The Mercenary's Claim Read online

  When she reached the end of the tunnel, she used the knife to cut through the leather wall that blocked the exit above her head and then pushed through a layer of dirt a foot thick so that she could emerge from the tunnel into the night. Peering around cautiously, she made sure she was alone, then pulled herself out of the tunnel exit and piled leaves over some sticks she cross-hatched over the hole so that it would be difficult to spot. She wanted Gregor and his men to wonder what had happened to her, keeping her escape route a secret if at all possible. One never knew when it might come in handy again.

  Her first job was to find a clearing where she could look at the night sky. Again, she had cause to thank her mother’s careful tutelage. What had seemed to her to be meaningless drudgery in learning the patterns of the stars was turning out to be life-saving information. She oriented herself with no difficulty and set out to find Wern.

  When she arrived at the location where he should have been, she wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or despondent. Wern was gone. She was sure she had the right place, since she was able to see in the pale pre-dawn glow. There were horse tracks and blood soaked into the ground where the stricken man had lain, but no sign of which way he had gone.

  Then Kirsten began to think. If there were no tracks of a man walking away from the site and Wern, for all his many talents, couldn’t fly, it only stood to reason that he had to have been carried off on a horse. She felt her heart leap. She had not heard any sounds of another capture and she was sure she would have heard celebration if that had occurred. In fact, Gregor probably would have taunted her or questioned her about the lie she had told if indeed anyone had been caught. The only other explanation was that her husband was near. Kirsten almost whooped in triumph until she realized she was far from being rescued. She hastened away from the site as the sky lightened at an alarming rate.

  Chapter Six

  The early morning chill soon burned off and Kirsten found herself perspiring in the heat as she pulled her snagged dress from another blackberry bush. She felt that keeping off the paths was safer and several times heard men on horseback pass by, probably searching for her, but she had played in these woods too often as a child to be caught easily by a bunch of strangers.

  She was making for the lake, the only plan she had been able to come up with in the night. Hoping that Driver had made contact with Gustav, she headed as best she could toward what she hoped was the spot where they had waited while Wern had acquired their mounts. The journey that had taken only an hour or two on horses took her all day and by the end of it, she was famished. Gregor’s men had given her some water when they had locked her in the bedroom, but nothing to eat.

  She found the tree with little trouble and dragged herself up into it to wait. Finding her eyes closing of their own accord, she tied her waist to the branch of the tree to prevent a fall and let herself drift off.

  “There it be!” Driver’s voice awoke her from a deep slumber.

  “I see tracks but I don’t see her.” Gustav sounded frantic, but she had never been so glad to hear any voice in her life.

  “Then look up!” Driver chuckled as he pointed.

  Kirsten was struggling to come awake and get herself untied from the tree. “What’s wrong? Darling? Come down!”

  Kirsten, exhausted, tried to answer but instead just made a kind of gulping noise. Her throat was parched and, weak from hunger, she couldn’t make herself heard. Her leaden fingers wouldn’t obey her. Frustrated, she hit the tree trunk and cried out again.

  “She be tied up there, Gustav! A trap! Back!”

  Gustav leaped up into the tree, sword drawn. “Let them come at us! My sword is thirsty for blood!”

  “And your wife is thirsty for water,” Kirsten croaked out in a faint voice.

  Gustav swung up to her, one hand on the branch, the other brandishing his blade. “Who tied you up here?” he hissed in her ear. “How many of them? Which way did they go?”

  Kirsten swallowed, coughed, and tried again. “I tied me up here. There is only one of me and I cannot go in any direction for I am stuck! Cut me down!”

  Gustav leaned back in astonishment. “Why in the name of heaven would you tie your silly little self to a branch?”

  Force of habit had her answering his question. “Because my scarf wouldn’t reach around the trunk.”

  Gustav nearly fell out of the tree laughing. Kirsten, beyond reason, joined him, her croaky voice sounding odd in her ears, but reviving enough to see the humor in the situation.

