Townsend, Lindsay - The Snow Bride (BookStrand Publishing Romance) (35 page)

Magnus meant it as a jest, for he was striving hard not to speak his worst fear—that Elfrida had left the tower because she wanted to be away from him. Now they were together and he felt her gripping him, kissing him, he was ashamed.
I should not be so jealous
, he thought.

“
There was a new blonde at the keep,” he said, “but not your sister, for she did not react when I said her name or yours.
”

Elfrida, warily shaking the
“
bag
”
shoe on her foot, flipped up her head.
“
Was she pretty?
”

She is jealous, too!

Magnus shook his head, feeling more and more content.
“
Not so much.
”

Elfrida looked on the verge of speech, her own pretty face clouded, but then she made the sign against the evil eye and sighed.

“
Christina?
”
Magnus asked softly, knowing full well it was not her sister she was thinking of just then but the unknown blonde.

Elfrida
’
s bright, amber eyes shone with gratitude then excitement.
“
I think I know where she is! In another tower, of stone, very old, near a Roman road and...
”

She gave a strangled cry and thrust herself at him. Caught by sheer surprise, Magnus was knocked off-balance. He dragged her down with him and above her yelp heard the familiar
thock!
of a crossbow bolt spending itself into a tree stump not a man’s length from them.

“I felt it coming,” Elfrida panted, as he flung himself over her, covering her with his body as more crossbow bolts and arrows rained down. “Malice coming...sensed it.”

And moved to meet it
. Magnus grabbed his sword. Her courage inspired and appalled him, as he knew very well she had tossed herself into the path of the arrow to save him.
Any more?
he almost asked, but this was his world now. He dragged her over his shoulder and pelted in a rough, ungainly sprint for cover, any cover.

“Stay!” he warned, dropping her by a holly tree. “I mean it.” He kissed her smartly, for love, for thankfulness, and ran out again into the snowy dark to meet the oncoming fray.

Chapter 26

Elfrida could not help Magnus. She was overcome by a compelling desire to pass water and had to shift deeper into the holly. Beneath its green canopy—black and glossy in the dark—she found the ground dry and covered by a soft leaf litter. She did what she must and backtracked, her heart hammering with anxiety.

Lifting the final shielding branch, she discovered she had no clear sighting of Magnus. At the distance of a field, men fought on foot and horseback amid falling snow. Burly shapes clashed in the snowy murk. She heard a horse scream, whether in pain or anger she could not see. She was helpless and useless, for even a charm to sting the eyes of Magnus’s enemy was no good unless she knew for certain who that enemy was. She wished ill luck to Gregory Denzil, but her flesh crept as she did so—ill wishes could rebound.

Worse, this battle pinned them down when she wanted to be moving, seeking the Roman road and the ancient stone fort, finding Christina.

Is this the doing of the
Forest
Grendel, the necromancer, or our own ill luck?

Trying to see more, she reluctantly stripped off Magnus
’
s cloak and began to climb the branches of the holly, ignoring the scratches. She inched upward, protected by her youth’s clothes, wrapping an arm about the narrow trunk of the tree and hooking a leg over another branch. She forced herself to go up the length of a man and looked out.

Snow blew into her face. She mopped her eyes and squinted through the thick sleet, listening to the fight somewhere out in the wood. She could tell from the slow, chopping sounds, like a weary peasant hacking at a branch for firewood, that the men were tiring. No one had breath to spare for cursing. She prayed that Magnus was safe and winning, and longed to fight hand-to-hand beside him, a warrior of arms as well as magic.

She shouted incoherently, cries of support fierce enough to dislodge a roosting crow out of a nearby oak. She found her dagger and slashed it straight across her palm, making a fist to encourage the blood to flow, spattering across the holly leaves. “By the spirit of this tree, defeat to our enemies!”

What was that?

Shocked by a clammy touch on the side of her throat, she almost lost her footing and fell. Sweating, eyes tight shut, her breath coming in great gasping spurts as if she had sprinted the length of a field, she released her grip on a handful of branch and holly leaves. More throbbing pain shot through her fingers and up her arm, but she reached up and peeled the narrow cord away from her hair.

It was as slim as a ribbon and made of a strange, soft, smooth material. Recalling what Magnus had said about silk, Elfrida decided it could be silk. It stretched off into the darkness and was attached to something—when she gave it a gentle tug, no end came free.

So what was it and why was it here?

Elfrida drew on the cord until it was taut and saw a branch on a nearby oak tree trembling. So the cord ran between these trees, but it was too high to be any kind of trap, at least a trap for men.

She tweaked the cord and it hummed slightly, a dark note.

“It is too thin to take any weight,” she remarked aloud, thinking of how the Forest Grendel had been able to move so stealthily in the forest near her village. Would a web of ropes slung from trees explain his swift and silent movement? How he attacked like a spider, as Walter had put it?

