Elisabeth Hobbes - The Saxon Outlaw's Revenge

‘Wulf! My son!’

He pushed Rollo’s corpse to the side and rolled the limp body on to its back and cradled it protectively. The hooded man dropped to his knees alongside and put his arm around the older man’s shoulders. He gently pushed the dead man’s hood back and the victim’s head lolled to one side.

He was only a boy. Constance sagged back on to her heels, a burst of compassion punching her in the stomach at the sight of the father’s grief. Her head felt far too light and she feared she might faint, but through her terror it struck her that she was unobserved once more. The two deaths had granted her a reprieve that she would surely not get again. She began slowly to edge towards her horse, never expecting to make it, and surreptitiously releasing her dagger from its sheath as a precaution.

There was a cry, then hands on her shoulder. She twisted around and swiped sideways with the dagger at whoever was behind her. It barely penetrated the leather jerkin of the hooded man and didn’t strike flesh. He seized her wrist, tightening his fingers and digging the nails in until the pain forced her to let go of the weapon with a shrill cry. He kicked it away and pushed her to the ground.

‘I told you not to move. It wouldn’t take much for Gerrod to spear you like a pig ready for the spit and right now I wouldn’t stop him.’

‘Why not let him?’ Constance said. Her throat tightened with terror. Somehow she had had the presence of mind to deepen her voice. ‘You’re going to kill us anyway, aren’t you?’

Did she mean it? Every sense screamed no, she wanted to live, whatever it took.

‘You don’t have to die if you’re sensible,’ the man said. ‘We want what’s in here, not your lives.’ He gestured to Constance’s strongbox.

‘That’s mine!’ she exclaimed angrily.

The man laughed without humour.

‘Is it worth more than your life, lad?’

Constance sat back on her knees, her leg burning with pain. She bowed her head.

‘You’ve got ballock stones to keep trying, I’ll give you that,’ the hooded man said, a touch of admiration creeping into his voice. He snapped his fingers and pointed to Constance. ‘Osgood, search him.’

A short, broad man stalked towards her.

‘Put your hands up,’ he instructed.

She lifted them a little.

‘No. Behind your head.’

Constance did as she was instructed, aware of how the action caused her breasts to lift and jut forward. Osgood’s hands fumbled at her waist.

‘Nothing else, Caddoc.’

He began moving higher up her body. She recoiled in horror as he brushed against the swell of her breasts, then closed his hands over them. He gave a cry of shock and let go as though he had been stung.

‘He’s a woman!’

Constance brought her fist round and smacked Osgood hard across the nose. He cried in pain. As his hands came up protectively she spun away, rising to her feet only to be seized by the neck from behind. She glared up into the blue eyes of the hooded man, Caddoc. He pulled her close to him so their faces were almost touching and examined her intently.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded. He lowered his hood, tilting his head to one side and narrowing his eyes.

Constance’s heart missed a beat as the gesture sent her spinning back through time.

‘I know you!’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said curtly. His gaze moved to Constance’s dagger that was frustratingly just out of her reach. His jaw set. He pulled Constance’s cowl off to reveal the coil of hair she had concealed so carefully.

‘Tell me who you are,’ he repeated. He looked back at her and brushed a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face. A deep white scar ran the length of his neck and his left ear was missing the lobe, coming to an abrupt stop at the cartilage.

Constance’s heart stopped and she blurted out the name without thinking.

‘Aelric!’

His face twisted with shock.

A searing hot flush raced across Constance’s throat and chest, turning to a chill that left her trembling violently from head to foot. Nausea overwhelmed her, tightening her throat and twisting her belly.

‘Help me, Aelric.’

Her voice sounded distant and dreamlike in her ears and her legs began to shake. She felt herself slipping away from the world, floating to the ground. Felt his arms seize her before she hit the track. The last sight she saw was his eyes; wide, disbelieving and filling her vision, before blackness consumed her.

* * *

The man who called himself Caddoc looked down into the ashen face of the woman he held in his arms. He had caught her instinctively when she began to fall, though after the many attempts she had made to run or fight he could not discount that this was yet another escape attempt.

He blew on her cheeks. She gave no indication she felt his breath. Her head lolled to the side like a recently slaughtered lamb and when Caddoc pulled back one eyelid with a fingertip he saw her pupil had rolled back. This was a true faint and the comparison he had drawn turned his stomach. He lowered her gently to the ground, stepping back carefully.

‘She called you Aelric,’ Osgood said, his voice thick and muffled from clutching his swollen nose. ‘Why did she call you that?’

Caddoc felt his stomach clench. The name was not one he had heard spoken aloud for over seven years. One he had buried deep inside himself. There was no one other than Ulf from his present that would know it and few people from his past were alive to identify him.

‘I asked who she was,’ he said indifferently. ‘Perhaps the name is hers.’

He didn’t expect the men to believe his feeble excuse and sure enough Osgood grimaced. Ulf looked up scornfully from where he knelt binding the hands of the remaining guard.

‘Aelric?’ Osgood scoffed. ‘That’s not a woman’s name. It’s not even a Norman name for that matter and she’s definitely that.’

Caddoc bent to pick up the dagger he had wrested from her hand.

A woman.

Guilt coursed through him as he recalled how he had twisted her arm until she yelped. Worse, he had dragged her from the woods and given her a blow to the head. He hadn’t known she was a woman, though, and she’d fought back fiercely enough. She’d even begun the assault on him by throwing the stick under his feet.

A woman who knew his name.

He stared at the unconscious woman, hoping to see some sign of familiarity, but her face was smeared with dirt and her brown hair was dishevelled. Her lips were full and enticingly pink and long lashes framed each closed eye. He crouched on his heels beside her, wondering how he could possibly have mistaken the high cheekbones and delicate features for those of a boy.

Her dagger lay in the grass. Caddoc reached for it and turned it over in his hands. For the second time a blow struck him between the shoulder blades, knocking the breath from him. His hand twitched to his belt and closed around the familiar handle of the dagger that Constance Arnaud had given him on the night she had set him free. The dagger he held bore the same design and engraved initials. The stone in the hilt was the twin of his, only red instead of blue.

The forest and clearing vanished and he was lost in the past, staring at the woman before him. It could be her. The hair was the right colour and years had passed for her as much as for him. For months he had gone to sleep and woken with that face in his mind and name on his lips until he had forced himself to forget the girl from Hamestan.

His mind began travelling down a long untrodden path, waking senses that had slept for years. He caught himself, ashamed that he should be thinking of such things at a time like this.

She had begged him to help her. He bunched his fists. Once he would have protected Constance Arnaud unthinkingly, but she had made her choice when she did not follow him.