Knight's Blood

by Julianne Lee

  “I’ve done sabers.”

  “Big deal. You’re using a shield, but by standing sideways like that you’re trying to hide the unprotected part of your body as if you weren’t carrying one.”

  “See, I don’t need a shield. I — “

  “You’re not going to a tea party! You’re going into battle, and if you are unhorsed you will be in the midst of a melee with blades all around you. Not just blades, but pikes, maces, axes, crossbows, and longbows. If you are not unhorsed, you will have guys coming at you with swords and lances.” Why wouldn’t this guy listen to him? What bug had gotten up his butt that he had to argue with everything Alex said? “Use the shield, forget en garde, and bloody well listen to me!”

  Trefor’s mouth pressed together and a white line formed around his lips. But he finally said, “All right. How do you want me to stand?”

  “Like this.” Alex demonstrated a more face-on stance with his sword held high and the shield covering the left side of his torso. Trefor imitated. “You can see how your best targets are going to be the head, arms, and legs. Your opponent is going to be wearing a helmet and carrying a shield, so his legs are most vulnerable. Cut him off at the knees, as they say, and he’ll topple obligingly and become vulnerable elsewhere. But the good news around here is that you don’t need to bother with him once you’ve cut his leg deep enough. Especially if you manage to cut it off, because he’ll bleed to death, or at least be of no further use to his king with a missing. In any case, he won’t be annoying you any more that day.”

  To Alex’s surprise, that seemed to sink into Trefor’s thick skull.

  For another hour or so he coached his son on how to handle broadsword and shield, and Trefor managed to stop giving him guff at every turn. By the time Alex saw sweat popping out on Trefor’s forehead from the pain in his wounded shoulder, he was feeling more comfortable about Trefor’s ability to survive in combat.

  Alex hoped Trefor’s improved attitude might stick with him, but in the following days around the cook fires along the way to the Marches, Trefor regained his sullen demeanor. Particularly if Hector was around. He bitched and moaned about the way people lived in this time, the lack of technology he considered basic, in modern English so Hector would wonder what he was saying.

  Mike, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be struggling so much with culture shock. One evening, not far from Lockerbie, they were gathered around the large common fire and Mike let loose a thundering fart.

  Alex commented, “Well, that was tuneful.”

  Hector snorted laughter and translated to Middle English so the others could have a chuckle.

  Both Alex and Trefor looked over at Hector, as stunned as parents whose child has just said its first word. Alex said, “You understood that?”

  Hector shrugged. “Once I learned the language you spoke was so similar to our English, ‘twas easy enough to work out what you were telling each other. ‘Tis a separate matter entirely to speak in the way you do, so do not expect me to try, and I wouldnae care to go to your future... I mean, Hungary, and attempt to be understood, but I understand well enough what’s being said. And young Mike here is indeed a resonant fellow.”

  “Just trying to fit in,” said Mike.

  Good point, though Alex had always managed not to pick up the uglier personal habits of the times.

  “What I wouldn’t give for a hot shower,” said Trefor. It seemed ever since he’d arrived he was missing something from the future, and hot showers had become a theme with him.

  Alex figured he was embarrassed at being so filthy all the time. He didn’t like it either, for while on campaign sometimes rashes would appear in spots where his clothing bound, but his nose had long ago adjusted to make body odors baseline for him and he just didn’t smell people anymore.

  “Showers,” he said with an edge of contempt. “Refrigerators. Television. MP3 players. Why did you come here if that stuff was so important to you? You had to know there was no electricity or running water here.”

  Trefor had no answer for that.

  Hector, however, had a comment. “What might a ‘shower’ be, then? And ‘electricity?’”

  “A shower is a very small room where heated water is sprayed out of a pipe and you bathe in it. Like a hot waterfall, and you can make it flow or stop with a lever on the pipe.”

  Hector’s eyes went wide. “Heated water ye say? From a pipe? Why would a man want such a thing? Does not the hot water weaken the body?”

