Knight Triumphant
Available in:
- eBook
- Paperback
- Hardcover
- Book info
- Sample
- Media
- Author updates
- Lists
Synopsis
"An incredible storyteller." -- Los Angeles Daily News Knight Takes Pawn After her husband Afton, Lord of Langley, falls prey to a deadly plague, Englishwoman Igrainia finds herself a captive in her own castle. . .held hostage by Scottish warrior Eric Graham. To Graham, Igrainia is merely a political pawn, a pretty prize to dangle in front of the English king. But when the king refuses a trade--Igrainia for the wife of Scotland's ruler Robert the Bruce--Graham forces Igrainia to marry him. What Graham never expects is the desire that his strong-willed bride stirs in his soul. And when Igrainia discovers the true heart of the fearsome knight, her life--and loyalties--will never be the same...
Release date: January 1, 1949
Publisher: Zebra Books
Print pages: 424
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
Reader buzz
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
Author updates
Close
Knight Triumphant
Heather Graham
They were surely madmen.
From the hill, Igrainia could see the riders coming.
They flew the flags of Robert the Bruce.
They had to be mad.
She rode with a party of twenty men, selected carefully for their skill and courage—and, of course, the simple fact that they were still alive and well. They wore full armor and carried well-honed weapons with which they were very adept.
There were less than half that number coming toward them, a pathetically ragtag band, racing up the hill.
“My lady . . . ?” queried Sir Morton Hamill, head of her guard.
“Can we outrun them?” she asked.
Sir Morton let out a sound of disgust. “Outrun them!” He was indignant. “They are but rabble; their so-called king runs to the forests while his family is slain in his stead. The Bruce is aware that he is an outlaw to most of his own people. My lady, there is no reason to run.”
“No reason,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “except that more men will die. I am weary of death.”
The riders were still gaining on them at a breakneck pace, racing from the site of the castle, where surely even they had realized that the black crosses covering the stone were no ploy of the enemy, but a true warning of the situation within.
Sir Morton was trying hard to hold his temper. “My lady, I am aware of the pain in your heart. But these are the very renegades who brought the terror to your home, who cost you . . . who cost you everything.”
“No man, or woman, asks for the plague, Sir Morton. And indeed, if you ask Father MacKinley, he will tell you that God sent the sickness in his anger that we should brutally make hostages of women and children, and execute our enemies so freely. We were warned of the sickness; we refused to believe the warnings of our foes. So now, if we can outrun the renegades, that is my choice. It was not my choice to leave Langley. I want no more death laid at my feet.”
“Alas. We cannot outrun them,” Sir Morton argued then. “They are almost upon us.”
She stared at him angrily. “You would fight them rather than do your duty to bring me to safety.”
“My lady, you are beside yourself with grief and cannot think clearly. I would fight such upstart rebels, aye, my lady, for that is my duty.”
“Sir Morton, I am in my full senses, quite capable of coherent thought—”
“My lady, watch! Your position here on the hill is excellent; you may view the carnage as I take my revenge on these knaves!”
Furious, Igrainia reined in her horse as Sir Morton called out an order to his men. He did not intend to await the enemy. He meant to attack first.
“Sir Morton!” She raged with fury, her heart sick as she watched the men spur their horses to his command. In seconds, the liege men of her late lord, Afton of Langley, spurned her order and took flight down the hill.
They seemed to sail in a sea of silver, armor gleaming in the sun. The colors they flew, the rich blue and red, noble colors, created a riot of shades along with the silver stream. Down the hill, a display of might and power . . .
Bearing down upon a sad rabble, scattered horsemen on fine enough mounts, some in tarnished armor, most in no more than leather jerkins to protect their hearts from the onslaught of steel that would soon come their way.
At her distance, she could see their leader. She frowned, wondering what madness would make a man risk certain death. She narrowed her eyes against the sun, studying the man. A small gasp escaped her.
She had seen him before. She knew, because he rode without protection; no helmet covered his head, and the length of his tangled blond hair glinted in the sun with almost as much of a sheen as the steel helmets worn by her own people. She had seen him dragged in with the other captured men, shackled in irons. He had looked like a wild man, uncivilized, a barbarian, yet despite the dirt and mud that marred his clothes, she had seen his eyes once, when they had met hers, and she had read something frightening in that glance. She had the odd feeling that he had allowed himself to be taken prisoner, though why, she didn’t know. Or perhaps she did. Castle Langley, as her husband’s home was called, had just been turned into quarters for the king’s men when they had come through, bearing the families of Scottish outlaws to London, where they would be held until their rebel kin surrendered.
And offered their own necks to the axeman’s blade.
Sir Morton’s men were nearly upon the riders. In the glittering sunlight, it was almost a beautiful spectacle, the gleam and glint of steel and color . . .
Until the riders came together in a hideous clash, horses screaming, men shouting, steel becoming drenched in the deep red of blood. Tears suddenly stung her eyes; Afton had wanted no part of this. He had been furious with the order to welcome the king’s men, to house renegades who were his own people. He had demanded that the hostages not be treated as animals, even when they spoke with their highland language and strange burrs, and looked like wild creatures from heathen times. He had stood, a proud voice of reason and mercy, until he had fallen . . .
And neither her love nor her prowess with herbs had managed to save him.
He would have been furious at this bloodbath, had he been with her.
Had he had his way, they would never have come to this . . .
She gasped, bringing her hand to her lips as she saw that a rebel had met Sir Morton head on, ever ready to do battle. The rebel was the wild man with the tangled blond hair.
Sir Morton’s sword never made contact with the rebel’s flesh.
Sir Morton’s head fell to the earth and bounced as his body continued through the mass upon his horse, until that part of him, too fell to the ground to be trampled upon.
Bile filled her throat. She closed her eyes, and lowered her head, fighting the sickness that threatened to overwhelm her. Dear God, she had just left plague victims, nursed the sick and the putrid and the rotting and . . .
With her eyes closed, she could still see the head, bouncing.
The clash of steel seemed to rise in a cacophony around her; she heard more cries, shouts, the terrified whinnies of warhorses, animals accustomed to battle and mayhem. She forced herself to look up.
The finest armor to be found had not protected the men of Langley from the fury of the rebels’ wrath. Men lay everywhere.
