Immortal Warrior (3 page)

“I am called Ivo de Vassy, and I take my right from the king, as the new baron of Alnwick.” He glanced down at the knife in her fist, then back up to meet her eyes. One brow went up, and she had the unnerving sense that he was holding back a laugh.

The second man didn’t bother to hold it back, snorting mightily when he saw her blade. “I told you,” he said to the first, then turned to Alaida’s men. “Why are you still on your feet? Kneel to your new lord.”

The guards and servants dropped immediately, save Bôte, who stood firmly at her mistress’s heel. Oswald also held his position, his short sword gripped tightly in his hand.

“I said kneel,” growled the second knight, putting a hand to the hilt of his sword. As though sensing trouble, his bird—a large raven—flew off to sit on the wall.

“A man can claim to be anything,” said Oswald with a calm he surely must not feel. “I have seen no royal writ, and until I do, Gilbert Tyson is lord of Alnwick, and I serve him and Lady Alaida.”

“Fair enough.” The pale knight reached into a pouch hanging from his saddle and produced a folded parchment. “Do you read Latin, my lady?”

“Well enough for this.” She returned her knife to its sheath, took the document, and with de Vassy following, carried it to one of the large standing torches. The scribe’s hand was clear, and even in the flickering light, she could make out the important words:
Ivo de Vesci. Barô. Dominus. Alnwick.
And that was the king’s great seal imprinted in the wax; she recognized it from letters held by her grandfather. The sense of dread she had held at bay through these last months flooded over her. Her voice was barely a whisper as she asked, “Is my grandfather dead, then,
monseigneur
?”

“No. Imprisoned at Windsor with de Mowbray, but alive and well at last word.”

“Thank you, my lord.” She collected herself, turned, and lifted her chin to announce to the others, “This is from the king. Bid welcome to your new lord.”

“Saints save us.” Bôte crossed herself and did a quick courtesy.

Oswald sheathed his sword, and with an apologetic glance toward Alaida, knelt to his new master. “Forgive me, my lord. I sought only to protect my lady.”

Lord Ivo brushed away his apology with a flick of his gloved hand. “I expect no less diligence in the future. What is your name?”

“Oswald, my lord. I serve as marshal of Alnwick.”

“On your feet, then, Oswald Marshal, and the rest of you, as well. Someone see to our horses.”

Young Tom dashed forward to grab the reins of his handsome horse, while one of the grooms took the other animals and led them off. Lord Ivo walked to the center of the yard, then turned a slow circle, taking in every stone and timber, surveying, measuring. Finally, his eyes came to rest on Alaida with the same assessing look.

Damn William.
He’d given her to this usurper; she knew it as surely as she knew her own name. Well, this new-made lord would find she was not a willing bride—if he could find her at all. She had just enough silver of her own to buy sanctuary at some nunnery, and she could petition for her grandfather’s release from there. She would be away at first light.

Except this Ivo’s eyes said he knew precisely what she was thinking. He tugged off one glove and put out his hand. “Come, my lady. Show me my new hall.”

Show him his new hall
, as though it were as simple as that, when it meant the very earth had shifted beneath her feet. Look at the way he stood there with his hand out, expecting her to come to him. She clenched her fists at her side and glared her defiance back at him. Let him whip her. She was not his dog.

His eyes narrowed. In three strides he was before her, so close she could feel his breath on her cheek. But instead of striking her, he leaned closer, his lips nearly against her ear.

“Do not let things begin so between us, my lady.”

His voice was low and full of warning, but a note of something else underlying that warning—kindness? hopefulness?—so disarmed her that when he stepped back a pace and put his hand out again, she found herself laying her hand in his palm. His fingers closed over hers, claiming her. It suddenly became very hard to breathe, and she vowed to herself that this surrender was only temporary, a way to put him off his guard so she could escape more easily come morning.

“Will I find resistance within?” he asked as he led her toward the door. His companion, Oswald, and the rest of the Alnwick men fell in behind them.

She ignored his double meaning. “Not from our men—I mean
your
men—once they see Oswald at your side. But there are several knights bachelor inside who have been loitering about, hoping Alnwick would be theirs.”

“Only Alnwick?”

