Her Knight's Quest: A Warriors of the Mist Novel (6 page)

He reached for the pack that Rubar had carried into the abbey’s guest quarters. It held the usual kind of items a man who lived on the road would have: a change of clothing, a comb, a bit of soap, and a few other odds and ends. The second man’s pack was much the same.

That left only the clothing they’d been wearing at the time of their deaths. The shirts were slashed and bloody, but otherwise unremarkable. The same was true of the pants. Both sets of boots were worn but serviceable. Duncan neatly folded what he could and set it all aside.

When he picked up a coin purse, a shiver of dread cold washed straight up Duncan’s arm. He dropped the small leather bag and stepped back.

Lavinia had been standing off to the side, watching his every move but making no effort to assist him. “Duncan, what’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure.”

He pointed to the bag. “Musar, which man did that belong to?”

The trader squinted to stare at it, still not approaching the table. “It belonged to Teo. That’s his mark on the side.”

“So you’re sure the other one belonged to Rubar?”

Musar studied it in turn. “Yes. Again, that’s his mark. You’ll find it on almost everything they own. It helps people who live in close quarters like the caravan wagons keep their belongings straight.”

Duncan braced himself and picked up the second purse. He immediately felt the same shiver of revulsion. This time, rather than tossing the bag down, he tugged the strings open and dumped the contents out on the table. He did the same with Teo’s, keeping the contents in separate piles.

Whatever it was he was feeling, he had no desire to touch it with his bare fingers. He used his knife to sort through the coins in each group. It didn’t take long to figure out which token was giving off the dread darkness.

He carefully sorted through Teo’s, quickly finding an identical coin. Would the other two people in the room sense the same power in the coins as he did? Perhaps a test was in order. Using the tip of his knife, he arranged five coins from each purse in a row, including the one that he knew to be the source of the problem.

“Lady Lavinia, would you please come closer? You, too, Musar.”

When they were flanking him, he said, “Don’t touch any of the coins. Simply hold your hand over them and tell me what you sense.”

As soon as Lavinia had her hand in position, her face turned pale. She jerked her arm back down to her side, wiping her palm on her robes as if it felt unclean. Musar was a little slower to react, but in the end he pointed at the right coin. He looked a bit stunned.

“What is that?”

“Those two coins have been ensorcelled. I suspect it was Teo who brought them into the abbey.”

He glanced at Musar. “I mean no disrespect. Someone gave him those coins deliberately, but the spell wasn’t triggered until he entered the abbey. He wouldn’t have sensed anything until then.”

Lavinia was noticeably quiet. What was she thinking?

Something niggled at the back of his mind, something about a coin. Finally, it came to him. “Earlier this evening, Rubar and Teo were joking about a bet they’d made. Nothing huge, just the kind of wager men who are friends will make with each other. Something silly, like who can hit the center of a target with his knife. Rubar had won the bet and was nagging Teo to pay him.”

He stared down at the two gold coins, identical to the others scattered on the table except for the cold, slippery feel of evil they gave off. “I am thinking that Teo paid off the wager with one of these coins. I don’t know how he came by them, but it was only by chance that it was Rubar who ended up with the coin.”

It was ever more clear that Rubar had been the true innocent in all of this. Grief tasted bitter on Duncan’s tongue. Then he noticed Musar’s hand reaching out to snatch the coin. Duncan grabbed his arm and pushed the trader back against the wall, putting himself directly between him and the table.

The man struggled against the hold Duncan had on him. He was no match for the strength of one of the Damned, but he was no weakling, either. If Musar managed to grab the coin, there was no telling what he would do. If he attacked Lavinia, Duncan would defend her, and the last thing he wanted to do was kill another man today. He already bore the burden of two innocent souls.

Lavinia caught Musar’s arm with both hands and kept him from reaching past Duncan.

“Musar, stop! You risk the same fate as your men if you touch those coins!”

By then, the trader’s eyes were wild, making it unlikely that mere words would get past the craving that had taken control of him. Duncan did the only thing he could. He stepped back far enough to give himself room to maneuver and slugged the trader with every bit of strength he had in him.

Musar stumbled back against the wall as his eyes rolled up in his head. Then he sank to the floor in an ungraceful heap. At least for the moment he was safe from the trap of the coins.

