tossed him on his back. In a flash, he was over him, the same short sword Lucien had wielded against Agravar only a moment ago now pressed into the flesh of his neck. “Yield,” he demanded with a smile.
“Bastard!” Lucien swore.
“True enough,” Agravar said, withdrawing the weapon and standing. The trio of giggling nymphs waved. He turned his back on them with a grimace.
Beside him, Lucien stood and brushed himself off. “’Twas only luck you had this day.”
“Luck is the fruit of skill and preparation.”
Not a gracious loser, his friend and liege lord glared at him. “I set you on your arse last time.”
“And I laid you low the time before that. As I recall, you were spitting out dirt until supper.” He was distracted by a familiar form coming from the direction of the keep. “Pelly!” he hailed.
“Captain,” the young knight answered, bowing first to him. To Lucien, he executed a similar motion. “My lord. My lady has bid me ask if you had forgotten your promise to ride into the village and escort her cousin’s party to the castle.”
“Damn, I had forgotten.” Lucien swept a hand through his hair and gave Agravar an enigmatic glance. “Was she…did she seem…upset?”
Poor Pelly looked stricken. He glanced at Agravar for reassurance. “Never mind, boy,” Agravar said, giving him a slap on the shoulder that knocked the slight-framed youth forward a few steps. “We know the mistress’s temper is short these last days of her confinement.”
Lucien let loose a string of expletives and stalked off. Rolling his eyes, Agravar dismissed Pelly and retrieved his weapon from the dust. As he followed Lucien off the training field, the three women smiled and nudged each other, casting flirtatious glances his way.
In the stables, Lucien was working up a fine temper. “Why do you not simply bed those wenches and give us some peace?”
“All at once or one at a time?” Agravar asked innocently.
“It makes no difference to me as long as they cease their annoying simpering.”
“You shall have to get used to it because they do not interest me.”
Lucien grumbled something intelligible.
“Is my lady in good health?” Agravar asked with studied nonchalance. “I have noticed your normally disagreeable nature even more trying of late.”
Lucien gave one shake of his head. “Agravar, by the blood of Christ and all that is holy, the woman is more precious to me than my own life, but I fear I will go mad before this babe is brought into the world. She is not herself. Never content, fickle to the extreme, and apt to spring into tears at the slightest frustration of her whims. She is fast becoming a tyrant.”
“She will be restored when the babe is born,” Agravar said blandly. He was a great admirer of the Lady Alayna and knew her to be a gentle lady with a heart as fierce as her husband’s, but never petty. And though Agravar could understand his friend’s impatience at Alayna’s uncharacteristic moodiness, he had no tolerance for any complaint Lucien might make.
For, as Agravar knew, the kindness of the Fates was fickle. Lucien had been gifted with the miracle of a peerless love. It was something the Viking had never known in any form. And he had, at the advanced age of thirty and four, resigned himself to the disappointment that he never would.
These thoughts kept him in sour company as he threw the saddle over his destrier and tightened the cinch. When Lucien spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. “I cannot think straight until she is delivered safely of the babe. Her restlessness…it has given me a bad premonition. I am…I…” He bowed his head.
Chagrined, Agravar said nothing to his friend’s mangled confession. He had been thinking Lucien consumed with self-pity when it had been worry that tore at him.
Recovering quickly, Lucien asked, “Tell me where you learned that maneuver you used back there? It might be useful, if one is unlucky—or unskilled—enough to find oneself on one’s back in battle.”
“I learned it from the gypsies.” To Lucien’s incredulous look, Agravar shrugged as they mounted their horses and kicked them into action. “I gather techniques wherever I can.”
Lucien grunted, pointing up ahead. “Pass yonder, Agravar. As we speak of techniques to be tried, it has reminded me that I had the smithy forge finer, lighter weapons from the steel I had imported from Spain. I am told it is far superior to our domestic blends.”
“Impossible,” Agravar scoffed, but he was happy to oblige the change of direction when he noticed the three women lying in wait who would be avoided by a diversion to the forge.
“Garron!” Lucien called, and the smithy shuffled out to see to his lord’s bidding. “Show my captain the new swords you have fashioned.”
“Oh, lovely beauties, they are, sir,” Garron exclaimed, fetching one of the blades.
Despite himself, Agravar was impressed. The weapon was sleek and quick, cutting through the air like a whisper. “I doubt it would cleave a man in two as deftly as this,” he said, tapping the heavy broadsword resting at his hip. “But it feels extraordinarily clever in one’s hand, almost as if it has a life of its own.” He passed it to Lucien, who made a few swipes with it and gave it back.
Untouched in Lucien’s scabbard was his father’s sword. There was no question of him relinquishing that blade, even for an exceptional weapon. It was a symbol of what he had come back from hell to recover, along with his lands, his life, his soul.
That quest had given Agravar something to believe in for the first time in his lost, uncharted life. He had become Lucien’s right arm. Good God, he had even committed one of the most heinous acts known to mankind in order to save the friend he counted as brother.
But now, in this time of peace, he would gladly trade his bloodletting broadsword for this delicate instrument, a weapon as elegant as the soft, peaceful life it bespoke. Aye, he’d once told Lucien he’d be content to mount his weapons upon the walls as monuments to his bloody past, and it was true enough.
True enough.
“I shall test the weapon,” Agravar said. Tossing his broadsword to the smithy, he ordered, “Give it a good sharpening while I test this and I’ll tell you what I think of this new steel.”
The soldiers took the short but roughly cut route through the woods as they were dreadfully late. Lucien, anxious not to further upset his disgruntled wife, had assured Alayna that he and his men would beat a quick path to see her cousin escorted from the edges of his lands to inside the castle gates.
They were just about to clear a scruffy copse into a meadow when, to their astonishment, two riders appeared, a man and a woman, cutting across to disappear into the woods.
“Strange,” Lucien said in a low voice.
Agravar exchanged glances with him. Then a sound from behind caught their attention. Twisting in his saddle, Agravar listened. Was that weeping?
Casting a glance back at the two riders, he saw they were at the other end of the meadow, just entering the forest
