That's odd, he thought. Folk never do that. As they come over the rise, travelers, one and all, come to an abrupt halt, no doubt to study the young man before them and the resolve of his drawn sword.
Gaspard did not disappoint, as desperation could teach any man the grim truth of doing what is required to live. His resolve to take from others was unbending.
The woman stopped then, three steps away from Gaspard. She reached up to lift the hood away from her head and it was Gaspard who took a step backward without realizing it.
She was not a tall woman. Nor was she proportioned in the thin, willowy way of the noble women that Gaspard had chanced to see upon the road. Rather, she was robust in form, her chest full and proud with a waist that narrowed well before opening out again to inviting hips. He was sure that her derrière would turn the head of any man as she passed, with her wearing pantaloons in the style of men.
Her dark eyes held him, their depths an enigma, and Gaspard shook himself, before lifting his sword back up in what he hoped would be a menacing gesture.
"Are you a robber?" she asked. Her voice was clear and he caught himself wondering what it would be like to hear her whisper with the first light of morning dancing upon her lovely lips.
"I am," he said, "Now don't be foolish, m'Lady, and pass over your coin and jewelry. Food, too, if you have any. Water you can keep as the road is long until the next village."
He said the same words each time, with little variation. Travelers understood quickly that he would have his way with them, but that he meant them no real harm.
The woman before him made no move, only studying him calmly, as if he posed no threat. It was more as though she regarded him as a curiosity, a moment's diversion upon the dusty road.
She shook her head, long black hair shifting about as she did, then said, "You don't speak like a highwayman. I mean, not the way I would have imagined.
"Are you sure you really are one? Because if you have a doubt, I'd prefer that you let me pass by."
Her eyes were so serious that Gaspard took a moment before he realized that she was teasing him. Despite his drawn sword and desperate appearance, she was not the least bit intimidated. That would not do.
He lifted his sword and then lunged at the woman. It was a risky move, but he had practiced it well and often. She was not the first stubborn traveler he had encountered upon the road.
Instead of flinching as the sword whistled past her ear to punch a hole in folds of the woman's undone hood, she was as still as stone.
Gaspard intoned his next words, these too, well practiced as he withdrew his sword just as quickly as it came.
"I am not to be trifled with m'Lady. The next touch of my blade will see you run through and I'll have what's coming to me in the end."
She simply smiled and Gaspard thought he heard the brittle sound of his heart breaking as that smile opened the woman's face like a flower bursting into bloom.
"Be that as it may, but I am afraid that I shall disappoint you. I have nothing of value, other than the very clothes I wear and these same were taken from behind a farmhouse where they'd been hung to dry.
"I am sorry, but my circumstances are just as poor as your own and I can only rest here a moment for I believe that I am being followed."
She turned away and walked to the side of the road. There was a patch of shade and she sat down without looking up at him, as if he no longer mattered.
Gaspard stood still a moment then realized that he still brandished his sword, only now at no one. He sheathed it, feeling foolish, before joining the woman at the roadside.
"Are you thirsty?" he asked. "I've no wine, but water might do much for a parched throat."
As she had walked away from him, Gaspard had not missed the fact that she carried nothing upon her person. Nor had he missed the fact that he had not been mistaken about her derrière.
She replied, "Some water would be nice...thank you."
Gaspard unslung a bladder full of fresh spring water. A lively stream ran not far from his oak tree and he had found its water clean and clear.
She took it from him and had a long swallow, wiping her chin with the back of her sleeve.
Not a noble, then, he thought. He had hoped that she would turn out to be a rich woman who had slipped away from her rich husband, off in search of a dalliance or to pretend that her life was her own for a while among the commoners.
No, she is common...maybe more so, even, than me, he thought again. Small gestures like wiping one's mouth said more than anything that passed by men's and women's lips in the guise of truth.
She gave him back the skin of water and he slung it over a shoulder. Tilting his sword up in its hilt at a sharp angle, Gaspard sat down upon the ground beside the woman and together they stared at nothing upon the dusty road before them.
"Aren't you going to ask me why I am traveling alone, or where I'm from, or anything at all?" she said, at last. There was no exasperation in her voice. Rather, all he heard was a simple question, one of curiosity and nothing more. That she was so unguarded was surprising. From where he came from, there were no such things as idle remarks or careless questions.
"Only if you prefer that I do. So, why are traveling alone and where are you from? And, do include anything else you have a mind to tell me." He could not help smiling as he said it.
She did not answer for a time and when it seemed that she might not at all, she spoke.
"I've been traveling for a long while now. When I began, I walked flaming corridors of gold. But then something happened at a farm. It was an accident but I killed someone, I think. And those burnt passages have been closed to me since.
"Perhaps it is because I claimed it for my own and it has changed, becoming something less but also something more. I don't know. Only that I had no choice. It was either that, or let it eat me."
The words tumbled from her lips like the water running in the little brook in the forest. Gaspard decided that as comely as she was, she was quite mad and that explained a great deal about her comportment thus far.
