by Lisa Jackson
“Hold him,” he ordered. With deft fingers, he tore a strip of cloth from his tunic and forced it into the guard’s gaping mouth. Only when the man sagged against the bars, his legs wobbling, did Bjorn release him and snap his manacles over the man’s thick wrists. The jailer-turned-prisoner struggled, shaking his head and throwing himself against his bonds, but to no avail. Bjorn grabbed his keys, sword, and dagger, then hurried through the door, unlocked the stranger’s cell, and ran toward the stairs, nearly knocking over Lady Cayley, who was hastening soundlessly down the steps.
“You’re free?” she cried, stepping backward, surprised.
“Aye. Let’s go.”
“But how—?” she asked as she squinted into the darkness.
“Later, woman!” Bjorn insisted. “Now hush.”
“He’s right. Come quietly,” the sorcerer agreed.
Bjorn grumbled, “I don’t know why we need her!”
“Trust me. She is on our side.”
He felt, rather than saw, the woman’s back stiffen. “You doubt my integrity?”
“Nay, lady, only your ability.” Bjorn had no time for a woman—a rich, pampered daughter of the baron—getting in his way.
“Even though I risked my life to come down to the dungeon to save you, even though you are a common outlaw, you doubt me?” she said, her voice filled with indignation.
A woman would only slow him down, but Bjorn would not question the sorcerer, not when the man had healed his wounds and shown him how to gain his freedom. Now, if only he could sneak into Holt’s room and—
Enough! We must flee the castle before we’re discovered! Trust this woman; she needs us as much as we need her.
The cripple, even with his limp, was swift enough, and Cayley led the way to the stables, where no guard lingered. Inside, the horses snorted and rustled when they sensed the intruders. But each animal quieted as the magician touched its coarse winter coat. ’Twas too dark to see much, but Bjorn found his stallion and Cormick’s fleet mare for the woman while the sorcerer untied a quick horse to claim as his own. No bridles were in evidence, but Bjorn cut lengths of rope with the jailer’s knife. He fashioned the twine into halters with reins, and soon they were leading their steeds out of the stables and into the moonlight.
Don’t worry about the guards, the strange one intoned without words. I shall handle them.
The horses’ hooves rang through the bailey as they approached the main gate. Bjorn thought ’twould be easy enough to lure the guards from their posts and pounce on them, but he sensed that the magician had another plan.
Be ready!
The sorcerer rode his horse into the middle of the bailey and threw his head back to howl like a dog at the moon.
“Wait!” Bjorn commanded. “Do not—”
But the deed was already accomplished, and men were beginning to awaken and shout.
“What’s he doing?” the lady asked, horrified.
“I know not! Shh!” Bjorn kept his horse in the shadows of a hayrick. The main gate was open, the portcullis not yet dropped for the night.
“Halt! You in the bailey! Who be ye?” one guard asked.
“Know ye not?” the magician asked.
“Speak up, man!”
“I be the voice of the Devil. Lucifer’s my name.”
“Holy Mother,” Cayley whispered, swiftly making the sign of the cross over her ample bosom.
“For the love of Christ, he’s either drunk or as mad as a dog!” the guard growled. “He’ll wake up the whole damned castle.”
“Who is it?” another sentry asked, and he, too, was lured into the inner bailey, where the magician, arms spread wide, began to bay soulfully again. In a rustle of feathers, a great owl hooted and landed squarely on the man’s outstretched arm. Bjorn watched in fascination as the wizard didn’t flinch when the curved talons bit into his skin.
“Come,” Bjorn ordered and kneed his mount. The horse took off like a thunderbolt, leaping forward, in its anxiety running toward the gatehouse. Cayley’s horse gave chase.
“Stop! For the love of God, what’s that?” one of the guards yelled.
“Who goes there?” another demanded as Bjorn’s steed raced under the portcullis, steel hooves clattering over the drawbridge.
“ ’Tis the prisoner! ’E’s escaping!”
“Nay, it couldn’t … God’s blood, there’ll be ’ell to pay now!”
Bjorn heard no more. Over the ringing of hooves, shouts of alarm, and that horrid, soul-scraping, keening wail, he heard only the sound of his own heart beating a wild tattoo in his chest. “Run, you bastard, run!” he yelled at the horse, who was already nearly taking flight.
