Conquer the Night (3 page)

Jay grinned suddenly. “Ah, Arryn! So we have the castle; you'll shortly have Darrow's woman.”

“Aye …?”

“Well, she could be ugly as sin, of course.”

“Indeed.”

“Wrinkled beyond all measure. She is rich, but wealth is certainly not always accompanied by youth or beauty.”

Jay studied his friend for a moment, wanting to feel the same sense of humor. He could not.

“If she is as ugly as sin, as wrinkled as a prune, it will not matter. She is Darrow's, and that is all that counts. Was Darrow's. No more. The boys who were left to defend this place will have mercy, but …”

“Aye?” Jay demanded.

Arryn shook his head. “What more is there? She, too, is at my mercy.” He inhaled and exhaled, feeling as if he breathed in bitterness. “Nothing here is for pleasure. It is vengeance, Jay. She is simply to be used, ruined.”

“Aye, but … is such vengeance humanly possible if such proves to be the case? I mean, if a maid is preposterously ugly—”

“You have mercy, Jay.”

Jay, his helmet in his hand, smoothed back his rich brown hair. “Ah, there's the word! Mercy! Such a virtue, and lost to Scotland and Scots for so very long, so it seems. You've granted mercy to these men.”

“But you would have me grant mercy as well to the woman who encouraged Darrow in his vicious and bloodthirsty behavior?”

“Arryn, perhaps—”

Arryn leaned downward, his gloved hand curling into a fist that he slammed against his chest. “Sweet Jesus, I cannot forget or forgive what happened!”

“But she could be quite simply repulsive!” Jay stated.

“Then I will meet her in the dark, with a sack upon her head! Come, we've taken the bailey; now the towers must fall to us!”

He spurred his horse, leaving Jay to rush behind him to his own mount. Angered, restless, still feeling the pursuit of inner demons, Arryn rode hard to the great gate at the main tower. He called out orders, commanding his men to bombard the structure with a ram. Defenders overhead shouted, threatened; they would hurl down oil and flaming arrows to set them all ablaze. One fellow, in particular, shouted down that he would burn with them in hell.

“Seize the great oak shield and continue ramming the gate!” Arryn commanded, and his men quickly backed away toward the shield they had fashioned of heavy oak, a piece of siege machinery that protected them like a wooden roof from the missiles cast down from the arrow slits in the main tower that stretched above them.

The door shuddered.

The flames cast down burned, smoked, and went out. The oil dripped off the curve of the shield.

The ram thundered against the door.

“Hold! For God's sake, we will surrender!”

Arryn lifted his visor and looked up. The same fellow who had sworn to burn with them all in hell was the one offering the surrender.

“You protect Lord Darrow's lady, sir. You would give up so easily?” he queried mockingly.

“You've granted mercy to the soldiers in the bailey. I am Tyler Miller, captain of the guard, and I've heard, Sir Arryn, that you keep your word. Swear mercy to us and I will open the gates; thus you will have taken a castle you can still defend.”

“Aye, I swear mercy. But I ask again, what of your lady?”

“It is her command that I surrender,” he said, his voice suddenly tremulous. “She, too, must cast herself upon your mercy. We are too few, we have no more oil, no arrows, and we are poorly armed. And …”

He hesitated, looking down. “Sir Arryn, we've heard of the fate befallen so many of your people. We humbly beg pardon, and swear we were not among those who attacked your holdings. God help us, we were not. These are Lowlands here, and aye, we've English in our blood, but many of us are Scotsmen as well, sworn allegiance to the old lord here, the lady's good father. Aye, he was an Englishman, but … we're not all vicious dogs, sir.”

“Open the gates then,” Arryn commanded.

“Your word?”

“I've given my word.”

The great gates to the main tower of the fortress creaked open. Arryn nudged his horse forward, only to realize that Jay had ridden behind him. “Take care—it could be a trap.”

“I must lead the way in,” Arryn murmured.

