The Two Torcs Read Online Free

adorable.”
    “He’s not that kind of present.”
    “No?” She pouted for the man in black’s benefit. “But I’m not hungry.”
    “Not that kind either. He has information. I want it.”
    She smiled and a light flickered deep in her eyes.
    “Oh, good,” she said. “A
plaything
.”

CHAPTER TWO
    A pale lace of frost covered the window glass, catching the buttery glow of the fire that crackled and popped in the hearth behind her. It was low, but still cast enough heat to penetrate the linen gown and the scant garments underneath.
    Marian’s back was dry and warm as a loaf of fresh-baked bread, but the front of her was so cold it felt damp, clammy. The two sensations kept her concentration sharp and she embraced them, considering first one and then the other in turn.
    Anything
to keep her mind occupied.
    Over the edge of the frost crystals she could see the top of mighty Sherwood. The barren trees alternately held patches of snow in nets of woven branches, or gaped open, letting it fall to be swallowed in the depths. The wood looked like a vast checkered blanket laid across the western part of the kingdom.
    It was so bitter cold out there in the wilderness.
    She turned from the window with a jolt and a flap of cloth. The warmth of the room brushed across her face, feeling hotter than it was because of the cold on her skin. She crossed the room in three swift strides, reaching her bed. Stepping high, she went over the bed instead of around it and dropped on the other side, falling into a hard wooden chair.
    Leaning forward she pushed the mattress away from her, sliding its soft mass across the slats until a space opened as wide across as her forearm. A sheet of leather had been tacked to the slats, allowed to droop between them to form long pockets in the apron.
    Between each slat lay a weapon.
    A sword taken from a locker at the stables. She didn’t know who its owner had been. There was no mark on the plain wood grip or the simple leather scabbard, but the blade itself had been well cared for, honed to razor sharpness by hours of passing a whetstone over the edge.
    Next to it lay the Duke of Raleigh’s family saber. The handle gleamed with inlaid pearl and gemstones held by gold and silver wire. The scabbard matched, a line of rubies tracing out the sigil of Raleigh’s family. This sword had become hers when her friend and servant Chastity liberated it from the Duke’s drunk and sleeping form at the bottom of a stairwell, after one of King John’s debauches.
    The ancestral blade had been near impossible to pull free from its sheath, gummed in by years of neglect and disuse. It had taken creative thinking and a thorough application of oils to break it free. She’d been afraid that when it finally gave way, that the blade would be worthless—a ceremonial plaything, a decoration and nothing more—but it was made of good Spanish steel, stout on the spine and sharp on the edge, a heavy weapon made for cleaving bone.
    A half-dozen knives were scattered between the slats, as well, from a wide-bladed kitchen knife to a thin poniard with no edge but a wicked point for punching through armor, to a small chirurgeon’s blade not half as long as her littlest finger.
    To one end lay a fire-hardened cudgel, the wood black and varnished to a dull sheen, the knot on the end of it bloody red like mahogany. A leather thong wrapped the handle and the knuckle was dimpled from the dozens of skulls to which it had been applied.
    To the other end lay the war hammer.
    King Richard’s war hammer.
    Her fingers stroked the handle, sliding over the worn oak stave and the slick strap of steel nailed to halfway down its length, there to reinforce the mounting of the head. She touched it, rubbing her finger pad over the point of the deadly spike that jutted from the back, opposite the wide, flat face. Tiny grooves squiggled on the surface of the steel, like worms after the rain, cut there by the torn edges of all the armor plate it had