Through a Dark Mist (11 page)

7

Onfroi de la Haye was a spike-thin, ferret-faced man cursed with a propensity for breaking into clammy, prolonged sweats when subjected to any kind of stress. He suffered nervous ticks in his high, gaunt cheekbones which set his brows and eyelids twitching in alternating spasms. Perpetually dry lips—even though the rest of his body might be drowning— continually brought his tongue flicking forth like a snake to chase the dried flakes to a crusted scum at both corners. His eyes were set too close together to allow for normal vision, with the result that when he was not twitching, he was squinting myopically to see objects only a few paces away. His nose was long and hooked, his chin pointed, his skin— beneath the few scrawny hairs he was able to cultivate into a beard—was a pitted and pocked testament to a sickly childhood.

Sweating torrents, twitching spasmodically, and picking morosely at a favorite weal on his cheek, Onfroi paced before the smoking ashes of the campfire, tracing and retracing a worn path in the flattened grass. By his calculations it had been nearly eighteen hours since he had bolstered his courage enough to dispatch his messenger to Bloodmoor Keep. Given the time required to ride from Alford to the castle and back …

The sheriff came to the end of his measured track: halted, swiveled abruptly on his heel, and paced back.

… it would be well nigh onto midnight before a missive could return along the same route.

Onfroi paused long enough to squint out across the common on which his men had pitched camp. The abbey was nestled in a shallow valley, the monastery and its surrounding fruit orchards separated from the wide meadow by a sparkling ribbon of water. An orderly compound of buildings made of quarried stone and pitched slate roofs, the abbey was tranquil and rose-tinted in the dusk light, the air singing occasionally with the lowing of a lamb or a tinkling of a goat’s bell. The small bronze bell in the priory had rung at dawn to call the holy brothers to mass, then had vibrated the stillness again at three-hour intervals until the last—Vespers—nearly an hour ago. It had allowed for plenty of time to go over every detail of the ambush again, to anticipate every question and demand that would come his way.

Onfroi swabbed his brow with the fold of his velvet sleeve. He could not even begin to imagine what form Wardieu’s anger would take. Having witnessed all extremes in his ten years as sheriff of Lincoln, he was not certain which to dread the most: the cold, icy calm that caused an offender’s bowels to turn to jelly; or the hot, rampaging fury that resulted in flesh and tissue being splattered in all directions. The man was a spawn of the Devil, no doubt about it. Unreadable. Unpredictable. Unfriendly. And unflinchingly possessive of his property. How should he be expected to react to the kidnapping of his bride?

Halt. Swivel. Pace.

There had to be a reasonable explanation of how thirty armed guards could allow themselves to be taken by surprise, stripped of everything of value, and herded out of the woods like guinea fowls, dressed only in shirts and chausses … but what was it? By what possible
reasonable
logic could he, Onfroi de la Haye, hope to explain how an outlaw had managed to dig himself a forest lair that had defied discovery for nigh on two months now? How could he begin to explain the existence of a spectre in black wolf pelts who struck and vanished, struck and vanished and never left so much as a turd behind to show he had ever been there? Men could not track him. Hounds could not track him. Armour —no matter how thickly forged—could not deflect his bowmen’s arrows, nor could the swiftest of horses outmaneuver the silent death that stalked them from the greenwood.

Halt. Swivel. Pace.

Reasonable? The very word mocked him. Why, by the Devil’s loins, could he—Onfroi de la Haye—have not contented himself with the two small estates his father had bequeathed him? Why, by the fruit of those same viperous loins, had he allowed Nicolaa to push and prod and manipulate him into seeking the appointment as reeve of Lincoln?

Nicolaa! Bah! A beauty to look at, but long ago corrupted by greed, ambition, and a lust for immortality. She was a clever bitch. Cold and conniving. And so in love with herself it was no surprise she had little room for anything else in that frigid heart of hearts. Onfroi knew he was a laughingstock because of Nicolaa’s excesses. Truth be known, it was just as well she sought her perverted pleasures in every other bed but his own; truth be told, he was more than a little afraid of where those perversions might lead someday. Blood and pain delighted her; torture was viewed as an evening’s entertainment; a victim’s disembowelment was a prelude to a hearty feast.