Then, the mention of her having killed someone and that she was being followed struck home.
Messengers had come on horseback from the north and rumor flew in all directions that a lordling's son had been murdered by a servant woman. Word was she had fled and that a handsome reward awaited whomever chanced upon her and brought her to face justice.
Gaspard had heard the story with little interest. It had been such a short time and those messengers had been on fleet horses. A servant woman, traveling on foot, would take weeks, months even, to arrive this far south if south were, indeed, the direction she had taken.
Except that maybe she had managed it anyway.
Gaspard felt his stomach flutter with excitement. A reward would do for him what hundreds of travelers with their few coins of bent copper would never do. He could leave off with this life of misery and desperation. He might even return home, triumphant before his elder brother and purchase some neighboring land to begin a proper farm alongside that of the ancestral tracts. There was never enough money for the families of the region to be able to offer all of their sons the inheritance of lands. Instead, they went to the eldest son and as for the siblings, it fell to them to strike out upon the open road, vagabonding until destiny or doom spirited them away.
But with this woman and the money she represented, Gaspard of the Green could go back to being Gaspard du Vallon, the younger son returned to the family fold, his pockets full and his future bright.
The woman beside him had fallen silent and Gaspard eased himself to his feet once more. He looked down upon the small form seated upon the ground and wondered how she might have been driven to murder a nobleman.
"When you say that may have killed someone at a farm, you meant to say a nobleman's farm?" he asked, his hand drifting to the pommel of his sword. The movement could be construed as habit or a threat. He did not care one way or the other.
She looked up at him
with a puzzled face.
"No, not noble. It was a farm like any other along the road. Modest with a modest young man that was kind to me, until...." she trailed off.
Gaspard had heard the nobleman's family name with disinterest and now it escaped him. He thought it of only a syllable or two.
"I see," said Gaspard, "So this modest family, what was their name? Perron...Paran, something like that?"
"Perene?" she exclaimed. "Someone has been killed at House Perene?"
Perene...that was the name the horseman had mentioned. She was the one.
"Who?" she asked as she climbed to her feet, her voice filled with alarm, "Who was it?"
Gaspard replied, "Who was killed, or who did the killing, my pretty?"
He did not wait for her to answer as he tightened his grip upon his sword. He doubted she would be much trouble. She was certainly unbalanced, but weaponless.
"The defunct was the nobleman's son. I don't recall his first name. As to who did for him, they say it was a servant woman who then ran off in the night, the man's blood not yet dry upon her hands."
He watched as understanding flooded her features. Emotion swirled behind her eyes as they shifted from his face to look down at his sword hand and back up at him.
"I am sorry. But, you see, there is a reward," he said.
"But, I know nothing of this," she said, "I left the manor during the night and I did not return. Master Olivier was alive when last I saw him."
She did not add that when she last saw him, it was with the imprint of her hand emblazoned in red upon his cheek. He had hurt her and her hand had flown of its own volition to strike the groping fool.
"Of course, he was," said Gaspard, "But, there are people who want to speak with you about it. We shall go together, you and I. I will be your protector and escort along the way."
Her eyes shifted again to his sword hand, then she said, "Please, don't do this. You'll regret it, I promise you, and so will I."
Gaspard did not doubt that she regretted much, but he would soon be a rich man and for that he was prepared to do what was required.
She shifted her feet and then looked up at the sun. There were no clouds to block its bright face and Gaspard watched, surprised, as she looked directly at it, wide eyed and not forced to tighten her eyes down under its brightness.
He slid his sword out of its sheath silently in a fluid, practiced motion. The day was beginning to warm and he wanted to be off before the heat became oppressive.
That she could look at full sun without squinting was an interesting enough trick, but she would need to do a great deal more than that to turn him from his purpose.
She looked to him and she smiled.
He wiped at his brow with his free hand and his sleeve came away wet with perspiration. The day was warming faster than he had anticipated.
"If nothing I can say will change your mind," she said, "Then I will go with you, although the way back north is long and difficult."
He replied, "We shall continue south, in fact. There is a small city in the foothills leading up to the Ardoise mountains. It is named Licharre and there is headquartered a royally mandated prefecture. They will see you on your way to whatever end awaits you.
"Otherwise, as you say, the way to the north is long and worse than difficult," he continued, wiping again at his face. Sweat was running down to darken his shirt collar. Her eyes met his and he remarked that what he first took as mere prettiness was, in fact, a visage of remarkable beauty.
"I don't know how you managed to get past them, little woman that you are, but there is a band of brigands who control a ford along the north road and they are merciless to those who seek passage.
"To avoid them, we would need to turn far from our way to the west before continuing north and that would be costly in time. Too much so, and they are not the only lot of villains we might encounter. As it is, I can't imagine how you managed to slip by them, as the ford is the only way you could have gotten so far south this quickly."
