Knight's Blood (11 page)
Authors: Julianne Lee
Tags: #Kidnapping, #Science Fiction, #Fantasy fiction, #Married people, #Scotland, #General, #Fantasy, #Children - Crimes against, #Fighter pilots, #Fiction, #Time travel
“Let them find seats and they’ll be served.”
Trefor nodded, then turned to speak to his cluster of guys. Alex watched closely and saw that most of them seemed to know this drill. Probably locals—genuine fourteenth-century knights. But there was one who kept looking around, staring at the shields and weapons hung on the wall pegs, up at the heavy wooden beams holding up the roof, peering at the windows glazed with thick, wavy glass. His hair was shorter than the others’, even shorter than Trefor’s, and he moved with an unwariness Alex had learned was peculiar to Americans. Alex guessed this was someone from the future. He recognized a tourist when he saw one.
That assessment turned out to be accurate, when the gawker followed Trefor to the head table and the others found seats at the lower tables. Alex watched the two approach and decided he didn’t like the look of this other guy. It was nothing he could put his finger on, but there was a distasteful sense about him that made Alex think of a newly deployed seaman who was unlikely to last out the cruise. He could almost smell it.
Trefor came, sat in Lindsay’s chair—his mother’s chair—and gestured to his friend to pull up another from one of the lower tables.
“No. He’ll sit with the men.”
Trefor frowned. “Why?”
Alex leaned forward. “Because that’s the way we do things here, and I’m the laird. This is my castle. My hall. My table. It matters who sits at the head table, and I get to say.”
Anger flashed in Trefor’s eyes, so eerily like Alex’s own, and he said to his friend, “Go sit with the other guys, Mike. I think my dad and I got some private talk to do.”
Mike looked from Trefor to Alex, then back again, as if to suggest he didn’t approve of the way Trefor had caved on the issue. His teeth were too small for his head, giving his square face a loose-lipped appearance of toothlessness, and that mouth twisted in a grimace. But then he nodded and complied without speaking. A servant woman came with a plate stacked with pieces of beef to place in front of the master’s guest.
Alex watched Mike go, then sat back and said to Trefor, “He’s from the States?”
“My best friend. I’ve known him since my last foster home, ten years ago.”
“What about the others?”
Trefor shrugged. “Hired swords. Lots of out-of-work knights hanging out in Edinburgh these days. Every man in Scotland under the age of sixty fought at Bannockburn, don’t you know. Most of them came within a hair of capturing King Edward single-handedly. It would appear the whole Scottish army followed him across the battlefield when he escaped. Must have been quite a sight.”
“You brought a lot of money with you.”
“I’m comfortable. Fake jewelry is indistinguishable from the real thing here, what with there being no magnifying glass yet, and I figure if nobody can tell it’s not real, then it might as well be. Even the real stuff is worth more in trade value here than it is where we come from. Like bringing Cuban cigars into the U.S.”
“A treasure chest full of cubic zirconia?”
“Pretty much.”
Alex refrained from saying he didn’t think much of that sleazy solution to the problem of finances, for he remembered his first stake in these times had been a pouch full of coins and jewels he’d taken from a man he’d just shot to death. Instead, he said, “Can you fight?”
“I’ve had my scuffles.”
“I mean, with a sword. You know anything about how to fight in a battle?”
“I took riding and fencing lessons before coming here.”
Alex grunted. “Fencing. Like, with a foil? That’ll do you diddly for good here. Forget everything you learned in your classes. I’ll have to teach you how to swing a broadsword.”
“It can’t be so different.”
“Trust me, it is. I’ll teach you.”
“I can figure it out for myself.” The fire rose higher in Trefor’s eyes.
“
I’ll teach you
. If you’re going to fight under my command, you’re going to learn how to handle your weapon without getting yourself killed. Try to fight with a broadsword as if it were a foil, and you won’t last one battle. Hell, you won’t last past the charge.”
I’ll teach you
. If you’re going to fight under my command, you’re going to learn how to handle your weapon without getting yourself killed. Try to fight with a broadsword as if it were a foil, and you won’t last one battle. Hell, you won’t last past the charge.”
“I didn’t come here to—”
“To what? To fight? Or to take orders from me?”
Trefor fell silent for a moment.
Alex continued. “If you’re going to hang out here—become one of my household knights—you’re going to have to follow orders. You’re not a knight. You’re just a guy with enough money to buy a lot of shiny iron plate and a horse. I don’t know how you fooled those guys sitting over there into thinking you were a nobleman and a knight like them—”
“Same as you. You aren’t—”
“I was knighted.” Alex leaned forward and into Trefor’s space. To his credit, the younger man did not lean back from him. “I was dubbed by the king himself, and later made knight banneret, also by the hand of Robert. That is why I am entitled to ride around Scotland with my own men under my own banner, without attaching myself to another unit or asking for a by-your-leave from every land-holder in the country. It’s why I’m going to be able to go in search of your mother with my contingent without annoying the crown and making the current administration think I’m out to work against him.”
“You won’t find her.”
Alex leaned back but otherwise didn’t betray his alarm. Trefor was from the future and might know something. Alex hoped he didn’t. “I will.”
“You won’t. I know you won’t.”
“How could you know?”
“You didn’t find me. I don’t think you even went looking for me. I know you won’t find her, because you didn’t.”
Alex didn’t want to ask the next question, but he had to. “Did you read it somewhere?”
