Knight Triumphant

by Heather Graham

  LESSER OF TWO EVILS?

  She looked around the great hall. It seemed as if they were all casting glances her way. Glances that were filled with consternation and sorrow.

  Eric had returned with some news regarding her, obviously, and they were all talking about it.

  Sounds could be picked up and echoed, and heard across the room. She caught whispered syllables of their words.

  With mounting horror, she put them together.

  She is to be murdered.

  Weakness filled her limbs. Murdered. Her death was to be one of the “events” taking place at Langley tonight. This was a drastic measure. Not even King Edward had executed his female hostages. And now, Eric wanted her to go upstairs so that he could tell her alone, so that she could get some dignity together, compose herself so that her screams wouldn’t create an uprising within the castle.

  “Igrainia,” Eric said, “Jarrett will escort you up.”

  She shook her head, facing him. “No. Find the courage to tell me here and now.”

  “The courage?” He arched a brow.

  “Tell me now,” she said, her limbs like ice. “Am I to be killed?”

  “Killed?” Eric repeated, frowning and startled. He shook his head, lowering it, a dry, curious smile curving his lips. “No, my lady, I have not returned with any intent to do murder, legal, royal, or other.”

  “I overheard the men talking. You don’t need to disguise what is happening to me. If I am to be executed, murdered, simply say so.”

  His smile deepened, and once again, he shook his head. “So you hear them speaking, but I’m afraid you didn’t hear correctly. You’re not to be murdered. You are to be married.”

  More historical romances by Heather Graham

  The King’s Pleasure

  Come the Morning

  Conquer the Night

  The Alliance Vampire novels

  Beneath a Blood Red Moon

  When Darkness Falls

  Deep Midnight

  Realm of Shadows

  The Awakening

  Dead by Dusk

  HEATHER GRAHAM

  KNIGHT TRIUMPHANT

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  LESSER OF TWO EVILS?

  More historical romances by Heather Graham

  Title Page

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  Chronology

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright Page

  PROLOGUE

  Once upon a time . . .

  There lived a good king, and the land grew in peace and prosperity.

  But the king grew older. Anxious to secure the succession, he remarried, because after the loss of his beloved wife and son, only the infant female babe of his daughter was left to inherit the crown. His new bride was young and beautiful, and his task—to procreate and give his country strong sons to rule after his death—should have been a pleasant and easy one. Indeed, in his eagerness to rejoin his lady after a council meeting one dark and stormy night, he rode the high cliffs and tors of his native land with abandon, despite the warnings of his advisors.

  Along his way on that deep and tempestuous night, the king’s horse lost its footing, or the king himself lost his horse. He plummeted down the ragged hillside, and perished before his time—and before his task could be complete. The land mourned.

  The king’s young granddaughter inherited the throne. Hope remained. The land would still thrive, all thought, for the Guardians of the country would protect their young queen well.

  She was Margaret, known as the Maid of Norway. But alas, the child queen of Scotland died before ever reaching the shores of the land she should rule.

  The land lay in loss and confusion, for after her death, the claimants to the crown were many. The strong, powerful, and rightful king of a neighboring country was called upon for aid and advice. He would listen to the claims of all, and help the Guardians decide who should rule. Of the many claimants, three were predominant: John Balliol, John Hastings, and Robert Bruce, the Competitor. All three were descendants of the daughters of David, Earl of Huntington, grandson of David I, another good king who had given the land strength and prosperity.

  The wise men of the country were sadly unwary and indeed, unwise.

  Their neighboring king had eyes upon the country himself.

  Before the death of the young heiress, he had planned that she should marry his son, and thus unite the two countries.

  Now, he helped to choose a puppet king, a man to rule the country, yet bow to him as an overlord. With his eyes in truth, upon the prize for himself, he chose John Balliol.

  King John was at first acclaimed and accepted. But the overlord made the demands, and when the puppet king disobeyed, he was brought low. The great neighboring king folded his hands and nodded with pleasure. The prize, he thought, was his.

  The land was cast into years of war.

  Years of hell.

  A desperate purgatory, at the very least.

  Heroes rose to fight in the name of their absent king when he was broken by the overlord, dishonored, and forced to abdicate. They fought for freedom from the overlord’s brutal rule for they were a country of their own people, proud and separate. The greatest of these heroes was a man named William. He brought the would-be conquering army low. But in time, the great wrath of the neighboring king fell upon them, and William Wallace, champion of the people, fell to treachery and lost his life—head, limbs, innards, and more—to the fury and vengeance of the English king.

  Two men would now vie for the questionable treasure of the Scottish crown: John Comyn, kinsman of John Balliol and a powerful baron, and Robert Bruce, grandson of Robert Bruce the Competitor, who had made the original claim.

