Dragon Tree Read online

  CHAPTER ONE

  Lincolnshire England, 1194

  A split second before the arrow struck the jamb of the door, the girl's instinct sent her ducking back into the shadow of the cottage.

  The shot had come from one of the half-dozen crossbowmen who stood at the edge of the clearing. With lethal calm, their eyes stalked fresh victims and as soon as one was found, they raised their weapons, steadied aim, and fired a stubby eight inch quarrel. Behind them, laughing and shouting encouragement, were four mounted knights, their gray wool gambeson's devoid of any distinguishing crest or blazon. The sleepy village, innocent and unaware only moments before, was under attack by knights who did not want their identity known and for good reason. An ambush against unarmed villagers broke every law, defiled every precept of the Code of Honor.

  The first flight of quarrels had been wrapped in pitch soaked rags and set alight before being dispatched. The gray mist at dawn had been thick enough to conceal the raiders' approach but the wind had passed through the clearing like an errant hand, sweeping the fog away. That same wind fanned the sparks, sending flames leaping across the roofs and within seconds, columns of coiling black smoke were rising from the cluster of mud and wattle cottages.

  The three sway-backed asses in the village were too old, too work-worn to even bleat an alarm as the flames licked across the thatch and ran down the walls. They were also dead on the second flight of crossbow bolts, as was the solitary milk cow and the brace of fat hogs.

  As the roofs burst into flame above them, the men ran out of the cottages in a panic, snatching up pitchforks and scythes as if the handmade tools could afford protection against the deadly arrows. They were followed by their women who pushed and dragged children behind them, urging them to run for the perceived safety of the woods. Goats and chickens added to the confusion, for most were too insignificant a target for the archers—seasoned marksmen who wound their bows taut and fired with unrelenting accuracy, choosing the husbands, fathers, sons first.

  They were patient killers. They tracked a man as he ran behind the wall of a burning hovel, then waited for the heat and smoke to drive him out into the open again. The women fared no better. Several were sprawled on the ground already, arrows jutting from their backs.

  Amie remained crouched in the doorway of the smithy's cottage, her eyes watering from the smoke, her nose burning from the waves of heat that were sucking the air out of her lungs. Her back and shoulders were being scorched through the threadbare cloth and her choice was to break for the forest or be enveloped by the roaring flames overhead. The trees were fifty paces away, but there was nothing between them and the cottage save for a miserly vegetable patch scratched into the earth.

  Clenching her teeth around a half-sobbed prayer, she darted through the door and ran as fast as she could to the feeble protection afforded by a low mound of hay. Over the sound of her heart pounding in her chest, she heard the telltale thunk of an iron quarrel furrowing into the earth a few inches from her foot, but she was already running again, weaving this way and that in an attempt to elude the archer's aim. She was slight of build and wiry. The only softness on her body was in the vicinity of her breasts, which were pressed almost flat inside a tunic that was two sizes too small. Her hair was braided and hung in a long brown tail down her back; the hem of her skirt was pulled up between her legs and tucked into her belt so that from a distance, it was possible she had been mistaken for a lad.

  She heard a shout, followed by thunk thunk as two arrows kicked up clods of dirt close on her heels. She felt the spray of pebbles against her bared calves but did not look away from the bed of ferns that grew in the shadow of the trees. They were thick and high as her waist, covering the ground in a canopy of green, and she knew if she could just make it that far, she might have a chance.

  She heard another whoosht and dove for the undergrowth. Something punched her in the back of the shoulder and helped propel her forward, but she had barely skidded to her knees on the spongy loam before she was on her feet again, scrambling deeper into the sea of ferns. She ran one way for a dozen paces, then veered sharply to the left for a dozen more. She kept running wildly, changing direction every few moments, trying to ignore the shouts and screams that filled the clearing behind her. The wind was a blessing now, keeping the tops of the ferns swaying and dipping in constant motion, helping to conceal the direction of her flight.

