“Now,” he said, in the cool voice he used for her, “let’s see how strong you are. Lie down and push your body up using only your arms.”
Alyx had absolutely no idea what he meant, and at her blank look he sighed as if greatly burdened, pulled off his shirt and doublet, dropped to the ground on his stomach and proceeded to lift his body repeatedly with his arms. It certainly didn’t look difficult, so Alyx assumed the same position. On her first try only the front half of her body came up and on the second try, her arms raised her half way and then collapsed.
“Too much sitting!” Raine declared and grabbed the seat of her hose, pulling that heavier part of her up. “Now push! Do something with those puny arms!”
With that, Alyx rolled away from him and sat up. “It’s not as easy as it looks,” she said, rubbing her shaking arms.
“Easy!” he snorted, dropping to his stomach again. “Climb on my back.”
It took Alyx a few moments to believe what she heard. Climb atop that great, bare, sweaty expanse of sun-bronzed skin?
Impatiently, he pointed and Alyx straddled him. Using only one hand, he began to push up and down, her astride him, but the last thing Alyx was interested in was his show of strength. Never had she been this near a man before, and certainly she had never had one between her legs before. His sweat began to dampen the insides of her thighs, or perhaps it was her own sweat, but she certainly was becoming damp from someone. His muscles, popping out, straining as he lifted his own considerable body weight as well as hers with the one arm, rippled along the inside of her legs, sending waves of warmth through her body. Her hands, touching his hot skin, seemed very alive, very sensitive. His muscles and skin were making music, playing her body until it was singing a song she’d never heard before.
“Now!” Raine said, rolling to one side and dumping her in the dirt. “Someday when you’re a man you’ll be able to do that.”
Sitting down, looking up at him and all that lovely skin of his, her body still humming, she thought that the very last thing she wanted was to be a man.
Behind Raine stepped Jocelin, his beautiful eyes alight, watching her, and it was almost as if he knew what she was thinking. Embarrassed, she looked away.
“I think you’ve shocked your squire into silence,” Jocelin said to Raine. “You forget that people of our class aren’t used to your physical vigor.”
“You’re too busy sitting around counting your money,” Raine said in dead earnest. “And what’s made you so happy today? Not enough work for you to do?”
Joss ignored the jibe. “Just curious, ’tis all. I was on my way to practice with my bow.” With that, he left to go to the targets at the far end of the long field.
“Are you going to take root?” Raine asked, looking down at Alyx. When she stood, he took a long sword from a passing man and handed it to her. “Take the hilt in both hands and come for me.”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” she said instantly. “I didn’t even want to hurt Pagnell when—”
“What if I were Pagnell?” he said archly. “Come for me or I will go for you.”
The pain, so recent, so deep, made her raise the heavy sword from where its tip dangled in the dust and she thrust at him. When the blade was a hairs-breadth from his belly, he sidestepped, evading her. Again she lunged and again, again, and still she couldn’t touch him. She started for one side, changed in midthrust and made for his other side, but no matter what she did she could not hit him.
Panting from her exertions, she stopped, resting the sword tip in the dirt, her arms aching, quivering from the exertion, while Raine, smiling and confident, grinned at her until she longed to ram him with the steel she held.
“Now I will give you another chance. I will stand perfectly still while you swing at me.”
“There’s a trick,” she said with such fatalism that he laughed aloud.
“No trick, but you must lift the sword above your head and come straight down. If you can do that you will strike me.”
“I could not hurt someone. To draw blood—”
His face showed his belief in her swordsmanship. “Think of all my sheep, all the farmers I have caused to starve because of my greedy ways. Think of—”
Alyx happily lifted the sword straight up, planning to bring it down on his head, but at the moment she reached up the blasted, uncooperative sword started pulling her arms backward. Already tired and weakened, her arms could not hold it and for a few seconds it was a struggle—and the damned piece of steel won. The smirk on Raine’s face as she stood there holding the long sword, its tip planted between her heels, made her furious.
