My Valiant Knight Read Free

weel as any mon, and weel ye ken it, as ye yourself taught me such skills. Skills no mon will expect a woman to have.” She smiled faintly. “I shall be a great surprise to those Norman dogs.”
    “Aye, ye will at that,” grumbled Ronald. “Lass, ye are no fool. Canna ye see what those Norman swine will do to ye, if they catch ye? Ye, more than any other woman, must ken how a fighting mon’s thoughts turn when he sets his hands on a lass.”
    “Aye, I do. I suspicion that the devils will think on raping me,” she replied with a hard won calm. “Howbeit, if I see that fate has deemed that to be my lot, I shall kill myself.”
    “Nay,” he cried, shock giving him a brief surge of strength. “ ’Tis a mortal sin to take your own life, to die by your own hand. Ye could ne’er be buried in consecrated ground.”
    She shrugged and decided it would be best to divert his attention from that dark subject. “I believe the Normans may consider asking a ransom from my kinsmen for me. In truth, ’tis a very great possibility.”
    “Aye, a vena big one. Ye may weel be right in that, lass.”
    “Why, thank ye kindly, Ronald.” She grinned, and he managed a weak one in return. “Now, ye are to rest,” she ordered him in a stem tone of voice. “I can keep watch for our pursuers. Ye need to regain your strength, at least enough of it to continue on. Although, where we shall go is a great puzzle to me. My father and brothers have been most successful in assuring that we are surrounded by enemies.”
    As he closed his eyes, Ronald murmured, “We shall find some safe place and stay there a wee while, lass.” He sighed. “My weakness is forcing me to obey your insolent command to rest. Dinna fret, sweeting. We will find a safe haven to crouch in, until we can learn the fate of your family.”
    Within moments, the only sounds Ainslee heard were the trickling of the brook and the chattering song of the many birds secluded within the trees. She sat cross-legged, as close to Ronald as she dared to without risking waking him, and laid her weapons across her lap. Ears trained for any sound of approaching danger, she tensely waited. Fear was a knotting coldness inside of her, but even that would not shake her from Ronald’s side. He was her friend, her only friend, as well as her teacher, and had been more of a father to her than the man from whose seed she had sprung.
    A soft sigh fluttered from between her lips, and she ran her hand along the sword resting in her lap. It would be a completely futile gesture to take up her sword against a knight trained and battle hardened. She hated futile gestures, yet knew she would do it, if she was forced to. Ainslee knew she could never simply sit quietly by and let her enemies do whatever they wished to Ronald and to her. She had spoken the truth when she had told Ronald that, if the Normans tried to sate their lusts on her unwilling body, she would kill herself. It was yet another futile gesture, but it carried the satisfaction of depriving the Normans of their brutal sport. The moment they tried to rape her, she would make certain that they held only a corpse.
    The mere thought of rape caused a flood of fearful memories she had never successfully purged from her mind. She could still feel the bone-chilling cold of the dark, soggy hole her desperate mother had thrust her into, when the battle with one of the MacNairns’s many enemies had turned against them. The piercing screams of her mother and the other women still rang in her ears. The sight that had greeted her young eyes when she had finally crawled out of that hole was still seared into her mind. It had all been more than a child of five could bear, and it had stilled her tongue for two years, before Ronald’s loving care had freed her of terror’s grip. Their enemies had taken their pleasure of every unfortunate woman who had fallen into their grasp, and then cut their throats. They had not bothered to cut her mother’s