Chapter 22
As soon as Rafe heard Goswin yell, he cursed in frustration. The moment he turned his back, something bad happened. He knew it.
The boy was waving his arms frantically, urging Rafe to hurry.
Angelet had ridden a few paces to the south, and now faced away from Rafe.
She was seemingly unconcerned by Goswin’s behavior.
That was a little odd in itself. From the moment she saw Goswin, she took to him as if she had been charged with his care.
Rafe had chalked it up to her missing her own child and wanting to help another in his place.
But now she didn’t even look over at Goswin.
Rafe spurred his horse and covered the distance in no time.
“What is it?” he asked Goswin.
“Over there, over there!” he shrieked, pointing to a spot in the woods. “Someone shot at us! I saw the bolt fly right past my nose!”
Following the line of Goswin’s outstretched finger, he peered into the trees.
“I’ll find them!” Goswin shouted. His pony was already in motion, riding down the road parallel to the trees.
“Goswin!” Rafe shouted. “Don’t! Stay back here with Angelet!”
The boy ignored his order.
Cursing again, Rafe rode directly into the trees along the line the boy had indicated.
Branches whipped out at him as he plunged into the newly-green woods. Seconds later, Rafe spotted a big man who was fully armed and ready to fight, based on the fact that he held a sword in one hand and a long dagger in the other. Several feet behind him, a crossbow lay on the ground.
That was all Rafe needed to know.
He howled a challenge even as he drew his own sword.
It was not fair that Rafe was mounted while his opponent was on foot, but then again, it wasn’t fair that the man shot at an unarmed woman.
Thus, Rafe felt absolutely no compunction about holding the advantage.
He intended to give the other man no quarter at all.
The other man didn’t ask for any. He braced himself against the wide trunk of a tree and yelled a few insults about the unsavory sexual habits of Rafe’s mother. As it happened, those insults had no effect on Rafe, because he had no idea what sort of person his mother was.
So his mind was clear and cold when he charged the man’s position.
The man seemed as though he was going to stand his ground, but Rafe had long since learned to read body language, and he was unsurprised when his opponent skittered over to the other side of the tree, hoping to block Rafe’s right-handed attack.
At a distance of twenty paces, he subtly angled his horse’s path slightly away from the tree, he swapped his sword into his left hand, and swept it in a wide flat circle just about level with the man’s chest.
The mercenary raised his own sword to block the stroke, and a tremendously loud clang rang out when the two blades connected.
The man grunted, and Rafe knew why. His arm would be numb with pain right now, having taken much more of the impact of the blow than Rafe had. Rafe pulled hard on the reins to circle around the tree. He then switched the sword back to his right arm, which was perfectly sound.
The other man sensed Rafe coming, and turned to face him again. But Rafe now not only had the advantage of height, he also had a strong sword arm and more experience.
“One chance to live,” Rafe said. “Throw your weapons down and tell me who hired you, and why.”
The man only tightened his grip on his blades.
Rafe gave the man a more careful appraisal.
Everything about him said he was a professional, and that he wasn’t going to go as far as attempting to kill someone only to give himself up now.
This man was never going to talk. He wouldn’t reveal his employer or tell Rafe how he’d tracked him. He’d rather die.
Rafe could accommodate that.
He dismounted, springing down to the ground several paces from the other man, who was so surprised that Rafe gave up his advantage that he hesitated for a moment, which was a moment too long.
Rafe executed a series of moves so familiar to him that he could do them asleep.
His opponent was a competent fighter, and parried well for the first few thrusts.
However, Rafe didn’t just follow a learned sequence—he always adapted to his opponents’ response.
He had a knack for seeing a fighter’s move an instant before it actually occurred.
Some people thought it uncanny, and it was the primary reason why Rafe kept winning battles—few things surprised him.
This time was no different. The man’s actions seemed clumsy to Rafe, as though he was moving through mud while Rafe moved through air. The conclusion was inevitable, and when Rafe saw an opening, he took it without thinking twice.
His sword pierced through the other man’s lower torso, just below the edge of his breastplate. Rafe retracted it instantly, confident in the result.
Sure enough, his opponent dropped his own weapons to clutch at the wound, desperate to keep his guts inside his body.
“You bastard,” he hissed out.
“Yes, I know,” said Rafe. “I’ve just killed you, but you have a while before you die. Hours. Maybe a day. Did you have anything to declare? Please skip the confessions. I’m not qualified to forgive.”
