Risen (38 page)

Back to the edge of the loft he
went. Squinting he tried to make out the time of day. It wasn’t
much later from when he’d engaged the soldier, he thought, but he
couldn’t be sure. He tried to focus on the man below him, tried to
gauge the distance and height.

Then, Risen did a very risky thing.
Balancing on the edge of the loft, he took a chance and leapt feet
first…onto the head of the soldier.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT

†

William was keeping to himself at
the end of the wood slab bar. It was a raucous crowd, hard
drinking, hard quarreling, and it was their men who contributed the
most to the debauchery. The Englishman struggled to stay in the
present, to keep himself from thinking about the girl, and…about
Eleanor.

Here he was, many years and
countless miles from his past, and yet it made him intensely sad,
for some reason, and seemed to be most of what preoccupied his mind
now—the captive girl and the dark haired boy who was obviously in
love with her. It was therefore a complete surprise to him when the
stabbed mercenary, the one with the blade in his shoulder, came
barreling through the tavern door with Sylvie in tow.

“Bastard attacked me!” the man
spat, turning around, showing all of them the knife that still
protruded from his shoulder. There was laughter amongst the men,
and the man shoved Sylvie roughly to the floor in front of him,
ignoring her as he appealed for help from his comrades. She held
her hands over her face and did not look up.

Another man tried to pull the knife
from the soldier’s shoulder. The joint had contracted, the tendons
tightening in objection to the foreign invasion. The blade was
stuck fast within the capsule of the joint, and the mercenary
groaned as his mates struggled to pull the weapon loose.
Ultimately, the third man who attempted to rid him of the knife
succeeded, freeing him as he pulled it with a crunch from the
shoulder. The wounded man moaned, flexed his fingers, gingerly
reestablished mobility of the arm, swearing as everyone else
ignored his plight and examined, instead…the blade.

William stepped away from the bar,
receiving the exquisite weapon as it was passed around. He’d never
seen anything like it; it was extraordinary! But the mark—the one
carved into the butt of the blade—it was somehow familiar. He
passed his finger over it. Yes, he’d seen it before, and he
squinted, turning the weapon over in his hands as he tested the
edge with his finger.

It surprised him how easily he cut
himself, and he swept the other man’s blood from the steel onto his
pant leg just to examine it more closely. This was not a boy’s
device, and this was no weapon of opportunity taken by the child’s
clever resource. No—this was a weapon from the heart, and seldom,
if ever, had he seen one crafted as magnificently as this one was.
This knife belonged in the hands of the boy; he could feel it. He
believed this blade had been forged by the boy and…his
father.

There was something so alive about
the knife that it drove home to William the belief that Risen was
not only Ravan’s son, Ravan was Risen’s father, and the mercenary
would never cease his search until he found the boy. He
frowned.

By now, most were focused on the
girl, and William slipped the blade into his belt, behind the
scabbard of his sword before anyone noticed. Yeorathe was in fine
form, bellowing how they would profit from sale of one such as the
boy, one with such fire—his enemy’s son.

Sylvie remained unmoving, so small
in comparison to all that went on around her, and still kneeling on
the tavern floor. But, incredibly, William saw her resolve steady
as she looked almost calmly about herself, her gaze settling on the
single-eyed visage of the monster that postured before her. She
wore an expression of acceptance, of how Yeorathe would be her
undoing, and that would be the end of her.

Yeorathe’s humor fell with this one,
simple act…that she would look so calmly at him. “Think you will
look at me as you do? Well, you will not look at me in such a way
when I have finished with you.” He growled in a low voice and
slowly, deliberately, replaced his drink on the bar.

Others dropped their din so that
they might hear him better. Iwan leered, a flat grin creasing his
weasel face, and leaned in closer, turning his head so that he
could hear with his only good ear. It was a gesture that made him
appear quite like a fleshed-out monkey.

The one-eyed leader advanced on the
child, prepared to take from her what he wished, but it was William
who stepped between them.

“I cannot allow this,” the
Englishman said flatly.

An immediate hush fell over the
crowd. Odgar, who was by then more consumed of the food set before
him than what might amuse his men, turned about in his chair to
observe the exchange.

Yeorathe seemed most surprised of
all. The Englishman, his subordinate, had challenged him, and this
he was not accustomed to. Pushing the stiffness of his already
sprung erection from his crotch, he finally gathered his wits
enough to challenge William’s insubordination.

A descendant of Vikings, and as his
Norse ancestors did, Yeorathe preferred a two fisted axe as his
weapon of choice. He deftly pulled the weapon from its rest as
though he would use it on William. It was a brutal weapon and a
reckless gesture.

“You dare step in front of me?” he
said. “Delay my intentions? You are my hireling! You have no say
here!”

William drew his own sword, his
intentions sincere. “You harm the prisoner, and she is worth less
to us. I have been appointed their care. I will not allow
it.”

Odgar’s eyebrow rose as he took
another bite of the fish in front of him.

“She will survive me,” Yeorathe
snarled.

“She will survive you impure,”
William countered, unrelenting as he stood his ground. “You’ve
already cost us one prisoner for your sport, and you mean to cost
us another with your lust. Or, are you so impotent that you must
have a girl? A cripple at that?” He baited Yeorathe further.
“Cannot you find a real woman willing to lay with you?”

Murmurs began amongst the men but
not because this was a moral issue. The nature of their trade
regularly offered itself up to cruelty. Child rape or even murder
was sadly common but of little concern to men such as these. To
have one of them express consideration would have been unusual to
be sure. No, it was William’s financial pleas that affected them
most.

