Tam stopped suddenly, folding his arms. "I demand you tell me more of yourself, if just to take my mind off things, or I won't go a step farther. I'm still not convinced I wouldn't be better off saving myself, let alone entering this abbey."
Herne resisted the temptation to throw Tam over his shoulder and demonstrate just how easily he could take Tam anywhere he pleased. "It seems you already know much of me. So how about you tell me what you know of my history. I will tell you what is truth."
"I'm not a fool," replied Tam. "That way I will discover nothing new."
Herne strode on, increasing the length of his strides, and Tam ran to stay at his heel. "I surrender. Now let me think. You have led the Wild Hunt, spreading fear and mayhem that once turned the tresses of a raven-haired wench pure white."
"That is true."
"Why did you do that? Do you hate England so much?"
"This realm you call England was once a very different place. A land I loved. And all I loved was lost."
"So you sought revenge?"
Herne let the song of a lark rising from the heather answer in his stead.
"Revenge it was, eh?" Tam clicked his tongue. "So how did this come to pass? I learned you were once a king, a great warrior, peerless in his age."
A king and a great warrior. Is that what I once was?
"Well?"
Herne breathed out, a long, withering sigh. "I was not born a king, but a younger son like you, sired by a man of neither wealth nor rank. I became leader of my people because I fed and protected them." This was the truth as he recollected. He first rose to fame among his tribe before his fourteenth year, when winter hit so hard the rivers froze to iron. When the finest huntsmen came back empty-handed to their families, Herne set out into the ice-blasted forest alone, returning with a mighty stag flung over his shoulders and dragging the carcass of a fat boar behind him.
"No arguments about your greatness as a warrior, then?" asked Tam.
Herne shut his eyes a moment. "I barely recall." Yes, he'd fought with skill and cared not if he'd lived or died, just that his people were safe. But that was so long ago it seemed like another man's history. "I defended my own. No more."
"And who were your own? Your people? Did you have a wife, children?"
The past hovered in his mind's eye in perfectly preserved images. "My people were known as the Atrae and frequented lands to the north of here, near Windsor. I took no wife. I lost my kingship and my people…before that time came."
"But you must have had somebody you pinned your hopes on? Somebody you loved?"
Crea. Why must Tam keep reminding him of that man?
"You wished to bathe," he growled, glaring so hotly Tam's eyes grew round and he bit his blackberry-smudged lip. "See that ruin up ahead? That is the old mill. Where the land dips down beyond, the monks dammed the stream to create the pool."
"You, uh…You did not answer all my questions."
"I have lived alone for fifteen hundred years, boy. For two centuries, I dined on wolves until I grew tired of picking their splintered bones from my teeth. There is nothing more to tell, so bathe. And I will bring us breakfast if your blather has not caused all quarries west of Clausentum to flee."
Tam gaped at him a moment, betraying the merest hint of amusement, but he smothered it well. "And will you bring me out the lore to study forthwith?"
"Not yet. I have other business. You could always proceed to the abbey alone."
As they forged toward the bulrushes marking the edge of the pool, Tam grumbled, and Herne strove to think beyond their bodily needs. He must scout the lay of the land, the state of the spirits. Despite the closeness of the abbey, his nerves hummed, suggesting some foul presence drew near—although the beast now galloping at breakneck speed toward them was no ghost or wraith.
Tam stilled. Herne stepped in front of the lad, intercepting the enormous, panting hound as she leaped forward, her tongue lolling from her mouth in her glee. The dog planted her paws on Herne's upper thighs, and he braced himself easily.
"Dewer," he said softly, scrubbing his knuckles behind the dog's velvet ear in a fashion she loved. "You run to greet me. Good, loyal girl." Taking a grip of Dewer's collar, he glanced back at Tam. "You are accustomed to dogs?"
"I prefer cats." Tam still appeared uneasy, no doubt because Dewer, whom Herne had found as a deserted puppy, had grown from a tiny scrap into an uncommonly large bitch. She hitched her grey lip into a growl.
