Elizabeth Chadwick - The Leopard Unleashed

As Renard rode off, Gorvenal snorted and shied from the corpse of a destrier with arrows quilled in throat and chest — Adam’s sorrel Spanish stallion, and, after Heulwen and the children, the pride of his life.

Renard felt Gorvenal heave beneath him as he ploughed through the mud and took to the wooded slope. He knew how it felt to have a horse killed beneath you. He had been a stripling of fifteen when his mount had been gut-shot by a Welsh arrow during a skirmish and he had had to finish the horse himself with his dagger. Putting his hand in reassurance on Gorvenal’s warm black neck, he saw in his mind’s eye that other horse of his youth screaming and threshing on the ground, the look in its eyes as he went to it with the knife … the look in Henry’s eyes. For a moment he bent over the saddle as the anguish became a physical cramp. The spasm passed, to be replaced by an implacable rage. Setting his gaze to the trail, he sought the enemy.

When Elene’s first shock wore off, it was replaced by outrage that she should be thus handled on her own territory, and when she truly realised the enormity of what was happening, the outrage in its turn gave way to terror. The man holding her had a wrestler’s grip. The rivets of his hauberk hurt her as she was squashed back against them, and his breath was sour on her cheek.

Her mare started to labour beneath the double weight and a brief halt was called while her abductor remounted his own sturdier stallion. She was bundled kicking across the saddle and they were off again at a lumbering canter, heading for the forest that shrouded the border between Ravenstow, Wales and the earldom of Chester.

They forded a wide stream and water splashed into her face and soaked her clothes. The horse stumbled and Elene’s breath caught on a cry of alarm.

‘Never you fret, demoiselle,’ Hamo growled. ‘I won’t let you fall. You’re too valuable a prize for that.’ Elene gritted her teeth, as his grip dug painfully into her ribs.

‘Ranulf de Gernons will be mightily pleased to offer you his hospitality, so pleased that he’s going to reward me with a fine young wife and a rich fief—’

‘Never!’ she spat. ‘You’ll never get me before a priest!’

‘Oh, one way or the other it’ll be managed,’ he said. ‘With or without your consent, it makes no matter to me. The church approves of men who repent the sins of their lust and make proper amends.’

Elene swallowed a retch as she took his meaning. Rape to assert his immediate claim and then marriage to appease the church and secure her lands. God help her, how was she going to escape from this?

Towards dusk they stopped in a clearing to rest their blowing horses and water them at a forest brook. A mass of dead leaves carpeted the ground and more were twirling down to join them in a fitful golden rain.

The men fetched oat cakes from their saddle rolls and unslung their wineskins. They lit a cautious fire on which to roast slivers of flesh from one of the piglets they had taken earlier in the day.

Hamo dismounted and dumped Elene on the ground, and taking out his own rations, sat down beside her to eat. ‘Wine?’ he offered.

Elene averted her head. She heard him laugh and then the sound of him washing down his mouthful of food with long, wet gulps. This was not happening, she told herself. In a moment she would wake up in her own bed at Woolcot and thank all the saints in heaven that she had endured nothing worse than a particularly vivid nightmare.

The fire crackled softly and a wispy streamer of smoke drifted upwards. In the dusky silence all the autumnal colours of the forest were suddenly so sharp that to look at them hurt her eyes. She dropped her gaze to the rumpled folds of her thick woollen riding gown. She felt cold and shaky, wanted so much to cry that her throat ached, but not for the world would she let her pride break before this odious routier.

Hamo studied her and continued to chew his food. Pale with shock, she was not even remotely pretty. The hair that was straggling free of its braids was as black as jet and coarse and her eyes were a muddy, indeterminate shade somewhere between brown and green. Her body, however, was pleasing; he had had opportunity enough to handle it over the last few miles. High, round breasts, a willowy waist he could span with his two hands, and haunches lithe and firm from the active life she led. His mind imagined and his breathing quickened.

Gulping down his last mouthful, he wiped his hands on the ground and stood up to remove his swordbelt and then his hauberk. ‘We might as well get it over with now,’ he said. ‘The sooner it’s done, the sooner you’re mine.’ He stooped to grasp her arm and jerked her to her feet. ‘Meurig, Saer, come over here a moment, I need witnesses.’

Grinning, the two men detached themselves from the fire and sauntered towards their leader. Elene struggled against the hand clamped on her upper arm but with as much result as an ant trying to push a branch. She tried to bite him and he laughed, slapped her away, and hooking one leg between her ankles, tumbled her to the ground.

‘Hold her down,’ he commanded. Meurig and Saer moved with alacrity to obey, excited at the thought of witnessing the rape of a high-born virgin. Elene fought them grimly, thrashing and struggling until her limbs grew hot with fatigue and the power drained from them. Her skirts were dragged up out of Hamo’s way. She watched him fumble within his garments and whimpered, begging God to let her wake up.

‘It’s not a dream,’ Hamo panted as he knelt in the leaves and began to prise apart her clenched thighs. ‘In a moment you’ll be mine.’ He positioned himself for the thrust home and Elene’s whimper became a full-throated scream.

‘This way,’ William whispered and stepped between the trees and through the underbrush with the lightness of a young doe. His Welshmen moved with him, insubstantial as shadows darting from trunk to trunk.

Renard could track; it was a skill his half-Welsh grandfather had taught him, but compared to William who possessed an innate talent, he knew he was as clumsy as a wild boar in the undergrowth. William moved like a wraith and even when the tracks petered out seemed almost capable of smelling the way.