A bitch, a reclusive warmonger, and a vengeful wolf’s head. Was it any wonder his blood had turned sour and his belly ran liquid from morning till night?

Halt. Swivel …

Freeze!

Onfroi stood stock-still, his eyes briefly startled wide enough to show the red-veined whites. A low and distant rumble was drifting toward them from the east, carried on a breeze that smelled of sweat and anger.

Christ Almighty! Could it be Wardieu already? If so, he must have ridden out of Bloodmoor in the dust of the messenger, and by the sound of it, brought his entire castle guard!

A panicked glance around the campsite caused the veins in Onfroi’s neck to swell and pulsate. Half of his guards were lounging about in blank-eyed boredom, the others were gathered about a tapped keg of ale.

“Insolent oafs!” he screamed, kicking viciously at two men who were stretched out, fast asleep. “Up! Get up, damn you!”

He ran across the grass, boots and fists launching out at anyone foolish enough to remain in his path. “Lazy, insolent oafs! I’ll see how easily you sleep with hot irons poking out of your skulls! Arrest those men!” he shouted, pointing at the two unfortunates. “Get them out of my sight before I take a knife to them here and now!”

“God curse me for a fool,” he continued, ranting to himself, searching for more flesh to abuse in the scattering troops. “It is no wonder that damned wolf’s head has no fear of the forest. He could be a dozen paces away …
pissing into the soup pot!
… and not one of these oafs would notice!”

Onfroi ran out of obscenities just as the thunder of hooves rounded the sweeping mouth of the valley. Wardieu’s destrier commanded the lead; a huge white beast, a trained ram-pager hewn from solid muscle, with the blazing red eyes and flared nostrils of a demon bred in hell. His master was hardly less fearsome. Riding tall in the saddle, his blue mantle rippling out from broad, armour-clad shoulders, Lucien Wardieu wore an expression of cold, grim fury. Directly behind were his squires, their mounts less formidable but still throwing back clods of torn earth on every galloped pace. In heir ominous wake, two score of armoured knights appeared, each wearing surcoats embroidered with the Wardieu dragon, but carrying kite-shaped shields emblazoned with their own distinctive crests and arms.

“God in heaven,” Onfroi muttered, and fought to suppress the urge to cross himself. It was worse than he thought: Among the warlike faces of Wardieu’s vaunted army of mercenaries, was the one countenance in particular that caused his sphincter muscle to lose control.

D’Aeth. A huge, brooding bulk of a man whose face was so hideously scarred it went beyond the normal bounds of ugly. As bald as an egg, as broad as a beast, he was Wardieu’s subjugator, and there, dangling from his saddle like a tinker’s wares were the dreaded tools of his profession —iron pincers for the crushing of bones and testicles, leather straps and studded whips, a long thin prod with a wickedly barbed five-pointed tip (the purpose of which did not bear thinking). Who was Wardieu planning to have tortured?

De la Haye willed away a wave of nausea as the baron’s warhorse pounded to a halt in a swirl of grass and flayed earth. Wardieu sat a long moment, glaring around the makeshift camp, then swung a leg over the saddle and vaulted to the ground.

“M-my lord Lucien,” Onfroi stammered, rushing over at once. “I did not anticipate your arrival so soon.”

The piercing blue eyes came to rest on the sheriff’s sweating face. “Obviously there were a great many things you did not anticipate these past two days, De la Haye.”

Onfroi repressed a shudder. The baron’s voice was calm enough, but then so was the wind in the eye of a hurricane.

“You have prisoners?”

“P-prisoners? No, my lord. Unfortunately no, the outlaws moved too swiftly. By the time the survivors had reached us at the fens, the men who had perpetrated the ambush were scattered in a hundred different directions. That is their habit. To strike with the speed of vipers and vanish in the undergrowth as if they had never been.”

