The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy) (5 page)

Ceridwen turned her face into the weak comfort of her shoulder, closing her eyes and praying the giant wouldn’t rise. The sound of wood scraping on stone and the accompanying grunt of a great weight lifting dashed her last feeble hope, and a wave of despair flooded through her body. He was coming for her.

Rape was the least she expected and more than she thought she could endure, especially at the hands of the red-haired knight. He had been the one to capture her in the forest. Through the scent of her own sweat and blood, she could still detect traces of the stench he’d left upon her clothes. She remembered the hotness of his breath upon her neck, the cruelty of his mouth when he’d marked her with his teeth—leaving a double crescent of bloody, bruised wounds on the shoulder he’d bared by tearing the sleeve of her gown and part of her chemise.

Her legs had given way hours ago, leaving her to hang from the iron cresset like a sacrificial lamb, but she forced herself to regain her footing for one last fight. Pain shot through her limbs and nearly put her to the floor again. The brute had wrenched her ankle past the breaking point when she’d tried to escape him at the river. He’d near drowned her in the turgid gray waters of the Llynfi, but her damned luck hadn’t held.

She grasped her chains with both hands and balanced on her good foot. Her nose was bloody from his fist. More blood ran down the side of her face from her temple. Her ribs ached from where he’d crushed her to him with his mailed arm on their mad ride to the castle.

He drew closer, and tears she’d been too frightened to let fall before now welled in her eyes and spilled onto her cheeks. She had failed to save herself, failed to reach her brother, Mychael, and the sanctuary of Strata Florida Monastery. All was lost. There was no going back, and a quick death was too much to hope for within the debauched halls she’d been brought to.

A dog snapped at the knight as he passed and received a swift, vicious kick to its flanks. Whimpering, the animal slunk away. Another cur snarled a warning over a prize bone, but stayed well out of foot range. The maneuver did him no good, for the knight sidestepped quickly and landed a blow with his boot. The meaty haunch fell to the floor and the rest of the pack descended on the bone, snapping and growling into a tumble at her feet.

With a strangled cry, Ceridwen drew back toward the wall. Jesu! If the knight didn’t tear her to shreds, the hounds surely would.

An alaunt, looking more wolf than dog, rushed forward and claimed the haunch with a blood-chilling growl, standing its ground not a hand’s span from her, hackles rising. Ceridwen pressed herself closer to the cold stone to no avail. The hunger-crazed mongrels circled, bringing her within the lines of battle. A raucous cheer rose from the lower tables at some fool’s antics—and the red knight kept coming, plowing a way through the cordon of teeth and mange.

All was truly lost, and in her heart she surrendered. Her knees buckled, allowing her to sink to the floor and pray for death among the dogs.

“
Salvator mundi
,” she whispered, her eyes closing. “
Salva nos omnes
.
Kyrie
,
eleison
;
Christe, eleison; Christe, eleison
—”

A sudden hush in the hall stole the supplication from her lips. She opened her eyes and peered through the tangled length of her hair. The knight halted in the strange silence, his eyebrows drawing together in momentary confusion. An undercurrent of anticipation—or was it apprehension?—snaked through the cavernous chamber, touching servants and diners alike. Scattered laughter was quickly quelled, calls for more ale ignored. The dogs tensed and grew still, then one by one padded away with their heads lowered, their tails tucked between their legs, making for hiding places under the tables.

Ceridwen watched the red giant’s confusion change to unease as he slowly turned toward the great oak doors at his back. Within the space of a breath his complexion grew waxen, and when she followed his gaze she felt the blood drain from her own face.

Two huge hounds stood on the threshold, one so black its coat glistened blue in the torchlight, the other so white it hurt her eyes to look upon its sleek hide. She shifted her attention to the space between the beasts, drawn by the merest hint of movement in the shadows, the briefest glint of eye and whisper of sound.

A new sense of dread, above and beyond the fear that had weakened her knees, filled her and brought panic in its wake. Though she trembled with the cold, sweat broke out on her brow. With a certainty that pierced her heart, she knew that whatever lurked in the gloom was the true terror of this place, a danger more lethal than the knight. Latent, primal instincts rushed to the fore, overriding her heart’s surrender. She stumbled to her one good foot and jerked at the chains leashing her to the wall. They rattled and clanged with the force of her desperation, but they held. She jerked again, her hysteria mounting—until the shadows parted.

