Knight's Blood

by Julianne Lee

  Then, with a sour glance at Mike he switched to Gaelic, though it wasn’t Alex’s strongest language. He hoped the reply would come also in Gaelic. “What is this luck thing you have? Tell me.”

  Moving only his eyes, Trefor looked at him and considered his answer. Then he glanced at Mike and back at Alex. He replied in the same language. “I have a talent for the craft. Not a strong one, but Morag has taught me one or two things. She’s teaching me more.”

  “What was that I saw? Back at the castle. The weather thing.”

  “I made you lucky. For the day.”

  “Yourself. You made us all lucky, including yourself.”

  “Oh, but you were the fortunate one that day, and not me. It’s far easier to do it for someone else than for one’s self. And less likely to come back to bite one in the ass.”

  Alex frowned. “What does that mean? In what way?”

  “Well, you’ll notice it was unlucky to have encountered Sir James in Edinburgh while we were staking out the castle for Nemed.”

  Alex grunted in agreement, but said nothing.

  Trefor held out his hands as if comparing weights in them like a scale. “See, you must understand that there is no taking in the universe without something to come fill its place. Every action has a reaction, though it isn’t necessarily equal or opposite. You take luck, something else comes to occupy the void. It could be good, it could be bad. You never know. Making myself the lucky one puts me in the position of also taking the recoil. But if I make someone else the recipient, I’m in the clear.”

  Alex grunted again. ‘So someone else gets the bad luck later on.”

  “Don’t pass judgment. You got your clear day. What I got was a splitting headache.”

  “Did I get my life saved today?”

  Trefor’s eyes narrowed at him. “Why do you think I knew that bolt was coming? You think I had something to do with it?”

  Alex’s face warmed, and he wanted to say no. But those words wouldn’t come. He glanced at Mike and said, “Someone among my men, your men, or James’ bunch tried to off me today. You’ve been a royal asshole to me since we met, so guess who I’m going to look to for someone who hates me.”

  “I’m pissed off; it doesn’t mean I want to see you with a crossbow bolt through your skull.”

  “I can’t be sure of that, can I?”

  “Why would I — ?”

  “Trefor!” Morag ran into the firelight, her skirts in her fists and bare feet flying. She halted, and fairly jumped up and down in her excitement, still holding her skirts. Like a leprechaun dancing a jig. “Trefor, my love, I’ve something to tell you!” There was a sheen of sweat on her face and a pink glow of exertion; she’d run far, and it occurred to Alex to wonder where she’d been and whether she’d been dancing again.

  “What is it?” They were still speaking Gaelic. Trefor reached over to draw Morag to him, and she settled in next to where he sat. He put an arm around her and kissed her.

  Morag looked over at Alex as if waiting for him to excuse himself and leave, but Trefor said, “Go ahead, and tell it in Gaelic.”

  She heaved a great sigh. “Very well. I have news about that woman knight they speak of.”

  Alex’s hearing perked, and he listened carefully.

  “Go on,” said Trefor.

  “I’ve learned the raiders she accompanies have faeries among them.”

  Trefor and Alex both sighed, fairly impatient that Morag thought this was a big deal. But she continued in breathless excitement, insistent that this was important. “Now I know who they are! ‘Tis the troupe of the Danann outcast who calls himself ‘The Robber.’” She waited for a reaction, but got none. Alex didn’t get the significance she seemed to attach to the information. Excited and impatient, her hands flinging about in her agitation, she said, “Do ye not see? Or know? He is a vassal of King Nemed!”

  That name went straight to Alex’s gut like a dagger. His lips pressed together and he had to look away to calm himself. Nemed. The truth swam before his eyes. and he hated to see it. He’d not believed the female knight covered in paint and frightening men all across the countryside was his wife, but now he was forced to consider it. This was too close a coincidence to actually be one. Lindsay was with Nemed. Not chasing him, but working for him, and that tore Alex’s heart quite in half. The woman was there willingly. Lindsay had joined the enemy, and he wondered how long it had been that way.

