Chapter Twelve
The
March
Talon
Talon sat on Lara’s cot as she slept
and brushed an auburn curl from her cheek. “Lara.”
“Hmmm?”
“I don’t want to wake you,
but I wanted to say good-bye.”
“You’re
leaving?”
“I am.” She wouldn’t
remember this conversation when she woke. She never remembered the
conversations they had when she talked in her sleep. Talon
remembered them all. Some were short, strange, and cryptic, making
little to no sense, while others were full and coherent, like the
one they were having now.
“Where you
going?”
“To meet Charles and the
returning army. You’ll be free of me for the month I’m gone.” He
ran his fingers through her unruly mane, wishing he could gaze into
her changeling eyes one more time before he left. To see if they
would be a soft, mossy green or bright with burning embers.
Wondering for about the thousandth time if she would leave before
he returned. “Will you be here when I get back?”
“Be a good
lidi. Stay under captain
protection,” she mumbled, then buried her face into her
pillow.
Talon knew from experience she
wouldn’t talk again, at least not for a while, and he’d run out of
time. He gave his knee a pat, and Wolf laid his head on it, tail
wagging in anticipation of their morning outing. “Not this time,
old man. You must be a faithful hound to your mistress and be her
protector once more.” Wolf gave Talon’s hand a slurp and he ruffled
his ears. “I’ll be keeping an eye on Ranulf, whilst you, my friend,
will have the biggest rat of all to watch in the count and his mad
little vixen of a daughter, who’s very jealous of our wildcat.”
Talon gazed down at Lara, at the curve of her back, the swell of
her hips, and the long, lean, well-muscled length of her legs. “My
coin’s on our wildcat. Though knowing a wolf and a wizened old
witch are on watch makes me feel better about leaving my
auburn-haired, hazel-eyed beauty.”
Lara coughed and buried her face
deeper into her pillow, and Talon stood, then picked up his pack as
he gave the chamber one last look. He had everything he needed, but
not what he wanted.
He shrugged and slung the pack over
his shoulder. A soldier’s life never took into account what he
wanted.
“Fare well, Lara.” He
rested his hand on the door. “See you in a month.”
“Godspeed,
Talon.”
***
Lara
Talon’s step faltered and then the
door shut behind him. He’d thought she’d been talking in her sleep
again, something she’d done her whole life according to Sophie. But
Lara had been awake since Talon had first stirred from his bed.
She’d heard everything he’d said to her and Wolf.
She was his wildcat. It was she who’d
cursed him on sight and damned him with his oath to protect her.
She who he wanted but wouldn’t let himself have. He was protecting
her not only from Ranulf and Nithard but also from himself. That
was why he’d left so abruptly the night she’d leaned in to him,
naked…why looking at her hurt more.
All things she would have plenty of
time to think about and brood over for the next month. Right now,
she needed to get moving.
After getting dressed, she snuck down
the stairs and out the hall’s front entrance while the troop were
breaking their fasts with a feast Lara should’ve been awakened to
help cook and serve. Since she hadn’t been, either as a kindness of
the captain’s or a way to avoid saying good-bye to her awake, she
took advantage of the extra time and ran out the main gate, waving
her farewell to the watchtower as she headed for home. A home she
could stay at, free to live her own life and sleep in her own bed
again for a month at least if she gave up her plan. Yet if her plan
succeeded, in a month’s time, she’d be home free for the rest of
her life.
Sophie waited for her, clothes and
scissors at the ready. “Are you sure you want to do this?” She’d
been against Lara’s plan at first but had agreed to it on second
thought. Which gave Lara hope and courage that it would
work.
“I’m sure.”
Sophie grabbed the hank of Lara’s
braid almost before her backside hit the chair. Lara concentrated
on petting Wolf and telling him how he would need to stay and be a
good dog for Sophie while she was gone and trying to ignore the
shearing sound of the scissors and the gentle tugging at her hair.
Then it stopped and Sophie held Lara’s braid in her
hand.
“Well.” Lara gulped and
ran both hands through her shorn hair, marveling at how light it
felt between her fingers.
“Well.” Sophie tied the
loose end of the braid with twine and handed it to Lara.
