Highland Dragon Rebel

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Highland Dragon Rebel Page 20

by Isabel Cooper


  True, Moiread was his bodyguard, and being injured on his behalf was her duty. True, she’d accepted that duty freely, and Madoc had given her a chance to back out earlier. And true, she healed more easily than he would. She’d almost certainly suffered worse.

  He couldn’t forget the blood-soaked sleeve of her tunic, nor her expression as he dug wood slivers from her arm. Nor could he stop hearing her voice in his mind, saying that it was best he not be alone.

  Being an ally, even a mortal and breakable one, was fine. Sneaking back to the inn with Moiread, Madoc had felt himself a burden instead.

  * * *

  Moiread added another entry to her mental list of wrongs to hold against the English: making her spend the rest of the night in a room that stank of inhuman blood. At least the bed was clean enough, for all the damage they’d managed to do to the mattress. She’d slept on worse.

  She wasn’t likely to sleep at any rate, not for a while. Moiread sighed again. “Y’know,” she began, wringing bloody water out of the cloth and into one of the basins, “tonight means we’ll need to start treating inns as we do the wilderness.”

  “Set watches,” said Madoc, none too cheerful but at least resigned. “Likely even when we’re not in private rooms. I doubt these things would have had trouble killing a half-dozen other travelers if they’d needed to.”

  “Or simply setting fire to the building. It’d be less sure to kill us, maybe showier than their master would like, but—” Moiread dragged her mind away from unpleasant speculations and back to unpleasant reality. “Aye, watches. And even when we’re not asleep… Well, we should stay on our guard. More so than we were. Bed sport’s quite a distraction, done right.”

  “I wish I could argue that,” Madoc said with a rueful smile that was damned distracting itself. “But I’d never lie well enough to say you don’t hold all my attention at such moments.”

  “Charmer,” said Moiread.

  “Yes, for all the good it does me now. It’s not that I was overjoyed with whoever’s trying to kill me before this, understand, but now I could manage to hold quite a grudge.” Running a hand through his wet hair, he grimaced. “Not to say that I’m feeling amorous right now, mind.”

  “Aye.” Cold water and rags only went so far. “We’d best find a bathhouse tomorrow, or a river, before we leave. We’ll never keep the horses calm else.” She didn’t want to say that she had trouble enough as it was. Pointing out her nature felt like a bad idea. “Try and get some sleep. I’ll wake you when it’s your turn.”

  Both of them knew how hard sleep would be in that room, but Madoc, like Moiread, clearly knew well enough to try without protesting. He lay down on the less-damaged side of the mattress, his weight sending another drift of feathers flying out into the air, pulled the slashed blankets up to his chest, and closed his eyes.

  Moiread stood up and blew out the candle. Then she sat down at the foot of the bed, holding the assassin’s naked sword across her thighs. Beyond the broken shutters, the stars glinted down at her. After the colors of the Caduirathi’s land, they seemed very pale, and the night around them very dark.

  It was beautiful in its way. It was vast. That was all right. Just then, it was comforting to think of a great, wide world that would go on around, and without, and despite her. Just then, Moiread needed to know as much.

  Thirty-one

  In the first bleary light of morning, they left for the town bathhouse, a squat stone building that might have been left over from when the Romans ruled and the English themselves had been a subject people. Townsfolk rose later than farmers, so there were few to stare, and Moiread thought they’d gotten the visible blood off at the inn. Still she was glad of her cloak, and the morning chill to justify it.

  “We should take turns,” she said at the entrance. “Stand guard.”

  “It seems a common theme of late, but yes. A pity.”

  “Aye.” Men and women washed together in all but the wealthier towns. While neither of them would have been able to act on what they saw, Moiread wouldn’t have been above a bit of teasing. It was a long, chilly ride ahead.

  They both hesitated, the moment grown clumsy, before Madoc gestured toward the door. “You took the first watch,” he said, “and besides, I’m not entirely lost to chivalry.”