  Another sound brought her briefly to a halt. She risked a glance behind her and confirmed the dreaded thud of horses hooves scything through the saplings and underbrush. One of the knights had left the scene of slaughter and was pursuing her with almost lazy confidence into the greenwood. Even at a hundred paces, he was huge; his black courser was equally enormous as it trampled an indiscriminate swath through the ferns. The knight had his visor lowered, and there was not much to see between the iron grating that covered his eyes. She knew why he had come. He and others like him had been hunting her for over a month, and now the villagers were paying a terrible price for sheltering her.

  Biting back a sob, she ducked again and plunged deeper into the woods. The main vein of the creek that ran past the village was somewhere close by, but she had spent most of the past few days in a fever and was not familiar with the paths and turns. She was running blind, disoriented by all the green, the shadows, the new and excruciating pain in her shoulder that was forcing her to hold her arm in a hard curl against her chest.

  Without warning, the saplings thinned and the ground took a sheer pitch downward. She had found the creek, but it was at the bottom of a frighteningly steep embankment. Driven by another desperate glance behind her, she grabbed an exposed root and started to ease herself over the edge. The lip of earth crumbled under her weight and she slipped, only managing to break her fall by clutching at a second root. The action jerked her injured arm and she felt the iron arrowhead grind against bone. Barely able to bite back a scream, she let go and dropped straight down, landing on a bed of decades-old decayed leaves. The momentum of her fall sent her rolling onto the shaft of the arrow and she gasped with the agony as the iron tip was pushed all the way through the flesh of her shoulder, tearing through the coarsely woven wool in front.

  Blinded by the pain, she managed to drag herself under the tangle of roots that overhung the bank. She made a last, feeble attempt to rake some of the decayed leaves over her legs to conceal them, but a chill unlike anything she had ever felt before slithered across the base of her neck and down her spine, from whence it began to seep outward from her belly, numbing her legs all the way to the tips of her toes.

  He was there.

  The knight was above her on the embankment, his soft laughter coming to her over the creak of saddle leather as he guided his horse down onto the lower bank. A moment later, the jangle of his spurs told her he was dismounting, and through the drumming of her heartbeat, she heard the sinister whisper of a sword being drawn from its sheath.

  ~~

  A half mile to the west, a young squire shielded his eyes against the glare of the sunrise and pointed. “My lord... over there.”

  The knight he served followed the direction indicated to the treetops where a rolling spiral of black smoke rose above the greenwood. There was a village beneath that smoke, a small vill that he was aware existed in the heart of the forest but had never felt the need or curiosity to visit.

  One of the other lackeys suggested, “A fire in the woods, perhaps?”

  The knight studied the smoke through narrowed green eyes and sniffed the air. The smoke was tinged with a familiar scent, one that was not easily forgotten despite the years that had gone by since he had last tasted the acridness at the back of his throat. He knew instinctively that it was no ordinary forest fire and his misgivings were confirmed as yet another of the woodsmen came running out of the thicket, winded and sweating.

  “My lord Tamberlane...! The village is under attack. A dozen men, maybe more. Four knights in command with keen-eyed bowmen to do their ill work.�
�� He stopped, out of breath and words, and behind him three other yeomen dropped the stag they were carrying between them, and instantly unslung bows from their shoulders. The squire, Roland, spurred his horse closer to that of his lord and frowned.

  “Why would knights be attacking a poor village, my lord?”

  Tamberlane started to shake his head, but stopped when the faint sound of screams reached them through the lifting mist. Even at a distance, the cries were full of terror and fear, a sound that haunted his dreams nearly every night for the past three years. Beside him, Roland instinctively drew his sword. The lad was seventeen, still young enough and eager enough to be ignorant of his own mortality and Tamberlane supposed it would do no good to point out the fact that they were at a weighty disadvantage against armed knights. The yeomen were armed with falchions and hunting bows, with a handful of slender ashwood arrows between them, and while the young squire was on the cusp of full manhood, approaching his year of majority, he had not gained much fighting experience in the two years he had been serving Tamberlane. Moreover, they were all dressed for hunting, with nothing to protect them other than soft leather jerkins and doeskin leggings.

