He glared at her as he shoved his gauntlet under one arm and rammed the other onto his hand.
“Sir William!” The peremptory demand for attention came from behind Veris. Even Taylor could feel her skin crawl with alarm at the strident determination in it. Alexander had moved back behind her, to climb onto his horse. Brody was even farther back, speaking to his captain, who was already seated and waiting.
Taylor turned. She felt like she turned with lots of time to spare. The man standing three paces from the head of the column was a tall, pale Fatimid. His eyes were showing lots of white. He was holding a long spear, aimed at Veris, who was just starting to turn.
The man took two steps forward.
There was no thought in it. No hesitation even. Taylor moved sideways, stepping between the spear point and Veris, who was vulnerable.
The man had been aiming for Veris’ heart. She was farther in front and shorter, so it caught her higher up the chest, just under her clavicle. The mail hauberk had, as usual, slipped off her shoulder because the neck was too large.
The spear point slid in sharp and hard—she felt it bite against the bone. Silvery pain shot through her.
She heard a gasp, soft and high.
Oh, that’s me making that sound.
The man holding the spear looked at her. “No, no,” he said, letting go of the spear.
The tip pushed upward inside her. She groaned.
Veris was holding her, lifting her up.
People shouting.
Veris speaking softly in her ear. “Not for me. Not for me.”
“If not for you, who else?” she said, puzzled. She closed her eyes. “It hurts.”
“I know.”
Brody. Nearby. She could hear his angry shouts. Threaded with panic.
“Veris.”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to pass out.”
“You must stay with us, my lady.” Alexander’s voice. His fingers on her shoulder.
“Can’t. Sorry.” It was rushing at her.
“Let her go. It’ll be a kindness for what comes next,” Veris said roughly.
Then something touched her cheek. “Sleep,” Veris told her. It was his hand on her cheek then.
She obeyed.
Veris was still holding her when Brody returned, five minutes later. There was a haunted, stunned look in his eyes. From the limp angle of Taylor’s head, she had become unconscious.
Brody’s gut clenched.
Alexander was working on the bloody shoulder, his face expressionless. He glanced at Brody. “There is blood all over your tunic,” he remarked. “I presume it is Fatimid blood?”
“It’s English blood,” Brody said. He wiped his sword on his tunic, which would never see another wearing. He slid the sword back into its scabbard. He reached inside the neck of his tunic and retrieved the scrap of cloth he’d pulled from inside the assassin’s clothing. “We found that next to his heart.” He laid it across Taylor’s lap, where Veris could see it by glancing down. He patted Veris’ shoulder. “I’m sorry, Will.”
The strip of cloth was in Selkirk colors, with a Selkirk shield embroidered at the end of it, along with a stylized “D”. Davina’s household shield.
Alexander glanced at the cloth. “You have powerful enemies, William. Is that not the shield for the Lady Selkirk, the wife of your current master? Why would she wish to have her man parade as a Fatimid assassin and have you murdered?”
“Why indeed?” Brody muttered.
Veris shook his head. “Enough,” he murmured. “Let us take care of Tyra for now.”
Brody bent to take her from him. “There’s a wagon over here—”
“I will take her,” Veris said.
Brody stepped away. “Over here,” he said simply, pointing.
Veris turned and carried her toward the wagon without a word. Brody’s gut roiled as he saw blood drip from Taylor’s fingers as they trailed down behind Veris.
Well, justice had been mete. The man was as dead as it was possible to be. But he had died with regret on his lips that his duty to Davina had not been fulfilled and that was something Brody would fail to tell Veris for now.
Brody followed uselessly behind Veris and Alexander as they settled Taylor on blankets that had been quickly folded and set up as a temporary bed for her on top of the water barrels on the lead wagon. Alexander climbed up with her. “I will tend her,” he said, dropping a saddlebag next to him. “Leave her with me.” He tore the tunic open and was already unfastening the first of the buckles on her hauberk, as if Brody’s permission had been given.
Brody rested his hand on Veris’ shoulder. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said softly.
Veris jerked and tore his gaze away from Taylor. He seemed to process Brody’s words as if listening to them again in his head. He frowned, struggling to understand the idiom. Then nodded. “Yes, let us,” he agreed. He pointed to Brody’s tunic. “Your horse won’t let you near him.”
Brody swore. “A fast change and then we go, no matter what. We’ve been delayed in this place for far too long. I don’t care if we only get five miles today. I won’t spend another night here!” He headed for the wagon that held his gear, trying not to linger on the images in his mind.
The moment when she had taken the spear in her shoulder.
The soft sound she had made.
Veris’ desperate reach for her.
But the images played on like a YouTube video stuck on autoplay, making him re-live the sick realization over and over that he was too far away to do anything at all but watch it happen—and Veris, too.
They were both the most powerful creatures ever to have roamed the earth and neither of them had been able to help her.
She
had protected Veris, instead—a frail, mortal human.
Brody found himself leaning against the side of the wagon, his chest heaving, his eyes closed, struggling to hold in a pitiful cry of frustration and rage. And if this was
his
reaction, how was Veris handling it?