  Moiread wasn’t about to object. Her sense of smell was keener than a human’s, and the reek of dried blood lingered on her skin. Half of her found it sickening. She worried about the other half. As she was soaping her hair, she wondered if Madoc had thought of that too—and how much that consideration had been behind his offer.

  Sensible of him, if he had thought of it. Certainly it was no cause for Moiread to feel uneasy. Madoc had seen her poisoned, half out of her mind and losing control, long before he’d ever gone to bed with her, and it hadn’t dampened his lust. He’d seen her transform and kill and been just as eager in the inn. Danger didn’t put a man off.

  That night, awake on a farmer’s floor after a watchful and mostly silent ride, she thought Danger doesn’t put a man off in the first rush of desire. She was not the sole woman around—there had been women in plenty at Gilrion’s court, and Moiread had no doubt that Madoc could have found a willing barmaid at the inn—but she was there steadily, she was young and clean and in good health, and she’d offered herself to him.

  Men took what was convenient. She’d done it herself. That meant little about the person in question.

  In the morning, Moiread dismissed those thoughts. She knew herself to be comely enough. Men had truly desired her before. One or two had known what she was.

  The next night, she thought that those men hadn’t been human. She thought that a man who’d been half raised by his father’s priest, wherever he might have spent the next few years, might easily come to have words like demon and monster at the back of his mind when he looked at her, even if he never did anything so ungenteel as speaking them, even if he didn’t let himself think them directly.

  She sharpened her sword and stared at the dark sky.

  The hours past midnight bred such notions as meat bred maggots. Moiread knew that. Every enemy loomed like Goliath between matins and lauds. Every corner held a dagger, or worse. She’d drunk herself back to sleep in the field during such hours. At Loch Arach, she’d changed shape and hunted.

  On the road, she stared into fields and waited for the next, more menacing set of assassins: men who spat lightning or had six arms, probably. She considered the doubtless dark and unstoppable power of their master, and all the horrific fates that seemed almost certain. And she came up with reason upon reason that Madoc’s desire for her couldn’t have been true and wouldn’t last.

  It occurred to her during one of those endless hours that she almost welcomed that last set of thoughts. They were a plague in the dark hours, a wearying, endless wheel spinning in her mind—but in another way, she realized, they also felt like a shield.

  Because, she said silently to herself, why does it matter if he wants you, and for how long? You’ve gone without men before. Why is it so damned important whether or not this one came to your bed eagerly?

  Why are you suddenly so set on thinking he didn’t?

  * * *

  They rode silently now for the most part, wary from the danger they knew to be both uncanny and persistent, too short on sleep to have energy for idle conversation. By the third day, words were elusive. When Madoc did speak, he often found himself stopping and seeking the right phrase, even a common one.

  He felt pared down to the essentials, with no cushion between him and the world, nor any reserve to draw on for aught save emergencies. He trusted himself in fight or fire, but he couldn’t have thought up a witty sentence for any reward. It was as well that other matters demanded both his and Moiread’s attention.

  On the third day, riding past the ruins of a Roman fort, Madoc thought other matters might well b
e part of the drain, and not just because they meant silent watchfulness during the day and half a night of sleep. When he did think, rather than reacting to his surroundings or the task at hand, it was always along the same lines: his enemy was still set on his death. He’d still managed to find Madoc, and he possessed enough power to either summon demons or reshape men. Madoc couldn’t tell which.

  “I’ve never heard of the like,” he said during one of the rare moments of conversation he and Moiread had managed since the attack. They were eating bread and dried meat by the side of the road, while their horses rested and drank. “Not in any book, nor from any magician I’ve known.”

  “No,” Moiread agreed. “My father may know, or Agnes—they’re both more familiar wi’ magic—but I’d need candles to send them messages that they could actually get and reply to in time. Not to mention pen and paper and ink.”

  They hadn’t ridden through any real towns since the inn, so Madoc had another reason to rejoice when he saw the signs for an abbey. “We can pass the night there,” he said. “I can’t imagine killers would enter those walls.”

