It took Demon a good minute to accept what his men were telling him. The Gentleman and his rider were indeed nowhere to be seen.
Another rider, a man wrapped in a heavy winter coat, with a fashionable hat pulled low and features protected from the wind by a muffler, was cantering along on a big chestnut just north of where they milled.
If the horse thief had gone this way…
“Hello!” Demon raised his voice, raised a hand in salute.
The other rider glanced back, slowed, raised a hand to show he’d heard.
“Did you see a man-dark coat, dark hat, dark hair, tanned features-riding out on a roan?”
The rider hesitated, then turned and pointed to the east of northeast. There was another rise that might have concealed the rider some way on.
“Thank you!” Demon swung The Flynn in that direction and thundered down the rise. His jockeys and their mounts followed.
The rider watched for a moment, then continued unhurriedly on.
Stone-faced, Alex rode on, listening until the thunder of hooves faded.
Soon, the silence of the wide and empty heath returned.
Alex embraced it.
After a while, thought impinged on the odd emptiness in Alex’s mind, rose up through the unexpected shock.
Survival, after all, was reserved for the fittest.
After further cogitation a plan formed. Head north for a little while longer, enough to get well and truly out of the way of any further searching, then circle around, stop at Bury long enough to alert those left there, then head on to the new house-the new cult headquarters-that M’wallah and Creighton between them had found.
Creighton might be a problem now his master was dead, but M’wallah and Alex’s guard were exceptionally good at resolving all problems Alex faced. Creighton could be left to them.
As the sun slowly rose, Alex, alone, cantered steadily on.
Just after dawn, Demon finally halted.
They’d reached a strip of heath still crisp from the frost, and it was transparently obvious no rider had crossed it that morning.
“We’ve lost him.” Turning The Mighty Flynn, he pulled out the spyglass, and scanned all the heath that he could see.
“But how could we have?” one of the jockeys asked. “We was on his heels-well, a few minutes behind at most-and then… he just wasn’t there.”
Frowning, Demon thought back. Shutting the spyglass, he slipped it back into the saddle pocket. “You had him in sight until he went over the rise where you stopped-the rise where we asked the other rider?”
All the jockeys nodded.
Demon knew every dip and hollow on the heath; he’d been riding there since he was a child. He closed his eyes for a moment, envisaging… if that other rider had been mistaken, or…
Opening his eyes, he wheeled The Flynn back toward Newmarket. “Let’s head home, but we’ll spread out in a line north-south, and go at a slow canter. Yell if you see any sign.”
The horses were tiring, skittish; they needed to get back to their stable, into the warm, and be tended. The run had broken their usual routine.
Demon directed his men into a line, and they started back.
He wasn’t sure what to think. He was deep in weighing up the possibilities when Higgins, to the far south of the line, gave a hie.
“Over there! Isn’t that The Gentleman?”
Demon reined in, hauled out the spyglass, and put it to his eye.
And there was The Gentleman-with a suspicious-looking lump in the saddle. The Gentleman was well to the south, reins dragging as he lazily cropped coarse grass, then ambled on a little way, the lifeless lump on his back swaying with his gait.
Demon drew in a breath, let it out on a sigh. Stuffing the glass back in his saddlebag, he nodded. “That’s him. Let’s go.”
As one, he and his men changed course, and closed on the wandering horse.
The Gentleman’s head came up as they neared, but then he scented his stablemates and went back to his grass. The lump on his back didn’t move.
“Hold up.” Demon waved to his jockeys to rein in a little way away. Their horses sensed the wrongness of the slumped form on The Gentleman’s back and grew yet more skittish.
At a walk, Demon approached The Gentleman. The Flynn was an old hand; he would trust completely and go wherever Demon steered him.
But, yes, that was a dead body. It looked like their horse thief had met his end.
Glancing back at the restless, high-spirited horses, Demon waved them off. “Go on to the stables. I’ll be behind you. No more training this morning. They’ve had a good run. Get them inside and rubbed down.”
The younger jockeys had paled; they nodded and went. The older ones hestitated, but then nodded and headed in.
Leaving Demon to draw closer to The Gentleman, lean down and grab the trailing reins, then edge nearer and, without any real hope, check for a pulse at the side of the man’s neck. Finding none, he bent low and peered at the dead man’s face-enough to confirm that, yes, he was their horse thief.
And judging from his hands and the tanned line at his throat, until recently he’d been somewhere sunny, like India.
Straightening in his saddle, Demon frowned at the corpse. “Who the devil are you? And what the hell’s going on?”
Seventeen
Demon led The Gentleman and his grisly burden back to the stables. It took him and two of his men to lift the man free of the saddle; they laid him out in the back of a hay cart.
Carruthers came hobbling out of the tack room, where he’d been imbibing medicinal brandy. He looked down at the man, nodded. “That’s him. Cheeky, vicious sod. Not so cheeky now. Looks like retribution caught up with him pretty quick.” He glanced at Demon. “Any idea who did it?”
Demon thought of the other rider they’d seen, but could anyone slide a dagger through a man’s heart, and within minutes appear so unconcerned? He shook his head. “No idea. But he was out of our sight for a good while. No saying who he might have met up with.”
“Strange-looking dagger, that.” Carruthers eyed the hilt that protruded from the man’s chest.
“It’s ivory.” Demon bent and looked more closely at it, and any doubt this man was involved with the Black Cobra vanished. The hilt was the same as the daggers that had put paid to first Larkins, then Ferrar, whom they’d originally thought was the Black Cobra.
The sound of riders approaching, followed by a shout, “Ho! Cynster!” had Demon straightening, then striding quickly out of the front doors to the area before the stable.
Logan dismounted as Demon appeared. For the first time in days, Logan grinned.
Demon’s gaze reached him and his old friend’s face lit. “Logan Monteith! Sorry- Major Monteith. You are definitely a sight for sore eyes-even if you’re half covered in… what? Soot? ”
“We escaped a fire, and a few other inconveniences, hence our sorry sartorial state. But I hear you’ve grown sober.” Logan offered his hand, and it was crushed in Demon’s long-fingered grip.
“Not a bit of it!” Demon thumped him on the back and wrung his hand. “As I heard it, it’s you who’ve been getting serious these past months-and into serious danger, too.”
“Sadly, that’s true. Apropos of which…” Releasing Demon, Logan turned to the other three, who by now had dismounted and stood watching them with varying degrees of humorous understanding. “Allow me to present Captain Linnet Trevission, captain of the Esperance , out of Guernsey.”
Linnet gave Demon her hand. “A pleasure, sir.”
Grasping her fingers, Demon bowed gracefully. “The pleasure is all mine.” Straightening, he eyed Linnet’s breeches. “I warn you, my wife, Flick, will be after your tailor’s direction.”
Brows faintly arching, Linnet inclined her head, and Logan continued the introductions.