Elfrida shook her head. This cord was too narrow to support even her, and swinging between trees could never be silent in an English forest. Walter had thought of a spider because the man who had taken her sister was thin and long limbed. He had called Christina’s attacker silent because no doubt the Forest Grendel had moved with swift purpose, without shouting. Walter had been violently and unexpectedly attacked and his betrothed carried off. He had been in a tumult of panic and shock, yelling so much that he would have heard no other come or go.

And I know already how the goat woman covered my enemy’s tracks as soon as she could with those of her animals. This cord is not for swinging on or moving between trees. So what is its use?

Thoughtfully, carefully, she turned the cord over.

“Elfrida!”

Magnus’s indignant yell made her start, and she almost lost her footing and grip on the tree. Hastily, she stretched out and cut through the cord at the farthest reach of her arm, wrapping it round her wrist and securing it tightly. “Here!” she called back, slithering and crashing back down the holly tree, in any fashion. “Here, I am here!” She battled the holly branches aside, took a steadying breath, and stepped out of the twigs and berries, prepared to face up to him.

“What happened to you?” they both asked at once.

* * * *

Magnus knew he did not look his finest, whatever that was, and cared not at all. “At least it is not my blood.” He growled. He took in Elfrida
’
s grubby, lichen-smeared hands and saw that his cloak not on her back but hung over her arm. Her
improvised
shoe was already ripped and threatening to fall off.

“
What were you doing in the tree?
”
he asked wearily, and before she could answer,
“
Why do you never stay where I put you?
”

“
Am I a bucket to be hung on a nail?
”
she demanded, with a toss of her matted hair, staring straight back at him with bright, amber eyes slightly reddened by flecks of tree bark.
“
I obeyed your instruction. For the rest, I was pursuing my trade, my lord, as you were yours.
”

Amused by her hearty indignation, he felt himself smile. “For that I must be thankful.”
He supposed
. “I have Gregory Denzil under guard.”

The man had been an easy capture, clearly not expecting any retaliation after issuing that sneaking first volley of crossbows bolts and arrows. Denzil had been almost comic in his slowness, sitting like a wooden statue on his horse and scarcely moving as the counterattack swept over him and his bedraggled followers.
I was able to charge him, on foot, and Denzil, a battle-hardened warrior, issued no orders and made no attempt to brain me with a club or skewer me with a sword. And I have not run so fast for years
.

Magnus frowned, recalling how the rest of Denzil’s troops had been equally motley and halting, almost as if stunned.

So can I claim it as a victory, or is it something of Elfrida’s, something she did? If she was plying her trade, was she casting spells and charms from that holly tree? Who fought then, her or me?

“Did you see the fight?” he demanded, his voice sounding harsh even to him.

“No, sir,” she stammered, seeming unsure for the first time. “I had to...” She muttered a phrase in her own dialect and looked at him helplessly. “I do not know the words in the old speech. The garderobe—I had to find one, out of doors.”

She stopped, and even in the gloom and tumbling snow, he could see her blushing.

“Ah, well then.” Close to laughter, he gathered her in and hugged her, glad she could not see his face. It was a worthy thing to him that he had won the fight fairly, without her magic.

Denzil has gone soft and rotten, too, him and his men together. What are they now but brigands and thieves? I was protecting my woman and myself, so right was on my side. Why fret? It was an honest fight.

Relieved, in tune with the world again, he teasingly gave her hair a quick tug. “So what were you doing in the tree?”

“My lord.” Mark plowed through the snow toward them, his face radiating a mixture of triumph, weariness, and concern. “We should not linger here.”

Magnus raised a hand to show he had heard and drew back slightly from Elfrida. He felt especially indulgent to her again, now he could say he had bested Denzil himself.
After all, I wear amulets for protection, including the one she gave me. If Elfrida helps in other magical ways, that is all to the good.
“Is it something you do not wish to tell? Each trade has its secrets.”

The corners of her mouth tugged up in a swift, grateful smile, and then she grew serious again. “I found this, high in the holly tree.”

“
A silk ribbon?
”
Aware there must be more to it than that, Magnus turned the damp trinket over and whistled softly.
“
I recognize the lettering as Greek, the same kind as we found in the tower, but what are these other symbols?
”

“
Runes of magic and force,
”
Elfrida said quietly.
“
I know they evoke guardianship.
”

“
Of a person?
”

“
Or a place. Can you read the Greek? Does it make sense, real words, or is it simply names again?
”

He brought the ribbon closer, wishing for more light.
“
That word means
‘
king,’ King of the North. There are strange names, yes, perhaps of spirits or demons, and a repeated phrase,
‘
I conjure thee.’ Even on this brief strip, it repeats three times.
”