Warwolfe (de Wolfe Pack Book 0)(33)

Luc simply nodded, his gaze tracking the woman and the priest, as they all were. “Do you really believe she will betray us?”

Gaetan lifted his big shoulders, vaguely. “We shall soon know,” he said. “You and Denis flank them as they move. Stay to the trees, however, and stop when it is no longer safe to travel. Keep an eye on the pair for as long as you can.”

Luc nodded, moving through the other knights until he came to Denis. Young and excitable, Denis was more than agreeable to the orders and the two of them suddenly took off into the foliage, pushing through the heavy bramble and trying to remain silent as they moved. Gaetan watched them head off until he lost them in the shadow. Then, he moved up beside Téo and Aramis, standing between them as the men watched the Saxon warrior lady and the priest head towards the enemy encampment.

All they could do now was wait.



Ghislaine knew they were being watched as she and the priest headed into the Anglo-Saxon encampment and it was difficult to choose just who she was more afraid of at the moment – her brother or the Norman knight pointing an arrow at her back. None of this venture had gone as she had hoped but the problem was that she couldn’t stop the forward momentum now. She couldn’t simply walk away; she was becoming more and more entrenched in a situation of her own making and struggling not to lose control of it.

She was in it until the end.

As she and Jathan came to the edge of the encampment, several exhausted men around a weakly-smoking fire caught sight of her and began gravitating in her direction. Seeing that she was now noticed, she took action. She grabbed Jathan by the back of his tunic and shoved the tip of the dagger into his back.

“I am sorry if I hurt you,” she whispered to him. “But I must make this convincing.”

Jathan could see the enemy soldiers heading in their direction and he kept his eyes on them. “Understandable, my lady,” he murmured. “Good luck to us both.”

With that, the conversation died but Ghislaine’s apprehension was full-blown. The blade pressed into Jathan’s back was trembling so that she suddenly kicked his knees out and forced him on to the ground so her men would notice the prisoner and not her quivering hands. Besides… she didn’t want her shaking hands to jiggle that sharp blade right into the priest’s back.

“Look what I have found!” she said triumphantly. “Another Norman dog!”

Men were gathering around her, peering at the man on his belly, his face pressed into the cold, wet grass because Ghislaine had her foot on his head. She was beaming from ear to ear, as if genuinely happy with her captive, but it was all for show – she wanted her men to see how hateful she was towards the Normans and how gleeful she was in the capture of one. She had to be convincing.

And it worked.

Men began to congratulate her, peering down at Jathan only to spit on the man when they looked their fill of him. They had a Norman in their midst now and it seemed to rejuvenate whatever defeat had settled in their hearts and minds. A few of them even kicked Jathan as they circled him, like vultures going in for the kill.

“Another Norman bastard!”

“Kill him! Harold demands it!”

“Wait!” Ghislaine threw up a hand to stop the mob mentality before it truly started. “I will not kill him. I would put him with the other Norman prisoner, the one my brother took from me. Where is he?”

A man with dark dirty hair went to stand with her. He was one of her own soldiers, sworn to her, as were most of the men standing around her. In an age where men controlled the army and the country, it was extremely rare for a woman to command men but Ghislaine did. These men were gifted to her by her brother, Edwin, because he wanted her protected in battle. He knew he couldn’t keep her out of a fight so he had gifted her with about a hundred men and the means to support them.

Ghislaine’s men were extremely loyal to her, as evidenced by the fact that they’d remained in the encampment even when she’d turned up missing. A few had even gone out to look for her, but most of them were certain that Lady Ghislaine would return. She tended to be a loner at times, and a wanderer, but they knew she would not leave them. Even if she was a woman, she understood the heart of the warrior and the mentality. She would never leave her men if she could help it.

They had been correct.

Therefore, the man with the dirty hair was glad to see her and not surprised she’d brought back a prisoner. Lady Ghislaine was brave that way.

“Alary took his men and left just after dawn, my lady,” he told her. “That was a few hours ago.”

Ghislaine’s smile of triumph turned into something of a grimace and it was a struggle not to openly react to the news. “He left?” she asked, unable to keep the astonishment from her tone. “He… he is gone?”

“Aye.”

“And he took his army?”

“Those who could move, aye. At least two hundred men, mayhap a little less.”

“But… but what of my Norman prisoner? Did he take my knight, too?”

All of the men were nodding to varying degrees. “He was searching for you before he left, my lady,” another man said. “He would not wait for you to return.”

So Alary knew I was missing, Ghislaine thought. “So he took my prisoner and ran off?” she asked. “Did he not know I would return?”

The man with the dark hair shrugged hesitantly. “He did not say, my lady,” he said. “He looked for you. But when he could not find you, he took his men and his prisoner, and he left.”