“Mother! Mother, NO!”
Sigebert saw her coming. Under the mask, his brows rose. With a smile on his mouth, he urged his mount between Cathula and the snarling yapping raging pack.
The girl did not hesitate. Squinting up at him where he towered over her, she planted her feet and snapped her other hand onto the hoe’s handle. She swung it thus, like an ax, with the determined purpose of imbedding the blade in his head.
The leather mask moved urgently aside. Sigebert felt and heard the hoe’s edge hiss past the one ear that remained to him. The handle struck his shoulder so hard that the wooden stave broke, and the iron blade fell harmlessly away on a short stick. Before the astonished Frank had recovered himself, Cathula was spitting fury and thrusting at his belly with the splintered end of her hoe handle.
The thing gashed his forearm ere Sigebert gained a grip on the crude spear.
He pressed his knees hard to the black horse’s flanks, and Sigebert’s thighs and calves bunched with the musculature of any accustomed rider who had many times remained mounted only through the use of those sinews. Dragging Cathula close, he caught her by the arms. He managed to haul her across the saddle before him without toppling from it himself. Was no easy task, with the girl fighting him frenziedly and squealing the while. The horse whickered nervously. The broken hoe handle fell to the ground. Still smiling, Sigebert seized his captive’s brown hair, which hung in oily sheaves through being dirty. He struck her in the throat in such a way that she had to end resistance and fight for breath. Her eyes bulged and she made gasping choking sounds; airless sounds.
Sigebert dragged her up to set astride his horse, dragging her hands behind her back and high between her shoulder blades in a relentless double lock. She was strong and coming on fifteen; Sigebert was at prime male strength.
“Now-bitch-do you but watch!”
Little there was to watch, now. His savage dogs had made short work of their ghastly task. Vafres beat them away from their shredded, disjointed kill. Their jowls ran scarlet. At sight of what remained of her mother, Cathula made a sick mewling sound and shut her eyes. Her tiny belly lurched.
“Vomit over my leggings and I’ll impale you on that hoe handle,” Sigebert told her. He bent this way and that to run his gaze appraisingly over his catch.
The brown hair might have been a lot cleaner. So might her tight young skin, and mud from the ditch blackened her feet. Still, the pressure of her taut backside was most pleasant and her rucked-up skirt displayed enticing legs, and her body was better.
“Not bad,” Sigebert muttered, to none but himself. “She may even prove pretty, once she has been cleansed.” And he added in a mutter, “-and de-loused. Vafres!” He tossed a purse to the huntsman. “Coax that quivering coward out of its hovel and give it a gold piece for its offspring, here. Nay, stay!” He laughed in a burst, as at a fine jest. “Nay, give him thirty silver ones instead! That is more appropriate for a betrayer! Then follow me on the road. I return to Nantes forthwith.”
No longer did the Frank sound petulantly harsh. High good humour fair shone from him. As for the possibility that Vafres might take the purse and flee in another direction, Sigebert never considered it. How would such as Vafres explain his possessing so much money? Besides, even with such resources he lacked the personal resource to try.
Cathula had ceased her struggles. She stared at the blank, unrevealing wood of her home’s door-her father’s door, barred from within-and her eyes were blue ice. Slowly she turned her head toward the village church. There stood a spare figure in black, silent and unmoving. The black horse passed him by at a walk, and the priest of the cross said naught.
Sigebert turned his masked face to look directly on the man. He shuddered and sank to his knees, soiling his soutane as he drew the sign of the cross in the air. Perhaps he superstitiously believed that Satan had come to his village. Perhaps he was not far from wrong. It scarcely mattered. Once a man and then a priest and now neither, he uttered no denunciation and called down no curse in the name of his hanged and risen god.
Having done naught, he now said naught.
Sigebert went on, at the walk. Even the trees of the forest seemed to draw away. Cathula sat still, arms twisted and held high behind her back. She did not test her captor’s grip. The big horse came to the long, dustyy road leading east.
“There is no place you can flee where this horse cannot follow and trample,” Sigebert said, and released her arms.
Knowing they were too stiffened to be of use for a few moments, he thrust both his hands in under her upper arms, grasped her firmly, shook her. Her teeth clacked before she clamped them together. When he let go, she made no attempt to twist free. He had clutched her where none other had touched her, high on her chest. She swallowed, compressed her lips, and made no attempt to twist free of the one hand he kept on her. With the other he took up the reins.
She could not escape him; there was naught in the village to which she could return or cared to, and nowhere else to go. Sitting quietly before the Frank who had so casually destroyed her mother’s life and seemed bent on hers in a way she well knew, she gazed blindly ahead. Her mouth was a line that might have been sliced across her face with a dagger.
“What a fortunate wench you are,” Sigebert told her, speaking in her ear. His fingers moved and she sat stiff, not letting him feel her flinch. “I’ve a house in Nantes such as you have never seen, with linens and silks you may wear when you are somewhat cleaner-and doff by lamplight when I so bid. By Death, but you will live a life such as you’d never have known else! You should thank me!”
Silence.
“Mute, Ha?” His fingertips ground in. “No bad thing either, an it be true. Many men wish their women were voiceless-nay, I remember you cried out, yonder. Well then, Empress Theodosia, you merely need encouraging to speak!”
Sigebert kicked the black horse into a wild gallop-and let go any hold on his captive.
He rode superbly, a flowing part of his mount. Cathula jolted and bounced. Her head rocked and flew wildly back and forth and her hair stung the lower part of Sigebert’s face. Desperately and yet surreptitiously, she let one hand slip forth to grasp the horse’s mane. He had seemed so tall; now lethal hooves flashed in the dust of the road close, so close beneath her. To fall would mean broken bones at the least.
Even so she uttered not a word, whether to curse or to beg, nor did she gasp save when it was slammed from her lungs by sheer impact of flying horse on hard turf.
9
Hooves rang on the pave as the big black horse entered the walled yard. Arbors and flowerbeds breathed scent to one side, while trellises entwined with vines formed a partial roof above. The stable was beyond. Although cleaner than most, it smelled as stables smelled; yet Sigebert never noticed. Many a street of this city of Nantes reeked worse.
With an athlete’s grace Sigebert One-ear alighted from his saddle. Not a trace of burlesque or mockery informed his manner as he helped the girl Cathula to dismount. She accomplished it far less stylishly than he; her limbs were stiff, she who had never ridden before in her life.
She shuddered uncontrollably when he took her hand. Rather would she have been touched by a coiling adder. Her eyes were those of a trapped doe. After what he had done this day, this blackmasked rider on a black demon masquerading as a horse… his studied courtesy unnerved her more than open brutality. At least she could have comprehended that.
“You shiver,” Sigebert said, “and of a warm summer’s night! And you never cried out whiles we galloped! Indeed my dear, you must suffer in winter! Well, well, never dread that. Who knows? You may not have to endure another winter.” He let his captive peasant feel a threatening tightening of his strong hand on hers. “Austrechilda!”