  “What’s on up there? Is they up that there tree waiting in ambush? Is they killing my lady? The villains! Hang on, my lady! Driver’s coming!” It was Driver’s turn to sound frantic.

  Gustav tried to convince him not to climb the tree, but the old man was surprisingly agile and had joined them before Gustav could explain. “We’re not screaming. We’re laughing, but I’m not sure we should be. Get back down! Lady Kirsten is in a state. I’ll cut her down and then we’ll see what to do.”

  He carefully applied his blade to the offending scarf and lowered Kirsten to Driver’s waiting arms. “Water, please. And something to eat. Have you any food?” she begged.

  Driver lowered her to the ground. Getting out his water-skin, he asked the descending Gustav, “So they ain’t no ambush?”

  “No,” replied Gustav, shaking his head.

  Kirsten grasped the water-skin and looked as if she would try to drain it, but Gustav took it from her after only a swallow or two. “Easy, now. We don’t want you bringing it all back up, do we? Small sips, or I’ll take it away.”

  “No, don’t, please! I’m so thirsty,” Kirsten pleaded.

  Driver had produced a crust of bread from the inner folds of his jerkin. Normally, Kirsten wouldn’t have touched such an offering, but at that moment she would have fought a bear for it.

  “Help me get her on my horse,” Gustav rose and addressed Driver. “I’ll mount behind her and we’ll put some miles between us and whatever mischief is going on here.” This was soon accomplished and they headed down the path toward the lake.

  At a fork in the road, Driver signaled Gustav to follow him. They soon came to a path that led to the lake itself. On the shore, beached on the pebbles, was an overturned fishing boat, small but sturdy. “I spotted that yesterday when I were looking for you. Looks like a sturdy little thing.”

  “Right you are, Driver!” They were soon far enough away from the lodge to relax.

  * * *

  “And Wern is going to be all right?” Kirsten asked. They were ensconced in a small room above a disreputable looking pub that smelled of bacon and beer. Kirsten had never been more effusive in her praise of any bedroom.

  “It appears so. Neslin will stitch him up when he gets home. That will take a few days, but he’ll be fine if he rests. The publican’s wife wrapped him well and we loaded him on a wagon headed home from the fair at the abbey. They will pass directly by Schoenfeld.”

  “I’m so glad to hear it. I was so worried.”

  “Whatever gave you the idea to go chasing after Driver? Didn’t you know you would be caught?”

  “Yes, of course I knew.” Kirsten took another bite of the steaming soup they had requested from the kitchen as soon as they had arrived at the lakeside establishment some miles down the water. “That was my intent. I wanted to draw any enemies away from Wern while giving Driver a chance to escape and find you.”

  “Well, it was a foolish, foolhardy thing to do,” Gustav commented. “I ought to redden your backside for you, for sure. I’ll not have you taking such chances!”

  Kirsten finished the stew and gave her husband a searching look. “Why not?”

  “You could be bearing my child.”

  Kirsten shrank back as if he had struck her in the face. “I see.” The tears came to her eyes, the chill to her heart.

  Gustav looked away, his voice a whisper. “What could a man value more? What do you expect of me? That I admit that you hold my heart in your hand
as surely as you hold that spoon? That your smile carries the sunshine and without it my life is as dark as the pit of hades? How could I admit those things?”

  Hope dawned in Kirsten. “You could admit them if they were true.”

  Gustav sat back, his normal blustering manner returning to its accustomed position in the forefront. “Well, of course they’re true, but it wouldn’t do for me to let you know, would it? You’d wrap me around your little finger and twitch me like a horse swinging its tail.”

  “Keeps the flies away,” giggled Kirsten, understanding that, while something had changed between them, her husband was not the kind of man who made flowery speeches or stayed sincere for very long. “Horses need their tails.”

  “I’ll paddle your tail if you don’t finish your bread and hush this senseless chatter. We have a plan to make!”