Refusing to cry over
something as unimportant as hair, Lara gulped back tears and
climbed the ladder to their bedchamber. She opened the chest that
held her personal treasures and laid the braid beside a crown of
dried flowers, a keepsake from her and Sophie’s journey to
Neustria, given to her by the young god who’d won the riding
tourney on a blood bay stallion. A god who’d never removed his
helmet and who’d ridden under the name of Vagus. Wanderer.
Touching the crown, Lara sent out a
silent prayer that the journey she was about to embark on would go
as well as that journey had, then shut the chest, squared her
shoulders, and stripped out of her gown and shift. She pulled on a
breechcloth and a pair of worn linen breeches she’d bought off
Willem and cinched in her waist belt to keep them from falling off.
At least they were long enough to cover her ankles, and she was
able to wear her own boots. After grabbing the threadbare under
tunic and faded brown woolen jerkin she’d also bought from Willem,
she descended the ladder and stood bare-chested before Sophie.
Taking a deep breath in, she held her arms out.
“I don’t envy you this.”
Sophie bound Lara’s bosom and pulled the knot tight under her
breasts. “Especially since it’ll be rare you’ll be free of it.
Won’t it?”
“Only when I sleep, I
promise.”
“Your kerchief too.”
Sophie tied it loosely around Lara’s neck. “You must sleep with it
on, else some keen-eyed soldier realizes you don’t have an Adam’s
apple.”
“It will never leave my
neck. I swear.”
Lara slid the threadbare under tunic
on and the jerkin over it as Sophie opened a tub of olive oil mixed
with brown acorn dye. Lara poured a small amount into her palm and
rubbed it in her hair and over her face and neck and arms,
repeating the process until her exposed skin was a nut
brown.
“Is my hair dark enough?”
she asked Sophie, who nodded and then pursed her lips.
“Well now. I never saw
this.”
They both burst out
laughing.
“I’m going to miss you.”
Lara gave Sophie a heartfelt hug, then kissed Wolf on the nose.
“You too, boy.” Slinging her pack over her shoulder, she gave Wolf
the hand signal to stay before she opened the door. “See you two in
a month.”
***
Talon
Talon grabbed his empty bowl and
headed for the cook’s wagon. Seven days into the march, and he was
already bored, saddle sore, and hungry. At least the food on this
march was a cut or three above the usual camp food, which also
meant there was always a line of men as worn out and hungry as he
at the wagon.
“Chicken stew tonight.”
Tree raised his steaming bowl up as he walked by Talon.
“Chicken stew,” Talon
echoed, close enough now to smell the savory aroma. His belly
growling, he leaned in to inhale more of the teasing scent and
caught sight of the cook’s helper, the widow’s son Lara had
recommended, a scrawny, gangly lad with dirty brown hair peeking
out from under his cap whose direct gaze Talon had yet to meet.
Though Hamm was his name, he seemed to answer most to “hey, boy.”
He was an odd lad who kept to himself and the cook, Plutarch, but
he knew his way around a cooking fire. Lara had been right about
that.
Hamm would jump off the moving cook’s
wagon daily to gather wild greens and herbs from the roadside that
would show up in the stew that night, giving it a completely
different taste from the previous night’s stew even if the meat was
the same old chicken, rabbit, or squirrel. A rare treat for
soldiers on the march, used to stuffing tasteless gruel down their
throats just to fill their empty bellies with something warm. Now
Hamm ladled two servings of stew into each man’s bowl, his head
down, his gaze never wavering from his task.
“A man could starve in
this bloody line,” Talon grumbled loud enough for one of the
count’s men, who was trying to badger the lad into serving him a
third ladle full, to hear. “Let the rest of us have our firsts
before you start demanding seconds,” he said much louder and
clearer.
His little speech got nods all around
and a few “hear, hears,” then the brute demanding more stew turned
around with a snarl on his hirsute face.
“Ah, bloody
hell.”
It was Lothair, Ranulf’s second, who
was snarling at Talon one moment and yelling and flinging hot stew
around the next.
“My hand,” he screamed at
the hapless Hamm, who stood holding an empty ladle. “You burned my
hand.”
