Keeper of the Dream (58 page)

Hugh spotted Raine and called out. The king froze, then swung around. He stood with his legs splayed, his fists on his hips, watching Raine approach. The hem of his ermine-trimmed purple mantle dripped muddy water into a puddle around his pointed-toed shoes. The skin above his red beard was the color of a ripe plum, and his thick chest rose and fell with his angry breaths.

He leveled a look of royal rage at Raine calculated to curdle a man’s blood. “You are late, Rhuddlan.”

Raine stopped before the king. “My liege,” he said. He met and held the protruding gray eyes until the king was the first to blink. Then Raine looked around the savaged camp, and he allowed a slight smile to form on his lips. “Wales does not seem to agree with you, sire.”

It was a calculated risk—that the king could be shocked out of his rage by Raine’s impertinence. It failed. Henry flung out his arm, his voice cracking. “Seize him!”

Raine’s hand fell on the hilt of his sword. Too late he realized that Henry had pointed not at himself, but at Rhodri.

Henry’s men had the boy surrounded instantly. Raine had taken a step forward, his sword half out its scabbard, but he stopped when a young knight with a sharp, pointed face jerked up hard on Rhodri’s arm and the boy’s lips tightened with pain.

Raine spun around and confronted Henry. “Is this the mark of a king—to take his temper out on a lowly squire?” Though he kept his face impassive, there was an underlying sneer in his tone.

Henry’s square jaw jutted out. “This whelp is no mere squire. He is Owain’s son and my hostage, and he will pay for his father’s perfidy.”

“The boy had no part in this, sire.” Raine put himself as close as he could between his king and Arianna’s brother. “He’s been with me for two years and has served me well.”

“No part! No
part
He is hostage to his father’s good behavior and you see what the man has done. Gwynedd has behaved badly. Badly!” The king spat the words, his lips twisting and pulling back from his teeth. His eyes bulged obscenely, and the freckles stood out dark on his face like pox scars.

Raine stared at this man, his lord, this man who had held his loyalty and his honor for so many years. This man who claimed himself worthy to be king of all Britains…. This man who was frothing at the mouth like a wild boar.

“It was your choice to break the truce and invade,” Raine said, his voice hard and flat. “You can’t fault the man for defending his land.”

Henry jerked to a stop, his massive chest heaving. His eyes remained wild, unblinking. They narrowed, turned crafty. “This land is mine by right, and I no longer suffer his presence on it.”

“Nevertheless you cannot fault Owain’s son. You’ve a son of your own—would you want him to suffer for your crimes?”

The king threw back his head and bellowed a laugh. One after another the other men joined with him, all but Raine.

But the king’s laughter stopped abruptly. The laughter of the others petered out more slowly. In the ensuing silence, Henry said, his harsh voice almost conversational, “Chester, take your dagger and put out the whelp’s eyes.”

Earl Hugh started. He nearly laughed, thought better of it, and cleared his throat instead. It was now so quiet one could hear the water dripping off the tree. Rhodri’s face had turned pale, and he stiffened against the arms that held him, but he made not a sound.

“Chester!” Henry roared.

Hugh licked his lips. “Me, sire?”

The king bent forward at the waist, pushing his face into Hugh’s. “I said …
Put out his eyes!”

Hugh backed up before the onslaught of Henry’s bellow. “But—”

“By God’s balls, if you’re not man enough to do it, I am!”

The king whipped a dagger from his belt, but Raine was faster. His sword flew from the scabbard with a whistling sound, like the hiss of a wet brand … pinning Henry’s hand to the tree at his back.

The king’s fingers spasmed opened, letting go of the dagger. He gave a yell like a strangled cat, and the sound of it echoed down the gorge.

There was the hiss of more blades being drawn, but it was cut across by Raine’s voice, silky and dangerous. “Put up your swords … or is there a man among you who wishes to be known as the one who cost his king a hand?”

Raine’s sword pierced the king’s hand through the web, between the thumb and forefinger—a wound that would heal in a week or two. But with a single movement of his strong wrist, he could also sever vital tendons, rendering the hand useless forever.

“Rhodri,” Raine went on in that same calm, flat voice.
“Relieve these noble men of their weapons and toss them in the river. Then fetch our horses. Do it quickly, lad.”