‘What do you think—’

‘Sshhh, we’re very close now!’ William held out the flattened palm of his hand to Renard. ‘Can’t you smell their fire?’

Renard sniffed. Faintly he did indeed catch the drifting scent of woodsmoke but would not have been aware of it without William’s half-scornful remark. A tree root tangled around his foot. Carefully he stepped over it and moved on, following exactly in his brother’s footsteps.

‘There.’ William crouched on the balls of his feet and pointed through the trees. He made a spreading-out motion to his men and indicated with sign language that one of them should go back and bring up the reinforcements consisting of Renard’s troops who were not forest-trained and would have given away any scouting party with their noise.

Renard crouched beside his brother and concentrated on the drifting wisps of the campfire and the men squatting or standing around it. He signed ‘thirteen’ at William to indicate their numbers and mimed a query, for he could not immediately see Elene.

One of the Welshmen signalled to William.

‘The other side of the big oak,’ he translated on a breath to Renard. ‘There’s another man with her, eating and drinking.’

‘Fourteen to five, then. How many can you take with your bows if we move in?’

William pursed his lips and rubbed the polished elm of his bow stave. At length he held up six fingers, then increased them to eight. ‘If we’re lucky,’ he added and, delicately fingering an arrow from the half-dozen thrust through his belt, put it to the nock. ‘Alive or dead?’

‘How merciful do you feel?’

‘Alive then,’ William said softly. For practice, he flexed the bow and sighted at one of two men who had left the fire and were strolling towards the large oak tree. They disappeared from range and suddenly the imperative cry of a startled blackbird shrilled out from the Welshman nearest the oak.

‘What’s happen—’ began Renard, but whatever else he had been going to say was drowned out by Elene’s scream. ‘I hope that man of yours is a fast runner,’ he muttered instead as he drew his sword.

William used the blackbird’s cry three times to signal attack. Then he sighted again and let fly. The shaft thumped into his victim’s chest, knocking him from his feet. He twitched, hands clawing at the feather shaft, and did not rise again. William nocked a fresh arrow and sent it in fluid pursuit of the first. The second mercenary was running so was only winged, but his sword arm was rendered useless.

Renard ran around to the opposite side of the clearing and was in time to save the young Welshman who had trilled the alarm from being broached by the blade of a bearded routier. Another man lay arrow-dead close by and a second one, bleeding hard, was struggling to remove a barbed flight from his pierced arm. The bearded one wore no hauberk, only a quilted tunic that was still rucked up around his hairy thighs. He had no shield and Renard’s blade swiftly reached his throat.

‘Yield,’ Renard panted, holding back the death thrust.

‘What for?’ Hamo laughed grimly. ‘So that you can swing me later?’ And he lunged on to the blade. Whiplash swift, Renard twisted his wrist so that the wound went only half as deep as Hamo had intended. Rapidly the cut welled with blood, but not enough to kill. Renard used on him the same tripping technique he had once used on William, and as the mercenary went down, slashed and unwound one of the bindings from the chausses hampering the man’s knees and used it to truss him as efficiently as a dead deer brought home from the hunt. Then he looked round.

Elene was watching him, her back pressed against the oak trunk, fist to mouth and her skirts in disorder around her upper thighs. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked brusquely and flicked a rapid look to the fighting beyond.

She croaked assent. Renard, took it for the former. ‘Good lass,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’ Without further ado he plunged into the fray.

Elene shivered, and hugged her arms. He did not look like the Renard she remembered. His face was thinner, shed of its final puppy flesh and almost as brown as potter’s clay, and his expression was filled with battle light.

Hamo stared at her with baleful eyes, blood running into his beard, his hands and feet working to try to loosen Renard’s rapid knots. She thought she saw some slack in his bonds and a new wave of terror surged over her. She used the tree trunks to push herself upright but her legs wobbled and she went down again, grazing her knees, whimpering. From the corner of her eye she caught sight of Hamo’s dagger and swordbelt, the long knife still in its sheath. She crawled over to it, eased it free, and turned to face her dread.

Hamo’s eyes widened and he tried to roll away from her. She saw that his wrists were bleeding and that Renard’s knots were holding fast, but she did not release her grip on the dagger lest she also release her grip on sanity.

Swords clashed, scraping her eardrums. She saw Renard take a blow on his shield and counter-strike with a rapid, hard backhand at his opponent’s right knee. The man fell with a cry, the limb shorn through. Renard ducked beneath the swipe of another opponent, jabbed his shield sharply beneath the man’s chin and knocked him senseless.

Strangely detached from reality, Elene watched her future husband and thought of a ritual dance she had once seen performed at a harvest celebration. Death and fertility. Sowing the ground with blood. Virgins and sacrifices. Hysterical laughter welled up inside her. She choked it down and found it turning into a sob.

The ground began to roar, to shake. She looked blankly at the bearded captive. He returned her stare, then, groaning, closed his eyes and pressed his forehead into the fallen leaves. Horses thundered beween the trees, heralding the arrival of Ravenstow’s knights and serjeants.

Renard leaned against a tree, drawing air in deep, harsh breaths. A dull pain throbbed in his right side where a sword hilt had butted his ribs and his arm hurt with the strain of sustained action, although these were background considerations as as he surveyed with grim satisfaction the damage wrought upon one of Ranulf de Gernons’s best mercenary contingents, probably the same group that had been harrying the Caermoel lands all spring and summer. He thought of Henry; then, belatedly, as his breathing eased, of Elene, and with an oath hastened across the clearing to find her.