Chapter Three
Prisoner
Lara
The captain picked up the
still-unconscious Wolf and carried him back to the keep, which was
no easy feat: Wolf weighed ten stone at least. While holding Wolf
hostage was one way to keep Lara from bolting, it was also a
kindness she didn’t expect. It threw her because it made it harder
to be angry at him. She really wanted to be angry at him, at least
as angry as she was at herself for getting into this mess. She had
injured, and possibly killed, a king’s soldier. And not just any
soldier, but the king’s cousin. The enormity of what she’d done and
what could be done to her for her actions sank in. Soldiers ran
ahead of them to open the door to the main hall. Her feet were
heavy and sodden as they passed through, her chest felt as if it
were being crushed.
“Lara.”
She looked up and met the captain’s
steady gaze.
“Breathe.” He took a slow
breath in and blew it out, nodding as she did the same. “That’s it.
Breathe.”
The captain handed Wolf over to a
brown-haired, short-bearded giant of a man called Tree, who
followed them as the captain took Lara by the arm and led her up
the stairs. At the top, she glanced down into the common room,
where Sophie sat on a chair next to the injured man laid out on a
cot, his throat and leg bandaged, red spots of blood seeping
through the one around his throat. She met Sophie’s worried gaze
before the captain pulled her along the hallway, open on one side
to the hall below, and through the last door on the other side into
a large bedchamber, where Tree laid Wolf down next to the cold
hearth.
“You and Wolf stay here,”
the captain told her. “Do not attempt to leave this
chamber.”
He and Tree left, closing the door
behind them, and the outside bolt slid across with a loud thud.
Lara knelt by Wolf, who lay unconscious to the world around him but
was breathing steadily, then grabbed two large pelts off the bed
and laid one down on the floor next to Wolf’s back. After taking
hold of his legs, she rolled him over so that he was lying on the
pelt and then covered him with the other, a little concerned when
he still didn’t make a sound as she rolled him. She lifted his lip
and checked his gums, which were pale, but not dangerously so. The
best thing for Wolf right now was to let his body rest and
hopefully recover.
Lara wandered about the chamber, which
was as large as the entire ground floor of her and Sophie’s house.
The four-poster bed had red drapes that were pulled back and was
situated against the outside wall next to an open window facing the
courtyard. She glanced out the window. While she might be able to
make the two-story drop, she had no way of getting Wolf out safely
or unseen. She turned from the window and opened the two chests at
the foot of the bed. One held men’s clothing, neatly folded and
freshly laundered, as well as an otter cloak and a fur throw. The
other held a pair of men’s boots and sandals, two bars of soap, a
book of maps, a dried rose folded into a square of embroidered
linen, a set of carving knives, and a wood figurine of a woman with
an oval face and long hair curling down her back. She ran her
fingers down the flowing lines of the figurine, then shut the
chests and went to a table where a square board sanded smooth and
covered in small, alternating squares of black and natural wood
sat. Figurines were positioned on the squares, half of them carved
out of what looked to be some kind of bone as white as alabaster
and the others out of black stone.
Each side had eight pieces with wide
bases that tapered up to round tops, along with two in the shapes
of turrets, two horse’s heads, two tall, robed figures topped with
crosses, and two intricately robed figures with crowns: one with a
beard on its featureless face and the other with long hair down to
its waist. Nothing else gave her any clue as to whose chamber she
was in, though she had a good idea. She checked the door, even
though she knew it was locked from the outside, and then lay down
alongside Wolf, closing her eyes and taking some solace in the
steady rise and fall of his chest beneath her hand and the absence
of any wheezing or crackling, while trying hard not to think of all
the stories she’d heard of the punishments meted out to women for
protecting themselves against men, much less the king’s
cousin.
When she opened her eyes again, her
fingers stuffed into the familiar thickness of Wolf’s fur, it took
her a moment to realize she was lying on the floor with a light
blanket over her and to remember where she was and why. And that
she hadn’t had a blanket over her when she’d lain down beside Wolf,
whose body was warm to her touch and whose chest rose and fell in a
steady rhythm.
The chamber was dark but for the low
glow of a candle on the table where the board and figurines sat.
Lara pushed herself up to a sitting position, every muscle from her
neck to her toes pulling tight. She tried to gently rouse Wolf, but
he was still out to the world. She rearranged the pelt over him and
went to the open window. A half-moon shone brightly in the night
sky, illuminating the soldier sitting on a bedroll directly below
the window, his back propped against the manor wall.
