Florida Knight

by Blair Bancroft

  Cat had scrambled to her feet and followed Raven onto the field. Now, standing at the back of the crowd around Garth, she nodded to herself. Raven had taken over. Authority was so natural to him, no one questioned a stranger’s right to give commands.

  “Anyone know how far it is to the nearest town?” Raven asked.

  “Thirty minutes, maybe more,” someone replied. There was a collective groan from the archers. This, then, was the price for being so far from civilization.

  Gently, Raven ran his hands over Garth, looking for any further injuries. Had he broken an arm, hit his head on a rock when he fell? After a careful inspection and a few judicious questions, he eased Garth’s face to the side. The archer gulped air, spat out a mouthful of dirt.

  The oldest archer, his lanky height topped by a head of hair that was more salt than pepper, knelt down beside Raven and Garth. He held a pewter mug of water. “Garth? Buddy?” he inquired. “Are you up to drinking some water?”

  Garth opened the eye that wasn’t buried in the grass. “If I could figure out how,” he mumbled.

  “Okay,” Raven declared. “I’ll be the prop. If you guys can get his good shoulder back against me, I’ll support him while he takes a drink.”

  As willing hands started to lift him from the ground, Garth howled. The archers nearly dropped him. “Hell,” he gasped, “the damned thing’s sticking in the ground. I was picking up one of my arrows when it got me.”

  Raven slid his fingers beneath Garth’s shoulder, got a grip on the crossbow bolt. “Okay, easy now,” he instructed, “let’s try it again.”

  Garth grimaced, then surprised them all with a sigh of relief. “Didn’t realize that’s what hurt so bad. The pressure. Sitting up’s a hell of a lot better.”

  Gingerly, the archers maneuvered Garth until his good shoulder was leaning back against Raven, who was now sitting on the ground, supporting as much of the wounded archer’s weight as he could. Cat looked around, wondering if they dared risk moving Garth any farther in order to get him out of the hot Florida sun. “Lady Keilyn,” she called, “what if we moved the pavilion over here?”

  The Archery Marshal responded immediately. A brief command, and four archers broke into a run for the small pavilion. In less than five minutes it was reassembled above Garth and Raven. As the last peg was driven home, Cleve Johnson came bumping across the archery field in his golf cart, followed by a string of LALOC members loping along behind. Among them, their royal majesties and the Kingdom’s chirurgeon, Lady Bronwen. After a few anxious and encouraging words to Garth, the campground ranger and LALOC royalty withdrew, leaving the wounded archer to the care of LALOC’s medical specialist. Cleve Johnson, King Corwyn, Queen Eilis, and the Archery Marshal huddled together at the edge of the field, talking quietly. Over Garth’s head, Raven and Cat exchanged silent glances as they watched the discussion from a distance. No one was ever supposed to get hurt at a LALOC event. Bug bites, bruises, a twisted ankle, but not this.

  The look they exchanged said quite clearly: Not an accident. All bows were down. No one on the field had a crossbow. The shot must have come from the woods, a typical tangled Florida jungle where the shooter could disappear in a matter of seconds.

  The whole thing was surreal, Cat thought. All of them hunkered down in their medieval clothing, keeping vigil over an archer with an arrow in his back while waiting for the wail of a twenty-first century ambulance. In spite of low conversations here and there, the field was so quiet the buzz of insects could be heard. Raven continued to act as Garth’s prop, keeping pressure off both ends of the crossbow bolt protruding from his shoulder. Lady Bronwen, the chirurgeon, kept close watch, carefully wiping away the blood oozing from the front and back of Garth’s shoulder. Raven, Cat noticed, kept eyeing the woods, even though he had to know the shooter was long gone.

  Or was it possible the person they were looking for was still there, lurking in the woods, enjoying the excitement caused by his random act of violence?

  Cat shivered. The violence was escalating. A few inches lower, and Garth would have been dead. Was that the shooter’s intention? Crossbow bolts were faster, more lethal than an arrow. Cat settled into cold, determined anger. Raven was right. This nut case had to be caught. As quickly as possible. And now that LALOC was waking up to the menace in their midst, she and Raven were no longer alone. LALOC would be going to War.

