Jeratt’s eyes widened to hear himself described as Kerian’s “old father,” but he managed to keep still. He held out the brace of hares, and Felyce came close.
“Go,” she whispered, white-faced, her eyes bright and glittering with fear. “There’s a Knight inside. More are coming.”
A dark shape crossed before the window. Kerian’s blood ran quicker as Jeratt said, “Are you all right, Felyce?”
“Yes.” She pushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “I’m all right. He’s offered no harm, and he seems content to wait peaceably for his brother Knights.”
“Why are they here?”
Felyce shook her head. “I don’t know. He says little. I think they are scouts, Kerian, but the why of it doesn’t matter. They hunt Kagonesti, these Knights, but they haven’t forgotten what brought them here last year, the hunt for you.”
Again, the whiff of the stable. Kerian slapped Jeratt’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”
He hung on his heel, reluctant to leave.
“Go,” Felyce said, and now she spoke only to the half-elf, her pale cheek tinged with a flush of rose. “For the game, my thanks. Go!”
They did, before Felyce’s unwanted guest could come again to the window, curiosity growing, but they did not go far. Up the hill and around into the forest they found a place of concealment from which to watch. Neither spoke. Neither had to. They found a shelf of stone high above Felyce’s little dell, above the low, running breeze, and wedged themselves into the stony shelter.
Night fell. Three of Lord Thagol’s Knights came riding down the hill, following the same track Kerian and Jeratt had lately taken. They went in silence, no sound but the snorting of their horses, the clatter of hoofs on stone. The look of them, horses and men, spoke of a long ride. One pointed to the lights in the dell and rode swiftly down the hill to Felyce’s stone house. The others spurred to foflow.
Kerian watched them, narrow-eyed and thinking.
When they’d reached the dooryard, she leaned close to Jeratt and said, “They’ll be there all night. I don’t think they’ll hurt Felyce. “
Jeratt growled and snatched up his bow. Kerian stopped him. “No. If we go in, they’ll kill her right now. You can count on it Go back to the camp.”
There were, in all, but a dozen and a half outlaws there at this time, eighteen in all not counting Elder.
“Get me ten fighters and come back here.” Her eyes on the Knights, on the stone house below, Kerian said, “Nothing will happen to Felyce while you’re gone, and we have the bastards trapped.”
Jeratt grinned. He took up his bow and with no word slipped away into the night. He was not long gone.
Kerian followed the flight of an owl drifting on the night, wings wide, silently sailing. Concealed from sight of anyone below, she listened to the sigh of wind in the trees. In the dell, every window of Felyce’s house shone with light, orange glowing like eyes looking outward. Now and then a restless Knight would pass before one or another, upstairs or down.
“like they’ve commandeered the place,” Jeratt growled.
Kerian snorted. “They won’t hurt her as long as they need her to cook and fetch for them.”
They had three times seen Felyce walk out to the stream behind the house and return with laden buckets. By the light from her windows, they’d watched her lay the table in her front room and pile platters high with food.
“My hares,” Jeratt muttered sourly.
“Don’t worry,” Kerian said, gaze roaming the darkness. Somewhere in the forest, ranged round the lip of the dell, elf outlaws waited in utter silence. Their breaths did not make as soft a sigh as the wind. Kerian had asked for ten. Jeratt had found eight volunteers and challenged two vac-illators into joining. Her plan was simple and quickly explained. Her order, only one: Not one of Lord Thagol’s men would come out of the forest alive.
“They’ll leave at gray morning,” Jeratt said, not watching the forest but the dell. “They’ll probably take the south-going road, back toward the Qualinost Road and whatever tavern the Headsman is squatting in now.”
“Bayel says he’s at The Green Lea.”
Jeratt and Kerian sat in silence while stars wheeled across the sky, while the lonely silver moon set and the darkest hour came then died before the pale breath of dawnlight He was first to see the stirring of dark forms in the widow Felyce’s dooryard, the first to hear the impatient snort of a horse.
“Ready now,” Jeratt said, soft.
Kerian fingered the golden chain round her neck, the slender necklace Gilthas had given her on the night she’d left him. Ander had returned the token, and now the ring was whole again, two hands clasped.
“Ready soon,” she whispered, her lips close to Jeratt’s ear. She scanned the rim of the dell and saw nothing moving. She had been with these outlawed men and women on hunts; she knew how still they could keep and for how long.
“Jeratt,” she said, “one band should watch the north road, one the south. You take the north. There is only one signaclass="underline" the movement of Knights. You know what to do.”
They parted, slipping away until they occupied opposing sides of the high ground above the dell, each with a clear sight of the farm and the dooryard. Kerian had charge of a band of six. Even as she completed her orders, Ander came close and said, “They’re leaving the farmhouse, Kerian.”
She looked where he pointed and saw motion in the dooryard. The four humans wore faint outlines of light. Her elf eyes saw not only the flesh and bone shape of them, but the heat of their blood running, their life-force glimmering. They stood like red ghosts in the dooryard, and among them stood Felyce.
“She’s all right,” Ander said with a relieved breath.
Kerian stilled him with a gesture. Behind the sounds of the dawn, the first sleepy chirp of birds, a brook talking to itself, the wind rising then falling, she heard the voices of those in the dooryard. One Knight turned from speech with a fellow and nodded curtly to Felyce. Something small spun through the air between them, the first light winking on it. A coin dropped into the dooryard at Felyce’s feet The Knights kicked up their horses and rode out from the farmhouse yard, heading south. To the Green Lea, then, to Headsman Chance.
“Wait,” Kerian said to Ander. “Wait, and soon we’ll follow.”
In the forest others moved, Jeratt and his band of six. They didn’t move to join Kerian or pursue the Knights. Seven weaponed elves, outlaws and soldiers of an old, nearly forgotten cause, melted into the darkness of the wood and went by various ways to the Qualinost Road.
Kerian waited until she felt they must be well on their way. She smiled, thinking of a vise, and softly said, “Now Ander. Now we go.”
Four Knights rode through the graying forest. One professed himself pleased to see the sun pinking the sky, one smiled to see the shadows fade. Another watched the day prick out glitter on the stream they rode beside. His fellows also watched the water. A dragon’s enforcers, the strong arm of a Skull Knight, they went as though they were lords of the forest. One hawked and spat, the phlegm of a night of drinking from the widow’s wine cellar. In the pines, a jay shouted. From across the purling stream, another answered. Behind, the water splashed, two Knights turned and saw nothing but morning mist rising on the banks. Two others turned right and left, expecting to see the forest shimmer. The trees remained still. Not even the long, thin needles of the pines stirred in the morning breeze.
A horse snorted. One Knight slipped a hand low, gripping the pommel of the sword at his hip. The gesture sent tension running among them. Other hands touched weapons, seats shifted for balance.