Winter Siege by Ariana Franklin Read Free Book Online

sheath on his belt rather than in his pack and those sharp little eyes of hers had seen him and she’d grabbed it. Only this time he wasn’t her intended victim.
    By the time he was on his feet, she’d escaped with it to the other side of the fire and with a jolt he realized that she was going to turn it on herself; women did that apparently: killed themselves when they’d been shamed.
    He held out his hand. ‘You don’t want that. Give it back to me like a good girl.’
    She began backing away towards the far end of the church and raised the knife to her throat – but to his relief, instead of slicing her flesh, she began hacking at her own hair. And all the time her gaze was on him, as if he ought to understand. Her left hand held a hank of the filthy curls; the right sawed away the rest at ear-level.
    ‘Ain’t a girl,’ she said as he gaped in astonishment. Now the right side had gone and she was groping for the hair at the back. ‘Ain’t a girl.’
    She was mad, that’s what it was. They’d sent her mad, and small wonder.
    Small wonder if she doesn’t want to be a female any more, Gwil
, the Lord agreed.
Would you?
    ‘Does she remember what happened, then? Or don’t she?’
    But God, having as little comprehension of the feminine mind as any male, did not reply.
    Yet the metamorphosis was extraordinary. The crop-headed little figure glaring at him in the tunic and bulky hose was transformed into a boy. What had been viciousness was now courage to be admired; the repugnancy of its survival had become a wounded soldier’s endurance. He could cope with her better now that she was a boy.
    And then, for an anguished moment, he was taken back to where, for twenty years, he’d done his best to avoid going: to the last sight of another little boy in a Breton doorway, trying to be brave as Gwil went off to war, waving goodbye and promising to be back within a year.
    He’d returned in two – it had been a long campaign, that one, under the banner of the Holy Roman Emperor. There was no son waiting for him, and no wife either, only a rough, single cross with their names scratched on it in the paupers’ graveyard.
    You were away too long, Gwil.
    ‘Stop telling me. I know, don’t I? I’ve always known.’
    Look after this child, then.
    ‘But it’s not mine.’
    It is now. Look on it as your penance.
    Defeated, he walked round the fire and took the knife away. ‘You made a mess of that,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it proper.’
    The remainder of the long hair fell to the floor as he trimmed it and then shaved the neck up to the usual army level. ‘One thing,’ he said, ‘you ain’t no family of mine. That clear?’
    She nodded.
    ‘All right, then.’

Chapter Four
     
    BODY SIDEWAYS TO the target (drawn in chalk on the trunk of the heftiest of the beeches sheltering the grove). Feet same distance apart as her shoulders.
    Lower bow to load it. Nock arrow with index finger above and next two fingers below, not too tight, not too loose.
    Raise bow (smoothly, smoothly), draw back string to ear. Aim with dominant eye (she’d never known she had one).
    Release.
    ‘Well,’ Gwil said, walking forward to retrieve the arrow, his feet crunching the grove’s frozen grass, ‘you hit the bloody tree at least.’
    Actually, this time she’d hit the outer rim of the target, but he was as sparing in praise as he was in condemnation.
    She shot him a glance as if to ask what she’d done wrong; he was beginning to be able to read her now, to understand her even.
    ‘Didn’t follow through,’ he told her. She stamped her foot but more in frustration with herself than anything else.
    Bugger. Didn’t make sense to stay aiming after the arrow’d left the bow. But if he said it mattered, then it mattered; when he shot, he hit exact centre every time and she would become as good as him if it killed her.
    ‘Mind out the way, then,’ she said and reached for another arrow.
    ‘No you don’t. That’s enough for