“All the better to break our necks and the horses’ legs, as well.”
“I have ridden at night before, Mark, and so have you.” Magnus scanned the villagers again, careful not to look at Elfrida. He was not exactly ashamed so far as his little witch was concerned, but he was uneasy.
He told himself it was because she had threatened to curse him, although he knew already that she never would, because she was a good witch.
Elfrida is best here, with her people. I shall leave guards to keep her and the folk safe. I will return her sister to her, and then all will be well between us.
“Have you asked that priest to ride with us?”
“Not yet, Mark, but if Father John is like the rest of his brethren, he will agree. One of his flock is in danger.”
“Maybe.” Mark spat on the floor and rubbed at his red nose. “I hope you have gold enough for him, too.”
“I have.” The wagon had brought his treasure chest.
As Magnus spoke, Elfrida looked straight across at him. Standing with a ladle in one hand and a heavy stewpot in the other, she seemed calm and accepting, a Magdalene of the pots and pans. She had not told the villagers, either, so he had no cause to feel aggrieved.
“Magnus.” She spoke his name without rancor and nodded to him, then swiftly turned her head away as if a villager had called out to her, which he knew had not happened.
He nodded in return as a hot, sticky trickle of guilt oozed down his back. She was quick, this woodland witch, but not fast enough. He had seen the anguish in her face.
“Why can she not come?” whispered a voice in his mind, a woman’s voice—Peter’s Alice.
“It is impossible.” His belly felt as if he had just swallowed boiling lead.
“What will stop her following?” whispered Alice in his head.
The darkness and her own people, I trust, Magnus thought in response, but he knew that was not really good enough. His sense of shame and alarm increased. If she followed on and came to grief, would it not be his fault for denying her natural desire to aid and find her sister?
That may be true, but it cannot be helped. I am no nursemaid.
“And she needs none. She is a witch,” whispered Alice.
He whistled to Mark, the signal, and at once his second began to shove his way to the doorway. His other men began drinking down cups of ale and hastily stuffing trenchers into their mouths. Magnus limped to the fire, where Walter was sitting on a heap of bedding, with the priest beside him.
“I would speak with you alone,” Magnus said, pausing so the priest could translate. “It concerns Christina and how I will find her.”
Father John looked puzzled as he passed on this message, but Walter lumbered onto his crutch and hopped gamely away from the fire, saying something with great force and urgency.
“I agree,” Magnus said, glancing from side to side. Following his orders, the priest had been detained by one of his men, and the villagers were asking Elfrida for more ale—either that or she had offered it, so he and his men could make good their withdrawal.
“She is a clever wench and fair minded,” Alice whispered, as the lead in his belly boiled some more.
Walter stopped and turned, his honest, plain face half in shadow. There were many shadows in this part of the hut, which was what Magnus wanted.
“Yes?” asked Walter, or something like.
Magnus lowered his head, as if to share a secret, and when Walter leaned closer, he caught the smaller man a blow on the side of his head that knocked him out. Catching him before he fell, Magnus lowered him onto a stool and pulled his hood halfway across his forehead. Settled on the stool with his back against a set of hurdle fencing, Walter looked to be asleep. His breathing was strong and steady.
That will do very well.
Magnus left him and eased his way through the press of villagers. Coming to the open door of the hut, he half expected to find Elfrida hovering nearby and was not surprised when he did so.
She was silhouetted in the doorway, a small, slim figure. Her bright hair looked silver in the rising moon and, as he approached, he could see that the last of the itching spots had faded.
She was startlingly lovely, but still he must not take her with him. He could not bear the thought of her hurt by Denzils, touched by Denzils...
“Magnus.” She put down her jug of ale, slipped past a woman who was gesturing and clearly keen to speak to her, and took his left hand in both of hers. “Godspeed.”
Her grave, kind wish almost undid him, but it was the sheen of tears in her bright, amber eyes that punched into him like a dagger thrust.
