Minerva and Jory took the signal, sure enough. In minutes, dark forms bearing steel and staves had surrounded the campfire. Quicksilver looked up to find herself facing Minerva. "Do them no lasting hurt," she breathed.
Minerva turned to look at Gregory with contempt. "A fine sentry is he, to sleep while he wakes!" She looked up at Jory and nodded.
The outlaws moved silently toward the two brothers. Cudgels swung up and smashed down...
And jarred to a halt.
They didn't bounce, as though off an invisible shield; they slowed abruptly, then stuck fast, as though in a mire of tar. Minerva and Jory both pulled back on their weapons, but they would not come. They tugged harder, but both cudgels resisted. Finally, in exasperation and almost in unison, they dropped their sticks and whipped out their swords.
"No!" Quicksilver cried, but too late—the blades were already flashing down...
And sticking. Tight. Not as though in tar, but as though they had chopped into a very hard wood, and would not now come loose again. Minerva and Jory tugged as hard as they could, threw all their weight against their hilts, but they would not come loose.
The bandits muttered with superstitious fear, but they raised their weapons...
"You must not harm them!" Quicksilver hissed. Finally, Gregory looked up from his trance. "Do not fear, maiden. They cannot hurt us."
Total shocked silence fell on the band; even Minerva and Jory froze.
"You have known all along what they did?" In her shock and, yes, fright, Quicksilver almost forgot to whisper.
"I have—though it was not worth breaking my stream of thought. Your own anguish, though, is."
"My anguish? What know you of my anguish?" Then Quicksilver, glad to feel outrage, demanded, "And how can you be sure I am a maiden?"
"Why, it is evident," Gregory told her. "Evident! By what signs?"
Gregory shrugged, with a trace of irritation. "Too many to mention, too numerous to even register consciously. Like will to like. It takes one to know one. What more need you know?"
She stared at him, speechless. So did the rest of her band, men and women alike; they had never heard a male openly and willingly acknowledge the fact that he was a virgin—not unless he was a priest.
"Go back to your camp, now." Gregory turned slowly, taking in the entire band as h%4 spoke. "You shall not prevail, for I shall not sleep, and while I am awake, your weapons shall not strike. I would not have you lose your rest to no purpose."
He was so confoundedly gentle about it! So gentle, and so polite!
"We shall not go without our chief," Minerva said nervously.
Gregory turned to give Quicksilver a searching, and very thorough, look. It made her skin writhe, for there was no admiration in it, nor even interest just a one-second examination to determine her state of existence. "She is not chained, nor do I hold her caged," Gregory said, then to Quicksilver, "What holds you?"
"My word," she said.
Gregory just gazed into her eyes a minute, with that look that seemed to see far more and far less than it should. Then he nodded. "Then you are bound far more tightly than any shackle could hold you. I can do nothing thereby."
"Then we must steal her away!" Minerva insisted. Gregory considered the statement, then shook his head. "Geoffrey would not wish it."
"Oh, would he not!" Minerva said angrily, and aloud. She ignored Quicksilver's frantic shushing motions and stepped up to seize her chief around the waist, to lift up...
Quicksilver stuck fast.
Jory saw and came running to throw his arms about his sister, too, and help pull. A dozen more of the bandits crowded around, male and female both, tugging frantically. Quicksilver bit her lip against a cry of pain.
But Gregory heard her mind and said, not loudly, but with a voice everyone heard right next to his or her own ear, "Desist. You are hurting her."
They dropped Quicksilver as though she were a hot rock and leaped back. "Let her go!" Minerva said angrily. "No," Geoffrey said simply.
Enraged, Minerva spun away, seized a battle-axe from another bodyguard, and swung it down at Gregory's head. "No!" Quicksilver screamed.
"No indeed," Gregory agreed, looking up at the whetted edge that was stuck fast in mid-air eighteen inches from his face. Behind it, Minerva struggled to pull it free, cursing furiously, red in the face.
"We have come back to where we began," Gregory said. "It is fruitless. Go away."
"Fruitless indeed!" Quicksilver snapped at him. "How many men would it take to overcome you? A hundred? A thousand?"
"Too many," Geoffrey said. "They could not all come at him at once, and I would chop them down from behind." Quicksilver whirled. He was leaning up on one elbow, smiling, still under his blankets. He did not even think them enough challenge to get up and draw his sword!
"Oh, there is no fairness in you, in any of you!" Quicksilver raged. "There is no justice, no equity, in fighting a Gallowglass, is there? For even if I should manage to work out a way to settle with one of you, the others would pile in and vanquish me utterly! No, you are unfair, unjust, you with your magic and your thought-hearing and your skill at swords! There is no winning against a Gallowglass, because Fate has endowed you with gifts denied to the rest of us! No opponent has a chance against you, against any of you, for you will all come at us in a gang!"
"It is even so," Gregory said quietly. "There are six of us, and we have you outnumbered."
She spun about, staring in fury—but the look on his face was bland, even serious; if he had mocked her, he seemed unaware of it.
"I have never known him to use sarcasm," Geoffrey said, "nor to boast."
Quicksilver turned her back on Gregory with a shudder. "He is inhuman!"
"Now, that he is not!" Geoffrey was on his feet suddenly, fists clenched. "He is a good man, one of the best, and he has done you no wrong save to keep you from wronging me! Yet you have wronged him, who is the gentlest and best of boys!"
Quicksilver stared at him, amazed at his anger. Then she spun about to Gregory, and saw the signs of hurt in his face. Even as she watched, he smoothed them out, hid them—but now she knew they were there.
Minerva stared, shocked. So did Jory, and all of them. "It is you who have wronged him, Madam!" Geoffrey snapped.
She turned to look at him, and now she knew the tone, knew the look—it was the elder brother defending his little brother, as Leander and Martin had done for her, as she had done for Jory and Nan. Suddenly contrite, she turned back to Gregory—and saw him suddenly not as a heartless, imperturbable monster, but only as Geoffrey's little brother. Her heart broke open; compassion flowed. "Oh, I am so sorry! You have done nothing but aid your brother, nothing but defend yourself against me and mine! Nay, there is nothing inhuman in you, save your strength." That wasn't quite true—she also could have mentioned his apparent lack of a sex drive—but she was able to bite her tongue, for once. And she was repaid, in a sudden beam of gratitude from Gregory that seemed to light up his whole face. It held her transfixed for a moment of sheer surprise.
Then it was gone; he closed his eyes and bowed his head courteously, saying, "I thank you, Chieftain Quicksilver. I spoke aright before; you are all that a lady should be."
For some reason, she felt completely and very oddly flattered.
She turned to her band, waving them away. "Back to your campfires! Away! I cannot thank you enough, good friends, for seeking to free me from a road to the gallows—but I can see it is not to be done this way. No, away, and I thank you with all my heart!"