Lords of Conquest Boxed Set

by Patricia Ryan

  “Your charms are intoxicating.”

  “There’s straw up in the loft, and blankets.” She tilted her head toward a ladder leading to a niche between the byre and the ceiling beams. “We’ll be more comfortable up there.”

  Lowering her skirt, Alex raised a tankard and drank from it. “Truth be told, I’m more tired than I am randy. We’ve been fighting since yesterday morning, with no sleep. It only ended at sundown.”

  “I know.” Of course. She would have heard the sounds of battle as they wrested nearby Cottwyk Castle from her countrymen. Her expression sobered only momentarily. Nodding toward Luke, she said, “What about you, then? Are you too weary to take what you came here for?”

  “Nay.” He craved sleep as desperately as Alex did, but even more pressing was the need to release some of the savage energy thrumming in his veins.

  Alex set down his half-emptied tankard, grabbed his mantle, and lay down on the floor next to the fire pit, arranging the woolen cloak over him like a blanket. “Wake me when you’re done,” he told Luke, “and I’ll take my turn.” He shifted to get comfortable in the packed dirt, let out a great yawn, and closed his eyes. Within moments, his breathing grew steady and one hand fell open limply. Knowing his brother, Luke very much doubted he’d be able to awaken him for his turn with Helig, but then he suspected Alex was a good deal less keen on the wench than he’d let on. He’d just thrown her skirt up that way to show a little polite interest. If he’d really wanted her, he would have taken her right then and there. Alex wasn’t shy.

  “Nice fellow, your brother,” Helig said.

  Luke grunted in affirmation and accepted the tankard she offered him, draining it in one tilt. It wasn’t half bad. One thing these Saxons could do was brew ale.

  “You were thirsty.” The whore took the empty tankard from him and reached up to unfasten his mantle pin. She held it close to her face, her eyes widening as she examined the little onyx dragon imbedded in the golden brooch. Looking up, she said, “You’re him.”

  Luke took the pin from her and clumsily refastened it to the cloak. It had been a parting gift from his father when they left to join William. Alex had received one also, inset with tiny pearls in the shape of a wolf’s head, which he was forever misplacing. Luke treasured his pin and had always taken care not to lose it, especially after receiving word of his sire’s death at Christmastide. Both pins bore the same hopeful inscription on the reverse side: Be strong and of good courage.

  “You are him, aren’t you?” Helig said. “You’re the Black Dragon.”

  “I’m Luke de Périgueux.”

  Helig’s gaze lingered on his hair, which he wore long and braided in back, in the style of his father, rather than closely cropped in the Norman fashion. It was the feature that distinguished him from the rest of the occupying soldiers, including his brother. “Aye, you’re him,” she said, nodding. “You’re the one they talk about.”

  Luke knew what they said about him, the words they used to describe him: bloodthirsty, ruthless, brutal. Now she’d be wary, perhaps even refuse him, tuppence or no. He waited for the fascination in her eyes to turn to apprehension.

  But it didn’t. If anything, she seemed more enthralled by him now that she knew who he was. Her eyes lit with an interest he knew could not be feigned. Some women had a weakness for monsters in the guise of men, and Luke suspected this Helig was one of them. As she undraped the mantle from his shoulders and hung it on a peg, Luke reassessed her attractiveness as a bed partner. If her heart was in it, as it seemed to be, she might give him quite the lively ride. God knew he could use one.

  She approached him with a sway in her hips and a look of frank desire. There was something crudely seductive about her, an unwashed sexuality that stirred his loins. He backed her against the table and ground his hips against hers as he gathered up her kirtle with trembling hands. Arousal merged with the bloodlust still surging through him to rob him of all reason or self-control. He needed this woman, this release, and he was going to take what he needed now.

  Unbuckling his belt, she said, “Let’s get you out of these things first.” Luke yanked the heavy, calf-length tunic over his head and tossed it onto the bench, leaving himself in his shirt and chausses. Helig untied the shirt, exposing his chest, and combed her fingers through the dark hair there. “What have we got here?” She pulled out the first of two leather cords looped around his neck and ran her thumb over the crudely carved wooden cross. “My word. You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”

  He whipped up her skirt and lifted her onto the table as she pulled out the second cord. “What’s this, then?” She fingered the little leather pouch, causing the dried herbs within to crackle. “Yarrow?” A reasonable assumption. Many of Luke’s fellow knights carried a pouch of the all-purpose medicinal herb.

