Dark Maiden Read Free Page B

odds of the attack had changed. The rest of their assailants hesitated, slowing, looking at each other.
    But not the one possessed. He will come.
    “Give us the darkie,” called out another. “Luck for us.”
    Geraint curled his lip. “She is not mine to give and if she were you would never get her.”
    “I have no quarrel with you,” Yolande said, wanting to give them an escape. “We are travelers and will be gone by tonight.”
    Two turned away and she breathed a little more easily. Two stepped closer and she loosed two swift arrows at their feet. Another man sat down on the hillside amidst a patch of flowering fireweed and sobbed, “Poor Edo…”
    “Drunken fool.” Geraint tipped her a wink.
    Absurdly, the wink gave her heart. She loosed another arrow, a warning shot over the waverers’ greasy heads. “Go with my blessing.”
    More turned aside, content she had granted them the elusive luck they craved. Three remained, watching Geraint.
    Not these men, they are men only.
    Then she smelled a foul miasma that made her close her mouth sharply and glance at her companion. Sensitive as he surely was, although he had not known it before he traveled with her, Geraint had done the same and was nimbly burrowing into his pack.
    “Not the cross, not yet. It may not be needed,” she whispered and he stopped at once, his long, tanned fingers frozen on the straps.
    The copper armlet she wore under her clothes grew chill. The world about them was slowing down, men’s mouths opening and closing as they talked, word by word. The dried Saint John’s wort she always carried in a pouch around her neck hung heavy at her throat.
    It comes—spirit, lost soul—angry for being trapped.
    “I can help you,” she said in Latin, addressing the soul directly.
    A new figure stalked forward, a beardless youth who looked excited and close to tears. Yolande lowered her bow. “Release the man-child,” she said in Latin.
    The boy stopped as if barred by an invisible hand. The foul odor increased, worse than rotting eggs.
    “Peace be upon you.” Speaking in English for the boy and others to understand, Yolande plucked a branch of oak and offered it to the spirit within the youth. “Let the strength of the tree be your refuge.”
    Slow as a summer sunset, the lad’s arm rose to hers. He touched a leaf of the oak branch, pinching it between finger and thumb.
    “Come out of him,” she said in Latin. “Come to the oak.”
    The oak leaves trembled and the boy gasped, shivering as if plunged into ice water. After the heat of the angry spirit had left him, he would be cold.
    Yolande braced herself and began to recite the creed, ignoring the yells of the bystanders as the branch of oak burst into flame. The youth swayed but did not fall. He let the branch go and was free.
    The scent of the spirit stormed into her nostrils and through its heavy stench, a name was blazoned in her mind’s eye.
    “Peace to you, Thorkill,” she said in Latin. “Go to your rest with God.”
    The soul of Thorkill spoke within her head. I cannot go yet. I died unshriven, unburied. The boy stole a dagger of mine as I lay dying.
    “I will bury the dagger in a scared place, beneath this oak, and pray for you,” Yolande promised, whispering now. “Come out,” she said again in Latin. “Come to your rest, Thorkill.”
    The last leaf of the oak burned away, scorching her fingers. She did not flinch. “Give me the dagger you stole from a dying man,” she ordered the sobbing boy.
    The lad flung the knife at her feet and ran off. She picked it up and a whiff of sulfur seeped away, leaving only the smell of her own lavender and rosemary and pepper.
    “Go home,” she told the others, but they were already moving off, not too proud to run once they had gone a few paces away from her.
    She closed her eyes and began the prayer for the dead for Thorkill.
     
    Geraint stayed with her. He helped her to dig a shallow pit beneath the oak. He made her a small cross of