  No longer alone. For a flash, the space of a few warm heartbeats, Cat glowed in the sensation of being Raven’s partner. Until reality deflated her pretensions. There was no they. Raven was hunting, she a mere convenience. And yet . . . after Garth was safely in the ambulance and they’d watched it bump its way back over the field and rumble down the sandy road leading back to the outside world, Cat joined Raven in a search of the woods on the south side of the archery field. They found nothing. A solid coating of pine needles, oak leaves and underbrush thoroughly camouflaged any sign a human being had passed that way. Even Raven’s sharp eyes failed to detect so much as a broken twig.

  When they finally gave up, his face was as darkly clouded as a Florida thunderstorm. “Clever bastard and mad as a hatter,” he spit out. “Not good. With random acts of violence, it’s almost impossible to find a motive. Or recognize a clue if it’s dancing bare-assed at high noon. The s.o.b.’s off some place laughing at the lot of us. He’s going to kill somebody, and there’s not a damn thing we can do to stop him.”

  “Registration’s computerized now. There’ll be a list of who was here this weekend.”

  “A thousand people,” Raven mocked. “Isn’t that what I heard?”

  “This is one of our biggest events.” Cat sighed. “But isn’t that a lot smaller than the entire population of Central Florida?”

  “Somehow you never struck me as the Pollyanna type.”

  “Sorry.” Cat’s shoulders drooped.

  Raven’s black zippered boot toed the ground. He gazed downfield toward the line of archery targets. “So who would have this list?” he asked.

  “The Reservationcrat.”

  “The what?”

  “The organizer of each event is the Autocrat,” Cat explained. “The head chef is the Feastcrat. The person in charge of reservations is—”

  “The Reservationcrat,” Raven finished. “Okay, I’ve got it. So how do we get this list?”

  “It’s probably not done yet. Some people just come for Feast. I don’t imagine you’ll be able to get a printout until tomorrow at the earliest.”

  “And what makes you think our guy didn’t get in without registering?” Raven challenged. “In this crowd, how would anybody know?”

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere with one narrow road in. Several somebodies have been doing Troll duty there since Friday afternoon. Believe me, no one got in without registering.”

  “Hold it! Troll duty?”

  Cat managed her first smile of the afternoon. “That’s what they call the guardians of the gate. You know—like the troll at the bridge.”

  “You people are nuts. Stark raving,” Raven declared. “How the hell am I going to find one crazy in the midst of a thousand others?”

  Cat shot him a wounded look, turned her back and headed toward the road.

  “Hey, wait!” Raven caught up, keeping pace with her long strides. “We got a piece of paper at the gate, which we then took to the registration desk to make us official. That’s where the computer equipment was. What if our guy simply took his piece of paper, then bypassed registration? He wouldn’t be on the list.”

  “The gate slips are carbon copied,” Cat said, continuing her fast pace. “They even have license numbers on them. No one is anonymous.” As their feet hit the sandy soil of the road, Cat paused. “And, besides, I think it’s someone who’s enjoying the . . . well, game, for lack of a better word. Someone who sneaks around, yes, but is right here among us, out in the open, laughing behind his sleeve. He may even attend Court this afternoon, wanting to know what Corwyn is going to say about all this, what
he’s going to do.”

  Raven took his time, eyes drifting from Cat’s French braid, lingering over her face, the body under the green surcoat, the short expanse of black tights above the laces of tall brown suede boots. Waves of heat, drowned by Garth’s disaster, flooded back in an instant.

  “You’re hired,” Raven approved, forcing his voice to an indifference he was far from feeling. “I’m promoting you to Junior Detective.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic!”

  Raven raised his brows, innocence suffusing his chiseled features. “I’m serious. I happen to agree with you, and your knowledge of these people—however strange they may be—is valuable. I wasn’t being sarcastic.”

  Cat told herself it was Raven’s words that set her burning, not the stripsearch he’d done with his eyes. She suspected she was as scarlet as King Corwyn’s royal cloak. With her green surcoat, she could pass for a Christmas tree. Cat turned and fled down the road.

