Chapter Two #3
she had admired him. He’d seen the look in enough women’s eyes to
know it when he saw it. Yet she was the only woman who’d ever
looked at him like that and then run away from him. Twice
now.
She led him through a maze
of thick brambles that grabbed and bit at his bare arms, leaving
trails of blood trickling down them. Beyond the brambles it opened
onto a meadow, and on the other side of the meadow an even thicker
wood. He pushed on, ignoring the biting brambles, for he had a gut
feeling that if he didn’t catch Lara before she made the woods, he
never would. She was halfway across the meadow when Talon burst out
of the brambles. Wolf slowed to turn and look at him, and Talon
sucked in a big gulp of air, then yelled, “Hold.”
The dog turned in a slow arc and
headed for him at an easy lope.
“No, Wolf,” Lara called
over her shoulder. “Come.”
Wolf slowed, hesitating, and Talon let
out a loud snarl. The wolf-dog crouched low and then sprang into a
full run as Talon set his feet and held his longsword
high.
“Wolf. Noooo.”
Lara’s scream rang in Talon’s ears as
Wolf leapt and Talon jumped aside, slamming the flat of his sword
across the beast’s shoulder and sending it sprawling to the ground.
The hound scrambled to get its feet up under it, and Talon kicked
its head. He didn’t want to kill the beast, but he didn’t want it
coming back after him either. Wolf lay breathing but motionless as
Lara ran toward them and stopped ten paces away, leaning toward
Wolf one moment, the woods the next.
“He’ll live,” Talon said
with more effort than he cared to show. If she bolted again, he
wasn't sure he’d be able to catch her. “Lara.” He called her by her
name, getting her full attention, her expression wild with fear.
“Wolf lives.”
He stepped back from the dog’s prone
form, and Lara approached, step by slow step, watching Talon until
she stood on the opposite side of Wolf, out of Talon’s immediate
reach. He held his empty hand up, palm out, and Lara dropped her
gaze to Wolf and let her breath out in a rush when his chest rose
and fell. She stood there watching the dog breathe while Talon
worked on slowing his own breath and trying his damnedest to not so
much as twitch in her direction.
After what seemed like an eternity,
she looked back up at Talon. “What of the man in the
stables?”
Talon held her gaze, glad to see some
of the wildness gone. “He was alive when I saw him,” he told her.
She sucked a quick breath in and blew it out. “What happened?” he
asked, though he could have guessed. Fulrad was the only drunkard
among his men, and a mean one at that.
“He was drunk.” Her voice
quaked, yet she kept her gaze even with his. “He made a lewd
suggestion. I told him I didn’t want any trouble.” Talon quirked
his brows and held up his bandaged hand. “Well, I did,” she said,
raising her chin a notch. She pressed her full lips tight and shook
her head. “He wouldn’t listen. He grabbed me, we struggled, I, I
stepped on his knee, trying to get away, and then Wolf—”
She dropped to her knees, cradling the
unconscious dog’s head in her lap as she ran her hands over his
head, neck, and shoulders.
“Why did you run away when
you saw us?” Talon asked as she moved her fingers over the hound’s
ribs. “We wouldn’t have let anything else happen to
you.”
She raised her brows, her distrust
obvious. “He’s a king’s soldier. I thought Wolf killed
him.”
Talon ran his bandaged hand back
through his hair, wet and slick with sweat. “Well, lady, you and
Wolf do defend yourselves ably, if not wisely.”
She stared at his bandaged hand and
her chin trembled. “What now?”
“What now?” he repeated,
forcing himself to be Captain, whose man lay injured, possibly
dying, back at the Keep, and not Talon, who wanted nothing more
than to cup her quivering chin and tell her everything would be all
right. “Now I take you back to the keep, where we’ll see to the
extent of the man’s injuries and get his side of the
affair.”
“He may not be able to
tell his side.” Her voice of smoked honey cracked as she stroked
the dog’s neck. “Wolf had him by the throat before I called him
off.”
“Bloody hell.” Talon
tensed his jaw and shook his head. “The man’s name is Fulrad and
he’s not just a soldier: he’s the king’s cousin.” Which was the
only reason the drunken lout was a part of Talon’s troop. As a
favor to Charles himself. “Cousin or not,” Talon told Lara, “the
king’s laws do allow for defending your person.”
Her gaze held his, wide and pleading.
“Do you always follow the king’s laws to the letter?”
She was asking him to turn around and
let her run away, to escape into the woods as he had yesterday. But
yesterday it’d only been about Talon and Lara. Today it was about a
king’s subject injuring a king’s soldier. “I’m a captain in the
king’s army, lieged directly to Charles himself. It is my sworn
duty to uphold the king’s laws. And the king’s law decrees that you
be brought before the valley’s count next Mallus.”
Her face went white.
“Until then, you’re my
prisoner.” He held his hand out. “Give me both of your knives,
hilts first.”