you might have pushed each other over the gorge and broken your heads on the rocks below, but the sentry said you came this way, where there are no rocks or cliffs”—he glanced sidelong at Servanne—“only pitfalls.”
The Wolf stamped into his boots, straightened, and raked his hands through his hair to push it off his face. “What direction are they coming from?”
“West and north.”
“Have they sent out any advance patrols?”
“Robert and Gil have their eyes on a brace of them, half a league from here, but they were told to wait and see what you wanted done before they did it.”
“I want one of them brought to me. Alive.”
“So he shall be,” Sparrow nodded. He stole another peep at Servanne and his brow puckered into a frown. “Old Blister was frothing so loudly at the mouth, we had to borrow a stocking from Norwood the Leech to stuff in her throat. Even so, she managed to make enough noise to bring the birds squirting down on us. She wants mischief done to her if a way cannot be found to keep her silent.”
“I will calm Biddy,” Servanne said. “She will cause you no trouble.”
“Neither one of you had best cause any trouble,” the Wolf warned. “Hold your tongues and do exactly as you are told, and with luck, my lady, you will see your fondest wish realized and depart our company by nightfall. Sparrow”—he turned away from Servanne’s shocked expression—“Bring her back to the abbey when she is dressed and give her back to Mutter and Stutter for safekeeping.”
He paused at the mouth of the cavern, his hand on the webbing of ivy. He turned, at an admitted cost to his soldier’s sense of priorities, and met Servanne’s gaze through the wisping drifts of steam. Whatever he wanted to say—if he had wanted to say anything more—was gone with the next footstep that carried him out of the cavern and into the forest.
Servanne stared at the ivy until the leaves rustled to a standstill. Sparrow made an impatient sound in his throat, and she finished dressing, hardly aware of what her fingers did or how they managed to don stockings and slippers without feeling. Shame began to course hotly through veins that had so recently sung with pleasure. It was plain to see he had already dismissed their lovemaking as being of little consequence; plainer yet to see she had once again become the pawn, the expendable stakes in a game of rivalry and revenge.
Sir Aubrey de Vere prided himself on his hunter’s instincts. It was not far from the truth to say he could have tracked an ant through a cornfield on a moonless night—he had stalked fleet-footed paynims through the desert in windstorms while on Crusade; no mean feat for a Norman born and bred of noble blood.
So it was he could not believe his ears when he heard the sigh of an arrow streaking past his mount. His companion, a knight afoot who was bending over, sniffing at the imprint of a boot freshly set into the forest floor, heeled sideways, his steel helm unseated by the thrust of the arrow punching through his skull.
De Vere whipped around, but too late. His horse jerked forward as a tremendous weight dropped onto his rump, and by the time De Vere identified the bulk of a man, his own helm had been torn off, his head twisted savagely to the side, and stretched back at an angle near the breaking point. A gap in the chain-mail armour where the hood met the hauberk was laid bare beneath his chin, wide enough for the edge of a knife to tender a threat.
“Not a sound,” a voice rasped in his ear, but De Vere’s instincts, being what they were, had already launched his two elbows back, digging into what felt like a solid wall of stone.
Robert the Welshman absorbed the paltry affront to his ribs with a grunt of disdain, but the movement caused his hand to slice inward and down with the knife. The steel carved into the strained layers of flesh, parting the sinew and muscle like a blade springing the seams of an overfull gourd. Blood spurted out and over his hand, splattering the front of De Vere’s sky-blue gypon.
“Now look what ye’ve gone and done,” Robert muttered distastefully.
De Vere raised his hands, appalled to feel the heated wetness of his own blood soaking down beneath the padding of his surcoat. “I am dead,” he gasped. “God love