assortment of arms that might otherwise have been relegated to the packhorses. Even Ariel, when she mounted her palfrey, found both a falchion and a bow looped over her saddle, placed there by a man whose gray eyes acknowledged her glance and expressed confidence in her ability to put the weapons to good use if it became necessary.
Brevant, cursing the rain in a loud enough voice to earn a partial grumble of agreement from the guards, ordered the knights to mount and waste no more time dallying. He had better things to do, he said, (eliciting another round of sly grins from Gisbourne’s men) than to squander the morning pointing them onto the right road. He assumed the lead on his enormous rampager and set a belligerent pace through the inner bailey and over the first draw. The outer bailey was just as deserted and bleak; the ground was mud underfoot and the horses made deep sucking sounds as they approached the huge barbican. They rode in pairs and threes, with the guardsmen remaining in a glum pack in the rear, preferring to keep to their own company.
Ariel, despite the rain and the chill, found she was sweating uncomfortably beneath her layers of linen and wool. The skin between her shoulder blades was clammy and her hands, inside her gloves, were sticky with a dampness that had nothing to do with the wetness that leaked under her clothes. Henry rode beside her, and although his face was naught more than a dark blot beneath the steel nasal of his helm, she thought she saw a puff of breath after one sidelong glance, accompanied by the whispered words: “Courage, Puss.”
Behind them, riding three abreast were Sedrick, Eleanor, and Eduard. Iorwerth, with his arm cradled in a leather sling, rode behind them with Marienne and Robin completing the threesome.
Twenty paces from the main gates, a shadow detached itself from the guard tower, prompting Brevant to hold up his hand and signal a halt. He rode forward alone, supposedly to identify himself and explain what they were about. Ariel could hear nothing but the loud pounding of her heartbeat. Her palfrey took a nervous half-step sideways and skidded on a hump of mud, righting itself with an indignant snort. Somewhere off in the rain-soaked distance she thought she heard a bell ringing, but since she had no idea of the hour, she could take no comfort in knowing if it was a church bell or an alarm bell being sounded.
Beside her, Henry cursed softly into the drizzle. His helm creaked as he turned his head to glance over his shoulder, but a hissed warning from FitzRandwulf stopped him before the gesture could be completed.
Brevant had been swallowed into the gloomy base of the barbican tower, and the expectation of hearing a scream or a shout grew proportionately with each agonizingly slow minute that ticked past.
When the shout did come, it brought all of them jumping out of their skin. Barely had it tightened around their bones again when the grate of rusted iron links winding through a winch sent spidery clawmarks of relief scratching down their spines. The spiked grate of the portcullis seemed to take another eternity to lift high enough for Brevant to stalk out of the shadows and remount whereupon an impatient wave of his hand brought them moving forward again.
The horses hooves, clacking over the wooden draw, sounded like the rumble of thunder. Ariel was certain a momentary shout would bring a hail of crossbow bolts raining down upon their heads, and she rode as stiffly as a wooden marionette at a fair.
The village seemed to be leagues away, the forest beyond might have been on the other side of the world. On their right, the sea shone dully through the rocky hillocks that shaped the coastline; landward, to the east, a receding mountain range of low-lying black clouds still bristled with night evils.
Evil, in another form, sent a second shock to test the strength of Ariel’s heart and nerve. They were barely through the village and taking their first cleansing breaths of forest air, when the unmistakable blast of a horn trumpeted an alert to anyone venturing along the road: the royal cavalcade was approaching and expected to encounter no obstacles in its path.
Eduard and Henry exchanged a hard glance.
Their first instinct was to order everyone into concealment behind the wall of dense underbrush that lined the road. With the poor light and the rain, there was a