Tomas, across the table, watched with equal interest and appetite. As Jenny straightened, holding the heavy iron roasting pan, she contrived to let the wooden tongs fall from under her arm. They clattered on the floor and she feigned a moment of confusion.
“Oh! Blast!” she said. She started to stoop as if to retrieve them, then seemed to realize she was still encumbered by the roasting pan. She hesitated uncertainly. As she had hoped, Mound rose from his chair and moved toward her. He began to stoop to pick up the tongs, but she stopped him, stepping toward him.
“I’ll get them,” she said. “Hold this for a second.”
She thrust the iron pan toward him, and unthinkingly, he took it in both hands. It was a natural reaction. There was a second’s pause before he registered the fact that the pan was hot and the blazing iron seared the flesh of both his hands. He screamed in agony and recoiled, dropping the pan and thrusting his hands into his armpits to try to ease the breathtaking agony of the burns. He crashed into the table, sending it sliding into Tomas, who was just coming to his feet.
Ignoring the pan on the floor, Jenny reached back and seized the heavy rolling pin from the bench. Mound, with both his hands cradled in his armpits, was completely vulnerable as she stepped forward and swung the heavy piece of hardwood into the side of his head.
Crack!
Mound looked up at her, his eyes glazing from the blow.“You—” he began, but she swung the pin again, slamming it against the other side of his head this time.
Crack!
His eyes rolled up and he crashed to the floor, unconscious. But she felt a shaft of panic strike her as the handle of the rolling pin snapped at the second impact, sending the heavy cylinder of wood spinning away across the room and leaving her unarmed. Tomas came around the table, his dagger drawn, held at waist height. She saw the fury in his eyes and realized he would kill her if she didn’t act. The bench, with its knives and the heavy skillet, was out of reach. But there was another potential weapon at her feet.
She bent quickly, just as Tomas lunged. The dagger passed just over her as she stooped unexpectedly. Then Tomas, stepping over Mound’s unconscious body, put his foot in a patch of grease from the lamb and his feet skidded apart. As he struggled to regain his balance, Jenny had time to grab the shank end of the heavy leg of lamb. She swung it up from the floor blindly, with all her strength.
Tomas was caught with his legs spread wide apart and the leg of lamb thudded between them. His eyes opened wide with surprise at the sudden jolt of pain, and the breath was driven from his body in an explosive whoof.
The dagger dropped from his hand. Jenny, still holding the unwieldy leg of lamb in both hands, straightened and spun in a full circle to gain momentum, then slammed the thick end of the roast into Tomas’s jaw. It made a solid, meaty thud and the bearded robber, his face smeared with hot fat and grease, was sent sprawling across the kitchen table. He rolled off the far side, knocked over a chair and hit the floor, out cold.
It had all happened in the space of a few seconds. Nuttal, with his customary inability to react quickly to a situation, stood goggle-eyed across the kitchen, staring at Jenny and his two unconscious companions. Then his hand dropped to his own dagger and he started toward her, mouthing a curse.
Only to stop and duck hurriedly as she sent the leg of lamb whirling across the room at him. He felt it pass just above his head, then came upright again and saw that his delay had given the young woman time to reach her knife rack. He stepped backward as the first knife, a heavy-bladed carver, followed the leg of lamb, catching the light as it spun end over end toward him.
With a shrill neigh of fright, he ducked again, only to realize that a smaller but equally sharp vegetable knife was following the first. This one bounced off the wall behind him and, as it spun back, nicked his ear. Blood ran down his neck.
A two-tined carving fork followed in rapid succession. This one hit the wall point first and stuck there, vibrating fiercely. Nuttal looked at it, his resolve weakening by the second. He looked back at Jenny, saw that she had a heavy cleaver in her hand and was drawing it back to throw. And there were still another four knives in the knife rack.
He ran for the door—and just in time. The cleaver whirred end over end and thudded into the wall beside the carving fork, right where he had been standing. It vibrated with a much more ominous tone. Mewling with fear once more, he wrenched open the front door and ran outside.