“You’re as weak a boy as I ever saw. What have you done with your life?”
She absolutely refused to answer that question as she twisted the sword around to the front of her.
“Lift it to the top of your head, lower it and do it again and again until I return. If I see you slacking, I’ll double your practice time,” he said as he left her.
Up and down, over and over she lifted the sword, her arms screaming with the exercise.
“You’ll learn,” said a voice behind her and she turned to see the scarred soldier, the brother of the man who’d brought her here.
“Has your brother left? I wanted to thank him, although right now I’m not sure this is any better than what could have happened to me.”
“He needed no thanks,” the man said gruffly, “and you’d better not stop because Lord Raine is looking this way.”
With trembling arms, Alyx resumed her exercise, and it was several moments before Raine returned to show her how to hold the sword at arm’s length, one arm at a time, lifting and lowering it repeatedly.
After what seemed like an eternity, he took the sword from her and started walking back toward the camp. Her arms and shoulders feeling as if they’d been put to the rack, Alyx followed him silently.
“Food, Blanche,” he said over his shoulder on the way to his tent.
Gratefully, Alyx sat down on a stool while Raine took another and began to sharpen the point of a long lance. With her head leaning against a tent pole, she was almost asleep when Blanche came in bearing crockery bowls full of stew and curds and whey mixed with soft cooked lentils and more of the heavy black bread, with hot spiced wine in mugs.
As Alyx lifted her wooden spoon, her arms started to jerk spasmodically, protesting what she’d just done to them.
“You’re too soft,” Raine grunted, his mouth full. “It’ll take months to harden you up.”
Silently, Alyx knew she’d die if she had to take even a week of today’s torture. She ate as best she could, too weary to pay much attention to the food, and she was falling asleep when Raine grabbed her upper arm and pulled her up.
“The day’s young yet,” he said, obviously laughing at her exhaustion. “The camp needs food and we must get it.”
“Food?” she groaned. “Let them starve and let me sleep.”
“Starve!” he snorted. “They’d kill each other for what food there is and only the strongest would survive. And you,” he said, his fingers meeting as they encircled her upper arm, “you wouldn’t last an hour. So we go to hunt to keep you alive as well as them.”
With one jerk, she moved away from his touch. Stupid man, she thought, couldn’t he see that she was female? Without another word, he was out of the tent and she ran after him, following him to the edge of camp where the horses were kept. All along the way she saw the people of the camp, resting, digesting their food, no one continuing to work except Raine.
“Could it be possible that you could ride?” he asked, his voice showing he had no hope.
“No,” she whispered.
“What have you done with your life?” he demanded again. “I have never known a boy who couldn’t ride.”
“And I have never known a man who knew so little about the people outside his own world. Have you spent your life on a jeweled throne doing nothing but fighting with swords and riding great horses?”
br />
Flinging a heavy wood-based saddle on his horse, he said, “You have a sharp tongue on you, and if it were not for us training to fight, who would protect you when there is war?”
“The King, of course,” she answered smugly.
“Henry!” Raine gasped, one foot in the stirrup. “And who do you think protects Henry? Who does he call when he is attacked if not his nobles? Give me your arm,” he said and easily pulled her up to sit on the hard rump of the horse behind his saddle. Before she could say a word, they were off at a teeth-jarring pace.
Chapter Five
AFTER WHAT SEEMED to be hours of banging up and down on the bony backside of the horse, her knuckles white from gripping the edge of the saddle, Raine abruptly halted the animal and Alyx came close to flying backward over the tail.
“Hold on,” he growled as he grabbed the nearest part of her, which was her sore thigh, making her gasp in pain. “Quiet!” he commanded. “There, through the trees, see them?”
Dashing away tears of pain with her sleeve, she was finally able to see a family of wild pigs scrounging in the undergrowth. The pigs halted, looked up with their mean little eyes glaring out of their lean, tough bodies and snorted over the long sharp tusks protruding from their mouths.