Armor glinting in the sun. The shining intermittent, against the bloodstained field. Some had survived. Unhorsed, the men milled in a circle. There were shouts and commands; the blond giant was on his feet as well, approaching the eight or so men of Langley who remained standing. Watching, appalled, she didn’t realize her own danger. Voices carried on the air.
“Do we slay them now?” someone inquired.
The blond man replied, then shouted at the survivors. Swords fell to the ground. One man fell to his knees. Did he do so in absolute desolation, or in gratitude for his life?
Were they to be executed? Or were their lives to be spared?
She couldn’t tell. Others were talking, but they spoke in softer voices.
One of the rebels pointed up the hill.
Then, suddenly, the blond man was staring at her.
She couldn’t see his eyes in the distance. She could only remember them.
He started toward his horse.
Only then did she realize her own situation, and that he was mounting to ride once again, after her.
She spurred her horse, praying that she knew this region better than he, that her mare was a fresher mount, ready to take her to greater bursts of speed . . .
For a far longer period of time.
She prayed . . .
There had been a time, not so long ago, that she had wanted to die. When the death and despair had seemed so great that she would willingly have taken Afton’s hand, and entered the afterlife with him. That moment when she realized that she had lost him, that he had breathed his last, that his laughter would never sound again.
And yet now . . .
She did not want to depart this life at the hands of a furious barbarian, bent on some form of revenge. She thought of how Edward I had killed Wallace, of the horrors that had taken place, of the English furor at the crowning of Robert Bruce.
And she rode as she had never done before, flat against her mare’s neck, heels jamming the beast’s haunches, whispers begging her to ever greater speed. The rebel’s horse had to be flagging; their animals had been foaming when they first met with the men of Langley. If she could just evade him for a distance . . .
She galloped over the hill, through the thick grasses of the lea to the north. The forest beckoned beyond the hill, a forest she knew well, with twisting trails and sheltering oaks, a place in which to disappear. She could see the trees, the great branches waving high in the sky, the darkness of the trails beneath the canopy of leaves. She could smell the very richness of the earth and hear the leaves, as she could hear the thunder of her horse’s hooves, the desperate, ragged catch of her own breath, the pulse of her heartbeat, echoed with each thunder of a hoof upon the earth. There . . . just a moment away . . .
She was never aware that his horse’s hoofbeats thundered along with those of her mare; the first she knew of him was the hook of his arm, sweeping her from her horse in a deadly gamble. She was whisked from the mare and left to watch as the horse made the shelter of the trees. And for a moment, she looked on, in amazement, as she dangled from the great warhorse, a prisoner taken by a madman.
She began to twist and struggle, and bite—a sound enough attack so that he swore, and dropped her. His horse was huge; she fell a distance to the earth, stunned, then gathered her senses quickly and began to run. She headed for the dark trail, desperately, running with the speed of a hunted doe.
Yet again, she was swept off her feet, this time, lifted up, and thrown down, and the next thing she knew, he was on top of her, smelling of the earth and the blood of battle. She screamed, fought, kicked, yet found her hands vised above her head, and the barbarian straddled atop her, staring at her with a cold, wicked fury that allowed no mercy.
“You are the lady of Langley,” he said.
“Igrainia,” she replied.
“I don’t give a damn about your name,” he told her. “But you will come with me, and you will demand that the gates be opened.”
She shook her head, “I cannot—”
She broke off as he raised a hand to strike her. The blow did not fall.
“You will,” he said simply. “Or I will break you, bone by bone, until you do so.”
“There is plague there, you idiot!”
“My wife is there, and my daughter,” he told her.
“They are all dead or dying within the castle!”
“So you run in fear!” he said contemptuously.
“No! No,” she raged, struggling to free herself again. Afraid? Of the plague? She was afraid only of life without Afton now.
Not quite true, she realized. She was afraid of this man who would carry out his every threat, and break her. Bone by bone. She had never seen anyone so coldly determined.
“I am not afraid of the plague for myself!” she managed to snap out with an amazing tone of contempt.
“Good. We will go back, my fine lady, and you will dirty your hands with caring for those who are ill. You will save my wife, if she is stricken, or so help me, you will forfeit your own life.”
Dirty her hands? He thought she was afraid to dirty her hands after the days and nights she had been through?
Her temper rose like a battle flag, and she spat at him. “Kill me then, you stupid, savage fool! I have been in that castle. Death does not scare me. I don’t care anymore. Can you comprehend that? Are such words in your vocabulary?”
She gasped as he stood, wrenching her to her feet.
“If my wife or my daughter should die because of the English king’s cruelty against the innocent, my lady, you are the one who will pay.”
“My husband is dead because of the sickness brought in by your people!” she cried, trying to wrench her arm free. She could not. She looked at the hand vised around her arm. Huge, long-fingered, covered in mud and earth and . . .
Blood.
His grip seemed stronger than steel. Not to be broken. She stood still, determined not to tremble or falter. His face was as muddied and filthy as his hand and tangled blond hair. Only those sky blue eyes peered at her uncovered by the remnants of battle, brilliant and hard.
He either hadn’t heard her, or he didn’t give a damn. His command of language seemed to be excellent, so she assumed it was the latter.
“Hear me again. If my wife dies, my lady, you will be forfeit to the mercy of the Scottish king’s men.”
“Mercy? There is no mercy to be had there.”
“At this point? Perhaps you are quite right. Therefore, you had best save my wife.”
“I, sir, have no difficulty doing anything in my power to save the stricken, though I can assure you—their lives are in God’s hands, and no others. I was forced to leave Langley. I did not go of my own volition.”
He arched a brow skeptically. “You were willing to serve the plague-stricken and dying?”
“Aye, I would have stayed there willingly. I had no reason to leave.”
“You are the lady of Langley.”
“Indeed.”
He didn’t seem to care why she would have stayed.
“Then, as you say, it will be no hardship for you to return.”
“Where I go, or what is done to me, does not matter in the least.”
“You will save my wife, and my child.”
She raised her chin.
“As I have told you, and surely you must understand, their lives are in God’s hands. What, then, if I cannot save them?”
“Then it will be fortunate that you seem to have so little care for your own life.”
