Ruthless (2 page)

As Grunda rubbed the dark concoctions through
Ragnhild and Muriele's hair, the women called out ways to disguise
the two. One took her life in her hands when she ran down into the
bailey and dodged burning debris and rubble from the bombardment to
scurry back with a pewter cup of dirt. Her red-faced friend stopped
crying long enough to help mix the right amount of water into the
cup to make a light-colored mud.

They giggled when Grunda dabbed bits on their
ladies faces and hands to make them appear unwashed for many
days.

"My lady, ye look like the goose girl last
summer when the old drake pecked her legs and made her fall in the
mud pile!"

Muriele stared at the polished metal square
hanging over the washstand and burst out laughing. As the day faded
into evening, her shimmering hair became a dull brown.

The castle women, chamber maids and cook's
helpers all did their part to disguise their mistress and her
daughter, for after Lord Baldor came to the castle, the two women
had tried to make their lives easier. Now, the faithful women
helped them dress in worn clothing and two tattered cloaks with
hoods. Once they decided not even the most discerning eye could
tell the women were the mistress of Kinbrace and her daughter, they
coached them how to appear being of the common class.

A chambermaid clucked her tongue and advised,
"Ye canna stroll, my lady. Shuffle like ye are bone tired."

"Aye. Hunch your shoulders forward like you
have carried baskets of dirty laundry for many years," a laundress
said.

Back and forth they walked, practicing their
shuffle and rounded shoulders. Still, something was missing.

"I dinna know why, my ladies," a knight's
wife said. "Beneath it all, your breeding still shows."

"How can we still look like ladies of the
keep when we are covered with mud and our hair straggles limp from
beneath our scarves?" Muriele asked.

"Ah, I think I know what 'tis," Grunda said.
"Yer height. No other woman here is as tall as ye are. Sir Magnus
will check for lasses who come up to a man's chin."

"Huh! What are we to do?" Muriele was
beginning to despair. "We canna shrink like wool cloth boiled in
water."

"Aye. But ye can walk with yer knees bent.
And if ye would be lowly servants, dinna respond with anger if
someone touches where he should not."

Grunda pointed to five of the women and told
them to walk two ahead and three after Ragnhild and Muriele.

They shuffled around until they felt
confident in their deception.

Day and night, heavy stones from the
catapults bombarded the castle walls. Between the missiles meant to
break through the walls, trebuchets threw balls of fire flying over
them. No one within could rest or sleep but were under constant
stress putting out fires.

Finally, as dawn broke on the seventh day,
the last several barrages opened gaping holes in two of the
castle's walls.

Magnus and half his army swarmed through the
west side like hungry ants attacking a day-old corpse, while Sweyn,
his first in command, assaulted the east with as much fervor.
Amidst the screams of the frightened, the injured and dying, the
castle fell.

The conquering army did not see so much as a
glimpse of Lord Baldor. As the fighting waned, the Gunn warriors
searched for him as they gathered the women and children to send
them from the castle. The least-injured Kinbrace warriors would
guard them.

Magnus sat atop Odin and studied the women
who cried and clutched each other as his men led them down the
keep's stairs into the bailey. Sweyn stood in front of him and
peered at each woman's face as she went past. If she walked with
grace or dignity, he signaled her out for special scrutiny. He had
already stopped several and pulled aside their scarves or hoods to
bare their heads, only to find they had hair of any color but what
they searched for.

Magnus knew he would recognize Baldor's wife
and daughter. Bards sang of the beautiful women with their tall and
willowy bodies and hair the color of ripe wheat.

He found no signs of them.

o0o

Muriele felt the huge devil's eyes rake over
every female as they descended the stairway to the bailey. When
ordered to walk single-file, Grunda shoved Muriele and Ragnhild in
front of her, and with a sharp nod and twitch of her shoulders,
reminded Muriele to stoop.

Feeling the force of his eyes as he studied
her, Muriele hazarded a glance at Sir Magnus through lowered
lashes, feeling much like a wary mouse peering out a small hole
chewed in a barn wall.

