Knight Triumphant. Heather Graham

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      CHAPTER 2

      He was excellent at the art of killing. Eric knew it well. Against superior forces, he and his men always had the advantage of extreme training, experience, and the cold hard fact of desperation. But none of their expertise had ever wielded such a blow against the English as that of the strange disease that had seized their little band of rebels. One moment, they had been the most dreaded of the English king’s enemies; the next moment, they were a group of outcasts, shunned and feared by their captors. But even after their capture by the English, Eric had been confident of escape. He had allowed his own incarceration, planning on escaping walls and chains, to return for the others. He had known his ability to fight, to elude the strongest of his foes. He had never imagined that there would be an unseen enemy against whom all the prowess in the world was utterly futile. For all of his determination and strength, he had no power whatsoever against the illness that had ravaged their number. There was no enemy he had ever wanted to best with such passion, and no enemy who had ever had a greater power over him.

      As they neared the great gates to Langley Castle, he was barely aware of the woman on the saddle before him, or even of his own men, as willing as he to risk their own lives for the return of their women, children, and compatriots. Of course, they had all already been exposed to the disease. It had come upon them when they returned from the sea with the lone survivor of a shipwreck. None of them had known, when they plucked the unlucky survivor from the waves, that they had taken death itself from the brine, and that the man’s ship had gone down because none aboard his damned vessel had been able to fight the onslaught of the storm. The man had never regained consciousness. Within hours after coming aboard, he acquired the dreaded boils.

      None had thought to return him, still breathing, to the sea whence he had come; they knew that they had brought death aboard. Only when the fellow had breathed his last, had he been returned to the water.

      Soon after they had brought their own small boats back to shore, the English had come upon their camp, not knowing then that they had just captured the promise of certain death. Though Eric and many of the others had been apart from the band when King Edward’s men seized hold of the group, they had allowed their own capture, aware in their depleted condition and poor numbers that their only sure chance to rescue their women from the grip of the enemy was to come among them and discover the weaknesses among their captors and their prison. They had gone so far as to warn the English as to the manner of prisoner they were taking. The enemy had not believed them.

      Now, they did.

      Even as they rode the last stretch of distance to their destination, they could see that black crosses had been painted here and there around the walls, warning any who might venture too near that death lay within.

      “Tell the guard to open the gates,” he commanded his captive, reining in.

      Castle Langley rose high before them. A Norman fortification, it had high, solidly built stone walls, and a moat surrounded the edifice. It was an excellent estate, one that stood on a hill surrounded by rich valleys. It was near the vast hereditary Bruce holdings, except that Robert, recently anointed king of Scotland, now held less than he ever had as a first earl of the land. Edward of England had come to lay his heavy fist of domination with a greater vengeance and anger than ever. The Scots had a king they could admire, one behind whom they could fight for a free Scotland. But being crowned king, and becoming king, in Scotland were far from one and the same.

      “You will but have me open the gates of death,” she said softly.

      “Call out; have them open the gates,” he said. “We are a band of dead men riding already.”

      “Guard!” she called. “It is I, Igrainia, lady of Langley. Cast down the bridge.”

      There was motion on the parapets high above them, and a reply.

      “My lady, where is your guard? You must be away from this place; you must not reenter here!”

      “Open the gates; lower the bridge.”

      “Sir Robert has said that you must not return—”

      “I am lady here; open the gates.”

      “You ride with madmen; you come with rebels—”

      “The guard will die if you do not open the gates.”

      “Oh, my lady! For your own dear life—”

      “I am commanding you. Open the gates. Let down the bridge.”

      For a moment Eric feared that the woman might not have the authority she should wield; despite his desperation, he had not come here ill prepared, without knowledge regarding the situation at Langley. The lady here was a woman of greater importance than the lord. Though her husband had been a Scottish peer in his own right—one who had maintained a loyalty to Edward of England—this woman, wife of the perished lord, was the daughter of an English earl, a man who had gained his title some years back through an ancestor born on the wrong side of the English royal blanket.

      The sound of gears and pulleys creaked against the stillness of the day. The gates began to lower to span the moat. Here, near the sea, it was an oddly clean body of water, for the moat joined a stream that cut a blue ribbon across the green plain toward the rocky coastline where the land joined the sea. Moments later the gate was down, and entry to the castle was but yards away. He spurred his horse and entered into the courtyard.

      A pathetic show of troops came mustering from the tower keep as his band of men came clattering over the bridge. Though clad in mail and the colors of their late lord, the group that greeted them did not draw weapons, but formed a semicircle around their horses, waiting. They seemed to be leaderless, strangely adrift.

      “Set me down!” Igrainia said, “if you would manage this without bloodshed.”

      He didn’t like her tone, it was as rasping as her mere existence. But her words made sense toward his one driving goal, that of reaching Margot, his daughter, Aileen, and the others. It was all he could do to keep from throwing the woman down from his horse. She was anathema to him, hair pitch black when he sought a woman with a head of hair as golden and glowing as the sun, eyes a curious dark shade of violet when his world had come to rise and set in a gaze as soft and blue as the most beautiful spring morning.

      Alive and well and walking while Margot lay dying . . .

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