Dragon Tree

by Canham, Marsha

  He had made camp by the stream four days ago and the portable trappings of thirty men and horses were everywhere. Several small fires sent columns of smoke into the leafy growth overhead. There were blankets and saddles, bundles of armor and weaponry scattered throughout the clearing. Several canopies had been hung from the trees, practical only for keeping the heavy mists at bay during the night.

  His own pavilion was large and comfortable, for Odo was not a man who liked to travel without certain necessities. Aside from the nearly three dozen men at arms who accompanied him, he had two squires, several lackeys, and an armorer in his retinue. The latter travelled with all the tools of his trade packed into a large, square wagon. Odo also had a full string of horses, two suits of armor—one of chain mail and thick plated iron, the other of molded bullhide. His swords, shield, lances, and glaives were carried in a warwagon along with items of a more personal nature—clothes, cooking utensils, tables and chairs that could be broken apart and moved with ease—as well as a cot for sleeping.

  He had not departed his castle at Belmane expecting to need more than a paring knife and a long length of rope to hang his runaway wife when he found her. Three days into the hunt, however, she had seemed to simply vanish into the dark forest mists. He had dispatched men back to the castle for supplies and more men, and now, more than a month later, they seemed no closer to finding the murderous bitch. A sennight ago they seemed to have had success within their grasp. An almoner had mentioned seeing a woman and a priest on the road headed south. A storm had kept Odo and his men huddled in caves for a full day, but when it passed and scouts were sent out, a second report identified those same two travellers taking refuge in a small village.

  With his head still bound in bandages and his balance affected by the blow he had suffered to his skull, Odo had bowed to his brother's insistence that he, Rolf de Langois, be the one to approach the village and determine if the pair were indeed Elizabeth and the poxy priest, and to bring them both back to camp if it proved true. But something had gone wrong. Rolf had returned with an arrow lodged in his thigh and a tale of foresters ambushing them from the woods. The three highly paid assassins who had accompanied Rolf to the village were dead along with nearly a dozen of his best crossbowmen.

  While his barber cut the arrowhead out of his thigh, Rolf related how he had given the archers free reign to raid the village and take away whatever they could find of value. He said it had begun as cleanly and neatly as any surprise attack could, but out of nowhere, men had appeared to defend the village. They were foresters by the look of it, whose arrows cut them down with the precision of outlaws. Rolf had regrouped and sent men back within the hour but when they returned, the vill was deserted apart from the bodies. They had searched among the dead, but the corpse of Elizabeth Amaranth de Langois was not among them.

  Odo’s rage had very nearly accomplished what Elizabeth’s aim with the heavy pewter candlestick had not. His blood had risen in such a fury that the pressure inside his skull came close to bursting. His face boiled as red as his hair and the pain became so great, he eventually had to be held down by six men just to keep him from smashing his head against a tree trunk. It took four days for the agony in his brain to subside, for the pressure to ease, for the fury to cool into a icy, deadly calm.

  His whore-wife was missing, his men were dead. And now there were witnesses to the unwarranted slaughter of an entire village. Adding to his aggravations, he discovered that the vill belonged to the demesne of Taniere Castle. While he was not acquainted personally with the Dragonslayer, the reputation of Ciaran Tamberlane, former knight Templar, former champion of Richard the Lionheart was more than enough to make him treble the guards around the camp and set the men to sharpening every sword and blade in their arsenal.

  A man like that did not take kindly to having his villages raided, regardless of the provocation. A man like Tamberlane, with family ties to the king’s royal court would not simply stand by and do nothing to avenge an insult to his property.

  When several days passed without the sound of warhorses and armor approaching their camp, Odo had sent men to make discreet inquiries at other villages and hamlets. They had returned bearing nothing but foolish rumors: that the knight lived in seclusion at Taniere Castle; that there were powerful dark forces at work there; and that the former priest and servant of God was now a follower of Lucifer and counted among his retainers a hideous wraith-like creature who could alter his shape at will and change men to stone at a glance.