  Behind her, Raven shook his head. And almost smiled.

  “This is for you,” Cat said as she rummaged through the stash of garb in their tent. She held out a snowy white something. Negligently, as if her efforts were nothing, she added, “I had time to make it after all.”

  Automatically, Raven accepted the garment, shaking it out to get a better look.

  ‘It’s a surcoat,” Cat said, then moved toward the tent flap as if she had no interest in whether he liked it or not.

  “Hey, wait! Let me look at this thing.” A black raven, wings wide, an arrogant tilt to its head, arched its way across the front of the white surcoat. Bisecting the design at a catty-corner angle was an equally black silhouette of a broadsword. The calf-length sleeveless surcoat was slit high, front and back, and lined with a second layer of white fabric.

  “It’s not official heraldry, of course,” Cat mumbled, “but I thought it suited you.”

  What a strange mix the girl was. She could fight like a demon, then turn around and create a thing of artistic beauty. For that’s what he was holding in his hand, a work of art. And he’d bet a week’s pay it was pure silk.

  Okay, so yesterday, even last week, he might have protested wearing such a strange garment. But after an hour on the Lyst Field looking at the elaborate surcoats worn by fighters who could have been poster boys for the term macho, his outlook had changed. Yet somehow—stubborn fool that he was—he couldn’t bring himself to tell her what he was thinking. Maybe Cat’s bad manners were catching.

  No, they were both prickly, asocial, and downright muleheaded. Combatants, caught in a truce, facing each other, stiff-legged, waiting for the battle cry to sound. All that would come out of his mouth was, “ What’s with the slits?”

  “So you can sit on your horse,” Cat snapped over her shoulder as she once again headed for the outside.

  “What horse?”

  “The horse you would have had in place of your 4Runner if this were really the twelfth century,” Cat enunciated carefully.

  She was enjoying this, dammit. Raven heaved an elaborate sigh. “You had me worried there for a minute. I thought maybe we had to ride a horse to Court or something.”

  His lame humor was met with the incredulity it deserved. His wits had gone begging the minute he and Cat entered the tent. After returning to the center of the campground, they’d been besieged by questions about the attack on Garth. But the moment they were alone, he was once again swamped by the emotions that had been afflicting him ever since he’d seen Cat laid low on the Lyst Field. Hell, ever since he’d walked into Barbara Falk’s office and caught his first sight of a magnificent Valkyrie surely specifically created to carry Lieutenant Michael Turco to Valhalla. Emotions and the confusion that came with them were not something he could afford. They were, quite possibly, life-threatening. They were also scary. Very scary.

  Which did not mean he could forget about being civilized.

  “Cat!” Raven called as she ducked down to get through the screened tent flap. “It’s magnificent. Thank you.”

  She hesitated, one hand holding the flap, the other clutching her Feast garments. Then Cat turned her head, flashed him a smile that curled his toes. She was almost to the wash house before Raven moved a muscle. He sank from semi-standing to his knees. Father in heaven, give me strength! It was a damn good thing the girl was hurting. Or else . . .

  He was in trouble. He’d didn’t like strong independent women. And strong independent celibate women were a bitch. But he wanted her. Every last glorious inch of her. Yet even if she weren’t hurting, he was honor bound to keep his hands off. This was business, and he’d promised. If the Lechee is insulted or doesn’t understand the gesture— smile, bow and walk away. Never take your leching farther than the Lechee is willing to go. Honor any commitments made to the Lechee. If you don’t mean it, don’t say it.

  Hell!

  Raven reached for the black shirt Cat had made for him, staring glumly at the full sleeves with ruffled cuffs, the matching ruffle around the neck. Well . . . they weren’t big ruffles, not like those worn by the blasted cavaliers. Raven skinned off his tunic, slipped on the shirt, struggled to fasten the ties. Obviously, noblemen of ancient times had servants! He picked up the surcoat, ducked under the tent flap. He needed to stand full height to don the white silk so it wouldn’t get wrinkled. Jesus! The woman was turning him into a dandy.

