Snow in July (10 page)

If it was indeed her father and Sir Ruaud, she tried not to imagine who else might be riding with them.

Shrugging, she rose and caught Hilde before the mare got the notion to join the procession without her. Rowena had led her mount down the bank to the stream, which seemed like a fine idea. Kendra secured the saddle pack, checked the girth, tugged on Hilde’s reins, and walked down the gentle slope, choosing a spot a few paces from Rowena and her gelding. Hilde slurped the calmly flowing water.

The whine of an arrow and a startled outcry made Kendra turn. Cæwlin had slumped to his knees and was struggling to remove the shaft embedded in his shoulder.

“Away, my lady!” Oswy yelled as he ran for his horse.

Shouting for Rowena, she grabbed the reins, scrambled atop Hilde, set heels to flanks, and galloped across the stream. She despised having to leave Cæwlin and uttered a prayer for his life, and her entire party’s. Crouched low over the mare’s neck, she had no idea whether the hoofbeats pursuing her belonged to the mounts of friend or foe.

Screams and the clash of arms erupted behind her, and she slowed her mare to look back. And wished she hadn’t. Oswy, engaged with two of the intruders, was struck in the head. He fell with a sickening thud and did not move. Rowena stood shivering in the grasp of a third man. The other two, still mounted, were bearing down upon Kendra with frightening speed.

With Hilde already laboring for breath, Kendra had no hope of outrunning them. Heart pounding, she halted her mare.

“Fortune smiles upon us,” boomed one man. “She’s given us gold treasure ripe for the plundering.” Both laughed coarsely.

Cheeks aflame, she turned her mare to regard the men, who bore the ugliest faces she’d ever seen, their expressions rank with greed and lust. Their hair and beards were scraggly, their teeth broken, black, or missing. Scars crossed every inch of exposed flesh. The men’s leather tunics and breeches were badly tanned, rancid, and patched in several places, and their boots had fared little better. Incongruously, their horses seemed sleek and well fed, if winded.

The men probably had stolen them.

Swallowing her fears, she squared her shoulders, thrust out her chin, and declared, “I have no gold.” Her deliberate misinterpretation of the jest prompted another round of guffaws. She had to raise her voice to continue. “You are welcome to my medicines and food if you will leave me and my servants in peace.” She’d need salve and bandages to tend Cæwlin and Oswy if either man was still alive, but the sick pit in her stomach cautioned her not to harbor such thoughts.

“We care naught for your supplies, Lady Kendra of Edgarburh,” said a mountain of a man whose face featured a pale red scar on the left side from eye ridge to lip.

She gasped at his knowledge of her rank and name.

Grinning, he raised a hand. The others rode up to circle her, leaving Oswy where he lay. Kendra’s mare shifted nervously. She knew exactly how Hilde felt.

The leader dismounted and sauntered toward Kendra at the speed of a cat toying with a cornered mouse. When he had drawn close enough, he latched on to her wrist and yanked her from her horse, catching her roughly. He turned her to face him and grasped her chin. Inwardly, she screamed at the forced pucker of her lips beneath his grip.

“What you carry does not interest us.” His face loomed closer, and the reek of onions and ale on his breath made her stomach churn. “But you do.”

Her heart began pitching wildly as he released her chin, drew a seax, and raised it to her neck. With its point he pulled her locket from its place of concealment beneath her undertunic. How he knew it was there she had no idea. “Please, nay, that has no value!”

“Oh, aye, Lady Kendra, it does.” His laugh was a nasty rasp. “’Twill show Thane Waldron how serious we are.”

With a flick of his wrist, he cut the cord. The pendant fell into his other hand. Her hopes fell with it.

Chapter 5

K
ENDRA FELT NUMB.

Numb from shock, from hunger, from fatigue, numb from the cramping and chafing inflicted by hours spent in the saddle, numb from the drenching rain and subsequent cold that stung her cheeks and hands and sliced through the folds of her cloak to attack other vulnerable places. Numb from worry about the fates of Rowena, Cæwlin, and Oswy, numb from fear that her captors would decide to have their sport with her.

Her greatest numbness, however, stemmed from despair.

’Twas no small miracle that she’d stayed astride.

Her fears sharpened when the outlaws drew rein, dismounted, and pulled her down. But she was too numb to struggle. They’d been traveling westward through a long, secluded valley that she recalled from her journeys, years ago, to visit Ulfric and other members of her mother’s family. She also recalled that, because this valley’s stream was seasonal, no crofter or farmer lived here.

Nothing about this Godforsaken valley had changed. The downpour had turned the streambed into a ribbon of mud, not much use to either man or beast.

As Kendra stood with a hand on Hilde’s withers to steady herself, eyeing her captors and yearning for salve and bandages to soothe her raw thighs, the outlaw with the livid facial scar pulled his wineskin from around his neck and offered it to her. The unexpected kindness took her aback, and she hesitated, wondering where her wineskin had gone.

“Take it or not, ’tis your choice,” he said, not unkindly. “Ever ridden on your belly?”

From the seriousness of his expression, she decided he was referring to a mode of horseback travel rather than making a vulgar sexual allusion. She shook her head.

“Nor would you want to.” The man chortled, slapping his companion on the back. “Rat can vouch for that.” The outlaw called Rat looked irritated by the comment. “By the by, you can call me Snake.” He twitched his cheek, making his scar seem like a living presence upon his face.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” She groped the saddle horn for her wineskin’s strap without taking her eyes from the rat and the snake.

