"By the rood, Lady Talia, that bloody Lord Rufus be the meanest, ugliest bugger there ever was!"

Mustn't forget cruel, malicious and stone-stupid, Talia thought, but didn't dare say to Leod, else the dear old warrior and his compatriots might take the matter of Lord Rufus into their own hands.

"Mean and ugly or no," Talia whispered, swallowing the cold panic that had settled against her heart, "in just a few minutes Lord Rufus will be my husband."

Husband.  Dear Lord, the word tasted bitter. 

"Hell's hoary hound, girl, y'can't marry that pig-snouted bastard!"

"It's not a matter of choice, Quigley," Talia said, a darkly distant thunder shifting her off balance as she stepped into the firelit shadows of her castle courtyard.  "I'm Rufus's ward."

And this time there would be no escaping the inevitable.

No escaping the horrid ogre waiting for her to join him on the chapel steps.

To marry him.

This time there'd be no army to come crashing through the castle gates, like the last time. 

No act of God, like the time before, no broken siege.

No royal warrant in trade for her wardship, like the first.

No escape at all from this marriage to Rufus.

"When you reach the chapel steps, my lady, stand clear of the blighter and I'll put an arrow through 'is empty black heart."

"You'll do nothing of the sort, Jasper."  That's just what she needed; Rufus's men tearing her father's old archers to pieces.  She took hold of the man's bony arm.  "You'll each behave yourselves tonight, else you'll have worse than Rufus to answer to.

Talia heard the three men grumbling as they all set off again toward the chapel.  She suffered another soul-hollowing chill as the sky rumbled and thundered again, as the night wind slipped over the timber-picketed battlements, whirling together clouds of glistening leaves and sparks from the fire baskets.

"Gor, Rufus!" someone shouted over the milling mass of brutish soldiers.  "There your lady be!"

The crowd laughed and parted only wide enough for Talia and her old champions.

"Mmmmmm.....  Tasty, she looks to me."

"'E's waiting for ya, yer bridegroom is.  Stiff as a pike, I'll wager."

On she went, through the serpentine corridor of jeering, ogling men, stinking with drink and neglect.

So like their master.

Rufus.

There he was, strutting around at the bottom of the chapel steps.

Her gluttonous, barely-human guardian turned husband-to-be, downing a flagon of ale and grabbing another from a cowering page.

Rufus de Graffe. 

Pillager.  Waster.

Mother Mary, where was a true warrior when she needed one?  Her very own Green Knight to slay these dragon whelps and their unspeakable master?

A man who would keep this unrelenting war at bay, who'd keep her people warm and fed and secure in their homes.

Who'd be a husband to cherish? 

Just one more miracle.  And I'll never ask again.

"There she is, Father John," Rufus bellowed, his ale-slitted eyes gleaming at her, "my little bride.  All pink and clean and ready for me." 

Aye, ready to lose her stomach as the ghastly man staggered and stumbled toward her through the drunken crowd.

Please God, let the great ass drink himself into a stupor long before our wedding chamber is blessed.

"Come here, girl."  Rufus clenched her upper arm between his bruising fingers and yanked her up against his barreled chest, his foul breath flipping her stomach on end.

"Keep your bloody--"  But Quigley's outraged shout ended behind Jasper's hand.

"Please, let's get on with it, Father John," Talia said, easily yanking out of Rufus's reeking embrace.  She took the few steps toward the chapel, terrified that the old warriors would draw Rufus's wrath.

"Ah, now that's what a man needs in a wife, eh, priest: eagerness to be bedded."

Talia swallowed back the bile in her throat and cursed the lot of brides, of women, of royal wards who must obey their unworthy guardians.

The thunder came again, more deeply, rumbling across the cobbles, seeping its oddly intimate warmth through the soles of her slippers, riding up her calves to soften her knees.

Father John cast Talia a look of helpless distress as he motioned toward the steps.  "If you'll, uhmmm, take your place beside Lord Rufus."

Her place.  No.  Rufus was far, far from the right man to stand with her here on the chapel steps, the lord of her beloved father's castle, her husband. 

Her protector.

"No more lagging, priest," Rufus said, growling as he slid his hand over Talia's backside, "the lady has her needs."

Rufus squeezed hard and she slapped his hand away without thinking, hoping Leod wouldn't jump the man.  "I'm not your wife yet, Rufus."

"Be damned, woman!  You'll speak when you're asked to–"  Rufus's beefy face reddened.  He drew back his fist and Talia was about to dodge out of the way, when the force of his swing was caught by a wide-eyed soldier.

"Trouble, your lordship." 

