And from his safe distance, Robert wasn’t sure he wanted her to, either.
Take care, beloved, he thought. Be safe. And know that you shall always be in my heart.
Robert watched as Sabina slowly approached the edge of the forest. She finally made it there, and then after a moment’s hesitation, she disappeared.
Chapter 16
Tostig of York looked through his battlescope. It was a curious device, sort of a magnifying glass set in a long leather tube that allowed him to see great distances. It had been a gift from Lord Reginald of Guillaume, a souvenir of his time with the Saracens and a token of his goodwill. How ironic, then, that Tostig was using it to spy on him now.
He scanned the horizon, and saw only a few scraggling scouts from Lord Reginald’s battalion. Tostig was amazed that his adversary would risk sending scouts out in the open sunshine at all, especially when he knew well that Tostig had the ability to scope out long distances. Then again, men were known to make bad judgment calls where women were concerned. Lord Reginald appeared to be focusing all his efforts upon finding that runaway bride of his, at the expense of his usual near-perfect battle acumen. It gave Tostig a unique opportunity, one that he had no intention of letting slip past.
Tostig wasn’t entirely sure that Reginald even knew that he and his army were there. But in any case, he would find out soon enough. He estimated from the signs he could see on the horizon that Reginald’s men were about eight miles away, on the other side of the forest, and closing in fast. Tostig would just wait, and watch. He held the high ground after all—when Reginald and his men advanced, his archers would pick them off like flies.And then he’d send his cavalry in for the kill.
One thing worried him, however. He hadn’t received word from Mfanwy in almost two days. The scout he sent after her had never returned, and she hadn’t arrived at their designated rendezvous point, either. Obvious she’d been delayed, but why? It wasn’t at all like her to bungle a mission. If she didn’t return by sundown, he’d have to send another scout after her.
Mfanwy was an excellent spy, but she was also tiny and somewhat frail. Tostig doubted she’d hold up well under torture if she were ever captured. That was always a risk whenever one hired women to do the dirty work of spying, but the rewards usually far outweighed the risks—especially where the pleasures of the flesh were concerned. Such was the case with Mfanwy. All Tostig could do was wait and pray that she wasn’t captured.And in the meantime, he had plenty to keep him busy.
He adjusted the focus on his battlescope, then scanned the horizon again. Now he could see much further, all the way to the edge of the forest. He spotted something there, something that shocked and surprised him.
He readjusted the scope, looked again. It—or rather, she—was still there.
He turned to Sir Moonwulf, his lead cavalryman and childhood friend from Denmark. “Moonwulf, look through this glass and tell me what you see,” he ordered in Danish.
Moonwulf obeyed. He stared into the glass for a moment, then handed it back to his master. “’Tis a woman, Sire,” he said. “Or rather, a woods hag, filthy with mud and leaves. Though ‘tis a far prettier one than most wood hags that ye see.”
“Indeed she is,” Tostig replied, staring in the scope again. He adjusted the lens until it was set at maximum power. What an incredible invention this thing was! Now he could gaze upon the woman’s dirty, yet lovely features as if she were just a few steps away, instead of a mile or two. He would make a point to thank Lord Reginald for it just before he killed him. “This woman is no common peasant, either,” he said. “She has fine aristocratic features, and her clothes are cut of the finest materials, even if they are dirty. And that Scottish tartan of hers isn’t fooling anyone, I’m afraid.”
Tostig stopped looking into his battlescope, and began to laugh.
“What’s so funny, Sire?”
Tostig just laughed harder, then clapped his hands three times. When he’d finally recovered his senses, he turned to Moonwulf and grinned. “God is good to us today, old friend. I do believe we have discovered Lord Reginald’s beloved bride.”
Moonwulf gave him a blank look. “Do you intend to return her to him, then?”
“Oh no, Moonwulf. We shall use her as bait.”
