Conqueror (22 page)

Her eyes opened slowly. A raw-boned black charger?

The helmed figure in front of the hordes lifted his hand, then swept it down. His cavalry kicked into action, thundering down the hill, spewing clods of dirt and brown grass in their riotous wake.

Gwyn’s throat squeezed tight. The roar of hooves drowned out her hammering heart, and the sun glinting off their bright shields, pressed tears into her eyes. Helmed faces and armoured bodies charged down the hill, lances pointed and lowered for death—they were not people, they were weapons.

Then, without warning, they pulled up. The riders sat back and hauled on the reins. Their snorting chargers reared up on their powerful hind legs, and like that, forty rows of onrushing knights skidded to a furious, rock-throwing stop.

What trickery, this?

Her army, primarily on foot and arrayed in uneven lines not even half again as strong, drew to a halt as well. The two lines stood perfectly still, like statues. An unexpectedly cool breeze blew through the valley. Everyone froze in the sudden, remarkable silence.

“He’s givin’ us a chance to surrender,” Fulk observed grimly, “afore the bloodshed begins.”

“Who is he?” she demanded, squinting at the sunlit valley. “Who dares—”

Her throat squeezed shut. God in Heaven.

Pagan
.

She flung her hand over her mouth in horror.

Who else
but him
, sitting astride his great black destrier at the crest of a hill, his helm removed, giving her one last chance? One last chance to surrender…to him. Whom else? Griffyn Sauvage, her ghost of passion.

He was looking directly at her.

She almost laughed at the madness of it all.

Saint Jude save me
, she prayed, her heart pounding giddy blood from earlobe to ankle. She smoothed her skirts with a trembling hand. “Call them back.”

Fulk spun and looked at her. “My lady?”

“Call them back.” She pointed over the wall. “Do you know who that is?”

He nodded. “Aye. Sauvage.”

Her hand fell. “You know him,” she said flatly. “You know Griffyn Sauvage.”

Fulk shrugged. “I was with your father for many years, Lady Gwyn. Afore yerself was born.”

“So, you know there’s history there. Between our families.”

He averted his gaze. “A bit of it.”

“A bit of it,” she echoed. “Tell me, Fulk,” she demanded. “How do you think we stand, with Griffyn Sauvage and his army out there?”

Fulk looked over the battlement walls again, then shrugged. But the twitch of something in his eye gave him away. He knew how things stood. They could fight. And they would lose.

Gwyn was already planning for the future. She would open the gates. That was better than having him batter them down. A pitched battle would only give him more cause to run through the castle like a firestorm, laying claim to everything. And he must not be allowed to discover the prince. So she would open the gates. Feign surrender.

Feign
, she cautioned herself. Pretend. Do not truly do it. Do not succumb to all those things succumbed to before: his passion and decency and the way he made her feel like there was hope.

Was
this
not the weight of her penance, finally bearing down?

Had she thought it would be easy?

“I will not have our men die needlessly,” she said to Fulk. “And I see no wisdom in angering Sauvage any more than….” Her voice trailed off. More than what? How couldhe hate her more than he already must? “Call them back. Open the gates. Surrender the castle.”

Fulk nodded grimly. “Aye, my lady.” He strode off, shouting for his commanders.

Gwyn watched him go, her heart tumbling and fluttering, her blood moving fast and cold through her body. Inside, her mind was screaming:
He’s supposed to be dead!

And her heart was chanting:
He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive.

Griffyn rode under the gate with his sword drawn but hanging by his side. His gaze travelled swiftly over the crowded bailey. Surely Godwin the marshal, or Hamish the blacksmythe might have survived the years.

Then he snorted, dismissing the glimmer of childlike excitement. Only the strong survived, and eventually they died too. How many times must he be taught that affection was perilous and pointless?

He peered up at the dark, turreted battlements of the Nest, set against a backdrop of brilliant blue skies. It almost hurt his eyes to keep them open. Home. He was home again.

It was utterly quiet. Hushed villagers and householders thronged the edges, making a colorful, if tattered, pathway. Most bowed their heads as he passed, some bent their knees. He heard the whispers.