Duncan flexed his hand and stared down at the unconscious trader. “We need to get him out of here. We also need to search the rest of the caravan to make sure no one else has one of these coins. Do you agree?”

“Yes, I do.”

Lavinia stared at Duncan, her eyes narrowed in suspicion as she backed away from him. “You know a great deal about magic for a man who claims to be a lowly scribe. Why is the magic not affecting you? You can sense it, but it doesn’t call to you as it did to Musar.”

He had no time for such games and followed her step for step. “I wasn’t the target of the attack. You were. If I hadn’t been there tonight, we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all. You’d be dead.”

“We still have no proof that this was anything other than a random attack.”

He wanted to shake her, to make her realize the danger she was in. “Lie to yourself if you will, but don’t bother lying to me.”

She flinched as he continued to batter her with his words. “This kind of magic doesn’t come cheaply. Someone spilled innocent blood to create the spell in those coins. I might have my own secrets, but I’m guessing you do as well.”

Before she could respond, Musar moaned. They needed to get him out of the room before the coins asserted their influence on him again.

Duncan backed away from the abbess, mad at himself for having lost his temper and madder at her for refusing to admit the truth that was right before her eyes.

“Let’s get Musar out of here, and then decide how best to destroy those coins.”

Lavinia nodded, slowly regaining her normal air of authority. “We’ll take him to my office.”

The two of them hefted Musar up off the floor and muscled him back out of the workroom. Once they had him settled in the chair in Lavinia’s office, Duncan started for the door.

“Where do you think you are going?” Lavinia’s words cracked like a whip.

He looked back at her. “I was going to fetch his wife to see to him. When he’s feeling better, we’ll need to search the caravan.”

“Fine, but you and I will do the searching. I don’t want to place anyone else at risk.”

She poured Musar a glass of water as she spoke. “And when we’re done, you and I have a lot to talk about.”

He bowed his head slightly. “Indeed we do.”

Chapter 7

M
erewen didn’t need the carrion birds circling high overhead to know where to look for the dead horses. Their familiar presence was gone, leaving nothing but a cold blank space where their life force used to be. Her mare refused to take another step closer to the grassy knoll up ahead. Even Gideon and Kane struggled to control their mounts.

Finally, the three humans dismounted and left the horses behind. Merewen wished she could remain with them, but that was the coward’s way out. She owed it to the horses, both living and dead, to investigate what had happened.

From where they stood, they had clear visibility for a mile in all directions, and it appeared they were alone. Gideon and Kane positioned themselves on either side of her, swords drawn. She understood their need to find a target for their anger, something solid to fight.

The pain in her head had faded enough that she could concentrate. She started up the final rise to where she could already see the first horse sprawled in the grass. There would be more; how many, she couldn’t tell. When the attack had come, she’d sensed ten, maybe fifteen horses in full panic, all in pain and stampeding out of control.

She could only pray that they hadn’t lost the entire band of mares. Bracing herself for the worst, she walked up the steep slope. Gideon wrapped his free arm around her shoulders, offering his support.

The sight in front of her was a horror to behold, stealing her breath and robbing her limbs of strength. When she cried out, Gideon spun her around so that she wasn’t looking at the bodies that littered the hilltop.

It helped that she could sense Gideon’s own outrage at the atrocity. Gradually, she regained control, suppressing the emotions that would not serve her well at the moment. Grief would have to wait until later.

She forced herself to turn back, to count the dead. One, two, three, four, with three more a short distance away twisted in a tangle of bodies and legs. Starting with the closest corpse, she did a quick examination, trying to determine the cause of death. While she worked, Gideon and Kane split up to circle the hilltop, each studying the ground on his side.

Gideon reached the far end first. “Kane, did you find anything?”

The other warrior had knelt down to get a closer look at something in the grass, but he shook his head. “Nothing useful. All the tracks likely belong to these horses. No sign of any human footprints. No blood. Nothing that would explain their deaths.”

When the warrior stood up, he scrubbed at the mage mark on his face. “We’re too exposed up here. We shouldn’t linger.”

Gideon started back toward her. “Merewen, what can you tell us?”

Reluctantly, she touched each of the first three horses in turn, hating that their bodies were still warm, that they looked as if they would eventually wake up and return to their grazing. But no, they were dead, murdered by some terrible means that left no mark. She’d sensed this magic once before after a bolt of lightning had struck Gideon’s falcon avatar, sending Scim plummeting from the sky. The black chilling residue of the spell left her stomach queasy.

