by Gwen Rowley
Geraint remained silent, allowing Enid to respond. After all, it must be difficult to explain that you’ve married the enemy.
She gave Geraint a grateful but wary look. “Neither of us anticipated the marriage, Druce, but we felt it would bring us happiness.”
She should be a diplomat herself, Geraint thought wryly. She didn’t exactly say what either of them felt about the marriage now.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I had been ordered to follow the men that your husband fought several days ago. They traveled too near our land, and we knew they had once been members of the Cornish army.”
Geraint narrowed his eyes. “And why would Cornish soldiers concern you if there is peace between us?”
“We discovered they were no longer your loyal soldiers,” Druce calmly answered. “We needed to discover their motives, to determine if they intended harm. They did not confront us, but I was to continue to watch them.” He glanced at Enid and smiled. “And then I saw you, Enid, fighting against those men in all your glory.”
With a sigh, she waved away his words as if they meant nothing. Geraint almost put a stop to this reunion, but hesitated, knowing his only motivation would be jealousy. Who was this man to Enid? He was almost afraid to find out.
Just to end the awkward conversation, Geraint said, “Come share our fire and our meal this evening.”
He took Enid’s arm and led her back toward their horses. The other soldiers were already dismounting and preparing their encampment.
For her ears alone, Geraint said, “Be careful what you say to him, Enid. You cannot reveal our mission.”
She stiffened, but didn’t pull away.
“If you tell him,” he continued, “I will be forced to keep him with us as a prisoner. I cannot risk that he might twist your words and imply to your father that things are worse than they really are.”
“He will tell my father that I am married to you. He’ll testify that I am here of my own free will. Surely my father will be inclined to wait patiently to talk with you. Is that not enough?”
“But if Druce says I am coming specifically to deal with the Donella, will not your father see that as threatening?”
“Like I do?” Enid pulled her arm away, talking through a false smile for Druce’s benefit.
He opened his mouth to protest, but she sighed and raised a hand.
“Forgive me. My behavior is not helping anything.”
She left him to renew her conversation with Druce, while Geraint took care of her horse as well as his. It was difficult not to watch Enid and Druce together. They were so at ease with each other, like friends more than comrades. Geraint felt unsettled.
It didn’t help that Druce was a pleasant companion. As if being alone on his mission had stifled him, he did most of the talking that evening, praising the Cornish land, their harbors and fishing vessels. He sat around a fire with Enid, Geraint, Lovell, Fryda, and Ainsley, eating roasted fish. They licked their fingers and listened to him, and Geraint even found himself nearly laughing at Druce’s amusing tales of his journey.
Druce glanced at Enid. “Continuing my training is the hardest thing when I’m on a mission alone.”
“I remember that dilemma well,” she replied. “It sometimes helps to be set upon by ruffians.”
Lovell laughed loudly, as if she were joking.
Enid smiled at her squire. “That is what I was doing when I met Sir Geraint.”
“Fighting for your life?” Lovell looked embarrassed.
“You have seen her fight,” Geraint said dryly. “By God’s Teeth, you’ve experienced it first hand. Think you one thief would be enough to defeat her?”
“No one can defeat her,” Lovell said reverently.
Druce grinned. “Enid, is this lad another of your students?”
Geraint’s slumbering unease only intensified.
“He is my squire,” Enid answered after a moment’s hesitation. “We train together.”
If Geraint hadn’t been studying his wife so closely, he wouldn’t have seen the move at all—but in the meager firelight he saw her kick Druce in the ankle, while wearing an expression of innocence.
Druce didn’t even act startled. “You have a good teacher, boy.”
The sick feeling in Geraint’s stomach blossomed into a jealousy he’d never experienced before. This man, this soldier, had lain with Enid before Geraint had. She had “trained” him, taught him the intimate arts that Geraint had shared with her in their marriage bed.
Geraint forced himself to participate as the discussion meandered through various training exercises. But it was difficult when he was fighting self-pity. He told himself that Enid had married him, had chosen his life over that of a warrior woman.
But she was already regretting those choices after the revelation of Geraint’s mission. Had she changed her mind? Did she wish to return to the Donella now that she had Druce as a traveling companion? Geraint didn’t want her to go—had recently convinced her not to—but short of tying her up, he didn’t see how he could stop her. And she could probably break the ropes with ease.
Ainsley finally showed Druce to a fire where he could spread his pallet to sleep. Fryda went to the women’s pavilion, and Geraint kept expecting Enid to follow. But she waited until it was just the two of them at their fire, awkwardly silent. Off in the distance, they could hear the howl of wolves. Sentries guarded their perimeter, and the quiet of the soldiers’ voices as they passed one another sometimes carried on the wind.
And still Enid sat there.
“Do you not have something you wish to ask of me?” she said quietly.
He sighed. “Do you want me to?”
She stared at him with serious intent. “I wish for no more secrets between us, my husband. I told you that.”
“Very well.” Keeping his voice as neutral as possible, he asked, “Did you train Druce?”
“Aye.”
“In everything?”
