Knight's Lady, page 4
part #1 of Tenebrae Series
The faerie attacked, and Alex defended but was caught off guard and fell backward. He tripped over a protruding stone and slammed onto his back in the path. His opponent hauled back in almost a leisurely manner, and though Alex tried to roll he was too slow. The glinting faerie sword caught his belly and the point slipped through his hauberk. The stab was like a sock in the gut, and Alex let out a howl of pain. Metallic agony. The enemy yanked out his sword, gazed at him a moment, then moved on with a look on his narrow-eyed face that said he was satisfied Alex would die soon.
Alex retrieved his sword from the stone pathway beneath his hand and struggled to roll over and follow, but the paralyzing pain made him woozy. One hand pressed to hold in his entrails, for he was certain they would spill onto the ground, and blood flowed over it, red and sticky. Black spots swam before his eyes, and the battle raging around him slowed in his perception. He watched the enemy swarm to each corner of his castle, slaughtering his knights and murdering the servants. He figured he was about to die, and he found himself surprised it had finally happened to him.
Lindsay. Where was Lindsay? He struggled to his feet and searched the melee but didn’t see her. He called out, “Lindsay!” But there was no reply other than the clanging of swords and the dull clank of weapons on armor. Feet splayed for balance, one hand pressed hard to his belly in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding.
Then, as suddenly as they had assaulted, the invaders turned and made their retreat. Leaving the mangled MacNeil knights behind, the faerie knights stood down and hurried from the bailey and back out to the island interior. A few of Alex’s men followed, but they were not mounted and were discouraged when the trailing enemy knights turned to address them. Finally, the faeries made their retreat and disappeared into the forest beyond.
For Alex, the world tilted and darkened, and he went to one knee. A roaring filled his head. Once again he called Lindsay’s name and had no reply. Then there was nothing at all.
Three
Trefor emerged from the hole in the ground with some difficulty. He was a mite larger than the Bhrochan, and he guessed this breach had not been made for him. He wriggled and squirmed his way through, until the earth squeezed him like a glob of toothpaste onto the grass in the clearing from which he’d come six months before. Then he lay there to rest a moment after the hard climb. He was out of shape; he’d had too much lounging around in laziness with the wee folk and needed to get back to real life. As soon as his breathing returned to normal, he sat up and looked around. Well, no better way to solve that problem than to get walking back to the castle. He climbed to his feet and set out, tugging his tunic at the back when the breeze annoyed too much.
Along the way, he sensed presence. Not just one, but many, and the track he trod evidenced the passing of a number of large horses. Chargers, not the tiny garrons of the local farmers. An armed party had passed through here, headed for the western shore. Back the way he’d come. Alex’s knights on patrol? Training exercises, perhaps? That was the logical assumption, but the sense he had was not peaceful. There was violence here. Anguish. Blood was in the air, though there was none on the ground to be seen. Something bad had just happened, and he shuddered with evil energy.
In a hurry to get away from it, he ran part of the way to his father’s castle and arrived at the inland curtain in short order. It was only a few miles. Relieved to be back, he jogged across the pasture before the inland curtain, toward the portcullis where he would call to the sentry for admittance.
But instead of leaving the evil behind, he found he’d run toward it. A rain of crossbow bolts thudded around him, and he skidded to a halt. “Hey!” He held up his hands to show he was unarmed and went very still. A dark line of men-at-arms stood along the battlement, most of them reloading their weapons, but enough of them had not yet fired and held a bead on him so he didn’t dare move. “Hey, you men! It’s me! Sir Trefor Pawlowski! What is the reason for this?”
The knights above lowered their weapons, and one spoke. “Trefor Pawlowski? You dress strangely for a knight.”
“Let me in. You know it’s me.” If any of these guys were his own men he was going to tear some new orifices.
