Lady's Pursuit (Knight and Rogue Book 6)

by Bell, Hilari

  I read my final product to Rupert and Kathy when they returned, together and dogless, though Rupert now knew which direction the coach had gone, and one of the grooms was being laughed at for claiming that a golem had taken up residence under the stable.

  They thought I had the tone about right, so I wrote up a clean copy and signed the Liege’s name with a relaxed flourish — as if I was completely unaware this could get me hanged. It took several minutes to dry, but there was one more thing I had to practice...

  “What’ll you do for a seal?” Rupert asked. “Father wears that ring even when he sleeps. And if he does take it off, it’s guarded.”

  “As it should be.” I put the red wax stick I’d purchased beside the lit candle, and went over to the saddlebag that held, among other things, Rupert’s spare clothing. “The Liege’s seal is a legal guarantee, and it signifies a lot of power. But your family crest isn’t just on that ring. It’s on the sign of a tavern down the road, The Liege’s Arms. It’s on those little flags people wave when your father rides by in a procession, and someone who wants to flatter him passes them out. It’s even...” I pulled it out to show him as I spoke. “...stamped on your fancy coat buttons.”

  Mind you, the Liege’s seal ring was a flat stamp and Rupert’s buttons curved at the edges, but a bit of wiggling in the wax helped disguise that. And if I remembered correctly, the seal was a bit bigger... On the other hand, how many sheriffs, or even barons, would have a copy of the Liege’s seal around to compare it to?

  Forging a writ was treason... But I’d rather take my chances with the Liege than have Kathy take her chances with the thugs in some back alley, so I decided not to bring that up.

  We set out next morning on the coach’s trail, and we weren’t more than a mile from town before we spotted the dog following us. Or rather, Champion spotted the dog and shied so hard he’d have thrown a less skilled rider.

  By day the beast looked less like a rabbit, and more like someone had taken a normal dog and eliminated its neck and abdomen, sticking its head directly onto its shoulders and its hindquarters onto its ribcage. Its back legs were shorter than its front legs, so its rump sloped down, giving it the rabbit-shape I’d noticed in the alley.

  Aside from that it had a rough-looking coat, black brindled with brown, big pricked ears and a pointed muzzle. And the teeth were every bit as startling as I remembered.

  It took us the better part of the morning to catalog these details, because the dog turned tail and ran if we so much as looked at ... him, in fact. He spent so much time running away that we could tell.

  The dog vanished when we encountered other traffic on the road, but when we stopped at a stream to water the horses and eat luncheon, he emerged from the underbrush like some primitive hunter’s nightmare and sat on his haunches watching us. He kept about thirty feet away.

  Kathy insisted on giving him the remains of the smoked ham, which should have provided another meal for the three of us, and some bits of bread as well. She also, for reasons known only to the female brain, put the food somewhat closer to us.

  At least the horses had accepted the beast — they went right on cropping grass as he ate.

  “If you feed it,” I said, “it will keep following us.”

  Rupert and Kathy exchanged a look I couldn’t read.

  “He’s already following us,” she said. “What should we call him? Monster comes to mind, but that might make people think he’s not friendly.”

  “He isn’t friendly.” The beast had already wolfed down his meal and gone back to watching us from a distance. Though his gaze was mostly fixed on me. And it wasn’t as if I fed him.

  “How about Gargoyle?” said Rupert. “That fits too, and it sounds more kindly.”

  “’Tis too hard to say,” my love replied. “Here Gargoyle, here Gargoyle. It feels like your mouth is full of pebbles.”

  “Why would we want to call him?” I asked. But no one listened to me.

  Fortunately, the mutt didn’t follow us into towns — which might have created a panic. He usually found us shortly after we emerged, no matter what road we chose. I thought he might give up when we took rooms at an inn one night — a possibility Kathy and Rupert found distressing for some reason. But we were rapidly gaining on the coach, and Rupert had to admit that catching them would be a disaster. And following too close might make them come after us, which would be worse.

