Suddenly George stopped his pacing and came to them. “If a man’s to go far with a captive, he would have to have horses, and the only ones about are down at the barn.”
He reached for his rifle as did Pitney, but as the other men were stirring into action, the front door was already swinging shut behind Ruark. They all seized weapons and raced after him, leaving the women to console themselves, Ralston standing undecidedly, and Orlan Trahern fuming in his chair. Finally the squire heaved himself up and braced on his staff.
“Aarrgh,” he snarled. “If you think I’ll sit here with the womenfolk, you’re daft!” He took a step with his crutch and another, and then, hurling the blackthorn staff flat upon the floor, he went after the rest, ignoring his bandaged foot.
George Beauchamp arrived at the barn in time to hear his son tersely questioning the sergeant.
“Horses, man! Who has taken horses today?”
“Only Sir Gaylord, sir,” the sergeant answered, bewildered. “He came down shortly before midday and ordered a horse to be saddled. He’d been out all morning and wanted a fresh mount. Saddled it meself, I did. Then he took the little roan mare, too, the one with the scars on her legs. Said he might need to tote some stuff.” The sergeant paused then added a bit defensively, “Said he had the master’s permission.”
“It’s all right, sergeant,” George assured the worried man.
It was the sudden sharp whinny and thud of hooves behind them that made the men turn. Attila pawed at the boards of a stall with his hooves then whirled and stamped and snorted.
George jerked his thumb at the beast and asked of the sergeant, “What’s the matter with him?”
“Can’t rightly say,” the sergeant shrugged. “He started fretting when Sir Gaylord came and got hotter when the man took the mare out.”
George raised a brow at Ruark, and their eyes locked in silent exchange for a moment. Ruark nodded and ran to push the barn doors wide, while his father went to the stall and motioned the rest of the men aside, out of the way. George loosed the latch and swung the gate wide. Attila snorted and came out, his hooves ringing on the bare stone floor. He tossed his head, saw the open doors, and turned toward them instantly. Before he could gather speed, Ruark seized a handful of the thick gray mane and swung himself up onto the broad back. Attila skidded to a halt and started to prance angrily until Ruark clamped down with his knees and gave a sharp whistle. The horse then knew his rider and, sensing they were about the same mission, leaped for the doors. Behind them, Nathanial and the major began shouting orders.
Attila rounded the manor house and in an easy bound, cleared the gate beside the burned stable. Ruark let him have his head and only clung to his back, giving no guidance. They entered the copse of trees, and the gray skidded to a halt in the clearing. He paused but a moment, tossing his head, sampling the air, then was off again in a rush of hooves. They crashed through the brush and were out in the pasture, running like the wind. The smell of Gaylord was hot in Attila’s nostrils, but more than that, the scent of the mare. They were both somewhere ahead. The air was cool and bracing. The stallion settled into an easy run, not straining but stretching out with each stride until his hooves barely seemed to touch the sod. The tall oaks flew by in a brownish blur, and now they were on the trail. As Ruark saw the way, he began to guide the beast, and the two of them were as one, bent on a single purpose.
Gaylord chafed as he glanced back toward Shanna. Her sureness and composure were disquieting. He had a need to see her subdued, if only by fear. He dropped back beside her again, and the horses’ pace slowed to a walk.
“Even a fool knows when he has met his master,” he began.
“And you, sir,”—her reply came with that same calm smile—“have at last met yours.” Shanna felt the weight of the small dagger against her leg. She dared not try to get it now. There would come a time, she assured herself silently. Forcing herself to relax, she stared straight ahead, afraid that some of her self-control might crumble.
Gaylord tried to reason with her. “I am not a cruel man, madam, and you are most beautiful. A small amount of grace upon your part might prompt me to find mercy in my heart. I but wish to share a moment of pleasure with you.”
“My pleasure, sir,” her soft voice mocked, “would be to never set eyes on you again.”
The bitch! How could she deny him so?
“You are helpless!” he shouted and raised in the stirrups to his full height. “You are in my power, and I will do what I want with you!”