  Odo had discounted the peasant superstitions with much rolling of his eyes. He did, however, give a measure of truth to the tales of seclusion. The Glanvilles were a prominent family in royal circles and because his own father had disavowed him, Tamberlane had probably been directed to remain behind the walls of Taniere in isolation until his name was forgotten, his hair turned gray, and his skin turned to parchment.

  Rolf had not found Elizabeth among the dead, but he had found blood in the woods—a great deal of blood that did not all belong to the dead mercenary lying alongside the creek bed. Moreover, it was his opinion that a wound such as the one which had felled the experienced Brabancon was not the work of a common forester. A wound like that required the expertise of a trained sword arm and who but another knight, skilled in the art wielding a sword with such power could affect such a blow?

  Had Tamberlane himself been present at the vill that day?

  Had he found Elizabeth lying wounded in the forest?

  Had he carried her back to Taniere Castle to recover from her wounds?

  This last fevered suspicion had fueled Odo’s hand as he gutted and carved the deer. He had imagined the ropes were tied around Elizabeth’s wrists and that she, not the deer, had been hauled upright to hang before him. He had slit the skin with care and deliberation, peeling it back strip by strip as if he could hear and savor her screams. When the knife had sunk into the deer’s breast, he had actually felt his head swim with pleasure, and by the time he had finished removing the entrails by dripping handfuls, his body had grown so hard with bloodlust, it was all he could do not to take the first smooth-faced boy he saw in camp and bend him over the back of a wagon.

  He could easily have imagined that as being Elizabeth too. Undoubtedly the boy would bleat and wail just as she had each time Odo had demanded his conjugal rights. The whore should have been eager to please him, to thank him for marrying her and saving her from being wed to some wrinkled old man who smelled of garlic and cabbage. She should have fallen onto her knees and served him each and every night with a willing mouth and an eager body.

  Instead, she had balked and fought him at every turn. She had looked upon him with so much loathing and disgust blazing from her eyes that he had no choice but to slap it from her face and whip it from her body until she complied.

  The deer was lucky, Odo mused. It had been dead before he skinned it. The lovely Elizabeth de Langois would not fare half so well.

  He stared down at his hands, still running pink with blood. The front of his clothes looked like a butcher’s apron and he knew from his reflection in the pond that there were streaks of it splattered across his face and hair. He cupped his hands in the water again and started to scoop some out to rinse it off... but stopped. The blood made him feel strong. It made him feel powerful. Invincible.

  Pushing to his feet, he turned and glared around the camp site. He was a handsome man, broadly built, with shoulders and legs bulging with muscle. The color of his hair combined with the quantity that grew across his shoulders and back had earned him the byname Red Boar, and he had incorporated a depiction of the snarling beast into his coat of arms. He had run the lists many a time and never been unhorsed, never been defeated. At twenty and six, he was in his prime and had no fear of an aging, disgraced, banished, and defrocked warrior monk.

  His brother was leaning against a tree a few feet away, and when Odo caught his eye, Rolf de Langois limped over.

  “Your leg troubles you?”

&
nbsp; Rolf shrugged. He was leaner than his brother, with chiselled features that verged on beautiful. His hair was dark, his eyes long-lashed and almond-shaped. He had a sweet singing voice, a deceptively stunning contrast to the lethal, coldblooded instincts of the killer that he possessed. “The wound is healing and tolerable.”

  “Good. For I was wondering if we should pay our respects to this so-called Dragonslayer.”

  “You think he may have Elizabeth?”

  “I think she did not get up and walk out of the forest on her own.”

  Rolf nodded. “We cannot be sure it was even her.”

  “It was her,” Odo said through a snarl. “And if she thinks to hide from me at Taniere Castle, I will know. I will know and I will have her out.”

  “Tamberlane is still the king’s man. What if she speaks out of turn?”

  “She will say nothing, she will do nothing. She gives her trust as readily as a fox to a hound.”

