The Redeeming (37 page)

The torn and crimson-streaked knight jerked hard as if to break death’s grip, jerked again, and lifted his lids. “D’Arci?” Moonlight glittered in his eyes and skittered across the blood that covered much of his face.

“’Tis I and Baron Lavonne. Where is she, Abel? Where has he taken my wife?”

“North. On foot. Sir Durand follows, but he is injured and…requires aid.” Abel squeezed his eyes closed, opened them, squeezed them closed again, and swept up a hand to clear the blood from his vision. “Robert shouted that he would send Beatrix…to the four corners…of England.”

Christian felt as if slammed against a wall and could not imagine what Michael D’Arci must feel knowing that his wife was to be drawn and quartered.

“Go!” Abel barked, but D’Arci and Christian were already on their feet. “Baron!”

Hating the sacrifice of moments that could shift the line between life and death for Beatrix, Christian looked back. “Abel?”

“Do not forget all I have taught you—all Everard taught you.”

“I will not.” Sword in hand, Christian ran after D’Arci, leaving behind the ring of steel on steel and his brother-in-law who might not live to see how well his student’s training took.

Lord, let it be Your will that he live,
he prayed as he had not prayed for years,
that Beatrix live, that Gaenor forgive me my unbelief, that our marriage be blessed, that the end of all things foul upon Abingdale be near.

Over the treacherous moonlight-pierced wood he moved, holding fast to the sight of D’Arci whose slighter build gave him the advantage of speed and agility and gradually increased the distance between him and his liege.

On and on they ran, but just as Christian allowed the terrible thought that their pursuit might be in vain—that Robert could have changed course—he caught sight of the dim and distant glow toward which D’Arci moved. A moment after that, a figure ahead of the physician separated from a tree.

Alarm shot through Christian—and anger that he could not move faster. However, the inevitable meeting of blades proved not inevitable, and the only apparent exchange between the two men was words that were without form by the time they reached Christian. Indeed, D’Arci did not appear to so much as hesitate as he lunged past the other man.

A few moments later, Christian saw that it was an injured Sir Durand who hunched over the sword he had planted in the ground that he might lean upon it.

As much as Christian loathed the loss of yet more precious moments, he halted alongside the knight and gripped his upper arm.

Sir Durand straightened abruptly, and Christian did not need to see red to know the man bled profusely from the side wound he clutched.

“Make haste!” the knight growled. “He means to kill her. Upon my word, I…” He swayed and bared his teeth as if a show of ferocity might stave off death’s stalking. “…I shall not be far behind.”

Doubting the knight could make good his vow, Christian squeezed his arm. “Godspeed,” he said and ran.

Though in the space of those moments, D’Arci had gone from sight, the glow ahead guided Christian, and more so when it glowed brighter. For certain, Robert called to him, and Christian intended to answer him well.

G
aenor did not know what it meant for her sister, only that it had to be of great import.

Beneath the darkly inked sky that, on this night, boasted more than a passing acquaintance with the moon and stars, she tried to read the face of D’Arci’s man who had turned tense the moment a muffled clamor reached their ears and their seeking eyes picked out a glow that gave wavering form to a deeper place in the wood.

“It has to be the brigands,” she said, peering at him over her shoulder.

“Aye, my lady.” He looked to the man saddled beside them. “Leon?”

After a long moment, a harsh sigh broke the silence. “We have our orders.”

Gaenor narrowed her gaze on the grizzled man who had to be a score older than the one with whom she shared a mount. “Then you will simply sit here and ignore what is out there?” She thrust a hand in the direction of the glow.

She felt more than saw Leon’s resentful gaze. “If you believe that questioning my honor will move me from my orders, my lady, you will be disappointed. Our task is to ensure your safety, and that we shall do.”

“But my sister may be out there!”

“She may, but from the sound of it, our lord is in pursuit.”

That
was
how it sounded, for it was inconceivable the brigands would be so fool to not guard proof of their presence even though they were a goodly distance from the castle. Still…

“Surely there can be no harm in drawing near that we might better—”

“Apologies, my lady, but we must remain here.”

Squeezing her hands so hard that ache shot through her fingers, Gaenor once more focused on the faintly lit fog rising from the forest floor. Shadows moved in the midst of it—desperate shadows that met and parted and fell in time with the shouts of men and the ring of steel.

“Nay,” she breathed, then eased up the slack in the reins held by the man at her back and wound the leather twice around the saddle’s pommel. Though she hated that what she must do could bode ill for D’Arci’s men, she saw no other course.

She drew a hand up her waist to her girdle and curled her fingers around the hilt of her meat dagger. Bolstered by the air of resentment and restlessness that spanned the spaces between her and the men who would be fighting for their lord if not for their duty to guard her, she slid the dagger from its scabbard.

Holding the saddle’s pommel with her free hand and clamping her legs to the horse’s sides, she gripped the hilt hard, murmured, “Forgive me,” then turned, swept her arm around, and drove the dagger’s hilt into the temple of the man behind as Durand had done to Sir Hector.

His eyes widened and head snapped back. However, her blow lacked the strength of a seasoned knight and he did not lose the saddle as hoped. Feeling his hand grip her waist, she struck again, this time landing the hilt to his shoulder.

He grunted, fell sideways and, a moment later, lay on his back on the forest floor, the reins torn from his hands.

“My lady!”

Gaenor snapped her head around. Seeing Leon had drawn alongside and that he reached for her, she strained opposite, jabbed her heels into the horse’s sides, and loosed the reins from the pommel. She did not look back, nor did she need to, certain both men would follow. And that was just as she would have it.

