The Last Arrow RH3 (8 page)

"Brenna? Is that you?"

"Indeed it is, brother dear. And see what manner of prize I have brought for you to admire? A poacher, a trespasser, a churl who refused to even give his name until I tickled him with my bow."

Robin and Will both emerged from the shadowy maw of the arched entrance. They had swords strapped to their hips and were followed by a dozen men from the castle guard who fanned out behind them, crossbows in hand, poised to defend against any intruders lurking in the darkness beyond.

"A hale and hearty evening all around," Robin murmured.

"Bright enough to chase fireflies," she said, giving the proper, specific reply to assure the Amboise men she was not being coerced into bringing a hostile inside the walls. Had she answered any other way, Griffyn Renaud would be dead.

Instead, Robin walked forward, his boots echoing on the wood planks. His gaze barely touched on the stranger as he watched Brenna swing her leg over the front of the saddle and slide nimbly to the ground.

"You certainly do take a challenge to heart," he said, admiring the huge gray stallion. "Dare I ask where you found the unlucky fellow?"

"By the river. He was poaching Father's best fishing hole."

"I was attempting to ease the rumbling in my belly," Renaud said on a sigh. "I was not aware I was trespassing, or that a single fish—and a rather small one as it happened— would have me stretched out on a rack."

"We all tend toward caution these days," Robin allowed. "Did she hurt you?"

The question was asked as if it was a normal occurrence, and Renaud's jaw flexed once before he answered. "Only my pride."

Robin laughed. "Then you have fared better than most, my friend. My sister sharpens her teeth on poachers."

"He gave his name as Renaud," Brenna offered lightly. "But because he would part with no other information, I thought it best to bring him here and give him, perhaps, to Littlejohn, who would be more than happy to loosen his tongue."

"That may well be," her brother said slowly, "for he has not cracked any heads lately and his blood is running a little high. Renaud?" He was studying the knight's face, and in this he had the benefit of the torches blazing behind him, throwing hot yellow light on the sharply defined features. "The name feels as if it should mean something to me."

The stranger, his elf-shot eyes revealing nothing, crossed his arms over his chest and smiled. "Robert Wardieu d'Amboise, as I live and breathe."

Robin's frown deepened. "I fear you still have the advantage, sirrah."

"Five years ago, the haslitude at Gascon. A single-combat match between two nineteen-year-old striplings who had just earned their spurs."

Robin drew in a deep, startled breath. "Renaud! Griffyn Renaud de Verdelay! Christ Jesus on the cross! What black pit in hell has spit you back up onto the earth?"

"The deepest, naturally."

"Naturally!" Robin reached out and clasped Renaud's forearm, laughing like a fool as he called to Will. "Come and see the prize Brenna has brought us! God's good grace, I can scarcely believe my eyes! Griffyn Renaud de Verdelay!"

He pulled the grinning knight forward into a hearty embrace and clapped him several times on the back and shoulder before releasing him.

Brenna stared at her brother as if he had gone mad, and when Will joined them, he fared no better for he could only answer her questioning gaze with a frown and a shrug.

"Griffyn Renaud ... William FitzAthelstan, my very good friend. Will! We have here the only man in Christendom who caused me to visit an armorer after the joust to have my helm bashed back into a recognizable enough shape to pry it off my head. The only man whose ram-pager"—he stopped and peered again at the gray—"good God, can it be the same wily beast? The one who gave Sir Tristan as good a thumping as he got in twenty ... or was it twenty-one?... runs!"

"Actually, it was twenty-three," Griffyn said easily. "A record that stands to this day, the last I heard. And it would have been twenty-four if the judges had not stopped it and declared it too cruel for the horses to carry on."

"They gave me the win on points," Robin said, sobering briefly. " 'Twas the only time I was discomfited being declared champion of the tourney."

"Not too discomfited to refuse your winnings," Renaud reminded him.

"I refused your horse and armor," came the retort. "And came looking for you afterward to give you half of what I earned ... but you were already gone. Vanished without a trace."

"I had ... commitments."

