Dragon Tree (8 page)

With his head
still bound in bandages and his balance affected by the blow he had
suffered to his skull, Odo had bowed to his brother's insistence
that he, Rolf de Langois, be the one to approach the village and
determine if the pair were indeed Elizabeth and the poxy priest,
and to bring them both back to camp if it proved true. But
something had gone wrong. Rolf had returned with an arrow lodged in
his thigh and a tale of foresters ambushing them from the woods.
The three highly paid assassins who had accompanied Rolf to the
village were dead along with nearly a dozen of his best
crossbowmen.

While his
barber cut the arrowhead out of his thigh, Rolf related how he had
given the archers free reign to raid the village and take away
whatever they could find of value. He said it had begun as cleanly
and neatly as any surprise attack could, but out of nowhere, men
had appeared to defend the village. They were foresters by the look
of it, whose arrows cut them down with the precision of outlaws.
Rolf had regrouped and sent men back within the hour but when they
returned, the vill was deserted apart from the bodies. They had
searched among the dead, but the corpse of Elizabeth Amaranth de
Langois was not among them.

Odo’s rage had
very nearly accomplished what Elizabeth’s aim with the heavy pewter
candlestick had not. His blood had risen in such a fury that the
pressure inside his skull came close to bursting. His face boiled
as red as his hair and the pain became so great, he eventually had
to be held down by six men just to keep him from smashing his head
against a tree trunk. It took four days for the agony in his brain
to subside, for the pressure to ease, for the fury to cool into a
icy, deadly calm.

His whore-wife
was missing, his men were dead. And now there were witnesses to the
unwarranted slaughter of an entire village. Adding to his
aggravations, he discovered that the vill belonged to the demesne
of Taniere Castle. While he was not acquainted personally with the
Dragonslayer, the reputation of Ciaran Tamberlane, former knight
Templar, former champion of Richard the Lionheart was more than
enough to make him treble the guards around the camp and set the
men to sharpening every sword and blade in their arsenal.

A man like
that did not take kindly to having his villages raided, regardless
of the provocation. A man like Tamberlane, with family ties to the
king’s royal court would not simply stand by and do nothing to
avenge an insult to his property.

When several
days passed without the sound of warhorses and armor approaching
their camp, Odo had sent men to make discreet inquiries at other
villages and hamlets. They had returned bearing nothing but foolish
rumors: that the knight lived in seclusion at Taniere Castle; that
there were powerful dark forces at work there; and that the former
priest and servant of God was now a follower of Lucifer and counted
among his retainers a hideous wraith-like creature who could alter
his shape at will and change men to stone at a glance.

Odo had
discounted the peasant superstitions with much rolling of his eyes.
He did, however, give a measure of truth to the tales of seclusion.
The Glanvilles were a prominent family in royal circles and because
his own father had disavowed him, Tamberlane had probably been
directed to remain behind the walls of Taniere in isolation until
his name was forgotten, his hair turned gray, and his skin turned
to parchment.

Rolf had not
found Elizabeth among the dead, but he had found blood in the
woods—a great deal of blood that did not all belong to the dead
mercenary lying alongside the creek bed. Moreover, it was his
opinion that a wound such as the one which had felled the
experienced Brabancon was not the work of a common forester. A
wound like that required the expertise of a trained sword arm and
who but another knight, skilled in the art wielding a sword with
such power could affect such a blow?

Had Tamberlane
himself been present at the vill that day?

Had he found
Elizabeth lying wounded in the forest?

Had he carried
her back to Taniere Castle to recover from her wounds?

This last
fevered suspicion had fueled Odo’s hand as he gutted and carved the
deer. He had imagined the ropes were tied around Elizabeth’s wrists
and that she, not the deer, had been hauled upright to hang before
him. He had slit the skin with care and deliberation, peeling it
back strip by strip as if he could hear and savor her screams. When
the knife had sunk into the deer’s breast, he had actually felt his
head swim with pleasure, and by the time he had finished removing
the entrails by dripping handfuls, his body had grown so hard with
bloodlust, it was all he could do not to take the first
smooth-faced boy he saw in camp and bend him over the back of a
wagon.

