Paladin's Prize (Age of Heroes, Book 1) (36 page)

Ah, Thaydor.
What woman wants a man who’s always right?

But once more, he was.

Very well, it was not her place to judge or punish anyone. No mortal could ever see the contents of another’s heart.

It dawned on her as she concentrated on drawing up the healing power that she had never sensed actual evil coming from Reynulf. He was wicked, to be sure, but for those with the spiritual gift of discernment, true evil always gave itself away by the cold, sickening feeling it inspired, almost like a fetid smell.

She had sensed it strongly from the dying Urmugoths on the night she had found Thaydor, but not from the red knight…

With that, she felt the draining flow of power rush out of her tingling hands and flood into his well-muscled body. The Light closed the seeping wound in his side, and then she cupped her hand almost tenderly near his face and healed his broken jaw.

But when she reached to cure the worst of the scrapes and bruises, he brushed her off with a defensive air and sat up swiftly. “That’s enough.”

“Hooray, he can talk,” Wrynne said, stung by the way he held up a bloodied hand to ward her off.

Reynulf probed his side, found it fixed, and then eyed her in wary astonishment. “Thank you,” he said gingerly, even as he edged back from her a bit, as though he half expected her to add a curse to the healing just for fun.

She might have, if she’d known any curses.

She scoffed at him. “I’m not a witch.”

He grunted skeptically, watching her.

She rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“Feeling better?” Thaydor offered him a hand up with his usual princely magnanimity.

Wrynne found it rather vexing at the moment.

Reynulf looked at him and seemed to decide on the spot to give up their rivalry, clasping the paladin’s hand.

Wrynne eyed the sword at the Bloodletter’s waist. “Maybe you should take away his weapons before you get too close to him.”

“Never mind that. What news?”

At her husband’s dismissive answer, Wrynne spun on her heel and headed back to her horse.

“My lady!” Reynulf called after her.

She paused, fought with herself again, and then begrudgingly turned around.

He lifted his hands slightly. “I am sorry about the babe.”

“That’s all you’re sorry for?” she cried.

“Wrynne, don’t start,” Thaydor warned. “I need to talk to him. Details?”

“Eudo’s gone mad,” Reynulf said. “He’s got a company of Urm mercenaries marching into Pleiburg tomorrow morning, about a hundred strong. Some are already there.”

“What?” Thaydor breathed.

“They’re meant to replace the knights who’ve sided with you, to put down what he calls your rebellion. There’s a gathering in Concourse Square tomorrow morning to let the people know the Urms are here with the king’s permission and not to be afraid.”

“Baynard actually went along with this?”

“The man’s a jellyfish, Thaydor! He has no idea what’s really going on, that Eudo’s just imported his own praetorian guard. A few Urms are already lurking in the palace, under Eudo’s command. I know because they paid me a little visit.”

“You weren’t aware—”

“No! If I had known this, I wouldn’t have opposed you. Eudo wanted me to stand up as leader of his Urms so the people wouldn’t panic. They tried to pour some witch’s brew down my throat to make me obey. Sana’s part of his conspiracy. I fear the king’s a walking dead man. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

“You did the right thing coming here.”

“First time for everything,” Wrynne drawled, keeping her distance.

Reynulf looked regretfully from her to Thaydor. “All your lady said of me is true.” He glanced around. “I had my orders. They wanted Thaydor out of the way. Kill me if you think I deserve it, but I’m here to help now however I can.”

Thaydor gave him a searching look, needing no words to communicate what would happen to Reynulf if he betrayed them again.

Reynulf’s face was still defiant, but he dropped his gaze, silently acknowledging that Thaydor was in charge.

Thaydor clapped him on the shoulder with a guarded nod. “Best go get your horse.” Then he beckoned to his men. “Come on, open the gates! Let’s go inside and get everybody settled. We’ve got work to do!”

As he turned, waving them toward the cave mouth, his gaze met Wrynne’s. He gave her a hard look that warned her she was in more trouble than Reynulf had been.

But of course. For her, the paladin had higher expectations. A knot promptly formed in her stomach as she wondered what her warlord would say to her in private.