  "My lord?"

  Tamberlane sighed inwardly and nodded. Armor of another sort rippled along his arms and bulged across his chest as he adjusted his swordbelt and withdrew his own bow from the sling that hung across the saddle horn. It was a Welsh weapon, a longbow fashioned from yew, capable of flinging arrows two hundred yards with enough accuracy and weight to pierce chain mail. Having only recently given in to his curiosity over the unknightly weapon, his proficiency left a great deal to be desired, but he could hit a tree trunk at fifty paces if it was wide enough... and if the tree did not jump out of the way, as they seemed wont to do.

  Disdaining the eagerness in Roland’s eyes, he spurred his destrier in the direction of the columns of smoke. As chance would have it, he had chosen to ride his piebald that morning to give the beast exercise, and he could feel the excitement rippling through the warhorse’s powerful flanks as they cut through the ferns and saplings. Similarly, the two wolfhounds that were Tamberlane’s constant companions, responded to a softly whistled command and streaked cleanly and silently between the trees, leading the way straight and true to the small hamlet.

  Within minutes, Tamberlane and Roland had ridden close enough to the village for them to draw a reign for caution, slowing their approach, waiting for the rest of the woodsmen to run up and fan out behind them.

  After a brief, muffled conferment, they split into two groups. Tamberlane took the wolfhounds—Maude and Hugo—and circled to the east, while Roland led the five foresters around to the west. The screams had ended, but there was shouting now and the occasional robust laugh to indicate that the victors were celebrating their success. They were arrogant in their triumph, for there were no sentries left to guard their backs. Roland was easily able to creep to the edge of the forest without being seen.

  He deployed the huntsmen and waited until each had taken cover behind the stout trunk of a tree. From his own position he could see the charred ribs of the cottages, the smoke thinning now as most of the huts fell to ruin. He could also see the men-at-arms starting to move amongst the dead and dying, kicking bodies onto their backs, searching for signs of life, cutting into still-warm flesh to retrieve the valuable iron tips of their arrows.

  The squire waited an impatient three minutes. He raked a hand through the golden waves of his hair and glanced repeatedly at the far side of the clearing, expecting his overlord to thunder out at any moment.

  “Roland! Look there!”

  One of the foresters stabbed a finger in the direction of the burned huts. Two of the soldiers had found a young girl who was still alive, and without paying heed to her cries for mercy, dragged her into the clearing and threw her down onto the ground. While one knelt down to hold a knife against her throat, the other started to unbuckle his belt and lower his leggings.

  Roland drew two arrows from his quiver. With one clenched between his teeth, he stepped out from behind the tree, raised his bow, and struck the first attacker down with a clean shot to the heart. The second was dead before knowing the cause for his comrade’s shocked cry.

  Just as death had come swift and unseen to the villagers, it streaked out of the forest now and took the raiders unawares. Most were caught out in the open and after the first flush of arrows found their marks, they scattered in confusion. The three knights at the edge of the clearing drew their swords and lowered their visors but by then they too had become targets and one screamed as an arrow caught him high on the thickest meat of the thigh.

  On the far side of the village, Tamberlane cursed when he realized Roland had not waited, but had launched his arrows already. Ciaran had followed the riverbank, intending to circle around the village and attack from the far side, but his progress had been halted by the sight of one of the knights dismounted and standing over the body of a young peasant girl. It was obvious he had chased her to ground after she fled the village. It was equally obvious that he was not content to merely finish his work quickly and return to the others, for his sword was drawn and he had used the point to ruck the maid’s skirts above her waist. Where the steel had touched her skin with ungentle purpose, it had scored bright red lines of blood to mark its path.

