The Fifth Knight(58)

CHAPTER 14

“God’s eyes, what a strike!” De Tracy’s roar echoed out as Theodosia ducked away with a cry.

Blood sprayed from the animal’s severed neck, and its head bounced and rolled through the snow in a slash of scarlet.

Her faint increased, darkening her vision, numbing all sound.

Fitzurse advanced toward the pack with his stained sword up, boots ploughing through the lividly stained snow, as uncaring of the carnage as he had been in the cathedral. “I’m ready.” His voice was soft, measured.

Far away.

The animals turned and fled to guttural calls and hoots from the other two knights.

Theodosia gulped in deep breaths, struggled to keep hold of the branch in hands that seemed to weigh a ton.

Fitzurse turned to her. “Sister.”

She held her branch out and waved it, her last feeble defense. “Stay away from me.”

He clicked his fingers, and his companions stepped to him.

“Or what?” Fitzurse stepped toward her through the blood-soaked snow, flanked by the other two monsters. He gestured to the dense trees. “You’ll run in there? Oh, no, you can’t. You’ll get eaten.” He stepped closer.

Theodosia raised the branch.

His sword flashed out and struck it from her hands, the wood grazing her palms with the strength of his blow.

“No!” She jerked back, fighting for balance. She fell to her knees, hands grasped before her, urging a blow that would take her head from her shoulders too. Take it, and with it her secret of where her mother was. With her gaze defiantly fixed on Fitzurse, she summoned her act of contrition, ready for her end. “Deus meus, ex toto corde p-paenitet — ”

Fitzurse’s clout to her cheek sent her sprawling into the snow.

“Shut up.”

Her skull hammered from his strike, the sight of the three knights’ boots swam before her. She struggled to draw breath, to carry on with her prayer, but a sob of pain and shock choked her.

“Get her on her feet, le Bret. De Tracy, keep an eye out for those animals.”

The huge knight’s hand grabbed her shoulder and hauled her upright.

Fitzurse regarded her with complete, icy calm. “You are shockingly uncooperative.” He stuck his sword point-first into the snowy ground. “But even you’ve got more virility than Palmer.” He removed a couple of coils of rope from his belt. “Running away, like a yellow-breeched knave, just like I accused him on the riverbank.” He gave a tight smile. “Not able to see a job through, remember?”

A job. That’s what she’d been to that coward, that renegade Benedict Palmer. It was what she was to them all, what Mama was. A job that had to be finished. She’d not help them in their foul work, any of them.

“You’d have done well to listen to me, then,” continued Fitzurse, uncoiling the rope with swift movements. “Carried on running yourself, instead of stopping the noble Hugh de Morville ending the dog.” He nodded to le Bret. “Put her hands behind her back.”

Le Bret shifted his iron grip to wrench back one of her wrists. Pain sparked up her arms as he crossed it with the other.

“Let go of me!” She struggled uselessly in his hold as Fitzurse coiled the coarse rope tight around her wrists, then bit into her skin as he secured it with firm knots.

Benedict had said Fitzurse wanted her bound before he burned her to find out what she knew. The fire behind them. Damped down by the snow but still hot. She pulled all her weight against them, tried to kick out with her feet, to sink her teeth into le Bret’s chain-mailed arm.

“You see what I mean about lack of cooperation, le Bret?” Fitzurse sounded amused as he passed the rope around her body, looping it across her chest.

She gasped in pain as he pulled it cruelly tight to knot it at the back. Her arms were now completely pinned behind her, the rope cutting into her breasts if she tried to move her hands. Still she kicked.

“De Tracy,” came Fitzurse’s clipped command. “We need another pair of hands for the sister.”

De Tracy complied, coming to stand before her as she struggled.

“Bend her over,” said Fitzurse.

De Tracy gave a wide leer. “This should warm us up.”

Her stomach lurched. Dear God, they couldn’t. Not her virginity, her chastity. “Stop it, please, stop it!”

De Tracy grabbed her by the neck and forced her down until she was bent double.

A noose went round her neck and panic overtook her. She thrashed in the knights’ grasp, screaming for someone, anyone, to help her.

Fitzurse crouched behind at her ankles and tied them as tightly together as he had her arms. Then his hands were busy at the front of her neck.