  “Aye,” he lied as he reached beneath his shirt and fumbled for the drawstring of his chausses. His madness had become a carnal drive, hot and urgent.

  She brought the pouch to her nose and sniffed, then frowned. “That’s not yarrow. What’s in there? Catnip?”

  Luke stilled in the act of untying the woolen hose.

  “I recognize the smell,” she said. “My brother, Ham, uses it. Perhaps you know of him. You’re under Lord Alberic’s command, are you not? Ham is the hangman at Foxhyrst.”

  Luke and Alex were quartered at Foxhyrst Castle, under the rather inept command of Lord Alberic, one of King William’s most ambitious lapdogs. Alberic’s devotion to his liege—combined with a certain amount of sly manipulation—had recently earned him the coveted title of sheriff. Most of the soldiers who’d served under him since Hastings—including Luke and his brother—remained with him as men-at-arms charged with suppressing rebellion. As Luke recalled, Alberic’s hangman had more or less come with Foxhyrst Castle. Ham was a bearish, bald-headed Saxon who brought a great deal of savage enthusiasm to his work and cared little that his countrymen counted him a Judas.

  “Ham says he can’t work up the stomach to torture and kill folks lest he chews some catnip first,” Helig explained. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? Catnip?”

  Among other things. Luke took the pouch from her and tucked it back into his shirt.

  “Ham says it makes him half mad. Makes him evil as the Devil himself, so he don’t care about nothing but killing. Takes a day or more for it to wear off.” She looked at him knowingly. “You chew it before you go into battle, don’t you? That’s what makes you such a ferocious—”

  Luke closed one hand over her mouth and clamped the other around the back of her neck, hard. Bringing his face very close to hers, he stared fixedly into her wide green eyes. “You talk too much,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to talk to you. I just want to fuck you.”

  She nodded. He eased his hands away, and she licked her lips nervously. “Let’s go upstairs to the—”

  He covered her mouth with his hand again. It was shaking. “Right here is fine.” With his other hand, he parted her stout thighs and positioned himself between them.

  She looked over his shoulder at Alex, unconscious on the floor.

  “My brother can sleep through anything.” He jerked on the drawstring again, but his palsied hands seemed unequal to the task of freeing himself from his chausses.

  Luke felt a gust of cold air at his back. Helig sucked in a breath and pushed him away, her eyes on something behind him. Wheeling around, Luke saw a man standing in the doorway, holding the deerskin aside.

  The intruder was big and unmistakably Saxon, with long red hair and an unkempt beard. His skin was pale as parchment, and dark circles rimmed his eyes. Even from across the room, Luke could smell him. He smelled like sickness and sour ale.

  The Saxon growled something at Helig while gesturing to Luke and the sleeping Alex, his expression one of outrage. From what Luke understood of the local tongue, the whore was being berated for consorting with Normans.

  Luke took a step in the other man’s direction, the quivering bowstri
ng inside him humming with murderous fury. His fists shook with the unreasoning need to punish this creature, to smash his face in, pummel the life out of him.

  Jumping down from the table, Helig grabbed Luke’s arm and said something to the other man in an appeasing tone. The Saxon barked something back at her, then reached beneath his tattered cape and produced two pennies. He pressed these into Helig’s hand, then began pulling her toward the ladder that led to the loft.

  Luke seized the Saxon bastard and spun him around, hauling back with his fist.

  Helig closed both hands over his wrist. “Please, no!”

  He could have easily wrested himself from her grip, but a small, still-sane voice added its soothing whisper to the cacophony inside his head: It’s the herbs... hold back... ride this out.

  “Please,” the whore begged in a tremulous voice. “I don’t want any trouble here. This fellow, he’s a bit touched. Don’t know what he’s doing, really.”

  That’s two of us, Luke thought. Two madmen, fighting over a poxy whore.

