In the Shadow of Midnight (24 page)

With one hand, Eduard lifted and fastened the protective flap of the linked iron camail that covered the lower half of his face and throat. While he did so, Ariel suffered the full, unleashed power of his eyes.

“If I find I need your help, my lady, I will call upon it. Until then, just do as I say, by Christ, and with no more of your arguing, or—”

The threat was never completed. A low, whining rush of air passed over their heads and a split second later, a solid
whonk
left the pair staring at the short, iron-tipped crossbow bolt quivering in the tree trunk behind them.

W
ithout standing on ceremony, Eduard pushed Ariel toward the trees and smacked the rumps of the horses, startling them into bolting for the river. He snatched his bow and quiver from the sling on Lucifer’s saddle, then stepped behind a clump of bushes—a sight met with a distant, muffled guffaw of laughter.

“Aye, run and hide, Graycloak. You would fare far better just to pay us a toll and pass along the road without further ado.”

Eduard cursed and clamped the shaft of an arrow between his teeth while he leaned his weight into the strong arch of yew to tighten the slack of his bowstring. Common outlaws. Deserters … or men paid by the French to disrupt the flow of traffic through Normandy. They travelled in small packs like dogs, robbing, killing, plundering … taking hostages to ransom.

Three, perhaps four more voices echoed the sarcasm of the first, their jibes accompanied by a brief hail of stubby crossbow quarrels. Only one came anywhere near the first; most of them plunked harmlessly into the soft earth, well short of their targets. The villains were either extremely poor shots or they were in too much of a hurry to show strength over caution. One foolhardy fellow even danced a small jig, hooting and hollering when his bolt came close enough to shave a strip of bark off the tree Eduard stood behind.

Almost contemptuously, Eduard stepped out into the open. He raised the graceful sweep of his longbow and nocked the arrow to the string. With the siring and feather fletching drawn back to the curve of his jawbone, he straightened his fingers and snapped the arrow free, sending it into the distant greenwood with the impact of a thunderbolt. The dancer was lifted back and thrown off his feet, the steel-tipped arrow piercing clean through his chest and protruding half its length out the back. A second outlaw, farther along the gully, jumped
up to gape in horror at his fallen comrade and, too late, heard the soft
hiss-s-s
of a second ashwood arrow streaking toward him. This time the lethal tip passed through the width of the man’s neck and struck a tree some twenty yards behind, still carrying enough speed and power to become embedded deep in the wood.

Yet another fool stood to rearm his crossbow, a costly necessity in the handling of the clumsy weapon. Placing the stirrup of the bow on the ground, he slipped his foot through the metal ring and, with a heave and a grunt of air, pulled back on the resined gut until it fit tautly over the metal hook of the trigger. He died where he stood, his face showing more surprise than pain.

Eduard pulled two more arrows from his quiver, his eyes glinting coldly as they scanned the slope of both hills for the next target. He ducked, and missed by inches, the barbed tip of another bolt that was fired from the cover of a large pine tree. His verbal response was muffled by the iron link camail, but there was nothing to mute the hard blaze of anger in his eyes as he fired both arrows into the dense growth of boughs. A cry of pain sent two more outlaws scrambling for thicker cover, one of them doubled over and clutching a skewered arm.

Any thought of celebrating was quashed as a shout parted a curtain of evergreens and two more men came hurtling down the slope, their swords raised and sparking in a flare of sunlight. Eduard tossed his bow aside and unsheathed his own blade, bracing himself as the first man slashed for his head and met the broad side of cold steel instead. The villain was not nearly as tall as FitzRandwulf, but he had the power of a bulldog in his arms. He wielded the sword in both hands, windmilling it close enough to be a threat, far enough to avoid Eduard’s blade while his companion sought to maneuver himself into a position to strike at the knight’s back. The outlaws hacked at knees, thighs, belly, and shoulder … anything that looked vulnerable, testing Eduard’s instincts and his skill at sending their blades scraping at steel and empty air. They did not find him lacking.