Sabina emerged from the forest, shielding her eyes against the suddenly bright sunlight. She was in a large open meadow now, and on the far horizon she could see a tall grassy knoll. Atop that grassy knoll was a legion of soldiers, both on foot and on horseback. From this far distance, their banners and coats-of-arms looked to be Norman, though it was impossible to tell for sure. She didn’t know the colors of her fiance’s insignia, nor the color of his horse. She’d only met him once, briefly, at a feast her father had hosted. But that hardly mattered. Sabina figured that Lord Reginald was the only man in England besides the king who had any reason to mass an army on a hill overlooking the very forest where his fiancée had tried to escape him. So those legions of soldiers and cavalrymen had to be his. There was just no other logical explanation.
She rent a swatch of cloth from her shift and waved it over her head. It was the closest thing she had to the white flag of surrender. She would march right up to those soldiers, wave her white flag, and meet her fate.
Tostig rubbed his hands together with delight. The woman was closer now, only a quarter-mile or so away. She waved a dirty wet rag over her head, a pathetic attempt at a flag of truce. She was a foolish girl to even think that such things were ever done on the field of battle these days.“Look, Moonwulf. She’s surrendering. How quaint.”
“Why does she seek us out, Sire, and not her fiancé?”
“I believe she mistakes us for Lord Reginald’s armies,” he observed. “All the better for us. Ride out to meet her, Moonwulf. Pretend that you’re one of our enemy’s mercenaries, then bring her to my tent.Let her believe that you are reuniting her with her beloved husband-to-be. I’ll take things from there.”
“Yes, Sire,” He mounted his horse and rode off.
Tostig made a beeline for his battle pavilion. The game had begun, then. And he already had the advantage. Maybe he wouldn’t need Mfanwy after all.
Sabina watched as a huge man with blonde hair and blue eyes rode towards her on a dappled gray roan. She thought it rather strange that he looked nothing like a Norman. Most of the soldiers in Lord Reginald’s armies were Norman, after all, even if they were mercenaries. If they weren’t Normans, they were chiefly hulking Romans or lean Germanics, not at all like the massive man who rode towards her. Indeed, he looked like the frightening, savage Vikings her governess had told her stories of when she was a little girl.
The horse stopped about twenty feet away from where she stood. The man said something in a language she didn’t understand and beckoned for her to come forward. Against her better judgment, she did.
She stopped short a few feet from the dappled gray roan. The man repeated the unintelligible words he’d said before, louder this time. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand you,” she said first in English, then in French. She thought about Latin, but decided if the solider didn’t understand English or French, chances were good he had no Latin either. “I’m sorry, I don’t underst—“
Instead of responding, the huge Viking scooped her up with one massive arm and carried her beside his horse parallel to the ground like a battering ram. Sabina screamed, kicked, flailed her arms, to no avail. The horse cantered up the side of the steep ridge at lightning speed, threatening the trample Sabina’s dangling body. Just when Sabina was about to abandon all hope of survival, the Viking steadied his mount, and they made their way slowly through the base camp.
The military encampment was unlike anything Sabina had ever seen. Instead of the round silk canvas pavilions preferred by both the Normans and the English, these soldiers had erected strange-looking triangular structures held up by elaborately carved flat planks of wood.Almost all of them were fair and blonde, and all speaking in that strange, guttural tongue
spoken by her latest captor.
All at once, it hit her. She’s surrendered to the wrong army. What would become of her now? These men were Norsemen, perhaps Danes or even Swedes—and therefore, Vikings. Vikings were a brutal people with no respect for women. Surely she’d be raped at least, then possibly held for ransom, maybe even killed. Or made to work as a camp slave, cooking food for the hundreds of soldiers. But why on earth were they here in the first place? Vikings hadn’t raided the British Isles in centuries. They hadn’t had to—the Viking Danes had ruled England for three hundred years, intermarrying with the Saxons until the two peoples were almost indistinguishable. Then the Normans overthrew the Saxons, so what business would a bunch of guttural, uncivilized Vikings have here now?
That was easy. They were here to take their old country back.