He shoved her forward.
With no other choice, Igrainia walked.
Yet her heart was sinking.
If your wife is among the women stricken, then I am afraid that she has already died! Igrainia thought.
Because she had lied. She had thought herself immune to fear when she left Langley. Immune to further pain. Now, she was discovering that she did fear for her life, that there was something inside her that instinctively craved survival.
She wanted to live.
But if she failed, so he proclaimed, he would break her. That was certainly no less savage than the commands given by Edward in regard to the wives and womenfolk of any man loyal to Robert the Bruce.
Break her. Bone by bone.
It was all in God’s hands. But maybe this filthy and half-savage man, no matter how articulate, didn’t comprehend that.
“I will save your wife and child, if you will give me a promise.”
“You think that you can barter with me?” he demanded harshly.
“I am bartering with you.”
“You will do as I command.”
“No. No, I will not. Because you are welcome to lop off my head here and now if you will not barter with me.”
“Do you think that I will not?”
“I don’t care if you do or do not!”
“So the lord of Langley is dead!” he breathed bitterly.
“Indeed. So you have no power over me.”
“Believe me, my lady, if I choose, I can show you that I have power over you. Death is simple. Life is not. The living can be made to suffer. Your grief means nothing to me. It was the lord of Langley who imprisoned the women and children.”
She shook her head. “You’re wrong! So foolishly wrong! What care they received was by his order. Those who will live will do so, because he commanded their care. And he is dead because of the wretched disease brought in by your women and your children.”
“None of this matters!” he roared to her.
She ignored his rage, and the tightening vise of his fingers around her arm.
She stared at his hand upon her, and then into his eyes, so brilliantly blue and cold against the mud-stained darkness of his face.
“I will save your wife and child, if you will swear to let your prisoners live.”
Again, he arched a brow and shrugged. “Their fates matter not in the least to me; save her, and they shall live.”
She started forward again, then once more stopped. She had spoken with contempt and assurance. A bluff, a lie. And now, her hands were shaking. “What if I cannot? What if it has gone too far? God decides who lives and dies, and the black death is a brutal killer—”
“You will save them,” he said.
They had reached his horse, an exceptionally fine mount. Stolen, she was certain, from a wealthy baron killed in battle. He lifted her carelessly upon the horse, then stared up at her, as if seeing her, really seeing her, perhaps for the first time.
“You will save them,” he repeated, as if by doing so he could make it true.
“Listen to me. Surely, you understand this. Their lives are in God’s hands.”
“And yours.”
“You are mad; you are possessed! Only a madman thinks he can rule a plague. Not even King Edward has power over life and death against such an illness. Kings are not immune, no man, no woman—”
“My wife and child must survive.”
He had no sense, no intellect, no reason!
“Which of the women is your wife?” she asked. She wondered if she could kick his horse, and flee. She was in the saddle; he was on the ground.
“And if I give you a name, what will it mean to you?” he inquired.
“I have been among the prisoners.”
It seemed he doubted that. “Margot,” he told her. “She is tall, slim and light, and very beautiful.”
Margot. Aye, she knew the woman. Beautiful indeed, gentle, moving about, cheering the children, nursing the others . . .
Until she had been struck down.
She had been well dressed, and had worn delicate Celtic jewelry, as the wife of a notable man, a lord, or a wealthy man at the least.
Rather than a filthy barbarian such as this.
But it was said that even Robert Bruce, King of the Scots, looked like a pauper often enough these days. He was a desperate man, ever searching out a ragtag army, reduced to hunger and hardship time and time again.
“Who are you?” she asked
“Who I am doesn’t matter.”
“Do you even have a name, or should I think of you as Madman, or Certain Death?”
His eyes lit upon her with cold fury. “You must have a name when it doesn’t matter, when your life is at stake? When Edward has decreed that Scottish women are fair game, no better than outlaws to be robbed, raped or murdered? Wouldn’t you be the one who is surely mad to expect chivalry in return for such barbarity, and test the temper of a man whose rage now equals that of your king? You would have a name? So be it. I am Eric, Robert Bruce’s liege man by choice, sworn to the sovereign nation of Scotland, a patriot by both birth and choice. You see, my father was a Scottish knight, but my grandfather, on my mother’s side, was a Norse jarl of the western isles. So there is a great deal of berserker—or indeed, madman—in me, lady. You must beware. We are not known to act rationally—and by God, no matter what our inclination at any time—mercifully. Now, tell me what I ask. Does my wife live? You do know her, don’t you?”
“Aye. I know her. Father MacKinley is with her,” Igrainia said. “She lives. When I left, she still lived.” Aye, she knew his wife. She had spoken with her often when the disease had brought them together, forgetting nationalities and loyalties, fighting death itself.
And she knew his little girl. The beautiful child with the soft yellow hair and huge blue eyes, smiling even when she fell ill. The little girl had gone into a fever with a whimper.
But the woman had been so ill, burning, twisting, crying out . . .
She would die. And then . . .
Igrainia suddenly grabbed the reins and slammed the horse with her heels, using all the strength she had.
The huge gray warhorse reared, pawing the air. Igrainia clung desperately to the animal, hugging its neck, continuing to slam her heels against its flank. The man was forced to move back, and she felt hope take flight in her heart as the horse hit the ground and started running toward the trees.
Yet nearly to the trail, the animal came to an amazing halt, reared again, and spun.
This time, Igrainia did not keep her seat.
She hit the ground with a heavy thud that knocked the air from her.
A moment later, he was back by her side, reaching down to her, wrenching her to her feet. “Try to escape again, and I will drag you back in chains.”
She gasped for breath, shaking her head. “No one will stop your entry at the castle. Only the truly mad would enter there. I cannot help your wife—”
“I have told you who I am. And I know who you are. Igrainia of Langley, known to have the power to heal. Daughter of an English earl, greatly valued by many. My God, what you could be worth! There will be a price on your head, my lady, and you will save my wife.”
Once again, she found herself thrown onto the horse, which had obediently trotted back to its master.
This time, he mounted behind her.
Even as he did so, he urged the horse forward at a reckless gallop.
She felt his heat and his fury in the wall of his chest against her back, felt the strength of the man, and the power of his emotion.
