Page 45 of The Maiden

“You thought I wouldn’t?” he snapped. Just like a woman, he thought, you give her a compliment and she insults you. He turned on his side away from her. He’d had about enough of her insinuations that he was incompetent. The woman was emasculating! “Tomorrow you go back to the Irials.”

Jura grimaced and didn’t reply. This Englishman was very strange.

But the next morning they did not have time to argue. Jura woke fully alert, her senses knowing that something was wrong. Slowly, she reached out her hand to Rowan, asleep a few feet from her. He opened his eyes the instant she touched him and read the warning in her eyes.

To her consternation, Rowan leaped to his feet and began to shout. “Damn you, woman, always after me, a man can’t even sleep.”

Jura saw that he grabbed his sword as he stood. She also took hers and aimed it for his throat. “After you?” she yelled up at him. “You are a poor thing for a woman to want. I have had lovers twice your age who were better than you.”

“I shall show you who is the better lover,” he said, and leaped on top of her. “Roll to my right,” he said into her ear. “Hide in the forest and wait. There are two of them.”

When Rowan moved, Jura did indeed roll to his right, but she came up to her feet, her sword held firmly with both hands, and she positioned herself at his back as she had been trained.

Two men, thieves by the look of them, came toward Rowan, knives drawn. They looked hungry and ready to commit any crime to take what little Rowan and Jura carried with them.

“I am your king,” Rowan said, “put down your weapons. I will share what I have with you.”

“You’ll not give my horse away,” Jura said, still behind him, watching the forest for more thieves.

“King?” a thief said, and snorted laughter before he attacked Rowan.

Jura listened to the sounds of battle behind her and kept her head turned a bit so she could see when or if Rowan needed help, but he was a good fighter, very good. And she was surprised to see that he fought like a Lanconian.

One of the thieves fell and Rowan went after the other one while Jura still stayed close to his back. She had been trained well and they worked together as if they were dancing. When he moved, she moved.

She heard the second thief scream in pain, but she didn’t turn her head because, just as she thought might happen, a third thief came tearing from the forest, a sword raised above his head and coming straight at her. She parried his blow and steel rang against steel.

“Run, Jura, run,” Rowan commanded, and she cursed him for trying to confuse her. She was trained to obey orders but this was a bad order.

She fought the man with all her strength, not even hesitating when his steel cut into her upper arm. The man was frenzied as his sword raised and lowered, and Jura took each blow on her own sword. Then she counterattacked and began to push him back toward the forest with angry, aggressive blows of her own.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Rowan, finished now with his own fight, come toward her, but he stopped and watched instead.

Jura pinned the thief against a tree, ready to ram her sword into his belly.

“No!” Rowan said. “He is Lanconian.”

“He is Vatell,” Jura said, but she hesitated and didn’t kill the man.

“Here,” Rowan said, holding out a heavy meat-filled pie to the man. “Take this and take your friends. They are only wounded. Remember that your lives are a gift from the king. The king of all the Lanconians.”

The thief looked at Rowan the same way Jura felt, as if Rowan were crazy, and it was good to put miles between them. He snatched the pie and ran into the forest while the other two men, groaning, limped off.

The sun was beginning to rise now and Rowan looked at Jura’s bleeding arm then led her to sit on a nearby rock while he brought linen and fresh water from his saddle carriers. Tenderly, he began to wash and bandage her arm. It was a shallow cut.

“I have not seen that before,” he said softly. “I mean the way you stayed by my back. Feilan said nothing to me of women who guard a man’s back.”

“Perhaps he took it for granted. What does an Englishwoman do? If you had been here with your sister, what would she have done?”

“Lora would have hidden in the forest as I told you to do.”

“And she would have been taken by the third thief or he would have killed you when he attacked your back. Together, we made an impenetrable column with eyes all around.”

Rowan was frowning. “I see that but I do not like it. The men should be trained to guard each other’s backs.”

“Men are the stronger fighters, and quite often a woman only guards, she does not fight. It would be wrong to waste a strong arm merely to protect.”

Rowan finished the bandaging but he was still frowning. “I thank you for your protection this time but next time you must—”