will skewer him sooner than ask his name. Moreover, they have learned too well how to hide in the greenwood; it will take a kindred eye to find them.”
The Wolf arched a brow. “Are you volunteering?”
“Certainly not! You need me here to help rescue your little dove from her cage.”
Lucien smiled the kind of smile that boded ill will for the recipient. “Let me put the question to you another way: It must be well past midnight now; how soon do you think you can find the men and return?”
Sparrow threw his arms up in the air, decrying the Fates who were obviously determined to remove him from the hub of the excitement. “Very well, no need to beg. I will go. After midnight, you say? Then dawn at the earliest—assuming I get through the gate, and assuming the faeries do not turn the moor into quicksand by moonlight.”
Lucien and the others looked up at the sky. A bank of heavy black clouds scudded across a faintly lighter, star-splashed backdrop, bringing a sharp salty tang to the air. The moon would be full and bright when it reached its apex but for now was still too low on the horizon to do more than hint at the speed and mass of moving cloud. There was likely a storm somewhere out at sea—a blessing for those who would need the darkness for safety, a curse for anyone trying to feel their way down a narrow path etched into the side of a cliff.
“Sir Roger … do you think between you and these four —Cedric, Sigurd, Gadwin, and Eduard—you could manage to buy or steal a cart from the villagers outside and have it down the coast a mile or so, before dawn?”
Sir Roger de Chesnai, hardly renowned as a cart-stealer, puffed his chest and glowered past Eduard to the three wounded foresters he had already helped haul up the escape shaft. “I would have to have a damned good reason for doing so!”
“The reason, my lord,” said Lucien, “is that I do not know how well or how poorly the Lady Servanne has fared. Regardless, we certainly cannot expect her to run across a moor after all she has been through.”
Chagrined not to have thought of it himself, Sir Roger’s chest deflated and he nodded solemnly. “Tell me where you want the cart and it shall be there.”
“My lord—” Eduard was flushed warmly with a mixture of anger and impotence. “My leg may be a hindrance for running, but my arms are scarcely bruised. As I said, there is an inlet where the men go to fish, and in that inlet are boats. They are sturdy and agile, and if one knows the currents—as I do—one can slip in behind the breakwater and bring the vessel close to shore near the base of the cliffs. If you know the way to the eagle’s eyrie, then you must also know the small bay of which I speak.”
“I recall sneaking out at night and doing my fair share of fishing there as a boy,” Lucien said evenly. “I also remember currents that could smash a boat straight up against the rocks if the oarsman chose to follow the wrong one.”
The boy stood, and to the surprise of no one, was nearly as tall as the Wolf, and possessed the same uncompromising tilt to his jaw.
“You need another avenue of escape, my lord,” he reasoned. “Sparrow could drown in a quagmire, Sir Roger could run his cart right into the hands of the Dragon’s mercenaries. I know the currents. I will not choose the wrong one.”
“I could break your arm as a deterrent,” the Wolf said with equal logic. “Then you would not be able to row at all.”
“No, my lord. Nor would I make a very good squire to you with a game leg and a crooked arm.”
Lucien returned his son’s unwavering stare for a full minute, then had to lower his gaze to control the pride tugging at his lips. “Very well, if you are determined. But you will not go alone. Gil!”
Gil Golden looked up, startled. “No! You need me on the cliffs!”
“I need you below,” Lucien said firmly.
“There is nothing wrong with my arms or my legs,” she protested, looking from the Wolf to Alaric. “My bow can be of more use here, protecting your backs. You know it can!”
Alaric chewed his lip savagely, and after a glance from Lucien, took Gil by the arm and led her several feet