  “She apparently trusted the friar.”

  “Yes.” Odo’s eyes narrowed and he glanced across the clearing to where a slender figure in the brown robes of a mendicant sat slumped at the base of a tree. Several loops of rope were circled around his chest binding him to the trunk. His hands and feet were bound as well though it was more for the pain and discomfort the ropes inflicted than an additional safeguard against escape.

  They had caught Friar Guilford walking alone, out on the open road, not far from a broken cart they had found hidden in the forest. He had pleaded ignorance, of course, declaring he knew nothing about Odo’s missing wife, denying he had helped her escape Belmane. But the purse he wore at his waist contained too many coins for a priest to explain away on happenstance. And his eyes, when questioned about his destination, had flicked away from Odo’s and betrayed the lies for what they were.

  “How many men have we in camp?”

  “Thirty-eight. Six of them mounted.”

  Odo pursed his lips. “When we approach Taniere Castle, we would do well to do so without showing our full strength. As a knight as well as a monk, Tamberlane cannot refuse hospitality to a brother knight... especially one who fears for his safety in a greenwood filled with outlaws.”

  “And if your wife has, indeed, begged sanctuary inside the castle walls?”

  Odo smiled wanly. “It breaks the laws of both God and man to keep a wife from her husband, especially one who has already attempted murder once and might well kill again."

  Rolf pursed his lips. "She is a beautiful woman. She might beguile this warrior monk with her body and her lies. She might persuade him to keep her hidden."

  Odo’s smile thinned. “If she is there, I will feel her presence and smell the odor of treachery between her thighs.”

  “Nevertheless, perhaps we should have some bait with us to draw her out?”

  Odo followed the tilt of his brother’s head to where Friar Guilford was slumped against the tree. “He is almost dead now. As bait, he would not be of much value.”

  “He has breath left in him still. Enough for our purposes at any rate, even if we have to spike him on a lance to make him sit straight.”

  With thoughtful steps, Odo strode across the clearing and lowered himself into a squat before the priest, his forearms resting on his knees, his hands clasped together in front. He stared at the top of the tonsured pate a moment, then turned his head slightly and spat into the grass.

  “Truly, it would have gone easier, Priest, if you had simply told us where she was.”

  Friar Guilford’s head came up slowly. His face was puffed and swollen under the bruises that marked his cheeks and jaw. One eye was closed to a slit. The other, despite his exhaustion, despite the pain that wracked his body, was sharp and clear, as blue as a piece of the sky.

  “I have told you a hundred times,” he said through scabbed lips, “I do not know where the Lady Elizabeth is and I cannot tell you what I do not know.”

  “You expect me to believe you, Priest? You expect me to simply say: ah, yes, good fellow and so be on your way? This even though you can see for yourself that God himself has judged you false.”

  The priest’s gaze flickered down to his hand... a hand so swollen and inflamed it was distorted beyond recognition as a human appendage. He had endured Odo de Langois' questions; he had endured the beating, the blows, even the clawed fingers that had nearly burst his testicles like grapes. All of that he had endured with prayers on his lips and faith in his God.

  The last test had come with Odo’s amused insistence that he prove his ignorance of the Lady Elizabeth’s whereabouts by undergoing an ordeal by fire. A heavy iron bar was produced and heated red hot in the coals of the campfire. As a test of purity, the accused person had to hold the bar and walk three paces. The hand was then bandaged and left for three days. If, when the bandages were removed the wound was seen to be healing, then one’s innocence was proclaimed. If the wound was not healed, if it was festering and growing worse, then obviously God had abandoned him and declared him guilty of the charge.

  Half the flesh on Friar Guilford’s hand had come off with the filthy rags. The scorching was to the bone and he knew, by the fevers and aches in his body, that there was poison in his veins.

  Wearily, he looked back up at Odo de Langois. “I expect you will believe only what you wish to believe, and therein lies the cause for pity.”

  “You pity me, do you Priest?”

