She had no time to reply; Gunnar Olafson was already upon them. He drew up, charred earth scattering, his horse tossing its head as he restrained it. The round shield hung in its customary place over his shoulder. He was wearing his helmet, and now he took it off, tucking it under his arm. His face was streaked with sweat, his copper hair hanging in long damp tendrils. His eyes were sharp as blue spears, and Rose read his anger before he said a word.
“Lady, you should not be here.”
Rose pushed her intense reaction to him from her mind, noting instead the hard set of his jaw, the grim line of his mouth. Gunnar was seriously displeased with her, but she refused to allow that to intimidate her. “These are my people and this is my village, Captain,” she said evenly.
“’Tis not safe,” he growled.
For once, Rose thought in surprise, she was the calm one.
“You forget, Captain, Sir Arno is with me.”
Gunnar gave the knight a cursory glance, insulting in its brevity. Arno hissed in a breath, his hand going once more to his sword.
“And you are here, Captain Olafson,” Rose added, as if she had not noticed what had passed between the two men. “You will protect me, won’t you?”
His wide chest heaved as he drew a deep breath, held it, and let it go. “Aye, lady, I will.”
She leaned toward him, dizzy suddenly with her own power. “And you will obey me, Captain? You swore to do that, too.”
Gunnar Olafson had been very angry with her, but now as he stared into her eyes, the anger seemed to peel from him, leaving his face as still as a mere pond. “I did swear that, Lady Rose, and I do not make such promises lightly.”
What did he mean? There was a message there in his eyes. A glow. It spread through her body, rippling across her own calm and threatening a serious disturbance. He saw it; his mouth quirked. He leaned back in his saddle, and his anger was gone.
“Have you seen what you came to see, lady?” he inquired.
Rose nodded, and with an effort said, “And now I wish to see where it was that the merefolk escaped into the Mere, after they attacked my village.”
Arno made a further protest, but Rose did not take her eyes from the mercenary. He was the real power here, not the knight. It was Gunnar who would make any decisions concerning her movements and her safety. Rose understood that now for the first time, and she was all the more determined to have her way. To assert her rightful authority.
Abruptly Gunnar nodded his head. Calling out to two of his men—the two fairheads—who had been sitting upon their horses at a distance, waiting, he wheeled about and led the way.
“Come.” Rose glanced to Arno, and only then saw how flushed and angry he appeared. His own authority had been usurped, she realized with an inner sigh. Later on she would have to soothe Arno’s ruffled feathers—she had always done so before, and she was confident she could do it now.
They rode by the ruins of the miller’s cottage and the mill, empty and silent but thankfully untouched. Once the harvest was in they would need Harold to grind the grain. Where would they find another like him, so particular in his work and yet so reliable? What a waste it would be, if he were to die.
The woods covered the slopes to the west, but to the north the land fell away, flattening into meadows of green grass and yellow cowslips, and then sinking into the wetlands. Reeds and saltgrass poked from the mud and water, and wild duck and snipe hunted in the deeper pools.
“There, where the land dips low.” Gunnar Olafson had drawn up his gray horse and, lifting his arm, pointed out across the Mere. “We followed their footprints as far as that low island and then the water grew too deep. They must have had a boat.”
Rose scanned the horizon, frowning against the hazy glare of sun and sky. The wetlands, the Levels seemed to go on forever—flat, marshy, endless. The islands rose up out of them, the knoll of the dark and mysterious Burrow Mump looming like an ill omen against the summer sky. The home of her ghostly warrior. Her gaze skittered away before the doubts and fears could return to plague her. Instead she turned her
mind to the attack of two nights ago, those shadowy, faceless men who had run from the burning village. Anger shook her.
“Will they come again?” she wondered aloud.
Gunnar glanced sideways, and Rose could feel him reading her. The temptation to meet his eyes was great, but she held back.
“Maybe we have frightened them away,” he said, with nothing in his voice to tell her whether he believed his own words.
It was then she heard it, the thud of many horses approaching.
Gunnar turned first, his hand going to his sword. It slid silently from its scabbard, the lethal black metal gleaming like ebony. Arno tugged at his own sword and forced his horse around, cursing and digging in his spurs when it refused him. Several horsemen came up over the rise. They were strangers, grim-faced, armored. Rose was instantly aware that this was no friendly visit.
“Ride back to the keep, Rose!” Arno commanded, finally managing to turn his horse and place it between her and the approaching men.
Rose threw off her numb shock, gathering herself to obey, when suddenly Gunnar Olafson’s powerful arm curved around her waist and she was lifted onto his horse.
“No!” It was a gasp. Whether she was rejecting his presumption, or the sensation of hard male flesh all about her, Rose wasn’t sure. She began to struggle.