  “No.” Trefor sounded defensive, angering in the face of Hector’s attitude.

  Alex said, “It can. It makes you feel drowsy sometimes. It’s relaxing.”

  Hector shook his head. “Then I shouldn’t want it. Bathing is for those as would prefer to die in bed than on the field, I think.”

  Trefor’s eyes narrowed. “Or for those of us who like to get laid a little more often.”

  Hector laughed. “There is that, and if a shower of hot water would make the women come running and leaping into my bed I would certainly consider it.” He addressed Alex. “Perhaps then, my brother, that would be the secret to finding your wife? Wash yourself in a shower with the hot water, and the next thing you know Lady Marilyn will emerge from the woods all bright-eyed and saying, ‘Who is that smelling so fresh and clean and odorless? I must have him, and now!’” Then he said to Trefor, “But I’ve not noticed them clamoring after you, have I? As fastidious as ye are.”

  Alex laughed, but Trefor did not. He fell silent and stared into the fire.

  Then he glanced up at a spot over Alex’s head, and a light came into his eyes that made Alex look around. Behind him stood a woman of copper-bright red hair, clad in a fine woolen overdress with thickly embroidered sleeves that covered her hands to her knuckles. Her hair was braided carefully the length of her back. She would have appeared of high station, except that her only ornamentation was a scattering of spring flowers in her hair and a belt of golden rope. It reminded Alex of the one that Brochan guy wore, and alarm bells set off in his head. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  Trefor cried in a voice that alarmed Alex even more. “Morag!” Without taking his eyes from the woman, he rose and in two long steps went to her and took her into his arms in a heartfelt kiss.

  Alex and Hector looked at each other, and though neither spoke, Alex knew Hector was thinking the same thing he was. How had this woman made it into camp without being challenged by a sentry? Never mind the sentries, how did she make it through the array of tents and cook fires without attracting anyone’s attention? They both looked around, but everyone within sight was going about his business without even a glance toward the woman who was still locked in embrace with Trefor.

  Hector returned his attention to the couple and muttered, “Perhaps there’s something to this cleanliness of his.”

  Alex said to Mike. “Who is she?”

  Mike shrugged. “His girlfriend.”

  “Ya think? How about we put that right at the top of the ‘duh’ list? Tell me who she is, Mike.”

  “She’s one of the people who sent us here. The tall one.” He said it as if Trefor had gone into detail about the relative heights of the folk who had come to him a year ago.

  Alex looked over at her and thought her remarkably short for being a “tall” one. And she’d sent Trefor and Mike through time. By magic. He shivered with apprehension and hoped he was wrong, particularly since the two were groping each other like teenagers at a drive-in and their involvement with each other was plain for the world to see.

  He asked Mike, “She came with you guys from the future?”

  “No.”

  “But you said she sent you. Through time.”

  Mike shook his head as if Alex were an idiot for not getting it. “No, she will send us. In seven centuries when she’s an old lady, she’ll send us back.”

  Sheesh. Another blasted faerie. The old lady Trefor had mentioned. Now Alex knew where Trefor had learned to speak medieval Gaelic so fluently.
“Does she know this?”

  “Of course she does. Why else would she send us back?”

  Why else, indeed. “So, let me get this straight. In the future this old lady is going to muster up a cubic buttload of magic” — very costly magic, Alex knew, for Nemed had harped on that — “and send you guys back to this century just so her younger self can get smoochy with Trefor?”

  “Yup.”

  Alex raised his voice to be heard by Trefor. “Hey, Trefor, how about you introduce your friend?”

  Trefor seemed happier to see this Morag woman than he’d been about anything else since Alex had met him. He stepped back, gazing into her eyes, then guided her to the rocky rise against which he’d been leaning near the fire. There she sat like a queen, smiling for Trefor in response to his joy. Trefor’s face was aglow with his pleasure, and he said, “This is Morag, my friend who brought me here.”

  “She got a last name?”

