Quicksilver turned her mare to follow him, eyes sparkling.
As she came up alongside him, Geoffrey asked, "Why do you ride a mare? I doubt not that you are skilled enough in the saddle to handle any stallion."
"You do not think I would trust myself to a male, do you?" Quicksilver countered. "My Belinda is the equal of any stallion in all but sheer strength—and their superior in endurance and intelligence."
Geoffrey nodded, and they rode in silence for a few minutes, Quicksilver casting mischievous glances at him out of the corners of her eyes. It occurred to Geoffrey that she was sure she could escape him whenever she wished, but found him amusing in the meantime.
He had to admit some truth to it. For himself, he found her company entrancing, though he was not all that sure that he could escape her, if she did not want him to. On the other hand, she would find him harder to throw off than she knew.
"So," he said, more to break the silence than to make things clear, "you are a witch."
"As you are a warlock."
"Why did you not tell me that straight out?"
"You did not ask," she countered. "Do not patronize me, knight. You know as well as I that knowledge held in reserve is advantage."
"A fundamental principle of tactics," Geoffrey admitted. "However, now I do ask you straight out: What are your powers?"
"Why... the powers of any witch," she said, surprised. "I can hear others' thoughts, and move objects with my mind." Her eyes took on their wicked glint again. "And shield my mind from presumptuous warlocks!"
She did not know she was a projective, then—and if she was not about to volunteer knowledge without being asked, neither was Geoffrey. After all, if she knew she had such a power, she might bend him to her will more thoroughly than she already had. Heaven knew she had done enough of that already! "Does your band know of your powers?"
Quicksilver shrugged, making Geoffrey glad he had been watching her. "Some may have guessed—I know not. I have been at pains to hide the fact from my earliest childhood, when my father saw me making my doll move, and cautioned me to let no one know but my mother and himself. I was not always as careful as I might have been, though, and I think my brothers have guessed."
"Well, if one knows, they all do," Geoffrey said, from knowledge of living with two brothers himself. He tore his eyes away from her and watched the curving trail ahead. "You hid it from me well enough—until that arrow bound for my heart swooped down. I must thank you for that, by the way."
"I was glad to do it—the more so since your vengeance might have been more than I wished to see," she gibed. "Besides, my bandits doubtless thought it your doing."
"No doubt you made your brothers take the blame for you, too, while you grew. So your sister has not guessed?"
"Not so far as I know; she is seven years younger than I, and I was skilled at dissimulating ere she was old enough to study me. I think she has some witch power of her own, but I am not sure."
Geoffrey doubted that. He thought Quicksilver was probably very sure, one way or another. Studying the road ahead, he said, "This trail twists and turns among positive walls of leaves."
"It does," Quicksilver agreed.
"A score of men could easily be hidden, not three feet from the trackway."
"They could," she acknowledged. "I have sent them home, though."
But Geoffrey did not need to ask if they had obeyed. He was listening to the thoughts all about him, of forest creatures both four-legged and two-legged, and knew as well as Quicksilver that only half her force had gone back to the castle. The other half followed them as silently as a breeze among the leaves, a dozen yards from the roadway on either side, aching for Quicksilver's signal to strike.
Well, there wasn't much he could do about it, except to leave Fess on guard while he slept. Other than that, he decided to ignore them as best he could, until he had decided what to do about them.
He didn't think Quicksilver had decided, either.
Finally, they came out of the trees. Geoffrey tried to hide his sigh of relief—he would have welcomed a good fight, but not when he was so fiercely outnumbered that he might have had to injure a few of the outlaws, and perhaps even kill them because he couldn't take the time to be careful. If they had been thoroughgoing villains, he wouldn't have minded the chance, of course, but he found that he could no longer think of them that way. Besides, hurting some of Quicksilver's men might have made her hate him, and he was astonished to realize that he didn't want to risk that.
She must have read something of his relief, though, and misunderstood it, for she said, "Do not think that you are out of my domain, simply because you have come out of the greenwood. This land all about is filled with my people."
"Only the peasants, if you have bade your warriors go back to the castle." Geoffrey frowned. "You do not mean that even they would fight for you!"
"Every man," she said evenly, looking him straight in the eyes. "Every woman, too, if I asked it of them. I have been a good lord to these folk, Sir Geoffrey."
Geoffrey gazed back into her eyes, frowning. They were dark brown, so dark that they seemed to be deep pools into which he could plunge ... He shook himself angrily, turning away and forcing his mind back to the conversation. "It would be interesting to put your boasts to the test."
"Why, then, test them!" Quicksilver said merrily, and pointed ahead. "Yonder is a woman—two, though the one is very young. Shall I bid them fight you?"
Geoffrey looked up. Sure enough, a middle-aged woman and a girl had come into sight around a bend in the road—but it was Quicksilver and Geoffrey who had moved toward them, not the other way around, for the woman was bent over their cart, and the girl was holding the horse, which had been unshackled from the traces.
"No, do not," Geoffrey said. "Ask them instead if we may aid them."
Quicksilver gave him a quick, appraising glance, then followed it with a smile that made him feel he had been rewarded. "As you wish, then." She clucked to her horse and cantered ahead.
By the time Geoffrey caught up, she was bent over her saddle in conversation with the woman, who was curtsying to her, then pointing to the cart.
For a peasant woman, she was remarkably well dressed. Oh, she wore the usual dun-colored skirt and homespun blouse, with a muslin apron over both, and a kerchief to bind up her hair—but none of the garments was patched or ragged, and the cloth was a stronger weave than any he had seen on a serf's back. If this was how Quicksilver's peasants lived, no wonder they loved her.
Of course, the woman could have been the wife of a yeoman—but she was still well dressed for her station. Quicksilver looked up as Geoffrey reined in Fess. "They have lost a wheel."
"Have they really," Geoffrey said, with a bit of sarcasm. It really wasn't all that hard to see the wheel lying there in the roadway, and the cart leaning down on its axle with the baskets of vegetables higgledy-piggledy all over the roadway. Geoffrey frowned and dismounted to look more closely. "There is no damage that I can see. It is only that the peg that held the wheel has broken off."
"Damage enough," Quicksilver said, with a sarcasm of her own.
"Aye; the wheel is off. This, though, can be mended easily enough, and without a wheelwright or cartwright." He straightened up. "Good day, mistress. I am Sir Geoffrey Gallowglass."
"Oh! And I am only old Maud, sir!" The lady dropped a curtsy. "And this is my daughter Nan."
"Good day, sir." Nan curtsied prettily, with a saucy smile. She, too, wore better cloth than the average peasant lass. She had long brown hair that hung about her shoulders in a thick mass, burnished in the sunlight and held back by a simple band. She was pretty, with the hint of genuine beauty to come, and a figure that proclaimed she had just passed the cusp between childhood and womanhood—fourteen, Geoffrey guessed; old enough to marry, in medieval society, but far too young by any more modern standard. He hoped her mother would let her wait.