Snow in July (15 page)

“Who else would know the signal besides us?” Wart put in.

“Who else, indeed?” sneered Pit.

“Lad’s right.” Fists clenched, Raven stalked up to an unconcerned Pit. “Afraid of a little risk, are you?”

Pit grinned. “And you? Afeared of a wee bit of dark and fog?”

Raven worked his jaw and spat in Pit’s face. With a yell, Pit fell upon Raven, fists flying. To his credit, the thinner and more agile Raven gave out as good as he got, while Wart beseeched them to stop.

Unnoticed, Alain began working his bonds loose. He caught Ruaud’s glance and nodded.

The act of Raven brandishing a seax brought the fight—and the Normans’ efforts to free themselves—to a halt.

“If you want to stay here, stay,” he growled at Pit. “We are moving on.”

Raven mounted and kicked his horse into a trot. Ruaud’s lead snapped taut, forcing him to grip it to keep from revealing his loosened bonds. The lead must have slipped in his hands, for he uttered a pained grunt. Alain, behind Wart, had enough warning to avoid suffering a similar fate. Muttering a creative array of curses against Raven, Wart, Alain, Ruaud, the other outlaws, the dark, and the fog, Pit guarded the procession’s rear.

In the distance, beneath the waning moon, Alain made out the shadow of a conical hill that loomed larger as they approached. Instinct warned him their destination must be nigh.

After what seemed like an eternity, Raven drew rein at an oak and dismounted. While the other two secured the horses, Raven fished in the oak’s bole, withdrew a hunting horn, and blew a horrific blast. He returned the horn to the tree, retrieved his saddle pack, and sat at the tree’s base. Wart joined him. A sulking Pit chose a tussock within sight of the group, but not near his companions, and started gnawing on his travel rations.

The knights remained standing.

“Do as you please,” Raven said as he tossed them each a hunk of bread and the wineskin, “but you’re in for a wait.”

They sat. While devouring the rations, they assessed each other’s condition, which wasn’t too bad under the circumstances.

Snores made Alain glance toward Pit. The outlaw had slid off the tussock to curl in the grass. Raven and Wart appeared alert, but Alain sensed this was the best chance he and Ruaud were going to get.

They eased off their bonds, shared a brief nod, and leapt up to rush Raven and Wart. Battle rage surged through Alain’s veins, banishing pain and fatigue. The brigands’ bellows roused their companion, and the fight became a blur of punches, kicks, trips, rolls, vulgar oaths, and blade thrusts.

In a lull, Alain found himself standing, panting, over Raven’s body, the dead outlaw’s seax gripped in his fist, dripping blood. A trembling Wart faced him, his back wedged against the oak tree.

Hefting the seax, he wondered whether anyone had made a vow for this lad’s protection…

Ruaud’s shout made Alain turn and see his friend wrestling across the ground, trying to keep Pit’s seax at arm’s length. Alain sprinted across the gap, judged the timing, and plunged Raven’s war-knife downward.

Pit’s startled yelp allowed Ruaud to strike the seax away, throw the outlaw off him, and scramble to his feet. Alain raced to where the war-knife had landed and tossed it to his companion. Hand to neck, Pit staggered toward them, his eyes bulging with murderous intent.

He never made it. Eyes rolling, his head lolled, and he fell into an awkward heap. Ruaud, taking no chances, drove the seax through Pit’s throat.

Of Wart there remained no sign.

Perchance the lad had run off to alert the others. Alain strode to Raven’s corpse and began stripping it. At the moment of death, Raven had voided his bowels, and Alain shook the foul matter from the breeches as best he could.

“What are you doing?”

“Disguising myself.” In spite of everything, he grinned. “I suggest you do it too. I expect we will be getting more trouble ere long.”

Ruaud held up Pit’s scraggly jerkin, shaking his head. “These will not buy us one scrap of protection once their companions realize we are not of the band.”

“True.” Alain donned Raven’s breeches without difficulty but had to struggle to tug the jerkin over his broader chest. “I shall think of something.”

“Hurry.” Ruaud tossed a nod over his shoulder, where rhythmic splashing had begun to emanate from across the marsh.

Squinting let Alain discern nothing save a pale sphere of light bobbing toward them. He motioned Ruaud to help him drag Pit’s and Raven’s bodies into the tall fronds bordering the marsh. With any luck, scavengers soon would dispose of the evidence.

Alain instructed Ruaud to hide Waldron’s gold while he checked both men’s bodies. But his quarry eluded him.

Disappointed, he left the corpses and joined Ruaud in awaiting their visitor, a man poling a barge. They pulled their borrowed cloaks’ hoods close about their faces.

“Wolf,” said the bargeman in a heavy whisper.

Wolf? A name? Or a watchword? Alain looked at Ruaud, who twitched his shoulders in the barest of shrugs.

“Wolf!” the man repeated.

Alain made the only response that came to mind: he howled.

“Hey! Who the bloody ’ell are you? Who blew that—”

Ruaud and Alain plunged into the swamp and waded ankle-deep water toward the barge. The man raised his pole to wield it like a quarterstaff—credibly well, in fact, but no match for two knights. The cold water and sucking mud provided only minor obstacles. Ruaud snatched the outlaw’s ankle and pulled him, screaming, off the barge, where Alain silenced his noise with Raven’s seax.

They hauled themselves onto the barge and dragged up the body to dispose it with the others. Ruaud poled them toward the shore while Alain pondered their options.

“I say we ride back to Edgarburh with Waldron’s gold and tell the old man his daughter is here,” Ruaud suggested after the bargeman disappeared to join his lawless brethren. “Let him send his men out after her.”