  “Isn’t the planning your duty? Mine is to but get an heir.”

  “Planning? My duty? If we depended on my planning, we would probably starve. My duty is to find a man to do the planning. I feel the lack of Varin and my army most sorely at times such as this.”

  “I could play the part of Varin, but I haven’t the beard for the role.”

  “And it’s grateful I am for the fact! Beards, indeed! What need is there for a beard.”

  “Oh, never mind. It was something Neslin said to me once.”

  “To make a plan, first Varin takes into account all the words, rumors, records, anything he can gather to shed light on the field of battle, so to speak. Tell me again what you saw and heard at the lodge.”

  She recounted to him all the details she could recall. When she was through, he sat back and scratched his chin. “Could be a raiding party. Not his whole force, by any means. He wanted you, but for what purpose?”

  “He said it was for ransom,” Kirsten reminded him.

  “And we both know that is pretense on his part. He knows the state of your father’s purse. Gregor himself helped put the gaping hole in it, through which the gold has trickled out.”

  “Trickled? Flowed like wine. As you say, Gregor must know my father has precious little to ransom me with.”

  “And your husband has even less. Ransom cannot be his aim.” Gustav seemed to consider for a moment. “What said your father of the reasons for Gregor’s repeated attacks on his strongholds? The siege was only the last line in a rather long song of his assaults, was it not?”

  “That is so,” Kirsten replied thoughtfully. “My father remarked upon it often. He could not comprehend what Gregor wanted.”

  “Could he have had designs on you? It was you he took. Not that I can blame him.” He gave her a suggestive leer.

  “But he needs none of the titles my father could bestow. And now that I am your wife, what good could I have done him?”

  “You wouldn’t be my wife if you were my widow.”

  That thought struck Kirsten and she paled visibly. “He could never hope to win my father’s favor having done so despicable a thing.”

  “That may have been why he carried it out in secret at that lodge. He hoped no one would know I had met my demise at his hand.”

  Kirsten threw her arms around Gustav’s neck. “Don’t talk so! It’s too horrible!” Suddenly, she realized what she had done and gasped. Her attempt to pull back was unsuccessful.

  “Stay where you are. Most convenient position.” He stroked her hair and let his hand follow the silken strands down past her shoulders and over the curves and peaks he found along the way. “Perhaps I should take stock, just to be sure nothing is missing.”

  “Gustav!”

  “Beautiful face? Yes, still there. Lovely hair? Yes, still there also. Soft shoulders sloping down to twin slopes of paradise? Definitely, yes.”

  “Aren’t you going to continue the inventory? You seem to have gotten stuck,” Kirsten giggled.

  “Thorough investigation is the key to efficiency,” he retorted smugly. “I require to be sure all is in proper working order.” After a few minutes of her sighs and purrs, he admitted, “Yes, I do believe things are as they were before I left on my trip.”

  “Speaking of your trip—” Kirsten began.

  “At this moment, I have no desire to hear your questions,” Gustav stated categorically. He stopped her mouth with his and nothing further was said for a very long time.

  Just as they were dozing off, sated and exhausted, they heard voices through the walls. The publican and his wife were seemingly enjoying the same sort of marital bliss. Gustav laughed while Kirsten buried her head under the covers.

  * * *

  The next morning, Gustav rose early and woke Kirsten with a kiss. “Time we were leaving, darling.”

  “Just another minute,” Kirsten whined from the bed.

  “You have had a rough time of it,” Gustav agreed indulgently. “I’ll give you another hour, but then we must be away.”

  An hour later, with all in readiness, Gustav returned, expecting Kirsten to be up and dressing, but he found her still in bed, deep in slumber. He swatted her rump sharply. “Up! Time we were away!”

  Kirsten yelped. “Leave me be! I’ll get up when I’m ready!”

