The Barbarian

by Georgia Fox

  Evernight Publishing

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2012 Georgia Fox

  ISBN: 978-1-77130-159-6

  Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

  Editor: Marie Medina

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  To V

  THE BARBARIAN

  The Conquerors, 6

  Georgia Fox

  Copyright © 2012

  Chapter One

  Four days ago.

  "Readers want to know how the series ends." The text leapt out at her from the little bouncing envelope on her phone.

  "So do I," she muttered, pressing 'erase' with her thumb. Oh, so do I.

  Another text flashed up immediately. "So when can we expect the next book?"

  No possible answer to that question, while you have writers' block on a Berlin wall scale. Good thing she was about to get on a plane. She switched her phone off and slid it guiltily into her coat pocket.

  Still, she had an excuse, didn't she? Not that the publisher or her agent wanted to hear the juicy details of her private life. They wanted to make money, of course. They didn't care about her problems anymore than her English literature tutor at school ever wanted to hear the dog ate her homework. Even when that really happened.

  Which it did, twice. So there, bastards!

  The attendant at the gate took her boarding pass and cracked a brittle smile, lipstick and nail polish flashing in a gleam of matching blood red. "Enjoy your trip."

  "I'm sure I will," she replied with equal sincerity and walked through the gate, following the other passengers. At this point in the day's adventure they all walked briskly, heads up, eyes wide and hopeful. Breezy excitement cooled the air as they passed from the echoing terminal into a jet-way of purgatory, their last contact with earth for the next approximately eight hours. Ah, the gleeful anticipation of airplane food and the challenge of limited leg space; the joy of festering, recycled air and the luxury of back-breaking chair angles—all for one full third of a day.

  As she stepped through the door of the plane and passed the line of robotically welcoming stewards, she thought briefly of the hopes she'd once had—back when her first book was published and she had visions of becoming a bestseller overnight. She'd seen herself traveling in first class from then on, falling into one of those long seats with oceans of space, dabbing her face on a damp towel served to her by a steward with silver tongs, ordering the best champagne....

  Instead she was directed to her right and shunted along a tight aisle that would challenge even the hips of an Olsen twin. Now she was a mouse, trapped in a maze with a hundred other laboratory mice. The only way was forward. The man pushing along behind her, jamming the back of her knees with what had to be the world's bulkiest carry-on, would never allow her to turn around and go back, even if she was screaming about fire in the engines. She could almost feel his impatient breath moving the back of her hair as he shoved her along, muttering numbers out loud, reading them on the overhead luggage compartments, just in case no one else could see them.

  Please don't let him sit near me.

  Here she was. This was her home for the next eight hours. 39a Cramp Street

  —otherwise known as 39a Deep Vein Thrombosis Avenue

  . She stopped and squeezed to one side, letting the juggernaut and his "carry-on", which looked as if it probably contained severed limbs, thrust his way by.

  Through the tiny window, she stared at grey tarmac and a slice of the wing. It looked as airless outside as it was within. She was hot already, stifling. No chance to get her coat off with the stream of people pushing along the aisle, glaring at her as if she was begging for money on a street corner. She could barely get her luggage stowed away, before the combined force of gusty, discontented sighs in the aisle behind blew her down into her narrow seat. Coat would have to come off later; she'd wriggle out of it somehow once they were in the air and the seat-belt light was turned off.

  She sat directly on the little bag of goodies, gifts from the airline who wanted to compensate their passengers for the inhumanity of their seats. And the swag? A tiny toothbrush, paper thin travel "socks" that she had no room to put on anyway and an eye mask for "sleeping".

  Oh, if only the seat next to her remained empty. Elbow room. Blessed elbow room. She tried not to make eye contact with the other passengers as they passed. Please, please don't let any one of them be 39b.

  She took her notebook and pen out of her pocket and flipped down the little tray from the back of the seat in front of her. It hit her knees and she winced. Never mind that now. Must concentrate. Got to make notes. Got to get her head straight about this last book. Readers were waiting for it.

  It still amazed her that anyone actually enjoyed what she wrote. But apparently they did. Had to stop second-guessing herself and her talent. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, as her father would say.

  Pity she couldn't afford first class. She'd have lots of room to write then. Alas, she was not first class material. Her perspiration would never meet the likes of a soft white face cloth on an airplane; it had to make do with a crumpled Kleenex.

  A pair of khaki capris suddenly staggered sideways, knocking into her arm rest and her mini table. She didn't look up, but cursed inwardly. The woman was chattering loudly to her friend, who apparently had the seat across the aisle. Still staring at her notebook, she heard the click of the overhead compartment being opened again and then the whoosh of a heavy duffle bag thrown through the air. No time to get out of the way and no space for an evasive move anyway. The woman's luggage hit her soundly on the side of the head, like a swinging punching bag.

  "Oops. I'm so sorry, honey!"

  Honey?

  She held her cheek. "Don't worry about it. I trained with Ali."

  Ouch, that fucking hurt.