  Trefor looked over at him. “What’s wrong?” He had no clue.

  Alex frowned at Morag. “It can’t be true.”

  “‘Tis,” she said, and there was a note of triumph in her voice that made Alex grind his teeth. “Face it, MacNeil, your wife is riding with a troupe of renegades led by us wee folk.” Morag lnew less than she thought she did, and Alex kept shut about his hesrtbreak. In fact, he fell silent entirely. He took a long slug of wine to hide that his voice had been choked off. Then he stared down the neck of the jug as if its black interior were the most interesting thing before him just then.

  Nobody else seemed to have anything to say, either, until Trefor started the discussion back up. “So, Cruachan old chap, you know where she is now. You know where to find her.” To his mind there was nothing else that needed saying. But Alex’s head swam with many pertinent things he couldn’t utter. Not to Trefor, not to anyone. He swirled the last of the wine in the bottom of the jug and kept silent.

  “You know it’s her,” Trefor said to him.

  “I do.” He couldn’t deny it any longer. But he didn’t want to discuss it, so he looked around as if suddenly realizing the time. “I guess it’s time to hit the sack. According to the latest from James, we move tomorrow.”

  “Which direction?”

  Alex ignored the question and rose to return to his tent. He just didn’t want to talk about Morag’s news.

  There was a murmuring behind him as he went. Inside his tent he began to strip for bed. Gregor had laid out a bowl of water and a cloth, and though Alex wasn’t in a mood for washing he made himself attend to it. He didn’t get far, for Trefor’s voice soon came at the tent flap.

  “My lord Alasdair.”

  Alex looked up from untying his trews. Usually Trefor just barged in, and never addressed him with any respect. This was new. He retied the string at the top of his trews. “Come in.”

  Trefor entered, restored the flap, and stepped farther in to speak discreetly. “You do intend to go looking for her?” It was a question, and his voice was mild. Also new.

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “My business, not yours.”

  “Then I’ll take my men in the morning.” No anger, just flat fact.

  “You won’t like what you find.” Alex felt flattened. As if his world had deflated in the instant he realized Lindsay was with Nemed.

  “Then tell me what you think I’ll find. I need to know, because I’m going in any case. I’d appreciate some information.”

  “Why do you think she needs rescuing?”

  “Obviously she doesn’t. What she needs is to know where we are. In case she’s looking for us.” He took a breath, then added, “For me, I mean. She might be looking for me.”

  “She’s not.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I just know.”

  “But — “

  “I don’t want to go into it. She’s just not.”

  Trefor chewed on that for a moment, then said, “We need to be sure. And she needs to know we’re here.”

  “If she gave a damn about us, she wouldn’t be where she is. She would not have left London to come here.” She wouldn’t be with that Nemed. Alex eyed Trefor and wished he would just leave it alone. “There are things you don’t know about, and are none of your business.”

  “They are my business. She’s my mother.”

  “She’s my wife. My responsibility. I know her better than you do, and I know why she’s where she is. Let it go. Find her if you must, but don’t be surprise
d if she tells you to drop dead when you get there.”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  Alex grunted, and had to admit even to himself she probably wouldn’t say that to Trefor. Maybe. He couldn’t figure out what Lindsay was doing with that elf in the first place; he certainly couldn’t be sure of anything else about her anymore. The nightmares he’d once had of the two of them together, sent to him by Nemed, came to mind and he shut his eyes to keep them out. He said, “Just trust me; there are things you don’t know and don’t want to know.”

  “Then I’ll go. I do want to know, and I’ll find out what those things are.”

  Alex frowned at him. “Why do you think she wants to be rescued?”

  “I don’t care what she wants. It’s what I want.”

  “You want to find your mother shacked up with a slimy old elf?”

