Chapter Seventeen
This was a battle he could not win.
Jehan mounted his horse and clattered across the drawbridge, a dozen men-at-arms in his wake. He didn’t have to glance up to know Aliénor stood upon the ramparts like a carved wooden doll. When he’d left her in their tower bedroom, her soft, dark eyes had begged for hope that he couldn’t give her.
He covered the short distance across the field to where Laurent sat astride a war horse. Curious villagers had made their way up the hill to cluster at the edge of the clearing, not far from where the muddy earth gave way to the limestone cliff. Laurent remained astride his horse, his motley army arrayed behind him, his bad foot at an awkward angle in the stirrup.
Jehan walked his horse so close their mounts were snout to snout. “Ride away from this place, Laurent, and you will live.”
“My uncle said much the same thing.”
The boy’s face had grown lean, dark at the jaw with beard. A livid scar cut across one cheek. The black eyes that met his were so like the boy’s father, except the expression in them was both sad and full of grim humor.
No child anymore, indeed.
“I will pay your men.” Jehan spoke clear enough so the sell-swords would hear him. “Your debt to them will be absolved.”
“I owe them nothing but my gratitude. You can’t pay that back in the same coin.”
The boy spoke with a calm confidence, confirming Jehan’s worst fears. “So you’ve spurned the monastery.”
“The church will get me, by and by.” The boy turned his head, squinting toward the far hills. “In a long, pine box, most likely.”
Jehan tightened his grip on the reins, less to still his restless mount and more to gain time to figure out whether the boy’s flippant attitude was bravado, or something graver and more disturbing.
Jehan said, “You’re outmatched.”
“I suspect so.”
“In the face of a stronger force, there’s no shame in conceding.”
“Do you know so much about shame, Sir Jehan?”
Jehan’s jaw went tight. His mind flashed on Aliénor standing in the moonlight wearing nothing but a shift, offering herself to him with no promise of marriage. And he, taking her gift, knowing he could offer nothing honorable in return.
“I certainly know everything about shame,” the boy continued, resting his arms on the pommel of his saddle. “My father beat it into me as often as he could.”
“Your father is not an example to follow.”
“And that’s precisely why I’m here. Because my father is not.”
“Your cause isn’t valid. Your father disowned you long before I seized this castle.”
Laurent shrugged. “You know my real reason for being here.”
“She is in agony right now, watching this.”
The boy didn’t spare a glance toward the ramparts. “I know.”
“Ease her pain. Leave.”
“I ask the same of you.”
“Your sister,” he said, speaking through his teeth, “wants me to stay.”
“Does she wish me to leave?”
Jehan remembered her rush of relief upon recognizing her brother riding home across the fields, then bit down his growing frustration. “She will not thank you for this, Laurent.”
“Not at first.” He pushed up from the pommel. Light flashed off his arm braces as he swung his lame foot over his horse. “She may never forgive me. But my sister deserves to have someone fighting for her. In the absence of my damned coward of a father, that someone will be me.”
The boy hit the ground with surprising grace. One of his pike men stepped forward to lead the steed away. Laurent pulled his sword from its scabbard, swinging it in a full circle by the hilt before gripping it in two hands, waiting.
Jehan remembered Aliénor’s hands on his chest.
You won’t fight him, Jehan.
He breathed hard through his nose. The boy wasn’t giving him any choice. He eyeballed Laurent’s armor, saw the outline of some kind of padded, plated doublet beneath his surcoat. Yet the young fool wore no mailed hose, no chain-mail coif. No helmet. The boy’s feet were braced, his grip on the hilt firm.
Damn it.
Jehan dismounted. He yanked off his chain-mail gauntlets and tossed them aside. His helm joined them with a clatter. He crouched to pinch the buckles on his chausses, intending to bring some sort of parity to this contest.
The boy said, “Enough,” and then started toward him, a lurching blur. Jehan fell to one knee as he grasped the hilt of his sword, pulling it free in time to stop the boy’s angular swing. The clash of metal rang across the clearing, not so loud as to drown out Aliénor’s scream.
Beyond their crossed swords, Laurent’s face darkened in determination. Lunging to his feet, Jehan shoved the boy. Then he fixed his stance and gripped his sword to give the boy a moment to regain his balance.
Laurent found his feet faster than expected.
Jehan said, “You’ve been training.”
“All my life.”
Laurent lunged again. The boy’s uneven gait made predicting the arc of his sword-swing tricky, but Jehan parried without a pause. He brought his sword around and knocked Laurent’s out of his way, opening the boy’s torso to attack, but Laurent lurched to his good side more quickly than his crooked leg seemed to allow—then dropped to roll upon the ground and lay a sharp, flat-sided blow to Jehan’s chain-mail hose.
Jehan recoiled a step, the metal links ringing. He slammed the flat of his sword on the boy’s bent back. A whistling noise alerted him to a blade slicing through air, a blow he lurched to avoid but not before it cut a welt through the embroidery of his surcoat.
Jehan frowned at the frayed fabric. A sly, effective feint. Jehan had intended to make this fight look fierce, to draw some blood and to give some of his own as well. It would be cruel to shame Aliénor’s brother in front of his men-at-arms and the villagers who once looked upon this young Tournan as the future lord. But he didn’t expect the crippled boy to be trained enough to earn his ounce of pride.
Jehan narrowed his focus grimly.