He threw on a fresh tunic over his mail, belted it and added his sword as he hurried back to the head of the column.
Veris was seated on his horse, his gaze straight ahead, waiting. Alexander’s and Taylor’s mounts had been hitched to wagons farther back. The captains, the next in line in the columns, stayed a respectful dozen paces back. That left Brody and Veris alone at the head of the column.
Brody threw himself up onto his horse, gave the “forward” signal and moved forward himself, setting a pace that was not quite a brisk walk. He glanced at Veris. “I keep seeing it happening in my mind,” he said, using Saxon. He wasn’t as fluent in it as Taylor, but he was good enough with it that it would keep their conversation secure. “I hate that I wasn’t fast enough to stop it, to help her.”
Veris glanced at him sharply. “Then you do not blame me?”
Brody felt his lips part as his jaw dropped open. “Good heavens, no! If there is blame to be apportioned, I will pass it all onto Davina with pleasure. Veris, for the gods’ sake, why would you think I would blame you?”
He was staring between the ears of his horse again. “You love her. It is because of me she lies on that wagon now.”
“That is all you can think of?” Brody asked harshly. “In all of this, you worry only that someone might blame you?”
Veris turned his head again. His eyes were filled with agony again. “Forgive me. I worry that this might jeopardize what I’ve just found. I’m being selfish. Taylor…” He drew a breath. “Taylor absolved me before she slept. I want to make sure you feel the same. I want her to wake and find the world is aright. She has given up much to make it so. I would not ruin her efforts. She deserves far more than that.”
Brody felt much like he had when once he had fallen from the curtain wall as a child and winded himself. The inability to breathe, because his stunned lungs would not cooperate.
“What are you suggesting, Veris?” he asked, when at last he could speak.
Veris shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said at last, in a whisper. “No one has ever done for me what she did. Not a human. Not a woman. And not out of…” He dropped his gaze.
“Out of love,” Brody finished flatly. “Say it, Veris. It doesn’t bite.”
But Veris fell silent and for the rest of the day his comments were innocuous and in French.
* * * * *
Taylor woke to pain and heat and the smell of dust that told her she was still in the eleventh century.
Relief trickled through her. She had been terrified that passing out from the wound would send her back to her time and she was in no way ready to return yet. It was so not the right time to suddenly disappear.
She looked up at the blue sky above. She was being jolted. The wagon, she guessed.
“Keep as still as you can, my lady,” Alexander said softly. “It is a delicate thing I do right now.” His head appeared above her own, his soft brown eyes narrowed, the brows drawn together.
“And that is?”
“I am stitching your skin and your flesh is so much softer than a man’s.”
No wonder she was in agony. “I’m guessing there’s no such thing as pain relief while you’re doing it, either, huh?” she said.
“Most men grip a piece of wood, or clench it between their teeth,” he suggested.
“Are you at least using sterile string?”
“It was boiled, as I know your insistence upon such things. I am going to stitch again,” he warned.
She felt the needle prick and thought,
This is not so bad.
Then it pushed through her skin and she
felt
it underneath. It punched through the other side of her already outrageously sensitive wound. Then, the worst came. She felt the string being drawn
through
the wound.
“Oh, God, Alexander,” she moaned, trying to sit up.
“No, you must lay still, my lady!”
“No, no, Alex.” She clutched at her stomach.
He caught her around the middle and hauled her with surprising strength over to the edge of the wagon. She retched hard, over and over, each time as she thought about the thread running through her flesh. Finally, she could be sick no more.
Alexander helped her lay down on the blanket pad once more and it was then she realized that she was almost topless. The tunic was torn open, the hauberk unbuckled at the shoulder and folded down. The undershirt also torn all the way down to her waist. Her left breast was bare, but covered in almost dried blood.
She shivered, suddenly cold.
“I must finish the stitching,” Alexander said gravely.
Taylor nodded.
He began again. Taylor swallowed, clutching the edges of the blanket pad. “Talk to me,” she begged.
“If you wish. What would you like to talk about?”
“Tell me about the wound, then. How bad is it?”
“As wounds go, I think you are very lucky,” Alexander said. “There were no organs that were touched. No bones were broken. Just skin, muscle, tissue. I cleaned the wound and now I am stitching it. When I am done, I will put a herb compress on it to increase the rate of healing. In a day or two, you can take the compress off and a day after that, the stitches, if you do not plan on being very active.”
“I don’t plan to be active, no. But my life has been unexpectedly active all on its own,” Taylor said.
“Then leave the stitches for another day or two after that,” Alexander said placidly.
She hissed as the needle tugged.
“My apologies, my lady,” Alexander said. He fell silent.
“Please, keep talking,” she begged.
“Most eastern masters insist on utter silence while one tends them,” Alexander said. “I am not in the habit of speaking while applying medicine.”
“Even an old dog can learn new tricks,” Taylor insisted.
“Yes, I admit that is a puzzle I have been trying to resolve in my own mind.” He fell silent again, but before she could prompt him, he began to speak again. She thought it was a change of subject. “The one caution we must watch for now, my lady, is fevers of the blood.”