Part 15 (1/2)

Hooves pounded behind her. Challenged, her gelding increased his pace. For a

time they raced neck and neck, and then both horses began to slow. Too much to hope that they'd run on forever...”Are you afraid of him, sister-mine?”Easy to respond to Bannon's arch tone and brush aside the actual question.

”Don't be an a.s.s.”

”Well,” Gyhard began when they were walking again, ”that was interesting. I

a.s.sume you're unaware that racing on the Imperial roads is against the law and can result in heavy fines.”

Vree carefully leaned forward to stroke the damp curve of chestnut neck, her

heart beginning to drum less violently. ”It doesn't count as racing until a second horse joins in,” she pointed out. ”I wasn't racing. You were.”

”You were merely allowing your mount to work off excess energy?”

”If you like.”

Clearly, she wasn't going to tell him why she'd so suddenly needed to get away.

All things considered, he wasn't certain he wanted to know. ”So, what were we talking about?”

”You. Who you were.”

”Why not who I am?”

His question abruptly turned her mood. Her mouth twisted, and her eyes flicked over the length of his borrowed body. ”I know what you are.”

Gyhard i'Stevana squinted at the rapidly setting sun and tried, unsuccessfully, to convince himself that he could be home before dark.

”You should've stayed in Caraford,” he muttered. ”Should've diced with that toothless old man, choked down a bowl of disgusting mutton stew, and slept safely with the bedbugs until morning.”

But he hadn't. And now it was almost dark.

He hunched his shoulders as a chill Fourth Quarter wind tried to push an icy gust down under his collar and kicked his horse into a trot. He should've stayed in Caraford, but he'd wanted to get home and surprise his family who weren't expecting him back for days.

Shadows in the forest flanking the trail grew deeper.

Fortunately, he'd traveled between the village and home a hundred times or more over his twenty-three years and couldn't possibly get lost. He knew every rock and every tree. Unfortunately, he also knew what might very well lurk behind them.

His horse suddenly s.h.i.+ed sideways and he pulled it back to a walk, senses straining. He could hear nothing but the wind in the evergreens. See nothing but branches tossed against a darkening sky.

Moving slowly, so as not to attract undue attention should there be watchers in the dusk, Gyhard slid his light crossbow from its strapping and fumbled for a quarrel. Loading it would have been easier had the young stallion not continued to fight his control.

”Might be nothing,” he muttered, hooking the string back under the steel claw and resting the loaded bow on his thigh-but he didn't believe it.

His eldest sister, who'd taken over the forest contract when their mother died, had sent him to ask their lord, the Due of Sibu for help. An early freeze and a desperately cold Fourth Quarter, had driven a small band of rough men whose lives had always been marginal onto the dark side of the law. Gyhard had insisted they could handle it themselves. His sister had disagreed.

I should've waited for the Duc. Come back with him.

A branch snapped. He twisted toward the sound.

Something hit him between the shoulder blades with enough force to lift him out of the saddle. His finger tightened on the trigger and the crossbow bolt slammed into the frozen ground barely a heartbeat before he did.

A small panicked voice in his head shrieked at him to roll over, to draw his long dagger, to fight. Gasping for breath, right arm folded under him at a torturous angle, he wished the voice would shut up. He swallowed, tasted blood, and struggled to suck air through teeth he couldn't unclench.

The boot caught him under the ribs and kicked him over onto his back. Jagged ends of bone grated together in his arm. He screamed.

The sandy-haired man standing over him smiled, slabs of yellow teeth barely visible in the midst of a bristling red beard.

Time slowed and Gyhard stared in horror at the descending spear.

I don't want to die!

The crude point dimpled his heavy fleece jacket, parted the leather and the fabric beneath it, then finally touched the skin of his chest. To his surprise, it hurt less than the constant agony of his arm. The audible crunch as the heavy steel forced its way through bone was the worst.

Terror opened his bowels.

Then time took up its normal speed again and whatever G.o.ds had cus.h.i.+oned him from the initial blow retreated. He felt the spear slam out through his back and into the earth, and he jerked like a worm on a hook. He no longer felt the pain in his arm because pain was all he had left.

Almost all.

Out of the waves of scarlet and black came one coherent thought. NO. NO. NO. NO!

Somehow, he focused on the pale-blue eyes staring down at him in rapt fascination. Frantically, he began to claw his way up the spear shaft toward them. He could feel the rough wood ripping new abrasions around the edges of the wound. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered but not dying.

Then his right hand reached out and touched a filthy cheek and the pale eyes widened.

Smoke and fire and strange faces. Women he didn't know writhing under him. Blood l.u.s.t. Hunger. Rage. Too many images to make sense of. Gyhard pushed at them, shoved them away. When something called Hinrich pushed back, Gyhard clawed his way toward the center of the maelstrom.

Then he swayed, dropped to his knees, and stared in horror at the body impaled beside him. A body that quite unmistakably had not moved since it had been spiked to the ground. A b.l.o.o.d.y froth stained the golden mustache crimson as the dying man tried to speak. Failed. Died.

He was looking out of Hinrich's eyes.

But was still Gyhard.

Still alive.

Vree wet her lips and swallowed hard. Death happened. To friends, to foes, to everyone in time. She couldn't remember a time when she hadn't known she would die and she clearly remembered a day in her early teens, a dagger in her hand and a crumpled body spilling blood onto the ground at her feet, when she'd accepted it as inevitable.