Down the road they sped with only a ribbon of moonlight as their guide. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Cayley was tucked low, her black mantle billowing like a dark sail behind her as Cormick’s game mare swept across the night-darkened countryside. The wind whipped past them, bringing tears to his eyes, and Bjorn’s heart beat stronger, for this was the first taste of freedom he’d had in days, and oh, ’twas sweet.
The road forked, and they turned south, toward the nearest woods.
Zing!
An arrow hissed past his ear.
Thwack! Another landed in a tree to his right, and he heard the shouts of men on horses, already giving chase. A hasty look over his shoulder confirmed his worries; whatever advantage they had was surely fading.
“Bloody hell,” he grumbled. Without another thought, he turned off the road and into the blackness of the woods. Cayley’s horse didn’t break stride, and together they slowed, moving silently and doubling back, delving deeper into the woods as they crossed a stream and peered through the leafless branches to the starry sky. In a thick copse of pine, he stopped and grabbed hold of the reins of Cayley’s mount. Silently, he pressed a finger to her lips and felt her hot breath on his skin. The forest shivered with the rapid thuds of hoofbeats pounding over the frozen road. The soldiers passed not twenty feet from them, their horses galloping swiftly to the south, their torches held aloft, blinking like evil red-gold eyes before disappearing in the distance.
Once they could no longer be heard or seen, Bjorn pulled on the reins of his mount and headed north, to the camp near the old chapel where Wolf had said they’d meet.
“Oh, dear God in heaven,” Cayley murmured, her voice trembling. “They’ll find us.”
“Not if we shut up and hurry.”
“But they’ll send dogs and—”
“Just ride, woman. Do not cry, do not beg, and do not whimper, or I’ll leave you.”
“You wouldn’t!” she said, and he sensed her bristle. At the very least, she had some backbone.
“Not if ye behave yerself. Now, hush!” He felt her need to sputter and hiss at him, but she didn’t utter another word. “We’ll find Wolf.”
Wolf. The man he’d trusted with his life. The man whom he’d revered. The man who’d nearly sent him to his death. The man whom Cormick had considered his family.
Angry with himself, with Wolf, with the damned martyr of a magician, he glanced at the woman huddled on her steed. She trembled from the cold, and when she glanced his way, there was pain and anger in her gaze. “We should have left him not,” she finally said.
“Who? The wizard?”
“Aye. He gave up his life for us.” Her gaze, filled with blame, cut him to his bones.
“ ’Twas what he wanted,” Bjorn muttered, but couldn’t stop the blade of guilt that twisted in his heart. What the lady was saying had already crossed his mind. “Shh. Be still. As you said, Holt’s men could have dogs with them and find us.” He clucked to his horse, urging the stallion through the undergrowth, but his thoughts were at Dwyrain with the sorcerer.
God be with you.
As if he’d heard a scream from the dead, Holt awakened with a start. But the blood-chilling wail didn’t stop with his nightmare; no, it echoed through the castle, tumbling off the stone walls.
’Twas Ewan�
��s ghost returned to haunt him!
Guards shouted, footsteps thundered through the hallways, someone began pounding on his door.
“Sir Holt!” Red shouted. “The prisoners have escaped!”
“What?” Anger tore through him. “But how?” He threw on his breeches and tunic, then opened the door to find the rotund knight breathing hard and sweating despite the cool temperature of the castle at night.
“ ’Tis true. We were tricked, we were. By the magician!”
Another keening wail raced through the corridors of the castle. Holt’s heart nearly stopped, for it sounded to him as if the very beast from hell had been unleashed in the bailey.
“What in the name of Jesus is that noise?”
“The sorcerer, Sir Holt. He’s … he’s possessed! Call the priest.”
“The man’s a fraud. As you said, he’s used his magic to confuse you,” Holt sneered, hiding his own fear. Was he the only man in the castle with any brains? Strapping on his belt, sword, and dagger, he strode out of the room. Whatever trick the cripple had played, ’twould be his last!
Guards and servants were scrambling through the hallways, muttering oaths, whispering prayers, causing the rush lights to flicker as they passed. Outside, the noise was louder, a piercing, haunting scream that turned Holt’s insides to water. The sorcerer sat on his horse, his arms thrown wide, a huge ruffle-feathered owl sitting on his shoulder.
