Knight's Blood

by Julianne Lee

  Jenkins, with his fine clothing and gleaming weapons, had moved on and now enjoyed the company of two other women. Or thought they were enjoying his, because he had his arms around both and was telling them of his exploits in battle. Their attention was rapt as they chewed on pieces of meat. Lindsay had thought he was finished for the night, but damned if he didn’t take them both and move off into the darkness again. Lindsay blinked, and wondered whether he was just showing off or if he really had it in him.

  A hand at the bottom of her hauberk startled her, and she hauled off to backhand whoever it was, but turned to find one of the whores there with a sweet smile on her face. Stupidly Lindsay realized she’d forgotten this aspect of her disguise, and she switched gears as quickly as she could. Rather than hit the woman, she grabbed the intruding hand and put it over her shoulder. Then she kissed her as roughly and as quickly as she could manage without hurting her or disgusting herself too much. The visitor was a small woman, much smaller than Lindsay, and seemed frail. Had Lindsay been a man, she might have found her attractive, but since her orientation was for partners larger, stronger, and harder than herself, her distaste went beyond just her preference for male anatomy. She hoped the kiss was convincing, but didn’t see how it could be.

  Before the woman could say anything, and especially before she could get her hands under the hauberk again, Lindsay began to pull up the skirts on her visitor. “My, but you’re a pretty one,” she said. She was drunk enough not to have to fake inebriation, and was glad for it just then. Her voice was husky and her diction slurred, just like the other guys. “How about we go off over there for a spell? I’ve got no money, but I can show you a good — “

  “Och,” said the whore. “My sister over there needs me, I think.” With that, she yanked her skirts from Lindsay’s hand and picked them up in her fists to hurry away. Whether to her sister, or to a man with money, Lindsay neither knew nor cared. She took her empty cuach and went in search of more mead. With luck, her performance was observed by the guys and wouldn’t be wasted. She spent the rest of the evening making herself as drunk as possible, threw up in a cluster of bracken like everyone else, then found a spot to roll herself into her plaid and slept.

  The raiders plundered two more villages before they retreated across the border to shelter in a small, ruined keep near Lochmaben. Little more than a single tower to begin with, it had been reduced to only two intact levels containing a total of three rooms, all of them leaky in the rain and alive with mold and vermin of all kinds. Lindsay claimed space as near as she could get to the small hearth on the ground floor. Without a squire to serve her like the other knights, she’d had to tend her wounded horse. The others had all claimed their spaces before she’d been free to claim hers, so her spot was not close to the fire at all. It was going to be a cold stay.

  She looked around at her new home. It was a dump, even nastier, dirtier, and more overgrown with moss and weeds than Eilean Aonarach had been when taken over by Alex. Cracks between the stones ran from ceiling to floor, and it seemed a wonder it gave any shelter at all. In her own time, if this place might still be standing, tourists would wander through it and gawk, declaring it to be wondrous. And it would be, to have survived so long. Never mind the encroachment of increasing population in the next several centuries, King Robert had more than likely been the one to order the destruction of this little fort, to keep Edward from manning it himself. So now, unfit for English occupation, it suited Nemed’s rogues.

  Lindsay lay on her bedroll, newly purchased though aged and worn. Her participation in the three raids had enabled her to claim from the spoils a good horse and accoutrements, as well as a coif of mail to accompany her hauberk and gauntlets. No cuisses for her thighs nor poleyns for her knees, nor even greaves for her shins, though. She wished she had them, for her legs were vulnerable in raids on horseback against defenders on foot, and so far she’d been lucky to have avoided bad wounds. She hated being so poor. Most of the other knights had squires or common servants to maintain their animals and equipment, and it was humiliating that she was forced to do for herself.

