The Princess and the Rogue (11 page)

And it was genuinely a dark forest. Gigantic trees grew hundreds of feet skyward, their branches creating a canopy that kept out most sunlight. The huge oaks had another function, too. They provided shelter. The men had built elaborate treehouses above the cold ground, away from potential predators. Rope bridges connected dwellings of various sizes in a network, making travel between them possible without ever touching the ground.

“There are wolves, bear, and wild boar in Darkwood,” the outlaw had told her on their first day in camp as he showed her his home. “You need to be aware of that at all times. Don’t stray from camp. We don’t want to have to hunt you down only to discover you’ve been eaten.” Then he looked at her sharply.

“Understand?”

She nodded.

“Say it.” He wanted to make sure.

“Yes, I understand.”

“Good. Rules of camp are there for everyone’s protection.”

After that he turned and left, much to her consternation. Juliet wanted to convince him that she was indeed a princess of Westvale. Once that happened, surely he would return her to her father. Why wouldn’t he? He’d be amply rewarded. But she also recognized that Rand LaFlors was an outlaw. He answered to no one, king or commoner. From the way he had treated her, the fact that she might be royalty probably meant little to him.

And that, she realized, intrigued her more than anything else. All her life people had fawned over her. Servants, courtiers, knights, and knaves—they had all sought favor. She had been the center of her own universe. How things had changed. First her abduction, then her flight, now her rescue.

Well, it was sort of a rescue, she decided. The manhandling and that humiliating spanking at the old woman’s hut had infuriated her. At first, that is. But then she looked at her rescuer in a different light. It had to do with the way his hands had felt on her, the contact of their bodies. His strength, his resolve, his command of her. He made no effort to please her. Instead, he expected her obedience, something she had always demanded from everyone else. At night, alone, she found herself remembering that incident and thinking on it again and again.

When she did, a hot flush crept over her. A man had never laid hands on her like that. What would it be like, she wondered, to be held in his arms and loved in the way of a man and a woman? It would never happen at court. There were too many eyes and she was always watched. But out here in this wild place? With this wild man? Juliet realized these were dangerous thoughts, but she didn’t care.

Now it seemed he had no time for her, however. Worse, he required her to work, to do chores with the rest of them. It was demeaning and certainly beneath her station. Well, that would change when she proved who she was. The question was, how did she get his attention? He was constantly off, meeting with his lieutenants, hunting, raiding. Or whatever it was that outlaws did. Well, she would show him that it was not wise to ignore a princess.

* * *

The Village of Kern

“We went seeking help, but we were turned away.” The speaker, a reasonably prosperous citizen and owner of the mill in Kern, spoke to the figure who sat with his back to the wall, hidden in the shadows in a dark corner of the tavern.

“Yes, the king would not receive us,” said his companion, a farmer who tended a fair plot of land with his five hardy sons.

“That is most unusual,” said the man in the shadows. “King Robert is a good king. He usually hears the petitions of his subjects personally.”

“I tell you, we were abruptly turned away. Rudely, actually, by men-at-arms I’ve never seen before, and I have been to Greystone Castle on many occasions.” The miller huffed as if this were an affront to him personally.

“We lingered in the market, asking around, you know. Some said the king has been taken ill and his high minister has assumed command.”

The miller nodded, then added, “But the biggest rumor is that the princess has been abducted.”

At this, the man in the shadows leaned forward, suddenly very interested. “Abducted? By whom?”

“There is talk that she was abducted on an evening ride and an imposter who looks like her was inserted in her place. A stable boy has been telling this tale that the girl who returned on the princess’s horse was not the princess at all,” said the farmer. “She looked like her, but the girl did not know how to ride. That is what he is saying.”

“And that’s not all,” said the miller, keeping his voice low. “Several days ago there was an incident. A knight was seen fleeing the castle with men-at-arms in pursuit. There was a lad with him. Some say it was the princess in a lad’s clothing.”

LaFlors leaned back. His head was spinning. The princess abducted? And an imposter in her place? If so, had the imposter fled? Or was she the real princess?