“No.” Her cheeks flamed as she heard herself add, “Now they are disappointed in both regards.”

“Brand. Did you hear?”

He stepped up to take his place at Ivo’s right. “I did. Shall I just gut them now, or do you want to be civilized?”

“I would be pleased to help to do the gutting, my lord,” volunteered Oswald. Behind him, several of the others muttered their agreement.

So it was like that
, thought Ivo. He’d suspected it as soon as he’d heard the disgust in Alaida’s voice when she said
knights bachelor
. “How many are there?”

“Three,” said Oswald. “And eight men between them.”

“Do I owe any regard to their fathers or grandfathers?”

“No, m’lord.”

“Then let us be rid of them,” said Ivo. “But leave their guts intact unless they’re too foolish to keep them. No use starting any unnecessary wars.”

They reached the door and Ivo shoved it open hard, so it hit the wall with a crack. The dogs began barking, and Oswald whistled to silence them. A few men stirred and pulled their covers tighter in the chill draft. One lifted his head groggily. “Shut the door, ye pig’s ass.”

Before his head hit his arm again, Ivo had hauled the offender to his feet. “Mind your tongue, oaf, or I will have it tanned for a purse. Now light the torches. All of them.” He shoved the man on his way. “Everyone, awake.”

The man had the sense to obey. The hall stirred to life as the torches flared.
My hall
, Ivo thought with a sense of satisfaction deeper than he’d had in years. “On your feet!”

When they didn’t move quickly enough, he nodded to Brand, who strode through the room, bellowing and yanking blankets off stragglers. One man came up off his pallet with fists swinging; Brand swept his legs out from under him with one foot and moved on without breaking stride. Oswald followed in his wake, urging the Alnwick men to some order. By the time they reached the low dais at the front of the hall, even Alaida’s would-be suitors were awake, their eyes red-rimmed and bleary from drink. They reached for their weapons and started forward.

Ivo left Alaida by the door and swept across the path Brand had cleared. One of the leeches met him at the edge of the dais, his sword half out of the scabbard.

The flash of Ivo’s blade at his throat stopped the man cold, and his friends with him. Some of their men in the hall started forward. Brand rounded on them, defending Ivo’s back. Several Alnwick men rushed to his aid, and there was a brief tussle as they confiscated weapons.

“You dare to draw your sword against your host?” demanded Ivo hotly.

“What the devil? Who are you to speak to me so?”

“Ivo de Vassy,” he pronounced the name very clearly, so they would be sure to remember it. “Baron of Alnwick. You are in my hall, and you will stand down.”

“Baron of . . . ?” The man struggled to wrap his wine-soaked brain around the words, but when he managed at last, the color drained from his face. “It cannot be so.”

“And yet it is. I have seen the letter patent myself,” said Alaida clearly from her place near the door, undoubtedly as much for the benefit of her own men as for these louts. “Now sheath your weapons,
messires
, before I ask the baron to make me a gift of your ears. I am sure I would find them in fine condition, seeing how little they have been used in the past month.”

The knights’ faces went scarlet as laughter echoed through the hall, but they yielded, slowly returning their swords to their scabbards.

“My actions were unwise, my lord . . . Ivo, is it?” The man held his palms out and spread wide in surrender, but his oily tone still challenged. “Forgive me. I was asleep and dreaming of war. Being awakened so, I thought the dream was real.”

“Perhaps you would have gentler dreams if you slept elsewhere,” said Ivo. “Tonight.”

The knight’s lips thinned and he drew himself up. “Come, friends. We are no longer welcome here.”

“Ye never were,” muttered Oswald.

“You would have us leave now?” asked the shortest of the three, his eyes wide with the thought. “At
night
?”

“I just traveled the road from Morpeth and found it safe enough,” said Ivo. He tipped his blade slightly toward Brand, who stood there with his sword in his fist, looking every bit as though he would still enjoy gutting someone. “However, my friend here is not afraid of the dark. He would be happy to escort you.”

“We need no escort,” growled their leader. He stalked toward the door, his companions on his heels and their men trailing after. He slowed only long enough to spit an insult in Alaida’s direction. “Well done, m’lady. You found a champion as ill mannered as yourself.”