“I-I’m sorry, sir. You
turned as I poured.” Eyes cast down and gripping the empty ladle in
his left fist, the lad backstepped until his backside hit the
wagon.
Talon set his bowl down on the plank
of wood used as a serving table. One thing you never did was back
away from a bully. It was akin to turning yourself into a bloody
lump of raw meat in front of a starving cur.
“Sorry, you say?” Lothair
waved his hand around. “You scald my flesh and you’re
sorry?”
“I can put a salve on it,”
the boy offered, never looking up.
“Here.” The old cook
offered Lothair another bowl of stew. “Sit and eat your stew and
I’ll be right over to fix your hand up.”
“It’s your boy’s gonna
need fixing up.” Lothair shoved the cook aside and lunged for Hamm,
who sidestepped his charge so quickly, Lothair plunged headfirst
into the side of the wagon and knocked himself out right before
Ranulf and three others pushed their way into the snickering
crowd.
“What’s this?” Ranulf
stared down at Lothair as he began to moan and stir. “What happened
here?”
“Lothair tripped over his
own beard and fell,” someone called out, followed by loud
guffaws.
“You think this funny?”
Ranulf scoured the crowd of soldiers. “My man out cold is funny?”
The count’s men all managed to wipe the smiles from their faces,
but Talon and his didn’t even try. “You, boy.” Ranulf pointed at
the cook’s lad, who peered up at him from beneath his cap. “What
happened here?”
The lad kept his head low and his
voice lower. “I was serving him. He turned away as I poured, then
his hand was where his bowl had been. I said I was sorry, but he
came after me and hit his head on the wagon.”
“Lothair hit his head hard
enough to knock himself out?” Ranulf’s black eyes bored into the
top of the lad’s cap. “Without a trip or a push from anybody
else?”
“Nobody touched Lothair.”
Talon stepped up and stood in Ranulf’s face. “And this goes no
further.”
“Ah, the good Captain
Guiscard,” Ranulf sneered. “The defender of whores and hounds and
fey lads.”
The lad’s breath sucked in and let out
again in a slow hiss, and his fist still clenched the ladle’s
handle. The mouse might have teeth after all.
“That’s me.” Talon kept
his voice flat and unconcerned over the insult given him. “Talon
Guiscard, patron saint of strays.”
He heard the shuffling of feet as men
around them positioned themselves for the possible fight to come.
Tree set his bowl of half-eaten stew down and stood between Hamm
and a groaning Lothair as Phillipe and Anglbert came strolling up,
longswords drawn and laid across their shoulders.
“Are we having a party?”
Phillipe stopped to one side of Talon and Anglbert the other. He
glanced down at Lothair, who struggled to sit up. “Has Lothair
started the party without us?”
“Get him up,” Ranulf
snapped at his men. He pointed at Hamm. “You, boy, you’d better
stay clear of him and me.”
Talon watched them haul Lothair up and
walk him toward their section of camp, not turning his back on the
pack of curs until they were out of sight. Left in peace, he and
his men then got back into line for their supper, rehashing the
lad’s encounter with Lothair and congratulating David on his
victory over Goliath.
“Nice dodge, lad.” Talon
dropped a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry I missed it.”
Phillipe grinned over at him. “Did your widowed mother teach you
it?”
“No, sirs,” the lad spoke
into his chest. “Only how to cook.”
“Well done there as well.”
Talon held his bowl out, inhaling the savory steam rising over it.
“Your mother, does she have a sister named Berta?”
“They are, uh, cousins,
sir.”
Talon clapped a hand on the lad’s
shoulder again, not as bony as much as small-boned. “That explains
a lot. Cooking must be in your blood. If you can stand the road,
you’d make a decent living at it.”
“Don’t let Charles get
hold of him.” Tree retrieved his bowl of stew. “He’ll never give
him back.”
Talon swore he saw the corners of the
lad’s mouth twitch up before his head bent even lower over the
pot.
“He’ll have to fight me
for him first.” Plutarch brandished his ladle, which gave all the
men there a good laugh and turned the lad’s cheeks a very unmanly
pink under his tan.