The Rose and the Shield (Medieval 2)

I gave her my word.

Gunnar’s hand clenched upon Fenrir’s hilt, the cold patterned metal warming to his touch. His word was precious to him, and once given he would hold to it, always.

He had given his word to Lady Rose of Somerford. The very woman he had come to spy on in the hope of exposing her treacherous, black heart. The very woman whose land he coveted.

Why had he given her his word?

Perhaps it was because of the way she had spoken to him, so straightly, without guile—he had met few Norman ladies who did not use their looks or feminine weaknesses to gain advantages over the men around them. For a moment back there in Somerford’s great hall he had thought she meant to take up a sword, don armor and ride out to protect the village all by herself!

She was brave and determined—he could admire that. But he did not trust her—he could not afford to trust her. If rumor was true, she already held Sir Arno in her toils, and Gunnar had himself seen evidence that there might be something between the lady and the knight…

They are lovers!

He wanted to deny the truth of it. The vision of Lady Rose flushed and tumbled from Arno’s caresses made him angry in a way he could never remember being before.

He was jealous.

Odin help him if he should be caught up in her spell!

Gunnar shook his head. No, if there was a spell, then its name was lust. He was but a dog-wolf scenting the female of his kind. Lust could be dealt with, expunged. Radulf had said nothing about remaining celibate; if Gunnar had a chance to sample the Lady Rose, then maybe he should take it.

But could he have her once and walk away? Would his lust then be slaked, or would the churning inside him grow worse?

“Captain!”

Thankful to have his thoughts interrupted, Gunnar turned, and was instantly alert. Alfred was running swiftly toward him, dispelling the darkness with the fiery torch he carried in his hand.

The ruined side of his face showed up st

arkly—a maze of raised, white scars and puckered, pink flesh. The son of an English thane, a noble landowner, Alfred had been maimed in a skirmish against the Normans that had decimated his entire family. He had been a cheerful boy; he had become a sullen man—Alfred rarely smiled. Of all the men in his troop, Gunnar worried most for Alfred, and hoped the young man would remain with him at Somerford when this, their last mission, was done.

Gunnar’s gray horse shifted nervously as it caught the acrid scent of Alfred’s smoke-drenched clothing. “You have found something?”

Alfred glanced back over his shoulder, towards the mill that stood at the farther end of the village. There was a small cottage beside it, the blackened walls and glow of embers telling another tale of destruction. His voice was grim. “Aye, Captain, I’ve found a man. He’s dead. Looks as if he was caught in the fire.”

“Is he one of the villagers, like this Hergat?”

“No, Captain, I don’t think so. Come and look.”

Gunnar nodded and they moved off at a walk. He sensed there was more to this than Alfred was saying, but he would bide his time until he had seen for himself.

The miller’s cottage was little more than a shell, although strangely the mill itself remained untouched. Maybe the attackers had been disturbed before they could set fire to the mill, or the miller had stopped them. As they drew closer, Gunnar could smell the river and hear the rush of its swift-moving water. Two figures were standing by the burned cottage, one a child and the other a young woman. The glow from the smoldering timbers showed the woman’s face was smudged and her clothing dirty. At the sight of Gunnar on his horse she clasped the child hard against her, her expression at once afraid and defiant.

“The miller’s children,” Alfred murmured. “The miller himself has not yet been found.”

Gunnar nodded at the woman—he saw now she was only a girl—and the child. “Where is this dead man?”

“Over here, Captain.” And Alfred led the way around the cottage to the far side. He held the flaring torch over something on the ground, and Gunnar dismounted.

The body lay just outside the charred remains of what had once been the cottage wall, and although the face and upper torso had been burned away, the legs and feet were strangely whole and untouched. Obviously this had been a man, and an unusually large one.

Gunnar dropped to one knee, noting the finely wrought sword scabbard—the sword was missing—and the fine leather of the boots. There were no spurs, but there was a leather cord attached to the heel of one of the boots, as though a spur had once been attached there. The breeches were muddy, and there was a tear at the thigh where something sharp and deadly had been thrust through, into the flesh.

Alfred shuffled impatiently behind him.

Gunnar ignored him, leaning closer to examine the ragged hole in the man’s thigh. A lance or spear wound maybe, which had crippled the dead man sufficiently to allow him to be bested. Who had attacked him and why? And who was he?

“Is this the miller?” he asked quietly, knowing it was not. The clothing told him little, but the sword scabbard was Norman. As far as Gunnar was aware, the miller was an Englishman.