Snake elbowed Rat. “She may be nigh unto dead on her feet, but she still has spirit.” Again, Snake thrust his wineskin toward her. “Take it. Methinks you lost yours”—he jerked his chin eastward—“back yonder. We still have a fair way to go before we camp. If you don’t keep up your strength, you’ll be riding facedown ere long.”

She drank. Rather than the bitter brew she’d expected, the outlaw had given her a sweet wine that bore a hint of apples. She hadn’t realized how parched she was until that moment and took several more gulps.

Laughing, Snake pulled the wineskin from her grasp, and she groaned her disappointment. “That’s plenty for now, my lady, unless you do have a wish to ride on your belly.”

Her face flushed, only partially from the wine. She asked, “What of our horses? They must have water soon, and this stream is useless.”

Snake regarded her with approval. “Not far from here is shelter and a well, though we’ll have to lead our mounts up the last stretch to reach it. Think you can manage a bit of a climb, my lady?”

She nodded. “If I can tend to some personal needs first.”

Rat grinned, baring pointed teeth suggestive of his name’s origin. “Be pleased to help ye, m’lady.”

“Imbecile!” Snake rounded on the man, drew back a meaty fist, and punched him in the gut. Rat doubled over, moaning and swearing. “The next blow will be lower. If her ladyship is harmed in any way, Dragon will feast upon our ballocks.” Snake faced her with a wink and a grin, hitching his trews in a suggestive manner. “Can’t speak for Rat, but mine are of much more use to me where they are.” His eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t be thinking of running, would you, my lady?”

The thought had occurred, but she had dismissed it. “I very much doubt I’d make it as far as yon hawthorn patch.” She pointed at some thick, thorny bushes growing near the streambed a score of paces away, the sparse remains of their May blooms looking as bedraggled as she felt.

Snake nodded and cast another warning glance at Rat, who’d recovered enough to glower back at him. “Go do what you must, then, and don’t worry none about us.”

She didn’t feel very reassured by Snake’s implied pledge, but as she removed the saddle pack from Hilde’s back and retreated from the men and mounts, her legs’ stinging convinced her she had little choice.

Shielded by the hawthorn thicket, she hunted through the pack for a pair of bandage rolls and what was left of her elderberry salve, hiked her skirts, and set to work. The salve and bandages wrought a miracle on the abrasions caused by folds of her dress that had gotten caught wrong when she’d mounted. She wrapped each leg from thigh to knee while she pondered the outlaws’ words and deeds.

That they intended to hold her for ransom she had no doubt. She did doubt that “Snake” and “Rat” were these men’s birth names, not to mention the mysterious “Dragon” Snake had alluded to with a strand of fear threading his tone. Their final destination presented another mystery to which she doubted she’d get a forthright answer.

Then there was the matter of her father’s reaction to her abduction. Would he pay their demands or send the fyrd after her? She guessed the former, though she couldn’t be certain. Since the small terra-cotta salve pot was empty, she inverted it atop a low, flat rock beside the bush. She drew her dagger from its place of concealment beneath her overdress, cut off a lock of hair, and tucked it under the pot, hoping that if the fyrd happened by, one of the men would notice the odd arrangement and connect it with her.

She couldn’t keep from imagining a certain Norman who might insist upon riding with them. In the next breath, she denounced it as a vain fantasy. She had done nothing but run from him each time they met, giving him no reason to risk his neck for her.

The discouraging thought didn’t prevent her from harboring the fragile hope that Squire Alain might help rescue her. It remained the sole tether on her fears.

BACK AT the same window where he’d begun his day, gazing toward the chapel and rose garden, Alain wrestled with his concern for Kendra, whom he had not seen since their disastrous dawn meeting. Since he’d acted far too boldly for a squire, he doubted she would wish to speak with him again.

Around him drifted the soft chorus of sounds as Waldron’s retainers settled in for the evening. A sleek deerhound wandered over to investigate the intruder into its domain. Alain gently but firmly discouraged the questing nose and stooped to inspect the magnificent animal. By the white patches interrupting the brindle pattern on forehead and chest, he recognized the dog as one of the bitches that had accompanied Waldron’s hunting party.

Alain enjoyed a hunt as much as the next man did, but today his heart hadn’t been in it. He suspected his heart could be found wherever Kendra had gone.

The dog butted his hand. He obliged by fondling the spot at the base of her ears that all dogs seemed to enjoy. Emitting canine groans, she cocked her head and leaned into his caress.

He hoped this animal’s mistress would one day respond as ecstatically to his touch.

Instead, Kendra had left, ostensibly to dispense medicine and cheer to outlying farms, but the wringing of his heart proclaimed the truth. She was trying to escape him. Again.

And, again, he considered whether to reveal his identity and accept the consequences. Switching hands to stroke the dog’s other ear, he envisioned the most probable scenarios.

None were pleasant.

He gave the hound a final pat and stood. The dog regarded him, tail wagging. When that failed to produce the desired result, she sighed, turned thrice in a tight circle, and sank onto the rush-strewn flagstones at his feet. Folding his arms, Alain glared at the darkening rose garden as if by force of will he could make Kendra appear. She didn’t, of course; most likely, she and her escorts were sheltering with a farmer’s family. By the fading sunset, he judged that Edgarburh’s gates were already shut fast, and only in unusual circumstances would they be opened before dawn.

Movement across the central yard drew his notice. A rider spurred his mount to the manor house, halted, and slid from the saddle. The man didn’t bother to tether his horse, who wandered, nose down, into the longer grass while its rider took the manor’s stairs two at a time and disappeared through the door leading to the upper rooms.