  The woman made no further amends. Stretching up and showing a pale, paunchy midriff, she was forcing her duffle bag into the small compartment, probably crushing everything else in there, so busy yakking to her friend that she paid no more attention to her wounded neighbor. Probably hadn't even heard her reply. The apology, it seemed, had been as genuine as a harried waiter's "Have a nice day", uttered while surreptitiously searching the table for a tip.

  Thanks, bitch.

  Now she had a royal headache and they hadn't even taken off yet. Tylenol was in her checked luggage. Damn it.

  Wow. Her head was really spinning. The side of her face was suddenly numb. She wished her forehead felt the same, but it throbbed.

  Angrily she pulled on her complimentary eye mask and leaned as far back as possible in her seat. Darkness.

  That's better.

  Now. Think.

  But she couldn't.

  She didn't even know how she ... how she ... how she...

  How the figgity fuck did I get here?

  ****

  Cornweal, December 1084

  Lurching slowly and painfully forward, the wagon made progress that would have bored a snail. Sometimes it missed the hardened ruts of the track and jerked sideways before dropping a few inches with a sudden squealing shudder that ripped up through her tired bones. The wheels, thought Amias, might as well have been square, rather than round, for the motion would have been just as uncomfortable and tortuous. Shaken back and forth for the
past several hours since they left behind the last sign of civilization, her nerves were now at the edge of an abyss. Her teeth hurt and her temper, never known for being mild even on a good day, was about to explode like seeds from an overripe pod. Anyone with some familiarity of Amias would know the signs. Her new maid, however, had yet to learn.

  "Surely we must be there soon," ventured the short, plump girl squeezed onto the seat beside her in the trembling wagon. "It cannot be much further, my lady." Despite the lack of any reply, the young maid continued with undeterred optimism, her breath forming soft puffs of cloud that dispersed quickly in the damp air. "And then you will meet your husband at last. How excited you must be."

  "Must I?" Amias finally responded through gritted teeth. This was the fifth "husband" she'd been sent to by the king and her scheming uncle Giles. Her new potential husband was probably in love with someone else already, like two of the others. Perhaps he would be a scrawny, knock-kneed boy, too terrified at the prospect of a wife that he ran away, just as the first one did. Or she would find him on his deathbed, about to draw his final breath, like the last man who was supposed to save her from the fate of an old maid. People had begun to say Amias of York was cursed never to marry. She rather liked the idea, since it gave her a menacing aura. If one could not have great beauty or charm, at least one might have an aura, and if it scared people away, all the better. Her younger cousins had beauty and personality that could light up a hall when they entered it; Amias could snuff out the candles with one scowl.

  Nothing in life gave her any cause to smile—except when she saw someone slip on an icy road, or bang their head, or poke themselves in the eye. Amias had a tendency to laugh when no one else did.

  "Ami, you have not a single, tender woman's bone in your body, " her elder cousin Emma would say, when they were children and living together briefly in the same house.

  "Bones are not meant to be tender," she would reply. "My bones are unbreakable."

  And so she became Ami the Unbreakable.

  Orphaned since early childhood, she barely remembered her mother and the man she'd called father was not, in fact, her sire. At ten she'd learned that she was one of the king's bastards. A nervous, fidgety child, she was flattered and awed when King William sent for her to ask about her music lessons, her sewing and her riding progress. He seemed to like her, petting her hair and laughing when she dared find the courage to answer his questions, but she soon realized that he assessed her only as another of his possessions, a commodity. In time, she came to realize that this was how all men viewed her. Eventually she was sent to live with Giles Du Barry, the Baron of Burleigh, who was her mother's brother and one of the most powerful men in the country. Together, Uncle Giles and the king sought to find a husband for Amias, but so far each of her prospects came to naught. She had a sizeable dowry, but she also had a sizeable temper and bold knights who made their names on the battlefield and the jousting lists, were not so brave when they faced the wrath of Ami the Unbreakable.

  Uncle Giles had threatened to shut her away like a madwoman, but she knew he would not dare as long as her father, the king, was still living. He found other ways to punish her instead.

  Now a grown woman and almost beyond her prime, Ami was accustomed to being sent about the country and inspected like a brood mare. There were few things in life that surprised or perturbed her these days. Nor was there much that roused her curiosity either.

  "I wonder what your husband will be like, my lady," the maid exclaimed with a degree of excitement that her mistress found bleakly amusing.

  Turning her head, she looked quizzically at the girl bouncing on the seat beside her. "Do you indeed?"

  "You must be anxious to meet him, my lady. You must have butterflies in your belly."

  Ami ducked as another drop of rain landed on her forehead from the leaking cloth canopy. "Butterflies?" She laughed sharply and then sneezed.

  "The fluttering, my lady. In here." The plump girl clasped her stomach with both hands.