Stooping so low he almost nuzzled Dewer's ear, Herne murmured, "Tam is a friend. Defend him as you would me." Although he will not be with us long. Dewer's snarl faded, and she whimpered.
"The horned one speaks the language of dogs." Tam wrinkled his nose. "Why am I not surprised?"
"This good hound understands me better than most," he conceded. Dewer could always distinguish the few folk whose company Herne endured from the many he did not. And despite the lad's chatter, Herne found Tam more tolerable than most men. Tam showed mettle, although Herne suspected that fortitude might be severely tested before they parted forever.
"Do not stray far from the pool," he said.
"And why would I do that near an abbey packed with howling fiends?" Tam's laughter chimed recklessly as he fiddled with the many fastenings on his jacket. "Don't you worry, Herne the Hunter. I can take care of myself. Uh, but will you be bathing too?" Almost as soon as he spoke, his eyes filled with alarm. "I mean, after me, not now. Maybe when you've finished hunting and your other business? It's certainly prudent we do not bathe together and…Oh Lord. I'll be quiet; really I shall."
Tam cringed, turned away, and bent to remove his shoes. At the sight of the lad's neat arse, Herne fought stirrings beneath the pit of his stomach. He concentrated on scratching his hound's furred ears, gazing back across the blazing heather.
Crea had loved to wrestle in the heather. Pain blistered Herne's heart at memories of delight, then of the desolation following. Goddess, he'd not dwelled on Crea like this for ages, and now he must get away before his antlers burst forth and betrayed all. "Maybe I will bathe," he muttered, "later and alone."
"I think that would be best," agreed Tam.
Tam edged into the reeds. Herne took his cue to retreat to the trees. With Dewer at his side, he could easily track down a brace of coneys, and more impelling, he must discover what strange presence he sensed on the air.
He would seek answers at the oaks forming the heart of this grove, a gathering ground for spirits and their worshippers since long before the abbey was built nearby. Brother Herbert had spent long hours there, pondering if any union could exist between the church of mankind and the Greenwood spirits. There Herne might call on the power of the Goddess to demand whatever foul spirit trailed them come forth and explain.
But he did not go straight to this sacred spot. Instead he sped to the skirts of the grove where willows wept tendril-like branches toward the surface of the mill pool. From the cover of these trees, he could keep watch on Tam as he bathed without being seen.
"To protect the boy from any harm that would lie on my conscience," Herne told Dewer, as the hound followed at his heel. "That is the only interest I have in him." He took the dog's heavy panting as reassurance his words were truth. The way his body tightened suggested otherwise.
By the time Herne found a shaded location from which he could see Tam about fifteen yards off, the lad had removed his jacket and smock and had smoothed down the reeds so he could sit on the bank. After peeling off his stockings and folding them neatly, he wore only his tattered breeches.
Despite Herne's dour warnings to himself, his cock hardened into a semi-erection, his body racked with hot, pulsing desire, not just to possess but to ravish and consume. He raked his gaze hungrily over each inch of Tam, the auburn hair on his chest, every ridge and hollow of his thorax. Oh, and how he thirsted for the sweet curves of his arse.
Herne had enjoyed watching Crea bathe. Crea would float with his blond hair spread out, encircling his fox-like fea
tures like the glow of a flame about a startling white core.
No other man could ever bring Herne such all-consuming ecstasy. Neither did he dare seek any, knowing the bestial passions he could let loose if pushed too far. He taught himself to avoid temptation like men fled the plague, and now he let this village whelp draw him into risking everything. Why was he still here, staring at him?
Tam lay down and dipped his feet into the indigo pool. The waters lapped his toes, and he shuddered. A bolt of thrill shot through Herne, his cock growing ever thicker between his rigid thighs. Then pain split through his head, and his antlers raked the thin branches of the willow, setting the tree shaking and birds warbling.
Tam heard. Pushing up onto his elbows and shading his eyes to see, he stared Herne's way.
