Chapter Two
The Chase
Talon
“Four apples, no more.”
Talon handed the stallion’s reins over to Denys. “He’s had two
already this morning, no matter what he tells you.”
The stable boy grinned. “Aye, Captain,
I won’t let him fool me this time. And, Sir, the healers are
here.”
“Good.” Talon flexed his
bandaged left hand. He’d washed the cut given to him by the
flame-haired, hazel-eyed wildcat he’d come across in the mountains
yesterday, but the wound could have used a good healing balm. The
thorny beauty had left her mark.
Not that he blamed her. He grinned.
The first sight of her knee deep in the river as she stood off two
armed warriors with nothing more than two puny knives and one large
canine that looked more wolf than dog was something to savor. Her
legs had been bare up to her sleekly muscled thighs, her wet skirt
and tunic plastered to her womanly curves, and her auburn curls had
fallen free from their pins. He’d stood no more than a few feet
from her as she’d studied him with her changeling eyes of green and
gold and burnt umber rimmed with rings as black as her thick
lashes, mesmerizing him with her voice of smoked honey and her
blinding smile—right up until she’d called him an arrogant ass and
sliced his palm. He chuckled and ran his good hand back through his
hair. He’d asked for it, and she’d given it to him.
His troop had ridden with King Charles
into Spain last spring, taking city after city from the ruling
Moors in the name of Gaul and Christendom. After razing the city of
Pamplona, which still left a bad taste in Talon’s mouth, the army
had laid siege to Zaragoza, setting up camp on the Erbo River.
Talon was a man of plans and action, and his company of horsemen
formed to be fast moving and hard fighting, not to sit on their
backsides waiting for sickness and starvation to win the day. He’d
hated the sweltering plains of Spain and hated the thought of
innocent women and children dying slow deaths behind the walls of
the besieged city even more, so when Charles had asked for a troop
to return to the border valley of Oloron to man the garrison and
guard against raiding Basques, he’d been the first to volunteer.
They’d arrived three days ago, and he’d been glad to find the
villagers well used to supplying goods and workers for the
garrison. Leaving Anglbert in charge yesterday, he and Phillipe,
his second-in-command, had scouted the valley’s western border,
following the river up the mountainside, where they’d come upon the
wildcat and her wolf.
Today they’d scouted the valley’s
northern borders, where they’d found no signs of Basques or
wildcats. Disappointed as he was about the latter, Talon figured he
was bound to run into her again at some point during his stay at
Crossroads Keep. She’d been heading downriver yesterday with her
goats, and Oloron was the closest settlement of toths and villages
to the border wilds. He’d just have to keep looking.
Heading for the hall, a two-story
stronghold of wood and stone built to house troops twice the number
of his, he noticed a distinct lack of his men at their tasks in the
courtyard. He found them inside the hall, gathered around one of
the long dining tables. One by one they lifted their heads as he
approached, strange grins spreading across their faces as they
stepped back from the table, revealing a slim figure with a thick
auburn braid hanging down to the middle of her back, bending over
Anglbert’s knee.
Phillipe had regaled the entire troop
with the tale of their captain and the red-haired, long-limbed goat
herder at supper last night. They all watched Talon as Anglbert
looked up with the same strange grin plastered on his
face.
“Captain,” Anglbert said,
and the auburn-haired goat-herder instantly stiffened. “May I
introduce the valley’s healers: the ladies Sophie—” He nodded
toward a wizened, white-haired woman with a shrewd gaze. “—and
Lara.”
“Ladies.” Talon gave the
snowcapped healer a quick nod before turning to the younger woman.
He gave her the briefest of grins as she lifted her gaze, her eyes
as big and mesmerizing as he remembered them, eyes that grew even
bigger as he held his bandaged hand up. “I’m glad you’ve come, for
I’ve a recent wound that needs tending.”
Her cheeks flushed a becoming rosy
pink and she dropped her gaze back down to Anglbert’s
knee.
“Sit here.” The old healer
called Sophie indicated the bench beside her, across the table from
Lara, who steadfastly refused to look his way as he set his
longsword down on the bench and took the proffered seat. He held
his hand out to Sophie, who peeled away the bandage and inspected
the cut that ran from the edge of his little finger to the base of
his thumb. “’Tis fresh, kept clean,” she said, prodding the wound’s
edges with her fingertip. She looked up from his palm, her pale,
blue-gray eyes holding his. “How did you come by this nasty slice,
Captain?”
Talon glanced from Sophie’s probing
gaze to Lara, who slid a sidelong glance at him, the apples of her
cheeks flushing even pinker. She hadn’t told the old healer of
their meeting in the river yesterday; he’d wager coin on it. “I
foolishly attempted to pluck a wild rose,” he told Sophie.
