Damn him for dancing with them.Doubledamn herself for suggesting it.
She’d freed him from being herprotector as he’d freed her from being his lidi, because it was theright thing to do.Yet Lara felt neither noble nor right, onlyjealous and miserably wrong.She’d told him to go away, and he had,and he wouldn’t be back because she’d insulted him, his friendship,his honor.She saw that as clearly as she saw him wrap an armaround each of the sisters and walk them over to the barrels ofale.
“Come on, Wolf,” she said,climbing up onto the wagon’s seat and clucking her tongue.“Gaea,let’s go.”
As the wagon plodded along the road toher house, Lara couldn’t decide whether to continue home, pull herbedcovers over her head and cry her heart out, or turn back andtell Talon she’d been wrong to send him away from her, to invitehim to her house for supper this night and every night he remainedin Oloron.But what if he accepted?What if he came for supper andstayed for breakfast?Would she have the will to keep him from herbed?Would she even try?
If she didn’t, and they became loversagain, just the thought of which made her body flush and an achebegin to throb between her legs, she feared Sophie’s warningswould’ve been for naught, and she could still end up alone with hisbabe in her belly and lose him.She thought of how he fell in herdreams and laid a protective hand over her womb.She’d be a fool tomake herself grieve him or leave her child a fatherlessbastard.
No.It was better this way.Lessgrief.Fewer complications.For both of them.She gave Gaea’sharness a shake, determined to continue down the road she hadchosen, to move forward with her life, a life she chose of her ownfree will, a freedom she had fought hard to regain, when Wolf’s lowgrowl had her pulling up on the reins.
The hound stood in the middle of theroad, staring back in the direction of the village, his growlgrowing louder as four horsemen rode toward them.For one brief,ecstatic moment, Lara thought Talon had left the sisters andfollowed her, but as they drew nearer, none of the horses wereblack and the tallest of the riders was too thick-set to beTalon.
“Lothair,” she hissed.Achill ran through her as she recognized Fulrad astride his rangybay.
She was out of the wagon andunbuckling Gaea’s harness before conscious thought told her to, andon the mare’s back as the riders broke into a gallop.
“Come, Wolf,” she cried,urging Gaea into a run.After turning onto a game path, she pulledthe mare up behind a thick patch of bramble a hundred paces in,hoping she’d panicked for nothing.Then the shouts of men andpounding of hooves came over her own panting.Her heart in herthroat, she turned Gaea uphill and rode hard and fast.She was onher own.There was no Sophie protecting her from Nithard now, noTalon saving her from Lothair.She would have to get herself out ofthis mess, and her best, her only, hope was to outrun them and seekthe safety of the Hollow.
***
Talon
Talon peeled the two simpering blondesisters from his arms.Without Lara glaring at him from across thesquare for doing exactly as she told him to and dancing with them,there was no reason for him to put up with their high-pitchedsqueals and twitters.“Phillipe, Dardinel, I’m off for thekeep.”
“Off to Lara’s you mean,”Phillipe said, and Talon didn’t bother to challenge his second’sassumption.
He’d been keeping watch over her forthree months now, and despite her protests and assurances that shecould take care of herself, he knew he’d sleep better tonight if hemade sure she got home safe and in one piece.He glanced around thegathering.Ranulf and Ravenna watched him from under the beech treein the center of the square, but Lothair and Fulrad and two othermen-at-arms were no longer with them.In fact, they were nowhere tobe seen.
A niggling took hold in his belly andclawed its way up his spine as he set the Black to an easy gallopon the road west, keeping his eyes on the heavy tracks of fourhorses carrying riders overlaying those of a small wagon.A leaguefrom town, he spied a wagon sitting in the middle of the road.Lara’s wagon.With no Lara, no Gaea or Wolf in sight, only Lara’sboot prints next to Gaea’s harness in the dirt.
He followed Wolf’s and the mare’shoofprints, the latter set deeper now, as if carrying a rider, to aturn onto a game path that led into the wooded hillside.Heaviertracks of the four mounted horses joined them.
“Bloody hell, Lara, whattrouble have you gotten into now?”
He looped back to her wagon andgrabbed a stick.“Tracking the wildcat, T,” he scrawled in the dirtbeneath the wagon.Those who needed to would know what itmeant.
***
Lara
Lara, Gaea, and Wolf stood panting atthe edge of a meadow over three leagues up the mountain.The sunapproached the western peak, and Lara figured if they made themeadow’s far side before Lothair, Fulrad, and their other tworiders chasing them caught up, they could disappear into the woodsand make good time and distance in the dark of night.They wereonly half a day’s ride from the Hollow, and the woods grew denser,the paths nothing more than game trails on the other side of thismeadow.With the cover of night, she was fairly certain she couldlose them by doubling back in circles and covering hertracks.
“Come on, girl.”Shepatted Gaea’s lathered neck.“One last run across the meadow, andthen we’ll disappear into the woods, and you can walk the rest ofthe way.”
They reached halfway across the openmeadow when the first arrow whizzed by Lara’s head.She hunkeredlow over Gaea’s neck, biting her lip to keep from crying out asanother arrow barely missed Wolf.Glancing over her shoulder, shesaw the riders advancing, two of them notching arrows to theirbows.
An arrow whistled overhead and sunkinto the earth in front of Gaea, who shied to the right.Laraclasped her thighs tighter around the mare’s heaving belly andleaned them both to the left, the right, and the left again.Another screaming whistle, and Lara felt a searing pain as an arrowgrazed her right shoulder.She cried out without meaning to andjubilant shouts came off the men.Another cry, loud, fierce, andfearsome, rent the air.Lara looked over her shoulder as the Blackcame crashing out of the woods to her back, Talon standing in hisstirrups, holding his longsword high.
“Ride, Lara,” he yelled asthe men swung their horses around to meet him.“Ride.”
“Get the witch,” Lothairshouted, and Fulrad headed straight for her.“We’ll takeGuiscard.”
Lara glanced at the woods she’d beenriding for.She had a good chance of disappearing into them beforeFulrad caught up to her, but she couldn’t leave Talon to fight thisbattle alone.She wouldn’t.Drawing her waist knife, she swung Gaeaaround and rode straight for Fulrad with a feral snarl.
Fulrad raised his short sword, andLara grinned like a crazy woman, thinking it was a good thing she’ddestroyed his knee, else he’d be wielding a longsword.Gripping herknife tight, she hunkered over Gaea’s withers, intending to leapfrom the mare’s back onto Fulrad and knock him off his horse—whenWolf surged ahead and grabbed Fulrad by the calf of his leg andpulled him off his saddle and onto the ground.Lara never slowed orlooked back as the screams ended.She kept riding for Talon as Wolffinished what he’d started in the keep’s stables.
She rode past one man lying on theground, his arm severed from his shoulder, as another man, sworddrawn, circled Talon.The arrow sticking out of Talon’s thighalmost had her stilling.But then Lothair sat his horse twentypaces from the fight, setting an arrow to his bow, and Lara pressedGaea forward, willing her breath into the exhausted mare as theBlack charged the other horse chest first, sending it stumblingback.Talon stood in his stirrups, and holding his sword with bothhands, clove the man’s head from his shoulders.