And more . . .
She felt the trembling in him.
And suddenly understood.
Aye, he was furious.
And he was afraid.
And dear God . . .
So was she.
He was excellent at the art of killing. Eric knew it well. Against superior forces, he and his men always had the advantage of extreme training, experience, and the cold hard fact of desperation. But none of their expertise had ever wielded such a blow against the English as that of the strange disease that had seized their little band of rebels. One moment, they had been the most dreaded of the English king’s enemies; the next moment, they were a group of outcasts, shunned and feared by their captors. But even after their capture by the English, Eric had been confident of escape. He had allowed his own incarceration, planning on escaping walls and chains, to return for the others. He had known his ability to fight, to elude the strongest of his foes. He had never imagined that there would be an unseen enemy against whom all the prowess in the world was utterly futile. For all of his determination and strength, he had no power whatsoever against the illness that had ravaged their number. There was no enemy he had ever wanted to best with such passion, and no enemy who had ever had a greater power over him.
As they neared the great gates to Langley Castle, he was barely aware of the woman on the saddle before him, or even of his own men, as willing as he to risk their own lives for the return of their women, children, and compatriots. Of course, they had all already been exposed to the disease. It had come upon them when they returned from the sea with the lone survivor of a shipwreck. None of them had known, when they plucked the unlucky survivor from the waves, that they had taken death itself from the brine, and that the man’s ship had gone down because none aboard his damned vessel had been able to fight the onslaught of the storm. The man had never regained consciousness. Within hours after coming aboard, he acquired the dreaded boils.
None had thought to return him, still breathing, to the sea whence he had come; they knew that they had brought death aboard. Only when the fellow had breathed his last, had he been returned to the water.
Soon after they had brought their own small boats back to shore, the English had come upon their camp, not knowing then that they had just captured the promise of certain death. Though Eric and many of the others had been apart from the band when King Edward’s men seized hold of the group, they had allowed their own capture, aware in their depleted condition and poor numbers that their only sure chance to rescue their women from the grip of the enemy was to come among them and discover the weaknesses among their captors and their prison. They had gone so far as to warn the English as to the manner of prisoner they were taking. The enemy had not believed them.
Now, they did.
Even as they rode the last stretch of distance to their destination, they could see that black crosses had been painted here and there around the walls, warning any who might venture too near that death lay within.
“Tell the guard to open the gates,” he commanded his captive, reining in.
Castle Langley rose high before them. A Norman fortification, it had high, solidly built stone walls, and a moat surrounded the edifice. It was an excellent estate, one that stood on a hill surrounded by rich valleys. It was near the vast hereditary Bruce holdings, except that Robert, recently anointed king of Scotland, now held less than he ever had as a first earl of the land. Edward of England had come to lay his heavy fist of domination with a greater vengeance and anger than ever. The Scots had a king they could admire, one behind whom they could fight for a free Scotland. But being crowned king, and becoming king, in Scotland were far from one and the same.
“You will but have me open the gates of death,” she said softly.
“Call out; have them open the gates,” he said. “We are a band of dead men riding already.”
“Guard!” she called. “It is I, Igrainia, lady of Langley. Cast down the bridge.”
There was motion on the parapets high above them, and a reply.
“My lady, where is your guard? You must be away from this place; you must not reenter here!”
“Open the gates; lower the bridge.”
“Sir Robert has said that you must not return—”
“I am lady here; open the gates.”
“You ride with madmen; you come with rebels—”
“The guard will die if you do not open the gates.”
“Oh, my lady! For your own dear life—”
“I am commanding you. Open the gates. Let down the bridge.”
For a moment Eric feared that the woman might not have the authority she should wield; despite his desperation, he had not come here ill prepared, without knowledge regarding the situation at Langley. The lady here was a woman of greater importance than the lord. Though her husband had been a Scottish peer in his own right—one who had maintained a loyalty to Edward of England—this woman, wife of the perished lord, was the daughter of an English earl, a man who had gained his title some years back through an ancestor born on the wrong side of the English royal blanket.
The sound of gears and pulleys creaked against the stillness of the day. The gates began to lower to span the moat. Here, near the sea, it was an oddly clean body of water, for the moat joined a stream that cut a blue ribbon across the green plain toward the rocky coastline where the land joined the sea. Moments later the gate was down, and entry to the castle was but yards away. He spurred his horse and entered into the courtyard.
A pathetic show of troops came mustering from the tower keep as his band of men came clattering over the bridge. Though clad in mail and the colors of their late lord, the group that greeted them did not draw weapons, but formed a semicircle around their horses, waiting. They seemed to be leaderless, strangely adrift.
“Set me down!” Igrainia said, “if you would manage this without bloodshed.”
He didn’t like her tone, it was as rasping as her mere existence. But her words made sense toward his one driving goal, that of reaching Margot, his daughter, Aileen, and the others. It was all he could do to keep from throwing the woman down from his horse. She was anathema to him, hair pitch black when he sought a woman with a head of hair as golden and glowing as the sun, eyes a curious dark shade of violet when his world had come to rise and set in a gaze as soft and blue as the most beautiful spring morning.
Alive and well and walking while Margot lay dying . . .
He lifted the Englishwoman with a forced control and set her to the ground before dismounting behind her.
“Where is Sir Robert Neville?” she asked.
One of the guardsmen stepped forward.
“My lady, he is . . . he is abed.”
“Does anyone tend to him?” she asked anxiously.
Eric lost his patience, stepping around her. “I am Eric Graham, emissary of the rightful king of this holding, Robert the Bruce of Scotland. Lay down your arms, and your lives will be spared. The castle is now in the hands of the Scots who honor and acknowledge Robert Bruce as king.”
He glanced back at Peter MacDonald, who had ridden at his heels, giving a quick nod that he should now take over as the authority. Ignoring all else, he then started across the courtyard to the door to the keep, knowing exactly where the prisoners, even though near death, were held. It might have been a foolish move; a guard with a death wish of his own might have brought a battle sword piercing through his back. Behind him, he could hear the fall of arms as his men dismounted from their horses and collected the weapons. Peter MacDonald, a man who had been his right hand since the coronation of the king, began shouting the orders. Eric had complete confidence in Peter: the Scottish nationalists with whom he rode had survived thus far by covering one another’s back. They had become so tightly knit in their numbers, they nearly thought alike.