“You have won, wench.” Torn between kissing her and rolling her in the snow, he dragged her against him. “Get your things.”
Silently she plucked a small bundle from out of the darkness.
“You knew?” he snapped.
“I hoped, my lord.”
And that makes it good? Unable to think of another answer without cursing, he released her and strode outside, hearing her softly follow on.
Mark and the men coming with him tonight were already gathered in the trampled, snowy garden, all armed and mounted. His horse was there, ready for him, shaking its harness. Magnus climbed into the saddle, lifted Elfrida before him, and spoke. “Now we ride, fast and hard.”
Chapter 9
The growing moon was high and bright as they galloped into the woods. The shouts of the villagers were swiftly replaced by a steady drumming of hooves. Mark led the column, urging his horse on the snow-covered tracks as if he had wandered in the forest all his life.
“He has always had a good sense of place and direction,” Magnus agreed when Elfrida commented on it, his voice vibrating through her own chest. They rode very snugly together, and Elfrida was glad of it. Mules and donkeys she knew, but horses were for knights and nobles. The snow, which came to her knees in the village, seemed very low and far away, a soft, white blanket through which the great beasts plowed like mighty ships. She felt to be mounted on a dragon, she was so high above the bare hazels and saplings, and there was so much steam and snorting and muscled power thudding against her already aching thighs.
And Magnus had allowed her to come. Elfrida clicked her tongue, aware that as a witch she should not be so grateful.
It is for others to give way to me, not the other way round! Nor does this bold, bright company know what we are riding to. I sense no malice in these woods, but for how long will that last?
She only hoped she was strong enough.
Stretching frost-numbed fingers beneath her cloak, she touched the twig she had plucked from her rowan tree, from her land, a charm against dark witchcraft.
“Please keep Christina safe. Let her be safe.”
“Are you cold?” Magnus asked, misunderstanding her urgent plea.
She shook her head. “How do you know where to go?” It was something to ask, and she was interested. She had never thought of knights before Magnus, had not realized that they knew anything beyond war.
“I stayed at Gregory Denzil’s castle keep once when he held a tourney.” Magnus snorted, his breath parting her hair. “The prizes were poor, and I spent one day repairing a wall. It was that or have the serving lasses scream themselves into fits each time they saw me.”
Elfrida flinched at such casual, unconscious cruelty and, feeling her start, Magnus’s long legs tightened around her. “A holly branch caught me,” she gasped in a swift lie, as his embrace tingled down her thighs to her toes. “So, how many hours is it from here?”
“’Tis off to the northwest. When we get to the old road going west, we should go quickly enough. We shall be there by sunrise.”
Magnus’s horse braced itself to leap across a fallen branch, and Elfrida stifled a yelp as the jolt she received when the bay landed again had her accidentally biting her tongue. She spat, and her blood glowed darkly against the sparkling pillows of snow.
Please let it not be an omen.
“My gran
ddad, the one who spoke the old speech, told me a unicorn lived in these northern woods.”
Relieved he had not seen her spit, Elfrida turned her head so she could see the rugged profile of her companion’s face. “Did you search for the creature?”
He rumbled in amusement. “How did you guess? I did, but granddad said unicorns only showed themselves to maids. I’ve seen boars here, of course, and wolves, and gathered holly and firewood in the woods where I live. Which firewood do you like best?”
He was talking to calm her, she realized, as the ground slid beneath his horse’s busy hooves like a dark stream of water.
“I—” She did not know the old speech for “applewood.” She looked ahead, relieved that the only shadows were those of beech and lime trees, stretching across the steep, winding track. She tapped Magnus’s peg leg with her foot and felt him grin in understanding.
“That wood,” he answered, pointing to an oak tree.
They swept beneath another oak, this one hung with icicles and the frosted beads of mistletoe berries. Staring up as the milky orbs flashed by, Elfrida thought of a tower surrounded by woods with mistletoe, the domain of the Forest Grendel.
She reached out, allowing her cold fingers to brush against the few remaining leaves of a hawthorn, a good forest tree, and whispered to its spirit to keep them safe as the horse plunged past.