  “He comes to me regular,” Helig continued. “All he wants is what he came for, and then he’ll leave. Just let me do him first, and then I’ll do you for free. You can have me all night. I’ll do anything you want.”

  Luke yanked his hand out of her grasp. He could kill this man, the state he was in. Christ, he almost did. Let it go... ride it out.

  With a heavy sigh, Luke snatched his mantle off the peg and wrapped it around himself. “Wake me when he’s gone.”

  From the unsteady way the Saxon climbed the squeaky ladder, Luke could only conclude that he was drunk. It could be a long wait before Luke’s turn came around.

  He knew he’d never get to sleep with the battle madness still upon him. He searched the cottage for something stronger than ale, something to take the edge off, and came up with a jug of brandy. Half filling his tankard, he drank the brandy in one long, scorching swallow, then reclined on the other side of the fire pit from his brother and stared into the flames. They danced and swayed, like a field of wheat beneath a rippling breeze—a golden field, ignited by a setting sun.

  The image brought to mind the Abbey at Aurillac, where he’d spent an untroubled youth avoiding his lessons in favor of tending to the monastic wheat fields and vineyards and sheep pastures. Luke fingered the rough wooden cross beneath his shirt, remembering those years—happy years, the only truly happy years of his life. Often lately he found himself wondering if he’d still be happy—or at least content—if he’d taken Holy Orders as his father had intended, rather than rejecting cloistered life for soldiering.

  Luke ached to exchange the tools of warfare for those of the farm. He would surely have been granted a conquered holding already—either outright or by marriage to an English heiress—as had most of the others who’d fought at Hastings, but his skill with the crossbow made him too valuable an asset for subduing the locals. It was said that William had his siege towers, his battering rams, his stone-throwing machines... and Luke de Périgueux. His fellow soldiers had long ago dubbed him the Black Dragon, in honor not just of his dark Aquitaine coloring, but of the fiery beast within him, the image of which adorned his battle pennon.

  A light rain began to patter against the thatch. From the loft came whispers and the crackling of straw. Envious of Alex’s blessed oblivion, Luke reached for the brandy jug and drank directly from it.

  If only he could embrace warfare as Alex did. The White Wolf, they called Alex, a tribute to the stealth that made him such an effective swordsman. The enemy never knew he was there until they felt his steel sliding through them. In another man, such lethal skill might earn him a measure of envy from his colleagues, but the amiable twenty-year-old was the most popular soldier at Foxhyrst.

  Luke kept his dependence on the potent herbs a secret from Alex out of shame. What kind of weakling was he that he must resort to such measures before he could aim his crossbow at the enemy?

  At one time he had truly felt the dragon’s fire in his breast, and would enter each engagement screaming war cries and eager for blood. But his blood-thirst had come to sicken him, and now he must chew that loathsome herbal concoction before battle to reproduce it. If only it didn’t affect his senses so. Often he could recall little of a battle until weeks, even months, later. In fact, he had no clear memory of having taken Cottwyk Castle today—just fractured, nightmarish images, and the vague sense that he’d done something particularly irredeemable. Were it not for his blood-spattered chainmail, he might think it had all been a dreadful, half-remembered dream.

  The voices in the loft grew belligerent as the rain intensified, dribbling through a hole in the thatch to form a muddy puddle near Luke’s head. Seething with anger at the whore, the Saxon, and himself, he brought the jug to his mouth again and gulped. Every time he moved his head, things spun sickeningly, so he tried to lie still. He stared in the fire, squinting to make out the form twitching and writhing in the flames. Moving closer, he saw that it was a young man, little more than a boy. He was saying something in English. Luke strained and heard the word “Please.”

  Nay! He reached out to sweep the specter away, but it just leapt back up, writhing in torment in its hellish inferno, its eyes trained on Luke, its mouth working silently... “Please.”

  Something flickered on Luke’s arm, and he struggled to focus on it. “Jesu!” His shirtsleeve was on fire. Sitting up, he slapped at the burning linen, but the flames spread swiftly, consuming the thin fabric and searing his arm. Grimacing at the pain, he pulled his mantle tight around himself to smother the flames.