A hooded figure disengaged itself from the darkness with the ease of an eclipsed dawn rising from the night. The shape within the black folds of cowl and cloak lifted a long, graceful hand in a fluid gesture, and the hounds loped forward, clearing a path for their master.

At that moment even hysteria seemed too pallid a name to put to the strange mix of terror and fascination rising in her.

F
rom within the concealing depths of his hood, Dain surveyed the people in the crowded hall. He knew many by name, though few dared to call him by his. The baron, Lord Soren D’Arbois, was one, and also his lovely whore-wife, the lady Vivienne.

Ragnor the Red was there, looking both fierce and frightened, a combination Dain knew only he could produce in Wydehaw’s most bestial knight. The man had atavistic tendencies, and Dain fully expected that one day the Norman would go berserk in the grand tradition of his Viking forefathers. For himself, Danish though he was, Dain had no such fears. The methods and mayhem of war had long since lost their hold on him.

He preferred a more academic life, if quick fingers and a vocation of turning lead into gold could be called academic. Some called it trickery. Some called it magic. He called it both decoy and dangerous, for the path led its followers far beyond riches.

His steps brought him abreast of Father Aric, and the priest near stumbled in his haste to avoid the shadows cast by the dogs and their master. Elixir and Numa continued on, aware but not offended. Dain claimed no such magnanimity. He paused and bowed, hands clasped at his breast, knowing well how many hours the young priest would spend on his knees to wash away such a black stain of acknowledgment.

Father Aric crossed himself again and again, his eyes squeezed shut, his hand a blur of devotion as it raced across the stations of the martyr’s tree. The church had raised superstition to the very apex of art, and Father Aric was one of its more skilled artisans, a disciplined practitioner of religious cant and canon.

Dain debated whether to hold the pose until the priest exhausted either his piety or his arm, and prudence won. The hour was not so late as to preclude his hunt. He lowered his hands and moved on, but got no farther than the corner of the hearth.

Numa blocked his path, her milk-white body trembling, her gaze fixed across the flames and rising smoke to the far wall. Ragnor was there, and the bitch liked him no better than any maid, yet it was unlike her to disobey merely to indulge a fit of personal pique.

“
Gå
,” he whispered, modulating his voice to make the command little more than a breath.

When she hesitated, he looked once more across the fire, trying to discern what held her so enthralled. A pile of rags had been chained to the cresset, and it undoubtedly contained an urchin or, considering Ragnor’s vicinage, a virgin. Still, there were urchins aplenty in Wydehaw and enough virgins if one gave the definition a broad range.

A swath of white-blond hair tangled in the small heap held his interest for a moment. Then he moved on, a flick of his cloak against Numa’s hock telling her he would abide no more rebellion.

When he reached the foot of the dais, he found himself turning once again toward the hearth. For a man compelled by very little besides his own whim, that he turned at all surprised him. He blamed the deviant behavior on Numa’s unprecedented interest. The face he saw lifting from the pile of rags was another surprise, and for that he had nothing to blame but an unknown facet of his own nature. He hadn’t realized he harbored a conviction that jewels should be chained only when they were to be worn about the neck.

Pale blue eyes with the startling crystalline quality of gemstones peered out at him from gamine features streaked with blood and mud. Terror marked the maid’s gaze, and though he took pride in his ability to frighten the innocent and the not-so-innocent alike, he was disconcerted by the girl’s reaction. She would have to be made of sterner stuff if she was to survive a night of Ragnor’s attentions.

Dismissing the novelty of a new conviction—which brought him up to a grand total of two, possibly three—he returned his attention to the lord and lady of the manor. He was not above preying upon their more insidious weaknesses when he had the strength, but he hunted other game this night. His friend, the Welsh rebel Morgan ab Kynan, had been sighted in the mountains on the Coit Wroneu, a month late by Dain’s reckoning, but no less welcome. Dain was in need of some good company after the long winter, and Morgan and his band of men were companionship at its best.