The speaker did know him, for it was one of his men, and the gate opened for him immediately. But nobody seemed interested in where he’d been, nor were they concerned about this irritation, and as Trefor went up the path and looked around, all thoughts of kicking ass over being shot at dissipated. The castle was in an uproar over a recent attack. Blood still stood in puddles and rivulets on paving stones underfoot, so that Trefor’s bare feet slipped in it. Some bloodied bodies were laid out near the stables, and a couple of them had the pointed ears and unnaturally shiny armor of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Out of old habit, he touched his hair to make sure it covered his own faerie ears. Something really weird had just happened here. But before he could stop to find out what, he needed to procure some proper clothing. He tried to refrain from tugging at his tunic as he made his way up the winding path through the bailey to the keep, and wondered whether his stuff was still there.
The Great Hall was empty of people. Everyone seemed busy elsewhere. He saw nobody in the presence chamber downstairs, either, and went to the room off of it he’d occupied when he was here. The place was larger than most of the bedchambers he’d seen, but windowless, and it felt like a cave, much like the burrows he’d lived in for the past few months. A feeling of chronic claustrophobia set in.
He found his belongings there, stacked at the far end of the quarters he’d occupied six months before. It looked like someone else was about to use the room, for there were fresh linens on the beds and a ewer of clean water on the table. No dust anywhere. He threw off his filthy tunic and poured water into the bowl to wash.
His mother’s waiting maid, a coarse village woman who didn’t like him much, burst into the room and stood regarding him with surprise. Mary’s face was smeared with tears and blood. “What do you want?”
He ignored her as he continued to wash. She waited for a reply, but he declined to speak.
Finally she said as if desperate for something to say, “This room has been prepared for Himself.”
“What happened out there?”
“Your people attacked us, that’s what.”
His people? “My people are here. What are you talking about?”
She glowered at him, and her lips pressed together in a stubbornness he recognized. He would learn nothing from her, and it was only because he looked like a faerie and therefore a stranger. So he said. “Why is the earl, my cousin, sleeping here?” He took a towel to wipe his face dry. “What’s wrong with the lord’s own quarters?”
“They’re for a visitor tonight. An important guest.” By which, of course, he was to understand he himself was not important. He ignored that, too.
“And where is our fearless leader?”
Mary blinked and stammered a bit, then said, “He’s indisposed.”
Trefor looked around. “Where?”
“In his own bed. He’s wounded, and wondering where you’ve been these past months.”
“Around. I’ve been around.” Trefor squelched his concern over the report his father had been wounded, but couldn’t help asking, “What happened to him? What’s going on here?”
“Not that I believe you would concern yourself at all, but the earl was wounded defending the castle.”
Trefor figured that was a “duh.” He asked with strained patience, “Against whom?”
“Nobody kens who the attackers were. But they’ve taken our dear Lady Cruachan. She’s gone missing since the battle, and nobody can find even a body.”
A heavy thud of alarm hit Trefor’s gut, and it was all he could do to pretend it hadn’t knocked him sideways. His mother had never known him as a son. She’d never liked him any better than Mary did, and during the short time between her return from the Borderlands last summer and his departure to the Bhrochan domain he’d been barred by Alex from even speaking to her. But even so, just by the day or two he’d been with her after his birth, she was still more of a mother than he’d had in the Tennessee foster care system. Though he tried to keep his voice uncaring, he could hear the hard edge to it when he responded, “What happened?”
Mary’s eyes were wide with tears now. “Nobody can say. The faeries broke through the portcullis and swarmed the bailey. The earl defended us with his life, and now he may be finished.”
Without another word, Trefor turned to yank a shirt, a pair of trews, and a belt from the pile of clothing atop some of his other things against the wall and threw them on. Then he hurried to Alex’s quarters, where he found his father sitting on the edge of the bed.
Alex looked up as Trefor blew into the room and came to a stuttering halt at sight of Alex and the people surrounding him. Trefor’s father was white of face and blood soaked. A bandage purple with blood wrapped his midsection, and his face and hands were smeared red. A few servants stood by with linen cloth, water, and sewing tools for suturing, and there was a well-turned-out stranger who plainly was the “important” guest Mary had mentioned. The stranger was also blood spattered but didn’t appear to have been wounded. He and Alex were the only ones in the room who didn’t seem frightened; everyone else was teary-eyed and moving about their business with surreptitious clumsiness.
