by Grace Ingram
The masked fiend sprang up on to the altar-stone and brandished his trident. Wulfrune held up the naked baby, feebly squirming in the firelight, and the throng, though no one moved, seemed to draw together as though a tightened cord gripped the circle. Guy moved cautiously forward through the trailing brambles as she made her invocation, and laid the child on the stone. The Devil set down his trident, and all the company held its breath.
‘God aid us!’ Guy yelled, and drove at the ring. He slammed into warm flesh that went down before him, trod over something that quailed and heaved aside under his foot, struck back-handed with his swordhilt into a bearded face and swerved round the fire, that lighted his blond head like a nimbus. Wulfrune screeched and flung herself in his way, arms outspread and white hair streaming. His shoulder and elbow beat into bones and musty woollens, and she spun away as he scooped up the baby from under the knife and sprang upon the altar-stone.
'You!’
Lord Reynald recoiled, the mask-eyes glinting red. The Danish sword swung up, but some fundamental instinct stayed Guy’s arm. The man who had begotten him tottered on his stilted heels as he ducked, then dropped to one knee and caught up the trident. The three bright points lunged. Guy twisted aside, and it grazed his hip, tugging him off-balance as it ripped his chausses. He almost reeled over the edge of the stone, and as he staggered Lord Reynald thrust again. Guy dodged under it, hampered by the baby, and stabbed desperately. His point pierced, jarred and drove on to grit deep into bone.
The trident clattered across the stone. Lord Reynald flung up his arms, and from the unmoved beast-mask issued a human cry of pain and fear and desolation. Then he crumpled, his weight tearing from the blade, and fell backward from the altar-stone, twisting as he dropped, to lie on his face beside it. The goat-head shifted, the man’s hands scrabbled, and then were still.
Guy stood a moment, sick with horror and a queer regret for the kinship that should have been, the blood-fatherhood begun in rape and ended in parricide. A woman screamed and went on screaming mindlessly. She was Rohese. He lifted his hand, and the blade lifted too, its brightness glimmering through dull streaks. The witch-horde confronted him, palsied by calamity; staring eyes and gaping mouths turned on him. Their God Incarnate was dead, and they were poised either to rip his killer to rags in vengeance or to flee in panic from the wrath of Heaven that had felled him.
Rohese had thrown herself on her knees beside her sire and was tearing her hair and clothing as she shrieked, her face lifted to the moon. Wulfrune was struggling to rise, gathering strength to summon revenge. Guy tucked the baby under his arm, his left hand supporting the small head, and he wailed steadily. The ring swayed towards him in menace, and he braced himself for the rush, swinging back the sword. Then a familiar yell lifted behind him, and round the altar-stone Conan stormed, the firelight reddening his mail and helmet. Wulfrune, on her knees, clawed at his legs. He staggered and kicked out, taking her under the jaw. Bone snapped with a sharp crack, and she sprawled without a sound.
Rohese leaped up and away, still screaming. The circle broke like a string of beads; men and women plunged among the stones and into the thickets. The scrambling and crashing of their passage faded. Guy descended from the stone, and stood over the dead man with the beast’s head. The mask had twisted awry in the fall, and one horn and a blank eye caught the light. In revulsion he dropped the stained sword across the body. Conan’s mailed arm came round his shoulders.
‘You had no choice,’ he said roughly. ‘Don’t mourn. This world’s the cleaner for his leaving it. And that’s no way to use a fine sword.’ He took it up, tried it lovingly for balance, and then stooped to wipe the blade on Wulfrune’s skirts. He thrust it back into the sheath. ‘It has served justice, lad.’ He stirred the heap of black woollens with his foot. ‘Yes, I killed her, without intent. But that was justice too.’
Guy sat down on the altar-stone because his legs would no longer uphold him. The baby cried, flailing the air with feeble fists. He was hungry and cold, and one of those ills it was within Guy’s power to remedy. He laid the child across his knees and hauled his dirty, lousy shirt over his head for want of anything better. He swaddled Lord Henry’s heir and held him in his arm, innocent new life in exchange for the one he had taken.
Then Helvie was with him, fighting through briar and bramble with skirts hitched calf-high into her belt for the climb, torn and scratched and her hair falling loose over her shoulders. She sped across the turf and flung herself into his hold laughing and crying together. ‘Guy, you’re safe—not hurt—you did it! You’ve saved Hervey! Praise God—oh, Guy!’
He gripped her to him with the one arm he could spare and kissed her thankfully. ‘Helvie, my heart’s love, it’s done.’ Others were toiling up the ridge towards the fire and the lighted stones, their progress marked by curses and a crashing of bushes and the ring of horseshoes on rock. The fighting was ended. Lord Henry battled through the thickets, hewing his path with his sword and beating through by bull-force and impervious mail. He stood gaping a moment in the blaze. Guy sighed. Now his exertions were over his strength was spent. Weariness weighted his limbs, and the last thing he desired was to dispute over Helvie with her father. He heaved to his feet, the baby quiet now in the crook of his left arm and the other about Helvie.
‘Helvie!’ Lord Henry croaked, and lumbered forward. ‘Helvie—safe—and my son?’