  “Let me see!” Alys closed the distance between their tents, did a complete circle around Raven, nodding her head. “Great!” she approved. “Cat’s outdone herself on this one.”

  “She surely has.” But Raven wasn’t talking about his surcoat. His eyes were fixed on Cat as she returned from the wash house. She moved toward them like a wave over the ocean, in a long flow of blue-green silk, one hand holding the train high above the thick carpet of pine needles and oak leaves. Yards of elaborate trim in shades of green and blue marked the hems of her sleeves, the bottom of the gown, and provided a low-slung belt over her hips. Pearls rose above the same blue and green trim banded around a cap of some kind, the white pearls and long veil a striking contrast to the brilliance of the gown. She was stunningly gorgeous. More woman than any man could dare aspire to.

  Raven stifled a groan. This LALOC weekend was definitely getting to him.

  “M’lady.” Raven swept her a bow, stepped forward to take Cat’s bundled green surcoat, black undertunic, tights, comb and brush. Graciously, she nodded and waited while he stowed the gear away. When he held out his arm, she laid her hand on it, as if she actually needed his help walking to the outdoor amphitheater where Court was to be held.

  Well, hell, Raven thought, maybe there was something to this courtly stuff after all.

  The high-backed wooden thrones—foldable, of course—had been moved from the Lyst Field and now held center stage at the amphitheater. Beside them reposed two more modest thrones for the Prince and Princess. Rows of wooden bench seats stretched along the shallow slope facing the stage, with an aisle running down the middle. Nearly every inch of space was filled by LALOC members wearing their most elaborate and colorful garb. Others were clustered in groups on the hillside above the seats, heads together, rumors rampant, one topic of conversation on all their tongues.

  To Raven’s astonishment, a young man took one look at their group of four, whispered to the people next to him. The people in the row poked each other, wiggled down the bench to widen a space until it would accommodate Cat and himself, Max and Alys. “An honor, m’lord,” the young man murmured. Raven nodded, vaguely surprised, then finally recognized the shiny clean, magnificently dressed young man as one of the scruffy-looking archers from that afternoon. He was accustomed to respect for his uniform, his rank, but what he saw in the young archer’s eyes was something else again. The respect Raven usually encountered was frequently tinged with fear. Strange as the world of LALOC was, being the recipient of genuine respect was something he could get accustomed to pretty damn fast.

  “Oyez, oyez, oyez!” bellowed the King’s Herald. The crowd
sprang to its feet as their royal majesties strode down the center path that led directly to the stage area. Behind King Corwyn and Queen Eilis came Prince Marius and Princess Kiriana. Heads high, shoulders back, they smiled and nodded, the epitome of graciously condescending royalty. Behind them came their retinues, the men colorfully garbed in matching surcoats, the women sparkling in silks and satins strewn with pearls, beads, elaborate embroidery or brocaded ribbon. For a fleeting moment Raven tried to picture his captain’s expression if he were sitting here beside him. He failed. The troopers, corporals, the other lieutenants? They’d think they’d fallen into a nut house.

  At the king’s command, the audience sat. Other than an announcement that Garth’s condition was stable and that he would recover, Raven tuned out for the next twenty minutes or so. Court seemed interminable. Not that he criticized the practice of awards for service to the kingdom, but . . . His attention shot back to the stage as the King’s Herald called, “Garth of Glentyre,” in a voice that filled the amphitheater, echoing all the way into the surrounding woods. The young man who had made room on the bench scrambled past, trotted down the incline, bowed to the king and queen, then fell to his knees before the thrones.

  In ringing tones the Herald proclaimed that Owen ap Daffyd would accept the archery award for Garth of Glentyre. The members of LALOC shouted their approval, continuing to clap as Owen backed away from their royal majesties, still bowing, then turned and lightly ran back up the shallow steps cut into the path. Raven could swear there was a slight smirk on the young man’s face as he caught sight of the zippered boots as he clambered back into place. Raven supposed the blasted boots had been all too evident while he sat on the ground, legs spread, taking Garth’s weight. He sneaked a peek at his seat mate, caught the young man’s eye. They exchanged companionable grins.

  Okay, when was the last time he’d felt a warm glow of well-being?