Guillot raised his eyebrows and looked at dal Sason, but the other banneret seemed just as surprised as Guillot.
Another highwayman dropped where he stood. The man with the knife at dal Sason’s throat collapsed an instant later, leaving Guillot no further impediment. There seemed little point in grabbing a sword, so he charged, slamming his shoulder into the remaining highwayman.
The element of surprise enabled Gill to wrestle his way to the top of their sprawl. He rained blow after blow onto his enemy, pouring out every ounce of his rage and shame. His anger carried him along as he drew his dagger and plunged it down. By the time he stopped, the man was dead.
Getting to his feet, Guillot looked around. Dal Sason met Gill’s gaze with a puzzled expression, clearly no wiser than Gill as to what had felled the other three. Guillot moved from body to body—all were out cold, but showed no signs of injury. Being a gentleman of the road was an executable offence, and the responsibility for that was one of the many tasks Guillot’s seigneurship imposed upon him. As distasteful as dispatching a defenceless foe was, there was no telling who these men might harm, given the chance to do so. He made it quick, and took what little solace he could in knowing they wouldn’t feel any pain.
“You two all right?” A female voice called from the dusky gloom.
“We are,” dal Sason called back.
Solène appeared from behind a bush, a stone in one hand and a loop of cloth in the other.
“Looks like you boys got yourselves in some trouble.”
“Looks that way,” Guillot said.
“It’s getting cold. You should probably make a start with that fire,” she said to dal Sason.
“Don’t bother,” Guillot said, retrieving his sword. “I’m not sleeping next to these vermin. There was another reasonable camping spot a short way back. If we move fast, we can be set up before we lose the light completely.”
They walked in silence, leading the horses. Guillot chewed over two things. The first was his humiliation during the swordfight. He had never experienced that before, not from a lowly highwayman, nor the most esteemed of fencing masters. Even at his low ebb, he had expected to be capable of more. The second thing was Solène’s makeshift slingshot, and her seemingly lethal accuracy with it.
Once the horses were secured at their new camp, dal Sason set about building a fire. Even as Guillot started to whittle tinder from a stick, he thought about how much he loathed himself—how could he have allowed the one thing he had been so good at escape him?
He took a seat by the assembled firewood, drew out his flint, and started to work it against the edge of his dagger, creating a peel of sparks with each pass.
“That was quite an impressive display with the slingshot,” Guillot said.
Solène shrugged.
“I didn’t see any stones flying through the air. Or hear them.”
“Not my problem if you don’t see or hear well,” she said. “But I reckon that must have gone some way to settling my debt. Hurry up with that fire. I’m freezing.”
He looked at her. She was shivering; it was a mild evening, but she looked as though she had crawled out of a freezing river. And missed a few nights’ sleep.
“The thing is,” Guillot said, “the men you hit … None of them had a head wound. They didn’t have any wounds at all.” He fixed his gaze on her.
“Oh, for gods’ sake,” she said, shivering hard. “I saved you. Does it matter? Just be grateful.”
“I am grateful,” Guillot said, pausing in his effort to set fire to the tinder. “Very. Thank you. Only, I’m a little confused.” The colour was gone from her skin, and her eyes were heavy. She looked as though she was about to drop from the cold.
“Light the bloody fire, would you,” she said. On her utterance, it sparked to life, a long tendril of flame rising from the centre of the pile of wood. She hugged her knees to her chest, her eyes wide. The expression on her face was like that of a guilty child.
“I, uh…” Guillot looked at his untouched tinder. “Well,” he said, “that really is something.”
Dal Sason had been close to falling asleep, but now was fully awake and staring. If he was as surprised as Gill, he certainly did a better job of hiding it.
“Tell me,” Guillot said, his voice calm, “did you really turn into a goat?”
“Of course not,” Solène said. “I turned him into a pig. Only for a couple of minutes, though.”
Guillot laughed. Dragons. A sorceress. What would be next? The Prince Bishop announcing he was going to donate all his wealth to the mendicants? No, that would be too far-fetched. Dal Sason remained silent.
“You aren’t afraid?” Solène said.
“Why should I be?” Guillot said. “I’ve just seen you drop three grown men without laying a hand, or a stone, on them. If you wanted to hurt me, you’d have done it long ago. Come closer to the fire. I’ll stay awake with you until you’ve warmed up some.”
CHAPTER 12
Each morning, there seemed to be something new for them all to digest. First, it had been Gill’s revelation that dragons roamed the land once more. Now, their new travelling companion was a user of magic.
They packed up their camp in silence. Guillot kept his mouth shut, not out of any discomfort at being in the presence of a mage, but rather because of the memory of his fight with the highwayman. He had been a great swordsman for so long, the idea was part of his very being. To have it stripped away left him feeling hollow. He had always thought it would simply be there, waiting for him, if he ever needed to call on it again. How to get it back, though? He feared that he didn’t even know where to start.
They set off for Mirabay once again. There seemed to be no question of her not going with them. Guillot didn’t bring up the matter. She seemed to know how to look after herself, and if she wanted to go to Mirabay, he had no reason to stop her.
“What you said about the Intelligenciers,” Solène said after they had been riding for a little while, the first word any of them had uttered. “You wouldn’t actually do that, would you? Knowing what you know?”
Guillot shook his head. “It’s not my business.”
“You said you were the king’s representative…”
“Not really. Not for a long time.”
“It was a lie?”
Guillot smiled. “It wasn’t. I swore you would get justice, and I reckon setting you free did that. I still do. I don’t believe for a second what you did to Arnoul was anything other than self-defence. Admittedly, before last night, I didn’t believe you’d done anything to him at all. Still, I’m not going to lose any sleep over my decision.”
“Why’d you stop them, then? If you didn’t intend to hand me over to the Intelligenciers?”
He sighed. “Let’s just say I don’t like injustice, and leave it at that.”
“Why aren’t you afraid of me, like everyone else?”
For the first time that day, Gill realised he didn’t have a headache, and was grateful for the fact. “You’ve already asked me that.”
“I want a better answer.”
He shrugged. “I’ve been around enough people who wanted to do me harm to know what they look like.”
“And I don’t look like that?”
Guillot couldn’t restrain a chuckle. “No, you don’t. Then again, I’ll bet those highwaymen would have said the same thing.”
They rode in silence awhile longer before Guillot’s curiosity got the better of him. “Did you know you were a … sorceress, before you came to Trelain?”