Page 82 of Hers To Command
One of the mercenaries working on the wall came running. “They’ve come through the other way!” he shouted.
De Mallemaison uttered an oath and turned his horse to head toward the wall and the men pouring forth from the hole beneath it.
A pale Roald did not follow.
“OH, SWEET SAVIOR!” Henry cried as, regardless of the agonizing pain in his shoulder, he caught Mathilde and lowered her to the ground, cradling her with his good right arm.
“You there, help me!” he called to the nearest soldier. “Help me lift her. We’ve got to get her to the hall to Giselle.”
Henry couldn’t do it himself. He didn’t have the strength, his left arm was useless. He called for another soldier to take her other side.
As they lifted her in their arms, one on either side, Henry cursed himself for not, somehow, realizing she was there. He should have wondered who that soldier was, questioned the hesitation, sent her from the wall.
If she died…If she died, he might as well be dead, too.
But first, Roald was going to rue even being born.
As the men carrying Mathilde started down the steps, their enemies began fighting their way into the courtyard through the smashed gate. The men would never get to the hall with Mathilde. They would have to tend her here, as best they could.
“Come back,” he ordered. He tore the sling from his left arm and reached up to try to remove his helmet, but he couldn’t do that, either.
“Help me get this off,” he commanded one of the archers, who rushed to obey. When the archer got the helmet off, he gasped when he saw Henry’s bandaged face.
“Take off my bandages and use them to staunch her wound. Quick, man!”
Breathing hard, the archer did as he was ordered, looking away in dismay when Henry’s face was exposed.
Henry didn’t care what he looked like or what this fellow thought. He didn’t care about his own wounds, or what other damage might be done. All that mattered was Mathilde. “Don’t pull out the arrow,” he said as the soldiers eased the linen under her gambeson. “Leave it in until Giselle can tend to her.”
Unsheathing his sword, he started for the stairs leading to the yard.
“Where’re you going, my lord?” the archer who’d taken off his bandages called out.
“To kill Roald de Sayres.”
DEMALLEMAISONrealized it was hopeless the moment he got to the wall. There were too many soldiers from Ecclesford coming from within; they couldn’t stop them, short of pulling down the props, and there was no way to do that now.
Damn de Sayres. They should have used the men he’d hired to undermine the wall, not the captives. They would have been through before this.
Cursing, he pulled his horse hard to the right, away from the castle. To hell with de Sayres and his inheritance—if itwashis. He wasn’t going to die fighting for him. He’d been promised easy pickings, a quick fight and ample reward, and instead found himself besieging a well-defended castle and combating well-trained men.
As for the women, no woman was worth half this much trouble. Beating Lady Mathilde until she pleaded for her life and taking her sister had some appeal, but not enough to induce him to put his life in danger. As for D’Alton, that bitch could say what she liked, but heknewhe’d killed—
“De Mallemaison!”
With a gasp, he looked back over his shoulder, to see a man charging toward him, his sword upraised, his face—
God damn him, it couldn’t be! Some other man must be wearing D’Alton’s surcoat. But that long brown hair, the shape of his body—the broad shoulders, narrow hips.
D’Alton was alive and surging toward him to attack. Without a helmet.
Regardless of that shock, and the sight of D’Alton’s ruined visage, De Mallemaison reacted with the honed instincts of a trained killer and started twirling his mace, waiting until D’Alton was close enough to hit.
Keeping hold of the grip, he swung the weapon toward his enemy. As he did, D’Alton raised his sword like a beacon. The balls of the mace spun around it and the chains wrapped around the blade. Planting his feet, D’Alton gave a mighty tug, pulling the mace from De Mallemaison’s hands and De Mallemaison from his horse.
Stunned, it took De Mallemaison a moment to recover and get to his feet while D’Alton tipped his sword down to make the mace slide free.
It was then, with a rush of triumph, that De Mallemaison realized D’Alton carried no shield on his left arm. That whole side of his body was unprotected, like his head.