As the horse sped over uneven ground, Gaenor returned the dagger to its scabbard and bent low over the animal’s great neck. “I do not fear,” she whispered the lie she longed to believe. “I will not lose those I love.”
Lord, please do not let that also be a lie.

Nearer she drew, the battling figures amid the moonlit fog taking shape and making her heart pound as she struggled to pick out Beatrix and prayed her sister was, indeed, among them. If not…

It did not bear thinking upon.

A movement to the far left captured Gaenor’s regard. In the next instant, it was gone, taking cover in the shadows thrown by the canopy of trees. However, almost instantly it reappeared in the moonlight that wheedled a path among the leaves. The fleeing figure seemed to bear a burden, one that made him appear impossibly thick in the shoulders and back. As if—

Aye, only Robert or one of his men would flee combat, if not out of cowardice then to serve a depraved purpose. Though Gaenor hoped Beatrix was not that purpose and it was not her slight figure that accounted for the strangely burdened form, she sensed her sister did, indeed, lay in that direction.

Determinedly, she turned her mount aside.

F
our tethered horses, two facing north, two facing south. And in the space separating them, Sir Robert, rightful heir to the barony of Abingdale, tossed off his burden.

“Bind her!” he ordered one of two men left behind to watch over the horses and gear. He looked to the second man. “Light more torches.”

“But ‘twill reveal our position—”

“Do it!” The one torch had been just enough to return Robert to this place, but it was time to light it up most bright.

“Aye, Sir Robert.”

It should be baron, not
sir
.
Aldous Lavonne’s eldest son curled his hands into fists as he watched the man who had once been an esteemed knight in his father’s household hurry opposite to do his bidding.
Though tempted to call out that he should be titled Baron Lavonne, the mere speaking of it between Robert’s ears made a pitiful sound of it, especially since his night would likely end much the same as Beatrix Wulfrith’s.

“Beatrix,” he hissed and hunkered down beside her as the first of his father’s displaced knights knotted one of four ropes around her right ankle. “You ought to be awake for this,” he said and slapped her.

Her head snapped to the side and remained there.

He frowned. Earlier, had he struck her harder than thought? Might he have killed her? He leaned near, peered down her body, and by the light of now two—then three—torches, saw breath move her chest. A temporary condition only.

“Be quick about it,” he ordered the man who rose from binding her ankles—one to a spotted palfrey, the other to a brown palfrey. “We shall soon have company.”

Soon arrived moments later, but Lady Beatrix’s would-be savior came not on foot or from the direction expected. From the western side of the wood, the pound of hooves portended the arrival of what Robert guessed to be two riders.

He surged to his feet and ran to where his man had gone to retrieve the ropes of the two restless destriers that would soon be sent opposite the palfreys.

“Stop them!” He thrust the man toward where the riders would soon appear and snatched up the rope tied to the pommel of the nearest destrier’s saddle. Quickly, he unreeled its length to where Lady Beatrix remained unmoving. As he knotted the rope around her wrist, he felt the breath of fear at the back of his neck, but then it moved down his spine where it transformed into a thrill, the likes of which he was most familiar when the blood on his blade was hard-won. As this blood would be—but worth every drop, even if some proved his own.

T
he flare of another torch, then another, turned the clearing into which the burdened form fled from dim to distinct. The lighting of it seemed purposeful, as if it was a beacon meant to lead one home—though that certainly could not be the purpose here, which was surely to lead one to one’s death.

Still, for nothing would Gaenor pull back or allow herself to be overtaken by the guard she had foiled. Fortunately, D’Arci’s men rode two astride, giving her the advantage of some seconds, which was what was required to reach her destination.

She urged her mount onto the clearing. However, no sooner did she pick out Beatrix’s figure that lay at its center and the red-bearded man who bent over one of her outstretched arms, than something blindingly bright and searingly hot struck her left shoulder. She cried out as she lost the saddle and the reins tore into—and out of—her hand.

Landing hard, she distantly perceived the rock-strewn ground that sought to break her, the whinny of horses, and the clop of hooves. More closely, she frantically questioned where her breath had gone and the reason all was now dark when moments earlier the clearing had been lit. Had she broken something vital? Might death perch upon her shoulder? More importantly, might that terrible specter cover Beatrix?

Gaenor forced a painfully shallow breath into her lungs. As she shuddered it out, her vision returned. Despite the wavering, blurred edges, she picked out two horses tethered to a large tree to her immediate right.

“Kill her!”

She followed the shout to the red-bearded man who had moved to Beatrix’s other outstretched arm. It had to be Sir Robert, and he was pointing at Gaenor, directing his man to finish what he had begun in unhorsing her.

Struggling to right her upended senses, she shifted her gaze to her sister in hopes of seeing breath move Beatrix’s body, but it was the sight of pale hair darkened as if by blood that seized her attention.

As realization struck that another head injury had been dealt her sister, Sir Robert surged to standing and pivoted toward two other horses tethered farther out, their restlessly shifting backsides testament to their eagerness to be away from here.

The thunder of hooves that could be felt as much through the earth as heard across the air, brought Gaenor’s chin around. Her assailant, brandishing the torch that had surely felled her, halted his advance on her and turned with another brigand to confront the arrival of those men whose duty it was to guard the wife of Baron Lavonne.

Amid the ensuing shouts, Gaenor rolled to the right and felt the bite of rocks across her back, her side, and beneath her hands and knees. As she rose, she swept her gaze over the scene that had dimmed considerably with the casting aside of torches to allow swords to be drawn.

By the light of the one upright torch and the two sputtering on the ground, she saw that both of her guard had dismounted and were circling the brigands. And Sir Robert…

He lunged toward the skittish destriers at the far end of the clearing.