“We shall indeed,” Sir Orizhan said, matching Brock’s grin.
They stopped to walk for a minute, then ran on toward the convent.
Suddenly, hooves pounded behind them.
“Run!” Matt shouted, and stretched his legs for all he was worm—but the horse was galloping, and caught up with them easily. Dolan waved down at them from its back, looking frightened. One hand held reins, the other held the cantle of the saddle to hold him on—and the reins of a second horse that galloped beside the first.
Matt stared. “How’d you get behind us?” Then he answered his own question. “No, don’t answer. Silly of me. You were riding a bauchan.”
“Pull back on the reins!” Sir Orizhan called. Dolan dutifully obeyed, and the horses slowed enough for Sergeant Brock to run around and catch the reins of the riderless mount while Sir Orizhan caught Dolan’s. They stopped the horses and mounted, Sir Orizhan behind Dolan, Matt behind Sergeant Brock. Sir Orizhan kicked his heels into the horse’s flanks, Sergeant Brock did likewise, and off they went.
“I should ask what happened to the men who were riding these horses,” Matt called, “but I don’t think I want to know.”
Dolan shook his head emphatically.
“Ride!” Sir Orizhan commanded. “If these horses have caught us, the others cannot be far behind!”
“Yes they can,” Matt called back. “These two knew where they were going. The hunters still have to follow the hound.”
“It will speed soon enough,” Brock called grimly.
True enough, the hound’s bell-howling was growing louder and louder. Matt chanced a glance back and saw a dust cloud with several horses coming out of it, a strange, ungainly beast loping ahead of them—ungainly, but moving even more quickly than they were. He shut up and let the sergeant kick the horse up into overdrive.
“I thought troopers weren’t allowed to ride,” he called to Sergeant Brock ahead of him.
“We are not,” Brock called back, “but not for lack of knowing. Any serf’s son learns how to ride a plow horse.”
They came out of the woods and into a broad plain, cut into a patchwork of fields with a variety of crops, including pastures dotted with sheep. At its center, far ahead, rose the tawny walls of the convent.
“Ride!” Matt shouted. “Safety’s in sight!”
Then he saw the other horse off to their right with two riders on its back, riding hell-bent for leather—and saw the hell-bended hound behind, running at its top speed, leading half a dozen riders who shouted with glee as they chased. Looking back at his own pursuers, he heard the same sort of shouts—and noticed that the soldier in front had his hood up. He seemed much more gangly than the rest, knees up as high as the saddlebow. Matt deleted an expletive under his breath. Buckeye was leading the pursuit, howling with glee.
Matt undeleted the expletive. “Blasted monster can’t decide whether he’s for us or against us!”
“What monster?” Sergeant Brock looked back, then swore as only a soldier could, something involving a physiological impossibility and the questionable ancestry of the bauchan. But he recovered enough to say, “Be sure he’ll not let them slay you, milord, for who then would he have to torment?”
“Don’t say that word ‘torment,’ ” Matt told him. “There’s a lot they can do without killing me.” He didn’t add that the soldiers might treat the rest of the party to a few quick sword strokes.
Fortunately, the humans weren’t the only ones the hound scared. The horses heard that howl-baying growing louder and stretched themselves even harder. Somehow they seemed to understand that the beige walls ahead meant safety, and redoubled their pace.
Atop the wall, several black-robed figures appeared. One looked up to Heaven and raised her clasped hands in prayer. The others imitated her.
Matt glanced over at the other travelers and saw that their hunters were gaining, too. Of course, it would be too much to hope for that the two packs might collide…
Not with a bauchan with a twisted sense of humor leading one of the groups, it wasn’t. The two roads joined a hundred yards from the gate, and the other travelers galloped through the intersection just a few feet ahead of Mart’s party—and as he came alongside he stared in amazement. “Mama! Papa!”
The two riders looked up, astonished, and cried with one voice, “Matthew!”
Then the two groups of hunters howled with triumph—and crashed into one another.
They bawled and cursed and bellowed, slashing at one another with short cavalry swords, while the two hounds sprang to fight with explosive barks, each trying to sink its teeth into the other first.
Buckeye broke loose from the melee and shouted, “Ride!” He even ran after to slap the rumps of all three horses before he turned back to dive into the churning mass again.
He was just in time, too. The leader of one group saw who he was fighting and shouted, “We are king’s men!”
“We are reeve’s men, under the prince’s orders!” his opposite number answered, and they might have made peace there and then if Buckeye hadn’t reached up and clobbered one of them in the kidneys. The man howled with pain and yelped, “Call off your men!”
“Lay off!” the other leader shouted, just before Buckeye stretched an arm to rabbit-punch him.“Yowoo! I thought you called for peace!”
And the two groups set upon each other again, hammer and tongs, short swords clashing on bucklers and steel caps. Buckeye danced around and through the dust cloud, timing his punches perfectly to keep them fighting one another.
The gates of the convent opened wide just in time for all three horses to gallop through, then swung shut again. A team of nuns hefted a huge bar into the brackets on the backs of the gates, and Matt turned in the saddle to throw his arms around his parents. “Thank Heaven you made it!”
“And you, my son,” Mama said, returning the embrace, then holding Matt off at arm’s length. “Thank Heaven indeed.”
“Aye, thank Heaven,” said a severe voice.
They looked up to see an older nun coming down off the wall toward them, eyes flashing. “Who are you, who come unbidden to the Convent of St. Ursula?”
“At least we’ve got the right address,” Matt told Sir Orizhan, then, “Matthew Mantrell, Lord Wizard of Merovence, with Lord and Lady Mantrell, my parents—” He gestured to his mother and father, then to his companions. “—and Sir Orizhan, knight of Toulenge, with his squire, Sergeant Brock of Bretanglia. This other gentleman is Dolan, an unfortunate who has suffered at the hands of Prince John’s torturers.”
Dolan and Brock pulled their forelocks; Sir Orizhan bowed as well as he could from the saddle.
“And whom have we the pleasure of addressing?” Matt asked.
“I am Mother Diceabo, abbess of this convent. Do you claim the right of sanctuary?”
“We do!” all six of them chorused.
Then Sergeant Brock said nervously, “By your leave, lords and ladies, may we put off the courtesies till we have done with the attackers at your gates?”
“Attackers!” Mother Diceabo exclaimed. “Have they not left off once they saw you were safe?”
In answer, five howling soldiers leaped over the wall— only eight feet high, no bar to a horseman who could stand on his saddle and vault over it. Most of the nuns screamed and ran—for quarterstaves piled in a cone by the gate. Each grasped her stick and turned to face the invaders.
But Sir Orizhan and Sergeant Brock were there before them, spurring their horses and shouting war-cries. Dolan hung on for dear life.
Sergeant Brock turned a cut from a foeman, then whirled his sword in to thrust, but the enemy blocked it with his buckler, swinging his sword up for another strike. Matt leaned around Brock and thrust at the unarmored line between breastplate and hip. He couldn’t reach very far, but it was enough to make the soldier scream and clap his hand over his gut. Brock drove his hilt down, but the man was already clawing his way back over the wall.