The Promise (31 page)

Alonsa uttered a prayer of Godspeed and hoped she would not lose all of those who mattered to her this day.

Inés groaned in agony when the beast who had captured her flung her to the ground like a rag doll. He had dragged her by her hair through the bushes and trees in a desperate flight from the pursuing Imperialist army. When she had tried to scream for help, he’d shoved her against a tree and put his thick fingers around her neck. “Scream again,” he threatened, spit flying from his lips onto her face, “and I will snap your neck in two.”

Terrorized, she nodded her acquiescence, and he picked her up, threw her over his shoulder, and started running again. She bounced atop him, his shoulder jabbing her stomach repeatedly, the ground her only view as she tried to keep from falling, for what seemed like hours. Others such as he had run past them every so often, but he paid them no heed, eventually swerving into a copse of trees and away from the swarming horde of the Imperialist army pursuing them.

They stopped, her captor panting heavily, his breath creating white fog as he dropped her and grabbed his side. A wicked dagger hung from his belt, and he still clutched the goods he’d stolen from the cart in one hand. He looked behind them for a long time, until the forest grew silent of footfalls and fleeing mercenaries. She started to reach for his dagger but he turned to her, a look of purpose on his pug-nosed face.

“It seems I won’t get paid this month after all,” he snarled, an ugly sneer on his mouth. “You will be my payment instead.”

She scrambled backwards, too weak to run away, yet too frightened to lie still and await her fate. Her vision swam, and when she lifted her hand to her face, it came away covered in blood.

“Never.” She spat at him and turned to crawl away as fast as she could.

He grabbed her leg, easily pulling her back. She kicked him, connecting with something solid, and he grunted and released her. She scrabbled away again, pulling herself to her knees. For one moment, she thought she might be free, but then he flew at her, hitting her broadside and knocking her down.

She gasped with the pain radiating out from her ribs. He rolled on top of her, clasping her wrists and pulling them up. His heavy body pushed down over hers, and she could smell his putrid breath and ripe sweat, feel his sickening hardness as he ground his hips against her flailing body.

She spit in his face again, and he drew his hand back, slapping her hard.

She cried out and began to sob.

“I’d use my fist on you, but I like a little fight in my women,” he grunted, grinding down hard. “And I like your face. Don’t want to ruin it. Not too many pretty ones out here.” He shoved his nose into her neck, smelled her while she cowered in fear. “But if you fight me
too
hard, I’ll not be so good to you.” His eyes traveled over her body. “You’ll be handy to have around. Haven’t had a woman in months. In the meanwhile,” he said, grunting as he released one of her wrists, “might as well have a sample of what’s to come.”

She felt his hand between their bodies, working his cock out of his codpiece. She renewed her struggle against him, clawing at him with her free hand while they jerked and rolled upon the ground, and he pulled up her skirts. He was too big, too strong to stop, and she knew she could not defeat him. Still she fought, until she had no more fight left, until she felt the beginning of his searing penetration and she choked back a scream of rage.

Suddenly he was gone. No, his head was gone. She blinked, uncomprehending, as his body fell against hers and streams of blood poured from the gaping wound in his neck onto her face. She gagged in horror, squirming frantically to be rid of him, when she saw Fritz’s rigid face just above hers. He grabbed the man’s still jerking body and pulled him off her, rolling him away, the bloody blade in his hand a testament to what he had done.

Still she did not comprehend, and she gasped and choked and could not breathe. The blood, the pain—what in Christ’s name was
happening
to her?

Fritz leaned over her, a look of quiet horror on his face. “Inés?”

He reached for her, but she could not bear to be touched. She rolled away, not recognizing the desperate animal sounds coming from her throat, mewling and choking until her stomach contents heaved and she was retching on the ground before her.

She buried her face in her hands, shamed and covered with someone else’s blood, and wept in great racking sobs that shook her entire body.
“Ay, Dios mío, Dios mío!”

The forest was silent except for her cries. Then, she felt a soft hand on her shoulder, and a wet cloth touched the side of her face.

It was Fritz. Fritz, wiping the blood off her face and hands. Fritz, who had come into this place, pursued her, and rescued her. Fritz, who had seen her nearly violated for the second time, and who this time had killed for her—and he a man who had never killed before.

Her head jerked up, and she caught the sick look in his eyes. “Oh, my love, I am so sorry,” she whispered.

He looked at her, astonished. “What do you mean? Why are
you
sorry?”

“You—you killed him.”

He nodded his head and clenched his jaw. “My first kill in battle.” He looked at the sword in his hand and lifted it up. “It is a good blade. I think I will keep it.”

She held out her trembling hands to him and let them drop. “You are not sorry you had to do it on my account?”

He arched a brow. The boy was gone completely, and in his place was a man. “Anyone who thinks to harm the woman I love will die by my hand. No one touches what is mine.”

She sobbed again and he gathered her in his arms, blood and all.
“Fritz.”
She gazed up at him, her voice hushed with awe. “You saved me.”

A great shudder went through his wiry frame. “This time.”

She leaned back, touched his face. “And forever,” she whispered, letting her head fall onto his shoulder once more.

