The patrol passed by, and Amara slowly began to relax again-until the last rider looked around, then reined in his horse and dropped to the forest floor. He tossed the ends of his reins over a low-hanging branch, and began walking toward them.
Bernard moved very slowly, very calmly. He lifted his bow and drew it in careful, deliberate silence.
The outlaw swerved away from them when he was less than twenty feet off, sighed, and began relieving himself against the trunk of a tree.
Though Amara could not even string her husband's bow, Bernard held the powerful weapon at full draw without a quiver. He remained still, his breathing measured, his eyes half-closed and lazy-looking. Amara felt herself quivering with tension, and she realized that her knuckles had gone white where she had ahold of the First Lord's forearm. She itched to move her hand down to her sword, but refrained. The motion might stir a leaf, or break a twig, and warn the enemy of their presence. More to the point, her sword wouldn't do her any good at the moment, even were it already in her hand. Bernard's bow would be their best defense.
The bandit finished up, muttered something under his breath, and turned to go.
Gaius's weight shifted. Amara glanced sideways at him in alarm. His face had gone pale with pain, and his right leg, the one still recovering from his injuries, was quivering against the ground. It didn't make much noise-but it was enough.
The outlaw suddenly turned, his hand flying to his sword, his eyes narrow as they scanned the forest around them. Amara was lying utterly unprotected on the forest floor, within range of a good, long lunge, and the man was facing her. He simply stared, eyes moving slowly from left to right. He stood there for a full minute, just looking and listening.
Amara's nerves began screaming in anxiety. If the First Lord's leg twitched again, there was no chance, none at all, that the man would miss it. If he had the capacity to craft through Bernard's woodcrafting, he would be within a heartbeat of striking out at Gaius, unless Bernard's first shot was instantly lethal. If the man managed to survive the first shot, even if only briefly, Gaius might not be able to defend himself. If that happened, Amara would have to put herself between the outlaw and the First Lord, and she drew upon Cirrus to give her limbs the speed she would need to interpose herself in time.
All the while, Bernard stood directly in front of the man, bow drawn, never moving.
"What the crows are you doing?" blared a sudden voice.
Amara jerked in surprise, and half panicked as the movement stirred the earth and brush beneath her.
The outlaw didn't hear it. He reacted the same way, whirling in place and drawing his sword.
"Crows take you, Tonnar," the outlaw growled. "Scared me out of ten years of life."
Another outlaw appeared, his horse nudging slowly through the brush toward the first man. "Life you lead, I did you a favor."
"Bastard."
"You don't go off alone, fool," Tonnar said amiably. "Do it again, and Julius will have your balls."
"Julius," the outlaw said, his voice sullen. "He has us riding around in crow-begotten nowhere when there's a war on. You know what kind of loot we could be getting if we were at the real fight?"
"Stomach plague mostly, the way I hear it. We're getting paid steady for this. Don't knock it."
"There's no spy running around out here," the outlaw complained. "We're wasting our time."
"Knights Aeris don't fly this far behind enemy lines for no reason. They either dropped someone off-"
"Or picked someone up, in which case we're out here wearing our asses to nothing for no reason."
"You're riding. You're getting paid. Maybe we find someone, maybe we don't. Either we get the five-hundred-bull bounty, or we go back without anybody trying to gut us. There's no loser here."
"Except me, Tonnar. I have to listen to you run your mouth."
"You don't get that nag back in line, you won't have to listen to anything ever again," Tonnar replied. Then he turned his horse away and continued on in the direction he had been.
The outlaw scowled after him, savagely kicked a stone on the ground.
The stone bounded across the earth and bounced off of Bernard's leg.
Amara tensed.
But the outlaw hadn't seen it. He had already turned to his horse. He mounted, kicked the animal with unnecessary vigor, and sent it cantering after the rest of his party.
Bernard didn't lower his bow until a full minute after the man was out of sight, then he released the tension on the weapon and his breath with the same slow, careful exhalation. He lowered the bow and rolled his right shoulder, as if working out stiffness. Then he turned back to Amara.
"I'm going to shadow them for a bit," he murmured. "Make sure that they're not doubling back. Stay here, stay low. I'll be back shortly."
"Be careful," she told him.
He winked at her, and then turned away. The woodcrafting slid away from Amara, and the dappled sunlight brightened again, bright enough to make her squint against it.
She turned to Gaius, and whispered, "Sire? Are you all right?"
"Leg cramped," Gaius growled softly. "Started twitching." He rubbed one hand hard on his right leg. "Crows, that's uncomfortable. Pardon my language, Countess."
"Yes, sire," Amara said, giving him a small smile. She glanced after Bernard, and said, "We can change the bandages while we're here."
Gaius grimaced but nodded to her. He hauled himself about roughly, sitting up and extending his right leg toward her.
"Well," she said, as she went to work, "what did you think of that?"
"I think our young friend there isn't going to survive this patrol," Gaius replied. His voice tightened as she peeled the bandages from his right foot, revealing the discolored sores that had refused to completely heal. "And I think it's lucky they rode by in front of us. If we'd passed through a few minutes sooner, they'd have walked right across our trail and followed it straight to us."
Amara got out the canteen of salted water and poured it over Gaius's foot. He looked away, his expression distant and cool, but his leg jerked as the cleansing wash entered the sores. Amara set about washing and drying his foot, then putting a fresh bandage over it, before replacing his stocking and the heavy leather slipper Bernard had fashioned for Gaius.
"Quite cool in a crisis, your man." Gaius sighed, once she was finished.
"You noticed. I thought I was going to have to scream, at the end there."
"As was I-though for different reasons. I didn't dare use any metalcrafting to keep the pain down." He smiled and dug into his pack, extracting a flask of water. He swallowed most of it down, and then settled back onto the forest floor again, closing his eyes. "I can't ever remember going for so long without per-forming any crafting. It's like… walking around with my feet and hands asleep all the time. I hadn't realized how difficult it would be." He shook his head once, then closed his eyes and dropped into what looked like a light slumber.
Amara didn't disturb him. Though Gaius had insisted upon moving ahead, each hour cost him considerable effort. Though he never complained, the pain of his foot clearly wore greatly on him, and he leaned more heavily on the staff as each day went on.
She sat down with her back to a tree, drew her sword, and quietly stood watch over the sleeping First Lord, until Bernard suddenly appeared from beneath his woodcrafting, half an hour later.
Amara twitched in surprise and frowned at him.
"Sorry," he murmured. Then he knelt down and hugged her.
Amara sighed, shook her head, and returned the embrace. He felt large and strong and warm, and she suddenly felt a great deal less worried. She knew that it was really a somewhat ridiculous thing to feel. Bernard, after all, was as vulnerable to harm as anyone. But somehow, when he was holding her, that didn't matter. She felt better for no rational reason at all-and she loved that feeling.