Chapter Twenty-four
Numbers
Lara
They rode into a camp after dark where
two more Basques and a big, dark-haired man stood as they reined
their mounts in. Lothair. Lara held a sleeping Isabeau closer to
her chest as the flap to the single tent set up flew open and
Nithard stepped out. His black eyes met hers, then his gaze dropped
to Isabeau.
“Good evening, Uncle,”
Lara said, taking any bit of advantage she could from him. “I’m
sure you’re anxious to meet your grandniece, Isabeau Juditha
Rousell Guiscard. She’s named after her grandmothers and
grandfather.” Lara shifted Isabeau in her arms so that her face was
in profile. “I never knew my mother. Do you think my daughter
resembles her, of whom you were said to be so fond?”
Nithard stood staring at Isabeau as if
seeing a ghost, his thin lips moving wordlessly.
“I say the brat will make
a pretty little whore.” Ranulf sidled his horse up alongside Lara’s
and grabbed her by the hair, pulling her head back. “You’re mine
now, bitch,” he hissed. “And your little witch’s spawn is my
father’s to do with as he will.”
He let go of her hair as abruptly as
he’d grabbed it, and Lara had to hold on to her saddle horn with
her free hand to keep from falling off her horse while holding
Isabeau tight with the other. Isabeau woke up whimpering, which
turned into full-blown wailing as she squirmed to break free of
Lara’s hold. Her body shaking uncontrollably, Lara slid down from
her mount and held a squalling Isabeau tight as they made their way
over to the camp’s fire, where the Basques were directing the women
to sit. She sat down on a log before her legs gave out.
“Be careful of the fire,
Issy,” she told her daughter as she and Wilric toddled around.
“Hot.”
“Hot, Issy, hot,” Wilric
repeated, and Isabeau giggled.
“They’ll be fine.”
Patience scooted closer to Lara. “Now they’re together.”
Lara held shaking hands out to the
fires heat, though the night air was warm. She watched Issy and
Wilric picking up twigs and showing them to each other, and then
she met the worried gazes of Berta, Enid, and Doralice. “We’ll be
fine too,” she told them. “We’ve simply got to stick together and
give these Basques no reason for violence.” She thought of Talon’s
fury once he found out what happened to them and grinned. “We’ll
leave that to our men.”
“I pity the man whose head
meets up with Anglbert’s mace,” Berta said. “Or your father’s axe,”
she said to Doralice, who didn’t look convinced.
“Think of Phillipe,” Lara
told her. “Of the man he is. Know that he’ll come for you and won’t
stop until he finds you. And when he does, I for one would not want
to be at the end of his sword’s point.”
“Nor I.” A small smile
played at the corners of Doralice’s mouth.
Lara glanced around. Nithard, Ranulf,
Lothair, and Inigo stood deep in conversation, leaving the women
under the guard of two Basques who hadn’t shown any indication of
understanding their language while the others took care of the
horses. She motioned for the women to lean in closer. “The Basques
know our men are coming,” she said in a low voice. “Their leader,
the one called Inigo, told me this. He said Nithard was counting on
it. We’re the bait in their trap. We need to leave a warning for
our men.”
“How?” Patience
asked.
“I don’t know, yet,” Lara
said. The men’s conversation broke up, and Nithard returned to his
tent with Ranulf and Lothair while Inigo spoke with the older
Basque. “Keep an eye on Issy?” she asked Patience. “I’m going to go
see what I can find out.”
The two men stopped talking as she
approached, and the older man stepped back, eyeing her.
“Sir,” she addressed
Inigo. “May I speak with you?”
“Yes.”
“Your name is
Inigo?”
He nodded.
“My name is Lara. Countess
of Oloron.”
“I know who each of you
are.”
Lara darted a look at Nithard’s tent.
“Of course you do.” She lengthened her spine. “What do you plan to
do with us?”
Inigo nodded at the women huddled by
the fire. “They be sold at slave market in Pamplona. You and you
daughter be given to the Frank and his son. What they do with you?”
He shrugged, and Lara would have sworn she saw a flash of sympathy
in his brown eyes.
She thought of Ranulf’s threat but
refused to dwell on it. If she let her fear of ever being under
Ranulf’s control overtake her, she’d be useless.
“You and your men would do
better leaving us here when you break camp tomorrow,” she told
Inigo. “Dead men cannot collect coin for women they don’t have. My
husband—”
“Was a butcher of
Pamplona,” Inigo spat.
“Yes, he was at Pamplona,”
Lara admitted, sure that Nithard and Ranulf had told the Basques
this and many other things about Captain Talon Guiscard. “He was at
Roncesvalles as well. Yet it’s Pamplona that haunts him and gives
him nightmares still. To war against women and children, he said,
was wrong.”
Inigo chuffed. “Yet war he did.
Committing murder and rape to women and children, to my people, for
his king.”
