Warrior's Song (Medieval Song 1)

She heard her men speaking in low, angry voices.

Then they were riding slowly forward, toward that long line of Graelam’s men. The man who had ridden behind Graelam sat tall on his horse’s back, calling out calmly, “My name is Abaric. Attend me. No one will be hurt. Just keep riding.” He looked toward Graelam. “You will bring her, my lord?”

“Aye,” Graelam said, “I will bring her.” She heard the possession in his voice, his triumph and pleasure, and she wanted to slink away in shame. She had failed.

“Have her men collect the old man, but don’t let him near a weapon. He would gullet me if he could.”

She felt his arm hard beneath her breasts and said, “My men will never lower the drawbridge, never.”

He said nothing.

“You will see.”

He merely shook his head. His man handed him his helmet and he put it back on. He was faceless again, and that was more terrifying because he was no longer just a man.

It seemed that such a short time had passed when Graelam, Chandra seated in front of him on his powerful destrier, one arm holding her against him, rode forward to take position in front of his men. He came to a stop twenty feet from the castle walls. He yelled up to the battlements, where all her father’s remaining soldiers stood poised, his voice reaching every part of Croyland castle, “I have Lady Chandra. You will lower the drawbridge or I will cut her throat.”

She felt a knife edge against the naked flesh of her neck.

“He won’t,” she yelled. “He doesn’t want me dead. Don’t lower the drawbridge!”

The knife nicked her flesh and she felt a sharp sting, felt her blood, hot and heavy, seep out.

She heard their voices from atop the ramparts, but there was no hesitation at all.

“It is a fine holding,” Graelam said as they rode into the inner courtyard. There were horses and cows and chickens, at least a half-dozen dogs and a good dozen children, most of them quiet now, staring at the enemy who had just come into their world. Even the Croyland rooster, King Henry, he was called, had backed up, comb high, and was staring at them. Chandra watched as his men rounded up all the Croyland soldiers, watched the man Abaric lead them toward the dungeons.

Once in the huge Great Hall, Graelam looked at the black-beamed ceiling high above his head, the fresh-scented reeds that covered the floor, the well-scrubbed tables, the rich tapestries that hung on the walls to keep the sea’s dampness from seeping into the castle. There were few servants in evidence, however, and not more than a half-dozen men, their heads down, and Graelam said as he nodded, “This will do. You and I will be wed here, this evening, by your priest, Father Tolbert.”

“I will never wed you,” Chandra said. “There is no way you can force me.”

He looked at her a moment, then nodded again, as if he’d known she would say that. He said, “Tell me, where is Lady Dorothy and Lord Richard’s heir, John?”

“You will not find them,” Chandra said.

“You think not?” Graelam said. She was held loosely now by two of his men. “I will find them and then we will see how long your stubbornness lasts.”

She knew he wouldn’t find her young brother and her mother, and he saw that knowledge in her eyes. She lowered her head, a bitter smile on her mouth. They were in the small hidden room beneath the granary that lay just above the dungeons. It was a standing order from Lord Richard. Trouble of any kind, and they were to remain hidden there until he came for them. They were safe. But at what cost? She didn’t yet know.

But she did know that Graelam de Moreton would gain no leverage. Whatever the cost, she would bear it.

“Find them, Abaric,” he said to his man. “Also, bring me the priest.”

Never had a keep been taken so easily, so very effortlessly, she thought as she watched Lord Graelam sit in her father’s chair at the head of one of the long tables, one of the serving girls, her hands shaking, giving him bread and cheese and a goblet of the fine Croyland ale. She stood silently between his men.

“I will not marry you, my lord. All this is for naught. You will not find my brother to use to gain my compliance. You will leave soon, and I will see the back of you.”

“You thought never to wed?”

“No.”

“That is very strange.”

“Not at all. My father needs me.”

“Your father has his heir—a boy, who will someday be a man, something you will never achieve, Chandra, no matter how much skill you have with weaponry. You are meant to be a wife and the mother of warrior sons.”

“No,” she said again.