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“Do we go or stay?”
Hunter looked around at the thick pines, the black rocks that lined the edge of the trail. “’Tis not a place I’d choose to make a stand.” He edged the stallion into a walk. A few paces they went, each one filled with tension. It radiated from the slender body bolt upright before him. He saw the glint of steel in her hand and realized she’d drawn the dirk again. Oddly he didn’t fear she meant to use it on him this time.
“They follow,” she whispered.
Hunter nodded.
The trail dipped. The stallion’s hooves flirted with the edge, sending a hail of stones into unseen darkness. Hunter counted the beats till they hit bottom. It seemed a far ways off. “Easy, lad.” He nudged a toe into the stallion’s ribs, moving him over.
In that instant, something broke from cover. A rabbit.
The stallion screamed and sidestepped.
Into nothingness...
As they went over the edge, Hunter cursed, grabbed hold of the woman and kicked his feet free of the stirrups.
He hit hard on his back, grunted as rock dented steel. He tried to brake with his heels, groaning as his foot caught on a rock. Pain radiated up his leg. They bounced off the rock and slid down, like rainwater off a slate roof. Gravel clawed at his unarmored rump and rattled against his helmet. He spared a moment’s thought for the woman, protected only by her woolen trews and tunic, and clutched her tighter against his chest.
“Hang on,” he growled.
“Where?” Her fingers groped at his chest, his waist. “You’re slick as a great metal pitcher.”
Hunter chuckled. But the bit of mirth was short-lived. His back slammed into something solid. The impact drove the air from his body. The night exploded in a shower of bright stars.
Allisun’s head hit his metal chest with a resounding clunk, jarring her teeth, addling her wits. A moment, maybe two, she lay there collecting herself. Then the unnatural stillness penetrated her stupor.
They’d stopped sliding, yet the massive arms that had held her during the fall were still clamped around her.
“You can let me go now,” she whispered, raising her head.
A bit of light filtered in through the canopy of leaves, gleaming softly on his armor. The visor of his helmet had come up. In the shadows it cast, she glimpsed a square jaw, aquiline nose and closed eyes.
“Sir knight?”
He neither moved nor opened his eyes.
“McKie?” She pushed his arms aside, alarmed they moved so easily, crawled off his chest and shook him. “McKie?”
Nothing.
Above them on the trail, however, she heard a sound that made her panicked heart skip a beat.
“They came down this way,” said a coarse voice.
“Aye, I heard ’em crashing about, but all’s quiet now.”
“Bloody hell. They got away, then. Curse the luck. I gave up my share of the cattle in hopes of getting his armor.”
Armor!
Allisun looked down at the expanse of metal shimmering traitorously in the pale light.
Gasping softly, she whipped off her cloak and flung it over the knight’s head and torso. His left side was still exposed. She threw herself down on it, praying her dark woolens would hide the rest.
Then she lay still, listening and praying.
Chapter Three
He could not be dead, Hunter thought, for he hurt everywhere. Still, he couldn’t move. When he forced his eyes open, it was to suffocating darkness.
“Dieu,” he groaned.
“Shh.”
Something covered his mouth. The woman’s voice came out of the black, “Be still. They are above us.”
“Am...am I blind?” he mumbled.
“Nay. Only covered so they won’t see us.”
Coarse voices grumbled above them, arguing, he thought.
The woman whimpered softly, her breathing shallow and raspy. Her slender body, pressed more closely against his left side, shuddering convulsively.
Instinctively he put an arm around her, grateful that it moved to his command. Mayhap he was not paralyzed after all. As he lay there in the dark, his mind leaped back over the night’s events: the cattle raid, the woman he’d rescued, the precipitous flight from a band of brigands and the fall that had ended here.
A voice intruded, loud and coarse. “That armor he was wearing would be worth a fortune.” Gravel crunched. “Looks like they went over the edge here.”
“Curse the luck,” said another harsh voice.
The Bells, Hunter thought. He should do something...get up, draw his sword and prepare to defend. But he could not marshal the strength to move. To a man of action, lying here totally defenseless, waiting for the enemy to strike, was pure torture. His body jerked as he tried to force it to move.
“Stay still.” The woman stroked his cheek. “I know it is hard to stay hidden here,” she whispered. “But we could not hope to prevail. against so many armed, ruthless animals.”
Hunter wanted to scream. At the moment, he could not have fought a week-old kitten.
“They could be hurt,” said one.
“Do ye think so?” the other Bell asked eagerly.
“Aye. They was fools to try this in the dark. If they aren’t dead, they’ll be sore hurt.”
“Easy pickings. What say, should we go down and see?”