He spurred the bay lightly; the horse pranced prettily and swiftly, making its way across the threshold and into the stone entry. Arryn held his sword at the ready—it still dripped the blood of Englishmen—but the threat was not necessary. The soldiers from the inner courtyard had laid down their weapons. There were only five of them. One stepped forward, helmet in his hand, offering his sword to Arryn. Arryn dismounted from the bay and accepted the sword. Jay came behind him, along with Nathan Fitzhugh and Patrick MacCullough. The other guards turned over their weapons in total surrender.

“Where is the Lady Kyra?” Arryn asked, careful to continue speaking his native Gaelic.

Tyler hesitated, wincing. “In the chapel.”

Arryn dismounted and started to walk past him.

“Sir!” Tyler called.

Arryn paused, looking back.

“You swore mercy.”

“To you, I swore mercy.”

“But—”

“Get these five outside, to the wall with the others,” Arryn commanded Jay.

“Aye, Arryn,” Jay agreed, watching as Arryn strode toward the wielding stairs. “Arryn, there might still be danger.”

“This danger, Jay, I'1l face alone. Secure the fortress.” Arryn continued on up the stairs to the chapel, anxious, his blood racing and burning in a turmoil.

He reached the top of the stairs, and through a short hallway, came to the chapel.

And there, before the main altar, a woman kneeled.

Her head was bowed; she was deep in prayer. But she heard him. He saw her back stiffen. It was a broad back.

“Lady Kyra!”

Slowly she rose. Even more slowly, she turned to him.

She wasn't repulsive. That would be far too strong.

She was simply … serviceable.

She reminded him of a good draft horse. She was as broad at the shoulders as she was at the back. Her cheekbones were broad. Her jaw was broad. She was …

Broad. Aye, yes, broad.

The fever of fury that had brought him here seemed to momentarily still. His blood seemed to run like ice. No, she was not repulsive. She was as appealing as a solid cow.

Cruel, he told himself. She had her good points. Her eyes were powder blue; her hair was white-blond. Her little lips were quivering away. She didn't look like the cunning woman who might have made demands upon a man like Lord Darrow, forcing him to heinous and cruel excesses in his bid to gain greater riches beneath King Edward.

No, she did not look the type….

He had come for revenge. She had been party to brutality and tragedy; nothing in life came without a price. She belonged to Darrow—she and her estates. He meant to see that she and her property did not become important additions to Lord Kinsey Darrow's quest for ever greater power, a power that allowed him to torture and murder the Scots at will.

He removed his helmet and neck defenses, setting them down on a pew.

“So …” he stated, sword sheathed, hands behind his back as he walked toward her. “You are Lady Kyra.”

She was silent, not understanding his Gaelic, he thought.

Approaching her, he felt all the more ill. Seize Darrow's woman, use her, hurt her, cut into Darrow's flesh and soul the way that she and Darrow had cut into his….

Could he ever have carried it all through? He had killed often enough in battle. Yet, murder—and the murder of a woman, even if she were guilty of complicity in the most heinous of crimes against humanity—seemed beyond his capabilities.

This would be like slaughtering a shaggy-haired steer.

“No one left to guard you,” he mused, shaking his head. He stared at her flat, expressionless, bovine face again. “Oh, I am sorry, but … 'tis no great wonder! Nevertheless, you'll have to come with me.”

He started to reach for her. Just as he did so he saw a flying shape—like a shadow of darkness—coming toward him. He spun around just in time to ward off a blow as a figure in a dark cloak came toward him, a knife raised high.

“Ah, a defender at last!” he cried out.

Swift movement had allowed him to ward off the first strike, but the cloaked defender was swiftly at him again, spinning around with supple grace and speed to try to stab a knife into his throat, but again he deflected the blow, seizing the man by the back of the cloak, throwing him forward with impetus to allow himself time to draw his sword once again.

He tried to make out the fellow's face, but beneath the hood the man wore a faceplate with a helm of mail.

“Surrender yourself!” Arryn commanded, lifting his blade.

The cloaked figure turned.

And from beneath the encompassing garment, he drew his own sword. This defender was well armed, and had no intention of surrendering.

Fine
, Arryn thought.
To the death let it be
.

He advanced, ready for the battle, fury and fire filling his veins once again. He dared not think often of what had happened, horrible things beyond the subjugation of a country, a people. Crimes of man against man, crimes he could not believe that God could sit in heaven and allow.