Another crash of thunder, closer, grazing her heart.

"Bloody impudent sot, can't you see I'm busy!"  Rufus sent the guard sprawling into the muddy cobbles.  "Now, on with it, priest!"

Father John had wound the twine of his wooden crucifix around his fist.  "But, Lord Rufus, shouldn't you–"

"The wedding, dammit!"  Rufus grabbed Father John by the front of his cowl and thrust him back against the door.  "Begin now!"

But the thunder came again, rocking the very steps now, and her balance.  Another shudder seemed to make the timbered wall of pickets dance along the stone parapet.

Father John's eyes bulged as he squawked out, "Bless, O Lord, this ri–"

"Sir!  At the gate!"  The guard had struggled to his knees, and now tugged at the hem of Rufus's hauberk.  "They're coming through–"

They?  Please God, deliver us this one last time.

Everything stopped in the next breath.

Stopped with a crash and then a splintering sound as a single stone catapulted into the courtyard and landed hard against the kitchen shed.

Another siege?

Oh, please, God, yes!

Then a great banging of wood and metal echoing through the courtyard as a sea of soldiers began spilling through the barbican gate and into the courtyard. 

Wonderful, miraculous, glittering-helmed soldiers, easily overwhelming the few men who had tried to close the huge double doors against the surging assault.

The chaos slowed suddenly, and out of the midst of it came a deep-voiced cheer that rose up from the tumult of hooves and clashing swords, that echoed from the gates and bounded through the barbican and into the courtyard.

At the center of the cheering crush rode a huge mounted warrior, his arm raised in savage triumph, his blade filling the night sky with a flash of lightning and moonlit steel.   

Their leader, no doubt.

Her miracle.

And he seemed to be staring right at her.           

Through her.

"Buggering hell!"  Rufus staggered sideways, slack-jawed, as wave after wave of mounted warriors coursed around their overwhelming leader and his massive destrier.

"Call the men to battle, sir.  Please!"

This was a miracle, all right, a vast and sweeping one, pouring over the ramparts, swords flashing.  Filling her heart with gratitude and her ears with the horribly familiar sounds of war.

A miracle that might kill them all.

"The men, sir!  Pleeease!"

"Call 'em y'rself, Garlock!"  And then Rufus skittered from the church steps, slinking off into the shadows, leaving his men armed with little more than empty mugs of ale and their bare fists.

"Ha!  That'll show the bastard!" Jasper said, brushing his palms together, scowling after Rufus.

"One enemy replaced by another," Talia said, keeping the monstrous warrior in her sights, painfully aware that the trouble was far from finished.  That the fires would doubtless start in a few moments, the sacking and the pillaging.  "We've faced this all before, gentlemen."

"Seven times, by my count," the priest said, his fists buried deeply inside his sleeves, his face chalky as he fixed his gaze on the chaos in the courtyard.

"Aye, so Leod, you and Jasper go to my sisters in the keep.  Guard them with your lives."

Leod snorted, working his frizzly brows into a solid arch.  "And where do you think you're goin', my lady, when you're all dressed up?"

"Go, Leod!  Now!"

"Aye, my lady."  The two old men grumbled at each other as they hobbled off into the clash of metal and smoke and men.

Damn this bloody war and all its demon players.  Threatening and threatening and threatening again.  Always clamoring at her door.

Like this new one, wielding his sword against the sky, bellowing orders that sent men in every direction.

Just another warlord.  The next claimant to her wardship.  To her marriage bed.

Inciting his troops to his own brand of savagery against her and the people she loved.

"Go, Father; hide the gold candlestick and the rood."

"Aye, and the altar cloth."  He smiled ruefully and slipped through the chapel door.

"To the village, Quig.  I'll ring the alarm from the tower.  See that the villagers go into hiding until they hear the tithe bell, then come find me with the damage report.  Or if there's trouble–"

"I can't leave you to–"

"Hurry please, Quigley.  You know what has to be done."

"Aye, my lady.  For your father and for you."  The old warrior frowned through his deep moustache and then vanished into the chaos.

Talia sped away from the chapel steps, losing sight of the huge warrior in the snarl of men and horses.  Though it didn't matter this time.

Whoever you are, Sir Warlord, this time things will be different.  As Rufus would have discovered had he stayed long enough to wed and bed her.

Your victory will be as short lived as his.  Because her plans were already in place to take back control of her life--as unstopped as the tide, as necessary as the sweet sea air.

Her heart filled with resolve, Talia kept to the perimeter of the courtyard and its gruesomely dancing shadows, dodged and ducked her way through the fighting and finally managed to ring the alarm bell against the Baketower wall, praying that the villagers had escaped in time.

