Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
The Warg of the West
“Bandits!” one of the men cried. His shout rang in Mal’s ears as the mule snorted and stamped. It jerked at its tether as its eyes flashed on the sight of the crimson-clad figure running toward it with a sword raised, intent on cutting its ties.
At the corner of his gaze, Mal noticed the man with the bow reaching for his quiver, a sight that chilled him worse than any shadow.
Another traveler, the quickest to his feet, started after Griff but tripped over the handle of his cast-iron pan, sending up a shower of sparks that sprayed into the nearby brush.
Embers danced along the sleeve of Mal’s cloak, drawing a grunt of surprise and startling him from the shadows before he had time to think how he was going to get himself and Griff out of this with all limbs intact and no arrow wounds, never mind the mule now.
Arrows. The archer. Shit.
He was slotting an arrow, aiming at Griff in the dark as the foreman, oblivious, quickly cut the mule’s rope.
Mal set himself on a collision course with the man, drawing a hunting knife swiftly from his belt as he ran, shouting, “This is hardly being careful on the job!” to Griff as he closed in on the archer and swung his fist to ensure that arrow misfired. Then, “Go, I’ve got this!”
Taking the mule’s lead, Griff started urging the creature back toward the hill and Alys, making frantic gestures like there was an owlbear on their heels.
He didn’t get far.
The arrow didn’t fly true, but rather than landing in Griff’s back, it sank into his right calf just above the ankle. He managed to take a few stumbling steps forward with the creature—momentarily filling Mal with a wild, false hope—but then he crumpled to the ground.
Still, he was amazed Griff didn’t let go of that mule’s lead. If anything, he seemed to cling tighter to the rope as the mule began to drag him forward.
The archer swore as Mal hit him again, though he managed to hold on to his bow.
The two were locked in a struggle of elbows and fists and muffled grunts and the knock of the wooden bow against various body parts.
A sharp twang echoed as Mal managed to use his knife to sever the bowstring, feeling a grin of victory coming on as he gripped the archer in a tight headlock, squeezing the air from the man’s throat—but just then, the cook who had tripped over his own pan threw a rock that struck Mal in the neck.
Another rock opened a gash just below his eye, and he swore.
Blinking through the pain, he saw the third man stride bravely toward the place where they struggled, brandishing a short sword.
Listening to Griff’s faint groans, the direction of which he couldn’t even fully discern in the darkness, he wasn’t sure he had this handled anymore.
But then, finally, with another firm squeeze, the archer went limp in his hold.
He let the man drop into the dirt as he held his hunting knife aloft, fending off that short sword and a barrage of rocks alike as he tried to make a hasty retreat while also figuring out where exactly Griff and the mule were now.
But the men were advancing, and he had to keep his eyes on them. They were forcing him deeper into the brush where he’d hidden earlier, backing him effectively against a wall.
The fourth man, who had evidently abandoned his breakfast to try to chase down the mule and its unlawful new owner, was having a time keeping up with the pace of the nervous beast, even while it was dragging a body.
The man and Mal both stared for a moment as the rose-gold light of day finally began to seep over the edge of the eastern horizon, illuminating the animal’s frantic beeline toward the hill and the man with an arrow in his leg trailing behind it, face concealed by a scarf as red as his bloody pants, hitting every rock along the way.
Mal was so obviously cursed, but he rarely felt it as keenly as he did now.
“Fuck,” he whispered like a lover in the throes of passion.
And he was certainly feeling passionate as he gazed around at the chaos of the camp: the upturned pan, the smoldering remnants of little fires in the grass, the unconscious archer, the cruel shaft of the arrow protruding from his old friend’s leg.
Four weeks wasn’t going to be nearly time enough to get the treasure. Not with a wound like that. Not on top of Griff’s old wound from the attack still clearly bothering him, no matter how he tried to hide it.
Griff was going to be so bad for business.
All the commotion had apparently woken Alys at last.
Relief broke over Mal’s scarf-wrapped features at the sight of her bounding down the hill, rocks flying away from her feet as she skidded to the bottom with her sword already brandished—Rhun’s old sword from the war, a heavy relic, glistening wetly with the reds and golds of the early sun like a warning, or a promise.
