The Protector (32 page)

“I will not leave you thus.”

“If these bolts were meant to kill me, I would be dead already. Go. This is no time for the daughter of Roald de Leon to suddenly get womanish.”

She pulled off her cloak and tucked it around him. “I will be back with help soon.”

“Nay. Let the knights and soldiers handle this.”

“You sound like Morvan. I will see you soon.”

She charged her horse along the path, guiding it with one hand while the other pulled out the pins that held up her hair. Let them see from a distance that it was their lady and not a strange man who approached. Let no time be wasted with explanations and the slow rise of the portcullis.

Halfway across the field she began waving and yelling for the gate to open. By the time she clamored across the ditch the way was clear, and she bolted into the yard.

She had already yelled twice for Ascanio before she reared the palfrey to a stop at the keep stairs. She yelled again and ran up to the hall.

She slammed into a man's chest. Morvan's strong hands gripped her shoulders and almost lifted her off her feet.

“Thank God you are back,” she said, gasping for breath.

His dark gaze turned hot as he took in the forbidden clothes. Something else mixed with the anger, however, when he saw the blood staining her hem and hose. The men who had ridden with him closed in. Ascanio ran into the hall, alerted by her yells.

“Thieves have taken the farmhouse,” she said. “The two guards are dead, I think, and Carlos lies off the trail with mortal wounds.”

“How many?” Morvan asked, his hands still gripping her.

“Carlos counted ten. He thinks they will wait until morning to take the horses.”

“Everyone goes armored,” he ordered the men. “Ascanio, tell Gregory to take two men at once and find Carlos. He and four others will then stay at the gate-house. For the rest, we ride in one hour.”

The men peeled away. Morvan strode toward the stairs, a firm hand on her arm. “Josce, find a servant to help you armor me,” he snapped over his shoulder.

He pulled her up the stairs and into the lord's solar, then threw her into the chair and began pulling off his pourpoint to prepare for his armor.

“You defied me again.”

“A good thing too, or Carlos would die and the horses would be gone. For the sake of God, Morvan, men have been killed and the estate threatened, and you are angry because your wife has been naughty.”

“I am angry because my willful, disobedient wife is covered in blood and could well be dead.”

“I was never in any danger.”

“Because fortune has spared you this time you think that makes this acceptable?” He cupped her chin in his hand. “Tell me, wife, if I had not been here when you returned, what would you have done?”

“Sent Ascanio and the others to clear the thieves out.”

“While you sat here and embroidered? I think not.”

Scratches at the door indicated that Josce and the servant had arrived. Morvan harshly bid them enter, but continued holding her face. “I will deal with you later, Anna. But know this. Do not think, do not even
think
, of involving yourself in this action.”

He released her and stepped back so that Josce and the servant could begin their work. She rose and went to the door.

“Anna,” he said, his voice quieter now but somehow
more dangerous. “When we discuss this defiance, you can explain how you came to be wearing Sir Walter's clothes.”

“I took them to repair. I am not one of your noble whores, Morvan. In this my vows were honest. God go with you, husband.”

When the armor was finished, Morvan dismissed the servant and sent Josce down to prepare Devil. Alone in the solar, he stood thoughtfully for a moment, and then went to a large chest. Opening it, he removed a sword, and a bow and quiver, then closed the chest and placed them on top of it in clear view.

He would not have her unarmed, or using unfamiliar weapons, if she disobeyed him.

He looked long at the weapons and they were, as always, a symbol of her repudiation of any man's right to her. Of his protection and his command. Of him. He noticed the wear on the bow where her hand had gripped it over the years.

He could order her confined by the servants. He could tie her to a chair.

He left the weapons on top of the chest.

S
HE MOVED SHADOW INTO THE TREES
that edged the hill overlooking the farm. Readjusting the bow and quiver on her back, she peered at the scene below.

Morvan stood in front of the farmhouse, his armor gleaming in the light of the low-lying sun. The other knights formed a line curving along the front of the building. The rest of the men had been deployed around the building's front and sides.

The mares crowded nervously at the far end of their corral. A fire had been started near the water trough; if it came to it, Morvan was prepared to burn the building.

She was in no danger, so she really had not disobeyed Morvan, she told herself. He had forbid her to involve herself in the action, and she would not. But she could not just wait for word. Her horses were at risk, as was Morvan himself.

The retaking of the farmhouse appeared to be at an impasse. But the early evening light had begun to wane, and whatever was going to happen had to happen soon.

She surveyed the scene again. Something was missing. She realized what it was. The thieves' horses were no longer tied up in front.

She moved along the edge of the forest until she flanked the side of the farmhouse. From there she could see the horses behind the building, still saddled.

None of the castle men-at-arms were back there. The enclosed pasture behind the building where the stallions roamed had no way out, backing as it did against the precipitous hill into which the end of the valley cut. That hill formed a natural barrier to the horses, and would hold these thieves as well.

Suddenly, she saw two movements. They occurred simultaneously, each catching one of her eyes.

At the front of the building, Morvan shifted his position and turned to face her. He looked directly at the spot where she sat on Shadow, as if he sensed her hidden presence.

At the back of the building, visible only to her, a dark figure fell from a window and crouched toward the saddled horses. One thief had decided to make a run for freedom.

Once on the horse, the man did not charge around the building as she expected. Instead he bolted into the back pasture. As he did, another man fell from the window.

She looked down at Morvan and the other men. She was too far away to yell and warn them in time.

