Chapter Eleven

Hansen sat in the empty bed closet to which he had returned, staring at memories. Someone tapped on the door.

He rose from the bed, but the door wasn't barred. He collided with the figure who slipped in as Hansen reached for the lifter.

Contact made his guest a woman whose low bodice was embroidered. The moon rising beyond the opening in the east gable woke a sheen from Holly's chestnut hair.

She closed the door quickly. "I—" she began stiffly, but then the rest of the words came out in a rush, "—wondered if there might be something I could do for you, sir? I owe, we all owe—"

"Oh, nothing like that," Hansen said in surprise, though it shouldn't have been surprising.

He always forgot that people thought he was doing things for them. He wasn't. He did what was in front of him, what people forced him to do. It was never what Nils Hansen wanted, just that he was there when it had to done.

"Oh," said Holly. "Oh, I'm s-s-sorry—"

Air stirred as the servant whipped the cloak back over her front and turned to leave.

"Wait," said Hansen.

He heard her fumbling in the dark for the latch lifter. When she couldn't find it, she slapped the thin doorpanel in frustration.

"Wait," Hansen repeated.

For a moment, Holly resisted the pressure of his hands. Hansen was stronger than the servant, stronger than any woman he had met, and he would not be denied.

"It's all right, really," Holly said in a voice which suggested she believed her own words. "You want someone younger and, and not so fat. I'll tell—"

"No, wait," Hansen murmured.

"Any of the younger ones would be honored, but I said that—"

Hansen's arms were around Holly's shoulders. "Stop," he said. He kissed her forehead and felt her relax.

"Just wait," he repeated, and as she turned her face upward, he kissed her on the lips.

"I rattle on when I, when I'm nervous," Holly said. She tugged her cloak open and pulled his right hand to her bosom. "I—what you did for us—"

Hansen bent. Holly was wearing a clean dress, not the one in which she'd been pawed by Abel, but the pattern was similar. He kissed the curve of her right breast, just above the nipple.

"Oh," Holly said. She put her arms around him. "Oh dear."

"But not here," Hansen said, straightening. "I—"

He paused. "There's too many memories."

"Oh . . . ," Holly said in a different tone. "Oh, of course, the killing tonight . . . Oh, I see."

For an instant, Hansen trembled with a vision of Unn shaking her blond hair out in a cascade across her breasts and the firm, pale flesh of her abdomen.

"Yeah," he said. "That's . . ."

He didn't have the heart to continue with the lie, but it was all right. The woman misunderstood as Hansen meant her to do.

"Right," he went on softly. "Ah, don't you have a place of your, your own?"

"The children are—" she muttered, thinking aloud. "But I could move—" She focused on Hansen. "It will take a little time, that's all, but—"

"Wait," Hansen murmured, kissing her lips again as the only practical way of interrupting Holly's nervous flow. "We'll just go walking, shall we? It's a warm night."

Children might mean a husband.

Some questions are none of a third party's business, and no one benefits from the third party asking them.

"Yes, the meadow's lovely with the moon over it," Holly said. She led the way out of the bed closet and into the silent hall. "There's a wicket through the palisade, and there's no watchman there. Not that it . . ."

The mud streets of the village were almost as quiet as the lord's hall had been. Penned animals grunted and gurgled with the noises of digestion, but the beasts showed no interest in the two humans on the board walkways.

The moon was brilliant: full, and halfway now to zenith.

Holly nimbly jumped a gap where streets crossed, then hugged Hansen fiercely as he followed her. "It seems like everything is getting different," she murmured.

"I didn't have anything terribly exotic in mind," he said dryly.

"Silly!" she said, kissing his cheek and striding on toward the gap in the palisade at a quicker pace. "Though that would be . . . I mean, almost anything, at least."

The circle of withies intended to loop the wicket closed had rotted away. Holly turned the wooden grating open, then leaned it back against its posts when Hansen had followed her.

"What I really meant was the rovers, of course," she continued. "And the king summoning levies to Frekka for his army."

The meadow was scythed, not cropped by the teeth of animals whose hooves would damage the roots. It had not been long since the last mowing.

"Umm, prickly," Holly said as she bent to brush the stubble. "We'll put my cloak down."

She giggled. "And besides, I don't care!"

The field sloped gradually. By now, irregularities in the ground would hide the couple from anyone looking down from the palisade. Holly paused.

"Lord Waldron has been summoned to Frekka?" Hansen said as his fingers fumbled deliberately with the brooch clasping Holly's cloak.

"No, it's not a full summons," she said as her own hands, gently but firmly, took over the task from Hansen. "Two warriors only from here, that would be Arnor and Cholmsky, I suppose. . . ."

She turned and spread the garment in a graceful motion. She lifted her face to Hansen; the moonlight showed concern in her expression. "Unless you go, milord."

Holly gripped him fiercely before he could decide how to react. "Oh, lord. Something has to be done to stop the rovers. Or—"

She shuddered with reaction. "Or everything will change," she closed simply, and began to unlace the sides of her dress.

If Hansen had ever thought the serving woman was stupid, he would have been disabused by that simple and accurate assessment of the kingdom's plight.

They knelt on the cloak, then lay on it and one another, changing positions several times. It wasn't love, but it was something both of them needed.

And perhaps in its way it was love.