  The woman said, her voice smooth and soothing, “Nae. I’m often called Red Morag, but not among my own people, who are few enough to know me from others with that name.”

  “Danann?”

  She turned a sharp glance on him. “No. But you know of them?”

  “Enough to know they exist.” He wasn’t going to give away his familiarity with Danu. Then he asked, “Bhrochan?”

  Now she tilted her head to the side, puzzled. “How do you know of them?”

  “Are you Bhrochan?”

  For a long moment she considered her reply, then nodded. “Distantly.”

  Crap. It was true. She was one of the crazy faeries. The ones who had nearly killed him getting him here. “How distantly?”

  “I dinnae see how that matters at all.”

  “It matters to you because I’ve asked. Answer my question, or I’ll have you escorted from the camp.”

  A tiny smile at the corners of her lips let him know she figured anything he might do to keep her away would be easily circumvented, just as she’d bypassed the sentries. He knew then he would need to take her into custody and restrain her if she gave him any trouble, and even that might not do any good.

  Her reply was, “My mother’s mother was of the Bhrochan.”

  “You realize Trefor is Danann.”

  The smile spread across her face to become warm and affectionate. A hand reached toward Trefor’s, and he grasped it, entwining his fingers with hers. She said, “Aye, but I do not hold that against him. I care for him regardless.”

  Trefor chuckled as if it were a joke, but Alex didn’t think it was. He had a sense any love she might have for his son was in spite of Trefor’s ancestry.

  “Lots of crossing between the wee folk and humans, then? I wasn’t aware there were so many of mixed heritage.”

  “We’ve a long history, and live a long time. I’m over a century old, myself.”

  Alex said to Trefor, “Got a thing for older women, then, son?”

  Trefor’s eyes narrowed, and his voice came angrily. “Well, I can’t call my father ‘the Old Man,’ can I?”

  “Some would think that a good thing.”

  “I don’t see why anyone would.”

  Alex had no reply to that. This round to Trefor, who was now leaning in toward his girlfriend and whispering in her ear. She giggled, and he chuckled. Alex didn’t like any of this. Not one bit.

  Chapter Ten

  Lindsay had to get out of there. Without another glance at the suspicious knight, she licked her fingers clean of grease and as casually as possible rose from her seat. There was no helping a glance down at the stones where she’d sat, and she was immensely relieved to find no blood spot there. But she could feel it beginning to make its way down the inseams of her trews toward her knees, and she reached for her plaid to pull it around her with a mumbled complaint about the cold and what an annoyance it was there was no garderobe intact in the tower and that meant she had to go outside to pee.

  “Use that there corner,” said the faerie knight who had caught her scent.

  She tossed a disgusted look his way. “Filthy pig.” Then she hurried from the tower as if she were headed for a spot to relieve herself. When she reached the edge of the nearest thicket, she broke into a run to get as far away from the tower as she could, lest someone else happen by on the mission she only pretended.

  It was dark among the trees, but she found a patch of sunlight in a small clearing. There she stopped, her breathing heavy for the terror as well as the running. The bleeding from the birth had stopped days before, and she’d thought she was done with it. This sudden gushing flow must mean something had gone terribly wrong, and she knew no way to even address such a problem. There were no women attached to the raiding party on any sort of permanent basis, and revealing herself as female was out of the question in any case. There was nobody she could trust to ask for whatever folk medicine was to be had. She wasn’t even confident modern medicine would have had an answer for something this strange.

  In the clearing she stripped herself of mail and tunic, then untied her trews and dropped them to her ankles just above her boots. The crotch was soaked, and if she didn’t bleed to death she was going to have to do something about that enormous stain. In all the time she’d disguised herself as Alex’s squire, she’d never allowed so much as a spot on her clothing. This stain, if not cleaned completely, would betray her in an instant. If she wasn’t betrayed already by the scent that faerie had caught. She groaned, and reached for her bloodied linens.

