by Alison Adare
“If I were a craftsman’s son, I might have learned better,” Thomas said. “But I didn’t have your advantages. So I had to hire one.”
Son hurt with dull familiar little thump, advantages with a sharper one. “No, you just learned to handle a sword and look good on a horse, wear fine clothes, command a Company and marry well.”
“To a woman likely to poison my food.”
“Point,” Janet conceded. “Saint Peter’s pillock, I don’t know which of us is the bigger fool.”
“Jack!” Tom said, and though it was hard to tell by firelight, she thought he blushed a little. “As your manorial lord, I may have to start fining you for your profane language.”
“You can’t,” Janet said smugly. “You’d have to put me in the pillory, and I doubt you’d do that to your steward. It would hardly encourage your tenants to view me with respect.”
The corner of his mouth curled up a little. “I’ll fine you if I choose.”
She shook her head. “I know my rights.”
The half-smile spread to a full one. “You don’t, though, Jack. The law changes at the border.”
She gaped at him. “It does?”
“It does. Not for crimes, although from what I heard at court from the Marcher Lords the old laws are still the ones most likely to be enforced. Apparently the last Justice of the Peace to get more than a day’s ride from the Marches was found hanged from a tree. But civil law’s entirely different. I’ve a book on it, not read yet. How’s your Latin?”
“About what you’d expect from a locksmith’s son. I’ll need you to tell me what’s in it.” She raked her fingers through her hair. “Or the bailiff will be running rings around me. And you, by extension. Christ’s co-” Tom raised a finger warningly. “Coat. You could have mentioned it before.”
“I would have, had I known it’d make you mend your ways.” He rolled onto his back. “It’s still a while before dawn. Try to get back to sleep, if you can.”
Janet closed her eyes. A whole new set of laws to learn, and the ones that deal with inheritance and property, too. Saint Anne’s arse. This really is the worst idea ever.
Then a thought occurred to her and her eyes popped open. “Tom?” she said.
“Aye?”
“Swearing’s a crime. Even over the border, you can’t fine me.” She closed her eyes again. “So Saint Theodosia’s teats to your threats.”
Tom chuckled softly. “See?” he said. “You’ll make a fine steward for Brinday.”
~o~
There was little to mark the transition between familiar and foreign, between civilized and wild. Only that the roads gradually grew narrower and rougher, the towns smaller and further between. Janet noted that the few people they encountered on the road did not return Tom’s smile or greeting with more than a surly nod. Marking us as foreigners by our dress.
And in Tom’s case, by his looks.
For none of the people here were fair, and most of them were small. Her own coloring might have passed inspection, but tall, blond Sir Thomas Lynhurst might just as well have been riding with a banner blazoned with the Crown.
By mutual agreement, they didn’t stop in any of the towns. It was better to camp in the open, even in the rain, than risk the chancy hospitality of hamlets where every face looked at them with suspicion and resentment.
One of them was always on watch.
Janet found her muscles growing accustomed to the riding and she no longer slid exhausted from Masie’s back each dusk. Tom noticed, and pressed her to practice her swordplay. That brought new aches and pains — and bruises — as he drove her up and down beside their campfire, until skills and reflexes that had slept through the winter were awake and lively again and she could give a good enough account of herself with sword and buckler to satisfy him.
By the second day they had left behind the forests where every tree was fuzzed pale green with new spring growth, and passed into miles of open countryside. They rode through craggy hills and green valleys all swept by a sharp fresh breeze. Despite the damp, and the knowledge that she was riding through a land where she didn’t speak the language and where she was viewed as an interloper at best, invader at worst, Janet found her spirits lifting. Though the sky was gray with cloud, it was wide and open above her. The great empty spaces around them, the absence of crowds, narrow alleyways and closed doors, unknotted something tight in her chest that she’d become so used to she only noticed it when it was gone.