Chapter 15

Uncloak

T
he next morning, the gates of Pleiburg had been reopened but were heavily guarded. That hadn’t stopped Thaydor from getting into the city, of course.

He moved through the crowd gathering in Concourse Square to hear the king’s proclamation, planning his next move. He couldn’t stop thinking about Wrynne, though, and hoping he hadn’t been too hard on her last night.

She had sat through his lecture in stiff, wifely obedience, but he had seen the mutiny in those pretty gray eyes, tracking him as he paced back and forth, commander-like, outlining his expectations. She hadn’t argued, which worried him a little, in hindsight. Instead, she had expressed her opinion of his rules by denying him her body for the first time in their marriage.

He hadn’t liked that. It had quite startled him, in fact, but he was not fool enough to insist.
As if she doesn’t enjoy it, too
, he grumbled mentally.
But so be it. Let her have her sulk.
Hopefully by tonight when he returned to the Eldenhold, she’d be over it and things between them could return to blissful normal.

He pressed on through the throng, his face hidden by the draped hood of his pilgrimage cloak. He kept his head ducked a bit, trying not to draw attention to his height.

Once again, he wore chain mail under his civilian clothes. Likewise, he was sensibly armed in case of trouble, but took care to keep the jeweled hilt of Hallowsmite from sight. He had also brought five of his most trusted knights with him from the Eldenhold, similarly garbed, and the Runescar Trumpet.

The bard had insisted on coming along. “I canna miss this! I’ve got to
be
there to document whatever stunt these sneaky bastards try to pull off next.”

Reynulf had offered to come, as well, but Thaydor had ordered him to remain at the citadel. The Bloodletter was too recognizable—and too valuable, given the eyewitness testimony he could bring to bear against the Silver Sage. In their discussion of the situation, Reynulf had revealed that it was Lord Eudo, in the presence of King Baynard, who had given him the order to let the Urms in the gate.

Thaydor only hoped he had not made a mistake, leaving Wrynne and Reynulf alone in the same building. He did not want any fighting when he was gone, and his dainty little wife bore the Bloodletter a hatred of dragon-sized proportions.

He could understand why, but in such times, they did not have the luxury of indulging their personal feelings about someone offering crucial help. Besides, as he had told her in his gentle scolding last night, it was a tenet of their faith to forgive those who were genuinely sorry for whatever they had done, no matter how distasteful. All were to be given another chance if they were sincere, and Reynulf seemed so.

In any case, there were more than forty knights left back at the Eldenhold to break up any feuds his bride might start with the deadly warrior. They’d all be busy enough as it was. Thaydor had ordered the men to spend the day in spiritual purification to prepare their souls for battle. As a Daughter of the Rose in good standing, Wrynne would have a role in that, leading all knights willing to participate in the prayers and oblations of atonement in the rock-hewn chapel deep inside the Eldenhold.

Attendance in the ritual was not required, but for the truly penitent, Thaydor had also suggested they fast. Frankly, they would never defeat the foes arrayed against them in the degraded state in which he had found them. Ilios, as far as he knew, was under no obligation to help those who chose to live like pigs.

Thaydor still could only shake his head at how he had found them debauching those women—willing or not. Chivalrous knights should know better. The girls of Fonja were sadly misguided. For all their flaunting of pleasures, he had never met one who seemed happy—and now the king himself had taken up with one of their kind. Sana was the worst of them all, plotting with Lord Eudo, as Reynulf had reported.

Thaydor took up a position at the west corner of the square, where he had a good view of the royal balcony and the crowd. He leaned against the wall of a house there, eyes and ears alert.

His men were arrayed around the square in other advantageous spots, and he exchanged nods with them across the wide space. Sirs Ivan and Gervais had fanned out on his left, Richeut and Godefroy to his right, while Hugh had wandered up the middle, getting as close to the front as he could.

Marking their positions, Thaydor wasn’t sure where Jonty had disappeared to, but he returned his attention to surveying the crowd, calculating the various exits from the square if violence broke out.

He was one of the few, after all, who already had a fair idea of what the king was going to say when he came out onto the balcony any minute now.

How the people would react to the introduction of the Urms as the new palace guards was hard to predict. Most citizens had never actually seen one of the creatures before, and most people’s first impression of the ogre-born race was flat-out terror.

