Knight Triumphant

by Heather Graham

  “Igrainia?” Eric said.

  “She tricked me,” he admitted, his white features betraying his dread for the words he had to say. “She sent word that she was bathing . . . and created a trail for them to follow.”

  “She tricked us all,” Aidan said, riding up behind Allan. “She knew . . . she knew that they would slay your entire party. And possibly me and Lord Danby as well. After all, we stand in the way of what he wants.”

  Despite the sick, choking rage that grew in Eric, he knew that there was nothing he could say to them. He knew Igrainia.

  And in his heart, he knew that she had made the only move she could. His head spun with a cold, sick fury, yet it was against himself.

  He had misjudged his enemy.

  “We ride after them,” he said simply.

  And he spurred Loki forward, racing against the wind.

  As the day wore on, Igrainia was in pain. She hadn’t come upon a stream again in hours. She had ridden so long and so hard that her thighs ached. She was hungry, and yet her stomach seemed to be roiling. At last, she nearly fell from her horse.

  She had to stop, and had to find water.

  For herself, and for her horse.

  She dismounted. For a moment, she was so dizzy that she had to pause, bend over, and wait until the dark cloud over her vision passed by. She straightened. Her stomach rebelled. She stumbled into the bushes and then emerged, more desperate than ever for water.

  She tried to mount again, and realized that she hadn’t the strength then to leap onto the back of her mount. She led the mare to a fallen log, and managed to drag herself back on. She spoke to the horse, telling her that she was an animal, she was supposed to instinctively know how to find water. At last, by standing still on the road, she could hear a bubbling sound, and she followed it through the trees at the side of the road, crashing through branches and limbs, until she came to the water. She drank too fast, and found that she was sick again. She drank more slowly. Cooled her face with the water. The horse drank its fill. Finally, Igrainia led it from the trees, then, before mounting again, she dropped to the ground and placed her ear against the earth.

  She heard the vibrations instantly.

  They were close.

  So much closer than they had been before.

  She stumbled up, and onto the horse.

  Rowenna rode hard to make her way to Eric at the lead. Her cheeks were tear-stained. “It’s my fault. I knew, but she knew . . . and she said that he would get her one way or the other, and that she couldn’t bear it, being his captive, and knowing that so many had died because of her.”

  Eric glanced at Rowenna.

  “It is no man’s fault, except my own,” he said.

  And he pushed harder, riding ahead.

  She didn’t need to drop to the ground to hear the horses.

  They were right behind her. She leaned against her horse’s neck, urging her, pleading with her, begging her onward.

  She knew that she couldn’t outrace the many riders.

  She slipped from the horse, swatting the mare on the rear so that she would keep running.

  Then she ran herself, into the woods. She dodged through the trees, trying to put distance between herself and the road. If she were lucky, the road still ran by a stream. If she could reach the stream, run through the water, they might lose her trail.

  She ran so fast that she missed a root tangled between two trees. She reached for the trunk of one, trying to keep herself from stumbling over it.

  She grasped only a thin ribbon of leaves. They ripped from the stem as she tried to hold on. She went down hard, striking her head on more roots pushing through the edge of the soil. For a moment, the earth spun. She lay stunned and winded. The world blackened. She kept her eyes closed, trying to stop even the blackness from spinning. She blinked furiously, opened her eyes, and saw stars. She blinked again, opened her eyes, and saw Robert Neville.

  She blinked. He did not disappear.

  “Well, well, my lady!” he said.

  He reached down for her. She wanted to scream. She hadn’t the breath to do so. Nor to cry and rant and sob, and damn the heavens.

  He pulled her to her feet. She wavered there . . .

  Then the blackness spun before her eyes again, and what he did then didn’t matter.

  “Whoa, Eric! Hold up.”

  It was Jamie who called to him. He reined in. Loki pawed the ground, protesting. Eric had sensed that they were close. Even the animal seemed to know it.

  Jamie caught up with him.