Tom, too, seemed to brighten as the days went on. Likely with the knowledge that we’ll be at Brinday soon, for good or ill, the die cast, and the time for second guesses gone. He’d never again been as frozen in the face of a decision as in those first weeks after his Company was cut to pieces, but Janet knew he’d never learned to love a surfeit of options, either. Well, he has me for that, doesn’t he? Someone who’d always rather choose than be chosen for.
The road they followed wound up and up. The hills grew closer together, but the grass on their steep sides was lush and green, and the sheep that Janet saw grazing looked fat and content. Once, she dismounted and strode into the field to grab one, burying her hands in the thick wool, while Tom looked on in amusement.
“Satisfied with its condition, Shepherd Cooper?” he asked as she remounted.
“I —” Janet stopped. “My sister spins. I’ve learned to tell good wool from bad.” Although not necessarily while still on the back of the sheep. Still, the fleece had been thick and dense, which seemed to her to be a good thing. “We may starve, but hopefully not freeze to death.”
Thomas nudged his horse into a walk with his heels, tossing back over his shoulder, “Then things are looking up.”
They were four days past the border and by Tom’s calculation less than a day from Brinday when Janet woke in the dark to Tom’s hand on her shoulder.
“Whu —” she started to say, heaving herself up on her elbow.
And then she heard the wolves.
Chapter 3
She’d never heard the sound before for herself, although she’d heard plenty of imitations, made to add color to the stories some of the soldiers from wilder parts of the country told around the army campfires at night. Those imitations had been good enough that she had no doubt now what she was hearing. No human throat, however, could truly replicate that high, eerie sound. The hair rose on her arms and the back of her neck and she grasped the medallion at her neck. “Are they close?”
Tom nodded, but before he could speak, another howl came from the other side of the campfire, scaling up to blend with the first. More joined it, one after another, making a steady chorus that went on and on, without pause, as if the creatures making it had no need to breathe.
The wolves had them surrounded.
Most animals fear fire. Janet threw back her blanket and rolled to her feet, seizing more of the branches they’d gathered for the fire and tossing them into the flames.
The horses were stamping and tossing their heads. Tom went to calm them, trying to lead them closer to the campfire, but the animals baulked, their uneasiness at the wolves less than their terror of the flames.
“Can we outrun them?” Janet asked.
“If we knew the ground,” Tom said. “And if they weren’t all around us.”
“Turn the horses loose,” Janet said, and at his expression, “If they bolt, some of the wolves might chase them. If they don’t, they might kick at least one in the head. Either way, that’s better odds.”
“They might kick one of us in the head, too, if they panic.”
“Then we won’t feel being eaten,” Janet snapped. “Turn them loose!”
He did, then stooped to pick up two long branches. He held them in the fire until the ends caught, and then held one out to her. As she took the makeshift torch, she saw that, absurdly, he was smiling. “I’ll thank you to remember you’re speaking to the new lord of Brinday Manor, Steward Cooper.”
“Apologies, your wolfbaitness.” She drew her sword a
s Tom drew his. The howls were closer now, and then in the shifting darkness beyond the small circle of firelight, yellow eyes shone. “Tom!”
“I see them. This side too.”
Janet spun to put her back against his. Masie gave a high whinny and then bolted into the darkness, followed by their packhorse, but Tom’s Nightfoot was made of sterner stuff and turned in a tight circle, then reared, bugling a challenge.
And the wolves came at them.
The beasts were silent now, circling and snapping, moving as if in agreement. When Janet swung her torch at them, they dodged casually, almost contemptuously. She could feel the flex and give of Tom’s shoulders against hers as he did the same thing. One of the wolves darted in low, teeth snapping at her leg, and Janet slashed down at it with her sword and felt the blade bite. That wolf sprang back, but there was another coming on her other side. She stabbed and missed, won a second as it dodged her blow, and thrust her torch into its snarling face.
If any of the wolves had broken off in pursuit of the fleeing horses, certainly none of them were interested in Nightfoot. The stallion lashed out at any that passed too close in their intent rotation around Tom and Janet, but none of them attacked him and he showed no intention of pressing an attack of his own.
