splashed through the ford without noticing the spray churned up by the horse’s racing hoofs. Nothing

mattered to him but reaching Harelby.

He didn’t notice the horseman who came pelting up from behind until Malcolm came abreast of him, shouting, “Reivers in the vil age?”

In Stian’s headlong rush to reach his home, the words didn’t register for a moment. When they did, he asked, “What?”

“Think you there’s raiders after your cows?” his cousin shouted back.

The logical question brought some sense back to Stian’s panic-stricken mind. At least enough for him to slow his horse down enough to actual y look

about him for any sign of approaching danger. He was glad hard-headed Malcolm Erskine had chosen to come home with him for a visit rather than

lingering in York.

The path from the ford led through a thin stretch of wood to the vil age before going uphil again to the stone fortress. For any invader to reach that stone fortress there was the moat to cross and the motte to climb, across two wal ed and wel -defended baileys before reaching the tower built to withstand a strong siege. Malcolm was probably right, the fire had been set by raiders in the vil age, though that would be bad enough.

“Come on,” he said, and spurred his horse forward again, heading for Harelby vil age.

It was Hubert he saw first as the young priest stumbled out of a smoking hut, his baby daughter in his arms. The priest’s surcote was torn and singed, his thin face was covered in a dried blood from a deep gash. There was ruin al around them, bodies both human and animal, trampled fences, many a hut

was already gutted by fire, others were stil burning, their thatched roofs sending up the dark smoke Stian had spotted two miles away.

“What!” he demanded as he rode up to the priest. “Tel me quick! Where did they go?”

Hubert shook his head. He pointed toward the looming bulk of Harelby up on the hil . “The castle,” he told Stian. “They attacked the vil age as a diversion.

While we defended the vil age others got into the cast—”

Stian didn’t stay to listen to any more. He rode desperately for home. He cared not whether Malcolm fol owed or if there was an army waiting for him when he reached the gates.

* * * * *

top of the rise, just after Stian raced madly away, fol owed by Malcolm pelting madly after him. Al was in confusion among those left behind, ful of questions and worry. To Eleanor what was happening was evident—the vil age was under attack.

She wished Stian hadn’t ridden off without any warning but she wasn’t afraid of her own party being attacked. Besides Lars and their own people,

Malcolm had brought a half dozen of his men with him. They had plenty of protection, even without her lord to command the guards. She was confident that Edythe could be safely gotten back to Harelby and that was her first concern.

Standing in the dirt track, surrounded by the baggage train and a great many men on tal horses, she felt very smal and more insignificant than ever. It was an image of herself she had no time to indulge in however.

She looked to Lars. “Take her to Harelby,” she told him, pointing to the cart where Edythe peered anxiously at the sky.

The women around her were cackling like frightened hens but Edythe’s attention was on the rising smoke. Eventual y she turned her gaze on Eleanor. “I’m cold,” she said, though the day was very warm. “Something awful has happened.”

Eleanor didn’t try to argue with the unknown. “You’l be safe,” was al she said. “Get her out of here,” she said to Lars, and got a curt nod before she turned to Stian’s squire. “Take me up behind you, Ranald,” she ordered. “I’m going to the vil age.”

“It could be dangerous, my lady,” he answered, but he gripped her arm when she reached up and gave a mighty pul to help her onto the horse.

“I know,” she told him. She gripped him around the waist. She didn’t care if the reivers were gone or not. There would be people who needed nursing and bodies to bury no doubt. She had to go where her duty demanded. “Hurry.”

Hubert was standing by the roadside when they rode up, looking sick and stunned. Eleanor slid gracelessly off the back of the horse to rush up to him.

“What happened here?” she asked as soon as she’d taken his babe from his arms. She automatical y rocked the infant on her hip as it began to cry.

“Where’s her mother?”

“She’l be al right,” he said, sounding more like he was reassuring himself than giving information. “The reivers hurt her but she’l be al right.”

“And the others?” Eleanor asked. It was an effort to keep her voice calm. “What happened? What needs to be done?”

“Broken heads and bones,” he answered. “Some women raped. Hulda’s dead and her man and most of the pigs. She shouldn’t have fought to save a few

pigs.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It was a diversion,” he went on, his voice far too calm. “They were driven off far too easily, though they did damage enough while they were here.”

“So I see. Ranald, ride to the castle, send back my bag of medicines.”