Alex looked up at Trefor and said, “Good of you to join us.” Sarcastic as ever, that Alasdair. “Where have you been?” He panted a little from the pain but otherwise was holding himself together.
Trefor’s lips pressed together, and he refrained from replying, for anything he might have said just then would have been unproductive. Alex knew who the Bhrochan were, but Trefor didn’t care to speak of them in front of this fancy-dressed guy he didn’t know. Even in this century, where belief in faeries was more acceptable than in the modern era, he kept his ears covered for a reason, and in fact checked once more to be certain they weren’t giving away his heritage to a stranger.
“What happened?”
“I was stabbed.”
Trefor waited for an actual response, and the visitor replied for Alex, “The castle was attacked. We don’t know who it may have been, and the countess has gone missing. She must have been what the enemy sought, for they broke off of a sudden and left us, and there is no body to be found.”
“You’ve searched the entire castle? Every corner of the bailey?” Trefor knew his mother was a fighter and could have ended up anywhere, wounded and perhaps dying. Or already dead.
Anguish. Blood. He’d sensed it on the trail.
“There’s no sign of her. All others are accounted for.”
Alex, breathless from his pain, interrupted. “Trefor Pawlowski, this man is John Rothbury, Earl of Morpeth, messenger from the king.”
Trefor and Morpeth nodded greeting to each other, and Trefor’s nod dipped low enough to almost be a bow. He’d been in this century long enough to recognize pecking order, and obeyed the protocol.
Trefor then turned to Alex and took on a condescending tone meant to piss him off. “Don’t tell me you’ve lost her again.”
Alex threw him an evil look, and Trefor tossed it right back. Wounded and bleeding, Alex drew some deep breaths, then began to struggle to his feet. Mary went to him, protesting he should lie down for he was in no condition to stand, but Cruachan growled at her so she stepped back. Then he pulled himself upright. Everyone in the room tensed, ready to catch him if he should fall. But, though he trembled with the effort, he held himself steady and didn’t sway.
Morpeth said, “You won’t be of much service to the king now, I’m afraid.” His tone of regret suggested he thought Alex was about to die.
Alarm rattled Trefor again, and his jaw clenched.
Alex said, “Nonsense. Return to Robert and tell him my men and I will meet him in Ireland as requested.” Sweat ran from his brow and past one eye, and he paled even more.
“I cannot tell him that.” The king’s representative spoke gently, but his conviction was clear. He had no faith Alex would live to fulfill his promise.
Trefor thought he might be right but saw an opportunity and leapt upon it in an instant. “I’ll go.”
All in the room turned to him, and he resented their surprise. They thought of him as a distant cousin, and further that his loyalty was in question. Nobody but Alex and Lindsay knew he was Alex’s son. They never gave him credit for being a MacNeil, and that angered him nearly as much as the rejection from his parents.
“No, I’ll be fine,” said Alex.
“Of course you will, cousin. But you have other business to attend to, more important than the war in Ireland.”
Alex gave a quick glance at Morpeth, whose eyebrows went up at the suggestion Robert’s summons might not be the most important consideration here. Then Alex said for his benefit, “There is nothing more important than the defense of Scotland, Trefor, and I’m shocked you could say there was.”
“Your wife. If you live, she will need you.”
“She is lost,” said Morpeth.
Trefor guessed this guy didn’t know the Earl of Cruachan very well if he thought Alex would let his wife go so easily. If there was any possibility Lindsay was still alive, Alex would find her and bring her back. The one thing Trefor had been able to figure out about his father was that. He used that knowledge now.
“Surely, Morpeth, you can’t expect Cruachan to let his wife languish in the hands of his enemy,” he said.
“No more than Robert ‘lets’ his wife be captive of the English king.”