Robin grinned again and shook his head in happy disbelief. "And here you stand now, sprung from nowhere, as alive and fit as ever I have judged a dead man to be. You know, of course, that you are. Dead, I mean. Split in two by ...

Ivo the Crippler, so we heard."

"Ivo? That larded pullet? He is taking credit for my demise? The last time we met on the field, Centaur refused to run, knowing it to be a waste of energy. A trot was all that was needed to put enough force behind the lance to roll him out of the saddle and bounce him on the ground."

Robin threw his head back and laughed. Will obviously believed the story could be true and would have laughed too if Brenna's heel had not found his toe.

"It does not change the fact he was surly and rude and trespassing," she insisted. "And too secretive even to tell me where he had been or where he was going."

Renaud's smile did not quite affect both sides of his mouth equally as he glanced her way. "If you will recall, I did mention I had been following the river from Orleans. And I would not have been alone had Fulgrin elected to remain with me instead of striking out on his own."

"Fulgrin?"

"My ... man. I am loath to call him squire, for he rarely listens to a word I say and, more often than not, follows his own whim when it disagrees with mine. In this case, he insisted on keeping to the main road, even though I argued the route was twice as long."

"You argue with your squire then allow him to go his own way?" Brenna's eyebrow quirked at the notion of a knight tolerating such insolence.

"Allow?" His soft laugh sent a trickle of sensation down her spine. "Believe me, my lady, I have sent him on his way with the help of my boot more times than I can recount. He keeps finding me again, however, despite my attempts to be hanged as a poacher. We agreed to meet in Rouen by week's end, and I have no doubt he will be there waiting, as surly and bellicose as ever."

"Rouen?" It was Robin, looking surprised yet again. "To the tournament, of course?"

Renaud nodded. "L'Emprise de la Gueule de Dragon. There have been postings at every crossroad between here and Paris."

"We ourselves leave in three days' time," Robin announced, his grin genuine and infectious. "Indeed, who could resist a haslitude with such grand designs as 'The Enterprise of the Dragon's Mouth'?"

"Who indeed?" Renaud mused.

The instincts of the two men took brief priority and caused them to study each other with sharp new eyes. They were breathtakingly well matched in size and height, both in their prime as fighting men, and the irony was not lost on either one as they assessed the advantages and disadvantages of playing host and guest to someone they would likely be meeting as an opponent in the lists. "Perhaps," Renaud mused, "you should simply point the way to the road."

"And perhaps," Robin replied with equal graveness, "you should come inside that we might ply you with good, stout ale and have you confess all of your weaknesses."

"But I have none. Not unless you count a pressing need for a soft bed, a hot bath, and a strong herb woman who can ease my body of—his gaze flicked past Robin's shoulder and caught Brenna staring—"the multitude of unfamiliar aches I have earned this night, being forced to walk halfway cross the country."

"Your tongue should have been as loose then as it is now," she retorted smartly. "Certes, you would have been left to your own company."

"Perhaps I would have been more forthcoming, my lady, had you not addressed me first with your bow. How was I to know you were not a thief or a poacher? You put your arrow in the tree without the slightest hesitation and suggested you were only too willing to do the same to me. You were dressed like a common peasant, giving no clue to your gentle breeding, and since you showed no willingness to impart your name either, how was I to know you were not there to maim or murder me?"

Brenna's mouth dropped open. He had managed to mock, insult, and reprimand her in the same breath he used to put himself forward as the poor, hapless victim!

"Murder," she said, clenching her teeth again, "was a closer possibility than your arrogance lets you realize, Sir night."

"I rather doubt that, my lady, although there were other temptations that might have proved interesting to pursue."

Two hot red spots flared in her cheeks and she was thankful for the shielding darkness. Nothing hid the look in his eyes or the path they took downward to the front of her jerkin. She had laced the halves closed again to keep out the chill on the ride home, but she might as well have been naked for all the protection the linen and leather afforded.

She could feel his eyes probing through the layers, mocking her femininity even as he challenged it.

