With nothing else to do, he presented the sword, scabbard and all. The covered blade was a clumsy defense, but it was all Roder had. The bandit feinted a throw, and Roder waved his sheathed blade wildly. His grip was poor, and the heavy weapon flew from his grasp, rumbling through the air to land six feet behind his attacker. Gerthan grinned and took aim.
Somewhere in the dense greenery a horn blasted. A black arrow, fletched with gray goose feathers, sprouted from Gerthan’s ribs. He groaned loudly and dropped the dagger, following it to the ground a half-second later. Shouts followed, and the sound of men and horses crashing through the foliage. The horn blew again, closer. Roder spun around, trying to spot the source of his unexpected salvation. He saw Sandys vault onto a pony. Armed men on horseback and on foot were flooding the little clearing, dozens of them. More arrows flickered into the turf around him. Who was attacking? Another outlaw band, warring on Sandys’s gang?
Heart hammering, he knew he should do something. Picking up Gerthan’s dagger, Roder tore after Sandys, leaping over stones and tree roots. The bandit’s pony scrambled ahead, opening the gap between them until a trio of horsemen appeared directly in Sandys’s path. Sandys wrenched his horse around and found Roder blocking his way, dagger in hand.
Shouting, the bandit slapped the reins on either side of the pony’s neck and galloped at Roder. Whatever rush of courage Roder felt a moment before left him when he saw Sandys bearing down on him. He reversed his grip on the dagger as he’d seen Gerthan do, and flung it at the onrushing bandit. The next thing Roder knew he was flying through the air. He hit the ground hard and cut his chin. He didn’t see the thrown dagger land on the nose of Sandys’s horse, rapping the animal smartly. The dappled brown-and-white pony reared.
Roder clambered past the pony’s churning legs and threw himself on Sandys. The bandit was a seasoned fighter, but he’d fallen across some rocks, struck his head, and lay there partly stunned. Roder landed his hundred seventy-five pounds on top of him.
“Get off, damn you!” Sandys shouted, trying to shift the bigger man aside. Roder got his hands on Sandys’s wrists and pinned them to the ground. Sandys had an impressive cursing vocabulary and exercised it freely. While they struggled, men and horses surged around them.
The shouting and neighing subsided. Roder glanced away for only a second and saw the mounted men around them wore the tabard of the Fangoth garrison. Knights! He straightened his elbows, pushing himself up for a better look. Sandys took advantage of his distraction to plant a boot on Roder’s chest and heave him off. He rolled to his feet and found himself staring at the somber faces of twenty Dark Knights.
Roder grabbed Sandys and turned him around. Face streaked with dirt and blood (most of it from Roder’s chin cut), Sandys’s shirt was torn halfway to the waist. Beneath his jerkin, Sandys’s chest was tightly wound with a long linen bandage. It took a moment for Roder to understand why-”Lord” Sandys was a woman.
As he stared at the female outlaw, Sandys lashed out and punched him hard in the face. The Knights roared with laughter as Roder staggered back. He spat blood and found an eyetooth was loose.
“I’ve had enough of you!” he said in a rush of newfound rage. But he found his way to Sandys blocked by an imposing gray charger. Roder was about to take the rider to task when he realized who’d stopped him. There was no mistaking that iron gray beard and leonine head.
“Lord Burnond!” In a paroxysm of relief he clasped the old commandant’s leg. “My lord, you came after me!”
“Get away, boy,” Burnond said crossly. “We’re here to settle these outlaws, not save you.” He looked to the other side, where Sandys stood with her two surviving men. “Put them in chains,” Burnond said. “Add them to the ones we’ve already bagged.”
Foot soldiers prodded Sandys forward. She glared at Roder, He couldn’t fathom her expression-it was more than anger. Hatred? Or something like grudging respect?
Burnond ordered the herald to blow his cornet, and more men emerged from the trees. Some were in the livery of the Fangoth garrison, others Roder recognized from Castle Camlargo. If both knightly contingents were present, then there were some two hundred Knights and men-at-arms in the clearing.
“Bring the prisoners along!” Burnond shouted.
Lines of captured brigands, chained together in long strings, filed past Burnond Everride. Roder was astonished at their number. Carefully, diffidently, he asked where the other outlaws came from.
Burnond cleared his throat. “We took Bloody Gottrus’s camp last night,” he said. “Gottrus himself died fighting, but we captured most of his gang.”
Sandys and her two surviving comrades were thrown in with the rest. Roder stood quietly beside the commandant until a shackled Sandys staggered past. The sight of her in chains affected him strangely.
“Sandys-” he said, stepping toward her.
Burnond ordered the prisoners to halt. “Is this the bandit known as Lord Sandys?”
She looked at the ferns, trodden into pulp by the Knights. “That’s her,” Roder said quietly.
“Her? There’ve been rumors to that effect, but I didn’t believe them. Very well, let her be so marked.” A squire hung a wooden tag around Sandys’s neck with her name painted on it. Burnond was about the dismiss her when Roder remembered the dispatch.
“Wait!” he said, darting out to snatch the parchment from Sandys’s boot. “Your dispatch, my lord!”
“My what? Oh, that.” Burnond took the scroll from Roder and crumpled it in his fist. “It’s nothing.”
“What? It’s a vital message for Lord Laobert!”
“Still playing your part, I see,” Sandys said wearily. “Give it up! It was all a ruse, wasn’t it?” She nodded at Roder. “You sent this mercenary into the forest posing as a Knight, to find us out, didn’t you?”
Burnond arched an iron-gray brow. “Roder’s no Knight, and he’s no mercenary, either.”
“You sent out this clever spy with a fake dispatch,” she said, “knowing the forest brotherhood couldn’t resist waylaying him. All the while you were on his trail with your troops, waiting to pounce on us.”
“In a manner of speaking, my ‘lord.’ Roder’s mission was a diversion, to distract your kind from our forces moving into the woods from east and west. I never dreamed this trap of mine would catch such big game as you and Bloody Gottrus. You’re wrong about the boy, though-he’s no spy, no righting man at all. He’s the stableboy at Castle Camlargo, that’s all.”
A silence ensued as Sandys glanced from Roder to Burnond and back to Roder.
“The boy’s a fool,” Burnond said. “He has no aptitude for the manly arts.”
Sandys managed to smile through her swollen lips. “I’m the fool, Burnond. Roder had me convinced-up to the point I discovered he couldn’t read. After that I had him pegged as a bounty hunter. Stableboy? Your stable-boy attacked me on foot while I was mounted, and only his quick thinking kept me from getting away. If all your Knights were as manly as Roder, the bandits would have been cleared from this forest long ago.”
He stared at them both, speechless. Lord Burnond had tricked him and now exposed him as an utter dunce- and now it seemed that Lord Sandys the outlaw was sticking up for him.
“Your eloquence is misplaced,” Burnond replied loftily. “Those who resist the forces of order will inevitably fall. That is their destiny. Roder’s destiny is in the stable at Camlargo. In two days he’ll be back there, and you’ll be in the dungeon for your many crimes. Move them out, sergeant!”
The line of prisoners lurched onward. His face burning, Roder watched Sandys go. In fact, he found he couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
The capture of Lord Sandys and a large portion of Bloody Gottrus’s feared outlaw band created a sensation in the countryside. People flocked to Castle Camlargo from as far away as Lemish to see the infamous brigands brought to justice. Burnond Everride compounded matters by issuing a proclamation that anyone with evidence against Gottrus’s or Sandys’s gangs should come to Camlargo and confront the villains at their trial. People came by the hundreds to do just that.