“Go to hell.” The other man sank to his knees, his face paling as blood began to seep through his fingers.
Rafe shrugged. “That’s all you have to say? Goodbye then.” He turned to fetch Philon, who’d only gone a little ways away, being very used to noise and violence.
“You can’t leave me to die!” the other man said.
“I can. I will. Unless you tell me something useful.”
“And you’ll take me to a village?”
“No,” Rafe explained. “I’ll finish you off quickly. Choice is yours.”
The other man grimaced as some great pain rolled over him.
He seemed to be having some realization of his change in fortune.
Rafe always wondered at the sort of soldier this man was.
They thought they were invincible right up to the moment death took them.
Rafe always knew how close death was. Though he put on a show of nonchalance, he respected the deadliness of a sword.
The man opened his mouth, about to say something, when he suddenly hunched over in pain and coughed up blood all over the ground.
Rafe sighed, seeing the signs of a brutal ending. “Very well,” he said, more to himself than to the man. “Though he doesn’t deserve it.”
To the man, Rafe said, “Straighten up. Now!”
He followed the order, though it obviously hurt to do so. He faced Rafe on his knees.
“What’s your name?” Rafe asked.
“Morton.”
“Close your eyes, Morton.”
The man did. Rafe took a step forward and swung the sword in an arc. A red line colored Morton’s neck, and then he slid to the ground, dead.
Rafe quickly checked the body for any indication of where he might have come from or who he might know, but found nothing. Just as he expected.
He glanced at the crossbow, then stomped down hard on it, breaking the mechanism. He turned back to the corpse, intending to snap the remaining crossbow bolts in two, but he didn’t see any. Had that bolt been the only one the man had? Strange.
Rafe seized Philon’s reins, mounted up, and returned to the crossroads. In all, the fight lasted less than a minute.
Angelet was still there, alone. She sat on her horse, staring at the hill to the south. It was not an interesting hill, and Rafe didn’t like her silence.
“Got him,” Rafe told her, still gripping his sword. “I don’t know how the hell he got this close to us, but he’s never…”
Rafe trailed off, seeing that Angelet held her hand to her chest in an unnatural way, and that the front of her gown was deep red.
He felt his heart go cold. “You were hit.”
She began to slide off the horse. Rafe dismounted and rushed to catch her before she hit the ground. He pulled her into his arms and put her gently down onto the road, keeping her upper body cradled against him.
“Rafe,” she said softly. “What do I do?”
“Just stay calm,” he told her. “I’ll take care of you. I need cloth. Where the hell is that boy? Goswin!”
He thought he heard the hooves of Goswin’s pony but couldn’t be bothered to wait. He kept his attention on Angelet. “How’s the pain?”
“Not very much,” she said.
“That’s common. The pain comes after, but it’s nothing you can’t endure.”
“There’s so much blood.”
“I know.” God, he knew that. Far too much blood. “But don’t worry. The bleeding is already slowing and soon you’ll be bandaged up.” Lies, lies, lies.
She closed her eyes.
“No, no. Stay awake, love. I’ll deal with this.” He kept his voice low, to keep her calm and to stop the shaking he felt when he saw the location of the bolt, jutting out of her rib cage at a disturbing angle. If the shaft punctured her lungs or her heart, he’d lose her in moments.
“Just breathe,” he told her. If she couldn’t breathe without coughing, or if there was blood on her mouth, it was over. And Rafe could not accept that.
The clatter of hooves stopped abruptly and then Goswin was there in the dirt with them, his expression horrified. “She was struck!”
“Goswin!” Rafe yelled, furious at the world and needing to take it out on someone. “You rode ahead when I ordered you to stop. Do you know how stupid that was? Don’t ever do that again.”
The boy looked a little chastened by Rafe’s vehemence. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry won’t stop you from getting killed. There could have been more than one person!”
“There was! I saw someone running away!” Goswin reported breathlessly. “I couldn’t catch them though. The underbrush was too thick. But they definitely came from where that shot was fired.”
“Damn,” Rafe muttered. That was another bad sign. It meant that the person who escaped could easily inform their partners what happened and where to go. “We can’t stay here.”
“You want to move her?” Goswin said.
“Yes! Now go look in our gear for something to stop this bleeding. Cloth or something. Christ.” The boy scrambled up and disappeared.
Rafe lowered her so she lay on the ground.