But instead of fear, Sybilla began to feel the familiar rumblings of anger. “I said hold!” Sybilla shouted up at Wigmund. “Hold your men!”
The general glared at her, but relayed the command. He did not order the men to stand down, and Sybilla had not expected him to. Sybilla knew they would only be pushed so far, with or without her word.
Still, once they fired on soldiers of the king, their fates were sealed.
Sybilla tossed the earlier plea for negotiations aside and, without unpinning the still-flaming arrow from her gown, removed the latest message.
Last chance.
JG
“That pompous ass,” Sybilla growled, her fury spreading like thick ice on a deep lake. “Wigmund,” she called out calmly as she jerked the extinguished arrow free from the wood.
“My lady?”
“Bring your bow. Wrap and dip a fletching—I want to be certain it is seen.”
Sybilla turned the dead arrow in her hand, using her other hand to place the most recent missive on the flat shield. With the coaled end of the arrow she scratched a short, crude message, and then tossed her makeshift writing utensil aside.
When she looked up, Fallstowe’s general stood above her, his longbow in one hand and a single arrow in the other, its end bulbous and dripping with pitch.
Sybilla stood in one swift motion, still anchored to the wooden shield by the flickering arrow, the parchment crumpled in her hand. She seized the projectile Wigmund offered and then glanced at the general out of the corner of her eye as she tied her message to the arrow.
“I haven’t the strength to draw a longbow, good sir; I shall have the one across your back.”
If the general was surprised that Fallstowe’s lady intended to send the message herself, he hid it well, ducking his head to remove his shorter weapon and holding it toward Sybilla. Before she took it, she bent at the waist and yanked the flaming arrow from her hem, quickly touching it to the primed fletching in her hand. Then she grabbed the bow and turned to the battlements once more.
“I shall be the only one to fire,” she advised her general, and was satisfied as the command to hold made its way around the turret and away into the night.
Sybilla stepped into the embrasure and knocked her arrow, the bubbling pitch hissing, the heat from the flames rising up to warm her face. She knew she had only seconds before she was spotted. She quickly raised her elbows and lowered her weapon until she had sighted in on her target.
The carriage. A lone archer stood with his back leaned against the ornate conveyance, bow in one hand, arms crossed over his chest, as he conversed casually with another soldier. He paid Fallstowe no mind.
She drew the bow, her muscles quivering with effort. The flesh of the first two fingers of her right hand felt cut to the bone by the bowstring with no archer’s glove to protect her. Her shoulders, chest strained, but she no longer felt like stepping off the ledge into oblivion. In fact, she felt rather better.
Below, the archer’s face turned upward, and she heard his faint shout of surprised alarm.
One more fight then, for posterity’s sake.
Sybilla felt her lips curve into a smile, then she let her arrow fly.
ZEBRA BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2012 by Heather Grothaus
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ISBN: 978-1-4201-2785-0
Never Seduce A Scoundrel Page 29