  “No’ likely.” Moiread’s accent had grown stronger over the last few days. “Even the most evil mortals wouldna’ want that sort of price on their heads, and the others… Well, the saints have their power, and I’ll no’ deny it. Though—” She frowned. “Best to be safe. I’ll need to stop for a bit, and I don’t suppose you’ve any lengths of cloth on you?”

  “The wrappings,” said Madoc after a moment’s thought. “From the treasure. But why—”

  As they crested a hill, he could see the abbey in the valley below. It was a homely, solid place, a nest of thick gray walls and modest spires surrounded by the peace of fresh-plowed fields and budding orchards. To normal sight, it would have been lovely. In visio dei, the new growth was a riot of color, and silver lines of magic laced through the walls like a spider’s web on a dewy morning.

  “I dinna’ think they’ll see through my illusion like Gilrion’s folk did,” Moiread said, correctly interpreting Madoc’s sudden pause and knowing the conclusions he’d draw. “But I dinna’ know that they won’t, aye?”

  Madoc looked back at her, and his gaze automatically fell to her chest, a sight almost as disconcerting as the view of the abbey below.

  * * *

  Breasts painfully flattened with silk, tunic bloused out over her belt as much as she could manage, Moiread rode by Madoc’s side through the abbey gates and, as far as she could tell, didn’t get a skeptical glance. Either her illusion held, the physical disguise was good, or there was some advantage to their hosts’ not being supposed to deal often with women.

  Yet she was nervous as they went on, and not merely because of her guise. For the first time since the war, Moiread was in a stronghold of the English. It and its residents belonged to God and in theory had nothing to do with war, and the figures coming back from the gardens and fields looked not in the least intimidating, but England was England, and the English were the English. Moiread braced herself at least for the need to keep her temper once they heard her accent or Madoc’s.

  The monk who greeted them, once their horses had been stabled, didn’t inspire ease on that score at first. He was tall and thin, with silver hair around his tonsure and an aristocratic appearance to his face. He spoke like a nobleman too. “God give you good evening, and welcome. I’m Prior Michael. I hear you seek lodgings for the night.”

  “If you would be so kind, yes,” said Madoc. To Moiread, he seemed to be visibly making an effort to use his normal charm. Could the prior see Madoc’s exhaustion as she could? Or did her awareness come from feeling the same—or from knowing Madoc too well?

  Regardless, the monk smiled. If he felt anything but pleasure at Madoc’s accent, he concealed it well. Granted, they’d arrived mounted and armed, which spoke of men it would be best to please. Not all possessed the sense to see that. At least the prior was smart. “We’ve beds aplenty in our dormitory, and I would welcome the company at mealtimes, not to mention the news from abroad.”

  “Thank you most kindly,” said Madoc. “As for news—”

  Prior Michael held up a hand. “No, no. Refresh yourself first. We’ll have time enough at dinner, and I’d not keep a weary man from a bit of rest. Nor am I free from my duties yet,” he added with a wry smile. “I like to believe I’ve learned patience by now, though the Lord is fond of showing me my folly in such matters. But I do what I can.”

  Moiread hadn’t expected to find herself liking him. Of course, she knew the English didn’t all have horns and tails—bad as that figure of speech was for one of her kind. She’d dealt with their captive soldiers well enough during the war. They had been captive, though. They’d been in her power and had known it. She’d grown used to thinking of the English as folk who wore their power heavily.

  Some had. Some still did. Prior Michael could well be one, as gracious as he was to rich noblemen. But as Moiread made her way to the dormitory, she felt no urge to watch her back, nor any sense of unfriendly eyes watching her and begrudging her presence there. That alone was an unexpected gift.

  * * *

  “Of course,” Prior Michael said with a small self-deprecating smile, “we’re far from the court here, almost at the border. We’ve little to do with the king and his councilors. For myself”—he shrugged—“I’m happiest that way. In truth, our Lord knew what he was about when he made me a third son. But such doings do make for interesting stories, little as I wish a part in them.”