  The two would make a pact, the one giving the other his lands and riches in exchange for the other’s support in his quest for the crown. The neighboring king was now growing old and ailed, and, they thought, they could seize back their own country at his death. The churchmen knew of this plan, and they were pleased.

  But treachery again struck: The one betrayed the other, seeing that the neighboring king knew of the plan. Edward, self-proclaimed “hammer” of the Scots, failed to die as all had hoped, and instead, vowed his wrath and vengeance once again.

  John Comyn conspired against Robert Bruce, telling the neighboring king of Bruce’s compact with him and great churchmen.

  The neighboring king was again in a fury.

  And Robert Bruce, hearing of the betrayal, rode hard in his wrath to find the man who had betrayed him. They met within a church, and there, upon the altar, Bruce spilled the blood of Comyn. If he did not murder his distant kinsman with his blow, it did not matter, for his men finished the deed.

  In 1306, Bruce was crowned king of the Scots at Scone. The English king had stolen the great stone of Scone, upon which Scottish kings had been crowned for eons, but still, Robert the Bruce was anointed in the ancient tradition. He was crowned not just once, b
ut twice, for Isabel, a daughter of the house of Mar, came rushing to perform the hereditary duties of her family at a coronation as her brother, the earl, was a lad, and held by the neighboring king, Edward of England. She was but nineteen and married to the earl of Buchan, an ally of the English king, but in her devotion to her land, she was heedless of her marriage. And the consequences.

  She arrived for the coronation a day late, and therefore, so that tradition and propriety might be maintained, the ancient rites were performed again on Palm Sunday, the twenty-sixth of March, 1306. Now none of the people might doubt that Robert Bruce was king.

  And so, in name, he had risen at last to claim his great quest.

  But the new king had many enemies, among them the kinsmen of the slain John Comyn, powerful barons of the land.

  And then there was Edward I of England, who had ruled long, and hard, and brutally.

  And who, most annoyingly, had failed, thus far, to die.

  When he heard of Bruce’s coronation, Edward I had his son honored as Prince of Wales. Hundreds of hardy young Englishmen were knighted at the ceremony, giving vows before the altar of chivalry and valor.

  The English king’s wrath was such that no such vows might be maintained. There would be few prisoners taken by the English, for all men captured who supported Robert Bruce were to be treated as outlaws, executed without trial, hanged, beheaded, drawn and quartered, or dragged through the streets to meet various forms of torture, humiliation, then a grisly death. Heralds proclaimed throughout the land that the women—the wives, sisters, even daughters of the valiant patriots—should be treated little better. The English knights were given leave to rob, rape, and murder as they saw fit. They were the outlaw kin of an outlaw king.

  Within months of his coronation, Bruce had met savage defeats, and many of his finest men had been captured and executed, including three of his brothers. His wife had become a hostage of the vengeful English king, along with two of his sisters and his daughter. Only his great prowess, at times against incredible numerical odds, kept patriotism and loyalty alive among those who would serve him. He was not a ruler with a great army, but a tattered bandit fighting from the rich forests in which he could find shelter. Troops had to be raised from those loyal to this new king, and to the dream of freedom. Help was sought from abroad. The highlands of Scotland were far from the English, but the lowlands had been brought to their knees.

  The borderlands remained a form of Hell on earth. In this purgatory and chaos, men and women, the great and the small, struggled to survive.

  Robert Bruce was king of Scotland.

  But it was treachery that reigned.

  Once upon a time . . .

  There lived a man who would be a great king.

  But in the year of our Lord 1307, his battle for the land, for the freedom of his country, had only just begun.

  CHAPTER 1

  They were surely madmen.

  From the hill, Igrainia could see the riders coming.

  They flew the flags of Robert the Bruce.

  They had to be mad.

  She rode with a party of twenty men, selected carefully for their skill and courage—and, of course, the simple fact that they were still alive and well. They wore full armor and carried well-honed weapons with which they were very adept.

  There were less than half that number coming toward them, a pathetically ragtag band, racing up the hill.

  “My lady . . . ?” queried Sir Morton Hamill, head of her guard.

  “Can we outrun them?” she asked.

  Sir Morton let out a sound of disgust. “Outrun them!” He was indignant. “They are but rabble; their so-called king runs to the forests while his family is slain in his stead. The Bruce is aware that he is an outlaw to most of his own people. My lady, there is no reason to run.”

  “No reason,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “except that more men will die. I am weary of death.”

  The riders were still gaining on them at a breakneck pace, racing from the site of the castle, where surely even they had realized that the black crosses covering the stone were no ploy of the enemy, but a true warning of the situation within.

  Sir Morton was trying hard to hold his temper. “My lady, I am aware of the pain in your heart. But these are the very renegades who brought the terror to your home, who cost you . . . who cost you everything.”

