Eleanor hit the table in front of her father so hard that she heard the bones in her hands crack. She swept the maps and treaty drafts covering the table onto the floor and hurled the ink pot at the wall.

"You will marry him," her father said again. His eyes were red from the days without sleep, and his face was gray with the bitterness of their defeat. He looked away. "We have no choice."

"We have summoned the priest - "

"No!" Eleanor took a step back. "You expect me to . . . be his wife? Share his bed? Bear his children?"

Revulsion made her stomach turn over. "I'll see him in hell first!"

Her father stood up, sudden fury making bright spots flare over cheekbones in an otherwise dead white face.

"By my last count four hundred men died defending this keep in the last day alone, another two hundred the day before. In the last year we have lost all of our fields, our women have been raped, our children murdered. Why should not you be called upon to pay a price in this bloody war?"

His grief and anger rasped in his throat so Eleanor could hardly bear to hear him.

"You planned this campaign with your brother, insisted that we not parley when the Duke approached us, fought as a man fought though you never carried a blade - "

"You would never make a man pay this price!" she said desperately.

In an explosive movement he threw the heavy table over, making her jump back. He stepped forward to take her by the arm, fingers biting into her flesh.

"You are not a man! Would to God that I had remembered that a year past! Would to God that you had died in your brother's place! I would to God you had never been born!"

The world swam before Eleanor's eyes for a moment. She must be dreaming! Her father had never raised his voice to her, had coddled her since childhood.

"If we are to save a soul on our lands, you will marry the brute, share his bed, even sleep with his soldiers if he commands it. Not one more will die when we can make an tolerable peace at merely the price of a woman's honor."

The door flew open behind her. One of the Duke's men, stood in the open frame with his dagger drawn. Tall, white haired, face burned and wizened by years in the sun of a far off desert, he too looked as if he hadn't slept since time began. But then who had? The siege had lasted only a fortnight, but the last three days had been an unending assault. She saw that blood lust still lived in his pale eyes.

"My Lord and the Priest await us at the castle gate. Will she come?"

Her father shoved her so hard at the soldier that she almost fell at his feet. "Take her."

Without preamble the man dragged her out of the room and down the spiral staircase that led to the main courtyard. She stumbled against rough walls, all but tumbled down stone steps, her hair flew in her face like silver spider webs.

When she was pulled into the midday sun her eyes ached. How many days since she had seen the light of day? Acrid smoke from the tar and arrows used to breach to walls assaulted her nose and made her wretch. Bodies littered the courtyard, hung from the battlements. She saw men carrying them out of the keep for burial in a mass grave. So many familiar faces.

As she reached the main gate, its drawbridge bloody from the hard fought assault this morning, she realized she was dressed in just a thin shift still plastered to her body by her brother's blood. She could not have picked a more fitting wedding gown to celebrate this hellish union.

She was shoved into place before the priest. The men still in the keep and the hundreds of the Duke's men still alive on the battlefield outside, all turned to watch her take her vows. Without exception their faces were hard as stone. They all knew peace would be at the price of her flesh and they all approved the sacrifice.

Beside her stood the Duke of Trevich. He was dark skinned from decades in the holy-land, was broadly built, and had coal black hair that clung to his sweat soaked face. He towered over all but the man who had dragged her from the keep. His disgust was obvious as he looked at her.

What must he see? A woman as ill-matched to a man like him as could be imagined. So fair skinned that blue veins could be seen in her hands, hair so pale as to be almost white, frame so slender that she could still have been taken for a child despite her seventeen summers. She was as Norman as the king, he as Saxon as a slave.

Only her father's fierce look held her in place when she would have turned away.

The priest, the one who had baptized her and heard her confession since she was old enough to make it, stumbled through the ritual. She heard herself respond at the appropriate time, heard the Duke speak as well.

Her heart thudded with panic, growing louder with every passing minute until she felt as if the whole world must hear her fear. This must be a dream. Please God, she prayed, let me wake up!

When the priest stuttered to a stop, she looked up to heaven, praying that God might strike her dead rather than let live another moment as the duke's wife.

God gave her his judgment.

Her brother's head had been hacked off in the scant hours since he had died in her arms, and now it was stuck on a post that projected obscenely out over the bridge. It had a bit of red cloth tied around its neck, as though the horrid relic were a festive banner.