He could
easily have imagined that as being Elizabeth too. Undoubtedly the
boy would bleat and wail just as she had each time Odo had demanded
his conjugal rights. The whore should have been eager to please
him, to thank him for marrying her and saving her from being wed to
some wrinkled old man who smelled of garlic and cabbage. She should
have fallen onto her knees and served him each and every night with
a willing mouth and an eager body.

Instead, she
had balked and fought him at every turn. She had looked upon him
with so much loathing and disgust blazing from her eyes that he had
no choice but to slap it from her face and whip it from her body
until she complied.

The deer was
lucky, Odo mused. It had been dead before he skinned it. The lovely
Elizabeth de Langois would not fare half so well.

He stared down
at his hands, still running pink with blood. The front of his
clothes looked like a butcher’s apron and he knew from his
reflection in the pond that there were streaks of it splattered
across his face and hair. He cupped his hands in the water again
and started to scoop some out to rinse it off... but stopped. The
blood made him feel strong. It made him feel powerful.
Invincible.

Pushing to his
feet, he turned and glared around the camp site. He was a handsome
man, broadly built, with shoulders and legs bulging with muscle.
The color of his hair combined with the quantity that grew across
his shoulders and back had earned him the byname Red Boar, and he
had incorporated a depiction of the snarling beast into his coat of
arms. He had run the lists many a time and never been unhorsed,
never been defeated. At twenty and six, he was in his prime and had
no fear of an aging, disgraced, banished, and defrocked warrior
monk.

His brother
was leaning against a tree a few feet away, and when Odo caught his
eye, Rolf de Langois limped over.

“Your leg
troubles you?”

Rolf shrugged.
He was leaner than his brother, with chiselled features that verged
on beautiful. His hair was dark, his eyes long-lashed and
almond-shaped. He had a sweet singing voice, a deceptively stunning
contrast to the lethal, coldblooded instincts of the killer that he
possessed. “The wound is healing and tolerable.”

“Good. For I
was wondering if we should pay our respects to this so-called
Dragonslayer.”

“You think he
may have Elizabeth?”

“I think she
did not get up and walk out of the forest on her own.”

Rolf nodded.
“We cannot be sure it was even her.”

“It was her,”
Odo said through a snarl. “And if she thinks to hide from me at
Taniere Castle, I will know. I will know and I will have her
out.”

“Tamberlane is
still the king’s man. What if she speaks out of turn?”

“She will say
nothing, she will do nothing. She gives her trust as readily as a
fox to a hound.”

“She
apparently trusted the friar.”

“Yes.” Odo’s
eyes narrowed and he glanced across the clearing to where a slender
figure in the brown robes of a mendicant sat slumped at the base of
a tree. Several loops of rope were circled around his chest binding
him to the trunk. His hands and feet were bound as well though it
was more for the pain and discomfort the ropes inflicted than an
additional safeguard against escape.

They had
caught Friar Guilford walking alone, out on the open road, not far
from a broken cart they had found hidden in the forest. He had
pleaded ignorance, of course, declaring he knew nothing about Odo’s
missing wife, denying he had helped her escape Belmane. But the
purse he wore at his waist contained too many coins for a priest to
explain away on happenstance. And his eyes, when questioned about
his destination, had flicked away from Odo’s and betrayed the lies
for what they were.

“How many men
have we in camp?”

“Thirty-eight.
Six of them mounted.”

Odo pursed his
lips. “When we approach Taniere Castle, we would do well to do so
without showing our full strength. As a knight as well as a monk,
Tamberlane cannot refuse hospitality to a brother knight...
especially one who fears for his safety in a greenwood filled with
outlaws.”

“And if your
wife has, indeed, begged sanctuary inside the castle walls?”

Odo smiled
wanly. “It breaks the laws of both God and man to keep a wife from
her husband, especially one who has already attempted murder once
and might well kill again."

Rolf pursed
his lips. "She is a beautiful woman. She might beguile this warrior
monk with her body and her lies. She might persuade him to keep her
hidden."

