Nothing Else Matters (24 page)

and the Muragh are out of his reach. He blames himself but takes it out on others. It’s just grief, it’l go in time.”

Aye, she supposed it would, his at any rate. Right now, she could no longer keep herself from weeping. His words, his anger, his violence, they were more than she could take. This day had been spent in purgatory, al of it just a prelude to the pain Stian had just inflicted on her soul.

“Are you hurt?” Malcolm asked again.

She wiped her face with her sleeve. “I’ve much to do,” she said. Her voice was steady. She looked at Malcolm with outward calm. How odd, she thought,

as though watching herself from a long way away. She gently eased Stian’s head onto the floor. She let Malcolm help her to her feet. She grew dizzy when she took a step forward. The room had grown much darker. Why was everyone staring at her?

“I’l see to the servants now,” she told them. She took another step but for some reason found herself scooped up into Malcolm’s arms.

She heard him say, “She needs—” but the rest of it was lost in safe, heavy darkness.

“My lord?”

She couldn’t bring herself to cal him Stian. She wondered if he remembered last night but wasn’t about to ask. The expression on his face was as hard as it had been then, though she thought there was more pain in his eyes than coldness. She wanted to reach out to comfort him but his stiff demeanor

warned against any contact.

“Why didn’t you tel me you were with child before?”

So, he did remember. He didn’t look repentant. He had a cup of wine in his hand. He drank it down in one long gulp and tossed the cup away. It rol ed with a clatter down into the hal .

Eleanor’s throat tightened with pain, from grief and the coldness in his voice. “I was going to, in York. But then I thought it would be amusing to tel you and your father together. He wanted grandsons,” she added, echoing Stian’s words before Malcolm knocked him out.

Stian just gave a curt nod. He moved to step around her. They were standing on the stairs, and had met with him going up and her coming down. For once they were eye to eye.

She’d woken in her own bed just before dawn, wrapped in a fur blanket with Edythe lying beside her. She’d woken disoriented and not feeling very wel .

She hadn’t understood why Stian wasn’t in their bed with her. She couldn’t remember how she’d actual y gotten to bed. But soon memory rushed back of

the night before. She’d shuddered as she recal ed Stian’s angry accusations but she didn’t let herself dwel on them. She climbed out of bed instead, for she had much to do.

Fiona, Morwina and Blanche had al slept on the floor. She’d quietly woken everyone but her sister and set to work. Fortunately at least the bodies had gotten cleaned off the stairs while she’d been sleeping.

She’d met her husband on his way up while she was coming down for the fourth time in two hours. She wondered how he’d slept and where, and how he

was, but her concern had been cut off when he’d asked about the child.

Now she said as he tried to get past her once more, “Why are you wearing your armor?”

“I’m going after Conner Muragh,” he answered.

Eleanor gave a quick glance out the nearby narrow window. Rain was stil lashing down outside. A narrow trail of water had leaked down from the window casing, forming a tiny puddle in the worn step below it.

“The weather hasn’t cleared yet.”

“I ride out today. Woman wil you get out of my way? I need my leather cloak.”

She didn’t want him fetching his leather cloak. She didn’t want him leaving. Didn’t he know how horrible it would be for her to be alone here? Didn’t he know she was frightened? Of the raiders return. Of the responsibility. She wanted to cling to him and beg him not to make her face al these grim changes at Harelby alone.

She said, “You can’t leave!” and the words came out sounding harsh and commanding though she didn’t mean them that way at al . “My lord Stian,

please,” she added when his eyes narrowed to furious slits.

“It is not for you to give orders, woman,” he told her.

She knew she should humbly beg his forgiveness at her presumption but since she had not meant any disrespect, she tried logic instead. “There is so

much to do. So much you need to supervise. The steward was kil ed. Many of the stores in the undercroft were destroyed or stolen.”

“They didn’t steal the wine,” he said. “That’s al I care about.”

“Wel , I care about the flour and the dried peas and the pickled meat!” she snapped back. Anger flooded her, making her forget al deference and

diplomacy. “The crops were trampled in the field, pigs and sheep were slaughtered, the vil agers burned out of their houses. Don’t you care about that?”

