No, there were too many problems with this, she decided quickly. Too many questions to be answered later. Why was she out so early? Why was she carrying such a well stocked pack? And the maps? And, though she was too agitated to see its irrelevance, there were few woods about here that her father could use.
She would have more chance if she fled. Affecting a casualness she did not feel, she stood up.
Even as she made her decision, however, one of the other riders edged a little closer and said simply, but in a tone that was beyond argument, ‘Don’t.’
Marna’s eyes widened in both alarm and surprise. Not so much at this seeming anticipation of her actions, but because though, like the rider who had spoken first, the voice was heavy with the accent that characterized Nilsson’s men, this speaker was a woman.
She dismounted, and Marna felt herself being exam-ined by searching eyes, even though she still could not make out the woman’s features with the low sun shining in her face. The eyes moved to the disturbed ground, the dead man, and the steaming vomit.
‘What happened?’ the woman asked, returning her gaze to Marna. There was an unexpected gentleness in the voice.
‘They attacked me,’ Marna replied, without pausing to consider anything more elaborate.
‘They?’ There was an urgent edge to the first speaker’s voice, and he leaned forward in his saddle anxiously.
‘Two men,’ Marna said, looking up at him. ‘Outsid-ers. On their way to the castle. They…’
‘Where’s the other one?’ the man demanded sternly before she could finish.
‘He ran off,’ Marna said. She waved a hand vaguely towards the dead man. ‘He stabbed him by accident when I was struggling with him, then I did – that. Then he ran off.’
The other two riders dismounted rapidly. ‘Which way?’ one of them asked. It was another woman. Marna pointed. Her hand was shaking.
‘There’s blood here. And a trail,’ said the fourth rider, a man. He was bending down by the tree that the injured man had leaned against.
There was no further talk, but the two of them dis-appeared silently into the trees in the direction that Marna had indicated. Their sudden departure seemed to cut through Marna’s bewilderment. Questions tumbled through her mind, not the least of which was how women came to be riding with Nilsson’s men, but she pushed them to one side. Whoever they were and however they came to be there, there were only two of them now. She must make her dash for freedom quickly, before the others returned.
Yet somehow she could not blindly lash out with the knife at another woman.
But she could push her into the rider. That would cause enough confusion for her to escape. And they wouldn’t abandon the other horses to give chase.
As inconspicuously as she could, she took several deep breaths to steel herself to this venture.
Then, as she thought, without warning, she spun round and with a cry, hurled herself at the unsuspecting woman. The impact she anticipated, however, did not happen. Instead she found herself caught up in some way and spinning round a great deal more than she had intended. Then, abruptly, she was once more firmly pinned face downwards on the ground, gasping for breath.
Before she could properly register what had hap-pened, she felt the knife being gently prised from her grip.
A low chuckle came down to her from the rider above, and a word she did not understand, but which was plainly an oath, hissed out softly under the breath of the woman who had effected this sudden change in her posture. The chuckle became a laugh. ‘Language, language, Aaren,’ the man said.
Then she was being helped up. She was shaking. ‘Stay where you are,’ Aaren said, her voice firm but not unkind. ‘No one’s going to hurt you, providing you don’t do anything silly like that again.’ She pointed towards the dead man with the knife. ‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t mean to kill him,’ Marna blurted out.
Aaren glanced at the vomit and nodded. ‘It hap-pens,’ she said, though her tone was far from casual. ‘And he was trying to strangle you.’
‘How…?’
‘You’ve got muddy handprints around your neck,’ Aaren answered, before the question was asked, her hands reaching out in a motherly gesture to brush the offending stains. ‘Don’t fret. People who do things like that can expect to be killed.’
The strange mixture of callousness and compassion in the woman’s voice seemed to unhinge Marna, and suddenly she was sobbing again, while at the same time cursing herself for her weakness.
Supporting arms lowered her gently to the ground. She covered her face with her hands. No one spoke as Marna’s sobs ran their course. ‘I keep thinking, maybe he had parents somewhere, a wife, children. It’s awful. I can see their faces. What’ve I done?’ she said eventually.
‘Is any of this blood yours?’ Aaren asked, crouching down and taking one of Marna’s crimsoned hands.
A little bewildered by this question, Marna looked at her interrogator as if she had misheard, before she shook her head.
‘Then you’ve survived,’ Aaren said bluntly, return-ing Marna’s gaze intently. ‘He may well have had people unfortunate enough to love him, somewhere. But so do you, I’m sure. And I doubt you came into these woods to kill him, did you? He was the one who brought death here, not you. It was him or you. His loved ones or yours. Take a deep breath. Be glad you’re alive. For yourself and for them.’
Marna turned away from her as if cold water had been dashed in her face. ‘That’s just… words,’ she said, gasping and wrapping her arms about herself.
Aaren reached out and took Marna’s face in her hands. Turning her head she looked into her eyes. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘Believe me, I do. You must feel as you feel. Deny nothing. Words are all we’ve got. Be thankful at least that they’re true.’
Marna met her captor’s gaze uncertainly. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.
The return of the other two however, prevented any answer to this question. ‘We couldn’t catch him,’ the man said. ‘We’d have had to go out of the trees. But he’s bleeding badly. I doubt he’s going to last long.’
The rider nodded. ‘Even so, we’ll have to move this.’ He pointed to the dead man. ‘And the camp they’d made. Take it all well down, and cover the tracks. Give him the knife, Aaren. Make it look like a quarrel between the two of them. We don’t want to encourage anyone to come prowling about up here.’ He turned to Marna. ‘You did say they were outsiders, didn’t you, girl?’
Caught in a momentary spasm of self-pity, Marna snapped angrily. ‘Don’t call me girl.’
The two women looked up at the rider and smiled knowingly. He cast a brief glance upwards and tried again. ‘They’re not… Nilsson’s men, are they, young woman?’ he said.
Marna stared at him, her face puzzled. ‘No,’ she replied, repenting her outburst a little. ‘They said they’d come here to join Rannick’s army.’
The rider nodded to his companions and they set about gathering together the remains of the camp. ‘No, that’s my pack,’ Marna cried out, as the man took hold of it. He watched her as she stood up and walked towards him, arm extended. While there was no animosity in his gaze, there was a quality about him that made her want to shiver. ‘Thank you,’ she managed to say as she took the pack from him. Then he was picking up the dead man.