  Her apparent youth, evident by her lack of beard, had worked well for her before. She’d done for Alex as his teenage squire when they’d first come here, and now it annoyed her she was so alone. He should be there; they should be together. Her eyes closed and two tears squeezed from them to roll into her ears. It had been a mistake to leave London without him. She should have waited. She’d left in too big a rush to find the baby, too intent on chasing down Nemed and her son. Too angry. Perhaps even overly confident of finding them and returning to the twenty-first century before Alex would know she’d gone. Now she realized what she was up against and saw it wasn’t going to be so easy. Even if she found the baby, there was no way to be certain of ever finding a way back. She cursed herself for an idiot.

  Snores began to rise from the men around her. She rolled over to cradle her face in her arms and pulled her plaid around herself. All there was to do now, she decided, was to press onward and see what would happen. Maybe there was a way. Perhaps she would succeed and return to London to greet Alex when he arrived from his ship. But hope wouldn’t come. Her sense of the rightness in the world had bled from her until there was nothing left but raw need. Desperation. Stripped of hope, all she could do was resort to irrational expectation. The thing she needed would happen. It must happen. It would simply be so, because the alternative was unthinkable.

  ***

  The next morning she rose before the other knights were awake, to care for her horses. Better not to be seen working, even if everyone knew she had no squire. The men slept like rocks that morning, unlike while on the move when they would be alert at the slightest noise near camp. Lindsay had not slept so well as they. Even in her travels as a reporter she’d never rested easily away from home. Only at Eilean Aonarach, and only when Alex was there, could she truly relax. Only he ever made a strange bed home for her. She sighed and took a brush to her new property.

  A voice made her blood go cold and the hair on her arms stand up. “Persistent woman.” Nemed. No presence, only his voice coming from somewhere else. The disembodied voice had an echolike quality, ever so slight but distinctive. As if she were hearing it only in her head, and her head were the size of a school gymnasium. Lindsay resisted the urge to turn, and continued grooming her horse, ignoring the elf.

  “What do you expect to accomplish?”

  She didn’t reply and pretended she couldn’t hear him. Bristles from the decrepit brush came off on the horse’s coat, and she picked them off.

  “Do you imagine you have them all fooled?”

  Finally she said, “Yes.” That much she knew for a certainty. She’d exhibited enough manhood in her fighting and her whoring to allay any suspicion she might be a woman. Or even a weak man. She was one of the guys, and she knew it.

  But Nemed said, “I cannot see how. They all must be blind. I find you most alluring.”

  Lindsay rolled her eyes, and the strokes of her brush became harder in her irritation until the horse stamped its foot in protest.

  “I think it’s but a matter of time before one of them catches the scent of you and comes to attention for it. I certainly have. Something about the presence of a woman. It changes everything in the men around her, whether she or they want it to or not.”

  “Not my problem.”

  “It would be, were you discovered.”

  Her brushing slowed. “I suppose you’ll be the one to tattle.”

  “Oh, no. Not I. I don’t expect I’ll need to.” The quality and direction of the sound of the voice changed, and a hooded figure stepped from behind a stack of straw near a low, ruined stone wall. Lindsay stopped her work and turned her back to her horse so it wouldn’t be to him. “I think you’ll betray yourself.”

  “I never did before. Not in over a year of being Alex’s squire.”

  “You never rode with the fey before. Trust me, there are men here already wonderin
g what it is about you that makes them think about you at odd moments. Men like me.” His voice went all husky, and he tried to get her to look him straight in the eye. But though he ducked his head to address her eyes with his, she avoided them and went around to the other side of her horse. If he thought she was going to go all wobbly-kneed because he thought she was attractive, he was mad.

  In fact, she’d long thought Nemed was certifiably insane by human standards. He was, after all, a different tribe altogether. Maybe he did think he was seducing her. Perhaps sliminess was a standard elfin come-on. Her mouth twisted in a wry expression not much resembling a smile.

  “You don’t find that intriguing?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “Oh, come.” This seemed to amuse the elf. “Surely you’ve wondered what it might be like to be bedded by one of us.”

