The sentinel braced for battle.
Heart racing, mouth dry with fear, the sentinel stood poised, waiting. But the wait was not excessive, for it was as the sentinel had feared – the Northmen were already in the longhouse. One, the sentinel could see, was heading down the stairs, cautiously.
The figure of the enemy was illuminated from behind, a tall and broad silhouette in the darkness. He was moving warily, but deliberately, his enormous sword in front of him to ward off any attackers that might jump out at him from the darkness. In this dank-smelling chamber with its rough-hewn walls of stone, the enemy continued to come.
The sentinel was fearful but prepared. Sword lifted, the sentinel waited for the coming strike, bracing for the first blow. But, much to the sentinel’s surprise, the advancing Northman came to a halt about halfway down the tunnel. The sentinel was fairly certain that it was to allow his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness, but there was still something very tense and terrifying about the pause. The very tall Northman simply stood there and waited, patiently, as if his inactivity would drive the sentinel mad with apprehension. It almost worked, but the sentinel managed to remain calm. Finally, the Northman spoke.
“Do you understand my words?” he asked in his language.
Surprisingly, the sentinel nodded but didn’t lower the weapon. The Northman continued.
“I seek the king,” he said. “Tell me his location and I shall not harm you.”
The sentinel didn’t believe him for a minute. The helmed head shook back and forth, and the Northman cocked his head.
“Are you daft?” he asked. “Can you not speak?”
The sentinel didn’t reply for a moment. Then, the helmed head bobbed up and down, once. “I can speak.”
The Northman, who had, to this point, been wearing a helm in the Teutonic fashion, stolen, with a face plate, suddenly lifted the face plate.
“A woman?” he hissed in disgust. “Does your king force a woman to guard him?”
The sentinel shook her head again. “He does not force me to do anything,” she said. “I do what I was taught to do.”
Now the Northman was even more confused. “Who taught you this disgraceful thing?” he demanded. “Who would permit a woman to guard the king?”
The sentinel didn’t say anything for a moment; eyes the intense purplish-blue color of bluebells gazed steadily at the big Northman. “I do what I wish to do,” she said. “Now, if you are going to fight me, get on with it. I grow weary of speaking.”
The Northman’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “I would not be so eager to die if I were you,” he said. “If I fight you, it will be over quickly.”
“I suppose we shall see.”
The Northman didn’t exactly want to fight a woman; much as killing helpless women was dishonorable, fighting one, even an armed one, was an embarrassing test of a warrior’s skills. He began to reconsider his position, looking around, seeing three doorways in the tunnel now that his vision had adjusted. Two doorways were close to him while the third, at the end of the tunnel, was evidently being guarded by the sentinel from the way she was standing in front of it. It began to occur to him that there must be something very valuable in the chamber she was guarding. He pointed his sword at the doorway behind her.
“Is your king in there?” he asked.
The sentinel’s sword remained in front of her. It had never wavered, not once. “I will not tell you,” she said. “You will have to kill me to know that answer.”
He sheathed his broadsword. “I do not have to kill you,” he said. “I will simply come over there, push you out of the way, and discover for myself.”
“I would advise you not to try.”
He grunted. Then, he chuckled. He couldn’t decide if he was disgusted or humored by her stance. He suddenly began moving towards the sentinel with the intention of carrying out that threat when she sliced her sword at him in a rather expert move, so close that she caught the sleeve of his arm and ended up nicking him. She would have sliced him severely if he hadn’t been wearing armored protection for his lower arms. His father wore the same thing, as had his father, who said he had gotten the idea of such protection from the ancient Romans. Still, she nicked him enough to draw blood and he fell back, inspecting the cut.
“I was attempting to do this in a way that would not see you harmed,” the Northman said, his tone dangerous. “I can see that I will have to do this in a way that simply sees my wishes accomplished. It is unfortunate.”
The sentinel kept her sword out, preparing for the worst and wondering if she would live to see the sunrise. She tried not to think of how scared she was; she only tried to think of what needed to be done.
“Do as you must,” she said. “As will I.”
“I am sorry for the path you have chosen.”
“We shall see who is sorry in the end.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Are you?”
Her answer inflamed him. The Northman didn’t hesitate; he unsheathed his sword as fast a lightning and charged her. The sentinel, seeing that she was about to be bowled over, stepped aside at the last minute and stuck out her foot, tripping the big Norseman so that he crashed head-first into the wall and knocked himself silly. As he fell to the ground, she yanked the sword out of his hand and tossed it far away down the tunnel where he could not retrieve it. Then, she stood over him, the tip of her sword to his neck.
And that was how he awoke when his senses returned.
PART THREE
~ I Was A Child And She Was A Child ~
His ears were ringing quite badly.
In fact, his entire head was ringing. When Rhonan opened his eyes, all he could see was a big sword in his line of sight and a cold tip of death against his throat. He didn’t panic; he remained calm as he grasped at his last recollections, remembering where he was and the female sentinel who had confronted him. He remembered charging her.
