Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) by Giles Kristian Page A

straight, his broad-hat in a worse condition even than Joe’s.
    ‘My lord, if you had seen the strumpet I was forced to share my bed with last night you would have downed a cask of the first water just to get over the shock.’ Stifling a belch he glanced at Bess and Joe, then looked back to Lord Heylyn, suspicion thinning his eyes as he removed his hat and raked dark hair off his face.
    ‘Your father would be ashamed,’ Bess’s grandfather said, though he had only just finished a jug of malmsey himself.
    Dane squinted at the sky. ‘At this hour my father would have still been in his cups with a whore on each knee, my lord, as well you know,’ he replied through a scowl, hitching back his cloak, so that Bess could see two pistols tucked in a belt and a brutal-looking sword scabbarded at his left hip. The sword was nothing special but Bess knew enough about weapons to know that the firelocks were of good quality, easily the most expensive items about his person, and that included the cob.
    ‘I have a job for you, Dane,’ the earl had said, pulling his own thick cloak tight around himself, his grey-flecked hair ruffling in the chill wind. ‘You still owe me, for all you seem to squander every penny that comes your way. This is my granddaughter Elizabeth,’ he said, gesturing to Bess, ‘and she means to find her brother, my grandson, who is currently enlisted with Essex’s rebels.’
    The dark points that were Dane’s eyes grew at that, though Bess could not tell which bit of what her grandfather had said interested him more – the fact that she was his granddaughter, or that his grandson was a traitor.
    ‘You are to accompany my granddaughter, however long it takes, and make sure that no harm comes to her. You will have money enough to last, so long as you don’t piss it all away.’
    ‘And the boy?’ Dane said, at which a flush spread across Joe’s face.
    Lord Heylyn shrugged. ‘He is no concern of mine. Keep my granddaughter from harm. Whatever it takes,’ he said, the word
whatever
the ballast of the command.
    Dane had seemed indifferent to the task being asked of him, preoccupied instead with the misery of his self-inflicted condition. On top of this he struck Bess as disrespectful, inattentive and slovenly, which made the prospect of travelling in his company not in the least bit appealing. Still, she had Joe, who if anything seemed to like Dane even less than she. Furthermore – and this made her heart sing, threw light upon the world and vanquished a great shadow – she had succeeded in prevailing on her grandfather to help. Somehow she had done that. She would find Tom and Tom would be pardoned. Then they would weave the broken threads of her family back together and make the picture whole again. No, not whole. Never so. But it would be a new beginning.
    Thus had they provisioned and set off south from Kingsley that very day with the aim of travelling the ten or so miles to Winsford before dark. Part of Bess wished she had brought her own mare, Chryseis, but she had feared that such a fine-looking horse would bring her unwanted attention and so she had taken a bay called Millicent, who was usually ridden by servants running errands in the village or Ormskirk. Lord Heylyn had provided them with a good-tempered dun mare to help carry provender for man and beast as well as spare furs and waterproofed canvases should they for some reason find themselves sleeping underneath the stars. Dane, Bess noticed, now wore a buff-coat, though made sure it was covered by his bad-weather cloak and a ratty old bear skin which he wore across his shoulders, so that on his short-legged cob he looked more like some grizzled, itinerant pedlar than someone in whose hands you would place your safety.
    For the most part the man kept his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself and this was fine by Bess, fine by Joe too, she suspected from the young musketeer’s silence. He was sulking, she knew, presumably because he felt