Henry’s eyes bulged, shot with blood, and he snarled like a rabid cur. “You will die a traitor’s death for this, Rhuddlan,” he hissed, while in the background Raine could hear the splashing sounds of daggers and swords hitting the water. “I’ll have you hanged and gelded and disemboweled and blinded. You will be screaming for my mercy long after you’ve no throat left to scream.”

Raine said nothing, there was nothing to say. In the space of a heartbeat he had gone from his king’s best man to his king’s worst enemy, and there was no going back.

Rhodri appeared beside him, their horses’ reins wrapped around his bony fist. Tiny shudders racked the boy’s body and his green eyes, whole and unharmed and so like Arianna’s, stared at Raine out of his pale face.

With his free hand, Raine took his horse’s bit and waited for the boy to mount. “By your leave, Henry,” he said, with a flash of a smile that was sheer desperate bravado.

With a single, swift movement, he pulled his blade free of the royal flesh and leapt into the saddle, spurring the charger into a gallop.

They tore down the gorge. Behind him, Raine could hear shouts. They had maybe a two-minutes’ head start, he reckoned, before Henry’s men would assure themselves that their king would live and collect themselves to chase after them.

A hill rose up ahead, with a copse of thick pines curling along the eastern slope. Raine veered his horse in that direction. They were perhaps a hundred yards into the trees when men and horses sprang up from the ground and rocks, surrounding them.

Two dozen longbows aimed at Raine’s chest. But he was more concerned with the sword that pointed at his throat. He looked down the long blade, into familiar sea
foam eyes. Long, flowing brown mustaches lifted upward in an ironic smile.

“Welcome to Wales, Norman.”

Raine sat among pine needles and cones, his back against a trunk, his arms lashed behind his back. The man who had welcomed him to Wales stood next to his drawn-up knees and looked down at him along the length of a thin, aquiline nose.

“I am Cynan ap Owain.”

Raine narrowed his eyes against the sun, which shone through the tree boughs behind the man’s broad back. “You look like your father.”

The mustaches twitched. “Is that a compliment or an insult?” Before Raine could answer, he went on. “My brother, Rhodri, had quite a story to tell. To hear him talk you’re a hero right out of a bard’s tale.” When Raine said nothing, he cocked a brow. “Modest, too, are you?”

He hunkered down, pulling out a dagger to cut the thongs that bound Raine’s wrists. “You saved Rhodri’s eyes, which is the same as saving his life. You should have called me on the insult—tying you up like this. Arianna will have my guts for lute strings. What’s it like being married to my sister? I always thought the man who wed Arianna would have to be either a saint or a rogue. Which are you?”

“It varies depending on the time and the weather.”

Cynan laughed. Raine rubbed the circulation back into his arms, then Cynan helped him to his feet. The two men walked toward the rest of the Welshmen, who were grouped around the horses.

Rhodri came forward, leading Raine’s black charger. “My lord, what you did back there … I cannot thank—”

“Stuff a rag in it, Rhodri,” Cynan barked. “The man doesn’t want you weeping all over his hauberk. You’ll give him rust spots.”

Rhodri blushed, and Raine grinned at him.

But then his smile faltered. He thought of King Henry, nursing his rage and a hole in his hand, and of Arianna and their children alone at his castle and targets for revenge. He turned to Cynan, who was steadying his horse, preparing to mount. “Arianna is at Rhuddlan and Henry—”

“Isn’t going anywhere fast. We saw to that.” Cynan grinned, then pulled himself into his saddle with a grunt. “Still, we might as well withdraw to your castle as anywhere else. I wouldn’t mind sleeping in a nice warm hall come tomorrow night.”

Raine paused, his hands on the saddlebows. It occurred to him that letting the good part of a Welsh army into Rhuddlan would be like a sheep welcoming a wolf into the herd. But then, he had little choice. He was Owain of Gwynedd’s man from now on, for better or worse.

He looked up and met Cynan’s eyes. Green, sea-foam eyes so like Arianna’s.

The man must have read his thoughts, for a smile curved the corners of his long mouth. “As I said, welcome to Wales.”

They emerged from the forest onto the top of the hill. From here they could look down into the river gorge, where the English still reeled from the blow dealt by the Welsh and the storm. At the far end of it, close to them, some of the English dead lay scattered, unclaimed and unburied. One or more must be clinging still to life, Raine thought, for he picked out an occasional groan in between the trill of black birds.