  At the sound of shouts and more fighting, the knight had given pause, his blade poised over the cleft between the maid’s thighs.

  He had not yet seen Tamberlane, though that was about to change as an arrow cut swiftly across his path and thudded into the soft earth of the embankment.

  Swearing at his own ineptness, Tamberlane nocked a second arrow and drew the fletching back to his cheek. The two fingers that were curled around the rosined string snapped free and sent the arrow shooshing across the fifty feet that separated him from the startled knight who was now twisting around, searching for his unseen foe. The knave’s chest was surely as broad as any thousand year old tree trunk, but the shadows were distorting and the inexperience in Tamberlane’s hand made his aim unfaithful yet again. The arrowhead missed the rightful target by a foot or more, but in doing so, struck the knight’s left arm at the narrowest part of the wrist. The iron head shattered the bones, tearing through the tendons and tissue in a bloody red spray.

  Tamberlane dropped the bow and drew his sword. He held the blade upright before him, barely aware of paying homage to old habits as he mouthed a single word and spurred his horse forward.

  It was over on the first pass. Tamberlane’s blade swept down in a lethal flash of steel, catching the knight high on the chest where the links of his camail joined the lower edge of his helm. The knight spun away, his neck split open, his body falling with a heavy splash into the muddy river bed.

  Tamberlane reined his horse to a halt and wheeled about. When he saw that another rout was not required, he trotted slowly back to the embankment, his sword still held at the ready.

  The knight was dead, the clear water of the stream carried away a wide ribbon of red blood spouting from his throat. The girl’s condition was not so certain, but Tamberlane had no time to check. Maude and Hugo, responding to a shrill whistle, were told to ‘stay’ and to ‘guard’ while he urged his horse up the bank and rode hard toward the clearing.

  Roland had managed to drive the attackers back toward the verge of the woods but when they saw that their adversary was a mere squire in hunter's green, they had formed up in a solid line and armed their bows again. Two of the unwounded knights even managed a laugh, although that sound faded too as Tamberlane’s enormous destrier came thundering out of the greenwood behind them.

  Once again the line of marauders scattered, half of them casting their cumbersome crossbows aside in their haste to avoid the churning hooves. Several who stood their ground paid dearly for their stubbornness. One of the knights sallied forth, his visor dropped in place, his shield and sword raised in readiness. When the distance between Tamberlane and the knight closed, they bot
h swung their blades in a vicious swath, the combined force of their blows ringing out with the strength of a church bell. Steel scraped along steel before the momentum of their horses tore them apart, but without the cumbersome bulk of armor to hinder his balance, Tamberlane was first to swing around and spur his steed into another pass.

  This time his blade struck heavy armor across the chest, denting the mail and banging the knight’s air out of his lungs on a harsh grunt. The links did not give and Tamberlane had to recover quickly to block a counterthrust that would find nothing but linsey-woolsey and flesh to resist the blow.

  Roland charged valiantly forward to defend his lord’s back, but the second knight made no chivalrous distinction between squire and master. He bore in for the kill, his sword aiming to cut Roland from the saddle—an effort that would have succeeded but for the twin ashwood arrows that flew through the air and thudded into his body like cleavers striking meat, one taking him under the arm, the other piercing cleanly through the throat.

  The two archers, aptly named Quill and Fletcher, took a moment to congratulate each other’s aim while the third knight, his thigh pinned to the saddle by an arrow, saw how the tide had turned and screamed for the remnants of the raiding party to retreat into the woods. He led the flight, kicking his horse into a full gallop that soon swallowed him into the trees and shadows.

  Tamberlane, meanwhile, was still locked in mortal combat, slashing and hacking at an opponent who was not lacking in either courage or fortitude. He fought, in fact, like a man accustomed to killing and because Tamberlane's most recent battles had been against straw men with pumpkins for heads, his reflexes were not as sharp as they once were. The dullness cost him a deep slash along his forearm and forced him to grip his sword in both hands in order to block the knight's deadly blows.