“Sauvage…”

“…remember his father…”

“…like a legend, upon our time…”

“Thanks be to God.”

Dozens of hands were raised in greeting. Linen caps removed, rough country curtsies offered. In welcome.

It ought to be a balm.

Flicking on the reins, he urged Noir up the small incline to the inner bailey. His men rode behind, their cobalt-blue cloaks flung back to reveal steel-ringed mail coats and long swords. A suddenly cool breeze blew through the bailey, carrying the scent of decaying leaves and wet bark and the salty hint of the sea.

How many times had he ridden home as a boy on the scent of that breeze, satiated after a day of hunting or hawking or simply riding, hungry and dreaming great dreams, before everything had changed?

And yet this, his moment of triumph, his homecoming, felt utterly hollow. Where was the elation, the joy? After all this time, after all the warring, and the years of coming home, the fierce satisfaction he’d felt even imagining this moment was absent. The only thing that moved him was the thought,
“Where is she?”

They neared the centre of the bailey, hooves clacking over cobbles.

“My lord earl,” murmured a balding man who appeared near his boot.

Griffyn checked Noir and looked down. “Who are you?”

“William of York, my lord. I am the earl’s…I am…I was the seneschal.”

“William of York,” repeated Griffyn. He felt so strange. His heart was beating, but far away. His words sounded warped, as if they were being turned in the air like cream through a butter churn.
Of the Five Strands
, she had called him back at the inn, and he had laughed.

“Lord Griffyn, my lady Guinevere wishes to bid you and your men welcome to the Nest.”

His eyes flicked down again. “Where?”

“My lord—”

“Where is your lady?”

“My lord—” the steward sputtered.

“Where is Guinevere?”

A musical voice called out, “I’m here.”

His head snapped up and everything that had been grey and distorted became clear as an untouched lake. The world took on almost painful clarity. He scanned the vanquished people before him, then his gaze locked on her. His heart started beating again, strong and loud.

“I bid you and your men welcome to my home.”

He swung off Noir, threw the reins to his squire Edmund, and started over. Every step felt like it stretched furlongs. Her hair was as black as he recalled, bounding in riotous ringlets around her face. It was the first thing he noticed. That and the fact that her voice still rang like a bird song over a frozen lake, and it made him think of faerie dust.

He stopped in front of her, feeling his breath strong and hot.

“My lord. Welcome.”

Something hovered at his shoulder. He ignored it. The bailey was utterly silent. Even the breeze went still, and nothing moved except a dog, cracking a bone. Griffyn heard the snaps like ice breaking on a lake. He flicked his gaze over. The dog looked up and whined, then got to his feet and slunk away. Everyone held their breath, waiting for his vengeance to spill its fury.

“Welcome, is it?” he repeated quietly. “Your army was a welcome?”

“I did not know ’twas you,” she said softly enough, but her green eyes stayed on him with a fierceness that could burn holes through linen. He suddenly noticed how his cloak was bright against her frayed and dull fabrics. The Sauvage brooch alone gleamed more brightly than anything she wore, in large part, he realised, because she wore no jewels at all.

A breeze lifted a few stray stands of long, black hair to flutter in the air between their bodies. For a twelvemonth her face had haunted his dreams, and now here she was, in the flesh.

“You know now,” he said coldly.

“I know more important things than even that, my lord.” Her bitter words were bitten off with great precision. “I know these wars must end. I know my men have barely eaten in a fortnight, while yours have lived off the fields and barns of dozens of poor villagers along the way to
this
killing field. I know my army is small and yours huge. I know your
horse
probably ate better than my kitchen staff this past week—”

“You don’t know anything.”

“I know that we may lose—”

“You don’t know anything.”

“—and lose and lose again, and you will
still
never have won.”

“You don’t know anything,” he said again, his tone cold and level. “You don’t know what horrors my army has prevented—”

“How heroic.”

“—and you surely do not know what my horse is fed, Guinevere.”

They both paused. “Oats.”

One side of his mouth lifted humourlessly. “You think me a simple matter.”