‘Safe too, father! Guy killed that devil and rescued him!’
‘My son!’ He plunged past the fire and grappled Helvie to him. ‘You’re not harmed? Both of you—praise God!’ He gulped, and gingerly touched the bundle in Guy’s hold. ‘You’re sure?’
‘I was in time.’
‘He saved me too, father, maidenhead and life.’
Henry de Trevaine loosed her and turned to Guy. ‘It’s a great debt I owe you,’ he said with dignity. ‘All that’s dear to me. And you killed your own father to save my son.’
‘That’s no grief,’ Guy answered harshly.
‘You owe him your own life too,’ Conan stated from behind him. ‘He broke the ambush you were charging into head-down.’
‘I acknowledge the debt,’ he rebuked the mercenary, ‘and I’ll discharge it in full.’
‘His needs now,’ Helvie declared practically, ‘are a bath and a barber and a bed.’
‘We’ll not find them in this foul place.’ He looked about him, shivered and crossed himself. ‘God’s Life, why do we linger here? Tomorrow I’ll bring up my men to this accursed ring and purge it with fire and water until every one of these stones is powder blowing on the wind.’
‘And Lord Reynald?’ Conan asked.
They all turned to look on the dead man, and started to see his head and feet bare, shining pale in the moonlight that was conquering the fire’s dying glare. While they talked, some bold disciple of his had made away with the goat-mask and the cloven clogs. The trident too was gone, taken, Guy knew, for Lord Reynald’s successor in the ritual. They stood gazing down at him, somehow shrunken now that he was emptied of malice and power, no more than a small dead man in a close-fitting costume of dark leather.
‘What’s to be done?’ asked Conan again. ‘Call in the sheriff and make a public scandal?’
‘He would have murdered my son. Reason enough to take possession of Warby.’
‘Are you as greedy a thief as he was?’ Guy exclaimed, pricked from his trance of weariness. ‘Warby is Roger’s now, and I’ll defend my brother’s right to inherit!’
‘How will you stop me?’ Lord Henry growled.
‘I hold your heir,’ Guy reminded him, his lips suddenly twitching one-sided into a small grim smile. Once assured his son was safe, the noble lord had never dreamed of demeaning his manhood by taking the baby into his own arms.
‘And I’m with him,’ Conan said. ‘But is this a scandal to be published abroad?’
Lord Henry thumbed his chin. ‘Scandal—yes. There’s my daughter’s good name to be considered. Best hushed up
. Dishonours all gentle blood, a nobly-born knight taking to these foul practices. Bury him privately and keep silence, I say.’
‘And Roger succeeds him as is his right,’ Guy insisted.
‘Have your way,’ Lord Henry said impatiently, and began to move from the circle. Guy tightened his hold on Helvie and followed. She made a gesture towards the baby, offering to take him, but he was soundly asleep and Guy shook his head. Lord Henry turned to him.
‘As for you, young man, there’s some will say you should hang as a parricide—’
‘Father!’
‘So the sooner we get you out of this district the safer you’ll be. I’ll take you to Bristol myself and sponsor you to the service of the Duke of Normandy, who will be King.’
Guy looked at him, his heaviness lifting, and then remembered. ‘It’s what I’d choose before all other service, my lord. But if your offer depends on my renouncing Helvie, I must refuse. And I cannot furnish my helm.’
‘You can,’ Conan contradicted. ‘You have my arms and horses, and my last three men if they’ll follow you.’
‘Conan?’
The mercenary nodded. ‘I’ll go with you as far as Bristol, and ask the nearest monastery to admit me as a lay-brother.’ They were all startled dumb. It was Helvie who uttered the first shocked murmur of protest, ‘Oh no!’
‘To pass my days in penance and prayer for my lady’s soul and my own. It will not be for long, I think.’
‘Conan—’ Guy said again, and then checked, remembering the mailed skeleton he had embraced that night, and all that had brought them to this moment. ‘I’ll grieve,’ he said steadily, ‘but I’ll not attempt to dissuade you. And I’ll do honour to your gift.’
‘More than I ever did. You have a better sword to leave your heir, but keep mine to give your second son when you knight him.’
‘Your sword, and your name,’
‘Memorial enough.’
Other men had straggled into the Devil’s Ring, entering it between curiosity and flinching and remaining to gape. Lord Henry ordered the nearest to take up the dead and bear them down to the horses. They obeyed unwillingly. He turned grimly to Guy.
‘What sort of ingrate d’you take me for?’ he demanded belligerendy. ‘Who said anything about renouncing Helvie? If ever a man earned a wench’s hand you have done, and the fattest dowry I can assemble to clinch the bargain. All we need is a priest and a marriage-feast, and we’ll go see to it.’
Guy hugged Helvie and suddenly laughed, light-headed with joy and thankfulness. ‘My chief need just now is a shirt,’ he said.
‘Oh, I’ll provide that too,’ declared Lord Henry with an abrupt guffaw. He slapped Guy on the shoulder. ‘Fetch Helvie and that brat along, son, and we’ll all go home.’
Table of Contents
Gilded Spurs
GILDED SPURS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18