He—England's mightiest huntsman—froze like a stricken rabbit aware it was prey. The forest's creatures saved him. A moorhen screeched and darted from reeds nearby. Tam let out an unsteady sigh and lay back down. Herne bowed his head and willed the torture from his body. There was little danger here, as long as he possessed the strength to resist his urges. And resist he would.
He was about to move on to the grove, when Tam rose and slipped from his breeches. Naked, his pale skin shimmering in the summer light, he waded into the pool.
As he drank in the sight of Tam's cock, soft and slightly curving beneath a nest of amber curls, all the strength of ages could not shift Herne from his spot. The lad forged deeper, water lapping up to his knees and then his thighs, and then cool water licked his groin. He yelped. Cold sweat trickled down Herne's neck, sticking his leathers to his back, while the blood pounded ever more powerfully in his shaft.
"Goddess, release me," he prayed. He remained motionless.
Tam tossed water against his face, sending crystal droplets washing over his tightly closed eyes, his nose, and lips pursed like the bud of a rose. His chest heaved with panted breaths, and he threw the liquid up again, this time weaving his fingers back through his hair.
Herne chewed on his lower lip, as he had when he was a curious lad long ago. He envied every drop of water trickling down the fine lineaments of the lad's shoulders, over his taut belly and the shallow curve of his hips.
The Elfaene's words thundered in Herne's mind: "Was his pretty arse not made for you to sheathe your thick shaft?"
No. He was stronger than this. He turned away, a pang of regret ripping through him. Then he heard a gentle splash. A final glance over his shoulder undid him.
Tam had fallen backward to float on the pool's surface, arms and legs splayed wide. Irrevocably captured, Herne traced Tam's hand with his gaze as the lad stroked his thigh toward his cock. Among a deluge of sensations, Herne realized the pool must have been warmed by the balmy weather of recent weeks. Tam's cock was no longer at rest but half engorged, sunlight glistening on the plum-like head jutting halfway up his navel. Paddling from time to time with his other hand, Tam slid his fist over his cock and tugged.
While Tam did not possess Crea's crystalline beauty, Herne detected an enticing vulnerability about the lad. He lay there, tiny under the vastness of the sky, aware of nothing but his lusts. Herne's body, too, refused to be governed. So be it. If relief could be brought with a swift fetch of his fist, he saw no good reason to deny himself.
Tam pushed himself back to lie on the bank and concentrate on his pleasure wrought by his busy hand. Herne grasped his length beneath his coat, groaning at the relief as he slipped his thumb to his cockhead.
Dewer's sudden whine and the press of her wet nose at the back of Herne's thigh nearly had him cursing. That surely would have warned Tam of his presence. "Dewer! Run away. Find me coney."
The dog whimpered again, prodding her nose harder, nuzzling and then nipping at his ankles. Damn, why must she insist on disobeying him now of all times? Nothing could have dissipated his lust faster.
Then, beneath the rustling of the wind through the branches, he recognized the bay of many hounds, the bleat of a goat, and the thin, tearing wail of death.
The Wild Hunt.
No. Not now. Not them. Oh Goddess, do not let them find me when I am stripped so naked, so weak.
Herne adjusted his clothing in an instant and plunged toward the heart of the grove.
Chapter Five
Tam floated on the water's surface, savouring the sunlight on his face and the water trickling over his skin. The stickiness on his thighs washed away, and he snatched a halcyon moment amid a desperate morning. While he knew he must not linger long, the full force of his situation tolled silently on his senses.
In truth, he'd felt nigh happy this morning, agitated and thrilled in equal measures to be walking at the great huntsman's side. Even if they could not break the betrothal, there remained another option. He could become Herne's forever.
"I'd rather have my balls gnawed off by hellhounds," he muttered through clenched teeth. Still, the cool water refused to mollify his carnal urges, lapping his thighs, tickling between his buttocks, and conspiring with the pond's weeds to tease his every crevice. A few more thoughts about Herne's thick thighs drifted through his mind, and his already stiff cock jerked. Why should he suffer when he could so easily find relief?
He stroked his cock, fixing on the sublime rub of flesh against flesh. In his mind's eye, Herne towered over him, his features set in that formidable glower, his shoulders as broad as a cliff. Herne's antlers rose from the wild curls on his head, spreading wider and higher.
