Free Conqueror by Kris Kennedy

“Convince me to have my men and castles waiting.”
    Griffyn nodded but his gaze lingered a minute, watching Hipping go. Hipping was like a trained bear. On most occasions, he’d follow your bidding, but never, ever turn your back.
    No, he’d never have brought Guinevere here.

    “Hippingthorpe’s hunting lodge is near here?” she asked incredulously.
    “’Bout half an hour’s hard walk down the river path,” gruffed the man Pagan had called Clid. He was obviously the patriarch, and Gwyn dealt with him.
    Behind his bearded head, an equally bearded man threw another log on the fire, then sat on the bench. Everyone was sitting, listening to the conversation. As if they could do much else—the room was as wide as a birthing-stall, and half was in fact a stall. A cow’s slow chewing provided rhythmic background, and chickens scratched through the hay.
    “Aye,” Clid said. Or grunted. “A couple miles north o’ here.” He slurped up a bit more brown broth, then eyed her doubtfully. “But why wouldn’t Pagan have taken ye there straight off, iffen that’s where he wanted ye?”
    But Gwyn wasn’t listening. Hope had sparked inside her, and she was mindless of any more mundane considerations, such as how she’d get there or whether it was wise. “What fortune! But, no,” she said, and slumped again. “’Tis no use to me empty. I need lords. Or at least hardy men with horses.” She looked at Clid. “Men loyal to the king.”
    He smiled, his rotted front tooth prominent. “Not many of them here in the Midlands, o’ course.”
    “No,” she agreed, and stared glumly into the firepit.
    “But Hipple’s lodge ain’t what ye’d call ‘empty.’”
    She lifted her eyebrows.
    “Hipping hisself rode in afore dawn, along with his accursed knights.” Clid ripped another chunk of bread free with his teeth and worked it between his jaws. “Burning and raping and takin’, and yer king doin’ nothing to stop ’em.”
    Gwyn’s heart leapt. “Hipping is there?”
    “Oh, aye, he’s there. And he’s not alone.”
    She beamed. “Who else?”
    “Leicester.”
    Her eyebrows crumpled together in confusion. “Robert Beaumont?”
    “Aye.”
    “The Earl of Leicester is at Hippingthorpe’s hunting lodge?”
    “Aye.”
    Earl Robert Beaumont, most powerful peer of the realm, was riding to the remote hunting lodge of a minor baron? Hadn’t he been in attendance at the king’s feast—was it truly only a few hours ago? No, she realised. He’d been strangely absent.
    “Robert Beaumont, Lord of Pacy-sur-Eure and Breteuil?” she added for clarification.
    Clid scowled. “He might be Guardian of the Lord’s pearly gates by now, I s’pose, the way his royal lordship throws around titles. What I know is that he’s at Hipping’s lodge. Arrived a few hours ago.”
    She frowned. Why on earth had she not seen him or any of his retinue on the king’s highway?
    “There’s back ways to everywhere,” said Clid, shrewdly reading her thoughts.
    She considered this. It would be a dark and dangerous ride, what with the boars and wolves, and Hipping known as a wolf himself, but he was currently loyal to the king, and right now, nothing mattered more.
    She looked into the chieftain’s eyes. “I must get there.”
    He exchanged a few eyebrow-wagging glances with the men, then shook his head. “That’s a danger for us, missy. Best that the great ones don’t know we’re here. They’ve forgotten us, and I’d have it stay that way.”
    “They’ll never see you,” she promised. “We can share a horse, and you can leave me miles from the lodge.”
    “That’s where ye are now, missy. Miles and miles.”
    “But sir—”
    “Every time the great ones remember we’re here, it costs us. There’s not much ye can offer us to make it worth that.”
    Gwyn grabbed one of the felt bags around her waist, fumbled with its knot, and dumped the pouch open on the table. Gold and silver coins tumbled across the scarred wood,