Mother Mary, she ought to be used to the terror by now, armies of men battering down her castle gates.  Raiding her crippled village,  slaughtering the men, violating the women, terrifying the children.  Making orphans of the innocent.

Aye, but she had gotten used to it.  And that had been the trouble: accepting defeat instead of turning to fight.

It wouldn't happen again.

Woe be to this new one, this massive warrior with his shiny blade and arrogant victory.

He'd just made the biggest mistake of his iniquitous life.

She'd taken but three steps in the direction of the shop rows when she smelled smoke.

Straw, a dreaded smell, for it always meant the stables, the horses! 

Talia skirted the riot, tracking the smoke to a grain storage bin in the front of the castle granary, expecting to find the worst.

But instead of setting the fire, two soldiers were quickly dousing it, dumping the grain on the ground, as another held one of Rufus's struggling pages by the scruff of the neck.

"Our lord de Monteneau keeps no hostages, boy," the soldier bellowed at the terrified young man.  "You do know what that means, don't you?"

De Monteneau.  The new one.

"Please, sir," the young page said, squirming without success.  "Don't kill me!"

Horrified that this de Monteneau devil would blithely order the death of a defenseless boy, Talia grabbed the soldier's shoulder.  "You'll not kill a defenseless boy!"

The huge soldier paused, clearly annoyed but listening.  "And you are... who?"

"My Lady Talia, please don't let them kill me," the boy whimpered, taking a handful of her hem.

She grabbed his hand, fixed him with a stare.  "Did you start the fire, Figgis?  The truth, now."

He let out a mournful whine.  "Rufus ordered me to as he escaped, my lady.  I thought--"

"Great heavens, Figgis, if Rufus had told you to jump off the kitchen tower into the bay, would you have?"

He nodded.  "Yes."

Talia sighed, then glared up at the bull-shouldered soldier and his companions.  "The boy was minding orders, sir, ill-conceived, though they be.  You'll not kill him, do you hear me?  You will hold him in the guardhouse."

"Our lord does not hold hostages."

Murdering monster.

"Where is this lord of yours?"

The man laughed, arrogant, amused, certain of himself.  "My lady, our lord is busy somewhere seizing this castle."

She was just forming a hard-edged cursed on her tongue when she caught sight of another flame, far across the courtyard.  A flare of light in the chapel, a flame where it shouldn't be. 

Please not the chapel!

"Keep the boy safe, soldier!  Or you'll have me to answer to."  Fearing the very worst, Talia ran back to the chapel, up the steps, and then burst through the door.

There wasn't fire at all, nothing but a wildly flaring torch fixed into a sconce above the altar, its flame tossing dense shadows everywhere, masking everything not directly in its pale orange path.

"Father John!"  Her voice echoed back at her, bumped against the vaulting and the sounds of the battle raging outside. 

He wasn't there.  Only a dark, empty silence... and a large, formless, encompassing shape against the altar.

A shape that breathed and shifted, and then broke into two pieces. 

One part remained a groveling lump on the ground, and the other grew even larger, darker, taller, stealing most of the light and nearly all of the air.

A man.  No, not a man, a monster!  As tall as the altar arch and his shoulders as wide.

The lump on the floor rose up on his knees, spoke in a broken voice.  "Sir, 'tis our only holy relic–"

Father John!           

The beast raised his arm above his head, was about to run the priest through.

"Noooo!"  Without another thought, Talia leaped onto the broad back of the huge warrior.  "Unholy heathen!  How dare you attack a priest!" 

She scrambled to keep hold, wrapping her arm around his thick neck, clinging indelicately to his leather and mail-clad waist with her thighs.

She smacked him on the helm, bruising her hand as the faceplate shut with a clang.  "And in a house of God!"

The fiend growled deeply, reached around her with his huge, gauntleted hand, and took hold of her knee.  Then in a single, smooth motion, he grabbed her shoulder with his other hand and dragged her all the way around to the front of him, her legs still encircling his waist, the thick hilt of his sword trapped between her legs.

"How dare you, sir!"  She looked up into the dark, slitted void in his helm where his eyes ought to be, fathoms deep and threatening everything she held dear.

"Well, now," he said, his voice a forceful, intimate rumble that radiated through her chest and lit dark fires in her belly, "what have I caught here?"

More trouble than you know, she wanted to say.  But she couldn't speak a single word.  How could she when she was clinging to the muscular hips of a compelling, steamy soldier, staring up into his murderously dark eyes while his huge hands cupped her bottom.