Tam arched his body, straining toward this mere vision. He had not yet seen that part of Herne he longed for most, only felt him through a prison of leathers. Herne's cock was as majestic in scale as the rest of him. He conjured an image of Herne's member in his mind, thick and dark and lightly veined.
The more frantically Tam stroked his cock, the more his itching need grew and grew. He circled his cockhead with his thumb, slipping and teasing his foreskin. Oh heaven, but his handiwork would never satisfy him completely. He needed to be touched, filled, and taken. He needed the horned one; he craved Herne the Hunter.
Swift with the power of youth, his rapture broke, hot liquid gushing against his palm as he sank deeper into the pool. The water closed above him, flush like a silk sheet against his body that now burned in a joyous fever. Ecstasy consumed him inside and out, until the need to breathe had him thrashing his limbs and splashing up through the surface. He threw himself onto the bank. Lying on his back among the grasses, he panted, trailed his fingers in the cooling water, and enjoyed the pulsing pleasures shadowing his bliss.
He felt slightly dissatisfied. But when had he ever been fully satisfied? Maybe no man could be. A warm breeze stroked his drying skin, and for an instant, slumber seemed possible. Then the wind strengthened, buffeting cool air over his nakedness.
He shivered but did not open his eyes. He refused to look across the meadow to the grey skeleton of Beaumont Abbey. When they'd arrived, glimpses in that direction had made him shudder; he'd quashed suspicions that every murmuring breeze was the strangled cry of a monk. The ruin looked peaceful enough, and he'd let Herne's promises reassure him. He'd trusted him.
Had that been wise?
A barking dog stirred him more thoroughly. "Dewer?" He pushed up onto his elbows and stared about. The sky darkened, and a second dog howled, low and lingering. Herne had not mentioned possessing more than one hound. A cold fear twisted about his heart.
Who or what else was at large? Oh Lord, but monks kept hounds. Did not the tales tell how the king's men slaughtered every man and beast?
He scrambled to his feet, his blood congealing to ice. Across the open land between the pool and the abbey, a dark whirlwind ripped through the heather. Caught in a danse macabre within, dark figures approached fast, huge and hideous, some mounted on beasts.
Herne had lied. The ghosts of the abbey were real, and they were coming for him.
*~*~*
Herne reached the heart of the oak grove to see the hide of a great stag hung from a lower
branch, its gory head impaled on a stake, its mouldering brown antlers forming a crest. He well knew the meaning. The Wild Hunt had slain the stag and sprinkled its blood in the hope that its sacrifice would summon him.
"I know you're here," he shouted. "Do not cower. Show yourself."
"Welcome, huntsman."
He knew that voice, the songlike accent betraying the speaker's origins as a lord of the Welsh marches. The bracken parted to reveal Wild Edric. A stolid fighting man, much stouter than Herne, Edric possessed wiry black hair and beard and a green cap adorned with the feather of a carrion crow. His sallow complexion betrayed that his body should have been long dead, felled centuries ago by a poison arrow. A wild hunter, indeed.
"Edric," said Herne, his tone as welcoming as the scrape of nails against stone. He'd not seen Edric since the plague of 1348, and he'd dreaded this meeting long before he'd left Windsor. He'd never wanted to see Edric again. "Why do you call me?"
Edric grinned, displaying rotting black teeth. "You know why. We need our leader."
Herne's mind weighed down. He'd felt in his heart that his Goddess has summoned him, not the Wild Hunt, although on his arrival, some foul doings had indeed tricked him.
"Do you know what happened with the fair folk last night?" he demanded. "Of my betrothal?"
"Betrothal? Nay, man," protested Edric, his black gaze fixed on the mighty antlers Herne tilted toward him. He gripped the hilt of his stubby sword. "May my prick shrivel and drop for the worms to chew, but I care nothing for where you bury yours. If you came, a Wild Hunt must be the Goddess's will, and I can see you are hungry. Your blood is already up."
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