Read Online Goddess by Josephine Angelini - Free Book Online Page B

leave her. Finally, he clucked his tongue at his Goliath of a mount and thundered away.
    Guinevere dropped her head onto her folded arms and tried not to think of how much she needed to relieve herself.
    Moments later, she lifted her head in alarm. Shouts were coming from the back of the wedding train—shouts and strange yelps. Someone screamed in agony. Guinevere leapt to her feet and pulled out her dagger, snarling like the heathen she was.
    Her carriage lurched to a stop, and Helen could hear men shouting all around. Something jolted the side of the halted carriage, sending Guinevere sprawling against the wall of her cage. She steadied herself on her knees as another great shove knocked the carriage over onto its side—the window side facing down. The inside of the carriage went completely dark as the only escape was pushed into the earth.
    “To the princess!” commanded Lancelot’s voice from a distance. “Surround the carriage!”
    There was a great rustling of leaves, and the sound of many men moving into position around her. Guinevere listened to the clanging of metal on metal, and the pounding of feet running over her carriage. There were men grunting, shouting, screaming, and dying in every direction. The dull thud of bodies hitting the carriage and the ground was coupled with the last rattling breaths of dying men.
    Guinevere repeatedly slammed her shoulder into the side of the carriage, trying to tip it over and expose the window, but she did little more than rock the massive iron-and-oak enclosure back and forth. She let out a moan of frustration.
    “Lady Guinevere! Are you injured?” Lancelot said in a strident voice from outside the wall of her knocked-over prison.
    “No,” Guinevere said back firmly. “Let me out so I can fight.”
    Lancelot made a frustrated sound. “They’ve taken to the trees.”
    “Picts?” Guinevere guessed. There was no sound from Lancelot, probably because he didn’t know who their attackers were and couldn’t answer her. “They’ll be back with more warriors after dusk,” she promised him. “Please believe me—you may have pushed them back for now, but they are not gone .”
    “I know. I can’t see them in the trees, but I can still smell them.”
    “You must let me out of here!” Guinevere pleaded. “They want me , not the riches we carry in this party.”
    “How do you know that?” Lancelot asked, like he suspected she was telling the truth.
    “The Picts are one of the oldest clans. They’ve handed down ancient stories about our kind—yours and mine, Sir Lancelot. They know better than to fight me, or you, head-on. Instead, they will try to lure you away, and they will leave me in this prison to starve. They’ll wait until I’m too weak with hunger and thirst to stop them. They don’t want to kill me. They want to . . .” She stopped here and struggled for a moment. “They want children from me. To strengthen their clan.”
    Lancelot uttered a foul curse. She could hear his elevated breathing as he fought with himself. “But if I let you out . . . I don’t know what I’ll do to you. Are you sure that isn’t worse?”
    “I’d rather die in an honorable fight with you than be used as a brood mare. At least let me fight ,” she said in a strangled voice. “Don’t leave me to face that.”
    “If I set you free, you might try to kill me.”
    “Please,” Guinevere choked out, desperately trying not to cry. “Please don’t leave me locked up in here. I know you hate me, but don’t abandon me to such a terrible fate.”
    Lancelot exhaled sharply. “Stand back,” he ordered.
    The walls of the carriage shuddered with massive blows as Lancelot hacked his way through the bottom of the metal-reinforced floor with a sword. When the first blade was ruined, he collected another from a fallen man and started hacking away again.
    Three, four, five swords were broken to bits, but finally a large enough gash was opened for Guinevere to squeeze