  “Never.” Since Alex, she hadn’t even thought much about other human men. Now the thought of him brought a longing that made her eyes sting. She returned to her work and continued down the flank of her horse, wishing she had a knife in her hand. “Where’s my son?”

  Nemed feigned shock and laid a theatrical hand over his chest. “You haven’t found him yet? I thought that was why you came here. What are you doing riding around the countryside, burning people’s homes and taking their belongings, then? Why aren’t you out searching for your offspring?”

  Lindsay ignored the question, which was meant only to anger her, and said, “Why I am here is an excellent question. Why am I here? Why did you send me to that particular day, when Jenkins and his contingent were passing through Scone?”

  “I didn’t. I had no idea they would be there. You meeting up with Jenkins and An Reubair can honestly be chalked up to the vagaries of fate. The whims of forces over which no earthly creature has control. In fact, I did my best to make certain you weren’t sent anywhere. Not alive, in any case.”

  She looked over at him, and a frown knotted her brow. Not alive?

  “Awfully trusting of you to come to me and expect me to send you back in time. This is the precise time you wanted, yes? Had I known you would survive the trip, I would not have obliged so well.”

  “You tried to kill me?”

  “Of course I did, you stupid cunt.” He made a noise in the back of his throat and looked away. Then he turned back and said, anger flashing in his eyes, “For someone of your heritage, you are singularly dull witted.”

  “My heritage is Polish and English.”

  “And faerie. How can you be what you are and not know it? Nor know much of anything else?”

  “I’m no faerie.”

  “You must be. I should have killed you, but here you are. You are not entirely human, Lindsay Pawlowski. There’s fey blood in you, and by the look of you I would call you a daughter of Danu. Tell me, are there any ancestors in your human tree who were born on the wrong side of the blanket?”

  Lindsay blinked away her confusion. Nemed was lying, as he always did. “Undoubtedly. Everyone does if they look back far enough. The Queen of England, for instance.”

  “Within the two centuries preceding your birth.”

  “Go away, elf. King or not, you’re full of crap and I don’t care to listen to it.”

  “I want to know, Ms. Pawlowski. I wish to understand how it came to be that I’ve been saddled with your presence, your expectations, and your conviction that I’ve taken your brat. I’m quite fed up with you. It would please me to lay you at the doorstep of the great faerie queen, Danu. There’s no doubt in my mind that she is your ancestor. Perhaps even she herself was the one who seduced the mortal you call... what? Grandfather? Great-grandfather?”

  The duke. As she was fond of pointing out to anyone who asked, Lindsay had nobility in her ancestry, but the duke’s daughter had been illegitimate. How did Nemed know she had an illegitimate ancestor? And why was he so sure...

  The ears. Those little points at the tops of her son’s ears. The horrible realization made her go still. The ears could have come from her, her son a throwback to one of the Danann who had seduced a human. The ears could be her own fault.

  Nemed said, “I can see by your sullen silence I’ve touched on something. You know I’m telling the truth.”

  “Get out of here.”

  He laughed. “You work for me. Everyone here works for me. I doubt I’ll be going anywhere.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “You don’t want to be alone. I know you don’t.” Now his voice was softening. Seductive. Almost convincing, but she shrugged a shoulder and refused to listen. He continued, and she found it impossible not to listen. “You know, the question that occurs to me is why — if the man was seduced by Danu — then why was the resulting child raised as human and not fey? How did you lose your heritage?”

  Heritage. Lindsay’s head swam with the implications of what Nemed was saying. That she belonged to a tribe of faeries, and that her ancestry had caused the deformity in her son that had made it impossible to face the boy’s father. “Get away from me.”

  Nemed wasn’t going to budge, so she covered her horse with its quilted bard and went to return the borrowed brush to Simon’s squire. The elf didn’t follow her, and she ducked back into the tower to see if there was meat to be had. Mead, at least. She needed a drink badly.

