Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide (18 page)

These merchants and patrons were naturally embarrassed about being thus taken off their guard, and so, in their recounting of the incidents once back in town, the legend of the power, stealth, and deceit of Dirk Gallowglass grew with each telling. The fear of the black hood and rapier blade of Dirk Gallowglass made Henri’s job all the easier. He became a legendary figure about Eventide—a town that, rumor had it, was under his protection.

And that was true, although not for any of the reasons anyone in or out of the town imagined.

Henri pulled down the hood and became Dirk Gallowglass. It was late in the evening, a twilight ribbon fading at the horizon. Down the road came a single rider, his livery fine and his person fat. Dirk was in the shadows of the wood at the edge of the road between Welston and Eventide. No one else had passed by his hidden location in over a half hour. It looked like another easy mark. The highwayman adjusted his costume, drew his rapier, and leaped out in front of the horse.

“Haha!” he shouted in his most practiced and effective Dirk-voice. “Stand and deliver, lest you feel the wrath—”

He got no further with his speech.

The rider immediately dismounted without a word and drew his saber from its scabbard, closing directly with Henri, his blade rising at once. Henri barely countered a succession of swift cuts and thrusts that pressed him back before he could set a proper stance.

“Wait!” Henri cried out.

The elder man in the twilight only grinned.

The saber crashed against the thin rapier again and again, each blow shaking the grip in Henri’s clenched hand, threatening to break the blade. Suddenly the saber swung in a spiral, steel singing against steel, pushing the rapier out of the way as the mysterious patrician lunged, plunging the blade just below Henri’s left shoulder.

Henri cried out in pain, taking a great step backward. He swung the rapier in a wide circle in front of him to clear his opponent’s blade . . . and then turned and bolted for the woods.

Henri was panicked. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way—not to him. He could hear his opponent crashing through the underbrush behind him, chasing after him. The light was nearly gone and it was increasingly difficult to see in the deep woods. Yet, although the old man was obviously skilled with a blade, he was, nevertheless, still old. Henri outdistanced him quickly. It wasn’t until he had lost him altogether that Henri realized he was feeling very strange, indeed. The wound to his shoulder was bleeding and he was starting to feel light-headed. He got his bearings with some difficulty and made his way back to his camp. Pulling himself up on his legendary black horse, he hurried to seek help in the nearest town . . . which happened to be Eventide.

“Shall I take Lord Gallivant up to his room?” Evangeline asked.

“Yes, Daughter,” Squire Melthalion answered wearily as he cleaned the last of the spills off the long bar of the inn. He made his way around the room, snuffing out the lanterns as he went. “It’s time to close—there’ll be no more excitement for him tonight.”

Evangeline was a lithe beauty. Many of the women on Cobblestone Street thought her too thin, but her slenderness only accentuated her large, brown eyes and black, curly hair. She had a wide, generous mouth that was quick to smile when she had the time. She crossed the common room of the Griffon’s Tale Inn and took the old stubble-bearded man by the arm, helping him to his feet. Lord Gallivant tried to focus on her but gave up, taking her arm and moving across the room.

Evangeline had just reached the base of the stairs with Lord Gallivant when the door burst open. The Squire turned from the great fireplace of the inn where he was banking the fire.

Framed in the doorway and silhouetted from behind by the still-glowing pixie lanterns of Charter Square was the tall form of Dirk Gallowglass. His right arm still held the rapier, but he was leaning heavily against the door frame on that side. His left arm hung limp at his side, a glistening stain flowing from his shoulder.

Lord Gallivant turned as Evangeline gasped, raising one of his grey, bushy eyebrows. Squire Melthalion rushed toward the figure, trying to get between the man and his daughter.

It was a fortunate move, as the highwayman pitched forward into the room, barely caught by the Squire before crashing into the hardwood floor.

“Who is it, Father?” Evangeline breathed.

“Who is it!” the Squire answered in strained breath as he struggled to lower the man to the ground. “Evangeline Drusilla Melthalion, who do you
think
it would be, wearing a black hood and cape at this time of night? It’s Dirk Gallowglass—and by the looks of him, he’s bleeding to death.”

