Knight's Lady, page 8
part #1 of Tenebrae Series
“On the contrary, he fairly shouts it. All you need is to listen.”
“He does nothing but argue with me.”
“Indeed he does. If he cared nothing, he would ignore you entirely.”
Alex blinked in surprise, for he realized the priest was right. He rolled onto his back and stared at the dim pattern of tree branches overhead as Patrick prepared his bedroll for sleep.
***
Just short of Carlisle the weather turned suddenly cold, a light drizzle of snow hearkening back to winter. Alex’s scout rode into camp in the evening, in a hurry and his horse nearly blown. Out of breath himself and filled with excitement, he reported to Alex, “I saw them. Faerie knights encamped not far from here.”
Alex struggled to his feet, his arm as ever pressed against his side. “Did you see their ears?”
“Aye. And I smelled them.” He nodded hard, and his lanky brown hair fell into his eyes. When he tossed it from his face his goofy grin reminded Alex of one of the Beatles, though he couldn’t remember exactly which one.
Alex frowned. “Smell?”
“Indeed. Did you not know that faeries have a smell? Particularly when they are massed as these are. ’Tis similar to a freshly turned furrow. No matter how long they’ve been aboveground, they smell strongly of their burrows. Like plowed earth or dug moss.”
That tidbit of information had eluded Alex and interested him now, but he didn’t pursue it and merely grunted in reply. “Did you see the countess?”
The knight blinked in distress. “No, but she must be there, my lord. They’ve tents. I couldn’t lay eyes on all of them.”
Alex figured Lindsay must be in one of the tents. “Tell me the layout of their camp. Have they pickets posted?” He called for Patrick and the others, and the six of them gathered around their fire to map out a plan to creepy-crawl the camp. Moving with utmost stealth, they would locate and extract Lindsay without disturbing the sleeping enemy. With luck, the faeries would never know they’d been breached until Lindsay went missing the next morning. Snowflakes danced around them and hissed on their small fire. Then they slept until the moon was nearly set.
***
At full dark, when the moon was gone and the sun not nearly risen, snow was still falling. Alex and his contingent approached the camp of Reubair’s knights on foot. Stealthy and silent, they went downwind, for faerie hearing and smell were nearly as acute as an animal’s. The cold air was lucky, for dampening their scent. This was like sneaking up on a wolf pack, and at least as treacherous. Alex stopped at a rise where he could see nearly the entire arrangement of tents, and a scattering of men in bedrolls who had no tents. Lindsay wouldn’t be one of those, not if Reubair had an interest in her. She would be in one of the tents with him, under guard, and the question was which one was most likely to be his. Alex and his men would have only one chance at this, and they needed to nail the right tent the first time.
The big one in the middle. That would be the leader, and that would be Reubair. If Lindsay was in this camp, it would be in there, Alex was certain, for Reubair would want her where he could see her and control her himself. Sloppiness in dealing with Lindsay was unwise, and Reubair would know that. An image of her in chains flashed before him, and red anger colored it. Alex would kill the faerie, he was certain. Never mind whether she was hurt or not, he was going to kill Reubair on principle.
He pointed to the large green tent pitched near the crumbling embers of a good-sized cook fire and gestured for his men to follow with their swords drawn.
***
Hair stood up on the back of Alex’s neck as he led his contingent between sleeping bodies dusted with snow, toward the heart of the camp. There was no picket, and the band of raiders was overconfident in its numbers. One thing Alex had learned about knights in this time was that they tended to arrogance to the point of carelessness, and in fact took pride in it. Safety measures and conservative action deemed mandatory by his modern training were sometimes seen by knights as a form of cowardice, which made them vulnerable to stealth attack and avoidance tactics in battle. Military men would one day learn better, but meanwhile Alex, as a commander, was seven centuries ahead of his time and had the edge on these guys. He went straight to the heart of their camp, quickly, quietly, in a maneuver they would have found appalling, cowardly, and unfair — bordering on insane — had they been conscious to see it.
Nevertheless, he failed to reach the tent he’d targeted.
