Beast holds his hand up for us to halt. As I rein in my mount, I hear it: it is not the sound of fighting, exactly, but shouting and men’s voices. “Oh, no,” I whisper at him. “We are not playing at rescue again. You barely have enough strength today to stay in the saddle.”
Ignoring me, he gives some silent command to his horse, who moves forward, winding along a path among the trees and drawing closer to the sounds. Hoping to forestall him, I follow, while Yannic hangs back with the pack animals.
There are five men with horses stopped in front of a farmhouse. Two sit upon their destriers with great, white fluffy bundles in front of them. It takes me a moment to recognize the bundles as sheep. Two of the others are trying frantically to corner a goose, which is doing its best to evade them, honking in irritation all the while. It would be almost comical except for the farmer and his wife standing in the yard held at spear point by the fifth man.
“French,” Beast spits out.
“They do not appear to be harming the farmer or his wife.”
“No, just raiding their food stores to feed their own troops.” He turns to me and smiles. “We will stop them.”
I stare at him in disbelief. “No, we won’t. We cannot pick a fight with every soldier we see between Nantes and Rennes!”
“We cannot just leave these poor people to be bullied by our enemies. Besides”—he shoots his maniacal grin my way—“that will be five French soldiers I will not have to kill later.”
“We cannot risk something happening to you over foodstuffs,” I hiss back.
At an impasse, we stare at each other. Then his horse lifts its leg and steps forward, breaking a small branch under its hoof. A loud crack echoes through the air, and the shouting stops. “Who’s there?” a voice calls out.
I glare at Beast. “You did that on purpose.”
He scowls in mock annoyance. “It was the horse. But now that our presence is known, we have no choice.” He removes the crossbow from its hook on the saddle and pulls three quarrels from the quiver.
I resign myself to our fate and decide to get it over with as quickly as possible. “I must get closer. When I am in place, I will hoot like an owl.”
Now it is Beast’s turn to frown. “I am not sure that is safe.”
I roll my eyes as I dismount. “You are not my nursemaid. Remember, I am rescuing you.” I loop the reins around a nearby branch and begin to move quietly through the trees toward the house.
The leader is ordering one of the goose-chasing men to go in search of the noise they just heard. The woman is wringing her hands and crying about her new down pillow, but I block all of that out as I pick my spot next to a tree that is partially covered by a thick shrub. I pull out my knives and take careful aim at the soldier closest to the farmer and the one most likely to harm him. As I hoot like an owl, I send the first knife flying.
With knives, the two best choices for a kill shot at this distance are the throat or the eye. My aim is perfect and the knife catches him in the throat. The farmwife is made of sturdier stuff than the miller’s daughter, for she does not scream, simply jumps out of the way of the splatter of blood.
My second knife and Beast’s three crossbow bolts make quick work of the rest of them. When they are all dead, the three of us emerge from the trees. The farmer and his wife approach us, their greeting effusive. “Praise be to Matrona! She has sent you to deliver us from certain disaster.”
“Well, you were not in mortal danger,” I point out.
The farmwife bristles at this. “Not in mortal danger? What is starving to death, then, if not mortal danger?”
The farmer glances uneasily at the road. “Do you think more of them are coming?”
Beast follows his gaze. “Not immediately, no. But we’d best get the horses and bodies out of sight.”
“You will do no such thing.” I angle my horse to block his. When he starts to argue, I urge my horse closer and lower my voice. “If you do not have a care for yourself, then at least give a thought to what the duchess and my abbess will do to me if I arrive with nothing but your lifeless body.”
An odd, pained expression crosses his face and I think that at last he understands my peril, if not his. “Besides, it will take all of us working together to get you off that horse and laid down somewhere where I can tend your wounds.”
The farmwife’s hand flies to her cheek. “Was he injured?”
“’Tis an old injury, but a bad one. Is there somewhere we can settle him?”