“Dirk Gallowglass?” said Lord Gallivant. “Why, I haven’t seen him in more than a month.”

“A month?” the Squire chirped.

The old man chuckled to himself as he strode over to where the highwayman lay insensible across the Squire’s legs. “He was such a young rascal in those days. Handy to have around if you needed to get through a locked door or avoid a deadly trap on the way to some ancient treasure room. I wonder if he’s changed much since . . .”

Lord Gallivant reached down and snapped the hood off the highwayman’s head.

He frowned.

“What’s the matter now?” the Squire asked, trying to shift his legs out from under the weight of the highwayman’s body.

“This isn’t Dirk Gallowglass,” Lord Gallivant said simply.

“Oh, of course it is!” The Squire was quite upset.

The highwayman moaned loudly.

“We must get him into the kitchen,” Lord Gallivant said at once as he deftly took the rapier from the young man’s limp hand. “Lady Moonlake, will you please assist the Squire in helping this wounded soldier?”

“Yes, Lord Gallivant,” Evangeline replied at once. Lord Gallivant had so often called the Squire’s daughter “Lady Moonlake” that she had long since simply answered to the name rather than correct him. She grabbed the young man’s right arm and managed to shift his weight long enough to free the Squire. “We’ve got to help him, Father! He could die! And he’s so . . .”

“So what, Evangeline?” The Squire moved to the other side of the limp man, and together he and his daughter managed to get him to his feet.

“Well,” Evangeline said, struggling herself to hold up the limp body, “he’s just so . . . well, he’s too pretty just to let him die.”

“Evangeline!” the Square exclaimed.

“Come, there’s not a moment to lose,” Lord Gallivant said.

“Are you certain?” the Squire huffed under the limp weight of the roguishly clad young man. “He surely looks like a highwayman . . .”

Since that night, six months before, the legend of the highwayman had only grown and, in a certain way, lent an air of distinction to the village of Eventide. The town was under the protection of the highwayman, it was said, because he was secretly in love with a woman there. Of course, no one knew the identity of this woman since that was, after all, a secret carried in the heart of the highwayman alone. But every young woman in the town fancied herself the secret desire of the dashing rogue Dirk Gallowglass and they all wondered in their dreams just when he would fly into the village on his midnight black steed, sweep them up, and carry them off in the best romantic fashion of the Dragon’s Bard tales.

That was, until the rumor about Jarod Klum being the highwayman in disguise began to circulate.

Vestia Walters lay in her bed awake.

She had been thinking all evening about Jarod Klum being the highwayman and how perfectly this was all working in her favor. Percival Taylor was being driven insane by the mere possibility that his rival for Vestia’s affections was actually a daring rogue. For that matter, Jarod Klum was even beginning to look like a serious contender for her affections, as the idea of him being a dashing, troubled, and conflicted highwayman had genuinely piqued her interest.

But which one should she choose? Percival was easily controlled, something she rather liked about him. He would give her no trouble at all, and his parents were well enough off that Percival and Vestia might live comfortably with her parents’ assistance even in Mordale.

On the other hand, if Jarod actually were the highwayman, he could have a substantial treasure horde hidden, she did not doubt, somewhere in the woods. A highwayman’s treasure could set them both up forever in style and possibly even buy them a position at court in Mordale. And it would make her a highwayman’s wife, who might be so outlandish as to get away with wearing breeches and brandishing a sword or a knife or something when the mood suited her.

Maybe Jarod had even hidden his ill-gotten fortune in the bottom of that broken wishing well tended by the smirking Caprice and her two sisters. Vestia had gone to the well for a wish of her own not long ago and, although the results were eventually to her liking, it had looked disastrous at first. The more Vestia thought about it, the more certain she was that the well was the location where Jarod the highwayman had buried the immense wealth of his treasure.

Yet Vestia knew that Jarod would not be so easily manipulated as Percival . . . he might even go so far as to possibly act on his own without asking her permission at all!

So she tossed and turned in her bed, unable to make up her mind between her two suitors and her own destiny.

