“Then make haste. We will not wait, and yer share be ours if’n ye are late.”
The two turned their mounts and spurred around the side of the lake from which Laura had come.
“Show yourself,” the man called above the beat of hooves. “I got no time for games, girl.”
Laura slipped out of sight. As she searched the ground for something with which to defend herself, she wished she had snatched up her girdle with its meat dagger.
Below her was a hand-sized stone, to the right a fallen branch as long as her arm and as thick around as her wrist.
She snatched up the latter, and as she pried the stone from the earth, peered around the trunk. And nearly cried out. The sound of his companions’ retreat having masked his movements, the man guided his horse beneath the tree’s skirt.
“I see ye!” He grinned.
Laura slammed back against the trunk and dropped the branch to scrabble at the stone with both hands. She freed it, snatched up the branch, and careened around the opposite side of the tree.
“Where did ye go, girl?”
She drew a shuddering breath, jumped forward, and spun to face him as he urged his horse around.
His eyes moved from the branch to the stone. “I said I got no time for games, girl. And now I see ye better—that ye are a woman in full—I be less tolerant.” He tugged the reins and clumsily dismounted as if much drink coursed his blood.
“I vow my husband comes.” She backed away. “Do you touch me, he will kill you.”
In a less than straight line, he advanced on her.
“Pray, rejoin your friends and live. You need not die.”
“Neither need ye, but I am becomin’ annoyed.”
She thrust the branch forward. “Go!”
He sprang so suddenly she had no time to swing before he slammed a hand around the branch and wrenched it from her. “Now then, how much harder do ye think ’twill be for me to take the stone?” He tossed the branch aside. “Yer too pretty to mess up, so give over.”
Laura raised the stone higher, drew her hand back past her ear to more forcefully strike him if he lunged.
He did. And she brought the stone down on his temple, causing him to yelp and stumble sideways.
Still gripping her weapon, praying his companions did not hear his cry above their pounding hooves, she turned to run. But swung back around to consider her assailant’s horse. Were she to leave it to its master, she would soon be overtaken.
God willing, the beast would allow her to mount.
Heavenly Father, she silently beseeched as she lunged past the one who stood wide, head lowered and gripped between his hands, let not your arms be too full. I cannot hold myself much longer.
Chapter 30
Two riders as the man from Shepsdale told. Not the three thought possible, a sweep of the lake revealing no others.
Lothaire knew they had sighted him and his knights against the falling dark, for as the miscreants rode around the side of the lake that presented the better road to Thistle Cross, they bent low over their horses and shouted between themselves.
They hoped to reach the wood, but they would not gain it ahead of their pursuers. Certain there could not have been adequate time for them to harm Laura who must have hidden, he determined he would himself have the satisfaction of taking the villains to ground.
The mounts of the two men no match for a destrier, Lothaire’s prey was soon within reach.
Sword drawn, he swung his horse to the left, urged it to greater speed, and drew alongside the one in the lead. Though the slice of his blade would be satisfying, not only did he want these men alive to spill who had hired them—if any—but were Lady Raisa behind their mischief, their crimes might not warrant death. For a few coins, they but stirred trouble.
Thus, he slammed his sword’s pommel into the miscreant’s head, causing him to slump and tip out of the saddle. But as Lothaire swerved to avoid trampling his prey, the man’s companion ducked the blade of a pursuing knight, swung his sword, and caught Lothaire’s man in the upper arm.
“He is mine!” Lothaire shouted and spurred after him.
The man surprised, shifting his sword from the right to the left hand and swinging it hard against Lothaire’s blade.
For this, the eldest Wulfrith brother had spent days with the Baron of Lexeter, stressing the life-and-death importance of not only battling in the saddle but doing it as well as when one’s own legs were beneath him. His pupil had not yet achieved the skill demanded of him but had learned better how to move, balance, and leverage his body to deliver effective blows and fend off another’s blade.
Engaging those skills now, guiding his horse with thighs and calves, Lothaire put his shoulder into his sword arm and forced the man’s blade off his. His opponent recovered, and over and again their swords met until the miscreant turned his horse into the wood.
The arrangement of the trees, undergrowth, and ground were too unpredictable for Lothaire to soon regain the man’s side, but he must. The deeper they penetrated the wood, the darker the shadows and the more likely his prey would escape.
Lothaire bent low, and finding a sizable gap between trees, made it through and once more drew alongside the miscreant.
Teeth bared, the man met him at blades, and something about his face was familiar. But before Lothaire could place him, his destrier lurched over the rock-strewn ground.
Lothaire’s mount recovered just in time for his rider to swing a blade up and keep the other man’s from slicing him open. And here was the anger Baron Wulfrith had told Lothaire to make good use of. His retaliatory blow nearly sending the miscreant off the other side of the saddle, the Baron of Lexeter prepared to finish him.
Like the dogs of the shepherd who moved the sheep when they were not of a mind to be moved, Lothaire turned his horse in front of the other’s and struck with the pommel again—this time to the nose.
The man howled and lost the saddle. As the riderless horse surged forward, Lothaire reined around and saw his opponent lay on his back, a hand over his face. A moment later, he was scrambling for his sword. And thundering toward the miscreant were two knights who had followed their lord.
Lothaire shouted and held up a hand, signaling them to rein in.
Willing to accommodate the one who thought to shift the fighting from atop a horse to the ground, Lothaire loosed a foot from a stirrup, but before he swung his leg over, he caught a sound that would have gone unheard beneath the pound of hooves.
Laura’s scream speared his heart. Still, he forced himself to remain aware of the position of the man who had regained his sword, just as Abel Wulfrith had drilled into him while setting numerous opponents at his pupil.
“Kill him if you must!” Lothaire shouted to his knights and put heels to his horse.