  “Kirsten, we must be off. Gregor could find us. And even if he doesn’t, the vintner I went south to find is coming along behind me. I’ve already lost several days through this misadventure. I’ll not have him arriving at Schoenfeld before me.”

  “You go ahead then. I am tired and I want to sleep.”

  “You weren’t so tired last night.”

  She threw a pillow at him.

  Gustav went to the bed and peeled back the sheet to land several loud swats on his wife’s backside.

  “Ouch!” she screeched. She had not had anything to wear to bed, so the swats stung her naked backside hotly. “Stop! You can’t do that here!”

  He spanked her thighs just as hard. “How about here?”

  She rolled over and glared at him. “No! No! I mean in this room! The walls are too thin,” she hissed. “You remember how clearly we heard our hosts last night. Do you want the whole tavern to hear you?”

  Gustav shrugged. “It bothers me not one bit, but if you are concerned, get up out of that bed and ready yourself! We ride in half an hour!”

  She hurriedly donned her clothing and joined him downstairs, trying not to make eye contact with anyone as they left. Gustav had acquired another horse for her, so they did not have to ride together. Driver trailed behind them, as they had planned.

  When they stopped for the noonday meal, Driver offered to scout ahead. Once he had left, they had a pleasant time, while avoiding any discussion of the difficult morning or day before. Sunbeams danced with shadows to the tune of the bees and dragonflies. It was once the conversation circled round to the events of that day leading up to the present situation that the argument began.

  “But what made you believe I had sent for you?” Gustav wanted to know. “If I had been able to bring you, do you not think I would have already done it? You should have known I would not give in if all your pleading and wheedling had not already availed.”

  “I was not alone in being fooled,” Kirsten answered hotly. “Everyone thought, upon hearing the letter, that you had relented. Wern had a few suspicions, but he brought me anyway. Everyone acknowledged how ridiculous you had been to leave me behind.”

  “Ridiculous, am I? Who threw herself in the path of a pursuing enemy?”

  “To save two loyal retainers!”

  “Retainers whose duty it was to lay down their lives for you! Not the reverse!”

  “They had already done so many times over the course of the day. I could not let them suffer any more for my sake.”

  “That decision is not yours to make.”

  “If you had brought me with you, none of this would have happened!” Kirsten had lost her temper at last. “I thought you wanted me to see them as you see them! To acknowledge that low or high birth matters less than nobility of character. Well, now I do. Perhaps if you value
d your wife like you do your troops and your plan, we would all be better off!”

  Gustav narrowed his eyes at her. “You think I value you less than my retainers or my ambitions? What use to me are all the armies, lands, and titles in the realm if I lost the one thing in this world that gives them any meaning? You! That is the reason I cannot stand the thought of you in peril, of you pursued by men of evil intent. Without you, I am nothing.”

  “Fine way you have of telling me about it!” Kirsten sneered. “Of all the idiotic men in the world, you are the worst!”

  As if he were struggling to control his temper, Gustav gritted his teeth. “My lady, we are both in a temper. I think it would be best if we kept silence.”

  “There’s been enough keeping silence! I wish to talk!”

  “You wish to yell like a fishwife and I won’t have it.”

  “How exactly are you going to stop me?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them.

  Gustav’s usual grin returned, but with a new cast Kirsten suspected boded ill for her backside. “Thus.”

  So saying, he lunged for her. She ran, but he caught her after two large strides. He slung her over his shoulder and carried her to a fallen log. Flinging her over it, he wailed away on her riding skirts, while she shrieked her indignation at the top of her lungs.

  “Do you want Driver to hear you?” he asked as he pushed her skirts up over her waist baring her already burning rump to the warm afternoon air.

  “Stop! Let me up!”

  “I suppose you do, then. I hope he enjoys the show.” Gustav applied the large palm of his strong hand to her backside, first in the middle, where the flesh was roundest, then lower down, at the crease where buttock met thigh. She wriggled and gasped, pushing at the log with her hands and forearms, but he held her tightly against the trunk.