Straight into Gilan, who was walking up the path from the front gate. Nuttal rebounded, then threw himself at the Ranger, his dagger sweeping up for a killing stroke.
Like all Rangers, Gilan had superb reflexes. He had no idea who his attacker might be, but he reacted instantly. He swept his right arm across his body to deflect the hand holding the dagger and, in the same movement, pivoted on his right foot and brought the heel of his open left hand up to smash into Nuttal’s jaw. Nuttal’s head jerked backward. His heels left the ground by several centimeters and he crashed backward onto the front steps of the house, out cold. Gilan paid him no further attention. He sprang up the three low stairs to Jenny’s house. He sensed that the pretty blond girl who had come to mean so much to him was in danger. The door was open a few inches and he shouldered it aside and sprang through into the kitchen, his heavy saxe knife appearing in his hand as if by magic. He crouched, his eyes darting from side to side, searching for danger.
And saw Jenny by the kitchen table, her face in her hands, weeping. At her feet were the still forms of two men. One large and heavyset, the other slightly smaller and heavily bearded. Both were either dead or unconscious, Gilan saw. In any case, neither one offered any threat to him or Jenny. He resheathed the saxe.
“Jenny?”
She looked up and saw him, then dashed across the room into his arms. He held her close to him, enjoying the sensation, noting the fresh scent of her hair and skin. She sobbed uncontrollably, great racking sobs that set her whole body shuddering.
“There, there,” he said, stroking her hair gently as he held her. “Everything’s all right now.”
She leaned back in his embrace to look at him. Her face was streaked with tears, her blue eyes red-rimmed. He thought she had never looked so beautiful.
“You weren’t supposed to be here till six,” she said.
“I finished early at the castle and came straight down. And I’m glad I did.”
“So am I,” she said, and buried her face against his neck once more. Again, he stroked her hair tenderly.
“Come on, my sweet,” he said. “There’s no need to be afraid anymore.”
Once more, she leaned back in his embrace. “I’m not afraid,” she said. “I’m furious.”
“What’s been going on here?” he said, then put two and two together. “Are these the men who robbed the silversmith? You caught them?”
She nodded, sniffing. “I’d planned a lovely dinner for two and then these three barged in,” she said. “They ruined your plum tart.” She indicated the sorry remnants of pastry and plum filling, which had now been smashed and trampled into the floorboards several times. “And then they got your leg of lamb as well.”
Gilan looked down quizzically at the two unconscious men. The bearded one was lying doubled over, knees up to his chest, moaning weakly. Smears of lamb fat had congealed in his beard and his nose had been smashed sideways, out of line.
“So they had our dinner?” Gilan asked.
Jenny sniffed, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.“That’s right.”
“Well,” he said, “I don’t think they enjoyed it.”
THE BRIDAL DANCE
1
WILL WAS PORING OVER A PILE OF DOCUMENTS SPREAD ON THE table when Halt entered the little cabin in the trees.
“Morning,” said the younger man, without looking up. “Coffee’s ready.”
He wasn’t surprised by Halt’s arrival. He’d heard Abelard’s hoofbeats on the soft ground several minutes ago, followed by Tug’s whinnied greeting to
his friend. Halt checked Will’s coffee cup; it was three-quarters full and needed no replenishment. He poured himself a cup and moved to sit opposite Will at the table.
The bearded Ranger looked quizzically at the papers in front of his former apprentice. He tilted his head slightly to make it easier to read them upside down. Then he nodded to himself as he made out the contents of the top sheet.
“Working on that series of accidents at the castle, I see,” he said.
Will looked up at him and nodded. “Yes. Desmond asked me to look into them. He’s worried that they’re not really accidents. He thinks they might have been intentional.”
“He may be right. There have been too many to be just coincidence. There was another one last night, in the dining hall.”
Will raised an eyebrow at that. “What happened this time?”
