Free The Price of Blood by Patricia Bracewell Page B

hunched over, staring into the fire, bracing herself against whatever she was about to hear.
    Beside her, Alric shifted forward as well.
    “He took an arrow in the chest.”
    “An arrow!” She straightened, gaping at him. “But he was hunting. It might have been an accident.” This could all be a misunderstanding. Her father might even still be alive. She could leave this stinking hovel in the morning and go back to Shrewsbury, discover how her father fared.
    “It was not just your father,” he said, then took a long pull from the water skin, set it on the ground, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “It was all your father’s men, too—his falconer, his grooms, the four hearth companions, and the two retainers who rode with him. All of them dead.”
    She stared at his face, sculpted into harsh angles by the firelight. No accident, then. And no chance that her father was still alive. The hope that had flickered in her mind shuddered and died, and she recalled Alric’s words in the chapel, that it had been a trap.
    “Yet you escaped,” she whispered. “How?”
    “I was late to the hunt, still mead-drunk from last night’s feast. When I awoke, the others were gone, but I knew they planned to loose the falcons on the heath below Shrewsbury. So I rode that way, thinking to join the hunt. I was still in the woods when I heard the shouting and realized that something was wrong.” He drew a breath, grimacing at whatever picture was in his mind. “By the time I reached the forest edge, your father and the others lay on the ground in a wide clearing with arrows in their guts. Eadric and his men were already inspecting the bodies, making sure that—”
    He stopped abruptly, glanced at her, and began again.
    “It was an ambush, and Eadric must have planned the whole thing. His archers had been hidden among the trees and they turned the meadow into a killing ground.”
    She imagined how it must have been—horses and men confused by the onslaught of arrows, men cursing, crying out in pain, and after that, silence. In the end, it probably hadn’t been a feathered shaft that killed her father, but a knife or a sword blade. And still she could not believe that it was true. It seemed unreal, like a tale told by a scop who would change the ending to suit her if she commanded it.
    But Alric wasn’t finished.
    “The bastards never saw me,” he spat. “They were too bent on stripping the bodies and keeping the hounds from—” He cursed, then snapped his mouth shut. “I went back to the manor to find you. I climbed the palisade easily enough, but I would have been hard-pressed to know where to look if I hadn’t seen you going into the chapel.”
    She closed her eyes. She was trembling so hard that her teeth were chattering, and she clasped her hands tight, trying to focus—not on what had happened, but on what she must do next.
    “I must get to my brothers,” she said between shallow breaths. “I have to tell them what Eadric has done so they can demand a wergild. The king has to make Eadric pay for this.”
    But Alric was shaking his head.
    “Nay, lady,” he said, “Eadric would never have done this thing unless the king himself commanded it. Æthelred must have discovered the plots that your father was hatching with the Danes. He wanted your father dead. Eadric will be rewarded, not punished, for this day’s work.”
    She felt suddenly dizzy, the walls around her spinning so that she had to drop her head to her knees to make them stop. This was Æthelred’s response to the message she had sent him. But she had never dreamed that the king would do something so savage. To cut down the premier ealdorman of England was an act that spoke of a hatred so fierce it was not likely to stop there.
    And her brothers were with the king.
    “What will he do to Wulf and Ufegeat?” she whispered.
    “If they are still alive,” Alric said, “I doubt they will be so for long. You cannot help them, lady. You must look to