She vomited the little food she had taken that day onto the ground.

There was a moment's silence, then Lord Trevich's hand bit into her arm. He dragged her back across the bridge into the keep. Her bare feet slipped and slid in the blood. Over the bodies littering the courtyard, up the stairs, shins striking almost every step, she heard what sounded like a cavalcade of men behind her. After three flights of stairs he thrust her into her own room, onto her own bed.

She struggled up to see that there were three men in the room. The white-haired soldier who had summoned her to the wedding had his back to the door. A darker, slightly smaller soldier had moved behind the bed. The Duke stood before her. All their faces were hard with some unknown purpose.

Her husband moved first, pulling white linen from his pocket. He wrapped the cloth around his hand.

Without a word, he shoved her back until she fell onto the bed, The blond came from behind to pin her shoulders down. Her husband threw her shift up over her waist and forced her struggling legs apart. She felt his fingers, covered by the cloth, forced into her, felt something stretch and tear inside. She cried out in pain.

The tableaux froze for a horrible moment. Time enough for her to open her eyes, to see the dark one towering over her, expression at once angry and triumphant. The man guarding the door was watching her face, her husband's gaze was fixed firmly between her legs.

Her body arched as she began to fight again, shock fading to fury and fear.

The Duke pulled his hand away and she saw the linen was covered with her blood. He threw her shift down over her thighs and held the linen up for her to see. The soldier who had held her down at last let her sit up, but forced a hand over her mouth when she tried to speak.

Her husband dropped to his haunches so he could look into her face.

"Now, let's have it clear from the start." he said. "I have two men here who will say this was no true bedding. I will not be forced to wed a woman who hates me and who I have every reason to hate."

She could not believe her ears.

"You will live at my keep until I set you aside. At which time you will take orders as a nun. Do you understand?"

She tried to pull the hand covering her mouth away so she could spit obscenities at him. How could he think she would agree to such a thing? Betray her family! Hand her father's lands to him? She would die first!

The Duke's eyes narrowed. "If you say a word to anyone before we leave this place today, or before I give you leave to, I swear," he paused as if to make sure she would hear him, "I will kill every man within twenty miles. And you," a blunt finger jabbed into her chest between her breasts, "your mother, and your father will be the first to die. I absolutely guarantee it."

She thought of his army waiting outside the castle, the dead still piled in the keep, the burned villages with hardly a man left to rebuild shelter for the winter. He could easily do as he said he would. She held their lives in her hands.

After a moment, the dark one took his hand away from her mouth. Her lips were cut because they had been dragged back and forth across her teeth during her struggles. It took her a moment to find her voice.

"Too dishonorable to rape your own wife," she managed to say. "You amaze me Duke." She licked her lips, feeling them swell. "Rest assured I will not betray your secret today. I would rather die than have you."

"Then I have saved us both some unnecessary concern." He said as he stood up. "You come from the stupidest, most barbaric family it has ever been my misfortune to know. You are a blight upon these lands and a curse upon your king. It is all I can do not to strike your heads from your shoulders and throw them to the dogs."

"I thought you preferred pikes to dogs," she spat.

"Would to God I had put your father's head on a pike a year past," he replied sharply.

He looked up at his men. "Gather everyone who isn't required to mop up this mess and let's get away from this hell hole."

His men gave their assent, and she was dragged to her feet, then out of the room, and then back down the stairs. She watched the Duke shove the bloody rag he had pulled from between her legs into the hands of the priest. Her mother pressed her hands to her mouth as she stumbled by. Her father was nowhere to be seen.

"Bind her, and shove her in with the luggage," the Duke said. His orders were followed with alacrity and a few minutes later she sat in a wagon atop a shifting pile of rope and spears and in the company of two bodies wrapped in dirty cloaks. In a few minutes the soldiers and wagon set off.

Night fell before the march ended, and Eleanor's head ached with the endless jostling. She couldn't prevent herself from rolling or sliding about because her hands and feet were bound. Soon she was all but lying beside the two bodies being carried in the same cart.