The boy wanted a real fight.
He swung his sword and the vibration of the clash shuddered to his shoulder. The boy had been trained to use not just his arms but the bulk of his body to hold firm. Jehan swung away and returned at a different angle, again and again, testing Laurent’s favored side for weakness. The boy stood firm when he could, took a few steps back when pressed, and slid his sword down to release it from a hold when he grew weary.
Jehan shifted his attention, eyeing the way Laurent maneuvered his crippled foot to better predict the direction of the next attack. He struck hard, pushed in the boy’s weaker direction, but the boy slid his sword free like water through a sluice. Jehan used the landscape of this muddy field to nudge his opponent toward rocks that formed tripping hazards all across the ground, but the boy must have remembered the location of each one, because he danced over them without once looking down or removing his gaze from Jehan’s face.
Chasing the boy was like trying to chase lightning. Laurent was using his slimness and freedom from armor to advantage. But Jehan saw the effort it was costing him. Sweat plastered the boy’s dark hair against his forehead.
Yet Laurent’s determined black gaze hadn’t dimmed.
Parrying a new attack, Jehan focused on the fight while one part of his mind scrambled for a resolution of this tangle to satisfy him, Laurent, and most of all, the woman who watched from the ramparts in unspoken agony. The boy had already earned his pride. Jehan felt more than a grudging admiration for Laurent’s hard-learned skills. If it were not for the bloodlust in her brother’s eyes, Jehan could imagine he was honing a young squire’s talents in the hopes of taking him as one of his men.
Jehan would take such a fighter, too, crippled leg and all.
But Laurent would never accept such a position. Not in a house where he thought his sister was treated no better than a whore.
Marry her, screamed his heart, and not for the first time since she’d given herself to him. If the world only knew how much he wanted to slide a ring upon her finger and prove it wasn’t just lust that kept him at her side. He defied his prince every day he remained in this castle. He defied a vow of allegiance he’d made before God. He risked the chance that his continual disobedience would destroy the prince’s hard-earned favor, leaving him renounced without protection or resources, enemy to English as well as French, as vulnerable as he was when he’d been a penniless man-at-arms turning to thievery on the Gascon hills.
If he married her, she’d be as vulnerable as he. The thought gutted him just as cold steel bit into his thigh.
By instinct, he took three swift steps back to restore his stance, grunting as blood stained the wool of his hose. His sword sliced the air as he lifted it in defense. But the move was unnecessary, for the boy had already lost his advantage—one that might have won the match—by freezing in place to stare at the blood seeping through Jehan’s hose.
Time to end this.
Jehan moved fast, swinging his sword so hard he forced the boy to angle his weapon in defense as he backtracked, nearly crashing into one of his own men-at-arms before he wheeled off, stumbling. Taking the advantage, Jehan swung the flat of his sword blind and heard the boy grunt at impact.
Sweat flying from his brow, Jehan turned to see Laurent clutch his jaw, blood running through his fingers, as he took several wobbly steps on his crippled leg before falling to one knee. Jehan surged toward him but his twisting blow to dislodge the sword from Laurent’s hand met nothing but air. A slicing sensation seared his upper arm. He jerked away from the sword the boy had maneuvered around his back.
Once again the boy froze at the sight of blood blossoming, those black eyes going wide. With one sharp kick, Jehan knocked Laurent off the pivot of his knee. The breath came out of him as Laurent sprawled on the ground.
Jehan pointed his sword above the hollow of the boy’s throat, where blood pooled from the cut on his jaw.
He shouted, “Yield.”
The boy gritted the words, “I will not.”
“Yield.”
Jehan pressed the tip against the boy’s throat. Laurent’s sword lay upon the ground, close enough to grab.
“You fought well,” Jehan said. “Honor is served.”
“Mine perhaps. Not my sister’s.”
Jehan’s nostrils flared. He lifted his gaze to the ramparts. She leaned half over the wall, her hair flying wild, her pale face full of pleading.
There could be only one end to this. This boy would accept no conclusion but death—Jehan’s or his own.
Yet…perhaps there was one way Jehan could keep her heart.
He held Aliénor’s gaze long enough to give the boy courage to move, and the boy did not hesitate to seize the advantage. With the steel of his arm brace, Laurent knocked away the sword pointed at his throat and made Jehan’s sword arm fly wide. Jehan loosened his grip so the weapon arced out of his reach. The boy thrust up his own sword while rolling to his feet. The blade clattered against the hem of Jehan’s chain-mail shirt. Jehan grunted as it sliced a new wound across the last one on his thigh.
He hardly felt the pain. He faced the boy, pulled his dagger out of its sheath, and flipped it away so that the knife buried itself to the hilt in the mud beyond his reach.
Then Jehan spread his arms wide.
The boy paused, heaving, his sword raised, confusion rippling across his face.
“I’m unarmed.” Jehan flicked his fingers, welcoming him close. “This is what you came for, Laurent de Tournan.”
Laurent shifted his weight from his good leg to his bad and then back again. The boy’s gaze darted to the ramparts, where his sister watched.
“Ah,” Jehan murmured. “So you finally understand.”
“Understand what?”
“She won’t forgive you.”
“I’m doing this for her.”
“Are you?”
The boy’s face darkened. He flexed his elbows and bent his knees, grasping his sword tighter.
“Go ahead.” Jehan spread his arms wide. “Go ahead and kill me.”