guards. “I want the sentries doubled on all the gates and the inner bailey completely sealed. They cannot have gone far, nor moved very fast with wounded men in their midst. I want every inch of these cellars searched in case we have been fed a false clue; overturn every barrel, move every board, scour the towers and keeps from top to bottom. I want the bastard found!” he screamed. “I want his heart in my hands, and God have mercy on the man who lets him escape again!”
“Calm yourself, Etienne,” Nicolaa murmured, laying a hand on his arm. “He may have slipped his chains and gained his freedom temporarily, but he will not go far. Not while you still have something he wants very much.”
“Wants—?” The Dragon whirled on her, the madness in eyes clouding his reason.
“The girl, Etienne. Your brother will not leave the castle until he has found the girl.”
“But he will not find her, because you and I and the guards who are standing watch over her are the only ones who know where she is hidden.”
“We have underestimated him once already. Perhaps we should not be so eager to do it again.”
“How can he know what he cannot know?”
“How? Because he is not human, he has proven that already.” Nicolaa moved an intimate step closer. “But she is. She is quite human—soft and fragile—the perfect bait with which to catch a wolf … alive or dead.”
The need for violence was in the Dragon’s jaw, clamped shut with the effort it was taking to contain his anger. Nicolaa waited, her eyes glistening, the nerves in her belly fluttering with anticipation as she detected the first glints of sadistic pleasure in his eyes.
“Perhaps you are right,” he murmured thoughtfully. “Perhaps the least obvious place will be the most obvious choice after all. Yes … yes, he will know she is in the eyrie and he will attempt to go to her.”
“We can have fifty men on the cliffs waiting for him!” Nicolaa cried eagerly.
“No. No, by God, we will do nothing to interfere. If he is so desperate to rescue the fair maiden, who are we to stop him? After all, where can he go? Where can he take her except down?” Etienne indulged in a wry smile, noting Nicolaa’s macabre arousal and feeling a similar response stirring in his own loins. “That is where we shall have our fifty men, my dear. And that is where we shall snare ourselves the last black wolf in England.”
29
The drop from the castle to the eagle’s eyrie was every bit as hair-raising and suicidal as Eduard had described. The path may once have been wide enough for two to pass safely, but wind and weather constantly buffeted the sheer wall of the cliffs, eroding the rock inch by inch leaving nothing to prevent a misplaced foot from skidding over the crumbling edge. From there, a body plummeted to a violent death, smashed on the crush of rocks and frenzied seas below.
Conquering the steeply declined path in daylight was proof enough of anyone’s mettle. Attempting it by sporadic moonlight, without a torch or the comfort of familiarity to guide each footstep, was sheer and utter madness … or so Alaric kept shouting, each time his heart was not in his throat and he could be heard over the roar of the waves below.
The Wolf kept a tight rein on his nerves—admittedly not as steely as he would have liked them to be on this wind-ridden night. He forced himself to look at the path not the void beside it. He fought to ignore the constant lurching of his stomach and the feel of cold sweat running in torrents between his shoulder blades. Instead, he concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other, and on trying to remember the exact layout and approach to the eagle’s eyrie.
As a reckless young boy, he had taken special pride in exploring every dangerous and forbidden area of the castle grounds: the donjons, the high catwalks surrounding the ramparts, the darkest heart of the forests where pagans worshipped and druids offered sacrifices to Herne the Hunter. The cliffs had been a particularily satisfying challenge, for the only weapon he could use against his fear of the wind and the terrifying height was his own courage.
The eyrie was a fluke of nature, a ripple on the face of the rocks where the path widened briefly to form a large, flat ledge. In poor weather