When the wagon finally rattled to a stop, she was forgotten. She heard men starting fires, lamenting the lack of fresh game, cursing the damp ground and finally snoring. In the moonlight she tried to find a spear sharp enough to cut her bonds. She succeeded only in slicing her hand. She was struggling with the blood and the rope when she heard a voice.

The Duke, in fresh clothes, stood at the end of the wagon. Moonlight illuminated the blood pouring from her hands onto her shift. It looked like black ink.

"I have been watching you for half an hour, hoping you would find a way to slit your own wrists."

She remained silent, pressing her hands together to try and stop the bleeding. It hurt beyond belief, and she wondered if he could see her panic. She thought she was likely to bleed to death if he didn't help her, but she would rather die than ask him for aid.

With an oath, he stepped into the open-ended cart. He drew his dagger and cut the ropes on her hands and feet. The cold steel burned her skin where it touched. "I suppose a hundred well armed soldiers are a match for you even with your hands free."

He watched her struggling to rise, then cursed again. He grabbed her by an arm and jerked her onto her feet and out of the wagon. There he let her collapse, watched her tear her already tattered shift to make a bandage for her hand.

"They breed them hard in your family," he said standing over her.

She looked up. His back was to the moon and it blinded her. She couldn't find his eyes in the darkness that was his face.

"So easy to strike you down now-" he said, as if to himself.

"I am not afraid of you," she said in a curt voice. She stood up, putting her good hand against the wagon. "You should kill me now, for I vow you will never have a moment's peace while I live."

He laughed, the sound filling the night. Then he slapped her hard across the back. "Good!" he said as she stumbled to her knees. " I need someone to help me exercise my demons. I shall lie awake thinking of ways to make you pay for all we have lost-"

"You have lost?" She flew to her feet. She snatched at the dagger he had returned to his belt, and, to her surprise, she found it in her hand.

He stepped back as she raised it over her head. She held it there, frozen by uncertainty.

Should she kill him? Herself? Who did she hate more? How could she punish him if she were dead? How could he punish her if she was? Indecision held her immobile.

He stepped forward to retrieve the weapon.

"Perhaps, not so hard after all," he said as he sheathed the blade. He waited, as if he expected her to say something. When she didn't he took another step away.

"I still hate you," he said after a moment. "But I want to see you in warm clothes. Hating you as you are now is like hating a beaten dog."

She said nothing.

"Come on," he said, and led her away from the wagon.

They walked through the moonlit glen the party had stopped in, past campfires surrounded by sleeping men, some still fighting in their dreams. At one of the campfires he stopped, pulled a roll from under a sleeping youth's head. To her surprise the boy didn't even wake when his head hit the ground. The Duke led her back toward the trees of the surrounding wood.

He tossed her the bundle. "Care to change clothes? "

Warm clothes sounded like an impossible dream. She hesitated, then dropped the bundle to the ground. Without a word, she pulled her bloody shift over her head. It was all she wore. Her nude body gleamed white in the moonlight.

She unwrapped the bundle and pulled on the hose and the shirt. They were rough, crawling with lice, and they smelled foul. But they were warm. She picked up her shift and tucked it into her shirt, remembering that it had her brother's blood on it. It was all she had left.

"I've never seen a maid . . ." he paused, "undress so."

"I am no maid." She made the word a curse. "You saw to that. I am less than an animal, I would walk through this camp naked, and spread my legs for your men if they would have me. Be sure I would rather have them than you."

He was silent, as if stunned. Then he shook his head and led her back toward the camp. He brought her to his fire where the white-haired solider and the smaller dark one slept, their hands curled around blades as though they expected an attack in the middle of the night.

He jerked a leg off a half-eaten rabbit that still hung over the fire. He tossed it to her. He used his knife to pull flesh from its chest and put that into his own mouth.

"So," he said as he settled onto the ground. "I could wake up Alain here, and you would have him?"

"And the other too," she said nodding toward the dark haired one. It was strange how her words meant nothing to her, as if they were coming from someone else. "Wake them and I'll take them on. Let's put a bastard on your seat." She tossed a bone into the fire. "Any child I have while we are wed is yours in the eyes of God and the church, is it not?"

"And James too? " He cocked his head to one side. "I could simply kill you," he said.

"You could have done that this morning," she replied. "Obviously that is an unpalatable choice. You know that my people would never accept you if you did. This war would go on and on until neither of our keeps were left standing."