Good Lord. Sabina thought surrender would bring her safety at last, but instead she’d jumped straight into a raging bonfire.
The Viking rode up to the largest tent in the encampment and dumped Sabina at the door. She landed on the muddy ground in a heap. Before she’d even had a chance to stand, a tall, imposing man with fair hair, blue eyes, and the rough-and-tumble beard of a Yorkshireman stepped out of the tent.
“Ah, Lady Sabina of Angwyld, I presume,” he said in heavily accented yet perfect English. “How nice of you to drop in.”
****
Robert de Tyre had the dry heaves. He hadn’t eaten a morsel in days, and yet his body couldn’t stop trying to empty itself. Each heave brought up nothing but bile, and just made him feel even sicker. Still, Robert was not sick of body. He was sick at heart.
He had failed Sabina in every possible way. First he had failed to protect her, then he failed to make her love him enough to stay with him. And now, it seemed he’d helped to send her to her death.
Robert had originally planned to just abandon Sabina to her fate when she decided to return to her fiancé. But when push came to shove, he just couldn’t do it. He had to make sure she was safe, even if she wasn’t happy. He continued to watch her from afar as she approached what they both had thought was Lord Reginald’s base camp, had even managed to follow her part of the way by slithering his way along the ground, hiding himself among the tall meadow grasses. He’d even considered going after her at one point, but he’d nipped that feeling right in the bud. Sabina was her own woman now. At least, she was her own woman until she married Lord Reginald, and became yet another piece of his chattel property. The very thought of a woman like Sabina settling for such a submissive, powerless role as the wife of a Norman warlord made Robert’s skin crawl, but like it or not, he had to accept it. Some things just weren’t up to him.
The most important thing, he’d reasoned to himself, was for Sabina to remain alive and safe. He could take comfort in that, at least. So imagine Robert’s shock when he saw his beloved surrender under the white flag at the bottom of the meadow, only to be scooped up and carried away by a wild Viking on horseback.
All at once, it hit him. The massive army waiting on the ridge wasn’t Lord Reginald’s. When Robert risked all to get close enough to see that the encampment was laid out in the Dane fashion, he could draw only one conclusion. Sabina had surrendered herself to the armies of Tostig of York.
Robert’s blood ran cold. What the hell was Tostig doing here in the first place? Had he broken his vow not to interfere with Lord Reginald’s campaigns, then? Or perhaps had the two warlords struck up a strange alliance of some sort? Robert had no idea. For Tostig to appear on England’s southern coast with an army even bigger than Lord Reginald’s didn’t make a heap of sense in all of Christendom. But then again, nothing in Robert’s world made sense anymore. In the past few weeks, he’d had his entire world turned upside down.
Knowing that his beloved Sabina was now in Tostig’s clutches made Robert physically ill. Unlike his adversary Lord Reginald, Tostig had no honor where women were concerned. The slithery Dane viewed them as mere receptacles for his seed, to be tossed aside like old turnip-tops when he finished with them. For all he knew, Tostig was abusing Sabina right now, at this very moment.
The thought of Tostig taking liberties with Sabina shook him to his very core. Robert collapsed to his knees, began the first of what would be an endless string of dry heaves.
It had taken all of his remaining strength to let Sabina go. He’d respected her choice then, but now the game had changed. She was in danger under Tostig’s clutches, possibly even mortal danger. He had no choice but to risk everything to get her out of there.
Robert knew there was no chance in hell he could just waltz into Tostig’s encampment and rescue his beloved alone. He had no horse, no lance, he was filthy, he stank, and he hadn’t had a decent meal in more than two days. He needed backup. But where the hell was he going to get the help he needed?
Robert doubled over, dry-heaved again. This had to stop. He couldn’t go on like this for another minute. Whatever he had to do, whatever sacrifices he had to make to make Sabina safe, he would.
There was only one half-crazy possibility when it came to getting Sabina out of Tostig’s encampment alive. And that possibility was Master Cuthbert.