  “It’s Gregory. He nearly fell from his horse.”

  Eric dismounted, leading Loki back. Gregory was on the ground. Sweat created a sheen on his face. His lips were moving. MacKinley was on the ground beside him.

  “He says that . . .”

  “What?”

  “He says that they have her.”

  Eric stood in paralyzing, impotent rage and pain. Then he started to turn, ready to race again, desperate just to reach her.

  “Wait!” MacKinley called.

  He forced himself to pause. MacKinley didn’t need to decipher Gregory’s next words. Jamie was speaking to him, and they were words of reason.

  “Eric, we need a strategy. We can’t go running in like madmen. They’ll kill us all, and she’ll be no better off. She knew that this morning.”

  He paused in an agony of indecision, torn to run, but knowing that Jamie was right. Once, he had told Margot that he must escape the castle at Langley, that he had to leave her to come back with the men to rescue them all. He had known that he had been right then. He had not known that in the time needed, the consequences would be deadly.

  But now, equally, he had to make the right moves.

  “They have her,” Jamie said. “And they’ll be setting a trap, knowing that you’ll find out, and that you’ll come after her.”

  Jamie was speaking the simple truth.

  Silence seemed as loud as thunder.

  Then he heard himself speaking, and his voice was unbelievably calm and rational. “They want me as well,” he mused. “Well, they can’t have us both.”

  “What do you mean to do?” Jamie asked him.

  “Offer them a trade.”

  “A trade?”

  “I’m going to offer to surrender to them.”

  “Jesus, Eric! You know what they’ll do—”

  “I know what they’ll try to do.” He managed a rueful smile. “I run with some of the finest rebels in all Scotland. Excellent swordsmen, uncanny marksmen.”

  “Whatever you’re planning,” Jamie said softly, “it could fail.”

  “Then I will pay the price,” he said simply.

  She heard the voices before she opened her eyes, and hearing them, she determined not to let them know that she was conscious.

  “We have Igrainia. The sensible move is to run,” Robert was saying.

  “Igrainia! I want the outlaw,” Neville said.

  She barely opened her eyes, leaving her lashes low. At a distance, she could see that though the men had dismounted, they were in full armor and had their weapons at the ready. Robert and Niles Mason were closer to where they had laid her at the foot of a giant elm.

  “We should ride on as hard as we can, to meet with King Edward,” Robert persisted. “The outlaw will have to join up with the Bruce—all Scotland knows that the King is nearly ready to rise and lead his army. And when Edward leads this battle, the rebel Scots will fall like flies. This man, like the others, will most probably die.”

  “Is it that easy for you? He’s the man she’s supposedly wed, and while there is a question as to her marital status, none of her riches become yours. And if he is dead . . .”

  “So what is your plan? We were supposed to ambush him and his outlaws in the forest. Fall upon them as they slept. Now, they are well armed, and dangerous.”

  “If we threaten to kill Igrainia—” Neville suggested.

  “Threaten to kill her! Danby and young Lor
d Abelard are probably with them!”

  “If we threaten to kill her as a traitor to the crown.”

  “If the King finds out, which he will, with Abelard and Danby among them, I will receive nothing but a pool of mud in some desolate hole!” Robert said.

  “What if Abelard and Danby die in the melée?”

  “Good Lord, Niles, you’ve lost your mind! The men will never stand for it.”

  “Oh, I think they will. Most of these fellows are my own, hand-picked, hand-trained, and accustomed to what must be done to win a war. And, of course, not only do I have finely trained Englishmen in my crew, but Scotsmen. Aye, yes, good Scotsmen—kin and followers of the murdered John Comyn, and they will not mind in the least if they are obliged to kill a few Englishmen who are standing in the way of justice.”

  “But the murder of two peers!”

  “Not the murder. The battle loss. The sacrifice. They’ll both die heroes.”

  Igrainia could bear no more. She struggled to her feet and accosted the two. “If you kill my brother, you had best kill me,” she said.

