Defiant (20 page)

Mouldin and his sergeant sat on horseback at the bank of a rushing river swollen by the recent storms and stared back across the bridge they’d just crossed. The wooden bridge creaked as the
river rushed under it, and the sun burned hot, making the water glisten and burn the eye.

Father Peter leaned his head back, enjoying the coolness, the cessation of riding. He enjoyed a horse as much as the next man; donkeys were his usual mode of travel. But he had not ridden this much in years, not since he was irritating kings and counts, itinerating from one baronial hornets’ nest to another. Proof he was back in the business.

Mouldin turned to him. “What do you know, old man?”

“In total, a great deal more than you. Of the disappearance of your ninny-headed soldiers, naught.”

Mouldin stared across the river, up the hill on the far side. “A fifteen-year-old could not take down
six
of my men,” he muttered. “No one could.”

“Jamie could, sir,” his sergeant said.

The only thing to be seen were bright green spring grasses and a dirt road winding away in jagged, whipping curves down the hillside, like a mangy pup’s wagging tail. The air smelled of fresh grass and sun-hot pine needles. The wind rode by on the back of silence, rustling the reeds along the banks of the river. Otherwise, it was quiet.

Mouldin reined around. “We ride. Fast now.” He spurred his horse up the hill. “Burn the bridge behind us.”

T
hey stood at the crest of the ravine late on the fourth day and stared down at the river below.

“We’ll have to use the ferry,” Ry observed unnecessarily.

It was unnecessary because they all could clearly see the wreckage of a little wooden bridge that used to cross a stream that so obviously wanted to be a river. Eva nudged her horse closer. His muzzle drew level with the others’, and they all peered down at the rushing currents below.

“The recent storms must have been too much for it and washed it clean away.”

Eva sympathized with the little bridge.

“Some of it is burned,” Jamie said. They stared glumly at the charred black edges of the support beams, poking out of the earth like dark, broken fingers.

“They know we’re following.”

Jamie shoved his hands through his hair, impatiently tugging it free of its leather binding. It framed his face so that, despite three days’ growth of beard on his jaws, which would make anyone look like a vagrant at best, Jamie only looked more striking.

Eva scowled.

“Nothing for it,” he said, a touch of impatience sharpening his words. “The ferry it is.” They reined around to follow the bank of the river south. “We and every other soul in these parts.”

They began encountering people almost immediately. Until now, it had only been the occasional villager or fairgoer or pilgrim, riding or walking, or small groups. But now, as they crested the hill that led down to what was now the only river crossing for twenty miles in either direction, the numbers rapidly grew.

The river widened here, from where the burned upland bridge crossed over. The current was thus calmer, perfect for a ferry crossing. Afternoon sunlight made it glow.

A small village had grown up around it, mostly shops, the sorts of crafts and trades people on the move required. A blacksmith for wheel and weapons repair, a buckle maker, a candlemaker, a leather shop, someone selling hot pasties, and of course an alehouse.

No, two, Eva amended crossly. One could never be enough for the men of England.

And the mud. It was everywhere. A swampland of hoofprints and cart tracks and bootheels. Mud and tracks and...

“We might never find them again,” Jamie said. He wiped his chin with the heel of his hand, his jaw tight. “All these tracks, then a five-mile ride north to the burned bridge to pick up their trail again.”

A moment of silence ensued as the horses walked on, wherein they all contemplated the consequences of this outcome.

They rounded a small bend in the path and were finally able to see just beyond the copse of trees on the far side, to find a huge, pulsing line of people swarming there.

The flat, rectangular ferry was just docking on the near side. The ferryman had his pole shoved into the water, preventing
the ferry from hitting the muddy shoreline too hard. The men and horses on the barge braced their feet and swayed with the movement. They were all dressed in armor.

“Jamie,” Ry said in a low voice.

The human and hoofed traffic now off-loading chugged up the hill toward them on the narrow, rutted path.

“That is an army,” Ry said.