“No. He didn’t. He kept
his troop, the very same men who will be coming after us, with him,
outside the city’s gates once the raping and pillaging
started.”
“So you say.”
“So I say. I, who survived
Roncesvalles as well.” She saw the quick rise of his brows. “I
marched with my husband. I was at Roncesvalles, and yet I live.
I’ve been chased up this mountain before by Lothair and three other
men sent by my uncle to kill me, and yet here I am.”
“As is
Lothair.”
“Aye.” Lara allowed
herself a quick smile of satisfaction. “Minus a bite or two of
flesh taken by my wolf, in whom you put an arrow.”
“Otsoa?” the older man said.
He made a slashing motion along his left forearm.
“Otsoa ziztada Lothair?” Wolf bite Lothair?
Inigo gave a curt nod and the man
crossed himself.
“When I was six months
pregnant,” Lara made a rounding motion over her belly and pointed
at Isabeau, “Nithard had several of his men try to burn me and my
unborn child alive in my house. And yet, here we are. We have taken
our rightful places as heirs of Oloron, and Nithard and his pack of
curs have made a mercenary deal with you to—”
“With my uncle,” Inigo
said quickly. “Deal is with my uncle.”
“What do you and your
uncle get out of this deal, besides women and children to
sell?”
Inigo held her gaze for a long moment
before answering her. “A wagon of Fank steel.”
“Weapons?” Lara’s head
spun. Nithard would’ve had to have been buying or stealing weapons
for months to have a wagon full. “How long has your uncle been
making deals with Nithard?”
“They first come to our
village one year ago October, when Lothair’s arm still injured.
They come and go since, live under my uncle’s protection when in
our village. Ravenna there now. Frank weapons will bring us much
protection against our enemies.”
“And us women and children
will bring you much coin?”
Inigo dipped his head to her. “You go
sit, eat. Tomorrow come early, last long.”
***
“Mama?”
“Shush, baby.” Lara held a
fingertip to her lips and finished scratching Nithard’s name in the
dirt at her feet with a twig. “Mama’s drawing a secret.”
Isabeau squatted down and
mimicked her mother’s finger to her lips as Lara scratched the
word trap in
Latin below Nithard’s name, along with the initials R and L. She
glanced over her shoulder at the guard standing watch with his back
to the women as they relieved themselves behind a hedge of bushes,
then tore a piece of her skirt’s hem and hung it on a low branch of
the bush she squatted behind. Then she stood and made a noisy show
of trudging over to their horses with Patience and
Doralice.
Poor Berta stood rooted, looking
forlornly at her mount. Lara gave her a leg up and reminded her to
tuck her skirts under her legs to avoid chafing. She handed Wilric
up to Patience, who tucked her skirts under her and around her son
as she’d seen Lara do with Isabeau, then gave her friend’s leg a
grateful squeeze for her steady calmness. Patience was no more used
to a full day’s riding than the other women, yet she’d uttered no
more than a stiff groan when lying down to sleep on the hard ground
last night and mounting her horse this morning.
Lara lifted Issy up onto her mount’s
saddle, then swung her leg up and settled in behind her. She was
tying Issy in with her skirts when she caught Inigo’s second,
Ortzi, walking the edge of the camp, straight for the bush her blue
strip of hem dangled from.
“Hold on, Monkey,” she
whispered into Isabeau’s ear, tightening her one-armed hold on her.
“Mama’s going to make horsey dance.”
She kicked the horse hard in the sides
and pulled up on the reins at the same time, causing the cob to
rear up. She faked a scream and hoped her daughter’s squeal of glee
was taken as fright as she let the horse take a few stunted jumps
forward before reining it in. She didn’t have to fake panting from
the effort or the wild look in her eyes as she searched for Ortzi,
who stopped his searching and stood with his back to the bush,
crossing himself.
“Did you see that bee?”
she said, every eye on her. “It flew right at the horse’s
face.”
***
Talon
Fifty men rode out with Talon at first
light, half of them field workers riding their cart horses and
armed with everything from pitchforks and wooden staffs to old
family swords that had lain in chests for a generation or more. The
other half consisted of Talon and his men-at-arms, six of Nithard’s
previous guard who’d chosen to stay in Oloron when he’d left and
had sworn fealty to Talon, the keep’s stable hands, and various
villagers and tradesmen. Denys stayed to tend to Tree and Wolf and
his pregnant wife, and had given Shadow to Willem to ride, as
Willem’s horse was more used to pulling carts than riding into
battle.
Touched and proud as he was by the
show of men, Talon let it be known he’d be moving fast and hard and
would wait for no one. By the time they reached the remains of the
Basque camp mid-morning, only twenty-three were still with him,
including Willem, Arnulf, the miller, and the silversmith whose
grievance against the tailor Talon had presided over and ruled in
favor of yesterday at Mallus. Rilke was his name, a sturdy man of