Wardieu’s face was as blank as a stone. “You know them well enough to have established their habits? Then this is not the first time this particular band of vermin has appeared in these woods?”

A violent tic in Onfroi’s cheek closed his left eye completely. “Th-there have been rumours, my lord, nothing more. Rumours of a man who dresses in wolf’s pelts and plagues the merchant caravans traveling to and from Lincoln Town. But they are only rumours. You yourself are aware of how these local peasants exaggerate the smallest incident into an adventure of epic proportions, especially when the outlaws perpetrate their crimes in the name of Saxon justice.”

“The Bishop of Sleaford will be pleased to hear you refer to his mishap last month as a ‘small incident,’” Lucien remarked coldly. “As will the Lady Servanne.”

Onfroi’s tongue slid across his lips. “There is no proof the two crimes can be attributed to the same villains, my lord.”

“Oh? Then you would have me believe there are two packs of wolves hiding out in these woods? Two separate packs who have managed to elude your patrols for … how long? A month? Two months?”

“We have searched, Lord Lucien,” Onfroi whined. “The patrols have been doubled and their frequency increased. Hounds have been put to the scent every day. Foresters have been brought from the villages to aid the search. No one sees anything. No one hears anything. Spies do not return, and, if their bodies are found, they have had their throats slit and their tongues pulled through the gap. The Saxon rabble do nothing to help. Why, only last week we burned an entire village to the ground and hung the peasants one by one, but none would betray the outlaws. Not a single man, woman, or child would speak to save his own life.”

Wardieu’s lips compressed around a grimace. “Your methods are as crude as your abilities, De la Haye. Did it not occur to you that slaughtering an entire village would only provoke this Black Wolf—if he is one of them—to retaliate twofold? Did it never occur to you to warn me that guests traveling to my demesne might have some reason to fear for their safety?”

“The men ambushed this time were your own!” Onfroi blurted unthinkingly. “Christ above! Who would have thought
for an instant
that Bayard of Northumbria could not outwit a band of half-starved woodcutters and thieves!
He
was well aware of the threat, if you were not.
He
at least ventured out of the castle now and then to listen to tavern gossip!”

Wardieu halted in the act of removing his leather gauntlets. The look he gave De la Haye brought forth an immediate, gasped apology.

“God spare me, what I meant to say … I mean, what I did
not
mean to imply, er, to say … that is, what I meant was …”

Wardieu turned his back and signaled to one of his mercenaries. “Cull a dozen of your best men and go to where the ambush occurred. Search the area thoroughly. A man on his own can seem to disappear easily enough, but not a score or more, and not if they took women and packhorses. I want to know
exactly
how many are in this wolf’s pack, and in which likely direction they headed. And I want results, Aubrey de Vere, not excuses.”

“You shall have them, my lord,” declared De Vere and wheeled his big horse around.

While the selections were being made, one of the knights who had gathered with the other silent onlookers from the sheriff’s camp, limped forward, his gait favouring a wounded, bandaged thigh. He was neither tall nor especially pleasant-featured, but he was obviously a seasoned veteran of many battles, and when he spoke, it was with a voice that sounded like two slabs of rock grinding together.

“Sir Roger de Chesnai,” he said in answer to the question in Wardieu’s eyes. “I am captain of Sir Hubert de Briscourt’s guard, and was part of the escort sent to protect Lady Servanne.”

“I should not brag about a job ill done,” Wardieu said, removing his steel helm and pushing his mail hood back off the sweat-dampened locks of tawny gold hair.

De Chesnai blinked, whether to clear his eyes of the fever-induced moisture that slicked his brow, or to absorb the insult to his honour, it was not revealed by his expression.

“Command fell to me when Northumbria was slain,” he said, staring intently at the Dragon’s face. “I would ask for the opportunity to return to the site of the ambuscade with your men, if you will permit it.”

Wardieu glanced down at the blood-soaked bandaging. “Bayard was a good man. Before I would consider your request, I would know what happened.”