His old friend had already betrayed him once. And he still had the sack of two hundred fifty crowns too, the bloody bastard. Cuthbert owed him, dammit.
The first order of business would be to find where Cuthbert and his pack of outlaws and cattle had disappeared to. And then, if they didn’t manage to kill each other first, to enlist his aid.
It was a crazy, half-baked plan if there ever was one. But it was the only one he had.
Robert dragged himself back to the edge of the woods, praying that he hadn’t been spotted. He had no idea where Cuthbert had gone, but he knew that eventually, his old colleague would have to return to the Cock and Robin. So, that’s where he’d wait, and hope. And pray.
Chapter 17
As he’d expected, Robert returned to the Cock and Robin to find it still deserted. But he didn’t have to wait long. Just as darkness was about to fall, Master Cuthbert rode back into the compound. And he had plenty of company.
Cuthbert rode Robert’s horse Amir, while he pulled his own horse along behind him on a leather lead line. A small gaggle of stable boys and poor-looking peasants in dirty burlap accompanied him, most of them with three or four dairy cows in tow. His servant—and spy—Mfwanwy was bound and gagged, and tied facedown to his spare horse’s saddle. That threw Robert for a loop, so much so that he almost forgot to draw his sword.
Almost, but not quite. “Stop right there, Cuthbert,” Robert shouted, putting the business end of his sword three inches from Cuthbert’s nose. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”
Master Cuthbert’s one good eye blinked, but he didn’t even flinch. “You’re right, I do. I’m glad you’re here, Robert. I was worried I would never get a chance to explain what happened.”
Robert didn’t back down. He inched his sword point closer to Cuthbert’s scarred, grizzled face. “I’m listening,” he said.
“Can’t I get down off my horse first?”
“Correction,” Robert sneered. “That’s my horse you’re riding. And no, you can’t. And don’t even think about reaching for your sword or your mace. Any part of you that moves without my permission is going to get cut off.”
“All right, all right!” Cuthbert cried, freezing into place. “And I know you well enough to understand you mean what you say. And I mean what I’m about to say, too. I had the Cock and Robin cleared out because I knew exactly how you’d react. You’d make a run for it, and take the lady with you. Which is exactly what needed to happen to save your necks.”
“What do you mean?”
“My so-called servant girl over there was really a spy working for Lord Reginald. I caught her sending word to her superiors that you and the lady were here. I had to get ye out of here as soon as I could, and I knew you wouldn’t do it unless you thought I’d betrayed ye. It was the only way to get you out of here
fast enough, without creating too much of a scene.”
“Oh, you created a scene, all right,” Robert said, still keeping his sword arm locked in place. “Believe me.”
“Robert, anybody could see that you weren’t thinking straight when you showed up here. I couldn’t just tell ye to go, lad. Ye wouldn’t have listened.” Cuthbert swallowed hard. “Either that, or ye would have run me through.”
“I could always just run you through right now,” Robert seethed, though he couldn’t deny that what Cuthbert was saying made sense.
“That lady of yours has really addled your brain, lad,” Cuthbert said with a sly grin. “I’ve never known ye to lose your head over a woman before. Where is she now, anyway?”
“Gone,” he replied. “Captured. Which is why I’m here. I need your help, Cuthbert.”
Cuthbert laughed. “Well, I’ll be a lot more help to you when ye get yer bloody sword out o’ my face.”
“Not until you drop all your weapons first,” Robert growled. “I’ve already been to hell and back today, and I’m not taking any more chances.”
“Very well,” Cuthbert said. He dropped his sword and mace to the ground.
Robert didn’t budge. “The dagger, too. And the stiletto.”
Cuthbert feigned ignorance. “Why, whatever are you talking about, Robert, lad?”
“The dagger is in your doublet’s inside pocket, and the stiletto is in your boot,” Robert said, keeping his eyes locked with Cuthbert’s sole remaining one. “We served in the same mercenary army, together, remember? I watched you dress and pack every single day. And I was plenty observant.”
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