By the time she reached the place where Mal was barely holding his ground with the hunting knife, her cheeks were pink with exertion. Still, her eyes were alert, flashing with dislike as she dodged a rock and held her sword above her head, striking a pose for the three men who were still conscious.
“Morning, boys.” She grinned lazily around a yawn. “Who’s ready for the big, bad warg?”
She sprang at the rock thrower first, laughing as she sliced her blade this way and that to force him to dance.
Mal had always loved watching her work. There had been a few years when Theo, the man she almost married, tried to pressure her into domesticity, into things like needlework and brewing a perfect cup of tea for his perfectly boring houseguests.
When Alys finally sent him packing, Mal had been almost as relieved as she was to see the back of him.
He had missed having a business partner—a friend—who could truly hold her own, someone he could count on.
With a renewed gleam in his eye, he charged the man brandishing the short sword. No longer backed into the brush like some cowed creature being hunted, he feinted, dodged the man’s blade as it breezed by, then whisked his knife across the man’s throat.
There came a gasp, then a gurgle.
The man took one more swing at Mal as he began to fall, slicing into his ankle before he finally met his fate.
The cook, still seemingly torn between pursuing Griff and the mule and aiding his fellows, took one look at his fallen companions—one bleeding out into the dirt, one perhaps merely unconscious—and decided, after it all, to run.
Which left only the rock thrower.
Alys’s idea of a dance and her wild smile were ordinarily enough to unsettle most men into fleeing or handing over their purses, whatever was the order of the day, but this one seemed to be made of stronger stuff than most.
As the cook fled, the rock thrower glanced briefly in that direction, giving Alys an opening to drop her sword and try to grab him in a headlock.
She was probably hoping to render him unconscious like his friend by the fire, a move Mal knew well from their past experiences on the road together.
But as she threw her arm out, a knife flashed from somewhere, a hunter’s blade gripped in the man’s large and steady hand. Angled right toward her ribs.
Mal cried out a warning.
Alys was half a second quicker than the man as she covered his hand with her own, and just a touch stronger as she gritted her teeth and redirected the blade, sinking it deep into the man’s stomach.
He dropped to his knees. Blood began to trickle from his mouth.
And beside him, Alys fell to hers. “Oh no,” she whispered. She stared at the man. “Oh, oh, no. I—I’m sorry, I—”
“He was going to kill you,” Mal said firmly, though he tried to keep his voice gentle.
“I saw the whole thing, and you had no choice.” He sighed, and the noise came out closer to sympathy than impatience, which was a relief.
Sympathy didn’t come easy for him. “Look, Alys, I know how you feel about killing, but … it was bound to happen one day, our line of work.” After checking to make sure the man with the knife really wasn’t breathing, he rubbed a hand across Alys’s back for a few moments and then said, “Will you be okay right here? I need to go get Griff.”
She nodded resolutely.
But Mal had gone only a few paces toward the darting mule with his old friend attached when Alys gagged and threw up beside the body.
Mal winced but kept going, because Griff needed him more, making steady progress across the plain toward the mule. It seemed the beast wasn’t used to dragging the weight of a grown man and it was finally tiring, perhaps even calming in the absence of so much noise and swearing and clashing blades.
At some point, Griff’s scarf had come loose. Mal picked it up, draping it over his shoulder on his way over to the exhausted mule.
He grabbed the creature’s lead rope, working it gently from Griff’s stiff hand.
The other man answered him with a groan.
“Is this what you thought I meant by making bad decisions?” Mal asked, letting the worry in his gaze shine undisguised as he pulled off his scarf at last and crouched where Griff lay prone in the grass, dirt and scratches streaked across his pale, sweaty face.
“Or is it that you just don’t give a damn about yourself? ”
“I—” Griff panted and seemed to fumble for words, which was understandable, given how short of breath he was.
Mal’s stomach churned unpleasantly. He hated seeing Griff like this.
Hated Griff for being such an idiot, for nearly getting himself killed and making him watch.
He had asked him on this trip to keep him safe, but here he was, nearly finding a means to die anyway and complicating whatever hope they had of securing the treasure in time.
He shouldn’t care like this.
Griff had made it clear, on a long-ago day when he was just seventeen, that they were nothing to each other anymore.
It shouldn’t matter if Griff lived or died, especially if Mal didn’t have a hand in it.
But it did.