Is the Grendel in truth a Denzil? Are we on the right path? What if we are wrong?
“We shall know, soon enough,” she murmured, ducking as the horse cantered beneath a crab apple with low, overhanging branches. Behind her she heard Magnus laugh, and a moment later a wizened apple dropped into her lap.
“For your breakfast,” he said.
“We are not all lovers of apples as you are,” she began in her own dialect. Then she spotted a twisted, gnarled face leering from the shaggy foliage of a yew. She threw the apple straight at the face.
“Hey!” Magnus exclaimed, grabbing for her, but when she followed her throw with a sign against evil, he twisted about and saw the face in the yew for himself.
“Ya!” he yelled, and he spurred his horse. The stallion exploded into a gallop, driving straight for the yew, and Magnus stood up in his stirrups, the reins caught in his teeth, and hurled a knife.
The green face in the yew vanished as the iron knife hit the tree and stuck, quivering, in the snow-spattered bark. Magnus now dragged on the reins with his hand, urging the horse into a plunging stop.
Mark yelled something, and the whole column halted in the snow.
“Let me.” Elfrida leaned to the yew and removed the blade, scraping a sign for peace into the bark before she returned it hilt first to Magnus.
“What was that?” Magnus murmured against her hair.
“A green man,” Elfrida replied in her own tongue. “A wood elf,” she said in the old speech. “We are being watched.”
Mark glanced at her, a swift look of admiration, she was sure. Then he shouted, jerking his head up.
A few heavy flakes of snow blurred Elfrida’s sight and, as she blinked, she saw the small track ahead of them misted by falling bands of white, dense as smoke.
The revenge of the green man, or was it the Forest Grendel?
* * * *
They plodded another mile, and then Magnus admitted they should stop. Even on the old west road, which they had stumbled onto at midnight, going was onerous. The horses were weary, heads down, stumbling, their hooves covered in snow. When the snow turned to a biting sleet, everyone had endured enough.
Before him Elfrida was silent, uncomplaining, though God knew she must be chilled and weary. It was she who noticed the forester’s hut, set back from the road behind a holly tree. He felt her tap his arm to alert him and he called orders to the others, his voice cracking in the cold.
The forester, whoever he had been, had abandoned the hut, but it was just big enough for them all. Magnus knocked out a panel of wattle to enlarge the door, and they brought the horses in.
While he made a fire just inside the doorway, Elfrida slipped off into the darkness. When she returned, the men had bedded down and were chewing whatever rations they had with them. Magnus patted a lump in the floor beside him, close to the fire, and she lay down without a sound.
“She does not complain,” Mark said, his sandy eyebrows raised in obvious surprise.
“No, Elfrida does not.” Magnus heard the grudging respect in his second’s voice.
He rose and put what remained of the door back across the threshold as a barrier and windbreak. Checking it was secure, he knocked the snow off his cloak and stretched out again beside Elfrida. As soon as he closed his eyes, he slept and dreamed.
It was summer, and he was in a pleasure garden. Protected by a stout stone wall, it was bordered by fruit trees and ripening vines and filled with small, sparkling fountains, the like of which he had not seen since his return from Outremer. One fountain played over a turf seat studded with marigolds and daises. Magnus ran his fingers through the damp flowers, and he heard a woman sigh with contentment, a welcome sound.
Elfrida always knew when she was dreaming, and this time was no different. It was midsummer, and she strolled in an orchard filled with fragrant apple blossoms. She carried a twig of mistletoe, its waxy berries still in impossibly fresh bloom. Above her head, finches darted and sang, and bees buzzed in lazy contentment, dusky with pollen. There was a haystack beneath an oak tree and a green man smiling at her through the heavy white-green pomanders of a guelder rose.
“You have a gentle, courteous touch, Sir Magnus.”