“It has the same feel as the magic that almost killed Scim. It’s blood magic and meant to destroy whatever it touches. Kane, do you agree?”

The dark warrior joined her, standing over the closest mare. He slowly bent down to run his fingers along the horse’s chest and then up the neck. When he touched the forehead, he jerked his hand back and wiped it on his tunic with a look of disgust.

“It’s the same, only far stronger. If this much power had hit Scim, he would’ve died instantly.”

She had more horses to check. When she got close enough to get a look at the last carcass, she gasped. “Gideon, this is the mare that delivered a colt the day my uncle attacked our keep.”

Fear for the foal had her spinning in all directions, looking for some sign the young animal had survived the attack. “Do you see him anywhere?”

The two men circled the area, but with no success. Where could he have gone? Had he been taken? No, that made no sense. Humans would’ve left their mark on the hilltop.

She closed her eyes and reached out to Kestrel and then Rogue, sending pictures of the foal and asking for their help with images rather than words. The two stallions snorted and stamped their feet before separating to do their own hunt. It didn’t take long.

Rogue whinnied loud enough to draw his rider’s attention. “Down there.” Kane pointed toward a small stand of bushes at the base of the hill.

Merewen half ran, half skipped down the steep slope. At the bottom, she slowed to a walk, unable to force herself to move faster, reluctant to find out the colt had suffered the same fate as his dam. On the other hand, if the colt was alive, she didn’t want to startle him into bolting.

Gideon yelled, “Wait for us.”

She ignored him. If there was danger, the horses would let her know. Both Kane and Gideon quickly joined her, each with his back to her as they scanned the area for any threats. Kestrel hung back, but then stallions didn’t take care of their young. They protected the band as a whole.

It was Rogue who was acting out of character. He stood close by, watching her every move with obvious suspicion. When one of the bushes shook, she jumped. Both of her self-appointed guards turned, ready to fight.

“Sorry, the movement startled me.”

She waited until they relaxed slightly before continuing forward. To her surprise, Rogue joined her at the last minute, poking his big head over the top of the bushes as the colt stepped into sight. Ignoring her, he lifted up his nose to sniff at Rogue.

The big stallion snorted but stood rock still, letting the young animal get used to his presence. Finally, the colt limped forward to stand near Rogue, trembling as he stared at the three humans. Merewen’s heart leapt in surprised joy at the unexpected sight of the scarred stallion standing guard over the small colt.

Smiling and pitching her voice low and calm, she crooned, “I need to see how badly you’ve been injured, little one.”

The colt shivered and tried to retreat, but Rogue blocked his way. Merewen knelt down and checked the colt from nose to tail. He was fine except for being hungry and having a slightly strained foreleg.

“No broken bones.” She backed away to consider the options. “We need to get him back to the stable master so Jarod can take care of him.”

She considered the distance back to the keep. With his leg hurt, it was unlikely the foal would be able to walk that far.

Kane’s deep voice gave her the answer. “I’ll carry him on Rogue.”

An hour earlier she would’ve denied that was possible, but the stallion had obviously decided the young animal was his to protect.

“Gideon, can you help me lift the colt?”

He nodded and sheathed his sword. She held the colt to prevent the small animal from trying to run off while Kane mounted Rogue. Then the two of them lifted the foal high enough to settle him across Kane’s lap. The little fellow was clearly not happy, but quickly calmed down when Kane wrapped his arms around him and held him close.

Rogue started back toward the keep, keeping his pace slow and easy. It would take far longer to return home, but she wouldn’t begrudge one minute of the time. Saving one small life didn’t make up for losing the others, but it was a start.

And when she found out who had killed those beautiful, innocent animals, there would be a reckoning in Agathia.

*  *  *

Murdoch stood out on the small balcony that overlooked the bailey below. Definite progress had been made on rebuilding the stable in the past few days. He wished he had the strength to be down there helping. There was something good and clean about swinging a hammer, pounding a nail in to hold two pieces of wood together. It was a simple act of pure creation that could stand for decades beyond the lifetime of the men who built it.

“Should you be out of bed?”

He didn’t bother to look back over his shoulder. “I can stand.” Which didn’t really answer the question. “And I won’t get stronger flat on my back in bed.”

“At least sit down.”