  “My lady, I would like nothing more than to oblige you,” Niles said.

  Robert looked at her with equal distaste, but stared at Niles. “There must be another way. I would just as soon lock the Lady Igrainia eternally into a tower myself, which may certainly be the way to endure marriage now, as it stands. But I must be legally wed to her, if I am ever to have Langley and her English properties and rents.”

  “Don’t worry, my dear,” Niles told her, smiling pleasantly. “We will think of another way to kill the outlaw.”

  “It’s dangerous for us to send in any man,” Eric said, pacing a groove in the earth in the center of the copse where they had gathered to talk. “They may simply seize him, and we’ll lose a man and solve nothing.”

  “I’ll go in,” Father MacKinley said.

  They all paused and stared at him.

  He shrugged. “I’ll be safe. Even King Edward himself has yet to order the execution of an ordained priest.”

  “These men do not have to answer to the powerful peers, and the Church,” Eric reminded him.

  Aidan Abelard stepped forward. “I’ll go with him.”

  The group grew silent again.

  “How can we trust an Englishman?” Angus demanded, spitting in the grass.

  “They are holding my sister,” Aidan reminded them.

  Eric studied Aidan. “They might not pause at killing one of their own either, Aidan.”

  “They can’t kill us at first, they won’t get what they want. If I ride with MacKinley, they’ll be more likely to believe that you’re making an honest offer.”

  Aidan had a point. And if he meant to go over to the English, this was the time for him to do it.

  He and MacKinley started riding again. Their horses were rested, and they galloped forward on the path.

  “You and I are going to take a walk,” Robert Neville told Igrainia, taking her arm.

  She balked, looking at where Niles Mason stood, at the center of the large clearing where they had paused, staring back up the path. He was giving a messenger last-minute instructions. The man was to ride back and warn them that the Lady Igrainia could be killed in the action if they were to attempt an attack.

  Their men were now ringed in an arc, ready to meet a party of armed riders, should they come on.

  Dusk was coming.

  “I don’t care to walk anywhere with you.”

  “No? Well, you will be walking with me. Actually, you will be doing anything that I say. And I’m not waiting any longer. We’re going to get to know one another intimately, now.”

  “You’re about to engage in battle! You can’t take the time.”

  “I can be amazingly quick.”

  “I’m not going with you,” she said, straining against the arm that held her.

  “That will suit me, my lady. I don’t think I’ll be particularly bothered by an audience. I had thought that you might mind, but then again, you’re accustomed to mating with animals, so what will a few eager eyes looking on mean to you.”

  She was afraid that he meant it.

  “You don’t want to do this.”

  “Oh, but I do.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t want to do this now, because then you’ll never know. If you manage to kill Eric and King Edward forces our marriage, and I do produce a child, you’ll never know if it’s yours—or his. And will you murder your own child? Or spend your life wondering if the son you’re raising is your own?”

  He stared at her with a mottled fury. “I believe you’ve hinted that you’re with child. So if your firstborn dies, it will simply be a pity, one of those sad things that happen in life.”

  “Am I truly having a child? Or have I used that as an argument against you?”

  Before he could reply, Niles Mason shouted out to him. “Riders coming!”

  Robert had her wrist and he dragged her after him, meeting Niles on the road. Igrainia saw Father MacKinley and her brother trotting toward them.

  Aidan’s eyes were instantly for her. “Igrainia,” he said. “You’re unharmed?”

  “Aidan!” Robert said in mock distress. “Why would I hurt the woman I love and long to marry?”

  MacKinley had dismounted from his horse. “Sir Niles Mason, Sir Robert Neville, I have a message for you from the Scotsman, Sir Eric Graham.”

  “Give it,” Niles commanded.

  “Sir Eric is willing to give himself over to you on the condition that you immediately give his wife over to my care, and that of Lord Ewan Danby. She is then to be allowed to travel northward to a clan seat of his family, until the time when her child is born. Then, if it is still the order of the English king, she will return to Langley, and meet her obligations to her overlord.”