“Hold onto me,” Raine bellowed seconds before he spurred his horse forward and went after the largest pig, lance held point down. “Grip the horse with your knees,” he said when Alyx, openmouthed, held her breath as the pig began to charge them. The animal was so big compared to the horse’s thin legs.
Suddenly, Raine dipped sideways, his body parallel to the ground. Since Alyx was holding onto him, she went down with him. Unbalanced, falling, she held onto Raine with all her might as he thrust his lance into the backbone of the furious animal. The hideous scream was the voice of death, and Alyx buried her face in Raine’s broad back.
“Let me go!” he growled, shaking the pig off his lance, then prying Alyx’s fingers from his chest. “You nearly toppled us. Now hold the saddle with all your strength.” With that command he was off again, tearing through the forest, dodging tree branches overhead, trees to both sides, as he ran after another pig. Two more were brought down as cleanly as the first before he stopped and again had to pry Alyx’s fingers from his stomach. She had no idea when she’d grabbed him and was glad he made no further comment on her cowardice.
When he was free of her grip, he dismounted, took several leather thongs from his saddle and, after a cautious approach to the animals, trussed their feet. “Get down,” he said and waited patiently for her to obey.
Her legs, unaccustomed to the exercise, buckled under her and she clutched at the saddle to keep from falling.
Ignoring her, Raine slung the dead pigs over the back of his horse, then went immediately to the horse’s head to calm him as he pranced, not liking the smell of blood so close to him.
“Lead the horse and follow me,” he said to her, turning his back to her and walking ahead.
After one fearful look at the stallion, its ears back, eyes wild, sweaty from its run, Alyx gave a deep swallow of sheer terror and reached for the reins. The stallion danced away once and Alyx jumped, glancing quickly toward Raine where she could just see him through the trees.
“Come on, horse,” she whispered, approaching the animal slowly but again it moved away from her.
Frustrated, she stood still, eyes locked with the horse’s and softly, she began to hum, trying different notes, different tempos until she sensed the horse rather liked a very old, simple round. As the horse seemed to calm, she reached for the reins and her voice gained strength as she gained confidence.
Several minutes later, swaggering with pride at her accomplishment, she reached the small clearing where Raine waited impatiently with the third pig.
“It’s a good thing I have guards posted,” he said, flinging the trussed pig on the stallion’s back, “otherwise with all your noise anyone within a mile could have heard you.”
Absolute shock nearly flattened Alyx. Since she was ten years old all she’d ever heard was the most profuse praise for her music and now it was being referred to as “noise.” Without another word from her she allowed Raine to pull her into the saddle in front of him and together they rode back to camp, her back slamming into his chest.
Once back in the camp, Raine dismounted, ignoring Alyx, still in the saddle, as he untied the pigs and slung them in the general direction of a campfire. As Jocelin came forward, Raine tossed him the reins. “Show the boy how to clean a horse,” he said before striding toward his tent.
After a reassuring smile for Alyx, Joss led the horse toward the clearing where the other horses were kept.
“Boy!” Alyx muttered as she dismounted, holding onto the saddle for support. “Boy, do this; boy, do that. That’s all he ever says.” When Joss had unfastened the saddle cinch, Alyx stood on tiptoe, grabbed the saddle and pulled and promptly fell backward, landing in a heap with the heavy saddle on top of her.
Obviously trying not to laugh, Jocelin removed the saddle while Alyx rubbed her bruised chin where it had struck her. “Is Raine making your life miserable?”
“He’s trying to,” she said as she took the saddle from him and, after three tries, managed to set it atop a wooden construction. “Oh, Joss,” she gasped. “I’m so very tired. This morning he had me scour his armor, then I spent hours with that heavy sword. Now it’s hunting and looking after that great beast.”
At that comment the stallion rolled its eyes and began to prance. Without a thought, Alyx sang six notes and the animal calmed.
Jocelin had to control his look of amazement at her unconscious use of her voice before he could speak. “Raine has a lot of people to care for.”
