In the Shadow of Midnight - By Marsha Canham Page 0,7
“I have been smelling the sea since we entered this part of the forest.”
“Aye well, as close as we may be,” the Norman retorted, “we are not close enough. Any further delay and you will smell naught but the foul mess in my chausses.”
The men laughed good-naturedly and Ariel rolled her eyes skyward.
“The next time, Lord Henry,” the burliest of the group advised, “mayhap ye’ll not be so quick to sample a cotter’s pies.”
“There was nothing amiss with the pie.” The unmounted knight, distracted momentarily in a search for a suitable place to squat, removed his leather gloves and set them on the decaying stump of a tree. “It was the effort of trying to swallow the king’s intentions along with the pork lard that has soured my gut.”
“Likewise has it caused you to drag your steps slower and slower with each league that passes?”
“If I do drag my steps, it is because I know the reaction our news will bring. I know it and I dread it and … merde!” —he groaned with relief, not a moment too soon after loosening his chausses and angling his bared rump over the log— “and I would sooner face a hoard of Infidels alone and unarmed.”
“Come now, my lord,” chuckled the older of the two brothers. He scratched intently in his beard, then, as an afterthought, stuck the tip of his little finger in his ear and dug ferociously after an itch. “It cannot be as bad as all that. I for one, would risk those same Infidels just to have a roof over my head and bedding that does not rustle and stir beneath me the blessed night long.”
“And a wench,” the heavyset knight grunted wistfully. “I would settle for a wench with stout thighs and a hearty need to clamp them around me. Nor would I care if she had fleas or not,” he added sincerely.
The Welshman arched his brow, bemused by the Norman’s criteria. “Just so long as she does not bleat and kick too often with her hooves? Indeed, you have mellowed over the weeks, Sedrick.”
The swarthy Sedrick bristled and curled his lips back over his teeth. “At least I know what to do with a wench when I do find one beneath me. And when they bleat, they do not bleat with laughter.”
“More likely with pain,” the younger brother chided. “You crushed the last three whores you straddled, did you not?”
Sedrick grinned slowly. “In truth, it was the last five; the fourth and fifth being yer mother and sister.”
The brothers stiffened and sent their hands to the hilts of their swords.
“For the love of Christ,” Henry muttered from his perch on the log. “Can the three of you not pass a single hour without drawing insults? Lord Rhys …? Lord Dafydd …? My belly aches enough without having to constantly run a course with your Welsh humour.”
“Neither Dafydd nor myself is smiling,” the older of the pair answered blithely. “In fact, the very notion of either our mother or our sister showing such poor taste as to choose this barrel-brained Norman for a bedmate causes even the hint of mirth to vacate our heads.”
“Mmmm. Perhaps not Gwladus,” Dafydd objected mildly. He leaned forward to see past his brother’s armoured chest and cast a slow, critical eye along Sedrick’s form. “She has been known to admire any manner of long, thick objects when her husband is absent from home. Mother, however—” He leaned back with a creak of saddle leather. “Aye. I suppose I might be prompted to slit a throat or two in her defense.”
The squatting knight started to respond, but a swift, cool slash of steel came out of the bushes beside him, the deadly edge of the falchion pressing a painful threat into the stretched underside of his chin.
“The only throat that will be slit here today, my lords,” Ariel announced, “is the one resting over the edge of my blade.”
Gold-flecked hazel eyes darted upward and widened when they saw who wielded the sword that teased his throat. The unfortunate knight opened his mouth to speak, but the blade nudged higher, forcing him to crane his neck to the limit to avoid having skin and sinews severed.
The other three men had whirled around at the sound of Ariel’s voice, their weapons half out of their sheaths before her shout stopped them.
“I would not want to be the cause of so brave and illustrious a knight losing his head in such an ignoble position,” she warned.