There were enough cultists to keep the smoke billowing and roiling up, but the ranks of the good townsfolk of Bedford were constantly increasing.
A shot rang out.
Daniel jerked his reins tight, caught his horse before it could bolt. Astride its back as it pranced, he cursed some more. The cultists hated guns-as fighters that was their one true weakness. Even the men at his back, far better trained, had flinched. Their edgy tension had ratcheted up several notches.
More shots sounded, more than likely fired over the crowd.
An instant later, three cultists fled past the alley mouth, heading away from the fight.
Daniel ground his teeth. “Where the devil is Monteith?” Despite all distractions, he’d kept his eyes on the hotel’s front door. He had men stationed all around the building, watching every exit. If Monteith had gone out any other way, he should have heard of it by now.
Should have been informed that the troublesome major had been seized. Heaven knew he’d assembled enough men to be sure of accomplishing that.
Could Monteith be thinking to hole up in the hotel? As soon as the smoke faded sufficiently, Daniel would send in his assassins to scour the place.
His mount stirred, as restless as he. Another local man came running down the street from the left, a flaming brand held high, a pitchfork in his hand; the light drew Daniel’s gaze.
Up above the street, the light from the brand fleetingly silhouetted an object-one that fell from one roof to the next. A man-sized object; a crouching man. Daniel stopped breathing, watched. The man didn’t come to the front of the roof. He must have gone…
“With me!” Daniel snapped out the order. Loosening his reins, digging in his heels, he plunged out of the alley. Wheeling left, away from the melee before the hotel, he thundered up the road.
His assassins running as a group just behind, Daniel could almost taste success as he rounded the block, drew rein, drew his sword, and turned into the lane than ran along the rear of the buildings.
Logan dropped to the cobbles in the narrow yard. He swiftly scanned the cramped space. Stacked crates and empty barrels clogged the entrance to the alley leading to the rear lane. The yard was dark and relatively quiet, the high walls all around cutting off much of the sound and fury from the street. Even the smoke had barely penetrated there.
Straightening, he reached up and helped Linnet down. While she untied the ends of the cloak she’d knotted across her waist, he checked the scroll-holder, resettled it against his spine.
While Charles, then Deverell, joined them, Logan found the back door tucked inside the porch and tried it. Not only was it locked, it was also solidly bolted from inside. No access, no even temporary place to hide.
He looked back down the alley. The walls were plain brick, unadorned, and vertical all the way to the neighboring roofs, no doors or windows. He glanced up and around. There was no other way out.
“At least the archers across the street can’t see us.” Catching the others’ eyes, he tipped his head down the alley. “We’ll have to go that way.”
They nodded, resettled their coats and weapons, then he led the way forward, Charles behind him, then Linnet, with Deverell bringing up the rear.
They’d barely cleared the stacked crates and stepped into the alley proper when a dense shadow loomed at its end. As one, they halted.
The shadow resolved into a horseman in a black coat, breeches, and riding boots, astride a black horse.
Men moved behind the horse, forming up two by two and following the rider as he walked his mount slowly, clop by clop, down the alley toward them.
The sound echoed eerily off the alley’s high brick walls, a portentious drumbeat.
As if responding to the drama, the moon sailed free high above; it beamed down into the alley from behind them, bathing the approaching figure and his retinue, highlighting every line in icy-cold silver light.
Silver light that glinted on multiple naked blades.
The rider wore a black scarf wound about his head, concealing nose and chin; his eyes coldly observed them from above its upper edge as he halted-just far enough away to be safe from any attack from Logan or Charles, now standing shoulder to shoulder across the entrance to the small yard. Both had drawn their sabers. Logan couldn’t remember doing so; the hilt had suddenly been in his palm, his fingers locked in the grip, the blade held down by his side.
His every sense, every instinct, remained locked on the rider, even when two of the cultists moved up to stand on either side of the black horse.
Both cultists, like their fellows behind them, held naked blades in both hands.
“Those,” Logan murmured, “are cult assassins.”
“Ah,” Charles replied, and uncharacteristically left it at that.
Linnet, behind Logan, heard the exchange. Looking over his shoulder, she finally comprehended just what had driven him and his friends to battle so hard, for so long, to face so many dangers to bring it down. To defeat it.
True evil.
It stared back at her, not from the cult assassins’ dark, unflinching eyes but from the shadowed eyes of the rider. He… somehow, he made the hair on her nape lift, made her skin pebble and crawl; when his gaze found her, and, as if intrigued, rested on her, she had to fight to quell a wholly instinctive shiver.
An instinctive reaction.
An instinctive fear.
He wore a black coat, he rode a black horse, he had black hair. Yet it was his soul that was blackest; she knew that to her bones.
Her cutlass was already in her hand; she tightened her grip on the hilt. Not a single thought-not even a fleeting one-of fleeing entered her head. She’d come to fight alongside Logan and she intended to do just that.
Yet the odds… were by any estimation hopeless. That didn’t mean they couldn’t be overcome. She counted twelve assassins, but the biggest threat was the mounted man. He carried an unsheathed sword, held lightly balanced across the front of his saddle.
If they could get rid of him…
The rider had shifted his gaze to Logan. After another long, studied silence, he said, “At last we meet, Major Monteith.”
His voice was educated, very English, his diction only lightly muffled by the scarf.
When Logan said nothing, the rider’s eyes smiled. “I believe you know what I want. Please don’t waste time by telling me you haven’t got it-that you aren’t carrying it on your person at this moment.”
Opportunity. Possibility… Leaning forward, Linnet whispered to Logan, loudly enough for the rider to hear, “Give it to him. It’s no use to us if we’re dead.”
She knew it was a decoy, no use to anyone anyway. But the rider didn’t know that, and if he could be fooled into taking it and leaving, they had a chance of surviving even this attack.
Logan shifted, frowned. Made every show of reluctance, grateful to Linnet for giving him that chance. Whoever this man was, he’d know immediately that the letter was a decoy if Logan simply offered it up.
He waited, hoping that the man would make some threat-preferably against Linnet-to further excuse his surrendering the document he’d fought to ferry over half the world.
But the rider’s gaze remained locked on him and didn’t again shift to Linnet. Eventually, the rider arched a brow, as if growing bored.
Who the devil was he? He wasn’t Ferrar, yet from the color of his hands he’d been in India, and not long ago. He clearly commanded cult assassins, so he was, at the very least, a close associate of the cult leader. Coat, breeches, boots, and the horse were all of excellent quality, and the rider wore them, rode the horse, with the unthinking air of one long accustomed to such luxuries.
Logan allowed his frown to deepen. “Who are you?” He saw no reason not to ask.