  Igrainia stared at MacKinley in disbelief. Eric couldn’t allow himself to be captured again. He didn’t understand that these men would not take him to a place of execution. They would perform their vengeful murder here and now.

  “No!” she said. “He can’t do it. I won’t be a part of this! I won’t—”

  “You are not involved in this, Igrainia,” Aidan said softly.

  “Not involved! But—”

  “Tell Sir Eric that his proposal is an amazingly generous offer,” Niles Mason interrupted, “but . . . he must understand. His execution will take place here—and now. Aidan, you and Lord Danby may accompany him, but not his men. If I see a single one of his Scottish outlaws with him, the Lady Igrainia will forfeit her life as well. Is that understood?”

  “He will ride in alone, except for Lords Danby and Abelard,” Father MacKinley said.

  “No!” Igrainia protested. “No, tell him not to do this! They’ll kill all of you, any of you—”

  “This is an agreement between knights, Igrainia,” Aidan interrupted.

  “And one last thing,” Robert Neville said fiercely. “The Lady Igrainia watches.”

  “No, this isn’t going to happen!” Igrainia protested furiously. “Aidan, I’m telling you, I’ve heard them—”

  “We need to discuss the exchange,” Father MacKinley said firmly.

  “Once the outlaw has arrived, he comes to me, and we allow Igrainia into your care, Father. And yours, of course, Aidan, and that of Lord Danby. She watches the event, and then she is free—until the birth of her child.”

  “What guarantee do we have that she’ll return as promised?” Robert demanded.

  “I am her brother, and an English peer,” Aidan reminded them. “She will do as I say, and as her king commands.”

  Robert started to protest again. Niles set a hand on his arm. “We are agreed. Bring the outlaw in. And we will hand over the lady.”

  “Well, of course, he is going to make Robert shut up!” Igrainia exploded, trying to jerk free from Robert’s hold. “They don’t mean to honor a thing they say—”

  Robert pulled her back, hard. “We are all men of honor!”

 
“Honor!”

  “In a minute, you’ll be gagged, my lady!” Niles Mason warned.

  “Lord Abelard, I believe you can now return with the terms,” Father MacKinley said, addressing Aidan. He came to Igrainia’s side, and reached out, ready to take her hand from Robert’s hold.

  “What is this?” Robert demanded. “What are you doing? You must ride back with the terms as well.”

  “For the moment, Robert Neville, you will take your hands off my sister,” Aidan said sharply from atop his mount.

  “Igrainia will wait with me—under the eyes of your armed men, of course,” Father MacKinley said. “It is what the outlaw has demanded. He wants to be sure that she is unharmed when he gives himself over in exchange.”

  Aidan saw that she was in MacKinley’s grasp, rather than Robert Neville’s, then turned his horse, and was on his way. Igrainia started shaking uncontrollably, unable to believe what was happening.

  Aidan returned, and gave them detailed information on the ground the English had chosen, and repeated every word that the men had said.

  “It’s a trap, of course,” Jamie said. “They mean to kill you, and then seize Igrainia again.”

  “Of course, it’s a trap,” Eric said.

  “They’re liars. They don’t mean a word of their agreement.”

  “We don’t mean any of ours, except, of course, that I must hand myself over.” He was silent for a moment. “We’re asking a lot of Father MacKinley. He is a man of God.”

  Jamie was very grave, heedless of the fact that Aidan was present as he said, “MacKinley will do well enough. But you must think this out. She is a woman, Eric. A beautiful woman, but no matter what our plans, they may fail. If one of us falters, you’re a dead man. Worse, you’ll be praying for death. Weigh this carefully. Is she worth it? Is she really worth it?”

  Eric managed a grin for Jamie. He offered no explanations, or excuses.

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  “Well, good then,” Jamie said. “If you’re going to take such a risk, it’s good to know why.”