  “No man, or woman, asks for the plague, Sir Morton. And indeed, if you ask Father MacKinley, he will tell you that God sent the sickness in his anger that we should brutally make hostages of women and children, and execute our enemies so freely. We were warned of the sickness; we refused to believe the warnings of our foes. So now, if we can outrun the renegades, that is my choice. It was not my choice to leave Langley. I want no more death laid at my feet.”

  “Alas. We cannot outrun them,” Sir Morton argued then. “They are almost upon us.”

  She stared at him angrily. “You would fight them rather than do your duty to bring me to safety.”

  “My lady, you are beside yourself with grief and cannot think clearly. I would fight such upstart rebels, aye, my lady, for that is my duty.”

  “Sir Morton, I am in my full senses, quite capable of coherent thought—”

  “My lady, watch! Your position here on the hill is excellent; you may view the carnage as I take my revenge on these knaves!”

  Furious, Igrainia reined in her horse as Sir Morton called out an order to his men. He did not intend to await the enemy. He meant to attack first.

  “Sir Morton!” She raged with fury, her heart sick as she watched the men spur their horses to his command. In seconds, the liege men of her late lord, Afton of Langley, spurned her order and took flight down the hill.

  They seemed to sail in a sea of silver, armor gleaming in the sun. The colors they flew, the rich blue and red, noble colors, created a riot of shades along with the silver stream. Down the hill, a display of might and power . . .

  Bearing down upon a sad rabble, scattered horsemen on fine enough mounts, some in tarnished armor, most in no more than leather jerkins to protect their hearts from the onslaught of steel that would soon come their way.

  At her distance, she could see their leader. She frowned, wondering what madness would make a man risk certain death. She narrowed her eyes against the sun, studying the man. A small gasp escaped her.

  She had seen him before. She knew, because he rode without protection; no helmet covered his head, and the length of his tangled blond hair glinted in the sun with almost as much of a sheen as the steel helmets worn by her own people. She had seen him dragged in with the other captured men, shackled in irons. He had looked like a wild man, uncivilized, a barbarian, yet despite the dirt and mud that marred his clothes, she had seen his eyes once, when they had met hers, and she had read something frightening in that glance. She had the odd feeling that he had allowed himself to be taken prisoner, though why, she didn’t know. Or perhaps she did. Castle Langley, as her husband’s home was called, had just been turned into quarters for the king’s men when they had come through, bearing the families of Scottish outlaws to London, where they would be held until their rebel kin surrendered.

  And offered their own necks to the axeman’s blade.

  Sir Morton’s men were nearly upon the riders. In the glittering sunlight, it was almost a beautiful spectacle, the gleam and glint of steel and color . . .

  Until the riders came together in a hideous clash, horses screaming, men shouting, steel becoming drenched in the deep red of blood. Tears suddenly stung her eyes; Afton had wanted no part of this. He had been furious with the order to welcome the king’s men, to house renegades who were his own people. He had demanded that the hostages not be treated as animals, even when they spoke with their highland language and strange burrs, and looked like wild creatures from heathen times. He had stood, a proud voice of reason and mercy, until he had fallen . . .

  And neither her love nor her prowess with herbs had managed to save him.


  He would have been furious at this bloodbath, had he been with her.

  Had he had his way, they would never have come to this . . .

  She gasped, bringing her hand to her lips as she saw that a rebel had met Sir Morton head on, ever ready to do battle. The rebel was the wild man with the tangled blond hair.

  Sir Morton’s sword never made contact with the rebel’s flesh.

  Sir Morton’s head fell to the earth and bounced as his body continued through the mass upon his horse, until that part of him, too fell to the ground to be trampled upon.

  Bile filled her throat. She closed her eyes, and lowered her head, fighting the sickness that threatened to overwhelm her. Dear God, she had just left plague victims, nursed the sick and the putrid and the rotting and . . .

  With her eyes closed, she could still see the head, bouncing.

  The clash of steel seemed to rise in a cacophony around her; she heard more cries, shouts, the terrified whinnies of warhorses, animals accustomed to battle and mayhem. She forced herself to look up.

  The finest armor to be found had not protected the men of Langley from the fury of the rebels’ wrath. Men lay everywhere.

  Armor glinting in the sun. The shining intermittent, against the bloodstained field. Some had survived. Unhorsed, the men milled in a circle. There were shouts and commands; the blond giant was on his feet as well, approaching the eight or so men of Langley who remained standing. Watching, appalled, she didn’t realize her own danger. Voices carried on the air.

  “Do we slay them now?” someone inquired.

  The blond man replied, then shouted at the survivors. Swords fell to the ground. One man fell to his knees. Did he do so in absolute desolation, or in gratitude for his life?

  Were they to be executed? Or were their lives to be spared?

  She couldn’t tell. Others were talking, but they spoke in softer voices.

  One of the rebels pointed up the hill.

  Then, suddenly, the blond man was staring at her.

  She couldn’t see his eyes in the distance. She could only remember them.