Duncan ran to Conrad, pushed at him so he could reach his arms.
“What goes on, m’lord?”
“Quiet,” Duncan whispered.
He cut the cords that bound Conrad’s arms and handed him the knife.
“Free your legs,” he said, “then cut loose the others. The second guard is coming back. I’ll take care of him.”
Conrad grabbed the knife. “Thank dear God,” he said.
As he ran toward the willows, Duncan could hear the shuffling tread of Robin returning, floundering through the sand. Duncan stooped to scoop up the claymore that Einer had dropped. It was an awkward, heavy weapon that did not fit his fist. His numbed fingers had some difficulty grasping it, but finally he managed to get a good grip on it.
Robin began talking to Einer even before he rounded the willows. “I took an unbroached cask of it,” he crowed triumphantly. “No one noticed. Or I don’t think they did. All of them are slobbered.”
He grunted, shifting the cask from one shoulder to the other. “We have enough to last out the night,” he said.
“More than enough to last the night. There’ll be some left over we can wash our feet in if we feel the urge.”
He came around the corner of the clump of willows, and Duncan stepped swiftly forward. The stroke had no finesse, no fanciness, no swordsmanship. He simply crashed the edge of the claymore down on the top of Robin’s head. The skull split with the sound of a ripe melon popping; the rusty iron stopped only when it reached the breast bone. The violence of the iron striking the heavy bone set up a vibration that made Duncan’s forearm tingle. Robin made no sound. He fell like a tree before an axe. The cask hit the ground and bounced, rolling for a ways, its contents slopping in it.
Duncan bent over the body, reached for the hilt of Robin’s blade and jerked it free. Then he ran for the manuscript, and with the two weapons tucked beneath his armpit, held by the pressure of his arm, he picked up the manuscript, folded it once, unneatly, and thrust it inside his shirt, where it lay against his skin.
Andrew was free, staggering about on unsteady legs, and so also was Meg. Conrad was bending over Tiny, carefully cutting the cords that held the big dog’s jaws together. Duncan ran for Daniel, roped between two trees. As he approached, the horse shied away. Duncan spoke to him softly. “It’s all right, Daniel. Take it easy, boy.” He slashed at the ropes and as they came free, the horse lunged forward, then stood trembling. Beauty, already freed, trotted up, dragging the rope that had been her halter.
Conrad was moving toward Duncan, and Duncan held out one of the claymores toward him. Conrad raised his hand to show he had his club. “They left it lying there beside me.” Duncan tossed one of the claymores to one side.
“What the hell’s the matter with Andrew?” he asked. The hermit was stumbling about, looking at the ground.
Duncan hurried to him, grasped him by the arm. “Come on,” he said. “We must get out of here.”
“My staff,” gasped Andrew. “I must find my staff.”
He made a sudden lurch forward. “Ah, there it is,” he said.
He grabbed it up and thumped it on the ground.
“Where to, m’lord?” asked Conrad.
“Back into the hills. We’ll have a better chance there.”
Conrad sprinted forward, snatched up Meg, threw her on Daniel’s back. “Hang on tight,” he said. “Stay low so a branch doesn’t scrape you off. You’ll have to cling with all your might, for you haven’t got a saddle. I don’t even know where the goddamn saddle is.”
16
They halted in the clearing on the top of the rocky ridge where they had stopped the night before to watch the Wild Huntsman careen across the sky. The moon was low in the west and a few birds were beginning to stir and twitter in the woods below them. Meg slid off Daniel, grateful for the halt, and Andrew sat down on a small boulder.
“They’re all beat out, the both of them,” Duncan told Conrad. “Maybe we should hole in here and wait to see what happens.”
Conrad looked around. “Good place,” he said. “We could get our backs against those rocks and hold them off, should they come upon us. Better than being caught out in the woods.”
He held out his wrists for Duncan to see. They still carried ugly red welts from the bonds and the skin was abraded and bleeding. “I notice yours are the same,” he said.
“They tied us tight,” said Duncan. “If it hadn’t been for Cedric…”
“He should have come along with us. If the Reaver finds him out…”
“Maybe he won’t find him out. All of them were dead drunk. Someone had given them three casks of wine. And of course, they’d have to try to drink it up. Who in the world would have given them wine?”
“Maybe they found it. In one of the burned homesteads.”
“No. Einer, or was it Robin, said someone had given it to them.”
“You asked Old Cedric to come along with us?”
“That’s right. He said he couldn’t. That his bees had need of him.”
“Ghost didn’t show up last night.”
“Maybe he did and saw what had happened and went tearing off to try to locate Snoopy.”
“Had he come down, he would have scared the Jesus out of those two guards. They’d have lit out.”
Duncan shook his head. “What good would it have done? Even so, Ghost could have done nothing to cut us loose.”
“Yes,” said Conrad, “maybe that is it. Maybe he did show up and then left again. But what do we do now, m’lord?”
“We’ll talk it over, think about it,” Duncan said. “I don’t know quite yet what we should do. Maybe find a place to hole up until the situation clears a bit.”
“If it clears.”
“We have to do something. We have no food, no blankets. Nothing. And the Reaver took the wizard’s amulet.”
“Small loss,” said Conrad. “Just a pretty bauble.”
“It may be more than that,” said Duncan. “It may be a powerful talisman. It may have provided us protection. We were able to escape the enchantment, we defeated the hairless ones with ease, the werewolves turned tail and ran. It may have been the amulet that brought all these things about.”
“It gave us no protection from the Reaver.”
“That is right,” said Duncan. “It did not help us against the Reaver. But I am sure it helped us with the others.”
Andrew rose from his boulder and came over to where they were standing.
“I know,” he said, “what you must think of me. There was no time for it to be done before, but now that we have a breathing space perhaps you may want to castigate me for the dereliction of my duty. I was the one who should have kept the watch. You left me on guard against any seeming danger. But I dozed. I caught a catnap, I am sure of that.
That must have been the manner in which they came upon us, with me nodding while I should have been a-watch.”
“So that is how it came about,” rumbled Conrad. “I had wondered briefly on it, but had no time to think any further.
So you were fast asleep. Why should you have needed sleep? You slept all the night before, slumped in Daniel’s saddle.”
“That is true, of course,” said Andrew. “But it was not restful sleep. It was not the kind of sleep you judged it to be. Dozing was more like it. Not sound and solid sleep. Although I do not offer that as an extenuation of my failing. It all comes of a certain weakness in me, a weakness of the body. My mind may tell the body to perform, but the body fails. I am of not such stuff as martyrs may be made.”
“And you also,” said Conrad, “have a mouth that keeps running on.”
“Think no further on it,” Duncan said. “To each of us our weaknesses. In the end, it turned out all right.”
“I shall endeavor,” Andrew said, “to recompense for my failure in this instance. I shall try the harder to do my bounden duty as a soldier of the Lord. Henceforth, I swear to you, you may depend upon me in all surety.”