Not far from the cook fire, a booted foot shot out from one of the bedrolls and kicked him in the shin. He stumbled and recovered, and pain pierced his gut like a fresh sword stroke. Father Patrick, just behind him, ran up and dispatched the faerie knight with his sword, but as the wounded defender lay dying he shouted a warning through a throat gurgling with blood. Reubair’s men lying about the fire came awake and to their feet, swords drawing with the sounds of metal on metal and leather. A cry went up. With sinking heart, Alex knew he and his men were doomed.
They fought anyway. Better to go down in a struggle than to be captured. Faeries weren’t men: there was no telling what they might do to a human prisoner. Alex turned to defend Patrick, but the priest had already moved on to another opponent, and Alex found himself assaulted by two other faeries. He whaled against swords in the darkness and reeled when one knocked him sideways. His left shoulder went numb. Probably broken. He turned and swung, but it was useless. A mace knocked him to his knees, then all went black.
***
The pain was monstrous. As Alex rose toward consciousness, he struggled back into oblivion, but it was useless. He found himself astride a horse, draped over its neck and secured to the saddle with a rope. It was too tight and bound his kidneys like an iron barrel band, and when he tried to sit up he discovered a rope tied to his wrists and run beneath the horse’s neck. Just as well to remain lying over the saddle, for he couldn’t feel his left shoulder except when he tried to move it. When he did, it screamed such pain that nausea hitched in his gut. The old wound flamed agony. Something had happened to it, but he couldn’t tell what. All he could tell was that red pain radiated from deep within him. Though the air was freezing and snow floated past his face, beads of sweat on his forehead rose and dribbled down. Drops shook from the end of his nose in rhythm with the horse’s tread. He felt a vague disappointment he hadn’t died, and his mind turned with thoughts of how it would feel when he finally did.
A horse sidled up to him, and its rider spoke. “You’ve awakened.”
Alex tried to see who the speaker was but couldn’t turn his head far enough to see high enough. He replied, and blood spattered from his lips onto his sleeve. “Reubair.”
“No. Who are you, and what do you want with my master?”
A glimmer of hope sparked in Alex. They didn’t know who he was, and that suggested the possibility of escape. They might not think he was important. “Money, of course. We’re itinerant knights in need of funds. We seek gold and silver like anyone else.” He tried to make his voice suggest this should have been assumed in the first place.
“But you found a fight. Not terribly wise of you to come around us, I think.”
“Apparently not.” It was an admission calculated to appease, but Alex couldn’t deny the truth of it.
“How did you know Reubair is our liege?”
“You’re fey, yes?”
The knight snorted, and Alex wished he could see the face. “That means nothing. Many knights fight under the banner of the Dagda, rather than An Reubair’s.”
The Dagda. Alex had heard the name before. King of the Tuatha Dé Danann. He said, “But not you. You’re Reubair’s men.”
“True.” This faerie drifted into a conversational tone, as if glad to relieve some boredom. “But we fly no banner even when he is here, which he is not.”
Reubair wasn’t among these men? Alex lifted his head in an attempt to see his surroundings again, but the effort brought on more nausea and his gut felt as if it would squeeze from his wound onto the ground. If Reubair wasn’t there, then Lindsay wouldn’t be, either. He shut his eyes and hope waned. If Lindsay wasn’t with this group, then he had no idea where she would be.
But his chatty companion said, “In any case, you’ll regret your action last night. No ransom for you: we’re taking you to Ireland.”
Alex frowned in an effort at concentration. His mind was a mess, and all he could think of that related to Ireland was Robert’s efforts at eliminating the threat to Scotland from the Irish nobles loyal to England. “What’s there?”
“Reubair’s lands. Castle Finias.”
“He’s fighting on Robert’s side?”
The faerie knight laughed. “Reubair fights on his own side, always. And Robert, human that he is, has no idea these lands even exist except in legend. Reubair, for his part, is far more concerned with his relationships with Nemed and Dagda than with any human.” The faerie uttered the last word as if it were a pejorative.