The sound of clashing swords echoed through the trees
and along the gully, drawing the attention of the two bowmen Eduard had flushed from behind the pines. The one with the arrow jutting from his arm showed no interest in turning back to join the fray, but the second one, armed with a crossbow, stopped, grinned, and started running back toward the river.

Ariel, observing from behind a tree, saw the villain stop to rearm his weapon. He was well within the crossbow’s ideal range. Close enough, in fact, to pierce through the mail links of FitzRandwulf’s armour. The swordsmen were aware of this and kept Eduard’s back to the gully; he, on the other hand, probably was not even aware the danger existed.

Eduard’s bow was lying in the leaves where he had thrown it, the quiver alongside. Not stopping to think of the danger to herself, she ran out from behind the shield of trees, retrieving both, then dashing for the protection of a large oak. The longbow was enormous, larger and heavier than any she had used at Pembroke, but she was not unfamiliar with the weapon itself, having practised with the Welsh style of bow more often than the shorter, lighter type favoured by the English.

She nocked an arrow and sighted along the shaft, drawing the string to her chin with an effort that almost peeled the flesh from her fingers. She let loose at the crossbowman, who had seen her as the easier target and had aimed and fired his bow in the same length of time. While her arrow carried more speed, it also carried well over his head and was lost somewhere in the greenwood behind him. His bolt, meanwhile, thudded into the trunk of the oak with a distinctive enough bite to send bits of bark flying in Ariel’s face.

Her teeth set in a grimace, she pulled another arrow and slotted it to the string. Eduard saw her, saw what she was doing, and was shocked enough to do what the pair of attackers had been unable to manage thus far—he turned his back on one of their swords. Ariel heard Eduard’s shout and fired her arrow just as the swordsman started to lunge with his blade. The steel tip of her arrow caught him just under the hook of his nose, splitting the cartilage and bone, and plowing upward into his skull.

Eduard whirled, then whirled again, his sword flashing in a deadly arc that cut through his remaining attacker’s wrist, parting flesh and bone, then sliced through the exposed stretch of his throat, severing all but a narrow flap of sinew at the nape. Head and shoulder split apart in a fount of blood, and as the body fell, it sprayed the leaves with a crimson fan.

Eduard ran over to where Ariel was standing. The bow was still raised to shoulder height, the string was still humming in the sudden, dead silence. Eduard followed her gaze and saw where her third arrow had taken the crossbowman high in the chest, the tip punching through the bullhide armour like a knife through cheese.

She looked up at FitzRandwulf, her eyes shining, her cheeks flushed. She had lost her hat somewhere in the excitement and her hair lay uncoiled over her shoulder in a thick, sleek braid.

With her heart pounding in her throat, she watched him reach up and unhook the scaled pennyplate camail. His breath had caused spickets of moisture to become trapped in the hammered links and as he lowered the flap, it glittered in folds of burnished silver beneath his jaw. The iced gray coldness of his eyes combined with the harsh, uncompromising lines of his mouth sent the blood rushing through her veins with enough force to bring on a moment of dizziness.

“The next time I give you an order and you do not obey it,” he snarled, “I will strip a six-foot willow lash and flay such a pattern on your arse, you will be unable to sit for a month.”

Two stormy spots of colour darkened Ariel’s cheeks. “You are very welcome, my lord. And the next time I see you in ambush, I will indeed sit by and take pleasure in seeing you laid to ground.”

His eyes narrowed but his retort was lost under the thundering beat of horses’ hooves churning through the woods. Henry and Robin were the first to arrive in the gully. They brought their beasts to a skidding, rearing halt when they saw Ariel and FitzRandwulf standing unhurt by the river, then drew abreast at a slower pace, their swords in their hands, their
heads swivelling as they appraised the carnage on the forest floor.

“Well,” said Henry, “it seems we did not have to hurry back after all.”

“The four Sparrow counted were dead,” Robin explained breathlessly. “And not too long.”

“Aye,” Henry nodded grimly. “We must have surprised these curs before they could finish their grisly work. Christ’s blood, how many—?”

