Somehow Byrne had risen from the ground, the long knife Skald had thrown still buried in his back. He came forward, his steps silent, his face more like a terrible mask than the visage of a living man. His eyes had changed from deep, melancholy twilight blue to a glowing garnet red that spread over the whites and made it seem as if his eye sockets were filled with blood.
The eyes of a warrior gone berserker.
"What do you stare at, girl?" Skald asked.
She answered him honestly. "Death."
The Saracens had sharper ears, and one of them turned just as Byrne was upon him. One huge hand crushed the guard's throat as the other took his ax. The guards around him began to shout, and then fell silent as the ax flashed through the air around them. Their bodies stood rigid as their heads began tumbling from their shoulders, bouncing around their feet.
Byrne began chopping his way through the Saracens, cutting them down as if they were little more than deadwood. Some were able to raise their crescent-curved blades, but the ax severed their arms before they could land a blow.
Nothing stopped a warrior in berserker, the battle rage.
Byrne had told Jayr that men with his affliction did not recognize friend, foe, or innocent on the battlefield. Taken by berserker rage, the warriors knew only that what lived had to die by their hand. Byrne would butcher everyone in his path until there was no one left to kill.
Skald reacted to the hail of limbs and heads by turning back to her, shifting his weight as he brought down the lance. Jayr kicked out with her leg, smashing her boot into the seneschal's ankle. The lance scored the top of her shoulder but landed in the ground, pelting her face with dirt.
"You worthless piss catcher," Skald shouted, reaching for the lance. His head snapped back as his right eye sprouted an arrow, and he screamed.
Jayr took hold of the first lance and with a wrenching cry pulled it out of her shoulder. She saw the seigneur lowering Locksley to the ground, and beyond him Nottingham fitting an arrow to the bow he held.
Skald tried to do the same with the arrow in his face, cursing and weeping as he grasped the long shaft. "'Tis my birthright, not his. It'll be mine now, all of it, and I'll burn it down before I let them take it away." He looked up into Byrne's blood red eyes. "I am the eldest son, the mac Byrne; it is all to be mine, not yours."
The ax came down, splitting Skald's head and cleaving through him until his body fell apart, the two halves spilling his blood and insides across the ground.
Jayr saw Byrne walk over Skald's remains as he stalked toward Nottingham. Alexandra shouted for Michael, and the men of the Realm hauled back what Saracens still lived. No one could stop Byrne, however, and anyone who tried would be slain.
Jayr pressed her hand over the wound in her shoulder and took a deep breath before she flashed across the field, stopping in front of Nottingham.
"Aedan," she said, holding herself up by force of will alone. "The battle is over now. You have won."
Blood and gore dripped from the ax Byrne held and spattered Jayr's face as he raised it. She did not flinch, but kept her gaze steady as she looked into the violence in his eyes and held out her hands.
"I know you can hear me," she told him. "I am here, my lord. I need you with me. I love you. Come back to me now."
The ax froze in place before the hands gripping it slowly lowered it to the ground. The bloodied shaft slipped free of Byrne's fingers as he stared at her as though mesmerized.
"Here," he muttered. "Alive."
"Yes, my love." She smiled, moving in to grasp the hands lifting toward her. "You saved my life."
"Life. Saved." At her touch the blood rage in his eyes faded, and Aedan mac Byrne emerged from his personal hell to pull his woman into his arms. "Jayr."
Chapter 21
Michael Cyprien supervised removing the dead and the wounded from the field while Alexandra converted the infirmary and four other rooms next to it to a temporary hospital. She inspected Jayr's lance wound first, but found that lingering inflammation from the earlier dislocation had actually protected the bones of her shoulder from being broken by the lance.
"You won't be arm wrestling anyone for a few days," Alexandra told her as she strapped her into a sling, "but leave it alone and rest, and it should heal without complications."
Byrne assured her that he would personally supervise Jayr's recuperation before he carried his seneschal out of the infirmary.
The few surviving Saracens refused to let Alexandra touch them until Michael explained in Italian what had happened. The sight of Nottingham terrified the men, and Michael had to send him out of the infirmary before they would rest.
Michael instructed Harlech to move the bodies of Skald and seventeen dead Saracens to an outbuilding for later burial.Alexandra worked tirelessly through the night, and Michael stayed with her, helping her treat the wounded and doing what he could to make them comfortable. When the last patient had been seen, he took her back to their rooms and coaxed her into bed, where she fell asleep as soon as her eyes closed.
