Banhael turned crafty then. He circled Gar, huge sword weaving, seeking an opening. Gar circled around his circle, grinning, then obligingly dropped his guard. “Hah!” Banhael shouted in glee, and lunged. But Gar’s sword leaped back up, and Banhael saw to his horror that he was hurtling straight toward its point. He tried to stop in midair, to twist aside—and Gar’s blade circled the outlaw’s sword, catching it and flinging it away. Then Gar stepped in, striking with his sword hilt, and Banhael, off balance, fell. He pushed himself up—and found himself staring at the tip of Gar’s sword.
“A man once told me that, from this position, all you can look forward to is a quick surrender or a quicker death,” Gar said pleasantly. “Which do you choose?”
The outlaws shouted and started forward—and Dirk’s horse leaped out along their line, his sword swinging in circles—just in front of the bandits’ noses. Sharp cracks echoed as his blade cut the heads off a couple of spears, and the men crowded backward.
“I surrender,” Banhael croaked.
“Well, let me see,” Gar mused. “Shall I let you live? Accept your surrender? I think there should be a price for my self-denial—a night’s lodging, let us say, and a good supper of roast meat.”
Banhael glared at him, but he was glaring up along the length of Gar’s rapier, so he forced himself to say, choking on every word, “Of course. Be our guests. We will be delighted to give you our finest guest hut and our choicest cuts.”
“Of meat, I hope you mean. Well, thank you! We accept your hospitality.” Gar withdrew his sword and held down a hand. Banhael took it and clambered to his feet. “I don’t think I need to tell you what will happen if you’re foolish enough to try to betray us,” Gar said with a slight smile.
Banhael looked into his eyes and shuddered. “Breach hospitality? We wouldn’t think of it!”
“Oh, yes you would,” Dirk called.
Banhael reddened. “Well, we would never do anything about it. Your persons shall be sacred, sir knights, as shall those of these folk you’ve so strangely fought to protect.”
“Not so strange as all that,” Gar told him. “Coll is our squire, and these women are his mother and sister.”
“Yes, we’ve had the pleasure of meeting,” Banhael said dryly. “Well, come along, then.” He turned to bark orders to his men, and they set off through the forest.
“Not quite so quickly, if you please,” Gar said with an edge to his voice, “and I’d appreciate it if you’d choose a pathway more suited to horses.”
The outlaws slowed, and Banhael glanced back at him, glowering. “Well, come along, then!”
“Quickly, you three,” Gar said softly.
Coll led his mother and sister scrambling out from their lean-to, then fell behind them as they hurried after the bandits. He looked up at Gar. “The outlaws’ camp is anything but the place we want to go.”
“You’ve nothing to fear, with the two of us beside you,” Gar assured him.
Dirk explained, “Gar beat Banhael in a fair fight. That took the boss outlaw down in his band’s view, which means they could turn on him. He has to boost himself back up, and the easiest way to do that is to chum up to Gar.”
Coll gave him a wary glance. “What’s the harder way?”
“To ambush us,” Gar told him, “killing us in our sleep, for example. But he knows he could get killed that way, and so do his men.”
Dirk nodded. “We’re not fools enough to sleep without leaving someone on watch, and he knows it.”
“How?”
“If none of Earl Insol’s soldiers have fled to Banhael’s band yet,” Gar said, “they will soon—and they’ll carry rumors about the two stranger knights who led the king’s forces.”
Coll looked up in alarm. “Earl Insol lost, then?”
“Oh yes,” Gar assured him, “and the king won, easily.”
“If you don’t count the number of peasant soldiers dead on the battlefield,” Dirk said grimly, “and the number of serfs who got trampled underfoot.”
Gar shrugged. “When have these aristocrats ever counted any body that wasn’t encased in armor?”
A vision of men of his own village lying dead and bleeding flashed before Coll’s eyes. Grief swamped him, then yielded to the slow anger that began to burn inside him again.
“Grieve, then let it pass as a river flows past a ford,” Gar said softly. “Then perhaps we can find some way to end this ceaseless fighting, and the deaths that go with it.”
“Be glad none of the dead are your own this time,” Dirk said, equally softly.
Coll nodded, letting the anger push the grief aside until there would be time to deal with it—and until he was sure it was warranted; he hadn’t actually seen any dead men he had known yet. “But won’t the king be angry when you don’t come back?”
“His Majesty may regret losing two such useful knights,” Gar acknowledged, “but men are always disappearing in battle, especially when they refuse to wear full armor. When we do come back, he will be delighted that we have escaped the enemy, or found our way out of the swamps, and won’t ask too closely why it took us so long.”
“There are advantages to being useful,” Dirk agreed.
The outlaws’ camp surprised them all. It was a regular village, hidden deep within the greenwood, surrounded by trunks and roofed over by leafy boughs. Men went about their tasks—fletching arrows, skinning game, thatching roofs, practicing archery. A few children ran here and there in some frantic game, and there and here, a woman stirred a pot or roasted a fowl over a fire.
“Ah!” Mama cried. “Decent cooking!” And she bustled Dicea off to the nearest campfire, to chatter merrily with the woman there. The cook looked up in surprise, then smiled and answered a question. In minutes, they were all laughing and gossiping.
Banhael shook his head in wonder. “Women! Total strangers, and they’re god-sibs in five minutes!”
“My mother has a way of making friends,” Coll told him.
“She does indeed!”
“You do seem to have quite a few women,” Gar pointed out, looking about the camp. “Why were you so desperate to find more?”
“Because all my men want them, but only one out of five has one,” Banhael answered shortly. “There’s constant fighting over it. I could almost wish for a priest to come and set some marriages, so my men would know which women were taken and not to be stolen away!”
“Your men?” Gar turned back to him. “Are you the leader of this whole motley crew, then?”
“I am,” Banhael answered, with a level, defiant glare. “How fortunate,” Gar said mildly. “Then I won’t have to fight twice.”
“Would you dare?” Banhael demanded. “I’ve four times as many men around me now!”
“The ones you had didn’t do you much good before,” Gar pointed out.
Banhael glared at him, but something distracted him—maybe the rattle as Dirk loosened his rapier in its scabbard—and he turned away with a snarl.
“Where is this guest’s hut you told us about?” Dirk asked.
“Come along, I’ll show you,” Banhael grunted. “Such honored guests should be led by the captain himself!”
He took them to a but that was almost identical to all the others. Dirk ducked inside while Gar strolled around the outside, inspecting. “Needs a bit of new thatch, doesn’t it?”