  “Christ.” A sudden bout of shivering racked him. He wrapped his arms around his updrawn legs and squeezed his eyes shut. Ride it out, ride it out...

  The brandy, the lack of sleep, and those damned herbs had joined forces to drive him even further into madness than he’d already sunk. “Ride it out,” he whispered, lowering his head to his knees. “Ride it out, ride it out, ride it out...”

  When he opened his eyes, Luke found himself crouching on the floor of a strange cottage, rocking back and forth, back and forth. He blinked at the dreary, unfamiliar surroundings, at the flames crackling in the clay-lined pit, at the dark form of a man on the other side of the fire, asleep.

  “Alex?” The man didn’t move. Luke shifted to get a better view of his face. It was Alex.

  Over the sound of heavy rain came a man’s voice, from above. A woman spoke then, and Luke had a mental picture of a fleshy wench with curly red hair.

  The whore.

  The place began to look familiar. He remembered coming here. He’d come here for a woman, and Alex had tagged along to be companionable. But someone had stolen the woman from him and was upstairs with her now.

  He had a senseless urge to climb that ladder and take what he’d come here for. His hands curled into fists, and his mind’s eye saw him slamming them into the Saxon’s head until he didn’t move anymore.

  Luke rubbed his fists on his forehead and forced deep breaths into his lungs. Ride it out.

  Lying down, he tucked his mantle around himself. Sleep. That was what he needed. To sleep it off.

  * * *

  Luke snapped the bunch of small, purplish grapes off the vine, imagining the velvety wine the brothers would make from it. Holding the fruit over his open mouth, he crushed it in his hand so that he could drink its juice. The grapes burst open with a moan, spilling thick red blood over his fingers and into his mouth.

  No! He gagged and choked, thrashing against his confining mantle. Another moan echoed through the tiny cottage, and another, accompanied by the rhythmic crackling of straw overhead.

  A woman’s breathless voice: the whore.

  His whore—Luke’s. Not the Saxon’s. His.

  Luke leapt to his feet, fury blooming red hot within him. He crossed to the ladder in a single stride and climbed it three rungs at a time. The Saxon, rutting away between the whore’s pale legs, turned with an expression of outrage. Luke grabbed him and jerked
him off her, then smashed his fist into the bastard’s face. The Saxon groaned. Luke hit him again, and again, and again, until he lay limp and bloodied in the straw.

  The whore was trying to crawl away. Luke seized her from behind, whipped her skirt up, and mounted her.

  She cried out.

  Luke came abruptly awake. What... ?

  He sat up, trembling and sweating and struggling against the mantle that enclosed him like a cocoon. Next to him, coals glowed in a fire pit, on the other side of which his brother slept soundly. From the loft came the sounds of enthusiastic coupling.

  Was that a dream? It had felt so real, so...

  Tremors racked him. He was a menace, the condition he was in—a mindless beast, capable of anything. He must leave this place. Now.

  Gaining his feet awkwardly, he circled the fire pit and knelt down next to his brother.

  “Alex.” Luke grabbed the sleeping man by his shoulder and shook him. “Alex, wake up.” He slapped his brother on the face. “Come on, Alex. Let’s get out of here. Let’s go.”

  Alex didn’t so much as alter his breathing. He wouldn’t wake up till he was good and ready. What was Luke to do? He couldn’t leave Alex here alone; it was dangerous. A lone Norman soldier asleep in an English brothel with a lunatic Saxon upstairs who hated their kind? No, Luke couldn’t just ride away, much as he would have liked to.

  Luke returned to his spot on the other side of the dying fire and lifted the brandy jug to his mouth again. He’d drink himself insensible, that’s what he’d do. He’d drink himself into a deep and harmless stupor.

  * * *

  A crack of thunder jolted Luke. He raised his head and looked around, disoriented to find himself lying facedown in straw. He’d been on the packed earth by the fire pit the last he remembered.

  He tried to rise, but his head hit something hard—a ceiling beam—and he sank into the straw again. Christ, where am I? What’s happening?

  Another discharge of thunder made him flinch. Lightning flickered through a tiny window, briefly illuminating a cramped space between a straw-strewn floor and a thatched roof: the loft. Dread shivered through him.