Part 10 (2/2)
”Nothing dead,” Wardieu agreed. ”Alive, he serves as a reminder.”
”Reminder of what? what? That your brother was in my bed first?” That your brother was in my bed first?”
Wardieu laughed suddenly. ”Why do you think I pursued you at all, if not because my brother was there first? The fact you betrayed him so eagerly and so ... wholeheartedly, even knowing you carried his seed, well, it serves to remind me that things oft repeat themselves in life.”
”I would never betray you!” she insisted. ”I ...”
Nicolaa caught herself, a breath away from an admission. She could see the incandescent heat was gone from his eyes, replaced once again by the almost insufferable indifference that would have turned any kind of an admission into another weapon he would think nothing of using against her. And, even as she fought to regain her composure, another insufferable intrusion appeared on the crest of the knoll, running toward them with the beetling self-importance of a noisome gnat.
”Good my lord!” Onfroi de la Haye hailed them, an arm raised and flailing the air for attention. ”A message from Sir Aubrey de Vere ...”
Wardieu's annoyed gaze flicked to the sheriff ... then flicked again as he caught a brief glint of light where no light should have been. It took his superb reflexes only a split second to identify the metallic flash of an arrowhead streaking out of the woods, and he was able to shove Nicolaa out of its path as it hissed toward them, flying straight and true to the point where Nicolaa's heart would have been.
Wardieu spun around, his sword already halfway out of his scabbard, his eyes searching the blackness for an enemy he could not see.
Behind him, Onfroi de la Haye felt something hot and sharp punch through the quilted velvet of his surcoat. Meeting with very little fleshy resistance, the arrow had enough force behind it to pierce through muscle, gizzard, and tissue, and to exit out the other side a full six inches before the stiff feather fletching snagged on cloth and torn sinew. Onfroi stared down at the protruding feathers and screamed. He gaped uncomprehendingly at his wife, at Lord Lucien, at the shaft of the arrow that had found him by sheer mischance, and he opened his mouth again, screaming until Nicolaa's bunched fists struck him to the ground.
Less than fifty paces away, concealed by heavy shadow, Gil Golden cursed and swiftly drew another arrow out of his quiver. He nocked it and realigned his quarry, but before he could shoot, he was trammeled to one side by a pair of booted feet. The bow and arrow were startled out of his grip as a solid weight crushed into his shoulders. An instinctive grab for the hilt of his sword was cut short by the familiarity of a high-pitched voice cursing at him from the clump of thicket.
”What do you think you are doing, Addle-Brain!” Sparrow shrieked in a strident whisper. ”Christ's blood, are you mad? Has the whole world gone mad this night!”
Gil's fury gave him no chance to vent an intelligible answer. Beyond the fringe of trees, Onfroi de la Haye's screams were causing a minor eruption of chaos in the Wardieu encampment. Torches were blazing to life. A flurry of shouted orders was bringing a small army of armoured feet running down the slope toward the hem of trees. In seconds, the woods would be swarming with knights and men-at-arms.
Sparrow extricated himself from the thickets and gave Gil a resounding thump in the ribs even as the taller outlaw was bending over to search for his fallen bow.
”Move, you ape! Run to deeper cover before they fetch the hounds and loose them on us!”
”I almost had her!” Gil spat, cras.h.i.+ng through the tangle of saplings and gorse behind the fleeing Sparrow. ”I would have had her too, by Christ, if you had not swooped down on me like the wrath of h.e.l.l! Where did you come from? What the devil are you doing so far from camp?”
”What am I doing so far from camp? What are you you doing so far from camp! And what do you mean you almost had her ... had who?” doing so far from camp! And what do you mean you almost had her ... had who?”
”Nicolaa de la Haye,” Gil snarled. ”The sheriff's G.o.dless wife.”
”Nicolaa de la Haye!” Sparrow exclaimed, tumbling to an abrupt halt. ”But I thought-”
”You thought I was aiming elswhere? You thought I would set out on this miserably dank night to risk the ire of the Black Wolf by piercing the one breast in all Christendom he chooses to reserve for himself? You think me that much of a fool?”
”Would that I thought so highly of you, you hulking bandys.n.a.t.c.h!” Sparrow retorted. One ear was tuned to the camp and he heard the sudden howl of dogs, a sound that raised a cool p.r.i.c.kle of sweat across his brow. He hated dogs. Loathed the mangy, fang-toothed demons as much as he had the capacity to loathe any of G.o.d's creations. An early attraction in one of the fairs he had been sold into had been the pitting of a manacled dwarf against a salivating, red-eyed demon hound from Hades. Both his body and his mind were scarred from those horrific bouts, and he could barely tolerate the gentle, tamed beasts that had attached themselves to the Wolf's camp.
