In the Shadow of Midnight - By Marsha Canham Page 0,75

gust. A moist, heated shudder rippled deep within her, a reaction to his closeness, she supposed, and one she was uncomfortably unable to control … just as she was unable to control the slow, measured steps that forced her against the flanks of his enormous rampager. He was going to kiss her again. He was going to kiss her and there was nothing she could do to stop him.

“When I tell you to,” he murmured casually, “I want you to take the horses and move back behind those trees.”

Ariel blinked in surprise. “Wh-what?”

“Lucifer might try to fight you—he has less patience with women than I do—but you will have to try to hold him. Do you think you can manage?”

Ariel started to gasp another protest, but he was no longer looking at her. He was staring instead at something over the top of her head, and when she attempted to turn and determine what it was, she caught only a glimpse of forest shadow and mottled sunlight before a calloused thumb and forefinger were pinching her chin, forcing her to look up at him again.

“What is it? What is wrong?”

“Owls usually sleep in the daytime,” he said calmly, “yet we seem to have attracted a few lively fellows around us.”

Ariel tried to look again, and again was manhandled forward.

“Will you just do as I ask? Get behind those trees and keep your head down.”

“I am not completely witless, you know. I can use a sword and a bow to good effect. I can help”

With one hand, Eduard lifted and fastened the protective flap of the linked iron camail that covered the lower half of his face and throat. While he did so, Ariel suffered the full, unleashed power of his eyes.

“If I find I need your help, my lady, I will call upon it. Until then, just do as I say, by Christ, and with no more of your arguing, or—”

The threat was never completed. A low, whining rush of air passed over their heads and a split second later, a solid whonk left the pair staring at the short, iron-tipped crossbow bolt quivering in the tree trunk behind them.

Chapter 10

Without standing on ceremony, Eduard pushed Ariel toward the trees and smacked the rumps of the horses, startling them into bolting for the river. He snatched his bow and quiver from the sling on Lucifer’s saddle, then stepped behind a clump of bushes—a sight met with a distant, muffled guffaw of laughter.

“Aye, run and hide, Graycloak. You would fare far better just to pay us a toll and pass along the road without further ado.”

Eduard cursed and clamped the shaft of an arrow between his teeth while he leaned his weight into the strong arch of yew to tighten the slack of his bowstring. Common outlaws. Deserters … or men paid by the French to disrupt the flow of traffic through Normandy. They travelled in small packs like dogs, robbing, killing, plundering … taking hostages to ransom.

Three, perhaps four more voices echoed the sarcasm of the first, their jibes accompanied by a brief hail of stubby crossbow quarrels. Only one came anywhere near the first; most of them plunked harmlessly into the soft earth, well short of their targets. The villains were either extremely poor shots or they were in too much of a hurry to show strength over caution. One foolhardy fellow even danced a small jig, hooting and hollering when his bolt came close enough to shave a strip of bark off the tree Eduard stood behind.

Almost contemptuously, Eduard stepped out into the open. He raised the graceful sweep of his longbow and nocked the arrow to the string. With the siring and feather fletching drawn back to the curve of his jawbone, he straightened his fingers and snapped the arrow free, sending it into the distant greenwood with the impact of a thunderbolt. The dancer was lifted back and thrown off his feet, the steel-tipped arrow piercing clean through his chest and protruding half its length out the back. A second outlaw, farther along the gully, jumped up to gape in horror at his fallen comrade and, too late, heard the soft hiss-s-s of a second ashwood arrow streaking toward him. This time the lethal tip passed through the width of the man’s neck and struck a tree some twenty yards behind, still carrying enough speed and power to become embedded deep in the wood.

Yet another fool stood to rearm his crossbow, a costly necessity in the