While he took a silent count, moving lips and gauntleted fingers, Sedrick and Lord Dafydd came riding around the bend in the gully, herding the injured forester in front of them.

He was young for an outlaw, not more than sixteen or seventeen years of age. Long and lanky, his legs accounted for nigh on most of his seven feet of height. Sparrow stalked in his shadow, taking four steps to every one of his, in danger of putting a crimp in his neck from trying to see above the bony shoulders. There was not much to see. The makings of a sparse beard were sprouting over the lower half of his face; the upper was dominated by a pair of deep-set eyes as dark a blue as the midnight sky. His clothes were threadbare, not improved by a vest of matted hare’s fur that stank as badly as it was stitched together.

The shaft of Eduard’s arrow was stuck through his arm, splintered near the fletching where he must have fallen in his efforts to evade the two pursuing knights.

Eduard went to each body in turn, checking for signs of life and salvaging the valuable steel arrowheads. At the first body, because the shaft had met no resistance from bullhide or armour, he nudged the corpse onto its side and used his boot to snap the protruding arrowhead free. The next two men were as dead as the first, the eyes wide and staring, offering no protest as Eduard twisted and pried his arrows from their bodies. Robin had already ridden down the gully to retrieve the arrow intact from the trunk of a tree, leaving only Ariel’s last kill for inspection. The arrow was too deeply wedged in flesh and gristle to pull free, and while Eduard debated digging for it, Sedrick and Dafydd arrived by his side.

Their prisoner had stopped as well, his face grim through the layers of filth, his mouth curled in a sneer as he looked down at his slain comrade.

“Greedy bastards,” he spat. “I warned them no good would come from ambushing men who wore the Holy Cross. Show me a pilgrim with two coins to rub together, I said, and I’ll show you a monk with ten wives. But no. They were not satisfied with the four fat routiers who were addled enough to build a cook fire in these woods. They wanted more, and so they got it.”

Eduard was frowning at the gangly youth. The lad had muttered to himself in Saxon English, not a common occurrence in the forests of Normandy. “Where are you from, boy?”

“England,” was the dry response.

“Where
in England?”

The midnight blue eyes screwed into wary slits, for FitzRandwulf had addressed him in his own language. “Nowhere a fine Norman pricker like yourself might be acquainted with. ’Tis a small village, though, if it should please you to know. Small and poor and worked by men who are kept half-starved to pay for the king’s follies.”

“Is that why you have come to Normandy? To make an honest, decent living for yourself?”

“I was not brought here willingly,” the boy hissed. “I was forced to come, forced to leave my family, with my father a cripple and my mother coughing blood, so the king of soft swords could claim a loyal army behind him. As for wages—” He stopped and snorted disgustedly. “We were paid with strokes of the lash and with such frequent generosity you can be assured we praised our valiant king’s bountifulness nightly.”

Proud and defiant, he was showing no inclination to guard his tongue, no fear of having it slit from his mouth for uttering treasonous words. He must have assumed he was already a dead man in the eyes of these Norman knights, with nothing to be gained or lost by holding his silence or his contempt.

“What is your name, boy, and how did you come to be
here in the forest, robbing honest pilgrims?” Eduard asked evenly.

The lad drew himself straight and matched FitzRandwulf’s uncompromising tone. “My name, if it holds such importance to you, is Alan, son of Tom, yeoman of the Dale of Sherwood in Nottingham, and if it will please you to know, I came by way of breaking a guard’s head. Split it in two, I did, for him thinking he could use me like a whore. When he came for me, I butted him, all right, with the top of my head against the top of his. Doubtless the sodomizing bastards would have called it murder, so I cut for the forest—a place I thought I knew well enough.” He paused and gazed about him with a gravely disparaging look on his face. “’Tis not like an English forest, though. The trees here are thin and unfriendly, the ground too hard for a good night’s sleep. As for finding fit companionship—” He gave the corpses another black look. “Faugh! I’ve only been with them a day and a night and look where they have brought me. All I wanted was someone to show me the way home.”