Читать книгу Rhiana - Michele Hauf - Страница 12

A steel bolt—set between two intent eyes—aimed at Rhiana’s nose. She followed the weapon from glinting tip, down the crossbow stock, to a finger poised upon the trigger. Rain splattered the wooden shaft of the crossbow. Moonlight sparked in the very human eyes mirroring her own deadly gaze.

It took two breaths to realize she stood, not before a dragon, but a man wielding a crossbow. Where he had come from, she did not know.

“Stand down,” Rhiana demanded.

The man’s eyes narrowed and one dark, wet brow arched in defiance. “On my honor, my lady, you do not look like a dragon.”

“Neither do you resemble a fire-breathing beast. Lower your weapon, if you will.”

“You first.”

The man’s mail coif was pelted to his scalp by the increasingly heavy rain. And those eyes, she wagered they were blue, though she could not determine for the darkness.

Still she held her aim.

Avoiding looking at the tip of the bolt, Rhiana summed him up. Dressed head to toe in black leathers with steel spikes studding the coat of plates and his wrists. Broad-shouldered and tall as she, he must be a knight. But she did not recognize him as any from Lord Guiscard’s garrison.

“If you be honorable you would stand down first,” she sputtered in the pouring rain. “I must be on to the dragon!”

“It slipped down that tunnel.”

A nod of his head indicated the wall of stone to her left. Rhiana noticed the slit of blackness that must lead to the lower caves. She had never before remarked the tunnel. It had to be recent.

The muscles in her arms began to stretch and protest her position of aim, but she had no intention of backing down. Her thumb slipped from the trigger. Shivers, caused by the chill rain, echoed through her body. But her intentions were perfectly aimed.

“Are you not a knight?” she shouted against the heavy rainfall. “Pledged to serve your lord, and to protect women and children?”

That got him. The man slowly lowered his crossbow. The usual weapon, fashioned of hard wood with a steel band and fixings.

Stubble marked his narrow jaw. An angry nose, bent to the left, shouted of previous injuries. Completely soaked, the rain softened what Rhiana suspected would prove a rugged complexion. Not an entirely distasteful face.

Or it may be Rhiana was cold, wet and starting to hallucinate, for the air wavered with the cloying heather and the distinct odor of the dragon’s sage essence.

“You surprise me, my lady.” The man stepped back a few paces to stand beneath an oak tree. There the rain was half so strong, so Rhiana joined him, yet kept the crossbow waist level and pointed at him—ready. “The last thing I would have expected to find upon this mountain, besides dragons, is a woman wielding a weapon as if a warrior.”

Rhiana slicked a palm over her scaled armor. The dragon scales glimmered in the moon’s light.

“Who are you, sir? And why are you tramping about the forest with a weapon? Lord Guiscard looks unkindly on those who would hunt his deer and boar.”

“I am dragon hunting.”

Now he set the crossbow against the tree trunk, and crossed his arms over his chest. His gauntlets skittered over the rows of narrow steel studding his leather coat of plates. Rhiana had once fashioned the plated armor, but preferred chain mail, for she could shape it to fit a body exact.

Peering curiously at her, his gaze worked such a hypnotic fix upon her, she found herself stepping closer. Right up to him.

“I wasn’t sure if dragons had reinhabited the caves here at the seaside,” he said.

“Reinhabited? You’ve hunted here before?”

“Not me, no, but I’ve been told these caves are rich and attract the fire-breathers. I had thought to check for myself—with success! My shot to the beast’s belly was most effective in bringing it down.”

“Your shot?”

Gape-mouthed and stunned, Rhiana spun a look to the dark crevice where the dragon had disappeared, then back to the man. He had a fine opinion of something that was not his to claim.

“’Twas my bolt which felled the beast. An arrow to the belly penetrates merely fat. Nothing more than a bee sting to the creature. But to fly with a torn wing?”

“I beg to disagree, my lady.” He splayed a steel-plated gauntlet before him in explanation. “A deep wound to the belly on the younger rampants penetrates easily to the lower organs. My bolt was enough to disorient the dragon. It has been wounded, mayhap, seriously. Likely now it will be an easy track.”

Rhiana chuffed out laughter. “You plan to track the beast into its lair?”

“Of course.”

Cocky, self-important— Be this man a slayer? For only one trained and experienced would consider so dangerous a tactic.

Had Lord Guiscard held good on his claim he would call for a slayer? But that was only this morning when Rhiana had spoken to him. This man had not been summoned to St. Rénan.

“Be my guest,” she offered. “I shall stand in wait of your triumph.”

Only a fool would be so, well, foolish.

A nod, and tilt of his crossbow against his shoulder, and the man began to march toward the tunnel entry framed by the rain-slick megaliths. The lackwit planned to enter the cave, teeming with dragons. Nine of them, by Rhiana’s estimate. Of course, he could have no idea there was more than the one he claimed to have felled.

The idea of a stranger come to hunt dragons in her territory put up Rhiana’s hackles. And that he did not grant her the fell-shot?

“There are many more inside!” he called. He slapped a palm to the stone near the razor-slash entrance that could very well plummet to the very fires of hell. The gauntlet clanked dully against stone. “I guess a dozen.”

“Nine.” Rhiana stepped into the rain and tramped across the slick grass to join him. How did he know there were others? Fascination prompted her to learn more. “How long have you been here, sir?”

“Just arrived.”

Then how could he possibly have determined… “What be your name?”