“Stop!” he commanded, but the man continued his screaming as if he heard nothing other than the demons in his head. “Do you hear me, man? Stop this infernal—”
“Hey! Halt! Stop!” Out of the shadows, two horsemen spurred their mounts through the untended gates. “Oh, for the love of Jesus. ’Tis the prisoner! He’s escaped!”
“What?” Holt’s eyes narrowed on the fleeing horsemen. Not one, but two of them. “The prisoner—?” His mind spun backward to the flogging. No man he’d beaten so hard would be able to ride, and who was the other one—the smaller rider? Certainly not the dead man, returned to life like Lazarus. Nay, that criminal had been buried in the woods outside the castle—the maggots were feasting on his flesh already. A cloud crossed the moon, casting a shadow on the land, and Holt felt as if the cold hand of death had grabbed his heart and squeezed so hard he couldn’t catch his breath.
“Stop them,” he yelled, but his men stood transfixed, staring as the sorcerer howled at the damned moon like a wolf from the depths of hell. Like a wolf—sweet Jesus, the man is mocking me. “Red, Oswald! Get some men together and stop those two!”
“Oh … aye.”Red snapped out of the spell that had disabled him.
“After them!” Holt ordered. “After them!”
Red’s gaze swept the gatehouse. “Damn it.” Drawing his sword, he sprinted toward the stables, hitting men on the shoulders and hurling orders. Several men managed to break the spell and took off after him, their boots thudding on the frozen mud of the bailey.
Father Timothy, rumpled and cross, strode out of the chapel. Befuddled by the wailing and the crowd, he demanded, “What’s the meaning of this?”
“Prisoners have escaped!” someone in the crowd yelled.
“The sorcerer is possessed!” Nell proclaimed.
Timothy’s steps faltered. “I think not.”
“Listen to him, Father,” the candlemaker insisted. “ ’Tis what he said, that the Devil had control of his tongue!”
“Nay, this I do not believe.” But the priest was more ashen-faced than before and trepidation contorted his fleshy features. His fingers anxiously rubbed the beads of the rosary hanging from his pocket.
Holt drew his sword and made his way through the crowd that had gathered, forming a crescent of onlookers near the center of the spectacle.
“You there, hush!” Holt commanded as he approached.
The shrieking didn’t stop; ’twas almost as if the man took no breaths. Children were crying, women on their knees, men staring at the sorcerer as if he were the Christ arisen again.
“Stop now, or I’ll kill you.”
“Nay!” one woman, the baker’s pregnant wife, cried. “Sir Holt, you cannot. He’s but a half-wit or …”
“Pull him down!” Holt ordered his soldiers.
“Oh, please, no. He means no harm.”
“Do you not remember that he cursed Dwyrain?”
“That’s right,” the miller said, his frown deep. “We all suffered much. I lost a son.”
“And I a sister,” a woman said, but there was no conviction in her voice.
“My boy lost his leg,” another woman said with a catch in her voice. They stared at the man as if he were a saint rather than the hellmonger he was.
“Show some mercy,” Father Timothy pleaded, and Holt saw that his misgivings about the priest had proven true. Holt had always doubted the man’s allegiance to him. Timothy was weak in his faith and in his convictions. Holt had no use for him.
“The sorcerer is not a man of God, but practices pagan magic,” he reminded Timothy.
“He’s misguided.”
“As well as being a traitor to Dwyrain. This man helped the prisoner escape,” Holt said. How had the magician managed that? Who was the second rider? Several men appeared at his side, and while the man screamed, he was dragged from his horse, and the owl, startled, flew away with a great flapping of his wings. Feathers fluttered to the ground. Two huge, burly soldiers held the prisoner fast, and the sight was pitiful, for he was a thin cripple who struggled not and would become a martyr if Holt wasn’t careful.
“Who are you?” Holt threw at him, asking a question that had never before been answered. “Why are you here?”
The screaming suddenly stopped and the man’s fevered, mindless eyes once again were eerily intelligent, more frightening than when he appeared riotously insane. “I, Sir Holt, am your conscience, that nasty prick of worry that you’ve hidden deep but sometimes keeps you awake at night.”