Trefor blinked, puzzled to learn this. He glanced at Alex, who nodded affirmation that the Queen of Scotland was currently imprisoned in England. Nevertheless, Trefor pressed Alex. “The attacker was Danann. You know it had to be An Reubair.”
The blow landed like a right hook. Alex actually flinched. He looked long and hard at Trefor, and the slightly younger man gazed blandly back. They both knew it must be the truth. The dead faeries sprawled in the bailey outside were testimony to it. Who else of the Danann would have done such a thing? An Reubair — The Robber. The faerie knight who had once employed Lindsay as a hired sword. Alex’s eyes flared bright with anger, and a warm satisfaction filled Trefor. He was as good as on his way to Ireland, where he would be within notice of the king and in Alex’s place. Almost as good a deal as the inheritance he would never get. He turned to Morpeth for his acceptance of the offer.
Morpeth was no fool, and it was plain he didn’t care who came to fight for Robert, so long as there were sufficient men to fill the tribute. He nodded to Trefor and said, “The king will be pleased to see you and the men of Eilean Aonarach in Ireland within a fortnight.” Then he said to Alex, with what appeared heartfelt sorrow for the loss of a peer, “God be with you, Cruachan.” Everyone present knew Morpeth figured Alex would die soon, and most of them thought the same thing. With that, the king’s messenger left the room, his business concluded.
The instant Morpeth was out of earshot, Alex sank to sit on the edge of his bed again and hissed at Trefor in modern English, “You little shit.”
“Whatever do you mean, dear father?” Irritation rose, for he was nearly the same age as Alex, and Alex knew Trefor hated being called “little.” Never mind the other.
“You know exactly what I mean. If you undermine me with Robert I’ll have your head on a platter.”
“If I undermine you with Robert, you’ll be in no position to ask for my head.”
“Take care.”
“Have faith.”
Alex fell silent at that, and some of the anger left his eyes. Like he was thinking. Considering the possibility Trefor wouldn’t betray him. But he said nothing. Instead he continued his descent to the bed and lay back, his arm across his bandaged gut. Then his eyes closed and he went still, and Trefor thought for a moment he might have died. But Alex breathed again, and Trefor found the relief of it disconcerting. It would all be so much simpler if Alex would just go ahead and croak, and have done with it. Then Lindsay would be lost to her faerie buddy and Trefor might be able to maneuver himself into the empty spot in Robert’s good graces. But Alex was still breathing, and Trefor felt like a monster for wishing he weren’t.
***
Alex slept. When he awoke, the room was dark and seemed empty. He called for Father Patrick, and the pain of raising his voice above a whisper sliced through his gut, sharp and metallic and terrifying. A murmur of people he couldn’t see went up in the bedchamber, and he summoned the strength to insist he wasn’t dying. Nobody was convinced, and the priest stepped in from the anteroom where it was apparent he’d been waiting. Bent over Alex in his bed, he gripped his beads and began to murmur a prayer, but Alex held the fist and rosary with a hand flaky with dried blood and whispered low enough that only Patrick would hear, “Stop. I don’t need that right now; I need to get out of here.”
“Out?” The priest also whispered, possibly in collusion but probably more in astonishment.
“Put me on a fishing boat and get me to wherever An Reubair is.”
“If you travel, then you will die.”
“I won’t. There’s no smell of bowel in this wound, and I haven’t bled out yet so I’m not likely to.”
“But if you travel—”
“I’m going to heal.” Never mind peritonitis; if the bowel wasn’t cut he figured he would beat infection just by pure will. He couldn’t die now. Lindsay needed him. There was no choice but to go. “Get me out of here, and I’ll heal on the way there. Pick five men, including yourself. Just the men, not their squires. Nobody but knights on this trip. I’m taking us to the Borderlands, where An Reubair is making raids. He’s a... a man—”
“A faerie.”
Alex fell silent. He’d known Patrick believed faeries existed but hadn’t realized the priest knew anything else about them.
Patrick said in response to Alex’s surprise, “None of the enemy dead in the bailey are human. It doesn’t take a sharp intelligence to understand their leader is also one of them.”