He knew the ford well enough. There he had seen far too many men and women slain when they posed the least resistance to being robbed. He had been there and had held a drawn bow with the rest of them as voyagers were obliged to turn over their purses and sometimes, still, they paid with their lives. That his own arrows always flew wide of their targets had not escaped notice and Gaspard had slipped away one night, running for all his worth to the south, always to the south.
He grimaced at the heat assailing him, before shifting the sword from one hand to the other while he removed his leather vest. The linen shirt he wore underneath was drenched down his back.
"Then to the south, we shall go," she said, her smile at once sad and unwavering.
"But, I think you should know that your protection is not needed. You still haven't really understood who I am...what I am."
He did not follow her. It was only more of her cryptic talk, the madness that slipped through her cracked mind to confound her tongue.
What he did follow with his eyes was the line of her jaw and the way it led inevitably to her lips. He could imagine the soft skin underneath his fingertip as he traced along her face to touch those full lips.
The heat was becoming ever more intense, but he barely noticed, suddenly preoccupied by the growing weight between his legs. There, a different kind of heat was burgeoning as his eyes drifted down to her chest, the gentle curves of her breasts causing her shirt to billow out in just the right way. They were full and well formed. He could not break away, even if he knew that he should not stare. Her nipples rose up to tighten against the rough fabric of her shirt and he shifted his hips as his member thickened and lifted.
Without noticing, Gaspard let his sword fall to the ground. He stepped toward the woman before him and was gratified to see that she made no move to flee.
He looked to her eyes as his breathing deepened and for the smallest of moments, he thought he saw red flames crackling in their dark depths. He knew it was only a trick of the sunlight, nothing more, but for just an instant, it had been like looking into a smithy's forge, at blood red embers capable of melting the hardest steel.
All thought of rewards and riches drifted away. He wanted only to know the feel of her soft lips. He wanted to learn the taste of her taut nipples in his mouth. She was a thing of exquisite beauty and he had been a fool not to have seen it earlier.
"You see...I am not without defense," she said to him, her smile still there, shaped by red, red lips that begged to be kissed.
Gaspard fell to his knees and said, "I...I was blind. I am sorry, m'Lady. Please. I am clean and healthy despite my threadbare clothing."
He did not know why he said such things. Except that he know understood that she had been a goddess hiding behind the eyes of a servant woman and that he would worship at her feet, if only she would let him.
"Clean and healthy?" she said. "Then, I think you must show me."
Gaspard leapt to his feet, the sweat pouring from him now, and stripped away his thin shirt before hurriedly unbuttoning his pants and kicking off his boots.
He stood before her, his body shining in the bright sunlight. He was lean with rope like muscles. The past months on his own had stripped away what little fat he had had under his skin, leaving him hard and corded.
The dark haired woman eyed him up and down. She licked her lips and the sight of her tongue slipping out, wet and pink, only to hide itself away again just as quickly nearly made Gaspard moan.
His penis stood up stiff like a banner-man's standard. Whatever embarrassment he might have otherwise felt was gone. He only hoped that she would find him worthy.
She walked around him and with a thrill, he felt the touch of her fingertips brush across the top of his buttocks. He was burning for her and the surprise of her touch stung like hoarfrost. He shivered and his skin prickled with goosebumps.
Her dark hair tumbled around her face as she stepped around to face him once more. Her hands drifted up to tug at the
laces that wound their way up the center of her shirt and Gaspard could not tear his eyes away.
She undid the laces and with an excruciating languor, she pulled open the front, letting her dark nipples, rigid and hard, slip into view.
Gaspard watched, not daring to breathe, as she unbelted her men's trousers, then shrugged them away.
She pulled the shirt over her head and then stood before him, naked in the bright sun.
He saw only perfection in her every curve and as she moved away to the side of the road, he was drawn after her, as if she had bound him to her with chains.
She turned back to him and said, "Now. I want your mouth here."
She held her breasts in her hands, her nipples beckoning, and Gaspard nearly leapt at her before taking in a nipple between his lips.
He ran his tongue hungrily around it, circling and revolving. His hands were around both of her breasts and they were firm and swollen in his grasp. While he tenderly mouthed one, he took the other in his fingers to roll and pull at the dark flesh that stiffened at his touch.
The sound of her voice was in his ears. Not with words but with moans of pleasure that curled around him like warm velour. The heat was becoming unbearable but he did not care. The sun could have come down from the sky to incinerate him where he stood and it would not have mattered as long as he could die with the taste of this woman still upon his lips.
He trailed his other hand down across her flat belly to linger briefly at her navel. Then, emboldened with the lust boiling in his veins, Gaspard ran his hand farther down to where lush, velvety hairs slipped between his fingers.
She was all softness and damp heat that gave way to dripping folds as he slipped his fingers inside her.
She bucked against his hand, pushing hard against his palm. Gaspard fluttered his tongue at her aureola and he held his thumb against the hardened nub at the apex of her cleft.
"What is your name?" he gasped around the nipple in his lips.
The Marechal Chronicles: Volumes I, II, and III (An Erotic Fantasy Tale) Page 8