Also, rumors had been flying for months concerning their old friend, Caradoc, whom some now called the Boar of Balor Keep—an inauspicious name to Dain’s way of thinking. Most of what he had heard was either too fantastic or too atrocious to hold more than a grain of truth, yet even in the grain there was that which disturbed him. Morgan could be counted on to have winnowed the wheat from the chaff.

“Lord D’Arbois, my lady,” he addressed the pretty, young pair on the dais.

“Dain, good friend.” Vivienne spoke, her voice coy and silky. “I pray our request has not taken you away from more important concerns.”

“I am always ready to serve, milady.”

The briefest smile twisted Soren D’Arbois’s mouth. “Aye, ’tis one of your more endearing traits,
sorcier
, this willingness to serve.”

The lord and lady were a matched set, both high of brow and cheek, with honeyed hair and fair faces. Soren was more hawklike in the shape of his nose, but Vivienne’s mouth held the stronger streak of cruelty. Rumor said the old baron had married the blood too close in the match of his eldest son. Looking upon the husband and wife, Dain was inclined to believe the story.

“Willingness can be a virtue or a vice, Baron.”

“The lady assures me ’tis not one of your vices,” D’Arbois answered dryly, lifting a goblet of wine in feigned salute. He drained the cup and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. “But to business, Lavrans. Ragnor has brought me a mystery.”

“And I thought he hunted roe,” Dain said, softly mocking.

“So he did,” D’Arbois said. “The buck escaped, but not the doe.” Pleased with his accidental rhyme, the baron allowed a smile and gestured toward the hearth. “Behold.”

An anguished cry echoed through the hall. Dain turned to see Ragnor hauling the girl up by the scruff of her neck and gown. Numa trembled at his side, baring her teeth in a silent growl. To soothe her, Dain traced his finger along the length of her muzzle.

Ragnor shook the girl, and she cried out again. Fresh blood seeped from the long gash at her temple, making a garish stripe of red against the colorless strands of her hair. Numa lifted a paw in readiness to attack. Dain swore silently and motioned for Elixir to move to his left side and control the bitch. One forlorn maid was not worth a fight, no matter the prettiness of her eyes.

“My lord,” he said casually, “the next time you require a mystery, send a lighter hand on the hunt, for Ragnor has broken the one he’s brought.”

“More than I would have wished,” D’Arbois agreed, though without any regret in his tone. “I trust you will be able to put her back together, and when she is of apiece, return her that we may together plumb her secrets.”

Dain refrained from reminding his lord that when the occasion or the need arose, he would prefer to plumb female secrets alone. The possibility of all manner of
mésalliance
involving at least himself and D’Arbois had already been much hinted at by the baron and refused by himself, though never openly discussed. D’Arbois’s single strength was his ability to keep from being directly rejected. Still, Dain would have preferred not to physick the chit. Maids screamed when he stitched. They cried for all manner of reasons. Sometimes they pleaded, but never for the right things.

“If it pleases my lord.” Dain stepped toward the hearth, because he really didn’t have a choice, and was rewarded with a warning howl of outrage from the red giant. On another, the theatrics would have seemed overplayed. With Ragnor, such was to be expected. They were at check—and Dain realized that the true sport of the evening had just begun. He had been summoned to perform a part in a nasty tableau; that of being the one to take the jewel-like beauty from the raging beast. No one else, not even D’Arbois, had dared. With good reason.

All around him, Dain heard trestles being pushed back or taken down to make room for the combatants. The hunting dogs and mongrels moved with the tables, careful to avoid drawing Elixir’s attention. Dain, himself, was more wary of Numa. Being female, she was the less predictable of the two, as she’d so aptly proven with her response to the girl.

Servants scurried through the hall like silent wraiths, eager to empty the tables and refill the cups, making all ready for the rare entertainment to come. Dain hoped not to disappoint, though he’d thought he’d done his night’s work by freezing Noll to the Druid Door.

Fresh pitch was added to the cressets. Torches were set out in iron stands to ring the hearth, enclosing the section of wall where the girl hung from her chains and Ragnor’s fist. Dain entered the blazing circle alone, leaving the hounds behind with a quiet command. The odds were already in his favor, assuming the maid was on his side. He looked at her, a pale outline against the soot-covered wall, and saw her blanch.