“I care about finding the whoresons who murdered my father.” His words were punctuated by a bright streak of lightning.

Eleanor answered in the thunder. “Wel , I care about burying the man! And the steward and the guardsmen and Hulda and her husband. There’s more to

be concerned about here than one man’s death.”

It was the wrong thing to say. She knew it before the words came out of her mouth. Stian wasn’t ready yet to be reasonable, practical or logical. She

thought he might strike her this time. He didn’t, but the stare that bore into her for a long time was almost worse than violence. She was reminded of the struggles of wolves as she looked away first, having no doubt which of the two of them was the stronger.

“Get out of my way, woman,” he growled after they stood on the stairs in silence for a long time. “Or fetch me my cloak. Be useful or be silent, I don’t care which.”

Stian was surprised when Eleanor turned meekly to do his bidding. As she walked up the stairs, he almost cal ed out to her. He wanted her to come back, into his arms. He wanted to be near her, to rest his head on her breast and cry out al the pain that engulfed him.

He couldn’t afford that kind of weakness. There were men who needed kil ing, and it was easier for him to kil in hot anger than in cold blood. He wanted the pain, the anger and the hate. He needed them to keep going. His world had been destroyed. For some reason, Eleanor thought they could rebuild it.

He knew the only thing that was left for him now was revenge, to kil Conner Muragh or be kil ed by him. That was al that he could let matter now.

A part of him wanted to fol ow after Eleanor, it wasn’t easy to ignore the pul the woman had on him even through his careful y nursed anger. He had to go, he knew, storm or no storm. The men were assembling in the bailey. He decided to go out and join them. It would be better to go after Conner quickly

before he was tempted not to leave the woman’s side at al . His father deserved revenge more than he deserved the comfort of his wife’s presence. He

couldn’t let himself think about being a father or about the state of Harelby. Al those things were part of a broken pattern and he couldn’t imagine any new one forming without his father there to hold it together. Al that could matter was kil ing the man who’d smashed the world apart.

He’d send someone to fetch the cape from Eleanor.

* * * * *

Stian looked around from the back of his tal warhorse. Nicolaa Brasey’s manor house and most of the outbuildings were untouched, but the gate of the

tal wooden fence was smashed in. The thatch of the stable roof was blackened and partly burned away.

“No one was hurt,” she added. “I can spare three men to ride with you if you’re going after them.”

“They kil ed my father.”

“Then take al my men. I’l be glad to see Conner Muragh dead at last.”

The widow stood with a stern, stoic face, her arms crossed. Her son and household people flocked behind her as a light fog mixed with the smel of

smoke fil ed the morning air. At least the rain had stopped. Stian was sorry for the damage but glad the raiders had taken time for one more foray. He welcomed anything that slowed them down.

“Which way did they go?” She pointed north, which was no great surprise. “How many?” he asked.

“No more than a dozen, several of them wounded.”

“Keep your men then,” Stian told her. “We already outnumber them. I’l send back your horses,” he added as he turned his horse and headed back out the broken gate with Lars, Malcolm and their men fol owing behind him.

North led across a burn swol en to the size of a river by the heavy rain into heavily wooded country. Soon they came to a stone track, overgrown and

broken in places but stil easier for traveling than cutting through the forest’s bracken and brambles. Stian recognized the roadway.

“It leads to the Roman wal ,” he said as they stopped to examine the obvious trail left by the raiders.

The wal wasn’t so much a wal anymore as it was a intermittent line of piled stones that stretched like broken teeth across many miles of countryside.

Sometimes it marked the shifting border between England and Scotland. Stian had no idea just which side of the border it was on at present.

“The rain and booty are making travel slow for them,” Lars reported after examining a pile of fresh horse droppings.

“Good,” Stian said. A plan was forming. For al the pain, he could stil think like a soldier. “They’l be bending west toward Muragh lands as they near the wal . If we ride hard, I know exactly where we can be waiting for them.”