“I took note of that.”

Another beat of silence. “’Tis the rebels. They bear fitzWalter’s insignia.”

“I see.”

“I thought they were occupied besieging Northampton,” Ry muttered.

“I heard they moved to Bedford Castle and took it instead.”

“So why are they marching south?”

Jamie blew out a breath. “The only reason to leave a giving stream is to find a bigger fish.”

Ry looked over. “London is a goodly bit bigger.”

“You think they’ve taken London?”

If the rebels had taken London, things were going to deteriorate rapidly. But it was unlikely they could ever take it by force. Sooth, they had been unable to take even the relatively undefended Northampton Castle. London, even with its tumbledown walls, could resist until the Rapture.

If she wanted to.

But London was fickle, and the castellan of the once-mighty Baynard Castle within belonged to the leader of the rebel army, Lord Robert fitzWater. Should London
choose
to open her gates, well, that would be a different matter entirely. A bloodless coup.

It was not inconceivable that fitzWalter might try to assail the City. Neither was it assured, though. It was a bold move, a great risk.

Why now?

For the past five months, fitzWalter’s army had feinted, harried, poked, and prodded the king, but it had hardly been decisive. After weeks of besieging low-level castles and failing to gain entry unless the gates were opened from within, why had the rebels
now
moved to such a precious target? Why
now
test the king, why now show their hand?

The reins felt heavy in Jamie’s hands. Ry looked over and they said together, “Father Peter.”

“Son of a bitch,” Ry muttered.

Then they did as anyone did when in the path of an army on the move: they got out of the way.

“Keep your face down,” Ry muttered, but Jamie already had his head bent and turned to the side.

Both he and Ry swung off their horses as the gang of soldiers jangled and clomped off the ferry and through the small string of shops on opposite sides of the street, flowing up toward them.

Eva sat like a plank of wood in the saddle, for once without a flexible response. For ten years, the sight of a single helmed rider had meant danger. To be now confronted with an entire army froze her like January.

Gog, riding on Ry’s opposite side, sat up straight, practically vibrating with tension. Ry tipped his head, gesturing the boy off. Eva felt Jamie’s hands close around her hips. He pulled her to the ground, his hand immediately locking around her wrist.

Ry stepped up beside and put his arm around Jamie’s side, supporting him as if Jamie were injured. Not enough to draw focused attention, just explanation enough for why a man’s head would be down, his face obscured by long dark hair tugged from its binding and three days’ growth of beard.

They executed the move within seconds, too fast for Eva to be fully aware it was happening before it was complete. Then they limped down the bumpy, rutted path as they were overrun
by soldiers flowing around them. Ry kept his arm around Jamie, looking grimly ahead, while Jamie held one arm bent in front of his stomach. The other hand stayed locked around her wrist.

“These men,” she asked quietly, “they would not like to know who you are, would they?”

Ruggart Ry lifted his gaze over Jamie’s bent head and stared. Gog, walking beside Ry, jerked his gaze over as well, his face locked and tense.

Jamie’s words came low and clear, like pebbles being rolled by river water.

“To the contrary, Eva, they would like it very much. Ry, we need to know what is afoot at the ferry, and how we shall get across. Roger, we could use your help with the horses. And,” Jamie added, noting the exchange of looks between Roger and Eva, “should you think to do anything rash, consider this first: whatever you worry I might do to your lady, ’tis but a pale shadow of what they would do.” Jamie tipped his head toward the soldiers.

Gog gave a strained nod and avoided Eva’s eye.

Ry said in a low voice, “I will go on ahead with Roger. Find some way to occupy your face in an alley or doorway. I will return.”

“Aye. I shall follow along more slowly. With Eva.”

Ry and Roger walked on ahead, down the long slope to the riverside, the horses reined behind. They were figures of men, then they were dark caped blobs leading larger blobs, then they were almost undetectable amid all the masses of other human bodies scurrying around the ferry landing.