In the past six days, there had been a series of potentially dangerous events around the castle. A pile of masonry had somehow managed to fall from the upper battlements into the courtyard below. The stone had been cut and piled, ready to repair some damage to the wall, but the stonemason swore it had been set well back from the edge. Then the Battleschool’s quintain—a pivoting arm with a sandbag counterweight, where students practiced their jousting skills—had inexplicably failed. The pivoting arm, struck by a student’s lance, had suddenly come adrift from its support pole and gone whirling across the jousting field, narrowly missing two second-year apprentices as it came to earth. Then a heavy curtain, used to divide part of the Great Hall during cold weather, had somehow fallen from its support rail and collapsed to the floor, pinning a servant underneath it. The curtain was several meters high and four meters long. It was woven from thick material and it was a considerable weight. Fortunately, the servant had come out of the affair with no serious injury, although she did wrench her right knee painfully and had been confined to the infirmary for two days.
As Desmond, the Baron’s head steward, said, it was all too much to be brushed aside as mere coincidence. Now, according to Halt, there had been another event.
“It was in the dining room,” he said. “Apparently, when the servants brought a heavy vat of soup to the front table, the table collapsed under its weight as they set it down. One of the knights was scalded and a servant burned his hand on the vat as he tried to stop it from falling.”
“Could have been worse, of course,” Will remarked, and Halt agreed.
“Yes. All of these ‘accidents’ could have been. We’ve been lucky so far. But I think there’s someone behind it all and he or she has to be stopped.”
Will shuffled the reports in front of him into a neat pile, then placed a granite paperweight on them to hold them in place.
“I’ll go up and nose around the castle,” he said. “See what I can pick up. Do you want to join me?”
Halt shook his head. “I’m going out with the mail coach,” he said. “These robberies are becoming a nuisance.”
The two Rangers had been having a busy time. In addition to the mishaps at the castle that Will was investigating, there had been a series of robberies, with a bandit gang stopping the mail coach and stripping it of any valuables it carried. Halt was planning to trail that morning’s coach and see if there was any attempt to stop it.
“Are you expecting trouble?” Will said.
“Not really. There are no valuables in today’s load. I’m pretty sure the bandits are getting inside information on the shipments and striking only when it’s worth their while.”
“So if nothing happens today, that’ll confirm it?” Will asked.
His old mentor shrugged. “It won’t be absolute proof, but it’ll be a fair indication.”
Will rose and headed for the door. “Well, better get to it. I’ll go and call on Desmond, then take a look at this dining room table.”
“How’s your speech going?” Halt asked, hiding a smile. As best man at the upcoming wedding between Horace and Princess Cassandra, Will would be giving a speech. His first draft had been burned in a battle with moondarkers.
“I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet. I’ll get on to it in the next few days,” Will said.
Halt waved farewell, tilting his chair onto its back legs as he drained his coffee.
Will frowned at him. “When I was your apprentice, you used to tell me not to do that. Said it’d loosen the chair legs.”
“And so it will,” Halt said, smiling contentedly. “But it’s your chair now, so why should I care?”
“This has been cut halfway through,” Will said, crouched beside the ruined table from the dining room. He was studying the trestle legs that had supported one end. One of them had given way. It was splintered and jagged for half its width where it had broken. But the other half had been cut through. There was a clean, straight saw line in the wood.
Desmond, bending to peer past him, nodded. “So it has. And whoever did it doesn’t seem to care if we know about it. There’s no attempt to make it look accidental.”
Will stood, nodding to a servant nearby who was waiting to remove the ruined trestle and replace it with a new one. He and Desmond drew away to continue their conversation in private. “So now,” he said, “I suppose you’ll have to inspect all the trestles before each meal serving—just to make sure another one doesn’t give way at an awkward moment.”
Desmond shook his head in exasperation. “What a blasted nuisance that’ll be! And we’re shorthanded at the moment. Half the castle staff are helping with the harvest—and we’ve got the wedding coming up as well.”
Will glanced back thoughtfully at the ruined trestle, lying to one side as the dining hall servants replaced it.