They rode hard. The sky cleared and the breeze stil ed as miles and hours passed. The woods grew hot in the midsummer sun, flesh inside layers of

padding and armor grew hotter stil . Stian sweated out the wine and the headaches brought on by drink and Malcolm’s loving care of the night before.

His head grew clearer as he rode. Though he tried to think only of the fight to come, thoughts of Eleanor kept intruding at odd moments. When he saw a patch of flowers the color of one of her kirtles spread over a meadow they crossed, when the song of a bird reminded him of her laughter. He kept

reminding himself that he had no space for such soft thoughts now, not even to pass the time. Fortunately images of his father always came back to haunt him, sharp as the dagger that had ended Roger of Harelby’s life.

They circled around the reivers to reach the Roman ruins long before them. Stian had plenty of time to set up an ambush, placing his men behind a

tumbledown stub of wal and in the surrounding woods. He arranged his force so that the Scots would be surrounded as soon as the raiding party reached the open area just before the wal . By the time al was ready, the first of the Scots came into view. Most were on foot, some men in the rear were driving a few head of stolen cattle before them. No more than five or six were riding. Stian recognized at least one of Nicolaa’s horses. He recognized even more of the raiders. Conner Muragh was in the center of the first line of riders, his son Rob on one side. A skinny, yel ow youth in an oversized, rusting pot helm rode on the other.

Conner was bare-headed, bent-shouldered with fatigue. His braids were streaked heavily with gray and his faced lined, but Stian knew better than to

make the mistake of thinking it would be easy to kil this cunning old devil. His father had been of an age with Conner. There had been enough Muragh

bodies around Roger to show that he had not gone like a lamb to the slaughter and neither would his old enemy. Which was good. Stian welcomed the

fight.

It came soon enough when one of the men among the cattle was the first to notice the men moving up from behind the raiding party. He gave out a shout

and died with an arrow in the back for his trouble. Stian gave a shout and the rest of the men on the flanks moved in. He rode in from the front with

Malcolm and Lars, leaving a trio of archers to cut off any charge by the enemy to get past the wal . He let his men look to themselves while he charged down on Conner Muragh. His war cry fil ed the hot air, a release for al the pain and hatred within him.

The chief of the Muraghs met his cry of chal enge with a wild shriek of his own. “You’re mine!” he cried as he spurred his horse to meet Stian’s.

Stian liked men who talked in battle, it did nothing to help their concentration. He never talked to his opponents once the battle began. When their swords met, he fought in deadly silence. Silence that was ful of anger and determination. A learning silence as he studied the older warrior, hunting for any weakness.

The most obvious was the differences in their mounts. Stian’s was a trained warhorse. Conner rode a gentle palfrey from Nicolaa’s stable. It shied away in terror from the fight as swords clashed while Stian’s mount moved easily into battle. Conner fought two-handed, with a great sword, making him unable to use his reins. The horse beneath him had never been taught to be guided by signals from knees and spurs.

It wasn’t long before the palfrey reared in terror, throwing its rider from its back. The horse’s head knocked into Stian’s shield as it came up, knocking the round wooden shield from his grasp.

Conner made one wild swing as he fel . The great sword connected with Stian’s left arm, hacking far enough through his protective chain mail to slice

open a deep cut in Stian’s upper arm.

Stian felt nothing. He concentrated on the enemy who fel beneath his horse’s feet. Conner would have tried to slice open the horse’s bel y but Stian

wheeled the animal quickly and the horse’s hoof landed a hard blow to Conner’s shoulder as it turned. There was a heavy crack of breaking bone. Conner dropped to his knees, left arm dangling uselessly, barely able to hold the heavy sword in the other.

The man looked up as Stian rode forward for the kil . With his neck exposed that way, it was easy to take off his head.

When it was done, Stian just stared down at the decapitated body without any thoughts or feelings for what seemed like a very long time. If a battle went on around him, he wasn’t aware of it. He’d expected to feel gleeful, vindicated, washed free of al the sorrow and anger. Al he felt while looking at the dead man was the tiring aftermath from the exhilaration of battle.