Townsend, Lindsay - The Snow Bride (BookStrand Publishing Romance) (37 page)

Elfrida said nothing. She disliked—had disliked—Gregory Denzil, but his sudden death closed in on her like a shroud. The sheer, ruthless cruelty of Joseph Denzil struck at her core.
How can you, a fellow worker in magic, abuse your power so?
S
he longed to shout it into the woodland, even though she knew she would get no answers. But how could he sleep? She closed her eyes and the stricken, pallid face of Gregory Denzil hovered in her mind like a gathered storm.

A warm hand clasped her shoulder, and she shuddered. “He was so afraid,” she murmured. “I could do nothing against his fear.”

“Think no more on it,” Magnus said, gathering her firmly into his arms. “Hush now!” He stroked her hair as she stifled a sob. “My men will bury him and say some Godly words—we have done it often enough, on crusade. I owe Gregory Denzil that much.”

She rubbed at her burning eyes, angry that she was close to tears. “I have eased the dying and kept watch over the dead, so why should this death touch me so?”

“A poor death is always a horror. Would you rather feel nothing?”

“No,” she said and meant it.

“Come, then. We must make haste to find your sister now.”

Magnus had said the right words to free her. She forced some iron into her spine and moved back to the holly tree.

“We must follow these tokens,” she said, pointing at the long, thin rope of silk. “He lives alone, Magnus.”

She did not add that they should hurry. Magnus already knew that. He had already said they should search, even though it was night. It was now only two days to the final day, the solstice day.

“Better and better. How long do we have?” he added, mirroring her thoughts.

“Tonight, tomorrow, and the day after, at least until nightfall.” A wizard of dark magic would wait until twilight before beginning any major work.

“We have time, then.” Magnus cleared his throat. ‘‘’Tis good, very good.”

He is wary
, Elfrida thought as he helped her to mount one of the captured horses and swung up into the saddle behind her
,
but still he is coming with me
.

Had she not been so afraid, she would have smiled.

Magnus pressed her foot with his. “Does this Joseph know we are after him?”

She nodded, hating the admission. “Had you not helped him—” she began in a mutter, before biting down hard on her tongue. It did no good to remind Magnus of the gown he had so blithely passed to Gregory Denzil.

“What was that?”

She squeezed his arm, relieved he had not heard her. “Only that it is good to be moving again.”

“Humm,” Magnus said before calling back to their escort. There were a half-dozen warriors riding with them, red faced and raw knuckled in the biting cold. Elfrida wondered if Magnus had asked for volunteers and was glad there were only six.
Fewer of the brutes to worry over. Wit and faith will be our defenses, not manly brawn.

Does my lord Magnus understand that yet? By Gog and Magog, I hope he does!

“Does he know how close we are?” Magnus asked, draping his huge cloak over them both and giving her the ends to grip.

“I do not think so.” Elfrida was not certain, but from the signs that Joseph Denzil had left in the blue-door tower and in the ribbon she had found in the tree, she saw a confidence bordering on arrogance. “I do not feel he expects any serious pursuit. He knows someone looks for him, but he believes himself hidden and invulnerable.”

In dreams and visions he has called me Snow Bride, but never a witch. Perhaps he does not know I have such wisdom, or he discounts it. That may be his mistake, arrogance again. I trust that it is, that he has not some final weapon that I have no answer to.

She tried not to think of Gregory Denzil and his last, pawing moments of terror.

“And we have his name now, at last. Joseph.” Magnus rolled the name out as if unfurling an inferior piece of cloth and clicked his tongue. “Joseph! The name a doting mother gives her son, a mummy’s-boy name. It cuts him down from the Grendel we first thought him.”

The rough-coated, short-legged pony they were riding shied at a broken-winged blackbird lying dead on the snow in front of them. Magnus calmed the spiky-maned beast before it could bolt and gentled it into an easy canter then a slow trot.

“Perhaps some thoughts are best not spoken,” Magnus remarked, giving their mount a final pat. “Are these woods so completely his?

“Still, we need to go slowly to spot tracks and those webs of threads,” he went on, before Elfrida could respond. “We should go carefully.”

Sitting astride the pony and feeling Magnus’s arms and legs snug about her, keeping her secure in the stiff, unyielding saddle, Elfrida allowed herself to relax a little. However brazen some of his remarks, her warrior was no fool.

“Does he see you as a threat?” Magnus went on. “Does he know Christina is your sister?”

“No and no.”
I think I am right in this. I pray that I am.

They ambled on, the pony weaving between trees, and Magnus allowing the beast to pick its own way. “’Tis so dark,” he said, after a space. “We should have lanterns.”

“Could we keep them lit in this?”

“I doubt it, but any light would be welcome. I have seen him, Elfrida. I have warred with him already, in my dreams.”

Startled as she was by his confession, she was more amazed still when he added, “I drove him back by means of the amulet you gave me.”

Staggered by his admission and his use of her magic, of his total faith in her, Elfrida took in a great gasp of air to reply, “Good fight!” or “Well done!” or even “Thank you.” The cold made her cough, and she pitched forward, her lungs burning as she struggled for a full breath.

