Gwyn started flinging rocks, trying to distract them, but no one noticed. Perhaps that was because she hadn’t hit anyone. Cursing herself, she scooped up another handful and pelted the men with the small, stinging missiles. One clanged against de Louth’s helm.
As if it mattered. She might be what they were hunting, but she mattered naught anymore. Blood-lust had overtaken their ‘rescue’ mission, and she could hear their soft grunts as they parried closer and closer to their prey, taking no notice that they shoved her out of range as they did so.
Her champion backed up and stumbled. One knee hit the earth.
“Over here!” she screamed.
Three pairs of eyes snapped to her. She started running.
One soldier stumbled to his horse and spurred towards her. De Louth and the other paused, momentarily distracted. In that pause, her saviour took his chance. Dropping to his other knee, he caught up his bow and launched two arrows in rapid succession.
The second hit its mark first, embedding itself deep in de Louth’s thigh. He dropped to the ground, screaming. The first hurtling arrow travelled further.
It punched through the boiled leather armour protecting the chest of the rider just as he leaned sideways to scoop up Gwyn. He jerked backwards, his hands a death grip on the reins. The horse flung its head madly, skidded to its knees, and collapsed. Gwyn tripped and fell.
From nowhere, her rescuer’s hand closed around her wrist.
“Come,” he rasped, pulling her roughly to her feet. At first they didn’t see the dagger wrenched from the last soldier’s belt and flung. There was only the soft whoosh. Everything dropped into slow motion. The iron blade tumbled and flashed through the air. Gwyn loosed a long, slow scream.
Her saviour shoved Gwyn one way and himself another, but the move made him vulnerable to the soldier hurtling towards him, standing over him, raising a sword. He twisted reflexively, taking the blow on his back rather than his chest, from a fisted hilt rather than a whetted blade. Still, it was a thundering impact that knocked him to his knees.
D’Endshire’s mercenary straddled his body and raised his sword again for the death blow.
Gwyn went streaking through the air, without a thought and with the rather dubious weapon of a raised slipper covered in muck.
The soldier glanced over in astonishment and spun to avoid the impact, sending his sword careening harmlessly into the earth. Gwyn nailed his forehead with her slipper, then landed square on his shoulder with the even more doubtable weapon of her belly. The bluntness of the attack was offset by the fury behind it, and the two went flying.
Gwyn groaned as they landed, her lungs crushed by an armoured shoulder. The soldier rolled to his feet, clutching his head with splayed fingers. Blood poured from between them. He stared blearily at his hands, then her, then back to the sticky mess dripping between his fingers.
This time, when he lifted his head, his teeth were bared around a roar that blew her hair back from half a yard away: “Bitch!”
Dropping onto her prone body, he wrapped his gloved hand around her throat. “My lord is a fool for wanting a piece of you, hellion,” he rasped. “I’ll save him the trouble.”
Slow, hard pounding. No breath, only choking. Her chest was raw, her lungs screaming. She resisted the urge to pass out, fighting for her life. Strange images passed through her mind: her beloved Windstalker chomping hay, her father at dinner, the wardrobe where she kept the spices, undone chores.
The surprisingly calm query “Did I remember to freshen the rushes?” wafted through her mind, and it was then she knew her life must be over.
The thudding pain in her head meant nothing beside the pain of knowing she would die with a pounding Ache in her heart and a hundred dirty table linens on her conscience.
Chapter Four
Fading into unconsciousness, Gwyn didn’t realise the weight was gone until the warrior stood above her, sword dangling in hand, blood streaking down the side of his face.
Beside her lay the bloody-headed soldier, rather more bloodied now. His skull was split in two. Already his innards were oozing out, a pulpy mass, mixing with the mud.
Gwyn’s mouth began moving but no sounds came out. In the distance, the sounds of running footsteps faded away. Her saviour spun as if to give chase, then, with a few muffled words, turned back.
“Is he dead?” she whispered, as if someone might hear her and somehow not have noticed the combat of a moment ago. As if the hacked body might still, somehow, hold life and be awakened by her words.
Dark, shadowed eyes flicked to the prone body. “Quite.” He kicked the body away and stretched out a gloved hand. “Come.”
“Completely?”
“All the way.” He held his hand in front of her nose.
“Truly dead?”
“Nay, he’s but half dead, and will haunt you for years to come. Now, come, get up.”
Flat on her back, Gwyn frowned. A gnashing pain crowded into the back of her head. “I am more afraid of being haunted if he is fully dead, sirrah.”
This brought a moment of quiet. “Are you getting up or not?”
“Have you killed so many men, that one more means naught?”
He straightened and glanced around the deserted road. When he turned back, she could see only the gleam of his teeth as he smiled grimly. “And you, lady, have you been on so few highways that you know not the danger of riding on them alone?”
She opened her mouth, shut it again.
“Know you so little of men that you would think one such as he is not better off dead?”
Again he gestured to the man’s body. His smile receded as he ran his fingers through his hair, ruffling the dark locks into damp spikes.
“Know you how weary I am, and that I wish only to be home?”
He towered above her outstretched body but she was not afraid. Certes, he’d just saved her life. Whyfore be affrightened?
Her mind catalogued the various and persuasive reasons: perhaps because he was such an imposing figure, all hard slabs of muscle and piercing eyes? Perhaps because he’d just killed four men in less time that it took to de-feather a chicken? Or perhaps because he held in his hand a sword that still dripped with raw blood.
“Get up.”
“I…I—”
“You—” He reached down and grabbed her hand. “Do not listen well.”
He lifted her clean off the earth, hauling her away from the body. The soldier’s split head lolled to the side and a thin trickle of reddish spittle dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Dropping to one knee, her saviour lifted his chin, as if inspecting his handiwork, then crossed to the other dead men and did the same before dragging them to the side of the road.
Her saviour’s next words came from the dense stand of trees, where he was depositing the still-warm bodies. “We’ve only a little time. D’Endshire will know as soon as de Louth reaches the gate, and then he’ll be after you.”
“Or you.” She ran her hands over her dress from collar to waist, fluttering. “Happens he might enjoy finding you more, at the moment.”
There were sounds of shuffling and earth moving, then he emerged with a costly steel arrow-tip in his palm. She stared in horror. It could only have been plucked from the dead man.
He picked up his sword. “As I have said, his pleasure is not my concern.”