“More bandages!” Alonsa called to one of the women helping to tend the wounded while she dunked her own bloody hands into a basin of water to cleanse them.

The woman, occupied in cutting the strips of rough linen used for bandages, nodded. “They are nearly ready.”

She stacked several swatches together and handed them over. The crash of gunfire had long ago been silenced. Now only the moans of wounded men penetrated the persistent fog.

Alonsa, pressing a hand against the dull ache in her back, surveyed the ground where she stood. All around her, injured men lay groaning out their last moments. The stench of bodily fluids, the acrid scent of burnt powder and shot, invaded her nose. She pressed a scented cloth to her face to lessen the impact. The cold ground soaked up the blood in dark patterns, and she wondered what stark flower might grow there next year.

So much blood. So much loss.

She tried not to think about where Günter was and why he had not returned from the battlefield. At first, she told herself he merely indulged in the spoils of victory and that was why he had not yet returned. However, as the day turned into night and then another day passed by, her hope thinned and stretched, too brittle to survive.

Yesterday, after Fritz returned with Inés, he had gone into the battlefield to search for any indication of Günter’s remains, though he did not say as much. Today, Fritz and Inés went out together.

No sign of Günter existed. They found nothing. A few of his men remembered seeing him at the capture of Francis I on the battlefield, but no one seemed to know what had happened to him after that. No body had been recovered, and for that, she was grateful. She would not believe he was dead. Her heart would tell her the truth if it were so, and it remained stubbornly convinced he lived.

So many bodies, so much blood.

Alonsa needed to stay busy, needed to do something other than wonder if her husband lived, so she had volunteered to tend to the wounded alongside the market women.

Then, out of the mist, Fritz appeared, Inés trailing slowly beside him, her face wet with tears. In his hands, he held a battered great sword, flecked with dried blood the color of rust.

Black stones glittered on the cross guard.

Fritz, his face in anguish, held the sword out to her in a wordless apology.

Alonsa backed away from it. Her world narrowed to the blade, the stones, to one moment in time. Everything else became gray, meaningless … the air she breathed, the coolness of the fog upon her face, the death cries of the soldiers around her. Everything.

“Señora.”
Fritz, his tearful face streaked with dirt as he wiped his glove across his cheeks, continued to hold the blade out for her to take. “I am … so sorry.”

Alonsa shook her head. “No.”

“We found it nearly hidden on the field. He would never have given it up if—if he was alive.”

She took another step back.
“No. “

Sorrow marred his handsome young features. “My lady…”

Alonsa shook with the violence of her denial. “He is
not
dead. You did not find his body.”

Inés stepped toward her now, took her hand. “There were many men who … could not be identified. We looked among the dead, but we may never find him. The destruction was too great. I am sorry,
Señora.
There is no one else left to find.” She glanced at Fritz, the look they exchanged one of resolve, and then back at Alonsa. “If he could have come to you, he would have. All the whole men have returned to camp, and the injured and dead have been retrieved. There is no one else on the battlefield.”

“Günter is dead, my lady. You must accept it.” Fritz’s blue eyes grew cloudy once more. “If I could have been with him, if I could have done something …” He cradled the sword in his arms, and the tears slipped down his face. Inés rested her head on his shoulder, murmuring soothing sounds.

Every part of Alonsa’s body, of her soul, denied this news. He was
not
dead. He could not be dead.

“You are wrong. He is alive.” She snatched the sword from Fritz, felt its weight. It still seemed warm, as though Günter’s hand had only moments before left it.

“I will find him myself.” Gripping the sword’s hilt, she turned and rushed toward the line of horses tethered nearby.

“Señora,
no!” Inés called out to her, but Alonsa would not be denied.

“I will find him myself!” Alonsa located the horse Robert had acquired for her before their swift ride back to Pavia. She pulled the reins from its tether, found a block to stand upon, and mounted the horse. She rode past the shocked faces of Inés and Fritz, past the weary faces of those who tended the wounded, and out toward the battlefield to find the man she loved.

There were no tears now. She had no room for them, only prayers.

“God, you will not let them take him from me. I
chose love.
I repudiate all else. Neither curses nor death nor Satan himself can have him. He is
mine,
and I want him back.” She raised her eyes to the world around her and shook the fist gripping the reins. “Do you hear me, Miguel? You cannot have this one. He is
mine.”

Her heart pounded in her breast as the horse’s hooves thudded on the ground, throwing clods of dirt up behind it. In minutes, she reached the place where Günter’s men had last seen him. Her eyes scanned the park where the fog drifted in pockets, where the worst of the battle had been fought. Churned-up ground and blood-soaked fields were the only evidence of the battle that remained. The horse danced away from the smells, from the ghosts of the dead.

The peddlers, thieves, and pickpockets had been through by now. Bodies of the peasantry had been removed to common burial plots, while bodies of the nobility had been returned or sold to their servants and families. She would not find Günter here.

She rode on toward the Castello Visconti in Pavia, the new Imperialist headquarters, where rumor had it the French king was being held, and rode the horse through the wide gates.

“Halt! You there!” cried a guard. He rushed over to her, his sentry’s garb puffed and slashed, the white sash of his office thrown over his breastplate.