Gwenhwyfar_ The White Spirit - Mercedes Lackey [152]
But luck was with them. He tethered Idris in the brush near a pond, and both of them could hear the quiet quacking of ducks. She nodded him towards the pond, and she headed in the direction of a glare of sunlight through the trees that probably meant a clearing. As she stalked carefully along the edge of a meadow, she heard a tussle in the grass and saw two hares fighting. Now, hares fighting could only be male. And the male hares had no part in anything but the siring of the young ones; they went off and left the does to tend the babies alone. She froze as soon as she saw them, but they were so deep in combat they paid no attention to her. Carefully she stuck one arrow in the ground in front of her, moving as slowly as a leaf in a light breeze. Carefully, she put a second to the bow, and pulled it back to her ear.
She let fly. And without waiting to see if the first arrow hit, snatched up the second and put it to the string.
Hares were not very bright at best, and when fighting over females, they were single-minded as well. The second continued to attack the first for a critical moment after it fell over dead. By the time it realized that something was wrong, and its head came up as it froze with indecision as a few dim thoughts managed to escape from the sex fight-sex madness that spring brought on, it too was dead.
Feeling utterly triumphant, she collected them, gutted them then and there, cleaned her knife and the arrows with a handful of grass and brought back the cleaned carcasses to where Lancelin had tethered the horse. He was already there, tying a gutted drake to the saddle bow.
He looked up. “Two were fighting over a hen. I shot the loser.”
She nodded and held up her prizes. He actually grinned as he tied the carcasses alongside his catch.
As the sun set, it turned everything the color of roses—the greening forest, the sky, the clearings they passed through—and she could not help a feeling of triumph as she thought about all the nights she had seen this same rosy light fill her tiny window. She would swear that somehow she would win herself free, and now she had.
“Are you disappointed?” she asked into Lancelin’s back. “That you weren’t the one to win me free, like some warrior in a tale?”
He was quiet for a while, although she did not feel his muscles tense, so as she was used to seeing, he must have been carefully considering his words. “While the glory of being your rescuer all alone was a heady fancy, it was never more than that,” he said, slowly. “First, of course, I did not know if you were actually held captive by Medraut. Second, if you were, his men are many, and I am one. What I planned to do, I fear, is somewhat less glorious. I was going to skulk about to determine if there was a captive there, and if it was a female, and if so, where she was being held. Then to see how closely guarded she was. Then to see if it was you. After that . . .” He shook his head. “My plans were unformed. Pray remember, so far as anyone knows, you are still in Celliwig. My first course of action would have been to free you if I could, but I assumed I would not be able to. And I would have to think who would believe me that I could count on to fight with me.”
She began to chuckle. “It appears that Abbot Gildas and his monks were willing and able to put up some sort of fight.”
His laughter was deep in his chest, and she felt it vibrate in his muscles. “I owe the Abbot a profound debt of gratitude. I hope no one came to any harm.”
She didn’t know. “I don’t think Medraut would dare. Though he follows the Old Ways, still, a holy man is a holy man, and you harm one at your peril.”
While they had been speaking, the sun descended below the trees; the