Ironheart

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue

Northern Marches, Wales, 1188

The night was dark and full of menace. Leon shivered, struggling to stay awake. It was the joining point of the night. The hour of beginnings and endings. It was an unholy hour to be out of bed; the black watch before cockcrow when men most often died, and demons walked.

“Are you a knight?”

A thin little reedy sound it was, echoing somewhere from the right. At first Leon thought he had imagined it, for there was something about old piles of stone like this that accumulated shadows and odd sounds, creaks and sighs of wind.

Then it came again, eerie, alien, disembodied, drifting across the battlement, a voice soft as reeds twisting in the wind.

“Are you a knight?”

The point of his sword lifted a little.

It was an intrigue. It must be. Soon it would be dawn—the hour for murder and mayhem. He exhaled softly. It was comforting that the gray of his cowl and cloak bled into the gray of the battlements, leaving no shape for the eye to catch. There was only the shine of captured light from his naked blade as he waited, listening.

Glancing over his shoulder, Leon saw no movement, suspicious or otherwise, but his back prickled as if several thousand insects crawled up and down it. He swallowed hard.

It took courage to ask calmly, “Who is this?”

Silence.

It was some rotten trick. None had played such since he was nine years old and he’d dared the raven in the hayloft that the other pages refused to face. It had known better than to meddle with him, and fled with a great rustling of straw and a clap of wings.

“Is anyone there?” he asked the shadowed air and held his breath waiting for an answer.

Nothing changed. No voice responded. No figure appeared from the doorway. He swallowed loudly. No harm was near. A very little light came up from below, not enough to light the steps. If any spirits dream-danced there, none spoke.

He gave that some thought, then cleared his throat. He had been speaking French; he shifted to Latin. Nothing. “Who?” he demanded in Anglo-Saxon, and last of all, with fading hope, the old Gaelic of his childhood.

“I am here.”

That rocked him on his heels. The voice came from behind him now, the same voice, as if it were stalking him. He spun around, hands out, at hearing a light skipping step from the direction of the parapet. Closer, came the high piping tone of a child.

“I said, Are you a knight?”

Leon stared a moment, heart thumping. Shadows shifted and took substance. A glimmer. It was a girl, a highborn little girl in a white night rail, but lace dragged about one ankle and her lips and hands were muddied. She tilted her head to one side, studying him.

“No,” he said, to humor her while he tried to think. The girl had a pixie face, and the dark, shining hair that bounced about her shoulders was black as only an elf’s can be. But she looked real, a babe scarce weaned. There was no magic. There was nothing to fear. Her gaze remained steady. He felt heat flare in his ears, so he added, “When I am a man I will be.”

A frown touched her brow, as if he had said something curious. “Is that not the way of things?” she said, edging closer, as though they already shared one secret, and might share another, in time.

Leon blinked. How could a little girl speak with such knowledge? Except for the druids, adults were jealous of their secrets and did not share them with children. Was she a druid’s daughter?

Had he been enchanted? He clenched his hand to drive the thought away and touched the rough stonework. It felt real enough, down to the grit of old mortar.

I won’t let her see she has me uneasy, he told himself firmly. I won’t let her trick me. He took the chance. It took real effort, but he kept his voice steady.

“Are you a witch?”

“Do I look like one?”

“I’ve only seen one, face-to-face. At least I think it was a witch. You don’t look like her. But how should I know?”

“Well, now that I see you close up, you don’t look like a knight, either. You’re tall, but you look like a boy.”

The small doubt held him still, but that was only his good sense that said girls were not safe wandering at cockcrow alone. There were all manner of unwholesome things that haunted the night. And this one feared no harm from them—that seemed evident, whatever her reason.

He thrust his sword in its scabbard. “You’re distracting me from my duty. What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to watch.”

“To watch what?”

Her shoulders jerked slightly. “I wanted to see Father—they told me he’s going away with the prince,” she said fiercely, a dimpled dragon flashing fire and smoke. Her little jaw set. Her eyes were alive with thoughts. “I had to get up early and run away from Nurse, ’n’ here I am.”

He started to walk. She pranced along beside him.

“The battlements are out of bounds. How did you get here?” he asked, with deep notes of iron grating on one another in his voice. “And more to the point, why?”

“I couldn’t go downstairs because of the guards, and I didn’t want to climb out a garderobe shaft ’cause they smell so awful, ’n’ I came up here instead.” She moved closer, scowling. “I tried to get up there.” She pointed into space out a crenel. “But I’m not big enough. But you’re here, so you can—”

Leon flinched, and said, between closed teeth, “Forget it.”

He paused at a buttressed arch and turned to look into the vast hollow before them. From this angle, no lights shone, not even faint ones. It was black as a cave. Only the immensity of air, palpable as a beast, betrayed the cavernous gulf beyond.

Fear clenched his heart with an icy grip. How had he gotten into this? He grasped the merlon with one hand, to keep from shaking, and felt sandstone crumble under his fingers. He pulled back by instinct.

“Flamed rotted-out pile of—” He caught back a swear-word.

She turned her head and looked at him. Then slowly she began to smile, her eyes anxious, but her grin growing wider. She was contemplating mischief, he was sure of it.

“Are you afraid?”

“Of course not! I have an arm of steel and a heart of iron!”

“Oo-oh, how wonderful. Are heroes always so strong?”

“Of course.”