God’s eyes, ’twas all a mess. His gaze slid to a slit in the curtains that led to the kitchens. He spied Mab hauling a basket of eggs into the kitchen. She was scurrying quickly, as if afraid that he might see her. That pleased him and he smiled to himself as he rubbed his member with the palm of his hand. He’d worry about his wayward sisters tomorrow.
“I don’t like it,” Jagger said, tugging on his beard as he glared at Isolde.
Wolf felt the dissent of the men as they sat around the fire, passed a bottle of mead, and chewed on tough, burned meat. He saw the glances cast between the members of his band. For the first time, they didn’t trust him. Because he’d broken one of their sacred rules and brought the old woman back to the camp.
>
They felt betrayed.
Wolf didn’t blame the men.
“Jagger’s right. I don’t like it neither. What do we need ’er for?” Cormick asked. He picked at his teeth with a small bone.
“She knows the ways of the old ones and she was Sorcha of Prydd’s nursemaid.” Even to Wolf, the excuse sounded weak, and he couldn’t afford to be weak with his men, but he didn’t want them to know of his private feud with Tadd. That was one of the secrets that he kept close to his soul.
“ ’Ell’s bells, just what we need, a nursemaid!” Odell spat into the fire, causing the flames to hiss as he turned the four fat pigeons on the spit and the meat sizzled and rent the air with the smell of burning fowl.
“I say she stays. She could be of much help.” Why he was convinced that she would help him, he didn’t know, but there was something compelling about the old woman. He stared into her lined face as she sat in the shadows, away from the circle of men at the fire, and felt as if he could trust her. “Asides, no doubt Tadd of Prydd would like nothing better than to find her and take her back to the castle to punish her.”
“So what?” Odell asked, his nostrils curling a bit. “The rule is no women.”
Wolf’s temper snapped. He focused his harsh glare on Odell. “So this time I bend the rule.”
The men grumbled, but as Wolf eyed them one by one, no one dared question his authority. He was ready for it. Some of the younger men were anxious to take over leadership—like young bucks vying and butting heads for the right to mate with a female deer.
Someday one would challenge him, and he’d be ready. All in good time.
“All right, I say she stays,” Peter, the one-eyed soldier, finally agreed. He oftentimes was the single member of the group who could straddle both sides of an argument, pulling two warring factions together.
The men growled and whispered among themselves, but their conversations stopped when Isolde stood slowly and walked closer, her weathered face seeming more lined and ghostlike in the shifting light from the flames. “I only want to get to Erbyn,” she said quietly as her gaze moved slowly from man to man. “I mean none of you harm.”
“Humph!” Odell snorted as he stood and swaggered up to her. His face was crumpled into a disbelieving scowl. “Y’re just like all women, and when ye gets to the castle, you’ll be talkin’ to the maids, tellin’ tales about yer night with the outlaws. What we do, who we are, where we camp—”
“Nay!” Isolde’s old eyes glittered. “Do not doubt me,” she said in a tone so low, the forest seemed to grow suddenly still. The wind died, the fire no longer crackled, and even the horses were silent, no longer restless.
Odell gulped. His eyes narrowed on Isolde for a second, and he licked his cracked lips before falling back to his spot near the campfire and resting his buttocks on a large, flat rock where his knife lay. His grubby fingers surrounded the carved bone handle of his weapon, and he hastily made the sign of the cross over his chest.
“Then she stays,” Wolf said, uneasy with the situation, but feeling that he could not let her out to wander the dark forest alone.
“What do we do with ’im?” Odell asked, pointing his dirty blade at Frederick. “ ’E’s seen our camp, and we can’t very well just let ’im go, can we?”
“You should have thought of that when you brought him here,” Wolf said, his body tired from a day’s journey, his mind weary of the arguing.
“Aye, but then you wouldn’t know what was goin’ on between the ’ouses of Erbyn and Prydd, now, would ye?”
Wolf saw the gleam in the older man’s eyes. “You’re right, Odell. ’Twas good that you brought him here. We’ll keep his horse and send him back home.”
Frederick’s back stiffened. “Nay, my steed—”
“Is now mine,” Wolf said decisively. He offered the messenger a cold smile, guaranteed to put fear into the hearts of many a brave man. “You’re lucky, Frederick, to be leaving with your life.”
“ ’E’ll tell the baron about this camp, I’m warnin’ ya!” Odell shouted, not satisfied with Wolf’s reluctant praise. Cutting a strip of dry pigeon from a small bone with his dagger, he glowered at the prisoner.
“By the time he gets to Erbyn, we’ll be gone.” Wolf leaned closer to the fire. “It matters not; the message was delivered to Tadd at Prydd.”
“How can I trust you?” Frederick demanded angrily, though he was no longer shackled and he was drinking the outlaws’ mead and eating their sorry dinner.
“You can’t.” Wolf grabbed the spit and tossed four small pigeons onto the stones. He left the stick in the ground, grabbed one of the birds, and tore off a chunk of seared flesh from the pigeon’s breast. “But I have no reason to lie.”