He bowed grandly, palm to his chest. As he rose, he performed a sneaky, but chivalrous move by lifting one of Rhiana’s hands to his mouth.

She almost pulled away when she realized he planned to kiss it, but curiosity stayed her. It was a knight’s manner. Chivalry, and all that bother. He merely bussed her flesh with his closed mouth, wet with rain. Heat tendrils traveled up her arm, disturbing her as equally as they excited her. It was the closest she had ever come to a kiss.

“My lady, I am Macarius Fleche, dragon slayer.”

Rhiana tugged back her hand. Fleche? But that was…

“Actually,” he continued, “I am the greatest slayer in all the land, which includes the English isles, all of Italy and the upper parts of Spain. I remain unmatched by any who claim the same occupation. I’ve twenty kills to my record, all within a decade.”

Twenty kills? Impressive. Two a year. What a prize the doom below their feet would offer. Said prize, being more than mere notches to his crossbow. For slayers who took out a dragon were promised all they could carry from the hoard as payment. It was an unspoken rule of the land.

Macarius Fleche. That name…

“Know you Amandine Fleche?” Rhiana tilted her head to dissuade the raindrops from her lashes. “He is a dragon slayer.”

“Was.” And the man’s face changed, the twinkle in his eyes flitting away. With a hook of the crossbow over his shoulder he paced away from Rhiana, walking the expansive curve of the megalith.

Was? But that would mean—

Rhiana rushed after the slayer. “He is dead?”

“Last summer,” the man called.

Mon Dieu, Amandine was dead?

There waited a horse behind the megalith, hobbled beneath a copse of maple, and soaked to the hide. The horse bristled its back as Macarius attached his crossbow to the flanks and secured it with a tug to each of the leather belts. The man then turned to Rhiana.

“You are the female dragon slayer I have been told about.” A statement. He did not wait for her response. “I did not believe it. And yet now, mayhap there be some tidbit of truth to it.” He stretched his hand up her length. “Very fine armor. Remarkable even. Rather, I can believe in the possibility of a female slayer, but there yet remains the proof of it.”

Well. Not at all pleased with his indifference, Rhiana took a step toward him, and then marked her anger. Now was no time for arguments. Besides, she need prove herself to no man. Most certainly not to one who considered himself the greatest.

“What be your name, my lady?”

But of course, she was being rude. How easily a foul mood clouded her better senses. Odette would surely admonish her for playing the ruffian when delicacy of manner was required to attract a man’s eye.

Not that she’d any intention of enacting her pitiful powers of attraction.

Lifting her chin proudly, she declared, “Rhiana Tassot. I am a dragon slayer. And I have no cause to prove it to you. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I am off to my home. The weather bechills me, and the wounded rampant will not show again this day, to be sure.”

“St. Rénan?”

Reluctant to answer, Rhiana knew it was the closet village for leagues. “Yes.”

“I am headed there myself.” The man mounted the horse and reined it toward Rhiana. He bent at the waist and offered a hand. “I can carry another rider behind me.”

Staring at the black leather palm of his gauntlet, Rhiana vacillated. ’Twasn’t as if the plague crawled across the leather. But the offer made her sort of crawly inside. He had demanded proof of her skills. Had almost cast her aside as an impossibility, and so, of little concern. He was as all other men, bullheaded and prideful. Believing women belonged slaving over the hearth fire, or sweeping out their men’s dirty boot-prints, or moaning beneath them between the sheets.

The greatest slayer in all the land? Ha! And how many kills had he marked in the past day? Likely, zero to her two.

Cocking her head to the left, Rhiana shook it in answer. “I favor walking. It keeps me strong.” With that, she marched off toward the walls of St. Rénan.

For the longest time, Rhiana was aware the man followed her from a distance. Marking her long strides with a slow pace that surely put his beast to misery for the rain. The trek down the mountain went swiftly. Over the decades a path down the counterscarp that wedged a gouge all around St. Rénan, made for a quick, if plummeting walk. Her pace continued across the field of rape that would be harvested for oil and grain come autumn. She would not turn to look at him. That is what he wanted, no doubt, a pleading look.

Eventually the man passed her by, tipping a nod to her, and then pressing his horse to a canter for the village drawbridge.

It was then Rhiana stopped and fisted her hands over the scales that ended just below her hips.

“The daring…”

Well, he had offered her a ride. She should not be angry for that.

But why did it miff her he’d not offered a second time? As he’d passed her by? She would have turned him down again. Of course! But he could not have known that. Any man would have continued to press her to accept a ride. A gentle man who believed in chivalry, grace and honor.

“Macarius Fleche, eh?”

The surname was common. There was a Fleche who fashioned arrows in St. Rénan. He could not be related to Amandine Fleche. Not once, while training her, had Amandine mentioned a son or other relation.

Amandine was dead? How? When? This man had announced his demise with little regard. He could not be a relative, for would he not have shown some emotion?

Struck to her very heart, Rhiana’s tears mixed with the rain as she trudged onward. Her belly began to ache with an inexplicable hollowness. She had lost without having been aware. The old man had taught her selflessly, giving to her the gift of his skills, and asking in return that she strive to be the best.

“I have become quite good,” Rhiana murmured as she stalked, wet and weary, onward.

But the best? She had only begun her adventures in dragon slaying. To take her measure now would not be fair, especially when matched against one who had been slaying for a decade.

I am the greatest slayer in all the land.

“We’ll see about that.”