“Aye, my lady,” he answered. “And I’l come back to guard you myself.”

Eleanor took the stunned priest by the arm. “Come,” she said. “Walk with me.” She headed them into the smoke stil curling around the pil aged huts.

“Show me what needs to be done and we’l start to take care of it.”

* * * * *

The signs of fighting in the bailey were unmistakable but those were the last words Stian had expected to hear when he vaulted off his horse at the door to the hal . It was a girl who had spoken, Fiona, standing in the doorway at the top of the stairs. He didn’t have to ask who she meant.

Stian ran past her into the hal , cal ing, “Father!” in the unnatural quiet of the shadowed room. Only his voice echoed in the silence; he knew he wouldn’t be answered.

Malcolm and Fiona fol owed after him. As he looked around the wreckage of overturned tables and bodies strewn in the rushes he heard Malcolm ask,

“How? What happened here?”

“A surprise attack,” the girl answered. Her voice was none too steady but she seemed sure of her facts. Stian listened with half an ear while she

explained. “Lord Roger sent most of the men to fight off the reivers when they attacked the vil age. But that wasn’t al that happened. Some men climbed up through the hole the mason made for the garderobe.”

Stian whirled on the girl. “What!”

She flinched away, face ful of terror. “I—”

He came after and grabbed her by the shoulders so hard she whimpered in pain. “What happened? How could anyone—?”

Malcolm grabbed his arm. “Leave her be. The girl’s terrified. Were you hurt?”

Stian just barely remembered that Fiona was one of Malcolm’s younger twin sisters. He eased his grip. “My father,” he demanded. “What happened to my

father?”

The girl went into Malcolm’s sheltering embrace. “I wasn’t hurt,” she told her brother. “Lord Roger told the women to hide when he realized the tower was ful of invaders. I hid under Lord Roger’s bed. I heard the fighting, saw some of it looking out from where I lay. They’d come for Conner Muragh,” she added. “Got him too. He escaped with them.”

“But what happened to Lord Roger?”

Stian had grown angrier and more desperate with every word. He no longer cared for the answer to what had happened, he knew he was going to kil for

the how and the why. There was only one thing he needed to know. “Where is my father?”

“On the tower stair,” the girl answered. “I tried to move his body,” she went on, “but he was heavy.”

For the first time Stian noticed the blood on Fiona’s skirts. Not her blood.

“Oh sweet Jesu.”

Maybe he wasn’t dead. Maybe he was just—

Stian ran for the tower. He took the narrow stairs three at a time. He came across the first body at the turning from the second floor to the third. The dead man had been a Muragh. The second as wel . He found his father at the top of the stair, at the opening where the little room for the garderobe was being built next to the bower.

Roger of Harelby was laid out on his back. There was no doubt he was dead for his throat had been slit.

There were a pair of dead men beside him, leaving little room in the narrow corridor for Stian to kneel beside his father’s corpse. Tears streaming down his face, he kicked an enemy carcass aside and dropped to his knees. There was stil warmth in the body he took in his arms.

He closed his eyes, rocking back and forth for a few moments until the grief wel ed out of him in a roar. His hands and arms were covered in blood when he stood once more.

He held his hands before him and vowed, “Revenge. Every Muragh living wil pay for this.” He gave his father one last look then hurried down the stairs faster than he had raced up.

By the time he reached the hal , Lars was there, inspecting the carnage with Malcolm. There was a group of women huddled by the hearth. He supposed

Eleanor was among them. The women were safe enough, he had other matters to attend to.

“Come on,” he said to his cousins. “We’re going.”

“Where?” Malcolm asked, hurrying after him.

Stian headed toward the stable. “We’l want fresh horses. They’ve got a good start.”

“They’re traveling fast,” Lars said. “Must be. They kil ed the cattle rather than herd it before them. They’re not even thieves, just murdering bastards.”

“They’ve got more than a good start,” Malcolm pointed. “The light’s going.”

It was indeed close to sunset, Stian noticed. He didn’t care. “We’l track them in the dark.”

Malcolm stopped and pointed toward the north. “Look to the sky, man.” Stian looked up and saw the clouds moving up off the horizon, dark and moving in fast. “There’s a storm blowing in from the sea,” Malcolm said. “Can we track them in that? At night? See sense, Stian. Set your castle to rights, bury your dead and wait for morning.”