  We’d been on the road for less than two hours the next day when the dog rejoined us, and Katherine insisted we stop to feed him breakfast. Rupert, who was all but twitching to hurry us along, made no objection. Listening as they bandied names for the dog back and forth — Weirdness? Oddity? — I could see why the High Liege thought they’d suit each other.

  I wasn’t jealous, exactly, of the way they gossiped about mutual acquaintances, or shared some memory of Mistress Meg ... but I didn’t remember Kathy laughing that much at anything I’d said lately.

  My mood grew so surly I was hardly speaking to anyone by the time we went to sleep — camping in the countryside that night. Next morning I woke with the monstrous dog in my bed.

  This time I knew it wasn’t Trouble, and moved slowly and warily. But it only watched me with gold-brown eyes as I reached out to let it sniff my hand, before gently scratching around its neck and down its spine. Either a good night’s sleep or the dog’s wary pleasure eased my black mood, and that rough-looking coat was surprisingly soft. But after a few minutes my fingers were coated with greasy dirt. The beast needed a bath, if we were going to find him a home. And how we were going to accomplish that when he wouldn’t approach us, I had no idea.

  Then I had an idea.

  “Any chance you’ve got a Gift for animal handling?” I asked Rupert.

  “Sorry. Not a trace.”

  He didn’t look sorry.

  “What can you do, then?” If any of his Gifts would have been useful in finding Meg, he’d have told us long since. But if he had some ability I could put to use with the dog...

  “Finding runs in my family,” said Rupert. “But it tends to be focused on particular things. Water for me. I can tell you that the nearest freshwater spring is about two hundred yards south of here ... but where Meg might be, I have no idea.”

  He sounded pretty bleak about it, and Kathy hastily moved the conversation onward.

  “’Tis too early to try to bathe the dog. He has to trust us for that.”

  “He doesn’t trust us within twenty feet, unless we’re asleep,” I said. “Maybe a net? And a big tub. We could just lower him in, netted, and let him thrash around and wash himself.”

  “Or we could be patient,” Kathy said. “He’s ten feet closer today than he was when we started.”

  Since I didn’t have a net or a tub I had to give up on that idea, at least for now.

  The coach headed north and west again the next day, which meant we probably weren’t going to Borrowston. But the towns along these back roads were so small they seldom had more than one inn, and the coach never stayed there.

  Rupert was alarmed when he realized they must be camping out — though why he thought Meg would be in more danger there than in the Addled Cock, I didn’t know. Kathy said, bluntly, that if they wanted to rape Meg they could do it anytime — but if Meg had been raped, she wouldn’t have been as composed as I’d said she was. I added, more tactfully, that the kidnappers seemed to be more professional than that.

  Rupert was somewhat consoled ... but he still wanted to catch up to them, and we still didn’t dare get close enough to threaten them. I was pretty sure, at this point, that they’d been ordered not to harm Meg. I doubted they’d been given the same orders about us.

  The dog continued to follow his traveling food dish — at least, that’s how I’d have thought of us if I’d been him. He slowly came closer, but he still wouldn’t get within reach unless we were asleep. Judging by the tracks we found in the morning, he spent most of the night in or near my bed, though he also spent some tim
e near Kathy, and checked on Rupert occasionally.

  “How about Rabbit?” I suggested. We were riding along a muddy track that followed a stream. “He still looks a bit rabbity to me, and he’s such a coward that it fits him on a spiritual level.”

  “Rabbit?” Rupert turned in the saddle, probably looking at the dog’s teeth. “Really?”

  “I like the irony,” Kathy said. “And you can call it. Here Rabbit, here Rabbit.”

  The dog pricked his ears, and for a moment I thought he might come. But then Champion, who had been so well behaved I’d forgotten he was a stallion, snorted and lashed out with his hind legs as if an assassin was sneaking up behind him. He then bolted down the road at a full, mud-splattering gallop.

  Rupert was as startled by that first kick as the rest of us, but he kept his butt in the saddle somehow, and I saw that he’d decided to let the horse run off that panicked burst of speed before reining him in.

