Chapter Fourteen
Roncesvalles Pass
Talon
Talon stepped through the flap to his
tent. “Prepare yourself.” He told Lara. “The king
awaits.”
She stood smoothing her tunic, then
hitched up her breeches, tightened her waist belt, and pulled her
cap down over the mop of brown curls that brought a scowl to Talon
every time he looked at her.
“Come on.” He led her out
of his tent, a space so small he’d lain only an arm’s length from
her the past two sleepless nights, staring at the curves of her
backside and silently cursing himself and her.
Phillipe and Dardinel took their
positions to each side of Lara, with Tree behind her. As Talon led
the way through the three rings of tents between their camp and the
king’s, scores of men stopped to stare at the cook’s boy that was a
girl, fooling an entire company of soldiers for a hundred leagues.
After staring down one mouth-breathing, hirsute group of Bretons,
Talon looked over his shoulder at Lara, her eyes wide and her
expression wary as she glanced wildly from one man’s lascivious
leer to another.
He slowed and took her hand. “Keep
your eyes forward.”
She grasped his hand, and some of the
wildness left her eyes, though none of the wariness. Any other
time, he would’ve been mush at her holding on to him, but he was
still furious with her. They arrived at the king’s large,
comfortably appointed tent hand in hand, and he had to pull his
fingers from hers to present her to the king.
“My liege.” He dipped his
head to Charles, who sat facing them across his table as two
menservants discreetly melted into the tent’s shadows.
Charles looked Lara over from cap to
boots, his expression giving nothing of what he thought away. Talon
clamped down on a grin. If Lara thought Sophie’s scoldings were an
ordeal, he couldn’t wait until the king was finished with
her.
“So.” Charles eyed her
sternly. “You are the infamous Lara, who crippled my cousin, became
captive and made lidi to Captain Guiscard here, who, when told by your master, my
captain, that you were not to come on this march, disguised
yourself as a lad, a cook’s helper, and came despite what you were
ordered.” He paused, warming to his lecture. “You have also almost
gotten yourself beaten, or worse, twice now, causing my captain no
end of trouble from having to assign two of his men to guard you
day and night when they should be guarding me, to causing him to
pitch his tent, when he greatly prefers his bedroll out under the
stars on these hot August nights.” He turned to Talon. “Is that
about it?”
Talon shook his head. “Not even by
half.”
Charles’s eyes lit with amusement, but
Talon didn’t think it was funny. Any of it. Nor would Charles if
it’d been him who’d been made her jailer, driven to distraction by
her day and night.
“So,” Charles said to
Lara. “What have you to say for yourself? Do you truly expect me to
call your wergeld paid, your service to the crown rendered in full
for disobeying the captain’s, your master’s, direct orders and
causing him no end, and that is a direct quote, of
trouble?”
Lara stood silent as Charles steepled
his fingers and tapped his fingertips, a thing he’d once admitted
to Talon he did to avoid smiling when he didn’t wish to be seen
doing so.
“No, Sire,” she answered
Charles at last. “I do not expect to be rewarded for my
disobedience.”
“Smart answer.” Charles
unsteepled his fingers. “But then Talon did say you were an
intelligent woman.” Lara slid a sideways glance at Talon, who
coughed and shifted on his feet as Charles sat back, still eyeing
Lara. “Now the question is, what do I do with you?”
“I could cook for you, my
king,” she answered quickly. “Then I would be no more trouble for
Captain Guiscard.”
“Yes, well.” Charles
stared at Talon’s cheek, so Talon reached up and rubbed it, feeling
nothing but his old scar there. “You could cook for me; however, I
am assured by my captain’s second that I would have immediate
trouble in the form of forty soldiers protesting the loss of their
cook. Therefore, I think it best you stay with Captain Guiscard’s
troop and cook for them as you have been.” He glanced between them,
finally resting on Lara. “And because I trust my captain’s decision
on this matter, he will decide, when this march is over, how much
of your wergeld has been paid by your service to his
company.”
Lara dropped her chin to her chest.
“Yes, my king.”
Charles indicated that they should
sit. “Talon told me you play Shah,” he said as Talon pulled a chair
out for Lara. “I’ve not played since he deserted me outside of
Zaragoza to go galloping back across Spain and take up the post at
Oloron. A post he seemed unusually eager to take up.” Charles
winked at Lara. “Now I see why.”
Lara’s cheeks turned a pretty shade of
rose beneath her dyed tan as Talon took his seat.
“I was eager to get out of
a boring siege and leave the cursed heat of the Spanish plains,” he
grumbled.
Charles chuckled, then looked to Lara.
“White or black?”
“White,” Lara
answered.