Now, he was on his arse with ringing ears. He could hardly believe it.
“Lady,” he said. “If you are going to kill me, get on with it.”
The sword tip lingered on his skin, not hard enough to puncture it but enough to send a message. Rhonan looked up to see those lush blue eyes looking down at him, glittering even in the darkness.
“I will not kill you if you promise to go away,” she said.
He inhaled deeply, slowly. “You know I cannot make that promise.”
She considered his answer. “Then I will not kill you if you take your men and leave the King’s House,” she said. “You do not belong here.”
He found himself looking up into that face. From what he could see through the opening in the helm, her skin was pale, like cream, and he could see a dusting of freckles on her nose. Her eyes were quite lovely. He didn’t dare move for fear those lovely eyes would turn on him and he would find himself gored through the neck.
“My people were here long ago,” he told her. “This was our land. That is why you know my language. We belong here more than you do.”
The sentinel’s brow furrowed slightly as she pondered his words. “That is not true,” she said. “Your kind has always roamed our coast but you have left our kingdom alone for a hundred years. Why have you come?”
He simply lifted his eyebrows, a motionless shrug. “Why not?”
She didn’t like that answer. The sentinel frowned at him and moved away, removing her sword from his neck and moving back to the door that was flanked by two torches, burning low and smoking heavily from the fat they had been dipped in. The low ceiling above them was black and she backed up to the door, her sword still leveled at him.
“I did not kill you,” she said. “I showed mercy. Now you will take your men and go.”
Rhonan sat up, slowly, his ears still ringing a bit. He noticed that his sword was several feet away, on the damp earth where she had thrown it. Above them, he could hear screaming and scuffling as more of his men poured into the House of the King. Soo
n, they would try to come down into the tunnel and he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted their help. In fact, he knew he didn’t. What he did here, he would do alone. He needed no help against an inferior female.
“I told you that I cannot leave,” he said, looking at her. “I came to find the king. Where is he?”
The woman shook her head. “If I knew, I would not tell you.”
He believed her, on both accounts. Without question, he did, and a small part of him was becoming increasingly impressed with this lady warrior. She was tall, which is what initially led him to believe she may have been a young man before she spoke in her dulcet voice and he got a good look at her, but the face beneath the warrior’s helm was anything but masculine. He could see her lips when they moved, pinkish and sweet, belying the fact that she was fearsome and strong.
“What is your name, woman?” he asked.
She regarded him carefully. “That is not for you to know.”
“But I must call you something. I cannot keep calling you ‘woman’. Surely you have a name?”
“I do.”
She didn’t say anymore and the silence was deliberate. He smiled faintly; he simply couldn’t help himself. She was certainly brave; perhaps a bit foolish, but brave. Laboriously, he stood up, head still swimming a bit, and made his way over to his weapon, which he collected off the ground. He looked at it to see if there was any damage from the fall or the tossing; there was none. He turned to look at the lady sentinel again.
“My name is Rhonan,” he said. “Now will you tell me yours?”
“No.”
He lifted his shoulders in resignation. “Very well,” he said. “You are forcing me to choose a name for you. Since your eyes are of a deep and lavish blue, I shall call you Bluebell like the flower, for that is what the color reminds me of. I do not care if you do not like it.”
The sentinel was watching him as he inspected his blade and she couldn’t help but notice he was moving away, towards the stairs that led back up to the common room. She didn’t reply to his comment about the name he had chosen for her because she was positive he was trying to trick her into giving her name. She wasn’t going to permit him to corner her. Truth be told, she was greatly relieved that he was moving for the exit but there was something inside her, an instinct, that told her it was a trick.
Don’t trust him!
Rhonan paused when he was nearly to the steps leading up into the common room, looking up into the room and seeing sights he imagined the lady warrior would not like to see. There were dead men on the floor nearby and on a table nearly out of his line of sight, one of his men was forcing himself on a female servant. He had his fist in her mouth to stifle her cries as he thrust into her small body. But Rhonan wasn’t particularly moved by it; such things happened in war. He was fairly certain such things were expected of him, too, in yet another way to prove his manhood and his worthiness to supplant Nordjul when the time came. His gaze lingered on the carnage of the room, thoughtfully, before returning his attention to the woman.
“If you do not know where the king is,” he said casually, “why are you down here and not fighting alongside the other solders?”
The sentinel was careful in her answer. “Because this is my post,” she said. “I will not leave my post.”
Rhonan’s gaze moved to the door she was standing in front of. “Ah,” he said. “Of course. You nearly killed me for coming near the chamber that you guard. But you must also realize that will not stop me. I will gain access.”
The woman stiffened and the sword in her hand moved into a defensive position. “You may try,” she said. “But remember what happened the last time you tried.”
