The men laughed when they saw him, a blood-spattered child without a sword. The man without a hostage strode toward him, his hand clawed to grasp Bayr by his hair. Bayr simply crouched and gripped the sword still lying at his feet. With a bellow and a thrust, he ran the man through, the tip of the blade pointing to the man next in line.
The queen reached for Alba, who still dangled from the meaty fist of the third man. He moved toward the stairs, and the queen screamed and fought to follow. The man dragging the queen released her and came at Bayr wielding the same blade he’d held to her throat. Bayr shoved the man he’d just impaled forward even as he extracted the bloodied sword. He hurled it like a javelin, and it pierced the oncoming man’s shoulder, causing his blade to skitter across the floor. Then Bayr was past him, throwing himself on the back of Alba’s abductor as the queen lunged for the child.
Grasping the man by his ears, he wrenched his head to the right. He watched the man’s eyes, now facing him, flicker out. The man crumpled as Bayr released him, and the queen sobbed Alba’s name.
“She is not harmed. Only frightened . . . and angry,” the queen reassured herself, running her palms over the squalling infant whose little arms and legs were flailing in outrage. Bayr stepped around her, his eyes on the remaining attacker, who clutched at the sword piercing his shoulder and staggered back, his eyes round with pain and disbelief. He raised one bloody hand in surrender, and Bayr stood guard over the queen, not sure of how to proceed now that the man was no longer a threat. A light bloomed in the stairwell, and the pounding of boots on stone echoed up the shaft. The king’s guard had arrived, but the saving was done.
“You are covered with blood, Bayr,” the queen whimpered, but she reached for him, one arm clamped around the baby, one hand gripping his.
Bayr looked down at the ill-shaped nightshirt he’d gone to bed in, his limbs sticking out from the hem and the bell-shaped sleeves. His bare feet were splattered in gore, the pale fabric striped in crimson. His eyelids were sticky, and he knew his face must have fared even worse.
Then the vestibule was filled with torchlight and warriors, their swords drawn, ready for a battle that had already been won. King Banruud brought up the rear, his face terrible in the flickering light.
“Who did this?” Banruud demanded, his eyes on the dead and the dying. His warriors seemed equally stunned.
Bayr tried to explain but his tongue weighed more than the stone altar, and he could not make it move. He gurgled impotently and hung his head in humiliation.
“Bayr saved us,” the queen said, and clutched little Alba, who had already stopped crying, her dark, wet eyes clinging to the circle of big men and gleaming swords.
“Three men, Banruud. And he is just a boy,” one warrior observed, disbelief twisting his lips. He had come with the king from Berne and was not accustomed to Bayr’s abilities.
“There were more,” Queen Alannah insisted.
“Where?” Banruud barked.
Bayr pointed at the window and the man who still cowered beside it, bleeding and begging for mercy. The doubtful warrior walked to the opening and looked down.
“There are three men piled below, Sire,” the warrior exclaimed. The king moved to his side, peering into the gardens below.
“What is your clan?” King Banruud turned to the wounded man. The would-be captor tried to shrink away, but the motion made him sway.
“I have no clan,” the man groaned.
“Who sent you?” Banruud roared.
“We came for the child. There are people who will pay well for a girl.” His companions were dead, and he soon would be. There was no one left to protect. Bayr knew the man’s only hope was to die quickly.
“You had help,” Banruud hissed, wrapping his hand around the hilt of the sword that still protruded from the man’s shoulder. “You knew the lay of the castle.”
“His name was Biel,” the man panted. “It was his plan.”
“Biel of Berne is one of ours, Sire,” a guard confessed. Outrage shivered through the ranks, and the babe whimpered.
“Where is he?” the king ground out.
The wounded man pointed toward the window, clearly indicating the pile below. “There.”
“And the boy?” Banruud hissed.
The man grimaced in confusion. “He is not ours.”
“Did he assist you?” Banruud pressed, and the guards shifted in dismay.
The queen gasped, shaking her head, but Banruud silenced her with an upraised palm. Bayr twisted his nightclothes with nervous fingers but didn’t attempt to defend himself.
“No,” the man moaned, eyeing Bayr with fear. “He killed them all.”
The king, gripping the hilt of the bloody sword, dragged it from the man’s shoulder. The man screamed in pain and relief before his shout was silenced with another thrust. The king withdrew the blade once more, and the dead man paid homage to his boots.
Banruud turned, freeing his feet, and pointed his blade at Bayr’s head. Bayr did not flinch; the weight in his mouth had moved to his limbs.
“You must not hurt him, Banruud,” the queen implored, and the guards shifted in quiet agreement.
The king studied him, eyes flat, sword steady, ignoring the distress of his queen and his men. When he spoke, his voice brooked no argument.
“You will sleep here from now on, Temple Boy.”
The keeper didn’t come back for days, nor did the boy, Bayr, and each morning Ghost told herself she would leave the cottage beneath the cliff. There was a weariness in her limbs and in her head that made her shrink at the thought. Her mind would tiptoe across the green slopes and climb to the wall that circled the castle where her daughter breathed, where she lived and slept and gazed up into the face of a woman who was not her mother. And though Ghost was not within those walls, she was under the same sky, she breathed the same air and was warmed by the same sun, and she could not make herself leave.
It was a week before the keeper came again. She’d eaten all the supplies and had caught several fish from the cold stream. She hadn’t retrieved her gold, but she didn’t worry someone else would find it. The keeper wore a brown robe tied at his waist with a simple rope, the same clothes he’d worn when he’d carried her out of the woods. She supposed his purple robes were for ceremony or worship and wondered if the one he’d sent with the boy had once been his. It was worn on the edges—frayed like grass—but she could fashion something from it if she took the time. Mayhaps a dress that wasn’t gray. Along with his simple robe he wore violet circles beneath his eyes, and the shadow on his jaw and across his pate seemed especially dark against his pale face.
“Are you unwell?” she asked quietly. The thought worried her.
“No. Only weary,” he replied, equally subdued. “Forgive me for staying away so long. There was trouble, and I’ve been unable to get away.”
In a few words, he told her of an attempt to take the princess and the queen.
“She was not harmed?”
“No . . . neither of them was hurt. Only frightened.”
Ghost discovered her legs would not hold her, and she sat abruptly, making the stool beneath her tip precariously. The keeper steadied her with a gentle hand but lowered himself onto the other stool as if he too were feeling faint. He folded his hands between his knees, his wide shoulders hunched, his head bowed.