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“’Tis wrong to deny me the chance to fulfill my duty!”
Ceridwen gasped as Raymond swung his fierce gaze to her. He seemed aboil with rage and anguish and regret.
“Do not speak to me of duty, of right and wrong. I will not dishonor you again by forcing you to go. I thought it would be your preference. Do you refuse to return to your people?”
Her throat ached. Oh, how she wanted to go to them. But silently she commanded herself to reply as she must. “I do.”
Raymond’s low voice and calm manner only served to intensify his words. “So be it. One more mark on my soul’s tally of disaster won’t matter. Perhaps it will to you, but not to me.”
He swung his horse’s head around and Ceridwen urged her pony to fall in step beside him. Gazing upward, she did not believe his statement. The lines of pain on the Englishman’s face bespoke the truth. The “tally” did matter to him. ’Twas not likely that she was the cause of his distress, but something gnawed at that soul he claimed to have, however black it was.
As they neared the lane’s entry to the woods, Ceridwen thought she saw Raymond take pause. His horse tossed its head as if to confirm her suspicion, but Beauchamp shook the reins and reclaimed the animal’s obedience. The knight sniffed the breeze. “Rain will soon fall, we will be caught out. I know a shortcut, but we must take a steep path. Can you manage?”
“Aye,” Ceridwen replied. Come what may, she would stick to her pony like a burr. She followed Raymond’s mount as the black courser bolted through the woods, nimble despite his size. The Englishman rode lightly but the horse seemed out of control. A madness had possessed him as surely as it had his master.
Ceridwen was hard pressed to keep up, but Raymond hurtled on anyway, the faster to get through the forest he hated. Tree trunks sped past in flickering alternations of light and shadow. He let the horse take him, share with him all its wild power.
Leaning over the animal’s neck, Raymond’s hands left the reins, and he rubbed his palms down the pounding, sweat-slickened shoulders of his mount. He did not want to think or to feel. For a little while, he simply wanted to be.
But his momentary peace was shattered as a flash of white burst into the path before them. Grendel whinnied and shied and reared all at once. Raymond kept his seat until his mount headed irrevocably for a low branch. He dove off, landed wrong, and lay still for a moment with his eyes closed.
A jingle of harness and the receding thud of hooves told him of Grendel’s desertion. Hamfast licked his cheek and whined. Moist breath warmed his face as Ceridwen’s pony arrived and nuzzled him. God grant that she was still upon its scruffy back.
“Are you injured, Beauchamp?”
“Nay.” Raymond picked himself up and tried standing. Too quickly, but he managed to avoid her proffered hand. His right knee throbbed. As he tested it, a soft whuffle of sound caught his attention. Raymond stared down the curving path.
Standing there was the stuff of legend. A white stag, living and breathing. Heretofore an insubstantial animal of his imagination, from tales told him by Alys when he was a boy.
Raymond blinked and looked again. It remained, its nostrils flaring gently with each inhalation, deep brown eyes staring at him. A faint blue light seemed to flicker about its antlers and along its back. It snorted and pawed the earth.
He glanced at Ceridwen. She looked unperturbed, as if magical deer were an everyday occurrence. The stag leaped away between the trees. Raymond could not help himself. “Come on!” he shouted. The great dog at his heels, he ran after the beast, drawn like a moth to flame.
A white stag. Emblazoned upon his shield as befit a man of Beauchamp. He could no longer make that claim. He had gone through the motions, followed Alonso’s orders. But his heart was not in it. His ideals of keeping a united front, standing by his brothers no matter what, now seemed as vaporous as the creature he pursued. The stag was a creature purely of myth. It did not exist, except in the minds of superstitious old women. Perhaps all that he had lived for was as much a phantom as the beast. But it looked so real. He had to find out.
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