  Trefor let go a short bark of laughter. “That’s what you think? She’s left you for Nemed?”

  “That’s nothing. For a while I thought he was your father.” The look of shock on Trefor’s face made him add, “Until I met you and saw how much you look like a MacNeil.”

  “I look like you.’

  “More like my brother. You’re a ringer for him. It’s eerie.”

  Trefor didn’t seem to have a reply for that, but cleared his throat and said, “Well. In any case, I’m going to find her. I think you should go with me.”

  “She won’t want me to find her.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Of course Alex didn’t know that. But even more he didn’t want to take the risk of finding her and learning for a certainty she had left London to be with Nemed. This way he could harbor a tiny corner of belief she had gone in search of Trefor by herself. Desperate hope that it was, he needed to cling to it. “I just want to let it be. There’s nothing I can do for her.”

  “You don’t know that. You don’t know that she isn’t a prisoner. She could be held against her will.”

  “Lindsay? Right. Not unless she was locked up in chains.” Or a cage. Nemed had put her in a cage once and threatened to kill her. How she could be working for him now confused the hell out of him.

  “I think you owe it to her — and to yourself — to find out. Never mind what you owe to me.”

  “Why do you give a damn whether I go?”

  Trefor’s reply to that was immediate and matter-of-fact, and entirely reasonable in a Machiavellian sort of way. “You have more men than I do. There could be a fight. I need you there.”

  “I told you, let go of the John Wayne thing.”

  “If this guy is as nasty as you say, and if these raiders are the land pirates they appear to be, then there will be a fight if we get close. We run a risk. I want backup. I need your help to contact my mother and make sure she’s all right. You’re her husband and my father; I think you have an obligation to the both of us.”

  Alex considered that. Truly he did have an obligation to these two who were now his closest relations, but could it take precedence over his duty to Robert and James?

  While he was thinking, Trefor added, “You want to split off from James. Tell him you see a necessity to patrol. You don’t have to tell him which direction you’re going, because you’ll be going back and forth, sending dispatches by single rider. You don’t like Douglas; you should jump on this opportunity to cut loose before he figures that out.”

  Alex had to smile at the thought of James ever giving a rat’s ass whether anyone liked him. Nevertheless, he decided he liked the idea of splitting from the main army and said, “Fine. I’ll go to James. We’ll head north as soon as I can talk him into assigning us to patrol.”

  Trefor nodded. “Good. I expect we’ll break away tomorrow.”

  “I expect so.”

  Without further discussion, Trefor ducked out the tent flap, leaving Alex to turn over in his mind what he thought he might find once he located Lindsay. Images tumbled in his head, and his gut soured. It surely wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  But he told himself he’d been wrong about her before and it was possible he was wrong again. She’d not deserved his doubts and now might be perfectly innocent of the things he was thinking. He took a deep breath, finished stripping, and resumed his bath, then slipped under the blankets on his pallet. There to dream self-inflicted nightmares of Nemed and Lindsay together.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It took some talking to get James to agree to a patrol. The Earl of Douglas already thought of his army as mobile, and Alex suspected he also liked to always be the first to contact the enemy. That was reasonable; he was as hot for the plunder as anyone else and felt he had more right to it than lesser commanders. Again, reasonable by the standards of the day. Naturally he resisted the idea of sending forty men to wander the countryside on their own, but Alex was insistent. So insistent, his talk skated close to a hint he might simply take his men and go. It was a risk, but he figured he’d known James long enough to have a feel for how much pressure he’d tolerate. He watched the earl’s face as he spoke, alert for signs of too much irritation. It was after several days of nudging that James finally came around to Alex’s way of thinking and acquiesced to the request to split off from the main army.

  They headed south, sent a dispatch to James regarding the territory he was approaching, then circled around and struck north and west toward Carlisle. Though they had heard the troupe of An Reubair was raiding the English West March, in these days of slow travel and even slower communication they were still looking for a needle in a haystack. They might pass within a half mile of the raiders and never know it.