“It’s almost as if someone is trying to make your life more difficult,” he said. “I mean, these accidents are fairly trivial. They could have caused injury, of course. But the major problem so far is that they’re forcing you to be more vigilant and inspect the furniture and the battlements regularly.”
“And as I say, I’m short of staff,” Desmond agreed.
“Had any trouble with any staff members lately?” Will asked. “Anyone been disciplined or dismissed? Could be someone with a grudge against you—or against Redmont as a whole.”
Desmond scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Nobody springs to mind,” he said, then added as a thought struck him, “There’s Robard, of course, but I’m sure he wouldn’t—”
“Robard?” Will interrupted him. “Who’s he?”
“He’s an assistant steward I’m training. Or rather, he was. I had to demote him. He’s back working as a dining hall waiter for a few months to teach him a lesson. Actually,” he continued, “I was going to sack him, but the Baron intervened on his behalf. Said anyone can make a mistake. He suggested I give him a few months of hard work, then reinstate him.”
“What did he do wrong?” Will asked.
Desmond shrugged. “Well, we suspected he’d been stealing. Nothing serious, mind you. Nothing too valuable. Just little items that seemed to go astray when he was the last person seen with them. I couldn’t prove anything, which was why the Baron suggested I should give Robard the benefit of the doubt. Also, he had been treating the junior staff in the castle very badly—hectoring them, always criticizing their work, never showing them any sign of encouragement. We felt he needed to be taught a lesson.”
“And was he aware of the plan to reinstate him after a few months?”
“Aaah . . . well, no. He wasn’t, actually.” Desmond looked crestfallen. “Perhaps I should have told him the demotion was only temporary, but I thought it would be better if reinstating him appeared to be a reward for improved behavior. A spontaneous gesture, as it were.”
“So he may well be feeling aggrieved. After all, even if he was guilty, you couldn’t prove anything, so he might think he’s been hard done by.”
“That’s true, I suppose.” Desmond was obviously troubled by the idea. He’d always had a soft spot for Robard, even if the youngster did have a bit of a wild streak.
The head steward had hoped that as the young man matured, he’d outgrow the bad behavior. Now, the thought that his trainee was possibly behind the potentially dangerous events happening around the castle caused him to doubt his own judgment.
“It looks as if I’d better have a talk with him,” he said reluctantly.
Will eyed him shrewdly for a moment or two. He guessed what was going through the older man’s mind. “Would you like me to do that?” he asked. “After all, I have no previous history with him.” And, he added silently, I’ll be less likely to go easy on him.
Desmond looked at him gratefully. “Could you?” he said. “I’d really appreciate it if you could, Will.”
Will smiled. He remembered from his time as a ward in Castle Redmont that Desmond was a kindly person who disliked conflict of any kind. The need to punish a favored apprentice would be highly unpleasant for him.
“I’ll be pleased to help out,” Will told him. “Have him report to me at two o’clock this afternoon. I’ll be using one of the offices in the Baron’s suite.”
Robard looked around uneasily as he entered the office. Will sat at a table with his back to the large window, so that he was silhouetted against the glare of the exterior sunlight. This was why he had chosen early afternoon as the time for their meeting. He wore his cloak with the cowl up so that his face was obscured in shadow, and his head was bent over a small pile of papers on the desk before him.
“Sit down,” he said, keeping his voice neutral, neither friendly nor accusing. There was a straight-backed chair in front of the desk and Robard made his way to it and sat. Will, watching him from under lowered eyebrows, saw that he was sitting nervously to attention. He had to admit, however, that this was no real indication of guilt on the part of the trainee steward. A summons to an interview with a Ranger would be enough to make any castle servant nervous.
He’d seen Robard before on several occasions—usually formal dinners at the castle. He was a stocky young man, a little below average height. In a few years, he would probably go from stocky to overweight. There were already signs of it in the heaviness of his jowls and the beginnings of a soft extra fold of flesh under his chin. A trainee steward didn’t have too many arduous physical duties to perform, and the job presented an ever-present opportunity to indulge in fine food and drink.