He was prepared for some sign of resistance when he entered into the great hall, but there was no one there, other than an old man hunched in a chair by the fire. The old man tried to stir at the sight of Eric, but the effort seemed too great. He fell back into the chair, watching Eric as Eric watched him.
“You’ve the disease, man?” Eric asked, his voice seeming to bellow across the stone expanse.
“Aye. But survived, I believe,” t
From the hill, Igrainia could see the riders coming.
They flew the flags of Robert the Bruce.
They had to be mad.
She rode with a party of twenty men, selected carefully for their skill and courage—and, of course, the simple fact that they were still alive and well. They wore full armor and carried well-honed weapons with which they were very adept.
There were less than half that number coming toward them, a pathetically ragtag band, racing up the hill.
“My lady . . . ?” queried Sir Morton Hamill, head of her guard.
“Can we outrun them?” she asked.
Sir Morton let out a sound of disgust. “Outrun them!” He was indignant. “They are but rabble; their so-called king runs to the forests while his family is slain in his stead. The Bruce is aware that he is an outlaw to most of his own people. My lady, there is no reason to run.”
“No reason,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “except that more men will die. I am weary of death.”
The riders were still gaining on them at a breakneck pace, racing from the site of the castle, where surely even they had realized that the black crosses covering the stone were no ploy of the enemy, but a true warning of the situation within.
Sir Morton was trying hard to hold his temper. “My lady, I am aware of the pain in your heart. But these are the very renegades who brought the terror to your home, who cost you . . . who cost you everything.”
“No man, or woman, asks for the plague, Sir Morton. And indeed, if you ask Father MacKinley, he will tell you that God sent the sickness in his anger that we should brutally make hostages of women and children, and execute our enemies so freely. We were warned of the sickness; we refused to believe the warnings of our foes. So now, if we can outrun the renegades, that is my choice. It was not my choice to leave Langley. I want no more death laid at my feet.”
“Alas. We cannot outrun them,” Sir Morton argued then. “They are almost upon us.”
She stared at him angrily. “You would fight them rather than do your duty to bring me to safety.”
“My lady, you are beside yourself with grief and cannot think clearly. I would fight such upstart rebels, aye, my lady, for that is my duty.”
“Sir Morton, I am in my full senses, quite capable of coherent thought—”
“My lady, watch! Your position here on the hill is excellent; you may view the carnage as I take my revenge on these knaves!”
Furious, Igrainia reined in her horse as Sir Morton called out an order to his men. He did not intend to await the enemy. He meant to attack first.
“Sir Morton!” She raged with fury, her heart sick as she watched the men spur their horses to his command. In seconds, the liege men of her late lord, Afton of Langley, spurned her order and took flight down the hill.
They seemed to sail in a sea of silver, armor gleaming in the sun. The colors they flew, the rich blue and red, noble colors, created a riot of shades along with the silver stream. Down the hill, a display of might and power . . .
Bearing down upon a sad rabble, scattered horsemen on fine enough mounts, some in tarnished armor, most in no more than leather jerkins to protect their hearts from the onslaught of steel that would soon come their way.
At her distance, she could see their leader. She frowned, wondering what madness would make a man risk certain death. She narrowed her eyes against the sun, studying the man. A small gasp escaped her.
She had seen him before. She knew, because he rode without protection; no helmet covered his head, and the length of his tangled blond hair glinted in the sun with almost as much of a sheen as the steel helmets worn by her own people. She had seen him dragged in with the other captured men, shackled in irons. He had looked like a wild man, uncivilized, a barbarian, yet despite the dirt and mud that marred his clothes, she had seen his eyes once, when they had met hers, and she had read something frightening in that glance. She had the odd feeling that he had allowed himself to be taken prisoner, though why, she didn’t know. Or perhaps she did. Castle Langley, as her husband’s home was called, had just been turned into quarters for the king’s men when they had come through, bearing the families of Scottish outlaws to London, where they would be held until their rebel kin surrendered.
And offered their own necks to the axeman’s blade.
Sir Morton’s men were nearly upon the riders. In the glittering sunlight, it was almost a beautiful spectacle, the gleam and glint of steel and color . . .
Until the riders came together in a hideous clash, horses screaming, men shouting, steel becoming drenched in the deep red of blood. Tears suddenly stung her eyes; Afton had wanted no part of this. He had been furious with the order to welcome the king’s men, to house renegades who were his own people. He had demanded that the hostages not be treated as animals, even when they spoke with their highland language and strange burrs, and looked like wild creatures from heathen times. He had stood, a proud voice of reason and mercy, until he had fallen . . .
And neither her love nor her prowess with herbs had managed to save him.
He would have been furious at this bloodbath, had he been with her.
Had he had his way, they would never have come to this . . .
She gasped, bringing her hand to her lips as she saw that a rebel had met Sir Morton head on, ever ready to do battle. The rebel was the wild man with the tangled blond hair.
Sir Morton’s sword never made contact with the rebel’s flesh.
Sir Morton’s head fell to the earth and bounced as his body continued through the mass upon his horse, until that part of him, too fell to the ground to be trampled upon.
Bile filled her throat. She closed her eyes, and lowered her head, fighting the sickness that threatened to overwhelm her. Dear God, she had just left plague victims, nursed the sick and the putrid and the rotting and . . .
With her eyes closed, she could still see the head, bouncing.
The clash of steel seemed to rise in a cacophony around her; she heard more cries, shouts, the terrified whinnies of warhorses, animals accustomed to battle and mayhem. She forced herself to look up.
The finest armor to be found had not protected the men of Langley from the fury of the rebels’ wrath. Men lay everywhere.
Armor glinting in the sun. The shining intermittent, against the bloodstained field. Some had survived. Unhorsed, the men milled in a circle. There were shouts and commands; the blond giant was on his feet as well, approaching the eight or so men of Langley who remained standing. Watching, appalled, she didn’t realize her own danger. Voices carried on the air.
“Do we slay them now?” someone inquired.
The blond man replied, then shouted at the survivors. Swords fell to the ground. One man fell to his knees. Did he do so in absolute desolation, or in gratitude for his life?
