and brown clad shadow who came swooping down out of the treetops and landed almost on top of Sedrick. Brevant moved with lightning reflexes, thinking it to be some winged creature from hell come to avenge the slaying of the king’s men, and if not for Eduard’s equally swift reaction in cutting his blade across the path of Brevant’s sword, Sparrow would, in all likelihood, have found his head parted from his shoulders before he could finish chuckling over his timely arrival.
As it was, he found himself sprawled flat in the mud, where he had flung himself to avoid the cold slick of air disturbed by Jean de Brevant’s sword. Being unaccustomed to flinging himself anywhere, let alone in a stinking quagmire of mud and rotted leaves, Sparrow lay there for a long, stunned moment, the air huffed out of his lungs, and only the whites of his eyes free of brown sludge.
“The great, lubbering suet-gut!” he exclaimed syllable by syllable, extricating one arm, then the other from the oozing mess. Sedrick leaned over and grasped a fistful of Sparrow’s fur vest, hauling him up and setting him on his feet again with a grin as broad as his belly.
“Nice of ye to join us again, Sprite. Bit off the mark, though, weren’t ye?”
Sparrow still had hold of his arblaster, and at the sound of Sedrick’s chuckle, whirled around and drove the tip of the wooden bow into the toe of the Celt’s boot. The knight leaped and gave a howl of pain, which barely dented the wood elf’s craving for revenge. He rounded on Brevant and drew the two bone-handled daggers he wore at his waist, filleting the air in a promisory blur as he stalked the armoured giant.
“Sparrow! Hold up!” Eduard shouted. “It was an honest mistake, with no harm done.”
“No harm? No harm!” The little man puffed up like a quail in moult. “Two full days have I paced and pondered, fretted and feared, and now I am come back to join you only to have this lumber-nose send me arse over gob! Not likely I will hold up, sirrah! Not likely.”
His daggers flashed again, but the point of Eduard’s sword sent them both spinning away into the mud. Undaunted, Sparrow drew a wicked-looking hatchet from a sheath in his belt and was about to fell a limb or two when he caught sight of the four cloaked and hooded figures by the side of the road. Robin was trying desperately to catch and calm the horses, Ariel and Marienne stood with Eleanor sandwiched between them.
The two women had remained steadfastly by the princess’s side, relaying everything that happened, reassuring her in the calmest tones possible that the fighting had gone in their favour. Sparrow’s arrival and subsequent mud bath had eased some of their terror; seeing a long thread of silver-blonde hair blow free of the dark hood put a broad smile on the seneschal’s face and made him forget abruptly about Jean de Brevant.
“Our Pearl!” he cried. “Our Little Pearl has been saved! Good St. Cyril, I offer thanks to all the … the …”
Eduard had not been able to warn him. He had seen Sparrow’s black eyes dance with delight as he recognized the princess … and a moment later, widen with shock and horror as he caught sight of the face beneath the hood.
“Oh.” Sparrow cried softly. “Oh … sweet Jesu …”
“There is no time for an accounting now,” Eduard murmured tautly. “All will be explained to you later, when we have put some distance between ourselves and Corfe. In the meantime, it is enough for you to know we have barely skinned our way out of the castle keep; even now, I should think the castellan is trying to waken the governor and is discovering Sir Guy is not all that he should be.”
“Dead, then, is he?” Sedrick asked.
“Not when we left him. But he may wish he was when he comes around again. Once more I say, all will be explained when the breath of the leopard is not so close upon our necks. Robin! Dafydd! Gather up the spare horses … strip them down and string them together; we will take them along until we find a sweet enough meadow to deter them from running back to Corfe too soon. Sedrick, Henry, Jean … give a hand with these bodies. The longer it takes John’s Brabançons to find them, the longer they will think we move with caution. Sparrow …