There could well be a panic, which could turn into a stampede. People could be hurt, even killed, if all this went badly. Scanning, Thaydor noted countless children in the crowd and many old people, too.

He was worried. He had told his knights to be ready to speak up and try to keep order if the crowd ran. But he suspected that the silver-tongued bard would have even more of an impact on panicking people than his knights would.

Warrior though he was, Thaydor knew full well that the right words at the right time were far more powerful than any sword. He just hoped this didn’t turn ugly. The square was packed with two, maybe even three thousands souls by his estimate. People overflowed into the surrounding streets, peered out the windows, sat on the roofs, and crowded onto the balconies of the houses that had views of the square.

Despite the occasional undercurrents of uncertainty over what all this was about, a festival atmosphere presided. As it happened, he overheard several conversations around himself as the citizens of Veraidel speculated on what the king had to say.

“Maybe the queen’s finally pregnant.”

“Pah! She’s barren. More likely they’ll announce another war.”

“I hope not! We can’t win without Thaydor!”

“Well, he’s abandoned us and turned outlaw,” somebody muttered.

Thaydor frowned.

“Maybe Their Majesties are getting a divorce,” some matron suggested to her neighbors. “She left him, after all. Serves ’im right!”

“Nay, I’ll bet she’s back from her parents, and they’ve thrown that tramp of his out of the palace,” an optimistic female assured those listening.

She was laughed at.

“Maybe they’ve finally decided who’ll be successor to the throne, since they got no children. That’s it! I’ll bet they’ll tell us who the next king will be.”

“Care to make a wager on that?” a grinning man tossed back to the aproned shopkeeper who had spoken.

The latter waved him off with an easy laugh. “Not a gamblin’ man, sir.”

“Oh, I know!” someone else piped up. “I’ll bet they’re going to announce that they finally took Sir Thaydor into custody!”

The grinning man scoffed. “Ach, they’ll never catch him unless he wants to be caught. He’s too clever.”

“Why would he want to be caught?” someone asked.

“Because Sir Thaydor always does what’s right,” a young girl piped up earnestly.

“Daft chit,” some robed scholar sniffed, looking uncomfortable amid the press of so much humanity. “What, just because he’s got a handsome face?”

“You ask me, he couldn’t’ve done what they said. Not ’im,” the shopkeeper declared.

Thaydor kept his head down but was gratified to hear many people agree with the man.

An old woman sighed. “All I know is things used to make a lot more sense around here back when he was royal champion.”

No one disagreed.

Then a sudden blast of trumpets proclaimed the arrival of the king on the royal balcony.

“What lies have you got for us today, Your Majesty?” Jonty murmured, appearing out of the crowd to lean against the wall beside him.

Thaydor looked askance at him. “Where have you been?”

“Oh, here and there. Why? Did you miss me?” He flashed a grin.

Thaydor’s lips twisted as they both joined in the clapping for the sake of blending in. He returned his attention to the royal balcony, where various attendants of the king were stepping out. But he had to admit the bard had grown on him, especially since Jonty had left off making fun of him.

For the most part.

Then the proceedings began as King Baynard held up his jeweled, pudgy hand to quell the obligatory applause. “My dear subjects, I am so grateful for your loyalty in these trying times. You may be wondering why I called you here today. Well, I regret to say some very disturbing news reached the palace yesterday afternoon. As many of you know, our former champion, Sir Thaydor Clarenbeld, has sadly turned traitor to the kingdom.”

He clenched his jaw, hard-pressed to maintain his implacable outward calm.

“What a load of shite,” Jonty muttered loudly enough to be heard by several surrounding townsfolk.

“Yesterday,” His Majesty continued, “we found out that matters have just got a good deal worse.”

The crowd went very quiet, worry suddenly palpable in the air.

“Through some misguided sense of loyalty to Thaydor, nearly all my knights and military officers have defected to side with this outlaw against the Crown. Now, do not fear,” he hastened to assure them. “We do not feel you are in any immediate danger. However, we believe the knights
are
planning some sort of violent rebellion. War may come to the very streets of Pleiburg.”