MacAuliffe Vikings Trilogy 3 - Lord of the wolves (10 page)

BOOK: MacAuliffe Vikings Trilogy 3 - Lord of the wolves
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She shuddered at the thought. Marie de Tresse, the young maid who was her personal servant, had thoughtfully begun to teach her all the things she must know, though in truth, she had gleaned much of it by simply studying animal husbandry! The thought of being with Gerald in any such way made her feel violently ill. Yet the feeling did not persist, for she was assured in her father"s strength of will and determination. Maybe Gerald thought it natural that they should join their households together. She did not!

Nor would she ever entertain the thought of being a wife to his son! She could imagine sitting at night with him, watching him try to throw his dinner bones at the hounds" noses!

“Father will never let it be!” she assured herself.

But the rider was coming closer, and she felt uneasy. Was this some message from Gerald regarding her? Would her father"s very definite refusal give cause to trouble—or battle—between them?

She hurried away from the parapet, racing for her father"s tower bedchamber. It was a huge place with a great canopied bed in the center, a fireplace far before it, tables and chairs and trunks strewn about so that he might be visited within his personal rooms. Count Manon had already risen and was sliding his sword into the sheath at his waist.

“Father!” she cried, bursting in on him, but he was quick to comfort her.

“I have seen the rider coming. I"m going out to meet him.” Melisande hesitated. “Father, truly, you wouldn"t begin to consider making an arrangement—”

He laughed, pausing to kiss the top of her head. “Truly, Melisande, never!

Now let me see what is going on out there. He claims that I consider my land and my daughter superior—aye, girl, and that I do!” he said, smiling. But his smile faded, and he looked seriously into her eyes and stroked her cheek.

“Truly you are superior! I have watched you grow into a young woman with a wisdom that far exceeds your years. You have a tender touch for all beasts, a kindness in your heart for our people. They are dependent on us! All dependent on us, that is the world we live in. And you do not look to your own value, but give great concern to theirs. You have done me very proud, Melisande. Any man must prove himself worthy of you.”

Melisande stood up on her tiptoes, throwing her arms around her father"s neck, kissing his cheek. “If I have grown well at all, sir, it is because I have the wisest and kindest of all fathers!”

She realized then that someone stood behind them. She swung around.

Philippe, captain of the fortress guard, was there, staring hard at the count. “It is Gerald himself at the gate, begging an audience with you. He warns of danger, and asks that you come beyond the gates so that his words may be for your ears alone.”

Ragwald hurried up behind Philippe. “I do not like this, not one bit, Count Manon.”

Manon sighed deeply. “Ah, well, he warns of danger. I must ride forward and see what that danger might be!”

He started forward, then turned again, kissing his daughter"s head tenderly once again. “Remember my words, Melisande. Always.” He hurried to the stone steps leading from the tower parapet to the ground below. Someone had already brought his great horse, and the count swiftly leapt upon the animal.

He called out the order for the gates to be opened and rode out.

Melisande remained on the parapet, uneasily watching what took place below. All eyes in the castle were trained on that meeting just beyond the gates.

That must have been why, Melisande realized when she saw the danger at last, they had been so very oblivious to it at first.

Other riders were coming over the ridge now.

She saw it all too late and all too quickly. Gerald had led her father out some distance from the gates. He had come alone as a lure.

And her father, in good faith, had followed him. Now riders were bearing down on him with deadly intent. So very many of them. Melisande stared at them and realized that many of them were different, they were not all Gerald"s men. They were Vikings. Clad in conical helmets, skin boots trimmed in fur, wooden shields carved just a little differently. They were Vikings. Just like those who had come to ravage the coast, like those they had beaten back upon occasion from the fortress walls. Vikings
riding with Gerald.

Because alone,
Melisande thought,
neither they nor Gerald could best her
father. They had strength, Gerald did not. Gerald could reach her father,
deceive him …

And the Vikings could not!

Melisande began to scream. For a moment she saw her father"s eyes. Below her, in the courtyard, the guards, too, realized the danger. There were screams and shouts, men mounted their horses and went racing out on foot.

And all too late, as Melisande saw clearly. Gerald drew his sword against her father, and her father, excellent swordsman that he was, parried the first blow, and the second, and the third.

But by then the horsemen racing down from the ridge were upon him. It seemed a dozen gleaming swords shimmered in the daylight, silver growing red.

She began to scream again, sinking to her knees. All of Manon"s men were industriously engaged in the battle now, and all too late. She had seen her father fall from Warrior. She had seen the gates fly open again as the men from the fortress poured out, confused, fighting wildly, screaming, shouting.

Their leader downed.

She had seen Warrior come trotting back in through the gates, lost, as the others went racing through them, and she knew. With certainty.

Her father was dead.

Upon the parapet she leaned back against the wall, trying to breathe, trying to fight the staggering power of the pain and loss that seized her. Nothing on earth could cut so deeply, tear at her with such deadly agony. He was gone; she could not live without him. The tears came pouring down her cheeks and she cried out in a shrieking sob.

But there was no one there to hear her. Ragwald was gone, having raced down the parapet, in shock himself from the sheer brutal treachery of the assault.

The pain that gripped her was so great at first that she could think no further.

Yet it was thinking of her father that at last gave her strength to rise again.

Gerald had come to slay her father and then do battle. He had known that
if he
killed Manon,
he would have destroyed the heart of the fortress, taken away the crucial guiding point for all the men within the castle walls. There was no one left for them to follow now. Philippe was their captain, of course, but the fighting would be different in the hearts of all the men.

Ragwald had taught her military issues as well as legal ones. The enemy always sought to kill the leader, and thus cause confusion within the force of men.