Vestia sighed for her own benefit and got up out of her bed. She crossed to the window of her room. Her parents’ lodgings were above the cooperage and most of the windows were in dormers on the north side overlooking Charter Square. Vestia unlatched the casement window and swung it open so that she could find some solace or inspiration in the night.

Vestia gazed out through her window over the square and the Cursed Sundial at its center. The pixies had long since been released by Xander from their lanterns in Charter Square, and the windows of the town were all dark. However, the moon was nearly full that night, casting a bright blue pall over the town. It was a beautiful, calm night. The murmur of the Wanderwine River came up from its banks on the west side of the square, and the rustling of the waterwheel from Bolly’s Mill put a deep rumbling under the otherwise still of the deep night.

Then came the sound of horse’s hooves at an easy walk drifting into the square. It was curious, indeed, for Vestia had come to think of herself as the only person awake in the entire town. She craned her head out the window, trying to see whose steed might be abroad in the quietest part of the night.

From King’s Road a single horse and rider came slowly into the square, the horseshoes clacking noisily against the cobblestones. A cloak was drawn about the figure closely, and a dark hood, blacker than the night, completely covered his head.

Vestia drew in a quick breath, then murmured quietly, “It’s Jarod . . . the highwayman!”

The highwayman turned around the corner of the Griffon’s Tale Inn, his shape silhouetted against the cobblestones shining in the moonlight. There he pulled on the reins, stopped his horse, and, turning, gazed upward . . .

. . . into the open window of Evangeline Melthalion.

Vestia’s eyes widened, her nose wrinkling in a most unbecoming fashion.

The slight figure of Evangeline leaned out the window. Vestia did not have to hear the words being spoken to understand their intention. Evangeline disappeared from the window, and for a moment Vestia thought she might be mistaken—but only for a moment. Then the door to the inn opened with studied care and the unmistakable figure of Evangeline emerged. She quickly made her way to the highwayman, who swooped her up in his arms, setting her in front of him on his horse and riding northward up the Mordale road.

Vestia, jaw slack in anger and surprise, turned away from the window and sat down on the floor.

“No one walks away from me!” she seethed. “You’ll pay for this, Jarod Klum!”

• Chapter 12 •

Guilty Associations

Jarod Klum whistled as he tripped happily down Wishing Lane. The Mordale road was behind him now and the apple trees to either side were losing the last of their blossoms in a beautiful light shower of petals. It could not have been a more perfect setting, place, or time—not even Abel, the Bard’s quiet scribe, who trod at his side, could dampen his spirits.

Caprice had sent word through the rather overly enthusiastic Edvard for Jarod to meet her at the footbridge over the Wanderwine near the well. Abel begged to accompany him on the short journey, as he had discovered his missing book to have ended up in the hands of Melodi Morgan and was anxious to meet the youngest of the Fate Sisters.

“Isn’t it a great day?” Jarod beamed as he walked, taking great strides down the road and swinging his arms freely. The scribe was having a difficult time keeping up. “I mean, I think the sun is shining brighter—actually brighter—and the colors in the woods are outstanding, wouldn’t you agree?”

Abel nodded enthusiastically.

“Now, you remember our bargain,” Jarod said. “When we come to the footbridge, I’ll introduce you, but you excuse yourself and go straight up to the house. I’m sure that Melodi will be there or somewhere nearby. I’ll just stay at the bridge with Caprice. Look, there she is now!”

Caprice stood in the middle of the footbridge, leaning against the railing and gazing into the waters of the Wanderwine River rushing below her. The course of the river had cut a slight crevasse into the landscape here that the footbridge connected on either side.

“Caprice!” Jarod called, waving his hand vigorously.

The woman turned toward the two men as they quickly approached, her face troubled.

“This is Abel, who . . . what is wrong, Caprice?”

The green eyes that had so captured his heart turned toward him, filled with tears. “Oh, Jarod, I . . . I just don’t understand it all . . . the things I’ve heard . . . the things they’ve been saying . . .”

Jarod was truly puzzled. He had not known what to think when Caprice had sent for him, but this was not among the dozen wonderful possibilities he had concocted for himself. It was obvious she was distressed, and he had no idea why. “Oh, Caprice! I’m so sorry! What have you heard? What is it?”