"Come now." Robin stepped between them. "It was a misunderstanding, nothing more. No one is murdered and you have, indeed, brought a most valuable prize home. I, for one, concede defeat. A brace of pheasants is naught compared to the resurrected Renaud de Verdelay." And to the vaunted Verdelay he added, "You will naturally do us the honor of accepting our hospitality."

"If I can offer Centaur a day's rest, gladly." The ice-washed eyes rose again to Brenna's face. "But only if I can be assured it is no inconvenience."

"It is no inconvenience whatsoever," Robin insisted, ignoring the glare on Brenna's face as he started leading the way back across the draw. "If anything, we welcome the news from ... ah ... where have you been all these years?"

"Here and there. In the east, mostly. Burgundy, the Germanys."

Brenna's skin prickled again, not pleasantly. She was no lover of coincidences, and there seemed to be a deal of them flying about this night. A knight alone, lost in the woods? A knight who was supposedly a champion, supposedly dead, suddenly come to life and prominence again, discovered on Amboise land, en route to a tournament at Chateau Gaillard. Was she the only one who saw something odd in all of this? Was the lump Robin had taken to his head that afternoon clouding his judgment, making him careless? Burgundy? Burgundy, for heaven's sake, was a land infested with assassins and mercenaries, men who wore no crests and carried no pennons, who would likely prefer the anonymity of the forest to recognition on the roads. Men went into the mountains of Burgundy when they were in disgrace or they had good reason to disappear for a time.

And when they came out again, they brought the snow and ice with them, in their eyes and in their souls.

Robin would not see it, however. Often to his greater fault, he held a rare and unassailable belief in the ideals of chivalry and was too virtuous, too trusting for his own good. He could no more believe a knight capable of treachery and deceit than he could himself spit on the Holy Grail.

Brenna was not half so trusting, and neither, thankfully, was Will, who stopped Renaud at the guardhouse where Robin would have led him straight past.

"I am afraid, my lord, you will have to submit to the normal castle procedures and surrender all of your weapons at the gate. They will be restored to you, cleaned and in good repair, when you depart."

"I was already relieved of my sword, as you can see. You will find it with another strapped to Centaur's pack."

"Merely a precaution," Robin explained with a shrug of apology. "My family is not well liked by the English king and his allies, and strangers tend to put the guards on their toes."

Griffyn grunted by way of giving response, for he was on his toes now. The man who happened to be conducting a search of his person for hidden weapons was Jean de Brevant, the captain of the Wolf's personal guard and the one to whom the safety of Amboise's residents had been entrusted for the past decade. Called Littlejohn by those who dared, he was a towering pillar of muscle, standing above seven feet in height. His face was hewn out of rock, bearded to the eyes, the cracks and fissures above arranged to give proof his favorite expression was a menacing frown.

The menace deepened noticeably when he found a thin-bladed, wickedly sharp misericorde tucked into the high cuff of Renaud's boot.

"You will get this back when you leave," he said as he handed the knife to another guard. "Lord Randwulf supplies his guests with a barber if they wish to be clean shaven." Renaud straightened his tunic and made a small adjustment to the front seam of his hose. "You are very thorough."

"I like to earn my keep."

"Then you should probably take this." He withdrew a small knife from a sheath sewn into the collar of his surcoat.

"And this." He pulled up his sleeve and removed a small crescent-shaped disc he wore strapped to his forearm.

Brenna, who had been leaning against her bow, enjoying Renaud's discomfort throughout the search, straightened and stared. She had not taken her eyes off him for more than a second or two on the ride home; how had he managed to conceal so many weapons? Even more confounding was the fact he had played the captive so well when he could obviously have overwhelmed her at any time.

Littlejohn's eyebrows were crushed together to form a single dark slash over the bridge of his nose. He was clearly as startled as Brenna, and the look he gave Griffyn Renaud should have turned his bowels to stone. But the calm, luminous eyes merely stared back, showing as much fear as a cat before a mouse.

Brevant made a sound in his throat, almost as ominous as the metallic grating of the portcullis being lowered behind them. He leaned close to Renaud and bared his huge front teeth in the nickering torchlight. "I would not try to be