I’d keep my distance too, horse.
Janet had always imagined wolves to be like dogs. Dangerous dogs, true, capable of being just as deadly to a lone man taken unprepared, but ultimately man-killers only as their training and handlers dictated. She had a healthy respect for dogs, but she didn’t fear them.
But wolves, she discovered, she did fear. The gleam of their eyes, their sinuous movements as they dodged her blows with contemptuous ease, the way they flickered in and out of the shadows as if they were all the dark forces hidden by the night made flesh … Janet swung at another snarling mouth and knew herself in the presence of evil.
“Which is — the — leader?” Tom panted, as sore pressed as she.
“He’s not wearing a damned token, is he?” Janet snapped. “How should I know?”
“The biggest.” She felt his weight shift and then heard the crunch of booted foot on a skull. “They’re like men! Kill the leader and the rest will run!”
“I didn’t,” Janet said, remembering a certain field in a now-lost war. She swung and drew blood, kicked out hard and saw a wolf limp away. The leader is the biggest.
That one.
Broad head like a mastiff, massive shoulders, a great white ruff around a thick neck. Keeping his distance. Biding his time. He wrinkled his muzzle in a soundless snarl and Janet fancied she could feel his hot and bloody breath on her skin.
She had seen hell, on a battlefield pitted with cannonballs and strewn with dead.
And now I’ve seen the Devil.
“Tom, guard your back,” she said, flung her torch at the one wolf between her and the big one, and lunged.
It sprang as she did, powerful haunches propelling it into the air level with her face, huge jaws open. She thrust up and in and then the beast crashed into her, knocking her backwards and bearing her down.
Teeth snapped at her face, claws scrabbled at her legs. She heard Tom shout “Jack!” as she got her hand under the wolf’s jaws and tried with all her strength to hold those great white teeth away from her as she struggled to free the sword pinned by the beast’s weight.
And then the wolf grunted and went limp.
Janet heaved it off her and got to her knees. She dragged free the blade she’d miraculously managed to bury in the animal’s belly as it sprang at her. One of the other wolves was crouched to spring, muzzle drawn back in a grimace of hatred, and Janet readied herself. “Come on, then!” she shouted at it.
It leapt, and Tom’s sword swung whistling through the air and buried itself in the beast’s neck.
The other wolves broke then, slinking into the darkness, casting malevolent looks back over their shoulders.
Janet fell to her hands and knees and vomited.
“This,” she said, when she could speak, “was the worst idea ever.”
Tom wiped his sword on the grass and thrust it back into its scabbard, hands shaking enough to make it a tricky task. “I’m beginning to think you might be right.”
Nightfoot was snorting and tossing his head, and Tom bent to the task of dragging the dead wolves far enough away from the fire to appease his sweating, stamping horse. Janet tried to get up to help but when she put her weight on her right leg a wave of pain made her realize that not all the blood covering her was the wolf’s.
Her hose and breeches were ripped from her right thigh to just above her knee, and beneath them blood welled from deep gouges made by the wolf’s claws. Cursing, Janet pressed the flat of her hand to the wounds and reached with her other hand for her pack.
“Let me see,” Tom said, kneeling beside her. She lifted her hand and he frowned. “Not too bad if it doesn’t turn.”
“At least if it does, I won’t lose the leg,” Janet said, black humor, for the wound was high enough that any amputation would likely kill her, if it festered. “The vinegar and salve are in my —”
“I know.” He found them in one of her packs, and the bandages. “Do you want me to —?”
“I’ll do it.” God only knew what was in the salve, but the apothecary she’d bought it from had sworn it sovereign against all forms of injury, and it certainly smelled foul enough. Janet unlaced her hose on the right side, pushed the leg down and hiked her breeches enough to pour the stinging vinegar over the wounds. She smeared the salve on and wrapped the bandage around her thigh. Taking a deep breath, she pulled it tight to tie the ends.
It hurt enough to make her blind and deaf for a moment, and when she could breathe without whimpering, Tom was out of sight.