Odo’s smile
thinned. “If she is there, I will feel her presence and smell the
odor of treachery between her thighs.”

“Nevertheless,
perhaps we should have some bait with us to draw her out?”

Odo followed
the tilt of his brother’s head to where Friar Guilford was slumped
against the tree. “He is almost dead now. As bait, he would not be
of much value.”

“He has breath
left in him still. Enough for our purposes at any rate, even if we
have to spike him on a lance to make him sit straight.”

With
thoughtful steps, Odo strode across the clearing and lowered
himself into a squat before the priest, his forearms resting on his
knees, his hands clasped together in front. He stared at the top of
the tonsured pate a moment, then turned his head slightly and spat
into the grass.

“Truly, it
would have gone easier, Priest, if you had simply told us where she
was.”

Friar
Guilford’s head came up slowly. His face was puffed and swollen
under the bruises that marked his cheeks and jaw. One eye was
closed to a slit. The other, despite his exhaustion, despite the
pain that wracked his body, was sharp and clear, as blue as a piece
of the sky.

“I have told
you a hundred times,” he said through scabbed lips, “I do not know
where the Lady Elizabeth is and I cannot tell you what I do not
know.”

“You expect me
to believe you, Priest? You expect me to simply say: ah, yes, good
fellow and so be on your way? This even though you can see for
yourself that God himself has judged you false.”

The priest’s
gaze flickered down to his hand... a hand so swollen and inflamed
it was distorted beyond recognition as a human appendage. He had
endured Odo de Langois' questions; he had endured the beating, the
blows, even the clawed fingers that had nearly burst his testicles
like grapes. All of that he had endured with prayers on his lips
and faith in his God.

The last test
had come with Odo’s amused insistence that he prove his ignorance
of the Lady Elizabeth’s whereabouts by undergoing an ordeal by
fire. A heavy iron bar was produced and heated red hot in the coals
of the campfire. As a test of purity, the accused person had to
hold the bar and walk three paces. The hand was then bandaged and
left for three days. If, when the bandages were removed the wound
was seen to be healing, then one’s innocence was proclaimed. If the
wound was not healed, if it was festering and growing worse, then
obviously God had abandoned him and declared him guilty of the
charge.

Half the flesh
on Friar Guilford’s hand had come off with the filthy rags. The
scorching was to the bone and he knew, by the fevers and aches in
his body, that there was poison in his veins.

Wearily, he
looked back up at Odo de Langois. “I expect you will believe only
what you wish to believe, and therein lies the cause for pity.”

“You pity me,
do you Priest?”

“You could
have had her love.”

“Her
love
? The love of a
whore
? You countenance this as
being something I should have sought?”

“She was no
man's whore. She was gentle and pure and spoke her marriage vows
with a sweetness that only needed someone to see it, to coax it
forth, to nurture it into loyalty and love. You could have done
this. You could have shown her kindness and compassion."

“Kindness?
Compassion? For a whore who spread herself for every man who walked
the halls of Belmane Castle?”

“You know this
as fact, do you?”

“I saw it with
mine own eyes,” Odo snarled, spraying the friar's face with
spittle. “I caught her with her legs spread and her skirts shoved
above her waist.”

“With your
brother Rolf? And did he tell you she begged him for it? Begged him
to drag her into the woods where her screams would not be heard,
then begged him to squeeze his hands around her throat until her
lungs were starved for air?”

“Such a
crushing would have left bruises. There were none. And there were
five other men present who said she lay beneath him willingly. Are
you saying they all lied?”

“They were
Rolf’s men,” the priest said simply. “They would say what he told
them to say.”

Odo sucked in
a deep breath. “Maybe it is you who would say whatever she asked
you to say. Maybe you are more man than priest and would beg a
little compassion of your own? She has the face of an angel, does
she not? And the body of a nymph with a well of nectar so sweet it
makes your tongue ache from the pleasure.” Odo leaned in closer and
lowered his voice to a conspiratory whisper. “Is that why you
defend her, Priest? Because you have tasted that nectar
yourself?”