Jamie tugged on Eva’s wrist. She tripped toward him and he slung his arm over her shoulders, so it looked as if she were supporting him. But in truth he was controlling her. He might as well have had a rope around her hips and a bit in her mouth. Like a tidal force, irresistible and inexorable, even in restraint, he
propelled them to the side of the path and they moved slowly along, as more soldiers clambered up the hill, their murmuring like a tide of foul mouths and loud boots.

Up ahead, far down the hill, the dark spots of Roger and Ry had merged into all the others massing down at the landing, trying to get passage across. Clearly this was being forbidden. The sergeant stood holding back the tide of people who wished to go from south to north. On the other bank, the army stretched back up to the hills.

In fact, they were building a few boats of their own, sawing and hammering like Roman soldiers. Soon they would overrun this riverbank, and everyone in their path.

J
amie propelled her down the path, off on the side, affecting a limp, ensuring they looked like beggars, anything to be inconspicuous, for Eva had no idea how truly she’d spoken.

Jamie was known far and wide as King John’s favorite lieutenant. Capturing him would be a significant coup in the slow dance of supremacy and demise the king and rebels had been locked in for months now. But it was more than that. For Jamie was more than that.

An encounter with the rebels would prove highly painful, possibly fatal. Robert fitzWalter, commander of the rebels’ Army of God, lord of Dunmow and of Baynard Castle, was a powerful man with a short temper and a long memory, and he did not like Jamie a’tall.

But then, that was because he did not like being betrayed.

The list of all the people whom Jamie had infuriated was as long and twisted as a vine. The great irony being Jamie had never forsworn an oath, never breached a confidence, ne’er so much as bald-faced lied to anyone but the king. And still he had amassed a long list of people who absolutely hated him.

Robert fitzWalter was at the top of that scroll.

If he or his men got hold of Jamie, nothing would stay his fury. The soldiers would grab Jamie easily, outnumbered as he
was a thousand to one. Then they would take him apart, limb by limb. Literally.

To the good, a great many travel-stained, hair-roughened men were traveling the roads these days. As long as no one knew him on sight, Jamie would appear to be one of legion. Nameless, immaterial.

Then he spotted Chance.

Chance, one of fitzWalter’s inner circle, his woman and his harbinger, had been in fitzWalter’s employ as long as Jamie. She would know him
before
sight. And beneath that feminine tunic was a thick leather gambeson, and beneath those dull red skirts were any number of blades.

Anger surged through him, hot and fast. He reined it in at once, but after came a sudden weariness. It was so common a thing, to be so furious. To be so thwarted. To curb the strong emotions pounding through him, so that he felt as if he were sawing on a bit that yanked in hard.

He kept his head down, his gaze up, his hand on Eva’s hip, propelling her forward, heading toward the recessed doorway. She stumbled. Black hair swept in a tangle across her face as she looked over at him.

“Are these bad men hunting you?”

Of a sort,
he thought. Bad women.

“Shall I save you?”

Clever Eva had detected something beyond the normal concerns of being in the path of an onrushing army.

“I am beyond saving,” he murmured, listening for any signs of being recognized.

“And then, of course,
you
are a very bad man.”

“That is most certainly so.”

“A shame.”

“I suppose there is nothing you can do.”

“I could call out.”

His attention came roaring back. Her voice had taken on a musing tone, so he did not know if she was thinking out loud, or speaking to him. “Cry for help.” Her gray eyes slid his way. “Call out your name.”

His eyes gleamed at her from within the hood. “Oh, Eva, you could, but that would be a very bad mistake.”

H
e pushed his hip against her hard, propelling her toward the narrow, recessed doorway, and when Eva took her next natural, stumbling step forward, he stepped behind her and pulled her backward against his chest. Then he stepped them sideways into the alcove.

His arm was already slung over her shoulder, so she felt like a shield before him. They were practically invisible, capes slung over them. In the shadows under the eaves on side of the road, they must look like unaccomplished beggars.