The worry in Alina’s voice hurt him more than the wound in his gut, and possibly did more damage. It was Murdoch’s duty, his calling, to protect her. Instead, when he’d crawled out of his sickbed, he stumbled more than walked this far, his muscles weak and shaky.

Alina had saved him in the attack; she’d thrown herself between Murdoch and her husband’s blade to offer up her life for his. If one of the enemy fighters hadn’t jumped forward to take the blow himself, Alina would’ve died, pinned to Murdoch’s body with her husband’s sword.

The nightmare images played out in his mind whether he was asleep or awake. Right now, she crept closer, unsure of her welcome. He stood his ground, averting his eyes despite how much he craved the sight of her.

“Gideon and Kane rode out with Lady Merewen. Do you know what was wrong?”

Alina finally joined him out on the balcony, clinging to the far side of the small space. “From what Averel told me, Merewen and Gideon were in their quarters when she suddenly started screaming.”

Alina glanced toward Murdoch. “Someone attacked the horses out on the grasslands. That’s all we know at this point.”

The news didn’t surprise him. It was just one more thing he couldn’t do anything about. “Would you send for Averel and ask him to see me?”

She studied him for a long second, her gray eyes seeing far more than he liked. “Why?”

If he confessed the real reason, she’d likely refuse. On the other hand, he hated the idea of lying to her about anything. She’d been mistreated enough by a man who should’ve cherished her. He spit out the truth before he could stop himself.

“I need to walk for a while to build up my strength, but I don’t know how far my legs will carry me. Averel can make himself useful for once and catch me if I fall. Of course if that happens, he’ll never let me forget it.”

Instead of protesting, Alina actually smiled at him. Nothing he’d said was amusing. “What?”

She closed the distance between them to give him a careful hug. “That is the first time you’ve sounded like yourself since you were hurt. I’ll relay your request to Sir Averel. I’m sure he’ll be happy to escort you for a few laps up and down the hall.”

She gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Before that, though, you should eat something. I’ll have a meal brought up.”

Then she was gone.

Women. Did they ever make sense? One minute she was questioning whether he should be out of bed at all, and the next she was almost dancing because of something he said. Rather than ponder a mystery he’d likely never solve, he walked back inside.

He made it as far as the door, which opened out into another room. It held a single bed for the other patient Alina had been tending. From where Murdoch stood, the man appeared to be asleep, but his breathing pattern gave him away. He was alert and well aware of Murdoch’s approach.

“Give it up, man. I know you’re awake.”

Slowly, the duke’s man turned his head in Murdoch’s direction, his eyes cold with a predator’s gaze. “What do you want?”

Under other circumstances, Murdoch would’ve wanted him dead. But regardless of what the man had done in the service of his master, Duke Keirthan, he had saved Alina’s life and quite possibly Murdoch’s as well. For that he owed the bastard.

“I want to know why.”

The trooper gave him a blank look. “Why what?”

Murdoch curled his hands into fists, wishing he had a suitable target for his frustration. Well, he did, but he wouldn’t hit a man who couldn’t even sit up, much less stand on his own two feet. Murdoch yanked a chair over beside the bed and slowly lowered himself down. When he was seated, he tried again.

He enlarged upon his question, spitting out each word slowly and clearly. “Why did you betray your liege lord? The man is a bastard and not worthy of a warrior’s loyalty, but yet you served him.”

The trooper closed his eyes and turned away. Murdoch thought he was going to refuse to answer. Finally, the man turned back, the expression in his eyes bleak.

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told your captain: I don’t know.”

Murdoch could imagine how well that answer would have settled with Gideon. “You don’t know why you not only betrayed Duke Keirthan but also Lord Fagan, the man the duke sent you to defend?”

The man flinched as Murdoch’s words lashed at him, his pale skin flushed as if feverish. He clutched the top of his blanket, his knuckles white with the effort.

“And you know for certain that I served these men?”

Murdoch nodded. “You were seen leading the duke’s forces, and you wore his symbol on a chain around your neck.”

“So I’m a traitor, a man without honor.”

On one level, Murdoch agreed with his assessment, but something about the man’s reaction rang wrong somehow. He needed more information.

“I would hear your version of the events of the other night.”

The trooper stirred restlessly, trying to push himself up. Murdoch leaned forward and helped stuff another pillow under his head. He understood the need to not appear helpless. He hated that they had even that much in common.