“Tom?”
“Here.” He came back into the circle of firelight, hands and arms streaked with blood, carrying something under one arm. He showed it to her. “The skin of your wolf. To impress the locals, when we get there. You can have it made up into a cloak — or the collar of one, anyway.”
“Lovely,” Janet said.
Tom bundled the wolf-skin up, glancing at her. “Hurts?” When she nodded, he rummaged in his pack and then put a flask in her hand. Janet eyed it suspiciously, and he smiled a little. “Aqua Vitae. It’ll help.”
She took a swig, and coughed as fire ran down her throat. “You’ve been holding out on me.”
“Emergency use,” he said. “Go easy with it. It’s not small beer.”
Janet took another drink and gave the flask back to him. “It certainly isn’t.” The liquid hit her stomach and began to spread warmth through her limbs. “The night is looking up.”
“It could hardly look any worse.”
Janet grinned at him. “I don’t know, we’re both alive, we’ve still got one horse, and it can’t be more than a day to Brinday.”
The corner of his mouth twitched up. “And you’ve got a new cloak.”
In the morning, the packhorse had made his way sheepishly back to their camp, but there was no sign of Masie. Janet unwrapped the bandages around her thigh. Her leg was stiff and sore but she didn’t think it was any more red or swollen than it should have been.
Tom, however, frowned at the sight. “You can’t walk on that,” he said, and Janet wasn’t disposed to argue when he helped her mount Nightfoot.
They made slow time. Tom might have been more used to days’ riding than Janet, but he hadn’t marched the length and breadth of the country as she had. She herself was happy to hold Nightfoot to a slow walk. Even then, by the time it began to grow dark, each step was sending a jolt of hot pain through her leg. She was glad to slide down when Tom suggested they make camp, and just as glad to sit with her forehead resting on her knees as he made a fire and tended the horses.
A touch on her hand made her look up, the clearing Tom had chosen sliding around her a little as she raised her head. “Can you eat?” he asked.
Her stomach heaved at
the thought. “No.”
“Try, anyway,” Tom said, offering her a bowl.
Janet took it, surprised to realize how long she’d been sitting motionless: long enough for Tom to set the camp, unroll their bedrolls, and cook up a mess of grain with what was left of their dried meat.
She forced down as much as she could, gave the bowl back to him, and looked down at her leg. The pain had settled to a steady ache and she would have been happy to leave it so, but there was no help for it. You need to put more salve on it, Janet. It’s not going to get any easier the longer you think about it.
It wasn’t easy at all. The wounds had turned puffy and red, and touching them made her sweat with pain. If that hadn’t told her that the apothecary’s concoction was no match for whatever evil had been carried by the monster wolf’s claws, the sharp hiss of Tom’s breath as he saw the state of her leg would have let her know.
She re-wrapped the bandage, held her breath and gritted her teeth, and tightened it. “Christ’s cod!”
For the first time Janet could remember, Tom didn’t remonstrate with her for the profanity, only held her shoulders in a firm grip as she panted and cursed and pounded her fist on the ground until the waves of agony ebbed a little.
He stood the whole night’s watch, brooking no argument about it, as Janet dozed uneasily, dreaming of giant teeth and hot bloody breath, of a giant black beast tearing at her throat — at Tom’s — of shifting shadows and strange noises in the dark. She was sweaty and weak when she woke fully in the thin gray light before dawn, and her leg hurt almost too badly for her to move it.
She made no attempt to undo the bandage again, and Tom, studying her face with the calm, cool expression she well remembered from a half-a-dozen hopeless battles, made no effort to insist she eat. He found a fallen tree not too far from where they’d camped and carried her to it so she could manage to mount Nightfoot, and led the stallion on their onward journey so she could give all her attention to clinging to the pommel and trying not to faint.
For she absolutely could not afford to tumble unconscious from the saddle and lie helpless while Tom, perhaps, searched her body for other wounds. Because wounds aren’t what he’d find.