These men coveted one thing above
all—profit. They were hired soldiers, mercenaries of gain. The
girl, crippled though she was, could be sold as a slave servant for
whatever purposes her owner desired. And all of these men were
acquainted well enough with eastern culture to know that a female
slave, pure, was ten times the worth of one defiled. Men of means
would pay well enough for her, even if she was of a single
use.

The murmurs increased, and the
lively atmosphere died away, for when it came to compensation, the
soldiers were entirely serious. If Yeorathe did something to insult
the profitability of their efforts, he would swiftly fall in his
men’s eyes. This was evidently sensed by their leader, for he
argued the point.

“She is of no value pure. No one
could want a cripple such as her!”

“You do,” William said smoothly,
fast to counter.

He rested the point of his sword on
the earthen tavern floor and crossed his arms across the butt of
it. It was a gesture of finality. The Englishman recognized this
was a dangerous path, to offend Yeorathe so openly, but perhaps it
was the path he’d always wanted, he thought suddenly. This
fortified him with unreasonable courage, and he remained steadfast
between Sylvie and Yeorathe.

“I will not have you pull from my
pocket coin that is not yours to take,” William said with finality.
Truthfully, the coin had never been William’s real concern. His had
been a crusade of forgetfulness, a shrouding of his own humanity.
Again, more stirrings from the crowd, and dissent began to surround
the soldiers like a slowly rising flood. Funny how a room can close
in on you when ill feelings grow, William thought to himself,
collapse faster than a mud house in a flood.

The conflict at the Ravan Dynasty
had not gone nearly as well as the men had hoped, and Tor was
probably still warm in the ground. Profits had been much leaner
than expected, and so the sale of the slaves was supposed to right
that somewhat. Yeorathe peered from one man to the next, but in the
end he seemed to recognize that his rule of the small band was not
firmly established, and the risk of mutiny could be
great.

William had bargained on
this.

Re-sheathing his weapon, Yeorathe
spat on the girl. “Get the bitch from my sight. She sickens me,” he
snarled.

And with that, William knew the
leader’s lust was one for the vulnerable and the weak. This was
good to know, for if a man would rape a defenseless child, he would
certainly plunder his own men, given the opportunity.

Odgar nodded, said nothing, and
returned to his dinner, obviously satisfied that his gains were
secure if Yeorathe’s trousers were not. The other men seemed
likewise pleased with the outcome, and appeared happy to return to
their festivities.

It was just then that William made
the decision that this would be the last campaign he would sustain
with these men, perhaps his last campaign ever. His heart was weary
as he wondered what he would then do, where he might lay his
withered soul to rest. Resentment clouded his mind in a way that he
could not explain. It was as though he’d been instantly robbed of
his capacity to bury himself, to cloak not only who he was but the
memory of the woman he once loved. And all because of the
girl!

Pulling Sylvie roughly to her feet,
the Englishman dragged her from the tavern and led the limping
child back to the livery, saying nothing as they went. It left him
sore, what Yeorathe had intended to do to her. All the same, he
struggled with the liability Sylvie had placed upon his
heart.

The blade, the one that had been
pulled from the guard’s shoulder, pressed into his hip, and he was
reminded of it, thought again about the mark on the blade handle.
He’d seen that mark before, he knew he had. Then it came to him. It
was on the coat of arms of the soldiers that had defended the Ravan
dynasty! And defend it they had, magnificently! They’d trounced
Tor’s army both in might and strategy, their marksmanship
stupendous as their longbowmen devastated the invading forces. Even
outnumbered, Ravan’s men had dominated the battle from the outset.
Tor had underestimated this one, had let his passion cloud his
vision. William knew the story, had heard the tale of how the dark
one set Tor on fire and killed his brother before finally felling
his son, Modred.

Of course, the tale had not been
accurate, William assumed. There was always more than one side in a
dispute. The truth, he believed, was generally somewhere in the
middle. Nevertheless, he recognized the mark—a ring, threaded onto
a cross.

“Why did you spare me?” Sylvie’s
question jarred him from his thoughts.

“You heard; you know why.” He did
not look at her only held firmly to her hand as he pulled her
along.

“We both know that isn’t
true.”

William stopped and spun on her,
stooping so that his face was close to hers. “Why do you vex me?
What is it you hope to accomplish?” He was unnaturally angry and
stopped her where she stood, stared hard at her, meant to
intimidate her, but it was not fear that he saw in her
eyes.

“You’re not bad, not like they
are.” She swept one frail hand back from the direction of the
others.

His gaze was locked onto hers, his
face twisted. “You have no sense of what I am! You believe you do,
but you don’t.”

“You’re not the man you were
supposed to be. I have a sense of that.” She rested her hand softly
on his shoulder, brushed a lock of his hair from it.

It was a heart-rending gesture. This
pushed William further than he was willing to endure, and he raised
his hand, held it suspended as though he meant to strike Sylvie
down. She did not cringe, only waited for the blow as though he was
about to hand her a gift.

Instead of focusing on her, he fixed
his stare on his own hand and remained frozen, as though the world
had ended, and this was his last position. His breathing steadied
as she reached up to take his hand in hers.

“Thank you,” she said. “You saved
me.”

He stared at her, studied the child
that reminded him so much of his Eleanor. “You don’t know me,” he
said, his voice hoarse with emotion, “and be grateful that you
don’t.”

Then he lifted Sylvie and carried
her the rest of the way to the livery. He said nothing more; he
didn’t need to. She did know him, but how was completely lost to
him. Sylvie knew his heart as sure as if she was his own
daughter.

* * *

William stepped into the livery just
in time to see a boy fall from the loft overhead. The guard
standing beneath was caught totally unaware as Risen leapt and
landed with his feet square on his head, snapping him face forward,
and sending him sprawling hard onto the ground.