A shout from one of Cynan’s men brought Raine’s head snapping around. A lone rider charged down the slope of the balded hill to the east of them. A red mantle billowed like a loose sail and long brown hair flapped and swirled in the wind.

Brown hair that glinted gold and red in the sun.

From out of the corner of his eye, Raine saw one of the
English wounded stagger to his feet, pulling himself up by a tree branch. The man had a loaded crossbow in his hand and he raised it level with his chest. In the instant that it took for Raine to realize what was about to happen, the Englishman fired.

The bolt shot through the air with a quick hiss, like a striking snake. The rider jerked upright, her arms flopping, and a red stain blossomed on her chest. She remained frozen in that way for one eternal moment. Then she tumbled over backward off the end of her still-galloping horse.

“Arianna!”

Cynan’s hand lashed out, snagging the black charger’s reins, holding Raine back. “It’s too late, man. She took that bolt right in the chest.”

Pain stabbed at Raine’s eyes, so fierce that he gasped aloud. He pulled blindly against the man who held his horse.

“Go back down there and Henry’s men will seize you,” Cynan said, his voice cracking with his own pain. “Arianna!”

Raine’s raw shout of anguish echoed over the moors. He wrenched the charger’s head free and drove his heels into the animal’s sides.

It seemed to take forever to get to her. He kept forgetting to breathe.

He leapt from his horse without bringing it to a stop and fell to his knees beside her. She lay on her front, her face turned away from him, pressed into the ground. With trembling hands and fear screaming in his mind, he gently rolled her over….

Oh, sweet Jesus.

The whole front of her chest was drenched in blood. She looked at him with eyes dark with pain. “Raine? It hurts.”

He kept it off his face—all of it, his gut-wrenching agony, the fierce, unbearable grief that even now was beginning
to tear at his chest, ripping him apart, the utter certainty that his Arianna, his beautiful, sweet Arianna, was about to die. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life, to look at her with that stiff, bland face he had hurt her with so often in the past.

As carefully as he could, he pulled her up so that she was lying in his lap, her back pressed against his chest. “You’ll be all right, love. But we’ll rest here a moment,” he said, surprised he got the words out through the thickness in his throat.

She nodded, sighed. Her tunic was shiny and black with her blood. He could feel its warm stickiness on his hands. Her breath came in shallow rasps.

Raine looked across the clearing for the man who had killed her. The Englishman leaned, slumped over sideways against the tree trunk, his arms empty of the crossbow and lifeless. Crazed with pain and dying, he probably hadn’t even known what he was shooting at.

Why her?
Raine’s mind shouted.
Oh, God, God … why her?

Her hand fluttered, as if she tried to reach for him, and he wrapped his fingers around hers. They were so cold. Already she was growing cold. “Had to warn you …” she said, her voice so weak he barely heard. “Afraid I was too late …”

He gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. “You weren’t too late,” he said, though he had no idea what she meant. He could feel hooves thudding on the sod and angry shouts came to him on the wind. They had seen him, had Henry’s men, and now they were coming for him, and they would kill him.

He looked down at her, stroked the hair from her face. Her mouth trembled into a smile. “You’re safe?”

He moved his lips and prayed it came out looking like an answering smile. “Aye, I’m safe, little wife,” he said, but his voice sounded rusty.

“Raine … I feel all cold and strange.” A deep furrow creased the bridge of her nose. “Am I dying?”

He could no longer keep the pain from showing. His heart was cracking open in his chest, and he was bleeding inside. He could taste the blood in his mouth and he could feel a wetness on his face. He rubbed his cheek, surprised to see the wetness was clear, not red.

Her eyes, so dark now they were black, pooled with tears. “Oh, Raine … I’m so sorry.”

How like her, he thought, to worry about him. But then it was easier for the ones who died. They weren’t left behind to spend the endless, empty years alone.

Her lips moved and he bent closer to hear. “Kiss me.”

He pressed his mouth to hers, shocked when he felt its warmth. He breathed into her, as if he could give his life for the one she was losing.

“Cariad … cariad
…” He spoke into her mouth. “Will you wait for me again?”

Her lips moved against his. “Always.”