For two hours Michael lay beside his woman, holding her and breathing in her scent as he thought of nothing in particular. After the day of betrayals, carnage, and destruction, simply being with her felt like a miracle. Skald could have easily killed either or both of them while they were drugged. He suspected the kindness Alex had shown to the deranged seneschal had saved their lives.
The next evening Michael summoned his suzerains to the guard hall to decide what was to be done about Nottingham. Alexandra insisted on attending.
"If there's going to be a trial, I want to be there," she told him. "And Nottingham should have an attorney."
Michael chuckled. "The Kyn do not have attorneys, Alexandra. Nor do we want them. Attorneys are like the plague. No, they are like two plagues."
"Nottingham can't speak up to defend himself," she told him as she changed. "If you want this to be fair, he needs someone to represent him and tell his story."
"If Skald did not invent his story," Michael pointed out.
"I don't think he did." She turned so he could zip up the back of her dress. "This is going to sound weird, but I think Skald really felt sorry for Nottingham."
Michael sighed. "Alexandra, he tried to cut off his head."
"Yeah, but before that he seemed really sympathetic." She clipped her curls back from her face. "Do I look okay?"
He caught a stray curl near her ear and tugged it gently. "You are beautiful."
"You won't kill him, will you?" she entreated him. "I didn't perform the world's first successful head reattachment on Nottingham just so some pissed-off Kyn could cut it off again."
"I think his near-beheading was close enough." Michael kissed her. "Don't worry, chérie. Even the Kyn can be reasonable and open-minded on occasion." He held out his arm.
Alex shook her head. "You go ahead. I need to stop by the infirmary and check on my patients. I'll meet you there."
Michael went to the guards' hall, where every suzerain at the Realm was present, along with Byrne, Jayr, and Locksley. Byrne looked calm and, for the first time since Michael had known him, completely at peace. Beside him Jayr sat, silently watchful and curiously radiant.
Michael took the time to greet each of his lords before standing up and addressing the room. "Much has happened since yesterday, and to dispel the rumors that are doubtless running rampant, I will tell you what I know is fact."
He began with the attack on Byrne, and how Skald had framed Jayr for it, and then progressed to the challenge and the second attack on Nottingham, finishing with the brief, bloody battle on the practice field.
"What we do not know is whether Skald acted alone, of his own volition, or if he was doing so with the knowledge and consent of Lord Nottingham," Michael said, and paused before adding, "Before Skald drugged my sygkenis and attempted to behead his master, he told Alexandra that Ganelon of Florence was once known as Guy of Guisbourne."
Locksley choked on the wine he was sipping.
The suzerains muttered among themselves; they were not men prone to shouting in outrage, but their anger was clear. Michael held up his hand and, when silence fell over the room, continued.
"Most of us were at court the day Richard passed judgment on the traitors of Sherwood. We witnessed many executions, including Guisbourne's." He glanced at Locksley, who sat rigid with disbelief. "Robin, if there is some possibility that your kinsman did survive—"
"I buried his parts in five different graves," Locksley said, his damaged voice rasping out the words. "The dwarf lied. Guisbourne is dead."
"Well, whoever this Italian is, he is behind the attacks," Adolfo put in. "That much is plain."
"I agree. That fool seneschal couldn't have acted alone," Halkirk said. "Even if he was, as he told Jayr, Lord Byrne's brother, he didn't have the wits to plan his revenge. Nottingham came here seeking power, new territory and men. He could have easily encouraged his seneschal's madness to serve his own purposes."
"Nice theory," Alexandra said as she came into the hall with Nottingham. "Problem is, it's totally wrong."
Michael gave her an exasperated look. "I know you wish to defend this man, Alexandra, but you cannot know what he thought or did."
"Sure I can." She held up a pad of paper. "He wrote down the whole story." She offered it to Michael. "You can read it later. I'll give you the short version. It's a real eye-opener."
Alexandra repeated the story Skald had told her, detailing how after Marian's death Guisbourne had been replaced by his bastard half brother, and ultimately driven from England long before the jardin wars had taken place.
"No one can substantiate this tale," Halkirk objected when she finished. "Skald is dead. The Saracens know nothing of Nottingham's life before he came to Italy. What proof can he offer that what he has written is truth?"