Shanna hid the shudder that went through her and laughed scornfully. “Sir? In a damp forest? You’ll muss your clothes.”
“There is no one to rescue you!” he bellowed.
And the reply came as soft as ever. “Ruark is coming!”
Gaylord shook the rifle at her in rage. “If he is, then I will kill him!”
Her fear was almost overwhelming, and she spoke to keep her lips from trembling. “Have I told you, sir, that he spent some time with the savages and learned their ways? He even won their respect. All of this when he was but a lad. Have I told you, sir, that he can pass through the forest like a shadow without stirring a leaf? Have I told you, sir, that he is a marksman? And when angered, he fights like a savage. Indeed, is a savage.” She gave a short laugh. “The pirates could well attest to that. They feared him, you know.”
From the corner of her eye, Shanna saw Gaylord glance back over his shoulder, and he scanned the trail ahead with a care unusual for one so bold.
“Have you ever thought, sir, how one man against so many could bring all of us out unscathed from the pirate’s isle?”
They passed a high spot where the trail dipped down into the valley, and Gaylord halted his abbreviated column to scan the path behind them again. Shanna cocked her head to one side as if listening carefully, and suddenly the assurance she had given tongue to was oddly heavy within her. Sir Gaylord was watching her with angry suspicion on his face. She straightened and met his gaze squarely, nodding ever so slightly.
“Aye, Ruark is coming.”
Her words were little more than a whisper, but they seemed to enrage the knight. With a snarl he jerked the rope, making the mare prance. Shanna fought to keep her seat and frantically clutched the handful of mane, just as they charged full tilt down into the valley. They rounded the last bend, leaving black slashes where the racing hooves tore the soft moss to shreds. Gaylord hauled the mounts to a skidding halt before the cabin, gritting his teeth in pain as the mare half stumbled. He calmed the steeds and stepped down from his own, tying the mare to the hitching rail and flexing his shoulder as if he knew a persistent ache in it. He took the bags from behind Shanna, and unlatching the cabin door, threw them within. He returned, stretching his muscles, and walked about a bit, seeking his own ease before seeing to Shanna’s. When it finally met his whim, he came to her. He untied one of her feet then went between the horses to loosen her other. He took some time with this task, and his long fingers unduly caressed her slim ankles and were wont to venture needlessly up her leg. Shanna held her breath, fearing he might discover the dagger.
Suddenly a rattle of hooves at the mouth of the valley drew their attention. For a moment the gray flank of the horse and the dark brown of its rider were visible through the trees. Shanna’s spirit thrilled with the sight, and briefly her eyes blurred with joyful tears, but she sobered as Gaylord snatched up the rifle. Chuckling to himself, he pulled back the heavy hammer and steadied the piece across the saddle of his mount, drawing a careful bead where the trail made its final curve.
It was another of his many mistakes that Gaylord turned his back on Shanna. As the hooves thundered near the curve, she raised her foot and struck the mare’s outward side with all her strength. With a sharp whinny Jezebel leapt away from the blow, and her movement caught Gaylord between the mounts, crushing the breath from him. The rifle shot upward like a misdirected arrow and sailed in a neat arc into the brush just as Ruark came racing around the bend on Atti
la’s back.
The mare caught a blow with a sharp elbow in the ribs and pranced away, leaving Gaylord to stumble out from between the two horses, gasping for breath. He looked up to see a huge gray stallion, eyes red, nostrils flared, ears laid back upon his head, charging straight for him, and a man crouching on the heaving shoulders like an avenging spirit.
Gaylord forgot the rifle as a chill went up his spine. Snatching Shanna roughly from the mare’s back, he dragged her to the cabin and shoved her through the door. With arms still bound, she stumbled across the dirt floor and sprawled upon the bed. Stepping in, Gaylord slammed the door and was reaching for the heavy bar when the whole of it, hinges, hasp, and all, was torn loose and crashed in upon him.
Ruark had launched himself from the gray’s back feet first, all the speed of the charge behind him. His legs were half numbed by the blow, but he rolled on a shoulder and came to his feet ready to fight.
