‘You won’t get away with this,’ Jean gasped, making a pass at the Count.
De Roncier side-stepped nimbly and lifted his lips in a snarl. ‘You think not?’
Jean made another stroke. ‘They’ll know who did this.’ François lunged, aiming for the knight’s heart. Jean turned his opponent’s blade aside with a grace that brought a smile to Waldin’s lips.
‘Neatly done, brother,’ Waldin breathed approvingly, and started clearing a path towards them.
‘The Duke will suspect,’ Jean ground out, ‘when it comes to light that we’re at odds in his lawcourt.’
François shook his head.
‘Who else would dare break the Duke’s peace? This land is his, and his writ is absolute here.’
François held up a mailed hand. ‘If you’ll hold off a moment?’
Jean nodded and shifted his sword to one side, eyes wary, but listening.
A wolfish gleam fired in the ruined hazel eyes. ‘You must know that a band of pirates have taken to mooring their ships in the Small Sea,’ François said. ‘They’ve been working their way up the estuaries, of which yours is but one. They take cover in the forest. I think you’ll find it’s the pirates who shoulder the blame for this, not I.’
A blond hulk blocked Waldin’s view, and made a pass. Waldin turned it aside without conscious thought, and tried to forge towards his brother and the Count, but the hulk had a long reach and barred his way. Waldin swore, for his mind was set on purging the world of the parasite that was de Roncier.
His brother and the Count re-engaged. Little by little, de Roncier was driving Jean back to the gaily tiled hearth. Waldin frowned. Another step and Jean would be dancing on hot ashes. He saw his brother’s sword sweep wide of the mark, and his frown deepened. That was not his brother’s style, a four year-old could have done better. What was he up to?
But almost before that question had finished forming, Waldin’s febrile mind threw up an answer. Jean was not even trying. Staring at his brother, it dawned on Waldin that for months they’d been gazing at the face of a man who had already suffered a mortal blow and was scarcely keeping body and soul together. Behind the front, his brother had crumbled to dust. Jean had relinquished responsibility for military matters, and he had not merely been providing a bored brother with something to stop him twiddling his thumbs. The delegation had been total. Jean had had the stuffing knocked out of him. He had lost interest in life, he had given up. He remembered the moves – witness that brilliant warding pass he had made a few moments ago – but he was not choosing to use them. Since the day his wife had died, Jean had been a shell of a man.
Waldin flicked his wrist, and severed an artery in the neck of a de Roncier trooper. Petrified, the soldier stared at Waldin with the eyes of a man who knew that he had been dealt a mortal blow. He toppled slowly, soundlessly, his blood pumping into the rushes. Jean was practically in the fireplace. Stepping over the fallen man and forcing his way through the scrimmage, Waldin went to give him aid. It was far better to go on your own home ground, he thought grimly. Far better to go fighting for a brother you loved than to die on a stranger’s land for a cause you had no share in. He would have his warrior’s death, and it would be a burning, glorious, defiant death. He’d fight to the bitter end, and if he couldn’t take François de Roncier with him, he’d have to trust in God to see that that swine’s felonies did not go unrewarded.
Crouching in the doorway, Gwenn stared at a scene from the mouth of Hell.
Gone was the well-ordered hall she had sat and sewed in with her mother. Pallets still strewed the floor, mute testimony to the unexpectedness of the attack. Lying across the bedrolls were bodies; but the bodies were broken, bloodied bodies, and the sleep those men were sleeping was not one from which they would ever awaken. Men were screaming. Men were groaning. Men were chillingly silent. Transfixed with horror, Gwenn was unaware that her sister had left the women and was climbing down the winding stairs after her.
Catching sight of Roger, her father’s squire, for one moment Gwenn fancied him festooned with red silk ribbons. Then she realised the lad was beribboned with his own guts. Her gorge rose and she reeled back. She forced her gaze back to the conflict. She was rigid with fear for her father. She had to see for herself that he was numbered among the quick. And where were Waldin and Raymond? Were all the men she loved dead already? What of Ned? At first she could not mark any of them among the seething mass of fighting, living men. Her eyes were skimming the lifeless forms sprawled over pallets and rushes, when the fray cleared in front of her and she was granted a clear view of her father.
Jean and Waldin were standing hip to hip, measuring swords with a man whom Gwenn did not recognise. She had picked up enough knowledge of arms from her menfolk to know at a glance that the man’s hauberk and helm were out of the ordinary. This must be the detested Count de Roncier. He shouted hoarsely, and in an instant four soldiers were at their lord’s side, their swords directed at the St Clair brothers.
Her breath was coming in fast, uneven gasps. She tried to swallow, couldn’t. Though it was unnecessary, for the brothers had seen de Roncier, she tried to shout a warning. The words lodged in her throat. Her legs were unable to support her, and she sank to her knees.
A shadow fell over her. A blood-smeared face stared wildly into hers and her heart dropped and thumped about in her stomach. Under the red streaks, the face was pale, and one that she knew. ‘Ned!’ she blurted, giddy with relief, for she had feared that her last moment had come.
‘Get upstairs!’ Ned gasped, pointing with his sword.
Without his gambeson he looked alarmingly vulnerable. He had a helmet, but it was dented. His tunic was torn and hanging off one shoulder. His knuckles were scraped raw.
‘Ned...’ Sick with fear, Gwenn pinned her eyes on his face, for bloody and changed as her father’s captain was, he was at least recognisable. Nothing else in that hell of a hall was the least bit familiar.
‘Move, Gwenn.’ He was so concerned for Gwenn’s safety, that not only did he forget the title that was her due, he reinforced his command by giving her a bruising kick on the thigh. ‘Get upstairs,’ he said, and groaned in frustration when she didn’t obey him.
‘Papa!’ White as bone, Gwenn looked past Ned at the figures grouped round the fireplace. Ned’s fist clenched. ‘Papa!’ she repeated, on a rising note. She shot Ned a look of agony. ‘Where’s the glory in this?’
‘Gwenn, you must–’
‘This is butchery, not glory. Look! Five against two!’ Ned whirled round ‘Give them aid, Ned. Please.’
It was then that Katarin reached the comfort of her sister’s skirts.
‘Katarin!’ Gwenn exclaimed, and her hands came up to shield Katarin’s eyes.
‘I’ll help them,’ Ned said. ‘But you must go up. For your sister, if not for yourself.’
Gwenn nodded and, sword up, Ned dived back into the mêlée.