“Idiot, I’m not chancing this trail at night. Besides, if they’re hurt, they won’t be going anyplace. We can go and get our share of the cattle, then sneak back later when it’s daylight and take what we want.”
Their footsteps faded away.
“They have gone.” She sat up, flinging off the cloak with which she’d covered them.
“Well, at least I am not blind,” Hunter grumbled, blinking against the moonlight filtering through the leaves.
“I am sorry, but I feared they’d spot that shiny armor of yours.” She slung the cloak around her shoulders and shifted to her knees beside him. “They will be back. We must leave as—”
“I cannot move.”
“What?” She leaned over him, frowning as she poked and prodded. “Small wonder, I’d say. You’re wedged in between a rock and the tree that broke your fall.”
“My back?”
“I do not think it’s broken.” She smiled faintly. “Your armor’s caught fast in the rocks. Here, let’s get this out of the way for a start.” She tugged off his helmet.
He swore as his head thumped on the stony ground. “Have a care what you are—”
“Sorry. I’ve never done this before.” She attacked the leather buckles holding the breastplate and back of his armor together. When they were loose, she cocked her head, grinning down at him. “You look a bit like a turtle I once trapped.”
“This is not amusing.”
“The turtle didna think so, either. He ended up in a soup.”
“Just get on with it, will you?”
“Aye, since you asked so nicely.” She approached the task with far more zeal than skill. It was no easy task for a small, inexperienced woman to extricate a prone man from a set of full battle plate. After much sweating and swearing on both their parts, she wrested the armor from his torso.
Freed of the encumbering weight, which had indeed been jammed between two rocks by the force of his fall, Hunter managed to sit up. “Damn.” He gingerly flexed first his shoulders, then his back. “Argh.” His hand went straight to the spot just above his waist where he’d met the tree.
“Hurt?” She circled around and lifted the hem of the padded gambeson he wore to protect against the chafing metal. “The skin’s not cut, but you’ll have a dandy bruise.”
“You say that so cheerily because it’s mine, not yours.”
She chuckled and came around to sit beside him. “It could have been much worse. Worthless as I find your armor, it did save you from greater injury.”
“Worthless?” Hunter bristled. “It will stop an arrow and even a slashing blow from a sword or lance.”
“Aye, but it weighs down a man and his mount and makes him far less agile in battle.”
Hunter grunted. He’d heard that argument from more than one Scot who preferred the traditional armaments to the armor popular in England and Europe. “This time, I’d say my plate was both blessing and potential curse. My thanks, for hiding me earlier and for getting me free.” Bracing his hand on a huge boulder, he stood. Pain stabbed through his left ankle, sending him back down.
“What is it?”
“My ankle.”
“Can you move it?”
Hunter warily rotated the foot, then nodded.
“Mayhap it is not broken, then.” She tugged off his boot.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Hunter endured her poking and prodding.
“A bad twist, I’d say.”
“Bloody hell!” Hunter gazed angrily around at the stark, wild land. Then a new worry intruded. “The stallion?”
“I—I do not know. I think he slid on past us, but I have not heard a sound, from below.”
They both turned to look at the wall of trees and rocks that hid the rest of the descending slope, then at each other. The same thought was in both their faces. The horse was dead.
“I am sorry,” she whispered.
“So am I. My sire raised him from a colt.”
Tears glinted in her eyes. “I could go down and search.”
“Nay.” The tightness in Hunter’s chest expanded to fill his throat. “He must be dead. An injured horse is not quiet.”
“We cannot stay here.”
“I know.” Hunter glared balefully at his swollen ankle. If worse came to worst, he’d walk on it and damn the agony.
“It may not hold you.”
“It will,” he snapped. “But there is no sense blundering about in the dark. Mayhap a few hours’ rest will improve it.”
“Hmm.” Allisun doubted that but saw no reason to argue. A poultice might aid the healing, but the herbs she’d brought with her in case anyone was injured were lost with her horse. “I could walk up to the trailhead and—”
“Return with your kin.” His face and voice were as fierce as they’d been when he’d rescued heir.
“Nay, that is not what I meant.” But she knew he didn’t believe her. Why should he? Though they’d worked together to escape the stampede and the Bells, they were enemies.
“They will come looking for you?” he asked.
“Aye. Of a certainty they will.” Providing they were alive and free. Sweet Mary, what if they weren’t? What if—?
“Just as my men will search for me.”
“Providing the Bells did not get them all.”
He snorted. “My men are more than a match for that rabble.”
“That rabble is the most ruthless fighting force about.”
“My men will best them.”
Arrogant ass. Allisun glared at him. “The Bells may be more interested in cattle stealing than fighting.”
“Let’s hope so, for all our sakes. But it may be some time before my men find us.” He gazed up the mountain, then back at her. “We should get what rest we can.”