“Damn,” she whispered to
the night. “He doesn’t trust me one whit.”
Stretching her sore, tight back, Lara
turned from the window and took in the chamber as her eyes adjusted
to the dark. The hearth fire was still unlit and the bed empty, but
there was a pile of pelts at the foot of the door.
And lying sprawled out in the middle
of the pile, the captain slept soundly.
“Not one whit,” she
muttered.
The captain’s eyes were closed, and
his breathing was slow and steady. The only clothes he wore was a
linen breechcloth, and she stood staring at the impressive breadth
of his chest, lightly furred with dark, curly hair, and how it
tapered down to a flat belly ridged with muscles. He had one leg
propped against the pelts, and his bandaged hand rested on his
knee. She skimmed over the manly bulge filling his breechcloth. A
telltale white of a scar ran up his inner thigh from his knee to a
hand’s width below his groin.
Lara sucked in her breath and let it
out slowly as she retraced the scar’s snaking path. Not more than
one man in twenty would be able to survive such a wound, even fewer
would come out of it walking without a limp, much less running and
fighting.
Shifting her stance, she saw his short
sword on the pelts at his left hip, the hilt where he could grab it
instantly. His longsword was tucked behind his back, its hilt to
his right side, its blade poking out to his left.
“Iesus
Christus,” she swore softly in the
cleric’s Latin. “Who does he think he’s guarding, the devil
himself?”
His eyes opened, shards of silver
pointed directly at Lara, and she jumped back.
“Don’t even think about
it,” he growled low, his hand on the hilt of his short
sword.
“Think about
what?”
“Using my sword against
me.”
“I wasn’t.”
“What were you staring at,
then?”
“Your leg.” She glared
down at his scar. “I was hoping it gave you great pain.”
He chuckled and held up his bandaged
hand. “Not nearly so much as a certain troublesome wench has given
me.”
Lara gnashed her teeth. “You think me
troublesome? For defending myself against a drunken soldier who
thought it his right to take whatever he wanted from me? Against
possible rape? Should I have simply lain down in the straw and
taken it? Do you truly believe it fair that I’m held prisoner
here,” she waved her arm, “in your chamber, until the count deems
to hold Mallus?”
“This is tsafest,” he said
with maddening calm. “For you and everyone else.”
“You must think me very
dangerous.”
He held up his bandaged hand and gave
a lopsided grin. “Now why would I think that?”
Lara glanced around the chamber for
something to throw at him.
“I’ll send a man to the
count tomorrow to find out when Mallus will be held
next.”
Lara snorted. As if finding out when
she was to be tried by Count Nithard would make her feel any
better.
“Until then,” he
continued, “the bed is yours, if you so choose.”
“Let us have a right
understanding, Captain.” Lara strode over to Wolf and plopped down
beside him. “I may be your prisoner, but I will not be your whore.
I will never share your bed.”
“Aye, well, as much as the
idea intrigues me,” he said, giving a low chuckle, “it wasn’t what
I meant. Besides—” He rubbed his hands up and down the nicks and
scrapes on his bare arms and grinned at her from across the
chamber, his teeth showing white against the black of his short
beard. “—I don’t think I could spare that much blood.”
***
Warmth and light played around the
edges of Lara’s lids as she stretched her sore, stiff body. A wet
nose stuffed into her ear, and she let out a sigh of relief to see
Wolf’s big, brown eyes staring into hers, full of life and
awareness. “Morning, boy.” She kissed his nose and ruffled his
fur.
“Noon’s more like
it.”
Lara sat up and followed Sophie’s
voice to the table where she sat, along with a platter of bread and
fruit and cheese.
“How fared you the night,
child?”
Child. Lara pushed herself up off the
floor with a groan. She was twenty-two years old, an old maid by
most people’s estimations, but to Sophie she would always be a
child.
“I passed the night safely
and comfortably enough,” she said as she took a seat at the table
and tore off a chunk of bread.
Sophie’s gaze went to the unruffled
bed, and Lara nodded toward the pelts piled neatly to the side of
the door, her cheeks flushing hot as she recalled how unchildlike
her reaction to the captain had been.
“I slept on the floor with
Wolf, as you found me,” she told Sophie. “The captain slept on the
pelts by the door.” The furrow between Sophie’s brow lessened, but
the shadows beneath her eyes remained. “Were you up all night with
the wounded soldier?”
Sophie shook her head. “Not all night.
Berta took a turn watching over him, as did the
captain.”
“The captain?”
Sophie nodded. “Early this
morn.”
“Why would…?” The door