The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [194]
“I—suppose you’re right,” she said. “But the shock, too many shocks, you know. Too much of this. Too much.”
He felt pity for the girl, but he didn’t have time to indulge it. “Austra,” he asked, gently but firmly, “where is Anne?”
“I don’t know,” Austra replied despondently. “She’s supposed to be with Artoré and his sons, and they were supposed to be going to Eslen, but then I saw them bring Artoré into the camp, and I thought one of the monks must have heard me, though I was a hundred yards away—”
“Austra, are there more of these fellows in the woods?”
She nodded her head.
“Okay, then—quietly, let’s go somewhere safer, and then you’ll tell me everything, yes? Sort it out in your head while we ride.”
“We have to save Cazio,” she mumbled.
“Right. We’ll save everybody, but first I have to know what’s going on, and I don’t think it’s wise we talk here. Come on.”
In a knightly contest, Neil could rightly claim the victor’s arms, armor, and horse as the spoils of victory. And though this battle had been fought on less-than-knightly terms, he reckoned the same still applied.
The fellow’s sword was a pretty nice one, made of good steel and with a better balance and edge than the one he’d purchased in Paldh. In a melancholy mood, he named the new weapon Cuenslec, “Dead Man’s Sword,” and hoped it did not prove to be a prophecy that would continue to fulfill itself.
The byrnie of chain mail fit him, if a bit loosely, as did the breastplate and gauntlets. The greaves were too long, however. The helm was tied to the horse, along with two spears, but the beast was unapproachable.
In fact, the horse was something of a problem. It would probably return to camp, alerting the dead man’s companions to his fate. Of course, they would know eventually, when he failed to return, but later was better than sooner. Still, he didn’t feel like killing the poor beast. Instead he took the rope he tethered Prospect with at night, made a lasso, and after a few tries captured him. Then he tied the other end of the rope to a tree.
Thus equipped, he and Austra returned to Prospect and rode back out of the forest, over a little hill and beyond sight of both the forest and the road, which felt safer than hiding in the woods. There he listened as Austra told her story and described the scene at the seid.
“You shouldn’t have left Anne,” he told her.
“I don’t see how you can say that, after she betrayed you,” Austra snapped. Then, looking chagrined, she went on, “Besides, she was safe, or I thought she was. Cazio and z’Acatto weren’t.”
“Yes, but how did you reckon to take on those knights by yourself?”
“I thought I might sneak in and cut their bonds,” she replied, “but so far I haven’t been able to get close enough.”
“And you haven’t see Anne at all.”
“No,” Austra said.
“Do you think they’ve killed her?”
“I don’t know,” Austra said miserably. “They’ve got Artoré and his sons. They must have killed one of them, because they brought an extra horse. But I counted, and there wasn’t a horse for Anne.”
“So you believe she got away?”
“I hope so,” Austra said. “This is all my fault. She would never have come here except for me.”
“There’s no point in worrying over that,” Neil soothed. “Concentrate on what you can do, not what you could have done.” He was surprised to hear himself say the words, and even more surprised to realize that he actually meant them—not just for Austra, but for himself.
Yes, he had failed, several times now. He would probably fail again, but the thing a man did—the thing his father would have told him to do—was to keep trying.
“If Anne’s alive,” he reasoned, “she’s on the other side of the forest. We can’t go through on the road, or they’ll ambush us the way they did your friends. But we have to go through—we have to find out if she’s still alive.”
“But Cazio—”
“There are at least two knights left, one of them a nauschalk. How many priests and men-at-arms? How many would I have to fight altogether?”
“Some of them come and go,” she said. “But I think maybe five monks and fifteen