“Come on, bastard,” he growled. “If you want my wife, you’ll have to kill me with your bare hands! No burning stable this time.”
Gaylord was no small man, and now the heat of the battle was upon him. He flung the stout door off himself and lunged to his feet, pawing for the pistols which were no longer in his belt but lay, instead, outside, beneath the horse’s hooves. The knight had only time enough to realize his loss before Ruark attacked. A howl of rage broke from Gaylord’s lips to answer the snarl of Ruark. At last, Billingsham could openly battle this bondsman who had plagued him from the first. With a thud, the two men met chest to chest, and their arms locked in a test of sheer strength.
Even through his righteous wrath, Ruark was amazed at the power of his antagonist. Their breath whistled through clenched teeth, and the tendons of both strained with their efforts. Gaylord’s feet slipped on the dirt floor as he was slowly straightened and bent backward. He had no choice but to give way or be flung on his back. He tried to dive to one side, but Ruark held on. They crashed as one to the floor in a cloud of loose dirt, and to Shanna’s eyes, became a thrashing welter of twisting arms and legs.
Shaking with her own emotions and her anxiety for Ruark, she lifted her skirts and clawed for the hilt of her dagger. Her bound hands were almost numb, but she managed to loosen the knife and tuck the hilt between her knees. Frantically she began to saw the ropes against the blade.
The two men rose on their knees. Ruark thrust his head beneath Gaylord’s chin and clasped his arms about the narrow ribs of the knight, hugging him like a bear until the other’s spine was bent to the breaking point. Gaylord moaned beneath the pressure then suddenly twisted aside. The hold was broken. They teetered and fell and again were obscured in a cloud of dust.
The knight’s flailing hand touched a smooth, hard length of wood, and he snatched its weighty length up. A small, cured pelt of an animal clung to one end, but he had no time to shake it off. Laughter wheezed from his laboring lungs as he rolled above Ruark and brought the stick across the bondsman’s neck, leaning all his weight on it. Ruark caught the wood, and the tendons stood out in his neck and arms like taut cordage as he strained to hold the piece from choking him. The staff moved upward ever so slightly and Gaylord shrieked his dismay. Ruark’s knee worked beneath the knight’s belly and lifted some of the weight away. His foot slid beneath the knight’s hip, and he heaved, hurling Gaylord over his head and away from him, releasing the staff as Gaylord sailed over him. The fur pelt came free. Then the realization dawned on Ruark with sudden clarity that the end of the smooth stick bore a wide double-bladed head. It was the ax he had left in the cabin.
Shanna gasped, and Gaylord chortled in high glee, shifting the double-bladed weapon in his hands as Ruark scrambled to his feet. Ruark seized a length of firewood to defend himself as the knight moved forward. Ruark could only move back as the keen-edged blade threatened him in the narrow confines of the cabin.
The edge of the table caught Ruark on the back of the thighs, and he could retreat no further. With a shout of triumph, Gaylord swung a two-handed blow downward as Shanna cringed and smothered a scream. Ruark dove to one side, and the table, with a rending, splintering crack, fell in halves as the ax cut it clean through. As Gaylord struggled to pull the blade from the shreds, Ruark threw the firewood low at the shins of the man and snatched another piece. The ax swung in a short swipe at Ruark’s belly, and the blow was barely parried with the short stick of wood. The ax swung again. Ruark leapt back to avoid the blade then crashed to the floor as his feet tangled in the wreckage of the table.
Gaylord’s bellow of victory ended in a shriek of pain. He had seen the bright flash and jerked away, but he had still caught the point of the tiny dagger on his cheek and felt the red hot shock of it slash downward along his neck, laying open flesh as it went.
In his lust for blood, he had forgotten the lady, Shanna, again. Indeed, no lady! She had freed herself and joined the fray with the silvered thorn, as fiercely protective of her husband’s life as he of hers. Snarling, Gaylord flung wide his arms, and she was thrust away, the small dagger flying into a corner. But as Gaylord grasped the ax again, she returned to rake his lightly shirted shoulder with her claws. She finally gained his attention. His bony fist struck hard, and Shanna stumbled back as it caught her along the jaw. Dazed and reeling, she sprawled again upon the furry bed, her world suddenly gone black and void.