"Never is a long time, My Lady. Those people will forget you soon enough."

"No," she said.

"You sound certain."

"I am. You must be also, or I would be dead now. My whole family would be dead." And not just my brother, she thought, my magical brother who you slaughtered because we would not surrender to you. She could still see Eric's head on a pike, eyes open and staring. He had just died when she last saw him, before she was pulled away to tend to yet another dying man. He hadn't received last rights, so he died with all his sins upon him. He was in hell now, or perhaps purgatory.

What kind of men would take a body, slice off its head, thrust a spear up into its brain, and hang it over the entrance to the man's own home?

She shuddered, allowed herself to slump against the sleeping soldier called James. Her head fell on his shoulder, so she and he were lying head to head. "I would kill myself if I thought having to slaughter every man, woman and child on our estates would be any kind of punishment for a man like you."

She tucked her hands into her armpits, curled into a ball. "But I'll live just to see if I can come up with something . . . better."

Robert watched the girl slide into sleep in amazement. What kind of creature was this?

A mad woman, surely. No more than a vicious dog. Less than human in every way. And of course she was his wife.

He tossed the bones of his meal into the fire and settled with his back against the log on which he had been seated.

What a god forsaken country! Had he fought for so long to come here? To defend an abandoned castle, barren, rocky land, people so long without governance that they lived like savages?

He had waited so long come to come home. It had cost him so very much.

Bile rose in his throat as he thought of the body that shared the girl's company on the weary journey home. His son. Just sixteen. Sixteen and so in love with his father's noble profession that he had fought to share in this battle. He had been assigned a station suitable for his age. He had left it behind to join the fray at the castle gate, and arrows had cut him down in minutes.

Robert stared at the moon that hung in the pale blue mist over the camp. He had promised his men peace in return for all the victories they had given him. They were all he had, and he was the only nobleman in the land they knew they could trust. Of course, by now they knew that triumph in the holylands counted for nothing, and they would have no ease for years to come. But they knew he would die for them and they were willing to return the favor.

His eyes dropped to the girl again. Christ, what a horror she was. But now the destruction would stop and he could make plans for the winter. With luck they all might survive. And in the spring, by God, the fields would yield if he had to sow every seed himself. He meant to have the prosperity and peace he had yearned for since his father's execution. And then, by God, he would find a beautiful, honorable, peaceful woman to share his bed and build his clan.

Eleanor woke the next morning to hear an oath at her ear. Her head dropped to the ground and she found a knife at her throat.

"Jesu! It's the girl!"

"Aye, you slept with my wife last night," said the Duke sitting up. "Much joy may you have of her."

"I'd sooner lay with a dog."

"As you have done before," said the one called Alain with a laugh.

Barely awake, she found her voice, "I'll have the lot of you. Every man in camp." She said. "Except your lord who I hope to see dead before he spawns a true heir." She sat up, stiff beyond belief from the cold and the hard ground.

"Every man of us?" asked Alain, his eyes hard with challenge. He fell on his back. "Have at it then wench. You will be dead before nightfall."

"No, no, we have been all through that." The Duke climbed to his feet. "If she dies we will have go back and kill all those people. Fair as it is to her, its unfair to them. Loyalty shouldn't be repaid so."

She looked at him. "So you have already discovered that my people are loyal." She dragged herself to her feet.

"You have no people," said the Duke. He fixed her with a hard look, a note of warning in his voice.

"Those people I don't have are very loyal to me, to my family, aren't they?" She raised her chin in defiance. "You must wonder why."

"Fear I suppose."

"Yes, fear makes them loyal," she said standing bushing the dirt off her clothes. "Fear of enemies that kill and maim. All those children who were made homeless and starving by your raids were immensely loyal to you before they died."

"Shut up." James was standing now, face red.

The Duke cut him off with a wave of his hand, dismissing the matter. "Let's get on the road. By nightfall we will be at the keep and we can lock her up somewhere." The Duke threw his cloak over his shoulders.

Eleanor shrugged, and turned away, walking back in the direction of the wagon.

"Where do you think you are going?" the Duke called.

"To ride with your dead," she called back. "They are the only men in your army fit to accompany me."