  On a smooth, muddy road, that should have been a good decision. But Kathy and I barely had time to bring our own horses to a trot, when Champion caught a front hoof on something in a puddle and fell hard, throwing his rider.

  He might have rolled over Rupert too, but someone had trained the Heir well. Rupert was already curling into a ball when he hit the ground, and he kept on rolling, out of the path of those thrashing hooves.

  Horror froze me in Tipple’s saddle, desire to look away from the catastrophe warring with the desire to race to Rupert’s aid. By the time I shook off my paralysis, we’d almost reached them and they were both regaining their feet. Rupert was almost as white as the few mud-free spots on Champion’s coat, but he wasn’t limping as badly as the horse was.

  “Easy, big boy.” He grasped the reins just below the bit, though whatever had sent Champion into flight didn’t seem to be bothering him now.

  “Walk him a bit,” said Kathy. “Slow and easy. That’s the fastest way to learn if there’s any damage.”

  “Are you all right?” I asked Rupert, since no one else seemed to care. Including Rupert.

  The dog was nowhere to be seen.

  “Umm. He’s favoring the right fore. Looks like ’tis bleeding, but he’s so muddy I can’t be sure.”

  I unpacked a cook pan and filled it with water from the stream, and after a bit of rinsing we found a bloody scrape just above Champion’s ankle, or whatever that’s called on a horse.

  “He’s putting more weight on it,” Kathy said. “I think he’ll be all right, but we should take it easy for the rest of the day. We’re beginning to get too close to Meg’s coach anyway. We can stop here.”

  But I was wondering what could have made that wound.

  Having no desire to get dirtier than I already was, I picked up a stick and began poking it into the mud. I found it almost immediately. Or rather, I found one of several flat slabs of rock that lay just under the surface of the puddle.

  “They’d keep wagon wheels from sinking in,” I said. “They were probably above the surface at first, and sank down after they’d been driven over a time or two. But whoever did this should have set them tighter, so a horse’s hoof can’t go into the space between the stones. It’s a wonder Posy and Tipple didn’t trip.”

  “We were pulling them in when we reached this stretch,” Kathy said. “They could pick their footing. If we’d been moving faster... The wagoner who did this should be fined half his load!”

  We resolved to report it at the next village, but Kathy still wanted us to do something about it. I took off most of my clothes — Rupert’s were already so muddy that it didn’t matter. We wrestled the large flat stones out of the mud and hauled them as far as we could off the road. That wasn’t very far, but at least they wouldn’t lame any more horses.

  The dog still hadn’t returned, the afternoon was hot, and Rupert and I were coated with mud, so we all went into the stream for a wash. Kathy, who’d used the time to mix up a poultice for Champion’s leg, washed Rupert’s clothes upstream, while Rupert and I scrubbed off downstream. I finished before he did, so I was the one who ended up washing Champion ... and saw a faint streak of blood trailing down the horse’s rump.

  Despite the fact that Rupert wore nothing but wet drawers, he and Kathy both crowded close to inspect the small red dot it came from.

  “Something stung him,” Rupert said. “That’s why he bolted.”

  “Maybe,” said Kathy. “Well, I suppose it must have been. Though it’s not swelling like a bee sting. Horsefly bites can bleed, but horses don’t usually bolt like that for a fly.”

  “If something left a mark like that on me, I’d run.”

  I wished Michael were here. He knew everything that would sting a horse, and how both horse and man could defend themselves — though some of his anti-fly potions were so smelly I’d rather have been bitten.

  Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to be after the horses now. Since it had found us by the stream, we moved a good distance away before making camp, and Kathy and Rupert promptly dismissed the matter.

  Given those well-hidden stones, I couldn’t quite let it go. But the assassin had clearly been stalking Michael, not the rest of us. And if the men who held Meg wanted to get rid of us they had more direct — and effective — methods at their disposal.

  I didn’t want Kathy to think I was paranoid, even if I was, so I said nothing.

  My prisoner slept in, somewhat to my annoyance. I could have waked him when the sky began to brighten, but I wanted a good look at him by daylight so I let him sleep a bit longer.