“No tumbling off into a snowdrift, Elfrida!”

A powerful, muscular arm snatched her back and held her. The pony put back its ears and snorted at the anxious rider on its back.

“Now you know,” she said, through chattering teeth, “and will be right to despise me. I am afraid, Magnus. I am a coward.” In spite of the cold and the snow, she felt herself blush, hotly, and wished he would scold her.

I have earned his derision. I should be spoiling for this encounter!

“You are brave for a lass.” Magnus sounded as sunny as midsummer, quite unperturbed.

“But I
am
afraid. I, too, have seen this Joseph in my dreams, a tall, thin shadow—”

“That is so, skinny as an icicle and as ill favored.”

Elfrida clamped her teeth tight on the rest, for she was deeply ashamed. She dared not tell him that Joseph Denzil, the priest-that-was, the necromancer, the Forest Grendel, had claimed her as his bride. What would Magnus think of her then?
By all the saints, what if he believes I somehow encouraged this creature?

“I do not know if I can stop him, Magnus,” she said presently.

Behind her, she heard a gentle sigh. “But you are still riding, my heart. You are still going to meet the challenge. That is courage, to fear and yet to keep going. In the end, we can do no other, you and I.”

He leaned into her, and she leaned back.

“How do you keep fighting?” she asked, planting a swift kiss on his arm. In the dark she sensed him smile.

“By thinking of my men, my friends, and those I would save.”

“What if he feels us coming and kills Christina for spite?” It was her greatest dread. “Look at what happened to Gregory Denzil, his own kindred!” The haggard, choking face of Gregory Denzil flickered briefly on the snow before her, and when she peered between the trees, she saw glimpses of closing shadows.

Magnus did not insult her fear by offering facile comfort. “We must draw him out, not pen him in. It will not be easy, but there are ways. In any siege, there is always a way.”

Elfrida said nothing. She could only hope that he was right.

Chapter 28

His good witch was right to be scared, Magnus knew, kicking aside a branch as the pony plodded down a slope decked out with blackberry thorns, holly horns, hazel and elder and, to add to the good cheer of the season, another dead blackbird, frozen against a tree stump. He knew she had stopped herself from mentioning her gown that he had tossed so casually to Gregory Denzil, but it was still on her mind, and rightly so. Joseph Denzil must have her gown and what magic, what mischief could he make from it?

“Nothing good.” Magnus growled, wishing he could have that time back again, do things differently. Dashing in Gregory Denzil’s brains much earlier might have been a start.

He had not said anything to Elfrida, but for all his high words, he loathed the idea of Joseph Denzil being a priest. He had seen a few priests and clerics gone to wickedness in the East, and with their learning and focus they were always trouble.

Never fret, Magnus! At least your lass does not know Joseph Denzil claimed her as his bride.

The cheering thought was like a swig of mead as he poked and threaded about the trees.
Seeking threads and ribbons like a girl seeking a love token
. But sometimes unpleasant tasks needed doing, and this was one of those times.

He never minded tracking, but this furtive grubbing through the undergrowth like thieves in the dark was not to his taste. He imagined Elfrida as a blonde, a little less pretty, less vivid, less tender—less like Elfrida and more like her kidnapped sister, Christina—and that spurred him on, made him keep watching out. His men behind rode in a sullen column but they, too, knew better than to grumble.

What else had Elfrida said just now about Christina? That she was secure in an ancient stone tower, set close to a Roman road to the north of here, deeper within the forest. That this would be one of her last remaining days alive.

He looked up and received a face full of snow from a lime tree. He shook it from his eyes and saw the thin, flickering ribbon, twisting round the trunk of a half-rotten oak.

“There!” Elfrida had spotted it, too, and was pointing, her outstretched arm a pale shadow in the gloom.

“We go on, eh?” he remarked, lighter for the brief victory.

This endless, tumbling, needle-sharp snow may be more than nature, may fall on our backs at Joseph Denzil’s urging, but we are closing on his lair. Christina must live! Today may be close to the darkest time of the year, but we shall find her.

He opened his mind to the rest, that finding Elfrida’s sister might find them Denzil, and he relished the prospect.

For all his fancy Eastern learning and friendship with devils, he will not stop my hands meeting around his throat.

Part of him knew this was wrong, that the necromancer would not be simple to vanquish, but he could be cunning himself, if need be. He remembered his stubborn, headstrong rush against the blue tower, when his great-hearted, anxious, determined little witch had scolded like a magpie—rightly so, he thought with a frown. This time his charge would be at the end, to swoop in swiftly from a clear, unblemished sky like a falcon, seize Christina, and crush her captor.

Surprise is the key. The creature is arrogant. Excellent! Let us use that pride against him. We have few hours to waste, but there are enough for us to throw down false trails. I have my wits and strength and loyal followers. And I have Elfrida.

* * * *

The night and the forest seemed endless to Elfrida as they roamed deeper into the woods, taking a route that seemed more south and east than north. She understood why Magnus had chosen this less direct approach, to disguise their real intent, but the slogging distance gnawed at her. She wanted to travel by the fastest way, to find the Roman road, to gallop along it.