Chapter Twenty-five
Ambushed
Lara
Isabeau was getting harder to keep
confined to a horse’s back all day and a circle’s worth of ground
at night. She’d made a break for it every time they stopped, and
though she didn’t get far on her toddler’s legs, she put up a loud
fuss every time Lara caught her.
“Like mother like
daughter.” Inigo chuckled as they stopped for the night and
dismounted. Issy had already made her run for freedom as soon as
her feet hit ground.
“Do you have children?”
Lara grabbed her daughter and held her and her squirms
tight.
“Three,” Inigo said,
handing his horses reins to one of his men. “Two boys, one
girl.”
Lara jostled Isabeau on her hip. “What
would you do if someone abducted them, intending to sell them into
slavery?” She glanced meaningfully at Nithard and Ranulf, who’d
dismounted and were stretching out their backs as one of the
Basques took care of their horses. “Or worse?”
“I do anything,
everything, to get them back,” Inigo said. “To kill
sasikumeak who took
them.”
“My husband will do no
less.” Lara let go of Issy’s hand so she could join Patience and
Wilric, who were heading for some bushes.
“I sure he try.” Inigo had
something akin to sympathy in his eyes. “Does not change anything.
Deal was made. I not go against my uncle’s word.”
“Nithard won’t live long
enough to know if the deal was kept or not,” she bluffed. “I’ve
seen this in my dreams.”
“You say this to Nithard
before.” The sympathy in his eyes changed to wariness. “Nithard
believe you. Why?”
“Because my dreams always
come true. One way or another.”
He eyed her for a long, serious moment
then eventually spoke. “Feed you child while men making
camp.”
Lara did as he suggested. She was
still nursing Isabeau a few times a day, and it helped calm Issy
down, though it also inevitably drew many of the men as close as
they dared to watch, craning their necks for a glimpse of Lara’s
breasts. Ranulf and Lothair practically drooled when they were
watching, and Nithard watched Isabeau rather than Lara, which made
Lara more uncomfortable than the other men’s leering
gazes.
While the Basque cook started the pot
of beans over the fire, she finished nursing Issy and sat with the
other women, watching Issy and Wilric play as Orttzi and Lothair
rode in.
“They’re a little more
than half a day behind us,” Lothair reported as he joined Inigo by
the fire. “They slowed down a bit, waiting for ten more men to show
up.”
“Just like soldier of
Gaul,” Inigo said. “Thinking numbers win him battle.”
“Does Guiscard still lead
them?” Nithard asked as he went over.
“Aye,” Lothair said. “Saw
him with my own eyes: his helmet, his armor, riding his
black.”
“What will that matter?”
Ranulf poked at the fire. “They’ve given us a greater lead to the
pass, where we will pick them off one by one.”
He smiled at Lara as he counted off,
and she closed her eyes against his vitriol and prayed Talon had
found her messages, especially the last one. It was unlike him to
slow his chase for numbers, but Lothair had seen them, had
recognized Talon’s horse and armor.
Opening her eyes, she caught Lothair’s
glare.
“What are you looking at,
witch?”
Lara smiled. “I was thinking of the
last time my husband chased you up this mountain, and the chunk of
flesh you left in Wolf’s mouth running back down it.”
“So what? Your husband’s
too slow to catch us and your dog’s dead. And I’m the one’s going
to finish you off once me lord here—” He jabbed a finger toward
Ranulf. “—is done with you.”
Lara widened her smile. “Wolf isn’t
dead.”
“What?” Lothair bellowed
at Ranulf. “You promised me that damned hellhound would
die.”
Ranulf shrugged. “I told them to kill
it. They chose to wound it.”
“Why would they do
that?”
“Because,” Lara said,
holding her hands out to the fire, “even a Basque knows better than
to kill a witch or its familiar. Something neither you, nor your
young Master Snake here, have yet to learn.” She shifted her gaze
to Nithard. “Isn’t that right, Uncle?”
Nithard startled and looked from Lara
to Lothair.
“I’ll tell you what I have
learnt,” Lothair said with a sneer. “I’ve learnt that a witch dies
as easily as any wench. Your old Sophie the Sixth—” He made a
hatching motion and grinned. “—her head split open as easily as an
overripe melon.”
Lara went stone cold, then white hot.
She pointed directly at Lothair’s heart. “You, Lothair, are a dead
man.” Then she turned to Nithard, who blanched. “And you, Uncle,
Sophie’s curse will come to fruition soon.”
“What curse?” Inigo
asked.
Lara smiled as Nithard stared off into
the night at something no one else could see. “He will die choking
on Frank silver.”
***
Lara gave Berta a leg up onto her
mount and knew the poor woman wasn’t acting when she let out a loud
groan of pain.
“Remember,” Lara whispered
as she placed the reins in Berta’s chafed, swollen hands. “As soon
as you see my signal.”