“I think you awful. And—”

He threw down his gauntlet and splayed his fingers tightly around her chin. “And
what
?”

“Dead,” she whispered, her voice trembling, which made him feel savage and satisfied. “I—I thought you were dead.”

“You did what you could to ensure it, did you not?”

She hitched on a breath. “And how many deaths have
you
ensured, with your sword and your count who simply
must
be made a king?”

His fingers tightened, pressing into the soft flesh of her chin. “Your family was destined to be my bane,” he said in a voice so low it barely carried through the air. “I intend to return the favour. Awful? You think me awful? You’ve no idea.”

“Not here. Not now,” interrupted a voice at his back. Alex.

Griffyn snapped back into the present. Every eye in the bailey was on him, their new lord, losing his temper and his mind over this witch of a woman.

He flung his hand down and took a deep, shaky breath, knowing how close he’d come. He could have killed her. If she’d said another word, if Alex had not stepped forward, he might have kept closing his hand tighter and tighter around her slender, poisonous throat.

He spun away.

“Take her to the solar,” he snarled, and obviously someone did, because a few moments later, his heart still thudding savagely in his chest, his mind still fuzzed with fury, he was meeting with his seneschal and top officials, sending them inside to meet with the de l’Ami administrative staff, and commanding his soldiers to inspect the garrison, make the men swear allegiance or be turned out.

They scurried to do his bidding, and chaos erupted around him. Griffyn grabbed Noir’s reins and stalked to the stables himself, trying to forget, to focus on the victory. Forget about his father. Forget the rage. The lost years. The woman he thought he could love. Forget, forget, forget.

Alex was overseeing the round-up and interrogation of the de l’Ami soldiers. They were staunch in their loyalty to Guinevere, as expected, but more was revealed in what was
not
said.

Stout men, but their pointed features bespoke hunger only just kept at bay. Men who were steadfast, but weary of their lands being ravaged by an endless war. Soldiers accustomed to battle and the strange vagarities of it, including honourable surrender when in the alternative lay waste and ruin.

To a man they pledged themselves to Griffyn Sauvage as lord of Everoot, and most did so willingly.

“This one,” gestured Hervé Fairess, the Angevin. “He’s trouble. And that one,” he grumbled, pointing.

Alex shifted his gaze to a young knight with close-cropped blond hair, who stood scowling at the gryphon-clad knights. His strength was apparent in the press of muscle against his tunic, but he did not appear foolish. He appeared loyal, if his regular glances towards the third-floor solar where Lady Guinevere was being held proved anything. Loyal, not stupid. And it would be stupid to make trouble now.

“We’d best let Pagan know,” Hervé gruffed.

“Pagan will know without us telling him anything,” Alex said mildly, but inside, a deep disquiet was starting to unfold.

He had watched the collapse of Griffyn’s legendary self-control a few moments ago in shock. Griffyn had not been trained in violence and ruthlessness to no effect, but he
never
revealed the depths of his fury. A father who had let greed ruin him, a legacy stolen, killing, killing for lost honour and for fallen kings, Griffyn’s life had been fated from before his conception. But he had never let his emotions boil over. Except for that one night a year back.

And just a moment ago.

Griffyn might be coming dangerously close to the edge of a rage that had been contained for eighteen years, honed with a staggering discipline. All the grueling self-denial, all the months and years of blood and purpose, had been in the service of this single moment: the Earl of Everoot was home again.

And something was terribly wrong.

Gwyn stood in the third-storey solar, staring at the knight who’d escorted her as he prepared to leave the room. He pointed to a tray of food and pitcher of wine.

“For your comfort, my lady.”

She sourly suggested that if it were truly for her comfort, perhaps she could be better placed in her own chambers.

He met this with an impassive look. “You’d rather not be there just now, my lady. Lord Griffyn is…converting them.”

Ah yes, she thought as he bowed out of the room, converting them…or taking possession. Whichever way ’twas phrased, it was the same. He was taking over, stripping the keep of any sign of the de l’Ami presence. Except her. She would be brought out when it was all complete, the final resistance brought low.