Gerald had done so. He had caused the gates to be opened. And even if they were closed again, he had done his damage. With his Viking warriors, he had created a powerful horde.

With Manon gone, the castle guards were fighting without heart.

Gerald would win. He had slain her father, and now he would take all that he wanted. There would be no one to stop him, especially once he had sworn homage to the king in Paris, because no one could ride out to settle petty disputes in a lawless land, where the strongest castle was always the one that decreed its own law …

She came determinedly to her feet. Gerald thought that he would kill her father, condemn her to whatever gruesome fate he desired, and seize all that her father had created.

She could not allow him to do so. She would rather die.

She gripped the wall of the parapet, staring down to the courtyard. Warrior stood there, alone, forlorn.

She pushed away from the wall, and she thought of the beautiful gilded coat of mail her father had brought her. For ceremonial occasions.

There would be a ceremony tonight. Her father must somehow lie in the chapel vault below, and they must all stand vigil.

They must live to do so. And somehow, somehow, best Gerald.

She looked to the heavens. “Dear God, let us slay him somehow! Please, God, any way on earth. Let me see him die today, or let me die myself in the effort!”

She pushed away from the wall and hurried for her tower room. She dressed in the mail, started out, but fell to her knees. “God, however you seek to help me, I will be grateful! By any means, fair or foul, let Gerald be beaten! I will accept any penalty you send my way,
I will rot in hell,
if that is your desire, but I beg of you, let this man be beaten!”

She stood and grasped the sword that fitted into the finely decorated scabbard that came with the mail. She shivered suddenly, violently. She didn"t want to die.

But her father was already dead. And she wasn"t so terribly sure that she wanted life without him. She was afraid.

Suddenly she heard his words echoing in her ears.
“You have … a kindness
in your heart for our people. They are dependent on us. They are dependent on
us …”

What reward for seizing this castle had Gerald promised the men he fought with? The women and girls who resided within it? The clothing they wore, the plates they ate from, the precious little pieces of jewelry they might have obtained? The silver chalices in the chapel, the golden crosses there? The dairy maids, the seamstresses, the maids, the cooks …

The men murdered, the rest of them slaves. She dared not think of the fate Gerald would have for her.

Death might well be preferable.

With that thought in mind, she rose. She would spend her life hating Gerald and his kin and Vikings!

However long or short that life should be.

Far down upon the parapet Ragwald was seeing a new dimension give a different shape to the fray taking place before him.

Great waves of
sea beasts
were coming. With each white crest that broke across the water, the rise of the ships could be seen again. They lined the horizon, those ships with their serpent heads. Prow heads snarling, teeth gnashing. Dragon ships,
Viking
ships.

They rose, again and again, seeming to leap across the water, their dragon prows rising anew, no matter how roughly the sea raged. The day, so bright with morning, had turned ominous. Gray clouds rolled on the horizon. Jagged streaks of lightning came down from the skies as if the great Norse gods Wodin and his son, Thor, had banded together with a vengeance and now, in a fury, rode the billowing, windy gray day, tossing down golden and rippled spear after spear of fire.

Dragon prows …

Ragwald stared upon the coming ships. Heedless of all that was going on, he raced down the stone steps to the courtyard and shouted for a horse. A mount was brought to him, and he leapt atop it quickly. He ordered the gate opened, and rode through the mass of men engaged in hand-to-hand combat, not fearing them at all, he was so incredulous. He rode hard to the shore and leapt down from his horse. With the melee still going on behind him, he stood there unbothered, as if he were immortal, the sea wind picking up clouds of his graying hair to blow it across his ancient wizened face, his gray eyes suddenly ageless.

A man who counted astrology—along with other curious wonder—among his talents, he was amazed that he had not seen this great catastrophe that now seemed destined to befall them.

First Gerald, and now this!

The ships, those magnificent, horrible ships with their great raging dragon prows and red and white striped sails!

He looked from the ships to the land.

How could any prophet of any kind claim credibility when he had not foreseen
today!
Oh, he"d felt those shivers last night, but he hadn"t begun to see any of this! He might have warned Manon against it all!

And now! This fury from the sea!

With Count Manon already dead. Butchered by so many men, beaten by their swords and maces, a battle-ax nearly cleaving his fine head from his warrior"s body. They were already in such very grave trouble. Ragwald could see from where Gerald had drawn his strength, bartering for it with some of the marauding Danes who were forever pestering the coastal byways and rivers of France.

The people here would know it, they"d all know it! Gerald was a distant cousin, and he had long coveted this piece of land, where high rock surrounded a safe harbor, where the sand of the beaches quickly turned to rich soil. Manon had worked too well here when he had taken the wooden fortress and slowly, surely, turned it to stone. Stone that shone white against the blue of the sea and sky and the rich tones of the earth.

But what was this new element? Viking prows leaping and flying across the sea? Coming like a hundred pounding horses, bearing down upon them!

Ragwald turned quickly again. All was nearly lost. With Manon slain, his men were beginning to run in panic. They were good men, loyal men, but with the thoughts and hearts of men.

What was left to fight for if Manon was gone? Better to run to the safety of
the forest, rescue their wives and children, run with them!

Men needed a leader, someone to stand behind, someone to fight for, to die for.

And all that was left to them was Manon"s young heir.

His daughter.

Ragwald inhaled and exhaled. He stared to the sea, trying to think. What would these ships matter, if Manon"s men could not regain their strength after Gerald"s attack? First things must come first, the enemy must be taken in order!

BOOK: MacAuliffe Vikings Trilogy 3 - Lord of the wolves
12.12Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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