Nemed. Suddenly Alex was interested in faerie politics. But his brain hurt with the effort of sorting out who was who and what was what. “What’s Dagda got to do with Nemed and Reubair?” Alex longed for a piece of that elfin sonofabitch, Nemed.
“Well, he surely wants his tribute from the lands of Finias.”
“And Reubair is worried about Dagda? Do they not get along?”
“Nemed is an elf, and was once king in his own right, before his people were destroyed. Reubair is a Christian. What would you say are the chances of accord between the three?”
Not knowing how Danann felt about elves, Alex couldn’t say. But since he knew they didn’t generally care for Christians, he guessed. “Not good.”
“Not good at all. It stands to reason the Dagda is not happy for an elf to place himself between a faerie king and his vassal. By all accounts he is less than amused by Nemed.”
Nemed controlled lands that rightly belonged to Dagda? It figured. Alex knew Nemed to be an angry, bitter, uncooperative guy, and it wouldn’t surprise him if the nasty old bastard had pissed off every Danann on the planet. Possibly even Reubair, but as this knight had said, Reubair was on his own side. Always.
A wave of nausea rolled over Alex, and his stomach heaved. A dribble of bile eased from his throat, and he spat it onto the ground under his nose. It landed and fell behind on the trail as the horse walked on. The pain made him wish he’d died in last night’s fight, but he clung to a single shred of hope. They were taking him to Reubair, and where Reubair was Alex was certain he would find Lindsay. That glimmer would keep him alive for a while, at least.
Six
Trefor made the voyage away from Eilean Aonarach with his own and Alasdair an Dubhar’s men under his command, landing the first night for a stopover on the island of Tiree. He accepted the hospitality of a landholder loyal to Robert he knew only by reputation, who lived at a place called Clachan Mór, a fair-sized keep and village at the north end of the island. He and his men were welcomed heartily for the night and were put up in quarters Trefor thought a mite plush for his bunch. He appreciated that his host was enthusiastic about his support of Robert, for the laird of this place talked much of the struggle against the English king.
His name was Maclean, and though his rank was only the Scottish title of “laird,” his clan was large and consolidated, and his wealth obvious. The castle was solid, well-appointed, and well furnished, a far more comfortable establishment than Eilean Aonarach. He also seemed to have been taking notes from the Normans in his neighborhood, for the manners evident in his household were as gracious as what Trefor had seen in gentlemen’s homes on the mainland. Of course, that didn’t say much by modern standards — even the bare-bones manners taught to him within the state foster care system — but these folks were less crude than the rough Highlanders of Trefor’s experience.
Trefor sat at table, near the head of the room in a place of honor but not so high as to encourage him to think he was above himself, and found himself impressed by the arms displayed about the walls. Maclean was related to some powerful men. Ross. Buchanan. Very powerful. Trefor also recognized the arms of James Douglas’s father, and wondered just how closely Maclean was related to the first Earl of Douglas. Sometimes it seemed to Trefor that everyone in Scotland was related, for the clans kept close track of all alliances, but it was apparent Maclean’s pedigree was exceptional.
Trefor envied it horribly.
While he was lost in his reverie, a cluster of giggly girls blew into the Great Hall like a gust of wind, aflutter with something one of them had just said that had struck them all as terribly funny, and they fell silent at sight of the visitors. All four were striking, even from across the room, decked out in fine, fashionable dresses and graced with a bit more than the average amount of jewelry. They glittered like fresh snow in sunshine.
“Deirbhile!” Maclean called out from the head of the table, and the prettiest, most glittery of the girls turned her attention to the laird. Her neck was long and pale, and her cheeks blossomed with bright pink roses. Large, bright, round eyes lit up a heart-shaped face. “Come and sit! Your meat grows cold!”
Jer-vil-uh. The unusual name caught Trefor’s attention, and he mouthed it silently. Deirbhile. He liked it. One thing about the people here was their talent for naming. Eilean Aonarach — Lonely Island. An Reubair — The Robber. Cruachan — Mountaintop. He liked that people here pronounced the “F” in his name, where folks back home in Tennessee had insisted on calling him “Trevor.” He watched, intrigued by this Deirbhile.