  “Alas,” said Madoc. “I’ve been abroad for a year or two myself. You may know more than I do of my home. But—”

  He told the man what he’d heard on the road: new colleges at the universities, the young king of Aragon, a book about hell from an Italian which he’d heard was quite good. He tactfully didn’t mention the antipope, and he avoided, with a sideways glance at Moiread, talking in any detail about Scotland.

  Prior Michael broached the subject himself, though not directly. “It’s to be hoped that we’ll get some rest from war for a time,” he said. “Not that every boy in the village isn’t sad to have missed his chance. But their elder brothers are generally wiser, or the ones who came back are.”

  He looked around the small guest hall: comfortable and homely, with a fire flickering on the hearth and small stained-glass windows keeping out the darkness. “But then, we’ve had the luxury of sending them. I shouldn’t complain that they go. Rather, I give thanks that their foes won’t come to us.”

  “Aye,” said Moiread. Far from the grudging tone Madoc had feared he’d hear from her, she spoke with great understanding.

  All the same, Prior Michael raised a hand. “I mean no insult to your people, sir, of course. The Scots are only the most recent of England’s enemies, and of themselves they’re good men.”

  “Some of us,” Moiread said. “But all men are terrible in war, Prior.”

  Thirty-two

  The storm hit shortly before sunset. Madoc had been expecting it. The day had been hot for spring, and though it had started clear, clouds had piled up in the sky all afternoon, then grown dark and lumpy. He and Moiread had hoped to keep going until full nightfall and a town. They’d tried to hurry accordingly, but the road was yet uneven from the winter thaw.

  Still they pressed on as the wind picked up and they felt the first few drops. They were just across the border from Wales, and both would feel more comfortable once they were over it. In addition, the more distance they covered quickly, the better chance they stood of losing any assassins who’d taken up the chase after their colleagues’ deaths.

  Then a wall of water fell on them from above.

  The rain came down so fast and so heavily that Madoc could barely hear Moiread’s cursing. Through a veil of water he did see her pulling on her reins, controlling the gelding who wanted to bolt for cover.

  “Come on, then, boy,” he said
, leaning forward and patting the gelding’s head. “We’ll find a place away from this mess. We’ve only to keep to the road for a while. We’ve got to stop soon,” he called to Moiread, as they got the horses moving again. “They’re as likely to break a leg in this as not.”

  “Or our necks,” she called back grimly. “Aye. I—”

  Lightning turned the sky blue-white. A heartbeat later, thunder cracked across the valley. Madoc’s horse screamed and reared, hooves lashing at the hostile sky. Madoc had kept his seat in worse conditions, but it was briefly a chancy thing. He pressed his legs tight against the gelding’s sides and hung on to the reins.

  “Verra soon,” Moiread yelled through the rain.

  Few people, including assassins, would brave such weather, and the rain would most likely wash out any physical tracks they left. Madoc tried to keep those small blessings in mind as he urged his horse onward. Looking to either side showed him no shelter, only the forbidding rise of the hills. The trees alongside were too short to provide any sort of cover. He wiped water out of his eyes, pushed sopping hair out of his face, and squinted ahead, but he could see no more than a foot in front of his face.

  The next stroke of lightning forked down into the ground not far off. Stories of hail and whirlwinds came to Madoc’s mind. He prayed hastily and silently that such catastrophes would stay away. In the immediate aftermath, his prayer seemed to have reached sympathetic ears, for nothing worse happened than the continued sheets of rain and the occasional thunder.

  He saw the shape to his left before he heard the voice, or at any rate before his mind could assemble the sounds into words.

  “Lord bless us, man. You can’t stay out in this!”

  The speaker was a tall man with dark hair and a full beard. More Madoc couldn’t say, for the rain blurred his face and plastered his hair and clothing to his body. At his feet, a large dog drooped its head, looking equally miserable.

 

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