  Good luck for her there was a haunch on the fire, which she bought into and sat down to wait for it to be ready. Talk was lively around the fire, men lounging on their bedrolls with nothing to do but chat while their squires and servants looked after things outside. She listened to some of the guys bragging about their time under Robert, a source of much glory during the past couple of years. The king had been desperate for men before Bannockburn, and every Scot with a horse, a weapon, and a grievance against the English had been recruited to fight. Now, having won, they were all heroes and heroism was thin on the ground among rogues such as these. They made the most of their boon.

  Lindsay talked of her own experiences among Bruce’s army, having ridden with Alex’s patrol company under King Robert’s brother, Edward Bruce, and of the wound she’d taken at Bannockburn that had almost killed her. It was skating on the edge of discovery, though, for she was not in a position to pull off her hauberk, tunic, and sark to show them the scar across her rib cage. Over the past few weeks she’d satisfied the scar requirement by showing off at every opportunity the one on her arm she’d acquired in her first battle under Alex. Nobody asked to see the one on her torso.

  The meat came ready and was portioned out. Lindsay ate with an appetite and thought she might like to roll into her plaid for a nap afterward. It was going to be a lazy few days, and they all wanted to get their rest before heading back south again.

  A warmth spread at her crotch. Lindsay stopped chewing, but showed no other sign of alarm as she smoothly shifted from sitting cross-legged to sitting with her knees together. Alarm, however, sang through her body. Something was very wrong. She was bleeding, and heavily enough to soak through her trews in seconds. And now she didn’t know whether she could make it away from the fire and the men without having it run down her legs. She had to move quickly, or she would be trapped. Even worse, if bleeding this copious didn’t stop on its own she would certainly be dead before long.

  Just as she was about to rise, one of the faerie knights — Iain was his name — frowned and looked over at her. There were no words, but he didn’t need them. His nostrils flared, and he peered at her in curiosity. A look of puzzlement, then realization came over his face.

  He knew. He could smell it.

  Chapter Eight

  Alex ordered that Trefor and his American friend should occupy the large, windowless room among the laird’s apartments below the Great Hall, off the meeting room. Close enough to keep him in sight, but not so close as to let him into Alex’s very inner sanctum. Hector and his gillies had the extra room off the anteroom to Alex’s bedchamber. Trefor and his buddy wouldn’t have access to Alex’s private chambers, and the quality of
the accommodations wouldn’t let them overestimate their status within the household. Not that they were going to be there very long; Alex determined he would take his knights to the mainland as soon as possible to begin the search for Lindsay.

  He was not nearly recovered enough from his illness to travel, but he had no choice. With Trefor watching him, eyeing him whenever he was in the room, needling him whenever they spoke, Alex had no desire to let on he’d even been sick, let alone that he was still nearly incapacitated. So he gave orders to ready the boats for hurried departure. Then he went to his bedchamber to rest again while Trefor and Mike settled into their room and Hector and Henry Ellot supervised the preparations. Gregor attended to Alex, who slept through the day and rose again in the late afternoon to make his way to the roof of the Great Hall for a look at the progress.

  At the quay to the seaside of the castle stood two large boats, their furled sails red, black, and gold with the arms of Sir Alasdair an Dubhar MacNeil. Crates stood ready to load, and horses had been lowered to the bailey to be held in pens until just before departure. Alex observed the bustle of castle servants, pages, and squires, and saw things were going as smoothly as could be expected.

  “Rinkidink boats.” Trefor’s voice came from right behind Alex, who jumped slightly. There had been no noise, not even a sense of anyone being there. Trefor surely had seen the jerk of Alex’s frame, an embarrassment.

  The Laird of Eilean Aonarach cleared his throat, tugged his plaid more snug, and faced forward, looking out over the quay. He said, “Only the king’s boats are bigger.” The king’s were quite a bit bigger, and far more numerous because he could commandeer merchantships but that was neither here nor there.

  “I expect he’s got a lot more of them, too. Teeny as they are. Everything in this place is smaller than I’d thought it would be.”