Were they to be executed? Or were their lives to be spared?
She couldn’t tell. Others were talking, but they spoke in softer voices.
One of the rebels pointed up the hill.
Then, suddenly, the blond man was staring at her.
She couldn’t see his eyes in the distance. She could only remember them.
He started toward his horse.
Only then did she realize her own situation, and that he was mounting to ride once again, after her.
She spurred her horse, praying that she knew this region better than he, that her mare was a fresher mount, ready to take her to greater bursts of speed . . .
For a far longer period of time.
She prayed . . .
There had been a time, not so long ago, that she had wanted to die. When the death and despair had seemed so great that she would willingly have taken Afton’s hand, and entered the afterlife with him. That moment when she realized that she had lost him, that he had breathed his last, that his laughter would never sound again.
And yet now . . .
She did not want to depart this life at the hands of a furious barbarian, bent on some form of revenge. She thought of how Edward I had killed Wallace, of the horrors that had taken place, of the English furor at the crowning of Robert Bruce.
And she rode as she had never done before, flat against her mare’s neck, heels jamming the beast’s haunches, whispers begging her to ever greater speed. The rebel’s horse had to be flagging; their animals had been foaming when they first met with the men of Langley. If she could just evade him for a distance . . .
She galloped over the hill, through the thick grasses of the lea to the north. The forest beckoned beyond the hill, a forest she knew well, with twisting trails and sheltering oaks, a place in which to disappear. She could see the trees, the great branches waving high in the sky, the darkness of the trails beneath the canopy of leaves. She could smell the very richness of the earth and hear the leaves, as she could hear the thunder of her horse’s hooves, the desperate, ragged catch of her own breath, the pulse of her heartbeat, echoed with each thunder of a hoof upon the earth. There . . . just a moment away . . .
She was never aware that his horse’s hoofbeats thundered along with those of her mare; the first she knew of him was the hook of his arm, sweeping her from her horse in a deadly gamble. She was whisked from the mare and left to watch as the horse made the shelter of the trees. And for a moment, she looked on, in amazement, as she dangled from the great warhorse, a prisoner taken by a madman.
She began to twist and struggle, and bite—a sound enough attack so that he swore, and dropped her. His horse was huge; she fell a distance to the earth, stunned, then gathered her senses quickly and began to run. She headed for the dark trail, desperately, running with the speed of a hunted doe.
Yet again, she was swept off her feet, this time, lifted up, and thrown down, and the next thing she knew, he was on top of her, smelling of the earth and the blood of battle. She screamed, fought, kicked, yet found her hands vised above her head, and the barbarian straddled atop her, staring at her with a cold, wicked fury that allowed no mercy.
“You are the lady of Langley,” he said.
“Igrainia,” she replied.
“I don’t give a damn about your name,” he told her. “But you will come with me, and you will demand that the gates be opened.”
She shook her head, “I cannot—”
She broke off as he raised a hand to strike her. The blow did not fall.
“You will,” he said simply. “Or I will break you, bone by bone, until you do so.”
“There is plague there, you idiot!”
“My wife is there, and my daughter,” he told her.
“They are all dead or dying within the castle!”
“So you run in fear!” he said contemptuously.
“No! No,” she raged, struggling to free herself again. Afraid? Of the plague? She was afraid only of life without Afton now.
Not quite true, she realized. She was afraid of this man who would carry out his every threat, and break her. Bone by bone. She had never seen anyone so coldly determined.
“I am not afraid of the plague for myself!” she managed to snap out with an amazing tone of contempt.
“Good. We will go back, my fine lady, and you will dirty your hands with caring for those who are ill. You will save my wife, if she is stricken, or so help me, you will forfeit your own life.”
Dirty her hands? He thought she was afraid to dirty her hands after the days and nights she had been through?
Her temper rose like a battle flag, and she spat at him. “Kill me then, you stupid, savage fool! I have been in that castle. Death does not scare me. I don’t care anymore. Can you comprehend that? Are such words in your vocabulary?”
She gasped as he stood, wrenching her to her feet.
“If my wife or my daughter should die because of the English king’s cruelty against the innocent, my lady, you are the one who will pay.”
“My husband is dead because of the sickness brought in by your people!” she cried, trying to wrench her arm free. She could not. She looked at the hand vised around her arm. Huge, long-fingered, covered in mud and earth and . . .
Blood.
His grip seemed stronger than steel. Not to be broken. She stood still, determined not to tremble or falter. His face was as muddied and filthy as his hand and tangled blond hair. Only those sky blue eyes peered at her uncovered by the remnants of battle, brilliant and hard.
He either hadn’t heard her, or he didn’t give a damn. His command of language seemed to be excellent, so she assumed it was the latter.
“Hear me again. If my wife dies, my lady, you will be forfeit to the mercy of the Scottish king’s men.”
“Mercy? There is no mercy to be had there.”
“At this point? Perhaps you are quite right. Therefore, you had best save my wife.”
“I, sir, have no difficulty doing anything in my power to save the stricken, though I can assure you—their lives are in God’s hands, and no others. I was forced to leave Langley. I did not go of my own volition.”
He arched a brow skeptically. “You were willing to serve the plague-stricken and dying?”
“Aye, I would have stayed there willingly. I had no reason to leave.”
“You are the lady of Langley.”
“Indeed.”
He didn’t seem to care why she would have stayed.
“Then, as you say, it will be no hardship for you to return.”
“Where I go, or what is done to me, does not matter in the least.”
“You will save my wife, and my child.”
She raised her chin.
“As I have told you, and surely you must understand, their lives are in God’s hands. What, then, if I cannot save them?”
“Then it will be fortunate that you seem to have so little care for your own life.”
He shoved her forward.
With no other choice, Igrainia walked.
Yet her heart was sinking.
If your wife is among the women stricken, then I am afraid that she has already died! Igrainia thought.
Because she had lied. She had thought herself immune to fear when she left Langley. Immune to further pain. Now, she was discovering that she did fear for her life, that there was something inside her that instinctively craved survival.
She wanted to live.
But if she failed, so he proclaimed, he would break her. That was certainly no less savage than the commands given by Edward in regard to the wives and womenfolk of any man loyal to Robert the Bruce.