  They were bright red. So copious was the blood, it shone wet on the cloth. She hadn’t bled like this even the day after the baby was born. This wasn’t even approaching normal; it was a hemorrhage. She reached for a handful of bracken to wipe it from herself as she swallowed tears of panic. This much blood meant she would probably end up collapsing right here in the clearing and bleeding to death where nobody would find her. Alex would never know what happened to her. She wanted to make it back to Alex. She wished to God she wouldn’t die so she could see Alex again.

  But when the worst of the blood was wiped away, she realized the flow had stopped. She could feel it had quit, the tightness in her belly was gone, and there was no more blood easing down her leg. There had been just enough of it to betray her, and no more. She looked around, expecting to find Nemed watching, probably laughing at her. It was a toss-up as to whether she wanted to feel relieved or angry. A practical joke from that bloody elf. Next time she saw him, never mind if she didn’t have a knife at hand, she would find one and cut his throat. For now, however, she satisfied herself with stripping off her boots, trews, drawers, and tunic, and wrapping the stained pieces in the relatively clean tunic. She had no change of clothing, so burying the clothes was out of the question. She headed for the nearby burn where she could bathe quickly and make up a story to explain her sudden need to do laundry. The long tail of her sark would cover her lack of what Alex called “package,” so lounging in the sun while her other clothes dried would be fairly safe. So long as she sat hunched over a bit and made certain the shape of her hips and waist didn’t show. Since the baby it had been more difficult to pass as a boy, her hips having widened some from their fashion-model narrowness of before. These days she needed to take more care in how her shape was seen.

  The burn was dastardly cold though the weather had been warm enough for bathing all the past week. Lindsay hurried as much as she dared, and scrubbed the clothing stains thoroughly. Not the slightest discoloration was allowed to remain, not the faintest line or shading. Then she checked her sark again for spots and found none, and draped the wet clothing over some gorse bushes in the sunshine. Unwilling to be caught lying down, where her shape would be evident under the sark and her hippy, woman’s legs would be seen by anyone happening by, she sat cross-legged in the middle of the clearing and pretended to be praying, bent over clasped hands.

  The pretense did segue to actual prayer once or twice, but she was there a long time and her mind wandered to many things. Alex and the baby, wondering wha
t their futures would be. Her hope to kill Nemed and that his future would never happen. Her hope Iain would keep the blood smell to himself.

  A crashing of boots through brush approached, and Lindsay tugged at the hem of her sark to make certain it covered enough. Then came two knights to the spot by the burn. She didn’t look up when they stopped to stare.

  “Praying, then?” It was Jenkins, accompanied by Simon, she saw by his boots. Lindsay’s pulse picked up. She didn’t particularly like Jenkins, and knew the feeling was mutual.

  She looked up and feigned impatience that her prayer had been interrupted. “Of course. You should try it sometime.”

  He snorted. “God and I have naught to say to each other.”

  “That’s your affair, but please leave me to my own conversation.” Her heart was pounding now, for Jenkins and Simon both were staring hard at her legs.

  “Do you always pray naked?”

  “When I’ve got wet clothing drying in the sun.” The questions were pointed and made her uncomfortable. Jenkins was suddenly far too nosy.

  “I hadn’t noticed them needing cleaning.”

  Now she unfolded her hands and gave him as disparaging a look as she could muster in her awkward position. “Not that it’s any affair of yours, but I had thought I had a fart coming and was mistaken. I’m certain you know what that is like. Be glad you weren’t here for the cleaning of it.”

  Jenkins grunted but didn’t reply. He instead went to the burn for a drink, then the two left the clearing. Lindsay continued to wait for her clothes to dry, and now prayed in earnest.

  The wool and linen weren’t quite dry when she put them back on, but the stains were gone and she could go stand by the fire for a while to be rid of the clamminess. Her fingers trembled as she dressed, relieved to restore her protective clothing as a man. She hurried back to the tower, where she would collect her bread ration, for it was late afternoon and she was quite hungry.