A third man eased toward the tethered horses. The first man streaked toward the stallions. He was going to stampede them, and in the confusion the thieves would ride away.

Her blood pounded at the thought of the horses surging down the valley, spreading up into the hills and forest, lost in this desperate bid for escape.

She turned Shadow onto the path that snaked along the top of the hill. She gave the signal for a gallop just as the roar of stampeding hooves rose up from the pasture.

She pulled off her bow and quiver and dropped it to the ground. She released the reins and unbuckled her belt. The sword slid away, leaving her light and mobile. Turning Shadow, she flew down the hill.

A daunting scene pressed toward her. Cramped along one side of the valley stream, the massive warhorses and coursers poured forward, all fiery eyes and bulging muscles. In their lead ran a huge white brute of a horse. Dotted amidst them she could see the heads of the thieves and, one hundred yards behind, the vanguard of the re-mounted knights and men-at-arms bearing down hard.

The lead stallion led the storm directly at her. She turned Shadow and rode in the same direction. She prayed that her plan would work. If not, the horses would go up over the lower hill at this end of the valley and disperse into the trees.

She felt the breath of the stallion on her leg and paced her speed so that he could draw even with her. She forced the two horses to run side by side, even though she could feel the stallion's rage and Shadow's quivering fear. Bringing up her legs, she crouched on Shadow's back, then jumped over to the stallion. Her legs grabbed his sides, and she held on to his mane for dear life.

She clutched at his head and twisted it. Using her arms and legs, she signaled the stallion to turn left, toward the stream. He went airborne to jump it.

The other horses followed. Again she pressed and pulled, doing with her arms what a rein should do. He
followed her command, and they began heading back down the valley toward the farm at the same thundering pace.

The thieves, caught in the confusion of the turning herd, saw her coming back along the stream. Two of them pulled their horses out of the fray and crossed the water.

The setting sun reflected off the steel of an upraised sword. The orange glint mesmerized her as it began its deadly, downward curve. As a result, she wasn't prepared for the other, less entrancing danger when the other thief reached over and dragged her from her animal.

She held on to the mane as long as possible, and managed to slide to the blur of ground instead of falling hard. She found the sense to roll toward the safety of the stream. It was merely luck that the two closest horses in the herd jumped her instead of trampling her underfoot.

Her face sank underwater. Cold liquid seeped into her clothes, shocking her. She floated, dazed and helpless, for a small eternity. Then a steel hand grabbed the neck of her garments and set her on her feet at the stream's edge.

She wiped her eyes. Morvan, his armor streaked with red from the setting sun, shielded her with his body as his knights and soldiers came up to clash with the thieves.

He kept between her and the action, and his sword fell on any thief who thought to escape across the stream or who dared challenge the horseless knight and lady.

The closeness of the death blows staggered her. The spreading carnage raised bile to her mouth. Morvan's visor was up, and she could see the fires that burned in his eyes as he anticipated the moves of man and horse. The herd, long gone, milled in the distant pasture.

Suddenly, it was over. Six dead men and three wounded horses lay sprawled on the ground. Four of the thieves and a few stallions had disappeared up the hill into the forest.

Morvan gripped her arm and pushed her toward Ascanio. “Take her back to the farm and have her dry by the fire. Then get her to the castle.”

Ascanio's eyes appeared harder and hotter than she had ever seen them. He pulled off his gauntlet and extended an arm to her. Grasping it, she swung up behind him.

They were silent on the way back to the farmhouse. He dropped her next to the fire and went to help the guards herd the stallions into the back pasture. He finally returned with another horse in tow.

“Are you angry with me too, Ascanio?” she asked as they threaded their way through the forest.

“Aye. And if my heart stops when you come within a hair's span of death, imagine how your husband feels.”

“I was not in so much danger as that.”

“We saw you go down beneath the herd. We saw the sword raised on you. He was beside me. I heard the yell that came from him. I saw his face.”

“If I had not done it, the horses would be gone, scattered. At best we would have rounded up half, for in a day they could reach our borders and then there would be no retrieving them.”

“Do you think that I give a damn about that? Do you think that he does? He has been willing to die for you from the start, Anna. How do you think he measures a herd of horses against your safety?”

He should value it very highly. The horses were the true treasure of La Roche de Roald. Without them this marriage would benefit him little.

And yet, even as she reasoned this out, she knew that the logic would carry little weight with Morvan. Too much existed on the other side of the scale. His oath of protection. His authority, and her defiance.

“Anna, when there were but a handful of us it was one thing. Yet even then I died a little each time that you rode into danger. And your going was no insult to me as it is to him. Your games of rebellion are one thing. This was another.”

They rode into the yard together. A sick void opened inside her as Ascanio's words repeated in her head.

She felt Morvan's gauntlet pulling her from the icy water, and saw his armored body standing between her and death. She had felt no real danger because he was there. In an awful moment of truth, she admitted that she had been enjoying the security of his protection even as she defied the protection itself.

She wondered how long it would be before he returned, or if he would even come back this night. As she went up the steps to her chamber, she hoped desperately that he would. She had the terrible feeling that if he did not come to her tonight, in anger if nothing else, a part of him would never return to her again at all.

Morvan stayed at the farmhouse late into the night, directing the burial of the dead thieves. The activity cooled his blood a little.

Finally, all was done. He told two extra guards to stay at the farmhouse. In the morning they were to ride to Fouke and Haarold and bid the two vassals to be alert for the escaped thieves. He considered staying the night at the farmhouse himself, but he found himself mounting
Devil even though he hadn't made the conscious decision to do so.