Crimes that haunted him, day and night, that filled his dreams with the screams of the dying …

Alesandra!

Nay, he would win here. His enemy would surrender, or perish.

With vicious, furious movements, he strode forward, his sword battering every thrust and swing of his opponent's weapon.

But the fellow was brave. He flew atop a pew, fought from the rim of the altar itself. All the while, the Lady Kyra babbled and blubbered, crying out strange warnings, gasps, screams of panic.

He ignored her.

This was a fight he could fight.

His enemy leapt from the altar to a pew, swinging his sword deftly. Arryn ducked the blow with a split second to spare, as the fellow was giving rise to leap around again with a solid, bone-shattering swing of his sword; once again, Arryn spun to give his weapon impetus.

A smaller man, lean, trim, agile.

But this was a fighter.

Still, strength would win out in the end, Arryn had determined. Strength, and his will to see everything that was Kinsey Darrow's destroyed.

Step after step, Arryn battered his enemy with a rain of blows that sent the fellow falling backward again, again—step by step his enemy parried his blows. But he knew his own strength and his fury. His opponent was skilled, but he knew that he was beating the power from the fellow's arms with every blow. Eventually, as he moved without faltering, he had his enemy against the wall.

His enemy's sword fell to his side.

“So you do surrender!” Arryn whispered huskily, advancing.

The fellow swiftly lifted his blade, nearly slicing Arryn's chin. Arryn ducked backward in the nick of time.

Surrender, no …

The fellow sped past him, tearing toward the entry.

Toward escape.

“Nay, my good fellow, nay, I think not!” Arryn cried, and leaping forward, he caught hold of the cloak, giving such a tug upon it that the fellow, a light man, was spun furiously in a circle. As he turned, Arryn stepped forward, tripping him so that the man's spin finished in a heavy sprawl upon the cold stone floor of the chapel. Oddly enough, they were directly beneath a beautifully carved statue of the Virgin Mary.

“Now do you surrender?”

The cloaked figure shook its head.

The fellow had protected his face and head, but wore no body armor. Arryn raised his sword in a certain threat, lightly placing the tip just above his opponent's heart.

“Now, my good fellow, speak quickly, for though you've been an able combatant, my patience is at a low ebb. Dark deeds have brought me here, and vengeance will be found with the blood of some poor beings!”

“Bastard Scotsman, do it!” the fellow said in a hiss.

Startled, Arryn moved his weapon. “Ah … a sword through the heart would be preferable to a hangman's noose? Or disembowelment. Castration … a few of the tortures Darrow so enjoys inflicting upon his captured enemies.”

“Do it!”

“No!”

The shriek came from Lady Kyra. Arryn kept his sword against the man's chest as he turned with surprise toward Darrow's lady.

His
broad
lady.

“I should spare this fellow? Is he your lover, by chance, milady? A man far more concerned with your welfare than the lord who left you here?”

The lady went suddenly still, in grave discomfort, so it seemed.

Curious, Arryn raised his sword again, as if he would thrust it through the fallen man's heart.

“No!” the blue-eyed, broad, and timid Lady Kyra managed to cry again.

“Who is he? Let me see.”

He knelt, wrenching the chain and plate helmet from his fallen enemy.

And there he froze.

For no man gazed up at him, but a woman. Eyes of emerald green fire challenged his in a blaze of hate and fury. A wealth of reddish gold hair tangled around her beautifully formed features. She made a man give pause, forced him to catch his breath.

“Ah!” he muttered, angrily reminding himself to remember his place. “The only man among these English proves to be a woman.” He leaned toward her. “So who are you?”

She didn't reply. She had lost her sword, but he realized that she carried a knife still, and was ready to spring for him, attack him. Cut his throat.

He caught her wrist and wrenched the weapon from her. “I am Sir Arryn Graham. Do you know me, madam?”

She didn't reply, but stared stonily at him. He smiled, having no intention of speaking in anything other than Gaelic at the moment. “You will tell me who you are, or I will slice your ears from your head, then your nose from your face. A little trick learned from Lord Darrow.”