The girl smiled again, and dimples popped into her cheeks. She curtsied like a proper Norman lady, then took an empty seat at table, above where Trefor sat, while one of her attendants hovered behind to serve her. Deirbhile was a family member, no doubt, and he guessed she was the laird’s daughter. There was enough resemblance between her and Maclean to make a case for it, and Maclean’s young heir who sat to the laird’s right had the same coloring as she. Deep chocolate brown hair peeked from under her headdress and veils, and her bright eyes were a pale, pale blue that Trefor found spooky. When she glanced his way, he had to turn his attention to his trencher, from which he picked bits of crust and laid them absently on his tongue. Not too cool to gawk at her. If she was the daughter of his host, it was best to not be caught staring.
The conversation at table was of the weather, for a late-season storm was on its way and everyone present wondered how bad it would be when it hit. Trefor wondered when it would, for he needed to be on his way in the morning. With his knowledge of the fey arts it would be a fairly simple matter to make certain it would lay off until he was gone, but he hated to spend the effort if it was going to do that anyway. Magic didn’t wear him out so much as it used to, but it still wasn’t much fun and carried risks he didn’t care to incur unnecessarily. In magic, as in everything else, every action brought reaction. But with magic the response was usually neither equal nor opposite, and impossible to predict.
But, even as the laird expressed his hope for clear weather to hold out, there came a crack of thunder so loud it seemed to shake the heavy beams overhead. Everyone looked up. Rain slammed against the narrow, glazed windows of the Hall. Any chance for good weather was ended, and the men in the room expressed a hope that the storm would be brief and the skies clear in the morning.
That hope died the next morning when Trefor awoke, dressed, and sought the nearest arrow loop to look out. Alarm galvanized him. It had snowed during the night, and the stuff was still coming down. The nearby hills were covered in an unbroken blanket of white. Piles of it along the castle battlements reached heights of a foot or more, and it was falling in large, soggy clumps under a low, leaden sky. Trefor ascended a tight spiral stair to another loop, where he could see his ships in the bay, and his heart clutched at what he found.
Two vessels had clashed in rough water, and though the distance was too great to assess the damage, it was plain the rigging was a mess and at least one mast was broken. Trefor’s stomach dropped as he noticed one hull seemed to lie a bit lower in the water than it should. He turned and hurried to the castle bailey and called for a horse and one of his men to accompany him to the shore.
There he found the damage was even worse than he’d feared. The boat with the broken mast had also jarred a leak in the side of the vessel next to it. Two of Trefor’s three vessels were no longer seaworthy, and one of those was shipping water at an alarming rate. Enough to sink it within a day. The boats were still banging into each other with loud, hollow, wooden thuds that made Trefor flinch. Bailing crews already hard at work to stave off losing them entirely shouted to each other as they tossed buckets of water overboard and climbed about to find the leaks.
“Crap.” Trefor’s mind flew to find a plan of action. He called to one of Alex’s knights, who directed the bailing efforts. “You! George!” George, clinging to the broken mast to save his balance in the chop, turned to hear his orders.
“Have some of the men unload the supplies and weapons while you’re also unloading water. Everything we get off that ship is to the good if she sinks.”
“Aye, sir,” George replied, then turned to see who among those present he would assign the task.
Maclean rode up, accompanied by several of his attendants, and dismounted. “Bad luck, Pawlowski.” His tone conveyed genuine concern, as if they were his own boats sinking. A frown creased his aging face, and he glanced at Trefor before continuing on down toward the quay. Maclean’s merchant boats, and the fishing boats anchored up and down the harbor shore, seemed to have escaped intact, though equally as icebound. Trefor’s were the only ones with obvious and crippling damage.
Trefor followed, at a loss for what to do, for his resources consisted entirely of those ships and the men he was transporting. He’d counted on acquiring cash and barter goods on meeting up with Robert. Now, not only did he not have wherewithal for repairs, the loss of his ships would put him in a bad spot for getting any.