He had to think. He had made an uneasy truce with Robert Greystone years before. Destitute and forced into outlawry when his father’s lands had been seized by the Ieryn, Rand had settled in the Darkwood. Soon his talent for robbing rich travelers and melting away into the forest had put a price on his head. Tired of being hunted, he had engineered a meeting with King Robert under a flag of truce. Rand robbed selectively and his chosen victims were rich Ieryn merchants. So he had promised to spy on the movements of the Ieryn, and report to Robert what he saw and heard. This he had faithfully done for years. In exchange, Robert looked the other way.

After all, the Ieryn traders now mostly traded with the red countess. Sometimes the trade was in flesh, a foul trade that enraged LaFlors. It was she who wanted LaFlors’s head on a spike. Rand left the local people alone and, in fact, he had returned or hidden several of the village girls who had managed to flee Castle Bathen. So while the villagers spoke in hushed and fearful tones about the outlaw Rand LaFlors, many knew the truth, including these two. But they kept it to themselves.

His return to the Darkwood by the long and complicated route he usually took gave Rand time to think. This was troubling news. If King Robert was ill and his only daughter abducted, what did that mean? For some time now he had noticed the increased presence of Ieryn men on the roads bordering Darkwood Forest, especially going to and from Bathen Castle. For some time Rand had suspected a secret alliance between the red countess and Ieryn princes. And he knew something else. Morgaine was related by blood to Robert’s high minister, Tomas Cramden. Was Cramden a traitor? With Ieryn help, did Morgaine have enough force to seize the throne of Westvale? It was not impossible.

The key to the mystery was obviously the king’s daughter. Which led to the question: precisely who was the girl he was harboring? The one who insisted that she was Robert Greystone’s daughter. Could she actually be who she said she was? He spurred his horse forward with an increased sense of urgency.

But when he returned to the camp, he was told the girl had gone.

“Gone? What do you mean? Gone where?”

One of the older women, Bertha, told him. “The sisters, Edith and Lylie, left with her. I overheard talk, but I thought it was just a harmless girls’ fantasy. She had convinced them she was royalty, a princess thrust into cruel circumstances. They talked about going to Tigrud. The girls would guide her there and she would arrange for their passage further south to Durham where their home is. I didn’t think they would actually do it, but this morning they were gone. They took some of the horses.”

Rand stifled a curse. What insanity. These stupid girls had put them all in danger. The road to Tigrud was no doubt thick with Morgaine’s men, looking for the girl. This was why they stayed in the Darkwood when things got hot. In the forest they were well hidden; outside, on the roads they were exposed. There was no time to lose. By now several of Rand’s men, seeing that their leader had returned, were approaching.

Rand addressed them. “Bran, John, find Dru and come with me. Saddle our fastest horses. Now!” The men scrambled, and in minutes they were making their way through the forest.

Rand did not want a big party for this search. Large bands of men made noise and attracted attention, especially close to the borders of Darkwood Forest. If they could intercept the girls before they breached the safety of the forest, then no harm would come to them or anyone else, that is, except to those silly lasses’ backsides by the time he got done with them, mused Rand. They had no such luck, however.

The girls were easy to track. The game trail they were on widened gradually as it approached the edge of Darkwood Forest. Rand and his party burst into the light. A few miles further and they would reach a road that led to Tigrud, one frequently traveled by wagons and carriages.

Rand pulled up and turned around in the saddle. “We are too much in the open here.” He looked up. “Let’s go up and over this ridge, and intercept the Tigrud road to the south. The girls would naturally take that road and we should be able to see them.” The long hill forming the ridge line was skirted by a creek and the road followed the creek as it made a long bend, so Rand realized they could cut distance off and have a better view of the route. Another faint game trail ran upwards toward the ridge top. They took it.

Once they crested the hill, they spotted the girls below on the other side. The three of them had stopped to water the horses. They were defenseless. What they could not see, because their line of sight was blocked by trees at a bend in the road, was a patrol of a dozen men in red livery coming their way—it was a troop of Morgaine’s men.