“A lot of people to play the lord with, you mean,” she snapped, following Joss’s lead in wiping down the horse.
“Perhaps. Perhaps a man like Raine is so used to taking responsibility he takes it without thinking.”
“For me, I’d like fewer orders,” she said. “Why does he command everyone? Why does he believe he rules everyone? Why doesn’t he just let the people rest?”
“Rest!” Joss said from the other side of the horse. “You should have seen this place a few weeks before he arrived. It was like the worst sections of London, people slitting one another’s throats for a few pennies, stealing so much you had to stay up all night to guard your possessions. Displaced farmers were at the mercy of murderers and—”
“And so this righteous Raine Montgomery set everything to rights, correct?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Did anyone ever consider he did it because he felt it was his God-given right over his underlings?”
“You’re awfully young to be so bitter, aren’t you?” Joss asked.
Alyx stopped brushing the horse. “Why are you here?” she asked him. “How do you fit into this group? You’re not a murderer and you don’t look like someone too lazy to work. The only thing I can imagine is that some jealous husband is after you,” she teased.
Instantly, Jocelin tossed the brush down. “I have to go back to work,” he said in a hard, flat voice and walked away from her.
For a full, stunned minute Alyx could not continue. Never in her life would she have insulted Jocelin. He was the only one she could talk to, sing with and—
“When you finish that you can fetch me some water from the stream,” came a whiny voice from behind her, cutting off Alyx’s thoughts.
Slowly, with deliberation, she turned toward Blanche. For all Alyx’s words on Raine’s arrogance, Alyx also had a great deal of class pride. This woman with her slovenly dress, her coarse voice, her uneducated accents, was certainly not of the same class as Alyx. Ignoring her, Alyx turned back to the horse.
“Boy!” Blanche demanded. “Did you hear what I said?”
“I heard you,” Alyx said, dropping her voice to a low tremor. “And I’m sure half the camp did, too.”
“You think you’re too good for me, don?
??t you, you in your pretty clothes with your fine manners. Just because you’ve spent today with him doesn’t mean you’ll spend every day with him.”
With a sneer, Alyx kept working on the horse. “Go about your business, woman. I have none with you.”
Blanche grabbed Alyx’s arm, pulled her about. “Until this morning I waited on Raine, brought his food to him and now he orders me to prepare a bed in his tent for you. What kind of boy are you?”
It took Alyx a moment to understand Blanche’s insinuations and when she did, her eyes blazed purple fire. “If you knew anything about the nobility you’d know that all the lords have squires. I merely perform the duties of any good squire.”
Blanche, obviously attempting to appear as part of the nobility, tried to stand erect. “Of course,” she snapped. “I know about squires. But just you remember,” she said threateningly, “Raine Montgomery is mine. I care for him as his lady would—in every way.” With that, she turned on her heel and left through the trees.
“Lady!” Alyx muttered, going after the horse with a vengeance. “What would a slut like that know of being a lady?” Angry, she was unaware of time passing until she heard Raine’s voice close to her.
“Boy,” he said, making her jump. “You’ve got to be faster than that with a horse. There’s plenty more work to be done.”
“More?” she whispered and looked so sad that Raine smiled, eyes twinkling, and Alyx straightened. She’d give him no reason to laugh at her again.
After setting aside the brush, whispering one last tune to the stallion, Alyx followed Raine back to the camp, where he went directly to a group of disreputable-looking men huddled about a fire. Raine, with his proud stance, his noble bearing, made these men seem even filthier than they were.
“Here, you three,” Raine said in a low growl. “You take the first watch.”
“I ain’t stayin’ out in them woods,” one man said as he turned to walk away.
Grabbing him with one hand, Raine pulled the man back and administered a swift kick to his backside that sent him sprawling. “If you eat, you work,” he said in a deadly voice. “Now get to your posts. I will come later, and if any of you are asleep, it will be the man’s last sleep.”