Break her. Bone by bone.
It was all in God’s hands. But maybe this filthy and half-savage man, no matter how articulate, didn’t comprehend that.
“I will save your wife and child, if you will give me a promise.”
“You think that you can barter with me?” he demanded harshly.
“I am bartering with you.”
“You will do as I command.”
“No. No, I will not. Because you are welcome to lop off my head here and now if you will not barter with me.”
“Do you think that I will not?”
“I don’t care if you do or do not!”
“So the lord of Langley is dead!” he breathed bitterly.
“Indeed. So you have no power over me.”
“Believe me, my lady, if I choose, I can show you that I have power over you. Death is simple. Life is not. The living can be made to suffer. Your grief means nothing to me. It was the lord of Langley who imprisoned the women and children.”
She shook her head. “You’re wrong! So foolishly wrong! What care they received was by his order. Those who will live will do so, because he commanded their care. And he is dead because of the wretched disease brought in by your women and your children.”
“None of this matters!” he roared to her.
She ignored his rage, and the tightening vise of his fingers around her arm.
She stared at his hand upon her, and then into his eyes, so brilliantly blue and cold against the mud-stained darkness of his face.
“I will save your wife and child, if you will swear to let your prisoners live.”
Again, he arched a brow and shrugged. “Their fates matter not in the least to me; save her, and they shall live.”
She started forward again, then once more stopped. She had spoken with contempt and assurance. A bluff, a lie. And now, her hands were shaking. “What if I cannot? What if it has gone too far? God decides who lives and dies, and the black death is a brutal killer—”
“You will save them,” he said.
They had reached his horse, an exceptionally fine mount. Stolen, she was certain, from a wealthy baron killed in battle. He lifted her carelessly upon the horse, then stared up at her, as if seeing her, really seeing her, perhaps for the first time.
“You will save them,” he repeated, as if by doing so he could make it true.
“Listen to me. Surely, you understand this. Their lives are in God’s hands.”
“And yours.”
“You are mad; you are possessed! Only a madman thinks he can rule a plague. Not even King Edward has power over life and death against such an illness. Kings are not immune, no man, no woman—”
“My wife and child must survive.”
He had no sense, no intellect, no reason!
“Which of the women is your wife?” she asked. She wondered if she could kick his horse, and flee. She was in the saddle; he was on the ground.
“And if I give you a name, what will it mean to you?” he inquired.
“I have been among the prisoners.”
It seemed he doubted that. “Margot,” he told her. “She is tall, slim and light, and very beautiful.”
Margot. Aye, she knew the woman. Beautiful indeed, gentle, moving about, cheering the children, nursing the others . . .
Until she had been struck down.
She had been well dressed, and had worn delicate Celtic jewelry, as the wife of a notable man, a lord, or a wealthy man at the least.
Rather than a filthy barbarian such as this.
But it was said that even Robert Bruce, King of the Scots, looked like a pauper often enough these days. He was a desperate man, ever searching out a ragtag army, reduced to hunger and hardship time and time again.
“Who are you?” she asked
“Who I am doesn’t matter.”
“Do you even have a name, or should I think of you as Madman, or Certain Death?”
His eyes lit upon her with cold fury. “You must have a name when it doesn’t matter, when your life is at stake? When Edward has decreed that Scottish women are fair game, no better than outlaws to be robbed, raped or murdered? Wouldn’t you be the one who is surely mad to expect chivalry in return for such barbarity, and test the temper of a man whose rage now equals that of your king? You would have a name? So be it. I am Eric, Robert Bruce’s liege man by choice, sworn to the sovereign nation of Scotland, a patriot by both birth and choice. You see, my father was a Scottish knight, but my grandfather, on my mother’s side, was a Norse jarl of the western isles. So there is a great deal of berserker—or indeed, madman—in me, lady. You must beware. We are not known to act rationally—and by God, no matter what our inclination at any time—mercifully. Now, tell me what I ask. Does my wife live? You do know her, don’t you?”
“Aye. I know her. Father MacKinley is with her,” Igrainia said. “She lives. When I left, she still lived.” Aye, she knew his wife. She had spoken with her often when the disease had brought them together, forgetting nationalities and loyalties, fighting death itself.
And she knew his little girl. The beautiful child with the soft yellow hair and huge blue eyes, smiling even when she fell ill. The little girl had gone into a fever with a whimper.
But the woman had been so ill, burning, twisting, crying out . . .
She would die. And then . . .
Igrainia suddenly grabbed the reins and slammed the horse with her heels, using all the strength she had.
The huge gray warhorse reared, pawing the air. Igrainia clung desperately to the animal, hugging its neck, continuing to slam her heels against its flank. The man was forced to move back, and she felt hope take flight in her heart as the horse hit the ground and started running toward the trees.
Yet nearly to the trail, the animal came to an amazing halt, reared again, and spun.
This time, Igrainia did not keep her seat.
She hit the ground with a heavy thud that knocked the air from her.
A moment later, he was back by her side, reaching down to her, wrenching her to her feet. “Try to escape again, and I will drag you back in chains.”
She gasped for breath, shaking her head. “No one will stop your entry at the castle. Only the truly mad would enter there. I cannot help your wife—”
“I have told you who I am. And I know who you are. Igrainia of Langley, known to have the power to heal. Daughter of an English earl, greatly valued by many. My God, what you could be worth! There will be a price on your head, my lady, and you will save my wife.”
Once again, she found herself thrown onto the horse, which had obediently trotted back to its master.
This time, he mounted behind her.
Even as he did so, he urged the horse forward at a reckless gallop.
She felt his heat and his fury in the wall of his chest against her back, felt the strength of the man, and the power of his emotion.
And more . . .
She felt the trembling in him.
And suddenly understood.
Aye, he was furious.
And he was afraid.
And dear God . . .
So was she.