  “You could have had her love.”

  “Her love? The love of a whore? You countenance this as being something I should have sought?”

  “She was no man's whore. She was gentle and pure and spoke her marriage vows with a sweetness that only needed someone to see it, to coax it forth, to nurture it into loyalty and love. You could have done this. You could have shown her kindness and compassion."

  “Kindness? Compassion? For a whore who spread herself for every man who walked the halls of Belmane Castle?”

  “You know this as fact, do you?”

  “I saw it with mine own eyes,” Odo snarled, spraying the friar's face with spittle. “I caught her with her legs spread and her skirts shoved above her waist.”

  “With your brother Rolf? And did he tell you she begged him for it? Begged him to drag her into the woods where her screams would not be heard, then begged him to squeeze his hands around her throat until her lungs were starved for air?”

  “Such a crushing would have left bruises. There were none. And there were five other men present who said she lay beneath him willingly. Are you saying they all lied?”

  “They were Rolf’s men,” the priest said simply. “They would say what he told them to say.”

  Odo sucked in a deep breath. “Maybe it is you who would say whatever she asked you to say. Maybe you are more man than priest and would beg a little compassion of your own? She has the face of an angel, does she not? And the body of a nymph with a well of nectar so sweet it makes your tongue ache from the pleasure.” Odo leaned in closer and lowered his voice to a conspiratory whisper. “Is that why you defend her, Priest? Because you have tasted that nectar yourself?”

  Friar Guilford turned his face away, his eyes burning with rage and despair. Neither food nor water had passed his lips in over ten days and he was weak enough, feverish enough that he had begun to fear he might go mad and say or do anything to gain relief for his thirst. Somewhere he had heard it took a healthy man more than three weeks to die by starvation, but madness, brought on by ravening thirst, came much sooner.

  He could smell the water on Odo’s skin, see it glistening on the fine red hairs that coated the freckled hands. He prayed day and night to keep his mind off the sound of the stream burbling by only a few dozen paces away. When he was not praying, he was thinking of Amaranth. He had been so utterly convinced he would see Rolf de Langois returning to camp that day dragging Amie behind him, that he could scarcely believe his own eyes when the knight had come back from the raid bleeding and empty-handed.

  His relief had quickly turned to fe
ar. If she was not in the village where he had left her, then where was she? Surely she would not have wandered off on her own?

  Their escape from Belmane had been a hasty, ill planned thing at best.

  A frantic knocking on his door in the middle of the night had wakened him. Elizabeth de Langois was standing there, her night sheath splattered in blood, her teeth chattering so badly she could not speak. A cup of wine heated with a fire tong had loosened her tongue enough to set the hairs on his neck standing on end.

  She claimed she had bludgeoned her husband to death. She had crushed his skull with a candlestick and left him soaked in blood on their bed. He had been drunk, as usual. Brutal, as usual. He had whipped her with his belt then torn into her like a ravening beast. He had called her a whore and a bitch and a dozen other filthy names even as he tugged on her hair and howled out his pleasure.

  When he was spent, he collapsed beside her still groaning promises of carnal horrors yet to come. Blinded by disgust, she had grabbed the closest thing to hand—a pewter candlestick—and brought it smashing down across his head.

  Amie assumed she had killed him. She had not fled to the chapel seeking help to escape. Rather, she had gone in search of absolution, to confess her sins and wait for the dawn to bring the sound of the alarm bells. Despite her noble blood, she would be punished as harshly as any peasant for her crime. Women who committed murder were strangled then burned.

  The peace of death, she had declared, was preferable to spending another day trapped inside Belmane Castle, and strangulation would be a merciful relief.

  Friar Guilford, while unable to condone what she had done, had stayed by her side and prayed with her through the rest of the night. When morning came there was, indeed, a hue and cry, but not because Odo de Langois was dead. He was very much alive with a split skull and a boiling rage that promised her punishment would not be so swift or merciful as a mere hanging.