“Barehanded.”
“Foolish is right.” She
tsked as she dropped his hand. “For only a fool would try to pluck
a rose barehanded.”
“Or an arrogant ass.”
Talon grinned as Lara’s head shot up, her wide eyes meeting his,
then narrowing. “But then it was a particularly beautiful, thorny,
rose.”
Lara dropped her gaze and her long,
slender fingers shook as she laid a linen strip across Anglbert’s
knee. She wore a brown work apron over a sleeveless gown of mossy
green, and Talon took in the sleekly muscled lines of her arms up
to her neck, where loose tendrils of auburn curled at her nape. He
followed the graceful bow of her neck down the length of her back
to her sandaled feet, admiring the high arch of them, and met the
baleful stare of the hound that had growled him off at the river
yesterday.
The beast had to weigh ten stone at
least and looked to be solid muscle beneath his thick coat of
reddish-brown, and his upright ears were at full alert as he
watched not only Talon but every other man in the room with his
unwavering stare. The beast shifted and yawned, showing off a rack
of teeth made for tearing and ripping flesh from bone, then seemed
to grin at Talon, his tongue lolling between his large
fangs.
“The dog,” he said as
Sophie took his hand and began to gently scrub the wound with a
soapy rag.
“You mean Wolf?” she
asked, though there were no other dogs in the hall.
Talon nodded. He’d seen a few wolves
in the wild before, but always from a distance. “Is he a
full-blooded wolf?”
Sophie’s keen gaze sized Talon up.
“No,” she said after a moment. “He has the white teeth of a dog,
not yellow like a wolf. Lara found him in the wilds when he was a
pup. Likely his mother abandoned him because he’s a half-breed and
she recognized him as being different.”
Talon and the wolf-dog eyed each
other. “He guards his mistress well.”
Sophie wiped the soap from his hand.
“He does. Even I, who have raised them both, would never dare raise
a hand to her in Wolf’s presence.”
“No sane man would, I
should think.” Talon had been sane enough yesterday when he’d first
come across them, but the sight of her red hair curling around the
oval of her face and the challenging tilt of her chin had been too
much for him. He’d been too long without a woman, and she was a
woman to tempt any man. She’d tempted him to the point that he’d
braved her beast of a dog and her sharp points, then paid with his
flesh for his brazenness. He’d admired her spirit as much as he’d
cursed his own foolishness, which was why he hadn’t chased her down
yesterday, and why he wouldn’t give her away now. “You say you
raised them both. Are you the girl’s grandmother?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Sophie’s gaze ’arrowed on Talon's, then she dipped her fingers into
a tub and smeared a soothing balm that smelled of rosemary on his
palm. “You take a great interest in a girl you’ve just met and
spoken nary a word with, Captain.”
Talon flexed his hand, impressed at
how the tight edges of his wound were already easing, then glanced
at Lara, who was diligently wrapping Anglbert’s knee. “I take a
great interest in many things, Madam.”
***
Lara
Lara tied the last strip of linen
around the knee of Berta’s kindly graybeard, then peered down at
the captain’s boot, letting her gaze travel up the length of his
leather leggings over the swell of his calves and well-muscled
thighs. Why hadn’t he chased her down with those legs after she’d
sliced his palm yesterday? Or told Sophie it was she who had cut
him today? Peering up at him from beneath lowered lashes, she found
no answers, only his unnerving gaze.
“Leave the poultice on
until tomorrow morn.” She spoke down to Anglbert’s knee, her cheeks
too hot to look him in the face, then reached into her bag for a
tub of easing liniment and set it on the table. “After you remove
the poultice, rub a handful of this into your knee three times a
day for the next seven days, then as needed. If you run out, Berta
can bring you more.”
“Not you?”
Lara looked up into smiling brown
eyes. “There’s no need for me to bring it, unless of course your
knee worsens.”
“What of the captain?” The
lines around Anglbert’s eyes deepened as he grinned. “His cut is
deep and his poor mind near to festering.”
Lara glanced at the captain, whose
brow looked more angry than feverish as he glared at Anglbert.
“Sophie will take care of his wound better than I.”
“Perhaps.” Anglbert tugged
at his beard. “But what about the poor man’s mind? He’s been
suffering a sickness of it since yesterday.”
“Since yesterday?” Lara
suddenly felt a little feverish herself.
“Aye, lady.” Anglbert
nodded somberly. “He seems to have picked up a cursed bad ailment
from splashing around in the river.”
Sophie’s touch was already on the
captain’s forehead, and then she ran her fingers down his neck and