She had a point. She was crafty as well as brave and Rhonan had a healthy respect for that. Still, he would not be deterred, so he moved away from the stairs, back in her direction, and brought his sword up offensively. He had the freedom of movement; she did not. All she could do was stand there and take a blow so heavy that he threw her right back into the door she was guarding. But the moment he brought up his sword again, she tried to undercut him and would have taken out the backs of his knees had he not been fast enough to block her.
After that, the battle was on.
Rhonan was twice her size and twice her strength, but the sentinel fought dirty. She was very fast, and very skilled and she literally ran circles around him as he tried to fight her. More often than not, he was going on the offensive against her but she would somehow manage to hold him off, at least a little, before moving away and trying to bring up a blade between his legs to cut his manhood off. Twice she had tried, and it had only succeeded in both impressing and infuriating him.
Rhonan realized, several minutes into the fight, that he really wasn’t trying to kill her. She was quite remarkable in her talent and he thought that it would be a great waste to kill a woman with such skill, so he was only really trying to disarm her. But the sentinel would not allow herself to be put in such a position that would see her easily disarmed. Three times, he tried to knock the blade out of her hand and three times he failed because she switched to the other hand and fought him, just as skilled with that hand. Rhonan’s attempts to disarm her soon stopped because it was clear she was well schooled as a warrior. This was no ordinary female.
Still, he had to win.
Coming to realize that any attempt to disarm her would be futile, at least while she was still fighting strongly, he went about trying to exhaust her. He took the offensive against her and pushed her around quite a bit, smacking her into the stone walls and generally battering her. Not enough to really hurt her, but enough to shake her up. He knew that if his father saw him, the man would have berated him for not going in for the immediate kill, but that was where Rhonan and his father differed a great deal. His father had no mercy and Rhonan saw beyond the stark line of life versus death. He saw the people, the places, and the motivations behind everything. He saw the sentinel in a way his father never could and his curiosity was great. He wanted to know how a woman like this became so skilled with a blade.
Who was she? What was her story? Rhonan had to know. Here, in the midst of a Northman raid, this woman was determined to fend off a man twice her size and doing it quite ably. But he began to see, eventually, that his attempts to exhaust her were working. She was starting to fade, breathing heavily, and her pale cheeks were red from exertion. When the sentinel began to grow sloppy with her sword thrusts, he managed to get a hand on the hilt of her sword and, with one big yank, pulled it out of her grasp.
Rhonan thought that was simple enough, to toss her weapon aside, but the sentinel was so infuriated that he’d managed to disarm her that she grabbed his sword hand and sank her teeth into his wrist, which at that point was marginally unprotected. Startled, he shoved her back by the face, sending her crashing into the wall. Her helm flew off at the impact, spilling forth long, red hair, messy and braided.
Rhonan wasn’t looking at her luxurious hair, however. He was looking at the bite on his wrist where it met his hand. He frowned.
“So you bite like an animal, do you?” he demanded. “I’ve not known a true warrior who ever bit an opponent.”
The sentinel was frowning deeply at him. “If I’d had the chance, I would have gouged your eyes out!”
He thought on that and conceded the point. “I have seen that in battle, in fact,” he said, looking into her young and angry face. She is little more than a child, he thought. “’Tis a good thing you did not have the chance, then. But one more move against me like that and I will spank you soundly.”
The sentinel lurched up from her knees where she had fallen against the wall, staggering her way over to the door that she had been so staunchly protecting. The deep blue eyes were glittering again.
“I will not give you the chance,” she said. “And I will not let you through this door. If you want to come through, you will have to kill me first.”
Rhonan didn’t want to do that. In fact, he realized that h
e really didn’t want to fight her at all. As the raid continued over their heads, his curiosity about her grew. A woman like this didn’t simply come to be. It took training and grooming. He wanted to know about her more than he wanted to find the king, which his men would do in any case. Right now, he was in a standoff with a sentinel guarding something very precious. Perhaps he could reason with her and earn her trust. Perhaps he might even take her back with him and take her as his wife. Whatever the case, he was disinclined to leave this position any time soon.
She intrigued him.
“I have no desire to kill you,” he said. “Why are you so eager to die?”
The sentinel pushed tendrils of red hair from her eyes. “I am not,” she said. “I am simply telling you that if you are determined to come into this chamber, it will be over my dead body.”
He leaned back against the wall behind him, studying her serious, young face. “And I have told you that I have no desire to kill you,” he said. “Are the contents of that chamber really worth dying over?”
She nodded. “They are.”
“Why?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“Why not? Do you even know?”
“Of course I do.”
Rhonan tilted his head, trying to figure out how he could trick her into telling him. “Let me guess,” he said. “I would say that there is something very valuable behind that door. Gold and jewels, mayhap?”
“Mayhap the treasure of Jerusalem as well.”
Rhonan grinned because she was trying to throw him off course just as he was trying to trick her into an answer. “Possibly,” he said. “Does it belong to you, personally? Is that why you are so eager to die for it?”