Today, he was their conqueror. Power radiated
from him even in the way he sat his horse. Together, they seemed a
statue hewn from granite.

Hard. Silent. Unmoving.

Sparks of tightly held emotion sizzled around
the man. The hair on her arms lifted every bit as much as when she
found herself outside in the midst of a lightning storm.

What caused it? His fury?

She near halted. What right did he have for
fury? It was their castle destroyed. It was he and her loathsome
stepfather who caused it.

"Sst!" Her mother hissed in front of her, the
sound barely heard.

Muriele looked down. If her mother had sensed
her feelings, then so could someone else.

When the devil's commander reached out to
snatch away Muriele's hood, Grunda stumbled and cried out, bringing
their attention to her. Ragnhild halted and bent low to help her.
With the old woman's curses and rants, the man let them through
without further scrutiny.

Outside the keep, the soldiers herded them
into the front bailey like so many sheep. Muriele near ruined their
disguises when a smelly lout prodded her mother's back and ordered
her to hurry. Had Ragnhild not grabbed Muriele's wrist, she would
have cut him with the knife strapped inside her woolen sleeve.

They no longer heard the moans and cries of
the wounded within the castle walls. He had meant it when he warned
he would
give no quarter
. The women's sobs and wails
drowned out most sounds.

Muriele was all out of tears. She'd had much
to grieve over.

o0o

Cursing and scuffling filled the air as the
last stragglers passed through the keep's huge doors. Four men
grappled with Lord Baldor as they pulled him out into the open. A
man followed carrying Baldor's shield and weapons.

"We caught the bastard hiding in the storage
room like the blustering coward he is," the last man said with
disgust.

"I yield! Ye canna kill a defenseless
man."

He held his empty hands high in the air.
Magnus snorted.

"Yield? When ye refused my offer four days
hence, ye sacrificed yerself and every man within the castle's
outer walls."

His fingers twitched with the urge to
strangle the fool for causing such useless slaughter. By Magnus'
code of consequences for right and wrong, Baldor must die by his
hand. Keeping his eyes on the loathsome man, he threw his right leg
over Odin's back and slid to the ground.

As Magnus leisurely took his shield from his
squire, Baldor foamed at the mouth. 'Twas an insult to act like the
coming fight was of so little consequence he was in no hurry to don
his arms. When the squire held up a fighting flail, Magnus grinned
and nodded. The long, leather-wrapped handle held two chains, a
morning star at the end of each. The wicked, spiked iron balls
could wreak havoc. With a hearty swing, he could generate
tremendous force and wrap the balls and chains around a weapon,
wrenching it from an attacker's hand.

The flail and sword would be his only
weapons, his shield his protection. He wrapped the chains around
the flail's handle and tucked it in a sling hanging behind his
right hip, the morning stars secured against a tough piece of
leather kept the spikes from puncturing his back.

Finished, he widened his stance, yawned and
stretched.

"Let Baldor arm himself."

He watched with amusement as Lord Baldor's
face purpled with anger. Magnus' had pricked him on purpose. An
angry man was a careless one. The eejit seethed while he should
have calmly thought on how to save his sorry arse.

Even so, Baldor surprised him with the speed
with which he grabbed his war hammer and slipped it beneath his
belt. Gripping his shield in his left hand and arm, the man hoisted
his sword. Magnus knew he would need all his skills and more to
defeat him when Baldor sprang at him, his sword slicing the air
between them with such unexpected agility and mastery.

o0o

Muriele noted the guard's excitement as
suddenly, the sharp screech and clang of swords again filled the
air. Sir Magnus was in hand-to-hand combat with her stepfather.

If Sir Magnus won the match, her stepfather
would die.

If her stepfather won, Sir Magnus would be
dead.

Whatever way the fight went, Lord Baldor
would die. The men who fought under Sir Magnus would see to it.

'Twas possible her life would be easier if
both men died. But Muriele could not wish it to be so. For just a
moment when she had passed Sir Magnus sitting so still on his great
horse and spied his sensuous lips framed with the precise short
beard, her skin had quivered. A spark flashed through her straight
to the pit of her stomach. There was something more to him than
mere danger.