Fists on hips, Alain studied the island. “We don’t know she is here. We need to verify it first.”

“We, we, always with the we. Well, I say not
oui
but
non
!”

Alain whirled on him. “That is your choice, of course. But the next time I see William, I will inform him that one of his knights would prefer to turn his back on a fight, a friend…and on someone in need.”

Ruaud laughed mirthlessly. “That was low, Alain.”

“
Oui.
” Alain finished securing the barge, strode to where the horses were tethered, and untied their reins.

The sound of scraping steel drew his attention, and he looked up to see Ruaud offering him one of the outlaw’s scabbards, which he had removed from the saddlebow of the nearest horse. “Not the best of blades, but it will serve you better than a war-knife.”

Alain couldn’t agree more. He accepted the sheathed longsword, looped the baldric across his chest, and returned to the task of coaxing a skittish horse onto the barge.

“Why are you bothering to do that?” Ruaud asked.

Though not in a mood to explain to someone who didn't intend to help, Alain said, “The other outlaws will be expecting a certain number of men and mounts.” He leveled his glare at Ruaud. “I shall devise a reason to explain why the man count decreased from four to one, never fear.”

“Four to two, you mean.” Ruaud strapped on Pit’s sword belt, a snug fit but far better than Raven’s would have been. The horse Ruaud led onto the barge went placidly enough, perhaps because one of its companions already had boarded.

“Thank you.” Alain didn’t bother to disguise his relief. “But I thought—”

“Don’t thank me yet. God alone knows how many more outlaws we must face.”

“Indeed.” After they guided the third horse aboard, Alain gripped his friend’s forearm warmly. “But our odds of success have just doubled.”

“I knew the fool would spout some nonsense like that,” Ruaud muttered, apparently to no one in particular.

Smiling grimly, Alain grabbed the pole to start pushing them across the swamp toward the island, praying with each thrust that he would find Kendra alive and unharmed.

Chapter 8

T
O RATION THEIR strength, they took turns at the barge pole, navigating by the hill. Although neither knight had suffered any wounds more serious than cuts and bruises, the exertion and pain, combined with the deprivation of sleep, food, and drink, exacted a steep toll. The food and drink problem they remedied with the outlaws’ supplies, but progress through the swamp, chorused by howling that sounded louder as they neared the hill, remained slow.

Alain was thankful to have Kendra’s image to spur him on. Between shoves, he studied Ruaud as the latter slumped against the bow, guzzling ale. Alain had sworn no vows for Ruaud’s safety, but he felt responsible for their predicament none the less. Though his shoulder was aching, and the calluses on his palms had grown calluses of their own, he stayed an extra turn at the pole.

Just when he thought his arms were going to give out, he spotted the torchlit outline of a dock and huts along the shore.

“Here, let me bring us in.” Ruaud levered to his feet and extended a hand. “You’ve been at it too long.”

Alain surrendered the pole without protest and moved to the bow to study the landscape.

No one seemed to be patrolling the shore. Still, he would be a fool to assume the outlaws had not posted sentries. But where were they? In the huts?

They got their answer when Ruaud maneuvered the barge up to the dock. Two men appeared from behind a rock wall above the line of huts, spears at the ready.

“King!” challenged one.

Not again!
Alain wondered which king this Saxon rabble would hold in such esteem as to incorporate into their watchwords. Surely not King William.

Then inspiration hit.

Clearing his throat and roughening his voice, he said in his best imitation of Wart’s guttural Saxon accent, “Pit and Raven are making off with the gold!”

“What?” yelled the other sentry. “Where?”

Alain pointed across the swamp. “Take our horses. If you hurry, you can catch the fongers!”

The huts erupted with a dozen men, all armed and clamoring to pile onto the barge and hunt down their erstwhile companions. Someone ran up carrying an armload of extra barge poles, which he distributed among the others, and the expedition shoved off, their curses drifting back across the murky waters.

“Well done,” whispered Ruaud.

“What in’ell was that all about?”

Ruaud and Alain turned to find another group of outlaws bearing down on them with leveled spears.

“I told you—”

“Methinks you’ve told us a pack of lies,” snapped the lead man. He caught Alain’s hood with the spear’s point and pushed it back. “Fongin’ Normans!”

The knights exchanged a glance, drew their borrowed swords, and the melee began.

KENDRA HEARD the faint clash of steel on steel, rushed to a window, and threw open the shutters. But what the hill’s slope didn’t conceal, the darkness did.

She tried to keep from indulging in the hope that someone was attempting to rescue her, or who he might be.

The whine of a sword being drawn outside her chamber’s door and the clatter of feet on the stairs told her the guard had left his post. But had he left the tower?

Only one way to find out.

She stepped to the door and gave the handle a tentative pull. Miraculously, it wasn’t locked. She eased open the door a fraction and peered out: still no sign of the guard, thank heaven. She ducked back into the chamber and snatched the wineskin and the sack of oatcakes and dried beef the guard had brought earlier, and slung them over her shoulder. Praying for her luck to hold, she gathered her skirts and crept down the winding staircase, alert for sounds of the guard returning.

On the ground floor, her good luck ended at its door. The guard had moved the huge bolt to exit but must have locked the door via key from the outside. Gritting her teeth, she resisted the temptation to pound on the door’s timbers; the last thing she needed was to draw the attention of her captors.

As she glanced around for another way out, her gaze fell upon the wooden-planked flooring. Her mother had spoken of the Tor’s hill being riddled with caverns. What would be more natural than a tower with an escape route built into the hill?