Trefor snorted and took a large bite of his meat. He said past the wad in his cheek, “Don’t think all history got written down. And you were never important enough for anyone to write about. It’s not like you were a king or anything.”
Alex knew that. But he would have liked to know about Lindsay. Or maybe even if he would ever be an earl. Trefor thought he would be, and had said as much. “How do you know, then?”
“They told me. The faeries.”
Alex snorted. “Right. Like they’re the epitome of honesty.”
“They told me where to find you.”
“Because they wanted you to find me. Like you said, it’s all one big joke to them. Stirring the pot to see what happens.”
Trefor just grunted and fell silent. It was plain he had no answers. Alex said, “I’ll find your mother, and you can tag along or not, as you please.”
Trefor’s eyes flashed again with a glance toward Alex, but then focused on his plate.
Hector’s loud voice cut through the ambient noise of breakfasting knights. “Introduce me to your guest, brother! And curse me for a blind man if he isn’t a relation from your Hungary!” The Barra laird, wearing little more than tunic, trews, and a long, ugly brown plaid draped over his shoulder, strode up the room, snagged a chair from one of the lower tables, and set it behind Alex and Trefor. Then he leaned between them, took a slab of meat from Trefor’s plate, and sat back on the chair to eat. Trefor stared at him with an evil look in his eye that Alex wanted to slap from his face. Hector was a good friend, and if not an actual brother, nevertheless behaved as much of one as Pete or Carl.
“Hector MacNeil of Barra, this is my cousin from Hungary, Trefor Pawlowski.”
Hector laughed out loud, then lowered his voice and said, “Why the story? Who is he in actuality?”
Alex also lowered his voice. “He’s my son.”
Now Hector’s face fell. “Truth to tell? Ye wouldnae lie to me, brother?”
“Never. He’s my stolen son, all grown up. Faeries did it.”
Alarm crossed Hector’s face at the mention of faeries, and he eyed Trefor. “And why is he here?”
Trefor said, a testy edge to his voice, “You don’t have to talk like I’m not here.” He spoke Middle English. A bit stiffly, but it was understandable.
Alex gazed at him.
Huh
. What else about Trefor did he still need to know? “Where’d you learn to speak the language?” Alex continued in the archaic tongue, for the benefit of Hector, who had English, Gaelic, and a little Latin.
Huh
. What else about Trefor did he still need to know? “Where’d you learn to speak the language?” Alex continued in the archaic tongue, for the benefit of Hector, who had English, Gaelic, and a little Latin.
“I have a gift for languages. I know all the major modern European ones, some minor ones, a little Chinese and Japanese. I’m a wiz with Farsi, and I speak fluent Klingon. Picking up Middle English in preparation for this trip was like falling off a log.”
“Gaelic?”
“Modern Scottish Gaelic and medieval Gaelic. I was lucky enough to find an instructor who knew both.”
Alex grunted once and considered that, then turned to Hector. “He came to claim his birthright. I’ve explained to him there is none, but he wants to stay anyway and help me look for my wife.”
“My mother. And you’re not going to find her.”
“But we’re going to go looking anyway.”
“Pissing up a rope.”
“It’s my rope. My piss.”
Hector butted in loudly. “Very well, then! It’s a search we’ll have. A hunt for the fair Lady Marilyn Pawlowski MacNeil.”
Trefor peered at Alex and frowned. “You let them think you married your cousin?”
“Distant cousin. It’s really the foster sister thing that is stickier here. No actual law, but it’s frowned upon.”
“Ick.”
“It’s not like—”
“The two of you put your heads together, you’ll find the woman.” Hector leaned forward to grab another piece of meat from Trefor’s plate, then sat back to eat it. His cheeks stuffed with food, he said, “I see he’s a MacNeil to the core, Ailig.”
Alex gave Hector only a bland stare, then said to Trefor, “Show him your ears.”
“No.”
“I said, show him.” The threat in his voice was to let Trefor know he would draw blood if Trefor didn’t comply.
Slowly the younger man raised a hand to draw aside the hair covering one ear.
“Och,” said Hector.
“If he’s a MacNeil—if he didn’t get those from me—where did they come from?”
“Faeries. ’Tis a mark of faeries. Had he been left instead of stolen, I’d be calling him changeling.”
“What’s a changeling?”
“When a child is stolen, the faeries leave behind one of their own. Sometimes identical to the child but weak and failing, sometimes a creature plainly not human at all.”
Alex remembered the crib splattered with dust. Slowly he said, “And . . . if one were to kill such a creature, would it turn to dust then and there?”
Hector nodded. “I’ve heard of it.” He leaned toward Trefor, his eyes wide, gawking at the faerie man before him. He leaned to see, but Trefor brushed his hair over his ears and made sure they were covered.
Alex said, “Faerie blood you say? You mean those goofy little folks who are all mad as hatters?” He’d almost rather it had been that elf, Nemed.
Hector shook his head. “I cannae say. But if he’s your son and your wife’s, one of you has given him the blood. And I can see he’s your son. There cannae be any doubt about that.”
Alex made a disparaging noise in the back of his throat. “My kingdom for a DNA test kit.”
Only Trefor snorted at that, for half the sentence was necessarily in modern English and the reference was to a play that wouldn’t be written for another two and a half centuries.
Trefor asked, “What does
An Dubhar
mean? Your nickname?”
An Dubhar
mean? Your nickname?”
Now Alex’s bland gaze fell on his son. “I thought you knew Gaelic.”
“I’m fluent, not a scholar. This particular word has escaped me until now.”
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