  Then, tracing up a river unfamiliar to Alex, they came upon a town still smoking. In the midst of a thick forest, a remote village no bigger than a few houses gathered at a slow spot in the river had been burned to the ground and its inhabitants were beginning the process of rebuilding. At the approach of Scottish knights the hundred or so villagers took fright and scurried off to the woods. At a command from Alex, his and Trefor’s forty men approaching up the riverside went into action.

  “Get one, bring him back.” said Alex, and Henry Ellot spurred away to cut off one of the men fleeing like a slow sheep running after a herd. His horse blocked the man’s path, and when the villager tried to dodge around, Henry wheeled his mount to block him again.

  “Halt!” shouted Henry.

  The man obeyed, tensed to run at the first opportunity. He looked beyond Henry and waved away a small boy who shouted at him from the forest edge. The boy hesitated, then ran into the woods before any of Alex’s men could catch him. The villager turned to Henry. “We’ve nothing more to take.” The fellow’s voice quavered with terror.

  Henry said, “That’s plain to see. My master wishes to speak with you. We want to know who was here. Talk only. It’s information we need.” He nodded toward Alex to indicate where he wanted the man to go. “Tell him, and know you speak to the Earl of Cruachan.”

  A light of surprise kindled in the man’s face, and he looked over at Alex, who waited patiently with Trefor at his left and Hector to his right. It was probably the first time anyone had ever expressed concern over the predicament of the border families, and particularly the English villager would be surprised at benign interest from a Scottish earl. He glanced back at Henry, then turned to approach Alex with a trepidation born of long abuse from the north.

  At a respectful distance within earshot, he stopped and went to one knee. “My lord,” he said in a tone he might have used to speak to the king himself. He even seemed to be trembling. Alex may have been Scottish and therefore the enemy, but this guy obviously was interested in preserving his own skin in the midst of the earl’s loyal men.

  “Stand and look at me.” Alex wanted to see his eyes, to know his mind. The detainee stood, and Alex continued, pointing with his chin at the destroyed houses. “Who did this?”

  The man shrugged and shuffled his feet. “We cannot say. I don’t know who they were.”

  “Describe them to
me.”

  “I saw little.” Fear rose to his eyes that he might not have enough information to please the earl.

  “Tell me what you saw. Be truthful and thorough if you want to rejoin your family and friends.”

  The man paled, a feat Alex would have thought impossible, for the fellow had been deathly pale and distraught to begin with. Then he said, “They were Scottish.”

  Alex snorted, and lowered his head to peer into the man’s face with disgust. “I know that. Be kind enough to tell me something new. I know you can do better than that. Give it some effort.”

  The villager’s feet shifted in distress. “They were merciless. We did not resist them, but they burned our homes regardless. They took things they could not have truly wanted; we had no silver, nor anything of real value except to ourselves.”

  “Your livestock. They wanted the animals.”

  “Aye, and they burned all that would burn. You can see for yourselves there’s naught left but ashes.”

  Alex found it difficult to imagine Lindsay participating in that sort of senseless destruction. It sickened him. “Go on. How many were there?”

  “I did not stop to count them, and cannae count so high in any case.”

  “Were there as many as these you see before you?”

  The villager looked around at Alex and Trefor’s knights, and said, “Aye. As many, but likely no more.”

  “What else can you tell me?Anything, any small detail?”

  The villager plundered his memory and opened his mouth to say something. He closed it, hesitating to say what was on his mind, thought some more, then finally said, “One of them was of the fey.”

  Alex did not move a muscle of his face. He said, “You believe in faeries?”

  “Do you not, my lord?” Many didn’t, for fear of those who would point the finger of accusation for heresy.

  “Aye, I do.” Alex had to admit that he did believe the wee folk existed, and had little use for those who would deny the patently true. “So one of them had pointed ears? Or did he do magic before your eyes?”