“Let’s hurry,” said Rand. “We need to get to the girls before those men see them.” He had another thought. “Dru, cut through the forest, come up on their rear, and shoot at the leader. Create a diversion and make them chase you back into the forest. Can you shake them?”

“Aye. There’s a trail I know. I’ll lose them.”

Dru set off, while Rand and the others made their way down as quickly as they could. Rand and his men emerged from cover, and he saw surprise, then alarm, in the eyes of his red-haired princess. As she caught sight of Rand and his men, she started to flee, trying to hurry her companions. Rand, John, and Bran were on them before they could escape.

“Get on your horses now,” ordered Rand. “There is a band of Morgaine’s men not half a mile from here and you are walking right into them.”

“He’s lying,” said Juliet. “There’s no one. And he can’t make us do anything.” She turned to Rand. “What right have you to stop us? I’m a princess and …”

“Yes, I know. But you’re going to be one very unhappy princess if we don’t get all of you off this road and into hiding right now.”

Rand looked down the road. Still no sign of them, but they had to be close.

“Don’t you understand?” he said angrily. “If you’re taken, they’ll deliver you straight to Morgaine. So let’s go. Now!” he barked and grabbed the reins of Juliet’s horse. His men did likewise with the other two.

Shouting and the sound of hoof beats made everyone turn their heads. Dru must have started the diversion. Still there was no time to lose. Red-liveried men appeared from around the bend in the road. They spotted the girls and Rand’s party.

“Come on,” shouted Rand. They spurred their horses forward, following Rand.

All the three girls could do was hang onto saddles as their rescuers led the horses back into the protective cover of the forest and away from the open road.

Rand could hear them in pursuit, the crackling of twigs and underbrush as they hunted. They didn’t all follow Dru, but must have divided their troop, he thought.

“We’ll have to split up,” said Rand. “John, you and Bran go north with the sisters along the ridge trail, then cut through the creek at the natural bridge. I’ll take the princess and cut west through the Eye of the Needle. They’ll have to divide to follow us all. Go, now!”

The men didn’t hesitate. They urged the horses forward. “Come with me,” Rand ordered Juliet.

“Where are we going?” said Juliet, looking over her shoulder anxiously to see if anyone followed.

“Where there are plenty of places to hide,” he said.

Darkwood Forest presented a challenge to all but the hardiest and most knowledgeable. Ancient trees competed with thick underbrush. There were hidden ravines, sudden defiles, and rock canyons with dead ends. Unless someone knew where they were going, they would be hopelessly lost or cut off within a few miles. That was what Rand was counting on.

They cut their way through narrow passages, crossed log bridges over raging rapids, and went up and over hills through what seemed like impenetrable thickets that tore at Juliet’s clothes. As night came on, they found themselves moving slowly through a canyon only a few feet wide in spots, but the canyon walls extended upwards for several hundred feet.

Just before the shallow creek through which they’d been wading exited the canyon, Rand pointed out a waterfall right in front of them, cascading from the top of the cliff.

“We’ll stop here. We may have lost them and we need to rest the horses anyway. Behind that waterfall is a cave. It’s a tunnel, a secret passage though this box canyon. It’s big enough for the horses too. We call it the Eye of the Needle.”

“We’re going to stay here? In a cave?”

“Yes, for a while,” said Rand.

Rand led the horses behind the falls and into the cave and took off saddles while Juliet looked for a place to lie down. The small opening in the cliff wall had been deceptive. They were in a large cavern. A flat ledge covered in fine dirt ran parallel to a stream that fed toward the entrance to the cave.

“Here,” said Rand, throwing Juliet a blanket. “Spread that out on the ledge.”

“What am I, your servant?” Juliet appeared to react without thinking and she seemed to regret it instantly.

Rand looked at her sharply, but ignored her rude outburst. He took some things from a pouch. There was bread and something that looked like cheese.

“I thought you’d probably be hungry when we found you.” He rose and approached her with the food.

* * *