After so many sennights of hearing the
terrible booms and shudders of hurled missiles, the swarming sounds
of arrows flying overhead, and the shouts and cries of men fighting
and dying in a castle under siege, how could the shriek of two
swords striking together seem even more ominous?

The guards began yelling and placing bets
afore the combat had started. Magnus and Baldor had not wasted time
testing each other but went straight to battling for the kill.

"Ah, I can see why ye send men to do the
killing for ye," Magnus said as he sidestepped out of Baldor's
reach.

"Coward! Stand and fight like a man," Baldor
shouted. His face turned redder and he grunted as he made a vicious
sweep with his sword.

Magnus's sword shrieked as he repelled to the
thrust.

"For certs, I hear yer men hold your
opponents so ye can skewer them without risking yer lily-soft
hands," he taunted.

Shock swept through Muriele remembering her
stepfather's men holding her betrothed's arms behind his back while
Baldor plunged a blade into her beloved's chest. Though Magnus may
have meant to taunt her stepfather, did he realize how true he
spoke?

When Baldor's teeth ground together, Magnus
lunged forward as if aiming for his right side. Baldor shifted his
great iron shield to the right, leaving a small opening on his
left. Magnus' sword found an opening between his chain mail and
leather padding. Blood soon seeped through.

"Did ye know ye bleed like a stuck pig,
Baldor?"

"Bastard!"

"Nay. I am the image of my father." He waited
a breath then added, "I hear ye can sire no sons."

Baldor thrust his sword high, trying to go
over the top of Magnus' shield and strike his head from his body.
Magnus raised his shield in time though the force of the strike
near knocked him off his feet.

"Nor even daughters." He continued to mock
Baldor. He turned his blade parallel to stop another downward
strike. "E'en a weak man can swell his wife's belly with puny
girls."

Soldiers guarding the women became more
excited with their betting. Men ran back and forth to spread word
of how the battle fared to those who could not see. Whenever the
guards were engrossed in the scene in front of the keep, she took
her mother's hand and edged the slightest bit backward toward the
broken walls.

Grunda kept her head lowered as she whispered
to Muriele and her mother. "Travel northwest to the forest of
Kildonan. Afore I came to Blackbriar, my father had a cottage near
to the northern end. He has long been gone, but if fortune follows
ye, it may still stand. They willna think to search so close to
their own lands."

"The next time excitement o'ertakes them,
we'll slip into the woods," Muriele whispered.

Baldor barged forward with his massive
shield. The two men near locked together. Magnus stopped his
taunting as they hacked and thrust at each other. Soon, all one
could hear was the loud, resonant sounds of their blades clashing
and screeching as they fought.

How could two men battle so long? By now,
surely they must be wobbling on their feet? Both were bloodied
aplenty from the long siege; both were bone-weary. Magnus' right
foot slid on the blood soaked cobblestones. As he caught his
balance, his shield moved slightly. The opening allowed Baldor to
score a strike low on the firm flesh aside Magnus' rib cage.

"The bastid's sword struck Sir Magnus under
the arm!" A guard shouted as he shoved the women out of the
way.

Muriele peered around him and noted Sir
Magnus did not take his gaze from her stepfather's eyes and face.
Was he searching for signs of weakness? He kept his own face
expressionless.

Now, Magnus' lips lifted in an amused, wicked
smile.

"Yer leman whispers to everyone she canna
tell if ye are swiving her with yer finger or yer cock."

With a vicious snarl starting deep in
Baldor's body, he swept the air with his sword. Magnus ducked
beneath the whistling blade and struck upward. Blood spurted from
Baldor's armpit.

"I will nail yer wee cock to a post for all
to see ye couldna pleasure a woman with such a pitiful weapon,"
Magnus promised.

The guards paid little attention to the women
in their excitement to get a closer view of the fighting. Keeping a
wary eye on them, Muriele and her mother edged backwards through a
gaping hole in the castle wall. The castle women quietly filled the
space they had left.