  "You mean indigestion and wind." Ami held a kerchief to her nose, fearing another sneeze. With her free hand she lifted the old sailcloth drapery that, while it was supposed to keep the cold out, simply strained the rain and blew about in the wind, multiplying the draft around her ankles. Glaring at the passing winter scenery, she muttered, "Villette, there is no mystery about men. If you've met one, you've met them all. The size of the cock might vary but he still crows every morning at sunrise and struts about the yard, full of himself, convinced of his own importance in the world."

  Stark, bare tree limbs rattled in the brisk wind as they traveled by at their lumbering pace. Angry spittle of never-ending rain hit her face. Ami dropped the sailcloth with a disdainful flick of her hand and sighed curtly.

  "This fool in want of a wife will be no different."

  Any man who lived out here, in the back of beyond, would be primitive, loutish, probably uneducated. He could be an old man or a young one. She had no idea, having been told next to nothing about him. As usual she was shuttled across the country at everyone else's convenience and in another of her uncle's desperate, hasty schemes. In a few weeks Uncle Giles could easily change his mind, find a better prospect to suit his own ambitions, and send her elsewhere.

  And her feet were damned cold. There were few things she hated more than uncomfortable feet. She sneezed again.

  "Bless you, my lady," Villette exclaimed. "I hope you do not get a cold."

  She felt her scowl deepening, knew it would make "unbecoming" lines in her face— didn't care. Let her new husband find a wrinkled old crone at his gate. Let him send her back to her uncle Giles, an unopened package returned. It would not be the first time, would it?

  But Ami knew this could be the last time. She was already one and twenty. Her uncle's daughters were younger, fresh-faced saplings, tame and obedient, far more likely to make good matches. They were thirteen and fourteen now. Very soon Uncle Giles would begin marrying them off and Ami would fall further back in his consideration, an item of depreciating value with every passing season that took her beyond from her prime child-bearing years. Time would also take the king's last breath one day. He was an old man and, of course, he would not live forever. When he died Ami knew her uncle would put her in a convent, or perhaps dispose of her in a dark pit somewhere, as he'd threatened several times.

  So she must make a choice between this last-chance husband, a madhouse, a convent or death. Choices, choices, she mused dryly. What was a girl to do with such an abundance of opportunity in the world?

  To further sour her mood, the little maid at her side commenced to hum. It was a tune that had come and gone periodically throughout their travels, often starting up quite suddenly, always unbidden, and ended by a curt word from Ami. Since she was not in possession of a quicksilver mind, Villette would pick up the same tune again, once enough time had elapsed for her to forget the intensity of her lady's displeasure. Thinking about this curious memory lapse more deeply, Ami wondered if it was simply an example of the girl's stupidity or if it was something more sinister. Perhaps Villette, with her wide, blank-stare was actually a criminal mastermind sent to drive her to despair. No one could possibly become such an accomplished torturer by accident.

  Occasionally, when it was allowed to continue beyond the first few notes, the humming was replaced with words, but these were merely snatches of song, suggesting Villette could not recall all the lyrics, or perhaps had never known them. It did not prevent her from repeating lines or adding unlikely words of her own choosing to make up for the lost parts.

  As far as Ami surmised, it was a song about a bird that, having pierced itself upon a brier, did nothing with its last breath of life but chirp away on the subject of unrequited love and broken hearts. Oh, she dearly wished she had a slingshot at hand. Sometimes it was kindest to put a wounded creature out of its misery.

  She opened her mouth to demand silence of the singing maid, but another sneeze shot out of her and she buri
ed her face in the kerchief.

  Suddenly there was a jolt, more violent than any preceding it, and then a series of loud splashes. Again she looked out to see they were crossing through muddy water. A nearby river must have overflowed in all the recent rain and broke its banks to flood a broad dip in the road. The horses whinnied in protest at the icy cold and several items from the caravan had fallen into the water.

  The wagon halted and it soon became apparent the wheels were stuck. With a great creaking of leather harness the horses struggled to pull her wagon free, but there was no doubt about it. They were firmly trapped. Brown flood water was half way up the jammed wheels of the wagon already and it seemed to rise higher just in the few seconds it took to register the danger of their situation. Churning swells surrounded them on all sides.

  Villette cried out, gripping the arm of her mistress so tightly she almost cut off the blood flow. "We shall be drowned, my lady. Save me!"

  Shoving her aside, Ami raised the flap of sailcloth again, higher this time, and looked impatiently for the guard who usually rode alongside. "What are you doing?" she demanded, seeing him dismounted, standing in water up to his waist.

  "Wheel's stuck," he replied.

  "No? Really? I can see that, you blithering fool."

  His cheeks colored. "Must be a log in the water—a tree down."

  "Well, are you going to do something about it, or just stand there, being as much use as a bull without horns?"

  Suddenly, amid a wild whooping and hollering, six men on horseback galloped out of the nearby trees and descended upon them. In that stunned moment there was little chance to react. The cold, weary guard, who seemed to be a novice at his post, hadn't even managed to get his sword from its scabbard, when the leader of the robbers saw Ami looking out.