The women had discussed trying to
escape last night after Lothair and Ortzi’s report. With the path
narrowing the higher they climbed, the Basques had removed their
horses’ tie line, and Lara had wanted all the women to break away
at the same time, to ride in separate directions and make the
Basques split up to chase them. But Patience had pointed out that
none of them save Lara could ride well enough to make it any
distance, so it was decided that Berta would act as a diversion
while Lara and Isabeau made a run for their men.
Lara gathered Isabeau and mounted
their horse, tucking her skirts under her legs and tying the hems
extra tight around her daughter. She glanced around the breaking
camp. The men were all busy saddling their horses, no one was
watching her.
“Hold tight, Monkey,” she
whispered in her daughter’s ear. “We’re going to ride horsey
really, really fast.”
She nodded to Berta, who let out an
ear-piercing shriek and threw herself off her horse. Lara whirled
her mount’s head around and broke for the trees.
“Get her,” Ranulf
screeched. “Get that witch and her spawn.”
More yelling and whinnying followed
Lara as she guided her horse through the trees to the path they’d
ridden up. Her mount was just working into a gallop when Lothair
and his gray jumped in front of them. She tried to turn her horse
into the woods, but Lothair bellowed and it spooked and reared. It
was all Lara could do to hold on to Isabeau and keep them from
being thrown. She was barely hanging on when Lothair grabbed the
reins from her. Lara started to throw a leg over her horse’s neck
when Lothair grasped her by the hair and jerked her head back so
hard her neck cracked. With a strangled cry, she held one hand up
in surrender, the other clasping Issy tight.
“Now that’s a good little
witch,” Lothair said as they were surrounded by chattering Basques
and a purple-faced Ranulf.
“Tether the bitch.”
Lothair looped a noose around her neck as Ranulf sidled his horse
next to Lara’s and ripped Isabeau from her grip.
“No.” Lara’s scream strangled as Lothair pulled her noose tight.
She tore at the rope, and Lothair pulled her hands from her throat
and tied them.
Isabeau screamed and kicked with all
her might against Ranulf’s hold as he tried to wrestle her onto his
horse, in front of him.
“You cursed little witch’s
spawn.” He yelped as her foot struck him in the groin, and he shook
her and slapped her across the face.
“Stop
it,” Lara yelled hoarsely as her daughter
wailed. “Leave her alone.” She glared at Ranulf. “If you must beat
something, beat me. It’s my flesh you’ve always wanted.”
“There be no beating of
flesh until deal is done,” Inigo, who’d shown up at some point,
commanded. He held his hands out toward Isabeau. “Give me child,”
he told Ranulf. “I have children. I know what to do.”
Ranulf hesitated, and Isabeau gave him
another kick to his gut. “Here.” He shoved the howling child into
Inigo’s arms. “Take her. For now.”
***
Talon
Talon took the point position on a log
behind a thick bramble where a wide, shallow river snaked down and
into an open meadow, giving him and the ten men with him an
unfettered view of where the murderous bastard Nithard and his
Basque slavers would have to cross to get to the pass a league
farther up the mountainside.
Anglbert took the woods closest to the
other shore with the other ten men, which made twenty-two archers
between them, every one of them a swordsman as well. The Basques
were to be the bowmen’s first targets. Talon’s was Nithard and
Phillipe’s was Ranulf, Oswald would take Lothair.
“Here.” Phillipe handed
Talon a strip of jerky.
Talon had no appetite, but he took it
because he knew he needed the energy for the fight to come, and it
kept him busy chewing something besides the inside of his
cheek.
“I saw you speaking with
Arnulf before we left him with the horses,” Talon said. “What
about?”
“He told me come what may,
he would be proud to call me son from this day on.”
Talon coughed and rubbed at an
invisible gnat in his eye. “Congratulations.”
A short, quick whistle had them
crouching low and notching arrows to their bows. Where the path
opened onto the meadow, Talon counted two Basques before Nithard
and Ranulf rode out, followed by the line of women with four
Basques riding along either side of them, one of them next to Lara,
who was last in the line and had a rope around her neck and wrists.
“Bloody hell.”
Lothair rode out behind her, and two
more Basques brought up the rear. Wilric rode with Patience, but
Talon didn’t see Isabeau with Lara or any of the other women. He
sucked his breath in as he made sure she wasn’t with Nithard or
Ranulf, then let it out in a slow hiss as the Basque alongside Lara
shifted something from one shoulder to the next. His daughter and
her head of red curls settled into the man’s neck.
“Nobody shoots the Basque
with Isabeau,” he told Phillipe. “Spread the word.”
He lifted his arrow to aim at Nithard,
but Lara jerked her head back and tugged at the rope around her
neck. Behind her, Lothair raised his fist and gave the rope another
jerk.
“Plan just changed,” he