Without hesitating, she nodded, and his fears were confirmed. It seemed so much worse to meet a man that Enid had lain with, rather than just imagine it. When Druce looked at her, did he remember the beauty of her nakedness? For all Geraint knew, women of the Donella might give themselves to any man, regardless of their married state.
Enid sighed. “He was the first young man to whom I taught the arts of love. I was as nervous as he.”
She watched him solemnly, with a shine of tears in her eyes.
“Is this too much for you to bear? Will my past always be between us, as well as our people?”
At least she cared how he felt. On his knees, he moved the short distance around the fire until he sat beside her. “Make me understand, Enid. This is so very foreign to me. How can you look at him and not remember what you were to him?”
“I do not forget that I was his teacher, Geraint,” she said, hugging her knees to her chest. “But that’s all it was. There was no emotion invested between us. We shared respect, and an eventual friendship, but it is not always that way. During all training, there is a distance that cannot be crossed. I was a mentor to him, not a lover. Even now, when I look at him, I remember our sword-fighting exercises more than the physical intimacy we shared for only one night.”
“One night? That is all?”
She nodded. “If you’d like, I could explain how we trained them.”
He held up a hand. “Nay. This was enough.”
“It is difficult for you with Druce here, I know. But he will be gone tomorrow.”
He hesitated. “And you will not leave with him?”
“I have given you my word!” she said, eyes wide. “I will go with you to see my father, and stand between you and him.”
“We are civilized people, Enid. It will not come to that.”
“Can you promise me that?” she whispered, her eyes again filling.
He cupped her cheek in his hand. “I do not wish there to be a lie between us. All I can promise is that I will do everyt
hing in my power to settle peacefully with your tribe. Can you trust me?”
“I hope so.”
IN the morning, as the day dawned beneath gloomy clouds, Enid met alone with Druce for one last time to give him a supply of rations.
Druce nodded his thanks, then hesitated. “Enid, what do you wish me to tell your father? Have you already sent word of your marriage?”
She shook her head. “I had no one to trust with such news. You can be my messenger.”
“I would be honored.”
“Tell him that I fell in love with the prince of Cornwall and married him, but I have not forgotten my mission. I will come to see him as soon as I’m able. Everything is under control.”
A day after Druce left their party, they traveled across the open moor, craggy hilltops etched against the sky in the distance. They passed a standing circle of stones, obviously put there with great care and deliberation. Enid, who’d been plodding along, lost in her thoughts, felt a whisper of magic.
She pulled her horse to a stop and stared at the stones, chipped and weathered and covered in moss. Several had fallen down, but they still formed enough of a circle to be used.
And they’d been used recently.
She looked for Geraint and found him guiding his horse along the line of soldiers, but his gaze was on her. She gestured for him, then dismounted and went to stand near the stone circle, but did not go in.
She felt him at her back.
“Enid?”
“Someone has done magic here recently.”
“Can you tell what was done and why?”
He no longer even hesitated at talk of magic, and a small feeling of amusement moved through her.
She forced away thoughts of her husband, took a step into the circle, and closed her eyes to concentrate. It was like stepping beneath an invisible waterfall. She gasped at the sensation of magic all around her, bathing her. It pressed against her skin, crept into her ears and up her nostrils. She batted at the air before her as if the magic were a living thing.
She heard Geraint’s voice from far away, but she could not heed it. The magic crawled on her skin like a million skittering bugs. She was swatting at it, scraping it out of her hair, feeling its corrosive evil as a sickness. It would never end—
Until someone grabbed her arm and pulled, and she emerged from the spell of the stone circle. She collapsed to her knees, nauseated, but at least the terrible feeling of invasiveness was gone. Only the hum of power nearby remained, a silent buzzing in the background. If she had not been rescued, she would have lingered there until the spell faded, and that could have been a long time.
“Enid?”
She felt Geraint’s hands on her arms. She patted his fingers tiredly.
“Are you well?” he demanded. “Is there yet magic I need to combat?”
He put his arms around her, and she clung to him gratefully.
“I am fine,” she whispered. “There was much magic in that circle, and not for good.” As her thoughts cleared, she struggled to make sense of the fleeting impressions that had assaulted her mind.
Then she turned and stared up at her husband’s face, so close to her own. “They have cloaked themselves so that we did not realize their nearness. They’re coming!”
Chapter 19
TO Enid’s relief, Geraint turned to Ainsley, his captain of the guard, and ordered the troops into a defensive position. Thank the gods he believed her.
Only then did he turn back to her and ask, “Can you see who it is?”
She shook her head. “I can only sense their evil intent. They’ve shielded themselves from our scurriers by using the magic. They are not great practitioners of it themselves, but this circle is ancient, and they used its power.”
“Mount your horse, Enid, and stay behind the line. Take your maidservant with you.”
She bit her lip but did as he asked, knowing that it was instinctive for him to shield a woman, especially his own wife. He’d only wanted to protect her from the moment he’d met her, and she loved that about him, even though she knew how impractical it was. She could be one of this troop’s greatest assets. And she would be, if they needed her.
