The rider slashed down at Luis, who attempted to dodge, but the rider compensated and caught Luis on his right shoulder, the blade biting deep. Roo’s blow caught the rider from behind, slicing deep into his leg. Bone was exposed as the rider screamed in pain and attempted to turn, only to lose consciousness in the saddle as he went into shock.
Roo quickly killed him. He rushed to Luis and saw the man was barely conscious. He was about to speak to him when he heard a scream from behind.
Roo spun to see the rider who had been thrown standing over Jason. The young clerk was on one elbow, blood running down his face from a scalp wound, while the soldier drew back his blade for a killing blow.
‘No!’ Roo shouted as he started to run. His legs were leaden, each step impossibly slow and heavy. He tried to hurry, but the soldier’s blow descended like a flash, and Jason screamed in pain. He had turned, and the thrust that should have silenced him left him contorted in pain, screaming.
Roo drew back his own blade, and swung with all his strength. He missed the soldier’s body, but sliced through the man’s wrist, and the sword tumbled through the air, the hand still holding the hilt.
The man looked at his bleeding stump in disbelief, not even seeing the next blow, which sliced the back of his exposed neck, causing his death as he slumped to the ground.
Roo knelt next to Jason, whose eyes were wide with pain and terror. ‘Mr Avery,’ he said, clutching at Roo’s shirt.
‘I’m here,’ said Roo, cradling Jason’s head.
Jason’s eyes were unfocused, as if he couldn’t see, and Roo saw the wound was a killing one. The head wound had come from the horse’s flying hoof, but the gut wound pumped blood in a quick rhythm, and Roo knew an artery deep in the body had been severed. Jason’s life was running onto the ground by the moment.
Jason said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Avery.’
Roo said, ‘You did well.’
‘I’m sorry I betrayed you.’
Roo said, ‘What do you mean?’
‘I was the one who gave Sylvia Esterbrook information to pass along to her father,’ he said, then began coughing blood.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Roo. ‘How did you know her?’
‘When you first came to Barret’s, I told you of her, and told you she was wonderful.’
Roo’s head swam. The fight, his wound, and now this. ‘Jason, how did you and Sylvia do this?’
‘I would pass her servant notes,’ said Jason. ‘She would write back to me. She promised that someday, when I was rich, she’d tell her father about me.’
Roo was stunned. Sylvia had played himself, Duncan, and now Jason for fools. After a moment, Jason said, ‘Mr Avery. Please, sir, forgive me.’
Looking about the woods, with Luis lying unconscious or perhaps dead across the clearing, with the women and children hiding up in a cave, Roo could only say, ‘It doesn’t matter, Jason. None of it matters.’
Softly Jason said, ‘She kissed me once, Mr Avery. When no one was looking, as she got into her carriage, she leaned over and kissed my cheek.’ Then his eyes rolled up into his head and he died.
Roo sat motionless, not knowing whether to cry or laugh. The boy had died thinking the murdering bitch was his perfect angel. Roo had not mentioned to anyone in the camp besides Luis that Sylvia was dead. Roo silently saluted her, for she had known what to do to get what she wanted from the men she had used. For Duncan, it had been the promise of power and money; for Jason, some child’s story of the princess and commoner rinding true love - a kiss on the cheek and love notes - and for Roo? Roo laughed a bitter laugh as he let Jason’s head fall to the damp ground. He rose, thinking. For Roo she had promised a perfect love that doesn’t exist.
Before meeting Sylvia, Roo never had any idea that love was anything other than a myth believed by people less intelligent than he, or a useful lie to get a town girl to spread her legs, but never had he felt the lie of love to be so monstrous as he did at this minute. Even from the grave Sylvia haunted his thoughts. He reached Luis’s side thinking it unfathomable how three men could look at the same woman and see three different women, or how each could believe her lies so readily. And he couldn’t understand how he could still feel such longing for her while detesting her so deeply.
Luis’s breathing was shallow, and his complexion was waxy. He groaned when Roo tried to move him, and tried to help as Roo picked him up, slipping his uninjured shoulder under Luis’s good arm. Half staggering, half dragging his friend, Roo tried to get him to the cave.
When he was a short distance from it, Helen Jacoby looked out and when she saw Roo struggling to bring Luis to the mouth of the cave, she hurried down and helped the exhausted Roo.
They got Luis inside, and Roo discovered that the cave was large, though shallow. It was illuminated enough from outside that he could see everything clearly. Karli gasped as they entered the cave, and tears welled up in her eyes as she asked, ‘Jason?’
Roo shook his head.
Helen began tending to Luis while Karli tried to keep her own distress from further upsetting the children. ‘Who were they?’ Karli asked.
‘Deserters, from the Queen’s army.’