He looked again at the cut, at the place where the footmen would surely be waiting. There was no longer any choice.
“Run,” he shouted, and pointed with Ghostcutter’s blade. Bethane hobbled forward and at once started skidding down the loose stony soil of the hill. She screamed as her feet flew out from underneath her and she kept sliding. Croy threw himself after her, his feet barely touching the ground as he danced down the hill. He reached out with his left hand and tried to grab at one of the tree trunks, but he lacked the strength to get a proper hold on it. The rough bark tore at the skin of his palm and only slowed him a little.
“Sir Croy!” Bethane screamed as she slid on her back, small stones bouncing around her face.
He bent his knees and jumped, arcing through the air to hit the ground again just next to her, rolling and bouncing as he tried desperately to slow his descent, to regain any kind of control on the steep slope. Her hands grabbed at his tunic and she pulled herself toward him just as he saw a tree coming straight at them.
For once he was glad for the numbness in his legs. He slammed into the tree with his left foot, hard enough to make his bones rattle. Somehow he got his knees around the trunk so he could hold on. Bethane whipped past him, her momentum pulling one of her hands free of his tunic. His left hand couldn’t grab her, not in time, and it certainly couldn’t hold her. The sword in his right hand had to go.
It felt so wrong-but he let go of Ghostcutter and watched it slide down the hill away from him as his right hand grabbed for the collar of Bethane’s dress. The sword was his soul-but she was his queen.
He managed to snag her garment with two fingers. His knuckles turned white as he took her weight. “I have you,” he called. “I have you, stop struggling!”
He glanced down at the bottom of the slope, looking for Ghostcutter. Without it he was defenseless. His fingers ached abominably but he cast this way and that with his eyes, seeking the blade.
Instead he saw the footmen. They were down there already, at the bottom of the slope. Waiting for him. Two dozen men carrying polearms. Their faces were hidden by the steel helmets they wore.
“Croy,” Bethane said, “please-please hold on-I can feel you letting go!”
Croy glanced at his right hand and saw she was right. His fingers were shaking. Little by little they uncurled, loosening their grasp. He was too weak to hold her weight.
“Croy, you are my champion,” Bethane said. “You are my protector, my-”
His fingers lost their grip and she slid away from him. Right toward the footmen.
He shouted her name and pulled his legs away from the tree trunk. Let himself fall as well. He would be by her side down there at least. He would fight those footmen with his bare hands, if he must. He gritted his teeth as he rolled end over end down the slope. He would fight to his last breath, to his last ounce of strength A rock slapped him across the temple and his vision went blurry. For a moment he was blind and his ears rang. He fought to regain his senses, fought to clear his head, but he was rolling, rolling out of control, and he couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t At the bottom of the hill he smashed into a boulder, right next to Bethane. His bones jumped inside his flesh and new agony erupted down his injured side, but he managed not to cry out. He was too busy looking at Bethane. She was unconscious but seemed not to have sustained any mortal injuries.
A clatter of steel made Croy’s heart leap. Suddenly the footmen stood in a circle around the two of them, polearms ready to skewer them. Croy tried to jump to his feet and found he could barely move his head.
He heard hoofbeats and then the rider came galloping around the side of the hill. The horseman slid out of his saddle and came running over. The footmen made room for him-was it to be his right, his honor, to kill a queen and a knight?
The rider came and stood over Croy, peering down into his face. His eyes were wide, as if he were surprised at what Croy had just done. “Var aus,” he said, as if Croy should know what he meant. “Var aus gevuirten, ha?”
“Give me one chance to stand up, and fight me like a man,” Croy howled. He tried to spit in the rider’s face but he couldn’t work up the saliva.
The rider shook his head and pointed at his ear, then his mouth. He shook his head again. He was trying to convey a message-that he couldn’t understand what Croy had said. Then he pointed at Croy’s chest. “You Skraeling,” he said, and nodded as if Croy had agreed with him. Then he placed his hand on his armored chest. “Me, Skilfinger.” Then he reached down as if he would take Croy’s hand. As if he would help Croy sit up. “Skrae ut Skilfing,” the rider said. “Skrae ut Skilfing friends.”
Chapter Ninety-One
The Skilfinger knight wore a byrnie of chain mail that fell in long triangular tappets around his knees. Strips of steel hung from the chain links across his chest and jangled merrily as he rode. “You. Come,” he said, for the hundredth time, gesturing westward with his lance.
Croy grunted but kept walking after the horse. On either side of him the knight’s retainers-rail-thin men in boiled leather armor, carrying poleaxes like the one he’d found on the trail-jogged effortlessly along. They didn’t seem to mind the slow going, but the knight seemed impatient with their progress. He had to keep his horse to a deliberate walk so Croy and Bethane could hope to keep up with him. Croy had asked a thousand times that the knight let Bethane ride behind him, but apparently that was forbidden. The knight practiced a severe religion that would not allow a man and a woman to touch each other unless they were married.
Of course, by right of precedence, the knight should have dismounted and given Bethane the horse. In the days since their capture, Croy had attempted to tell the knight who Bethane was in several different ways. Yet among the score of Skraeling words the knight possessed, and the half dozen or so of the Skilfinger language Croy understood, “queen” was not among them.
“It’s all right,” Bethane kept saying. “At least we’re safe.” She gave him one of her small treasury of smiles and he nodded back.
They had recovered Ghostcutter from the scree of the hillside and let him put it back in its sheath. That was something. Other than that, however, Croy wasn’t sure what the Skilfingers intended. He knew he had no choice but do as they said.
His strength was at its very ebb. The wound in his side was getting worse. Every time he lifted the bandage there, the smell nearly made him swoon. The old wound in his left elbow made it impossible to even close that fist. His feet felt like raw stumps.
Had the Skilfingers intended to slay him or Bethane, he would not have been able to resist.
Yet it seemed that was not the plan. Instead, the knight herded them westward, along the border rather than across it. The knight seemed uninterested in telling Croy where he was taking them. If they kept along this course they would soon reach the shores of Lake Marl. The fishermen who lived around the lake traded with Skrae, and surely someone there would speak his language. He would be able to find someone to translate and he could tell the Skilfinger knight just how important it was that Bethane be taken to safety.
Yet he had a sinking feeling they would not be going that far.
And he was right.
That night they camped in a box canyon with the wind whistling by high overhead. The knight gave them food and comfortable bedrolls but made sure they were watched at all times by at least two of his retainers. Croy was allowed to keep his sword, but he knew if he tried to draw it they would just take it away from him. So little strength remained to him that he doubted he could fight off even one of the well-trained soldiers.