Reckless (Age of Conquest #5) - Tamara Leigh Page 0,12

face would be bruised had she not deflected the blow with an arm surely purpling beneath her sleeve.

Until she found her escape—more possible now she was on land—there was safety in Bjorn’s ill-fated affection, and more important that with the earl’s threat pacing her thoughts. Were he able to hide from his son the barbarism of giving her to his men, he would make good that threat.

“I thank you for your protection, Bjorn. You are more courageous than many men. And honorable the same as a D’Argent.” Feeling his chest expand, she was glad there was some truth to that.

He carried her past the others to firm ground and set her on her feet. “It feels we are watched,” he said as she straightened her bodice.

She followed his gaze around the damply lush land that provided little cover for watchers—at least in the immediate area. “Normans?” she asked, careful to sound uneasy rather than hopeful.

“I know not, but since Hereward and his rebels abound here, likely their eyes are upon us.”

She had heard of that son of a Lincolnshire thane who was exiled from England years before the great battle, and that he had returned after the conquest to find his family lands in the hands of Normans. Determined to exact revenge, he had begun gathering other disaffected Saxons. It was the same as many before him had done—including Vitalis—only to more greatly number their losses in blood and possessions.

“My sire tells they will prove useful if they accept us as allies,” Bjorn said.

Foolishly useful, Nicola did not say. Unlike Bjorn, she did not believe his people were here to aid the English in recovering their land. Rather, the earl came to plunder Saxons and Normans before the Danes returned home with heaps of stolen riches.

“Do you think they will accept you as allies?” Nicola asked.

“When they see our might, they will rejoice, my lady!”

She hurt for what she believed misplaced hope. Her people had done this to the Saxons, and though the Normans would behave no differently were they the conquered, she longed to rebuke the English for continuing to rebel rather than rebuild their lives. Unfortunately, years of resistance had left many with nothing to lose but those lives. Thus, perhaps death in the company of the enemy was preferable to life beneath a Norman yoke.

So great was the movement of her thoughts that she startled when Bjorn set a hand on her shoulder. “Even if you never love me, no man will harm you while I am near.”

Then your sire is not a man? she thought and glanced at the earl who watched her and his son. Returning her gaze to Bjorn, she told another lie. “This I know.”

He jutted his chin at the nearly empty boats returning to the ships. “Once our remaining men and horses are ashore, my sire says we go to Ely.”

That inland isle Hereward held in the midst of converging rivers and a great marsh. Would those who watched allow the Danes to draw near or intercept them in advance of reaching their destination?

The latter, she hoped, then silently beseeched, Do not let these Danes take more from you, Saxons. Be wise to their treachery. They are no more your allies than Normans.

Hours later, seated before Bjorn on his mount, more deeply Nicola sensed the eyes of those watching the Danes move inland. And felt what she hoped was imagined—excitement, not of rebels anticipating the thrill of battle but of men seeing deliverers in those come across the sea.

Desperate fools.

Isle of Ely

East Anglia, England

Hereward was no fool. And yet he hardly questioned the appearance of Vitalis and Zedekiah the night of the same day he learned Danes had landed on these shores.

The new face of the rebel movement was that of a man some years older than the one who had led the Rebels of the Pale, and yet as Vitalis shared a tankard of ale with Hereward whom he had not seen since the man’s exile years ago, he felt the older, wiser warrior for this longing to advise him to send his followers home.

Am I merely defeated? he questioned. Does Hereward see what I no longer can? Has he good cause to believe the Saxons can overthrow William?

“I am told the mighty Vitalis of Wulfen disbanded his rebels,” Hereward said. “Why?”

In the space between the rebel leader taking another draught of ale that further wet his mustache and reaching the tankard across the table to his guest where they sat