It was hard to believe that she could love him and still not trust him.
Their enemy was spotted almost immediately to the east by the cloud of dust raised by their galloping horses. The scurriers would have sounded the alarm much earlier, but for the magic used against them. As it was, Enid knew she’d given her husband’s soldiers time to prepare. Helmets had been donned, shields and swords at the ready. Fryda found a hiding place behind a tumble of rocks, and Enid reluctantly joined her.
The enemy carried no banner, wore no uniform tunic, just like the mercenaries who’d attacked them twice before. There were more of them this time, and she realized that her husband’s twenty-four soldiers were now outnumbered. But with their shields held before them, they kicked their horses into a gallop to meet the charge. The air was filled with the roar of men about to do battle, and she could not sit behind and wait.
To Fryda, she said, “I will be back for you,” and began to slide down a tumble of gravel to the ground below, where her horse waited impatiently.
“Milady!” the girl cried. “I fear for you!”
Enid gave her a reassuring wave and mounted her horse. She followed behind her husband, determined to guard his back. Lovell, white-faced and brave, had waited nearby, obviously knowing her well. He rode up beside her.
“You must not fear for me either!” she shouted to him. “Take care of yourself!”
The clash of shields and weapons was almost deafening. Horses went down, pinning some riders, leaving others to fight on their feet. One of the enemy came through the line unscathed, still mounted. When Enid would have taken care of him, Lovell shouted a cry, kicked his horse into a gallop, and met the enemy. She was frightened to death for him, but she had trained him well, and she had to let him grow up.
Sword at the ready, she glanced between Lovell and Geraint, hoping neither of them would have need of her. Her husband fought at his men’s sides, inspiring confidence and camaraderie, but the Cornishmen were outnumbered. She saw several of their soldiers lying still on the ground.
More of the enemy broke through the defensive line, and Enid was forced to leave off hovering over Lovell and charge into battle herself. She’d never fought on horseback, but it was what she had started out this whole mission to learn to do.
And with the help of the gifts she’d received along the way, she succeeded. She killed two men without having to dismount, and the second had fought quite skillfully. But the power that infused her arm made her invincible, and she found herself galloping into the melee itself. All around her men and horses screamed. Weapons crashed together. The very air seemed thin with the heat of battle, and men groaned just trying to breathe.
But Enid was in her element, using her every skill to help her husband and his men.
When Geraint called for them to fall back and regroup, she obeyed immediately. Both sides retreated, keeping the ancient standing stones between them. Their renewed power was fading fast, and she no longer heard the hum of energy. The injured and the dead, men and horses alike, lay strewn on the battlefield. She counted quickly, and saw that four of their men were no longer with them. Were they injured, dying, even one of the dead?
The soldiers were well trained, and gathered around their prince to listen to his instructions. Enid remained on the fringes, watching the enemy, who had lost even more men. Now their numbers were more even with the Cornish soldiers.
“My lady!”
She turned to see Lovell, blood running down the side of his head, approach her.
“You are wounded!” she cried, reaching to examine his cut.
He waved her away, and she knew she was behaving more like a mother than the master of a squire.
“We need your help,” Lovell said in a quiet voice.
“I would do anything for my husband,” she an
swered.
Lovell shook his head. “’Tis for one of his men, the youngest but for me.”
“Severin?”
“Aye. This trip is his first experience in battle, and when we had sufficient numbers, he felt confident in his prowess. But today . . . my lady, I worry that he will allow his fear to keep him from the next attack—to embarrass him beyond what he can stand. The king would insist that he never be allowed to travel with the prince again. Will you help him as you helped me?”
Enid hesitated only a moment. If her warrior woman abilities could help, she must use them. She followed Lovell past the soldiers who guzzled water, even while they searched the ground for abandoned weapons to replace the ones that were broken or lost.
They found Severin with his back against one of the standing stones, his knees drawn up, his head cradled in his arms. Blood dripped from several small wounds, and he was breathing far too fast.
Enid went down on her knees. “Severin, can you hear me?”
But he didn’t answer. He was shivering so hard that his teeth chattered. When Geraint called them to reform, if Severin was able to respond at all, he might get himself—or others—killed.
She put her hand on his shoulder, and he flinched as if she meant him harm.
“Severin, it will be all right,” she whispered.
And with her thoughts alone, she called to her abilities as a warrior woman. Through her hand, confidence surged into Severin, and with a gasp, his head dropped back so that he could gape up at her. Where they touched, the faintest glow emanated, and without the sun, it was far too noticeable.
Guiltily she looked around and saw no one watching—except Geraint.
He had already accepted her magical gifts, and this was a lesser thing: courage when all seemed bleak. She turned away and looked into the grateful eyes of Severin, whose face had grown calm.
“Milady . . . what have you done to me?” he whispered in amazement.
“Only given you the strength to believe in yourself,” she replied.
And at that moment, exhaustion swept through her, and she knew that although she’d given aid to one soldier that would last the rest of his life, for this next hour she’d taken away another soldier from the battle—herself.