Charles turned the board so that the
black pieces faced him. “Now watch and learn, Talon.” He reached
for a black pawn. “Watch and learn.”
“Watch and learn?” Talon
snorted. “It was I who taught you how to play.”
Charles flashed Talon a quick grin. “I
wasn’t speaking of the board game, man.”
The king beat Lara handily their first
game, when she was still glancing wide-eyed around his tent as much
or more than she was concentrating on the game. She played the
second game with her more usual attentiveness, keeping her eyes on
his every move and taking her time to make hers as Charles and
Talon spoke of the failed campaign behind them and the march still
ahead of them.
“You still think the
Basques will retaliate?” Charles asked.
“Wouldn’t you?” Talon held
Charles’s gaze. “If it were your city burned, your women and
children dead?”
Lara’s head shot up, her attention off
the game and on them.
Charles let out a heavy sigh and sat
back in his chair. “I know the razing of Pamplona did not sit well
with you—”
“The great army of Gaul
slaughtered innocent women and children,” Talon ground out. “To say
it didn’t sit well with me is beyond an understatement.”
“I understand and even
commiserate with your feelings on this,” Charles told him.
“However, unfortunate as it is, the lives of innocents are often,
too often, I agree, a casualty of war.”
“Unfortunate?”
The king held up his hand. “Your point
is made, Captain, which is why I wanted you here. Your company will
be my second guard from here to Oloron.” He glanced at Lara. “This
way you’ll be able to watch over the both of us.” He leaned across
the table toward Lara as if sharing a secret. “Our Captain Guiscard
here is a mother hen at heart, with rather large, sharp talons I
would not wish to feel sunk into any part of my
anatomy.”
“A veritable patron saint
of strays.” She eyed Talon as if he’d actually grown feathers and
talons.
Charles burst out laughing. “She knows
you better than you let on.”
Talon motioned for Lara to move her
queen, and she set her white queen before the black king. Charles
widened his eyes as his mouth gaped.
Talon grinned. “Checkmate.”
***
Talon woke to a cry piercing his ears
and heart. He rolled off his bedroll and laid his hand on Lara’s
shoulder as a keening moan escaped her lips.
“Lara, wake up. Wake up,
my rose.”
Her eyes fluttered open and focused on
his. He helped her sit up, glad she was coming back to him, gladder
still she’d been so far away when he’d called her his rose. She
started shivering, and Talon held her, his nose in her shorn curls
as she buried her head into his shoulder. He sat there holding her
close as the gray of dawn broke, sharing his warmth and slowly
rocking back and forth, murmuring soft shushing sounds into her
hair until her shivering subsided, until she lifted her head and
pushed away from him, though not far. Her palms still pressing
against his chest, she took a deep breath in, then let it out
slowly.
“Stay close by the king
when we ride.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
Talon cupped her chin and tilted it so
he could meet her gaze and found his old friend the wary wildcat
staring back at him. “Why do you say that?”
“I dreamed I was coming to
a place of high rocks,” she said, her voice as shaky as her breath.
“The rocks formed a tunnel. When I came out the other side, I was
standing on a ledge, looking out over a field…a field covered with
the bodies of men and horses.” She clapped a hand over her mouth,
stifling a sob. “They were…everywhere. There was
blood…everywhere.”
Talon pulled Lara close and held her
tight. “It was just a bad dream.”
“No.” Lara grabbed his
tunic with both hands, her eyes wild. “I don’t just have bad
dreams. My bad dreams come true.”
“Are you saying you have
foretelling dreams?”
She held his gaze. “Yes. That is what
I’m telling you.”
Whether true or not, whether Talon
believed her or not, it was obvious she believed it. She had no
reason to lie. In truth, Talon had never known her to lie, other
than by omission. And whether her dream came true or not, time
would tell. Either way, it would do no harm to act as if it were
true.
“I tell you what,” he
whispered fiercely in her ear as the sounds of men moving about
outside infiltrated their tent. “I’ll stay close by the king today
and you stay close by me. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Lara’s quick agreement to Talon’s deal
worried him almost as much as her dream did, and he made sure they
both kept to it by insisting she ride between the king and himself
as the army prepared to march east for the mountain
pass.
They made Roncesvalles Pass by high
noon, and the bulk of the army were on their way down the eastern
slope of the mountain when the blare of a horn blasted through the
oppressing heat, sending a chill down Talon’s spine. A second blast
rent the air, then a third, then silence.
“That’s Roland’s horn,”
Charles said. “He rides rear guard behind the baggage train. Go,”
he told Talon as his personal guard closed ranks around him.
“Go.”
Talon swung the Black’s head west, and