  I judged him to be some years older than I, mayhap twenty-six or -seven. He wore his hair cropped short, and his accent, though educated, had not sounded noble the few times I’d heard him speak. His face, stripped of personality by sleep, looked quite pleasant.

  Having observed all this, I prodded him awake. The first expression to cross his face was bafflement at finding himself bound. Then he saw me, and memory flooded back. But the expression that flashed over his face before the self-control returned wasn’t fear, as I’d expected, but a hatred so intense, so personal, that I was startled out of my silence.

  “Do you know me, somehow?”

  I would swear I’d never set eyes on him before, but as Fisk pointed out I hadn’t met all of Roseman’s men. He might even be kin to someone I’d brought to the attention of the law.

  He shook his head, slightly, and proceeded to ignore me, except for the practical aspects of his captivity. And he’d not overstated the difficulty of holding a man prisoner.

  I had to help him up from the bedroll, for he couldn’t stand with his hands and feet tied. After some thought, I rigged a hobble that at least let him walk without aid. I had to untie his hands to let him relieve himself and eat, and then tie him to a tree so I could do the same myself and pack up the camp. I’d have worried about taking my eyes off him for more than a moment, but True watched him for me, his lips drawn back in a silent snarl. He also emitted his rasping, voiceless bark whenever the man so much as shifted his feet, which seemed a bit unfair in True. My would-be-assassin could have slit the dog’s throat before I could have stopped him. He even looked concerned when he observed True’s muteness — though he’d not hesitated an instant to slay me!

  But I suppose an assassin may also care for animals, so I had some hope of success when I saddled up Chant and went to ask him, “Where did you tether your horse?”

  He didn’t answer, didn’t look at me, but I fancied I saw dismay behind that cool mask.

  “’Tis your horse. If you tethered him loose, or your rope is weak, he might be able to break free when the thirst sets in. If you camped near a road, or some farmhouse, he might make enough noise for someone to find him. But if he can’t break free and no one finds him, he’ll die slowly and most cruelly. I’d spare any beast that, were it up to me, but I can’t waste time searching for a hidden camp. And ’tis not my horse.”

  In truth, if he refused to speak I intended to set some local farmers looking for the place, offe
ring a good reward for his horse and gear — though a good reward would leave my purse thinner than Fisk would approve.

  But he looked up and met my gaze, and my bluff must have been convincing for contempt flashed in his eyes.

  “It’s west of here. I’ll guide you.”

  After some thought about logistics — having him in Chant’s saddle, even if I held the lead, could go wrong in so many ways — I bound his wrists to one of the straps on my saddle and removed his hobbles so he could walk, close beside me and under my eye. ’Twas uncomfortable for him, but it didn’t last long — the camp was less than a mile distant.

  His horse was a leggy roan mare, with a white blaze and good manners. He’d camped by a stream so she didn’t need water, but I gave her a handful of oats from the supply I keep for Chant and Tipple while I packed up his gear. This didn’t take long, for he’d only paused to pull off his saddle and packs, not even taking the bedroll off his cantle.

  ’Twas a struggle to get him mounted, even with his cooperation — and that cooperation was motivated more by True’s bared teeth than by my knife.

  He might care for animals, but my good dog did not return the favor, and I took proper heed of that.

  After a bit more thought I unbuckled his stirrups, which would make it harder to keep his seat should he see a chance for escape, and tied a loose loop around his waist and then to the pommel of his saddle. If he tried to gallop off and couldn’t keep his seat, he was assured of a short and most uncomfortable ride, which would have made me hesitate to try it. My final precaution was to leave his horse haltered instead of bridled, with the lead rope tied to Chant’s pommel. I then threw his cloak over his shoulders, fastening it so his bound hands wouldn’t be visible from a distance, though my intention was to avoid being seen.

  I did manage to keep anyone from observing us, though riding around the field where a farmer and his sons were harvesting took us miles out of our way, and a party of youngsters out for a picnic forced me to hold a knife to my prisoner’s throat for quiet as they passed.