Elfrida sighed again and stretched out on the turf seat. Where she lay down, roses sprouted and burst into flower, their petals as soft and flawless as her skin. She smiled, and in the wonder of the moment, Magnus hardly cared if she was clothed or not. From a bower of white and pink rose petals she held out her hands to him and smiled a second time, trusting and warm, her bright eyes filled with admiration. “Come.”
The green man sprang down from the branches of the guelder rose and became Magnus. He bowed to her, a warm breeze ruffling his black hair curls. “My Lady.”
“Am I as much a lady as Alice?” she almost asked but was struck into breathless silence by the sight of Magnus’s robe. In place of his ripped and muddy tunic and leggings, he wore a flowing, long mantle, the robe of an angel, which molded to his figure closer than his shadow and shimmered like sun-kissed water. Her throat went dry.
“You are beautiful,” she said when she could speak. He was long legged, deep chested, slim flanked. The mantle showed so much yet not enough—
He swung her up easily into his arms and down into the tickling, soft hay, shrugging off the robe in a rustle of falling cloth. A golden haze of light embraced his naked body as he embraced her.
He rolled her into his arms on top of him and the softness of the gown she wore fell around him like snowflakes. To tempt her to divest, he brushed the sleeve of her gown with his hand and trailed kisses down her throat.
Her green dress vanished. It simply faded away like mist, perhaps as a trick of her magic. Stunned and delighted in equal measure, he gazed and looked. The pleasure of looking, of seeing, was absolute.
She was as pretty as an elf queen, wiry and fragile together, with lean lines and graceful, flawless curves, all haloed by her nimbus of bright, red hair. Awed, he felt his arms slide away. How could he touch such beauty?
“Ah, no, Sir Magnus.” Gently, she drew his hands back, placing them on either side of her dainty waist. “Stay with me.”
Delighted afresh, he stroked her slender, firm body, need and desire a roaring, building volcano within him. Her skin was whiter than the daisies, smoother than a pearl, and warm.
“More,” she hissed against his chest as he cradled her onto the springy grass and mounds of rose petals and fluttered his fingers across her glowing nether curls. “Touch me more, Sir Magnus.”
Her breasts were pink nippled, curving delectably into his cupped palm. She moane
d and coiled her legs around his flanks, lifting herself up to him, jolting against him in a giddy yet urgent swinging motion.
She ran her hands over his chest with its mass of curls, feeling the jut of each rib, the rough scars on his thighs and belly. He tasted of musk and salt as she kissed his roving fingers and coaxed his busy mouth to her lips. They kissed, deeply, and she licked her tongue across the ridge of scar on his lower jaw and lip, desperate to keep him there, looming above her, while her fingers explored the harsh, strong riches of his body.
He ravished her mouth for kisses, his fingers plunging between her thighs. She moaned against him and opened her legs more widely.
What? What was that?
She wrapped her fingers about his proud, erect manhood, wanting him all, and all of him inside her.
What was that?
They started awake as one. Elfrida was faintly ashamed to discover that sometime in the night Magnus had rolled over and that she had rolled with him to cuddle against him. She sensed his wakefulness and was more embarrassed. What would he think of her, trailing after him in that way?
Magnus was pleased—no other lass ever cuddled him in the night, including those he had lain with in the stews. Ignoring the urgent ache in his loins and aroused state, he lifted her hand from his waist to his lips and nibbled her fingers.
“Magnus—” Whatever answer, protest, or encouragement Elfrida might have said died in her throat. She realized that she was listening, tense and listening. “Something woke us,” she hissed against his broad back.
“I know.” Magnus shifted, and she could feel him checking his dagger. “I set no watch tonight,” he muttered, as if talking to himself. “I thought there was no need.”
Elfrida reached out in the darkness with her mind, straining to hear more. She had set protection for them all, but was it enough? Had the Forest Grendel found them?
When she heard the thud and crump of sharply falling snow, she was relieved. “Men!” she whispered. Possible brigands, possibly armed, but only men. “Men outside!”
Townsend, Lindsay - The Snow Bride (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 9