Page 2 of Bride of Ice
She’d have to be swift. Impetuous Jenefer might already be neck-deep in trouble. But Hallie wouldn’t go unprepared.
Tossing back her long blonde braid, she gathered her skirts and hurried toward the armory to speak with someone she could trust.
“I don’t trust the lass,” Rauve d’Honore admitted, shaking his shaggy head as he sharpened his sword on the spinning whetstone. “Your hotheaded cousin acts ere she thinks.”
Hallie scanned the armory. Three knights chatted in one corner. Two more were occupied, polishing their chain mail. They were safely out of hearing.
“Aye, I know,” she murmured, “which is why I must leave at once.”
“Now?”
“Aye, ere my parents return.”
Rauve let the wheel slowly grind to a halt.
He scowled in disapproval.
That scowl could make grown warriors quake. Especially since Rauve towered over nearly everyone. Even Hallie, who possessed the height of her Viking forefathers. Like a grizzled black bear, Rauve could send foes scrambling for their lives with a snarl and a roar.
But Hallie remembered being bounced upon Sir Rauve’s knee as a lass. He’d taught her to fight and picked her up when she’d bloodied her knee. There was no warrior more fierce, no defender more loyal than Rauve d’Honore.
“You’re not going alone.” He wasn’t asking her. He was telling her.
She arched a fine brow. “You’re not coming with me.”
“The hell I’m not.”
“I need you here,” she said. “I need you to take command of Rivenloch in my absence. Besides, I’ll have Feiyan with me.”
He scoffed. “That wee mouse?”
“That wee mouse flipped you onto your back yesterday,” Hallie reminded him.
Feiyan might be a bit of a thing. But her unique fighting skills—learned from her mother’s servant from the Orient—served her well. She’d quickly humbled Rauve on the practice field.
Rauve grumbled and rubbed at his graying black beard with his battle-scarred paw. He sheathed his sword. Then he plucked Hallie’s blade from where it hung on the wall and pressed it into her hands.
She shook her head, refusing it. “’Twill be a battle of words, not weapons.”
His black eyes widened. “You cannot know that. Besides, in the woods? At night? Dangers lurk in the forest. Thieves. Miscreants. Wolves.”
A snort of a laugh escaped her.
Everyone knew the story of Hallie and the wolf. As a lass, Hallie had befriended an orphaned wolf pup, which she still spotted on occasion in the forest. Legend said that as long as the beast roamed the wood surrounding Rivenloch, no wolf dared harm Hallie.
Thieves and miscreants Hallie could handle. Wolves she didn’t fear in the least.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him.
Rauve frowned, biting back a curse.
“You won’t delay,” he threatened.
“We should be back by morn.”
“See that you are,” he groused, “unless you’dlikefor your father to string me up by my beard and feed me to the crows.”
That made Hallie smile. Her father would do no such thing. Sir Rauve was his most faithful knight. Only once had Rauve dared to disobey Pagan Cameliard, and that disobedience had saved her father’s life.
