make better time on the road, but more than that would be difficult to manage, and too conspicuous besides. And though Brys would have bitten off his tongue before admitting it aloud, he was reluctant to steal from companions who might yet survive. True, there was only the thinnest thread of hope that anyone might escape the ambush in the chapel, but he wasn’t eager to snap it off himself. Not when he already had the two horses he needed.
Tightening his grip on the reins, Brys eased open the stable doors. Smoke shrouded the chapel in a gray veil and rose from several other buildings nearby. None were burning in earnest, but the fires were spreading.
The sound of approaching steps snapped his attention back to the street. He readied his sword for a killing blow and crouched behind the half-open door.
It was neither an archer nor a swordsman who shuffled through the smoky pall, however, but a woman carrying a lump of blankets in her arms. Her face was white and drawn tight with pain; red showed on her lip where she’d bitten it through. The shaft of an arrow jutted up from her back, just over the hip, and blood darkened the skirts of her plain servant’s dress in a wide wet stripe spilling down from the wound.
As she came to the doors Brys took her elbow and yanked her inside, out of sight. She didn’t resist, didn’t make a sound. There wasn’t a shout left in her.
He knew her, vaguely. She was one of the maidservants who had bustled around Sir Galefrid’s wife and their newborn son throughout the journey from Bulls’ March. Brys, who preferred to avoid domestic concerns whenever possible, had never spoken to the woman. He could not recall her name.
She, apparently, suffered from no such difficulty.
“Brys Tarnell?” she whispered, and managed the wan shadow of a smile at his nod. It did not reach her eyes. Nothing but pain reached her eyes.
She thrust the knotted blankets at him, stumbling under the strain of the motion. Instinctively Brys stepped forward and caught the bundle before it fell. Then he glimpsed what lay inside, and nearly dropped it himself.
There was a baby in the blankets. A baby with a tear-swollen face red and round as a midsummer plum. A baby he knew, even without the lacquered medallion tucked into the swaddling—a medallion far too heavy, on a chain far too cold, for an infant who had not yet seen a year.
“Wistan?” he asked, stupidly.
The woman nodded. Her chin sagged toward her chest; each nod seemed a little heavier than the last. “I carried him out. He was crying in the chapel … I took him out to hush him, poor impious thing, and it saved him. There’s no one else. No one.” She wiped tears from her chin; the effort left her leaning against the wall for support. Blood smeared onto the rough wood where her hip rested against it. “I was hoping for a horse, but I haven’t the strength to ride. He’ll be safe in Bulls’ March. Only there. Please. Keep him safe.”
“I will.” The words were out before Brys realized he’d opened his mouth. He paused, but saw no need to take them back. He shifted the bundle of blankets and looked down at the baby, whose hiccuping sobs were quiet but constant. A great danger, but a great opportunity. The heir to Bulls’ March—his dead liege lord’s son—had just fallen into his arms.
Yes, he would keep the child.
Brys walked toward the horses. As he reached them he stopped, realizing something, and turned back to face the woman again. He could read the unasked question, and the hope, on her face.
He shook his head, as gently as he could. “I can’t. That’s a bad wound. Looks like a gut shot. I can’t tend to a child and an invalid both, and you need more healing than I can offer. There’s nothing I can do.”
She said nothing. After a moment her eyes closed and she slumped to the manure-specked ground, still breathing but too weak to stand. Brys checked the courtyard—still empty—and set the baby on a pile of clean straw for a moment. He grabbed the half-dead servant by the shoulders and pulled her into an empty stall, where she’d be out of view if anyone should glance into the stable.
“Sorry,” he muttered as he left her.
The next question was how to carry the baby. He didn’t have an arm to spare for