“But not half so rude as you, sir,” she snapped back, then went to the open door to call after them, “Be warned, if I hear of so much as a single egg cracked in the village, I will ask for your ears after all.”

Ivo laughed. The maid had a quick wit and a tongue to go with it. He was going to have to watch her, lest he find himself married to a shrew.

She turned back to the hall, flush with victory, her eyes flashing, and her red hair blazing in the torchlight. The wind lifted loose strands and whipped them around her brow like tongues of flame.
Eisa, goddess of the hearth.
The ancient image leapt into Ivo’s mind.
She was fire itself.
He suddenly very much wanted this woman, and it had nothing to do with land or king or anything beyond a desire to see how all that heat might warm him.

“I will see they don’t get lost between the hall and the gate,” said Brand, fetching him back to the business at hand. A grinning Oswald signaled his small troop of Alnwick men to bring the weapons they had taken, and they followed him out.

The door had barely shut behind them when the hall erupted. Ivo’s new men crowded forward to kneel and offer their loyalty. Like that, he had them, and Alnwick was no longer in Tyson hands. Alaida’s high spirits faded as the fact of it struck her.

“He’s done it, my lady,” said Bôte, excited. “He’s sent them packing.”

“But who will send
him
packing?” Alaida wondered aloud.

No one. He looked too right standing there in what used to be her grandfather’s spot, accepting his due—powerful and commanding. Noble, from the angular cut of his features to how he held himself. Even his clothes singled him out from the others. In the crowd of shapeless browns and blues, his were a rich, dark gray, the cloth barely distinguishable from his mail shirt except by the latter’s dull gleam. With his white-gold hair capping his head like a halo, he looked like some sort of warrior saint—Saint George, perhaps—except no saint ever looked at a woman the way Lord Ivo looked at her over the heads of his men, like he would possess her right there. Her cheeks burned, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of looking away.

“He will make a good lord,” prattled Bôte. “I can see it in his eyes. He’s strong, but he knows how to wield his strength.”

“I hope you are correct,” said Alaida quietly. “Ask Geoffrey to come to me.”

When Geoffrey came along, she gave her last orders as the lady of Alnwick: to clear the bedding from the floor and send for the women to come down to greet their new lord; to bring out the lord’s great chair and a bowl and ewer for him to wash; and to see that he was offered bread, meat, and wine. Finished, she waited until Lord Ivo was at last distracted, and then slipped off to the solar, unwilling to watch any longer and anxious to pack what she intended to carry away with her to the convent.

IVO WASN’T SURE when she had disappeared, just that he looked up from the line of men kneeling to pledge their loyalty to find her gone. He frowned, and the eyes of the man before him grew round with concern.

“Have I offended, my lord?”

“What? No, no, it’s not you. Go. We will finish this another time.” He turned to Brand. “Where is she?”

“Upstairs. I saw her go as I was coming in. From the look on her face, I thought you had told her.”

“Not yet, but she surely knows. I had better get it over with.”

“Shall I go up and take that little blade of hers first? She might not be able to kill you, but it would hurt—although in truth, her tongue might cut more deeply. Those knights we routed may never swagger again.”

Ivo grinned. “She did take their balls off, didn’t she? What confounds me is why she didn’t do it before and send them on their way.”

“That sort only listens to steel.” Brand’s smile faded. “A bride so quick could make this venture very short, my friend.”

“Then it will be short. However, if I do not take her to wife as William commands, it will never begin at all.”

“Then go and talk to your lady. I will stay here and enjoy your fire and make sure our raven friend stays out of the wine.”

“You remind me.” Ivo motioned Oswald and the steward, Geoffrey, over. “I will ride out before dawn to survey my lands.”

“I’ll have a guard ready to ride with you, my lord,” said Oswald.

“No!” said Ivo, too quickly. He took a deep breath and spoke more carefully. “No. Brand is all the guard I need. We will cover more ground that way. While I’m gone, another of my men will arrive, by the name of Sir Ari. He is my left hand, as Sir Brand is my right, and will be seneschal and steward over the castle to be built, while you, Geoffrey, will remain steward of the manor. Know this: he and Sir Brand both speak with my voice in all things. Obey them and grant them each the respect due to me, and see that every man and woman on this manor does the same.”