”Do you realize the trouble you have caused me?” he demanded, running again. ”Do you have half a head's worth of notion how many different treasons I have condemned you of over the past few hours? Skewering the Dragon would have at least made the trip worthwhile, but you, you poxy snipe, you tell me now you had not even that much ambition! You tell me all you wanted was the skewered bosom of the Lincoln Bawd!”
”I almost had her too, d.a.m.n my luck. A beat sooner ... a blink blink sooner and she would have been as neatly spitted as a suckling pig.” sooner and she would have been as neatly spitted as a suckling pig.”
”A more deserving fate I could not envision for you, Gil of the Golden Eyes!”
”I did not ask you to follow me,” Gil countered. ”Nor will I thank you for interfering, if that is what you expect.”
”Save your grat.i.tude and your sweat for the hounds,” Sparrow snorted. ”Perhaps your luck will fare better and they will tear you apart before the Dragon's men have a chance to mould a copper mask to your face. And And before milord hears of this folly and pins your ears to your heels!” before milord hears of this folly and pins your ears to your heels!”
”He will only hear of it if you tell him.”
”Aha! Now the knave begs favours!”
They weaved and bobbed from one shadowy stand of trees to another, moving as swiftly as they dared in the darkness. The sound of their braying pursuers had veered to the west of them, but both knew it would not take long for the pointed noses to relocate their scent.
Gil, seeing how hard Sparrow was churning his legs to keep apace with his own longer, lither ones, felt as vulnerable as a newborn babe without the comforting weight of his longbow slung over his shoulder. Halting again, he grabbed Sparrow around the waist and, without delaying to ask, hoisted the squawking bundle onto a nearby branch.
”Up into the treetops you go,” he commanded. ”You can move twice as fast through the branches, especially if you do not have me to hold you back.”
”What will you do?” Sparrow gasped.
”My legs are long enough to cover the same ground, only in a more earthbound fas.h.i.+on. Do not worry about me.”
”But the dogs-”
Gil wiped a hand across his brow and glanced back over his shoulder. ”There is a wide stream up ahead. I will cut it down the middle until I have gone a ways to dilute the scent.”
”And you expect me to just leave you!” Sparrow sounded shocked-and hurt.
Because the little man was now on eye level with the taller forester, the latter could feel the clutch of fear in the gnarled, stubby hands as they grasped his shoulders.
”I will be all right, Puck,” he a.s.sured him. ”We will meet up again at the fens in ... an hour. In fact, a sovereign says I arrive there first, in plenty of time to cut and pare myself a new bow frame. Are you game?”
”'tis not a game, Gil,” Sparrow objected morosely.
”I know.” Golden reached out and ruffled Sparrow's curly locks. ”But I will best you just the same, so you had better put in a good effort, else have your coin waiting at the other end.”
With that and an extra tweak on Sparrow's rump, Gil set off at an agile, loping gait that quickly carried him out of sight in the misty gloom. Sparrow sent an oath after him, and would have given chase except for a sudden, bowel-clenching burst of braying and howling that was far too close for lengthy debate.
Scrambling nimbly up to the highest branches, he swung from tree to tree, his heart pounding loudly and steadily within his chest. He kept his eyes trained on the ground as it rushed below, hoping against hope to catch a glimpse of Gil running safely through the forest. Not even his keen eyes could see anything, and once or twice, the hot sting of tears almost caused him to misjudge the distance and angle between branches.
”G.o.d give you speed, my friend,” he whispered to the night air. ”G.o.d give you speed.”
11.
”G.o.d give me strength,” the Wolf snarled. ”You did what?”
Gil and Sparrow, looking as if they had both been dredged through a thorn patch, figited guiltily, s.h.i.+fting their weight from one foot to the other while the Wolf showered accolades upon their intelligence.
”You left the abbey without consulting anyone; you crept within a few hundred paces of the enemy camp, then, without a thought or consideration for the consequences, proceeded to singlehandedly jeopardize all of our safety by throwing arrows at Nicolaa de la Haye?”
”She does not figure to be of any significance in your mission for the queen,” Gil said sullenly, then added in a hushed voice. ”In truth ... I only wanted to see her. When I heard Sigurd mention she had joined the Dragon's camp, I ...”
”Only wanted to see her,” the Wolf repeated belligerently. ”And?”
<script>