“Asked Sir Walter what?” Walter inquired quietly from behind them.
The three young men turned about to face Ranulf’s foster brother, shamefaced until they noted the dark brown eyes twinkling.
There were no two men so different than Ranulf Fitz Hugh and Walter de Breaute, in temperament as well as in looks, and yet they had taken to each other like true brothers from the first day they met. At an impressive six feet in height, Walter was taller than most men. Ranulf stood a half foot taller, a giant among his peers. Walter was night with his olive skin and dark brown hair. Ranulf was sunshine, golden-skinned, golden-haired. Ranulf bellowed even in a good mood. Walter spoke so softly, sometimes you had to strain to hear him. Walter would laugh at the poorest jest. Ranulf rarely laughed at all.
Walter’s was a carefree spirit. The third son of a minor baron, he was as landless as Ranulf, the difference being he did not care. He would be as happy attached to the household of a great lord as to a minor one, or to none at all. It made little difference to him. He had no ambitions, no driving need to make a name for himself or acquire wealth and power. His older brothers loved him, so there would always be a home for him if he was ever in need.
Ranulf did not have that security. His father might be a great lord, might have taken him out of the village where his stepfather had raised him for the first nine years of his life, might have arranged for his fostering and training to become a knight, but Ranulf hated the man, would never ask him for aught, even did his life depend on it.
Ranulf had no home, but it was his burning ambition to correct that lack. It was his only goal, yet it was an all-consuming one. It was all he worked toward, hiring out to any man no matter the task, no matter the difficulty, no matter his own feelings in the matter. His ambition did not allow for scruples. He had wrested keeps for other lords, fought wars for them, routed thieves from their towns and outlaws from their forests. Whatever he did, he never failed. He had built up a reputation to that effect, which was why he could no longer be hired cheaply, which was why Lord Rothwell was willing to pay the exorbitant fee of five hundred marks to assure the wife he wanted was delivered to him.
“Well?” Walter grinned when no one spoke up to his question. “Did Lady Ella steal all your tongues?”
It was Kenric who answered. The curiosity of a fifteen-year-old does not allow for much subtlety. “Sir Ranulf talks to you. You know his thoughts and feelings better than any man. Was it only because he felt such strong aversion to Lord Rothwell that he would not take his money to commit us to this task?”
“He did not tell the man he would not do it.”
“Nor did he tell him he would,” Eric replied.
Walter laughed at that. “Aye, I thought that ‘we shall see’ was most eloquent coming from someone of Ranulf’s surly disposition.”
“Think you that is why Rothwell insisted we take fifty of his men?”
“Certainly. Men like him are not given to trust, especially when something is this important to them. The man cannot even trust his own vassals, or he would not have needed to hire us, would he? If that gout had not laid him up, he would be here himself. He no doubt thinks his men, in greater number than our own, will be incentive enough to see the task done.”
“Then he does not know Ranulf,” Searle said with a laugh.
“Nay, he does not,” Walter agreed, smiling himself.
“But what did Ranulf object to in the man?” Eric wanted to know. “He seemed harmless enough, if somewhat crafty.”
“Harmless?” Walter snorted. “You should have talked to his men to learn what manner of man he is.”
“Did you?”
“Nay, I saw what Ranulf saw, that he was another like the Lord of Montfort, with whom we both were fostered. Montfort took us both as his own squires, rather than giving us to one of his knights, and if you think Ranulf has been a difficult master, you do not know what hell is truly like. Pure meanness was what Ranulf sensed and reacted to in Rothwell.”
“But what of this task?” Kenric asked. “’Tis not by any means unusual, thoughwehave never been hired before to bring a reluctant bride to her betrothed. Was Sir Ranulf truly reluctant to do it, or simply unwilling to assure Lord Rothwell that wewoulddo it?”
Laughter sparkled in his brown eyes as Walter smiled at each of them. “Now if I told you that, children, what would I leave you to gossip about?”
Searle and Eric both glowered to be called children when Walter was only twenty years and four himself. But Kenric’s groan drew their attention to see Ranulf leaving his tent, fully armored.
“God help us, Lanzo is too quick this morn,” Walter said, his humor flown. “Fie on you, Kenric, letting me stand here in my underwear gabbing like a woman. Move, lackwit, or he will ride off without us!”
Which was a very real likelihood and would have happened if Lady Ella had not scorned Lanzo’s offering and gone off to stalk her own meal. Ranulf would not trust the cat to find him, even though their destination was less than an hour away. They had to wait until the feline returned with her field mouse and was set in the supply cart to enjoy her meal.
Chapter Three
Reina caught the wounded man before he fell, but his weight was too much for her and they both went down to the floor. He had pulled the arrow out of his shoulder before she could stop him, and now there was a gaping wound there, and she had nothing at hand to stop the flow of blood. She did not even know who he was, he was so covered with ash and smoke from tending the fire, but he did not take well to pain, promptly fainting to avoid it, and she could not leave him there to bleed to death.
“Aubert, I need a scrap of cloth, something…”
Aubert was not listening, or else he could not hear her over the continued pounding of the battering ram. The closed drawbridge had been smashed through, as well as the first of the two portcullises inside the gatehouse. The men working the ram were inside the gatehouse now and could no longer be reached with boiling water or sand, though the fires needed to be kept burning, the water dumped again when the army finally advanced.
It was time to retreat into the keep. The others who had attended the fires were slumped against the walls in exhaustion. The men-at-arms were still firing arrows when a target moved out from behind cover. The rest of the army were patiently waiting for the ram to do its work, though they too sent an occasional arrow over the battlements.
“Aubert!”