He was excellent at the art of killing. Eric knew it well. Against superior forces, he and his men always had the advantage of extreme training, experience, and the cold hard fact of desperation. But none of their expertise had ever wielded such a blow against the English as that of the strange disease that had seized their little band of rebels. One moment, they had been the most dreaded of the English king’s enemies; the next moment, they were a group of outcasts, shunned and feared by their captors. But even after their capture by the English, Eric had been confident of escape. He had allowed his own incarceration, planning on escaping walls and chains, to return for the others. He had known his ability to fight, to elude the strongest of his foes. He had never imagined that there would be an unseen enemy against whom all the prowess in the world was utterly futile. For all of his determination and strength, he had no power whatsoever against the illness that had ravaged their number. There was no enemy he had ever wanted to best with such passion, and no enemy who had ever had a greater power over him.
As they neared the great gates to Langley Castle, he was barely aware of the woman on the saddle before him, or even of his own men, as willing as he to risk their own lives for the return of their women, children, and compatriots. Of course, they had all already been exposed to the disease. It had come upon them when they returned from the sea with the lone survivor of a shipwreck. None of them had known, when they plucked the unlucky survivor from the waves, that they had taken death itself from the brine, and that the man’s ship had gone down because none aboard his damned vessel had been able to fight the onslaught of the storm. The man had never regained consciousness. Within hours after coming aboard, he acquired the dreaded boils.
None had thought to return him, still breathing, to the sea whence he had come; they knew that they had brought death aboard. Only when the fellow had breathed his last, had he been returned to the water.
Soon after they had brought their own small boats back to shore, the English had come upon their camp, not knowing then that they had just captured the promise of certain death. Though Eric and many of the others had been apart from the band when King Edward’s men seized hold of the group, they had allowed their own capture, aware in their depleted condition and poor numbers that their only sure chance to rescue their women from the grip of the enemy was to come among them and discover the weaknesses among their captors and their prison. They had gone so far as to warn the English as to the manner of prisoner they were taking. The enemy had not believed them.
Now, they did.
Even as they rode the last stretch of distance to their destination, they could see that black crosses had been painted here and there around the walls, warning any who might venture too near that death lay within.
“Tell the guard to open the gates,” he commanded his captive, reining in.
Castle Langley rose high before them. A Norman fortification, it had high, solidly built stone walls, and a moat surrounded the edifice. It was an excellent estate, one that stood on a hill surrounded by rich valleys. It was near the vast hereditary Bruce holdings, except that Robert, recently anointed king of Scotland, now held less than he ever had as a first earl of the land. Edward of England had come to lay his heavy fist of domination with a greater vengeance and anger than ever. The Scots had a king they could admire, one behind whom they could fight for a free Scotland. But being crowned king, and becoming king, in Scotland were far from one and the same.
“You will but have me open the gates of death,” she said softly.
“Call out; have them open the gates,” he said. “We are a band of dead men riding already.”
“Guard!” she called. “It is I, Igrainia, lady of Langley. Cast down the bridge.”
There was motion on the parapets high above them, and a reply.
“My lady, where is your guard? You must be away from this place; you must not reenter here!”
“Open the gates; lower the bridge.”
“Sir Robert has said that you must not return—”
“I am lady here; open the gates.”
“You ride with madmen; you come with rebels—”
“The guard will die if you do not open the gates.”
“Oh, my lady! For your own dear life—”
“I am commanding you. Open the gates. Let down the bridge.”
For a moment Eric feared that the woman might not have the authority she should wield; despite his desperation, he had not come here ill prepared, without knowledge regarding the situation at Langley. The lady here was a woman of greater importance than the lord. Though her husband had been a Scottish peer in his own right—one who had maintained a loyalty to Edward of England—this woman, wife of the perished lord, was the daughter of an English earl, a man who had gained his title some years back through an ancestor born on the wrong side of the English royal blanket.
The sound of gears and pulleys creaked against the stillness of the day. The gates began to lower to span the moat. Here, near the sea, it was an oddly clean body of water, for the moat joined a stream that cut a blue ribbon across the green plain toward the rocky coastline where the land joined the sea. Moments later the gate was down, and entry to the castle was but yards away. He spurred his horse and entered into the courtyard.
A pathetic show of troops came mustering from the tower keep as his band of men came clattering over the bridge. Though clad in mail and the colors of their late lord, the group that greeted them did not draw weapons, but formed a semicircle around their horses, waiting. They seemed to be leaderless, strangely adrift.
“Set me down!” Igrainia said, “if you would manage this without bloodshed.”
He didn’t like her tone, it was as rasping as her mere existence. But her words made sense toward his one driving goal, that of reaching Margot, his daughter, Aileen, and the others. It was all he could do to keep from throwing the woman down from his horse. She was anathema to him, hair pitch black when he sought a woman with a head of hair as golden and glowing as the sun, eyes a curious dark shade of violet when his world had come to rise and set in a gaze as soft and blue as the most beautiful spring morning.
Alive and well and walking while Margot lay dying . . .
He lifted the Englishwoman with a forced control and set her to the ground before dismounting behind her.
“Where is Sir Robert Neville?” she asked.
One of the guardsmen stepped forward.
“My lady, he is . . . he is abed.”
“Does anyone tend to him?” she asked anxiously.
Eric lost his patience, stepping around her. “I am Eric Graham, emissary of the rightful king of this holding, Robert the Bruce of Scotland. Lay down your arms, and your lives will be spared. The castle is now in the hands of the Scots who honor and acknowledge Robert Bruce as king.”
He glanced back at Peter MacDonald, who had ridden at his heels, giving a quick nod that he should now take over as the authority. Ignoring all else, he then started across the courtyard to the door to the keep, knowing exactly where the prisoners, even though near death, were held. It might have been a foolish move; a guard with a death wish of his own might have brought a battle sword piercing through his back. Behind him, he could hear the fall of arms as his men dismounted from their horses and collected the weapons. Peter MacDonald, a man who had been his right hand since the coronation of the king, began shouting the orders. Eric had complete confidence in Peter: the Scottish nationalists with whom he rode had survived thus far by covering one another’s back. They had become so tightly knit in their numbers, they nearly thought alike.
He was prepared for some sign of resistance when he entered into the great hall, but there was no one there, other than an old man hunched in a chair by the fire. The old man tried to stir at the sight of Eric, but the effort seemed too great. He fell back into the chair, watching Eric as Eric watched him.
“You’ve the disease, man?” Eric asked, his voice seeming to bellow across the stone expanse.
“Aye. But survived, I believe,” t
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