The moon appeared from behind a cloud, bathing the sorcerer’s face in a silvery, nearly angelic glow. Holt shivered in his boots.
“What say you?” Holt asked again. The man was truly addled, but a drip of fear slid down Holt’s spine.
“I’m your conscience, for I know what you’ve done.”
There was no reason to listen to this. “Take him away!” Holt roared, trying to stem the dread that was slowly scraping at his soul.
“Is not the baron dead?” the cripple demanded.
Holt rounded and crashed his fist into the madman’s face.
Several women gasped and fell to their knees, praying loudly. The wind picked up, scattering dry leaves and playing with hems of surcoats and mantles.
“Ask him,” the prisoner said to the crowd. “Ask him if he hasn’t been poisoning Baron Ewan each day, and when the old man didn’t die quickly—”
“Enough! Take him to the dungeon. He’ll be hanged at dawn!”
The magician had the audacity, the sheer, stupid insolence, to laugh. “Is that what you do to your adversaries, Holt? Kill them? Sneak into their chambers and place the skin of a bear over their faces until they can no longer draw a breath, as you did with the baron? Or do you marry them off, as you plan to do with Lady Cayley? Are you not planning to have her wed an old, cruel man who will kill her?”
“Take him away!” Holt swallowed hard. How had this … this addled half-wit known what he’d done? If anyone found out about the death of Ewan or if Connor discovered that Holt planned to betray him … He felt a tremor of fear, for Connor was a coldhearted bastard.
The guards pushed their captive roughly toward the north tower, but the sorcerer laughed again, the sound hideous to Holt’s ears. “Enjoy your short rule as baron. Holt of Prydd,” the sorcerer said with a patient, knowing smile. “ ’Twill soon be over!”
Holt’s temper exploded and he caught up with his captive. “You fool,” he uttered as he smashed a fist into the cripple’s gut, causing the man to double over. If not for the guards holding him upright, he wo
uld have fallen to the ground.
“Did you see that?” a man’s voice, one he didn’t recognize, yelled loudly.
“A brute, he is,” a woman murmured. “Lady Megan is lucky that she escaped becoming his bride.”
“Thank God Baron Ewan is alive.”
If you only knew, Holt thought, but he held his tongue. ’Twould look suspicious if he alone knew that Ewan had already left this world and joined his dead wife and children. That thought warmed him. Soon enough, come the morning, no one would any longer question his authority and refer to Ewan as the rightful baron of Dwyrain. ’Twas his now.
“Sir Holt!” Mallory yelled as he ran, ashen-faced, down the keep steps. “ ’Tis the baron.”
“Did he call for me?”
“Nay,” Mallory replied as he crossed the mashed grass of the inner bailey. “ ’Tis Lord Ewan. I’m afraid … ’tis dead he is.”
“No!”
Gasps and wails met the soldier’s announcement.
“ ’Tis true …” Mallory searched the crowd. “Father Timothy, please—”
“Did not the magician say—?” a woman asked.
“Shh!” her husband commanded.
“Say no more.” Timothy held the skirt of his robes high and marched soberly to the keep.
“The baron? Are you sure?” Holt asked. He started toward the keep.
Mallory placed a hand on Holt’s arm, restraining him. “There’s more,” he admitted, staring at the ground and tugging on the end of his moustache. “ ’Tis Lady Cayley.”
“Yes, yes, what about her?” Holt shoved the man’s hand off him and strode toward the great hall.
“She’s missing, m’lord.”
Holt whirled so swiftly he nearly fell over. “Missing?”
“Aye.” Mallory paled and his Adam’s apple wiggled nervously. “She escaped down a rope from her window.”
“For the love of God,” Holt growled, looking at the gate where the two horsemen had escaped. The tall blond outlaw and Cayley? Ewan’s weak, whimpering, and flirtatious second daughter? His blood boiled. Not only had his own wife eluded him, but her simpering younger sister as well. Every muscle in his body grew taut as a bowstring and his eyes narrowed on his pathetic troop of soldiers. “Can’t we hold anyone in this keep? Now, if you don’t want to be flogged, beaten, or hanged, I suggest you take off after the prisoner and return him dead or alive. I care not which.” Though a few troops had left, too many stood idle. “Go!”