Now, it was the other beast Gaylord had ignored too long. A half-voiced, bellowing snarl sounded in his ear, and the ax was snatched from his grasp as if from a child’s. He recoiled and thought to see it flash, ending his life. And flash it did, but straight upward with such force the blade was half buried high in a timber of the roof, its handle quivering well out of reach. Gaylord’s relief was short-lived, however, for he was seized in a vise that slowly crushed the breath from him. He was in the grip of a maddened beast who gave no quarter but slowly lifted him from the floor in arms of steel. Hurled halfway across the room, he rebounded from the wall and was immediately beset by punishing blows that took him from every side. He saw bared white teeth beneath dark-rimmed golden eyes in a snarling face that promised only death. Blows rained upon him, taking away his strength. He began to fear defeat and, worse than that, death. He raised an arm and weakly struck out but was attacked with such renewed savagery he stumbled back across the room and could only shelter his head beneath his arms. He fell to his knees and reeled as a hard fist struck him on the face. His hand was suddenly full of soft velvet and dimly he saw a woman’s face above him.
“Stop him! Stop him!” he sobbed. “He’ll kill me!”
Shanna struggled against the grayness that engulfed her, and through the buzzing in her ears, she heard a distant cursing mingled with a whimpering cry. She shook her head to free herself from the daze, and some vision returned. She saw Sir Gaylord at her feet on the floor, clutching the hem of her gown, begging for his life. Suddenly her mind was clear. What he had not given to others would be granted to him. Mercy. She stepped over the sprawling knight and caught Ruark’s arm to her breast.
“Ruark,” she pleaded. “Let him have his day with the hangman.” She slipped a hand behind Ruark’s head and, with the other, pushed his rigid body back. Stepping before him, she pulled his face close to hers and kissed his lips until his sanity began to return and she felt the stiffness of rage leave him. She knew she had won when he took her in his arms and lifted her against him in a fierce, crushing embrace.
Shanna was sitting on the stump, holding still while Ruark applied a cool wet cloth to her bruised cheek, when Nathanial and the major halted their mounts before the cabin. Gaylord sat nearby on a rough-hewn bench, well wrapped in a length of rope.
The latecomers surveyed the scene that greeted them as George and the others joined them. Considering the unhinged portal, George chuckled down at Ruark.
“My son, you truly have a way with doors.”
Gaylord was put on a horse, and Shanna was lifted to Attila’s back, where she perched in the arms of her husband. She would have traded
no part of her world away. The door of the cabin was roped in place, and the party was preparing for the return journey when suddenly a shout rang out from the trail and a rattle of hooves drifted down to them. They waited in wonderment until an ancient mare with stiff legs and a spine-jolting gait came trotting around the bend. It could not be said which wheezed the harder, the gallant mare or her courageous rider. A string of jolted curses drifted ahead of them as the mare neared. Nathanial stepped down from his mount and mercifully assisted Trahern to the firm turf. Stripping the saddle from Trahern’s mount, he laid it on the back of Jezebel, that mare of gentler gait, while George led the aging mare to the pasture and turned her out to graze in peace.
Dusk was gathering over the land as the mostly jovial party neared the manor house, and no one noted that Attila with his double load chose to lag far behind the rest. Indeed, it was questionable whether any hand guided him, since both his riders seemed much occupied with each other.
The returning party went directly to the barn where George pointed out a heavily planked stall intended to contain the occasionally errant stud or bull. It was little used. A small table and a stool were placed within, along with a pile of fresh straw and several blankets. The ropes were stripped from Sir Gaylord, and he was thrust into his stall-cell. Glaring about him, he rubbed his wrists then sneered at his captors.
“You may abuse me like this if you will, but as a knight of the realm I can be tried before no less than the high tribunal of His Majesty’s court in London.”
“Perhaps,” Major Carter replied musingly, “that will be up to the magistrate in Williamsburg.”