The Last Arrow RH3 (6 page)

Since the targets were no longer two-legged, there was no need to exercise more caution than she normally would in the greenwood. No need to play the fool either, and for that she kept her ears tuned to the sound of the wind in the upper boughs, the angry squabbling of squirrels and hare in the knee-deep ferns, the chatter of birds overhead who, like old women on a fence, stopped their gossiping long enough to mark Brenna's passage, then resumed their bickering as if nothing had interrupted. Gil had taught her the forest was full of alarms if one took the time to become familiar with them. The crunch of a leaf, the snap of a twig, the sound of furry feet scrambling away were all indications of an unexpected presence.

She ran with an easy, loping gait, her bow slung over her arm and the long cable of her braid thumping between her shoulders on each step. Her breath was starting to take on a ghostly quality in the cooling air and the fine hairs that had sprung free around her neck and temples were curling against the thin sheen of moisture that slicked her skin.

She had no desire to work up another chilling sweat, and while she loped along, she unfastened the laces of her leather jerkin, letting the sides hang open so the air passed freely through the looser weave of her shirt. Force of habit made her glide to a halt every few hundred yards to listen to the forest. Once she thought she heard the echo of a church bell, a tiny, tinny sound far off in the distance. There was a monastery farther up the river, and the monks were meticulous if not downright fanatical about gathering their flock to prayer. It was likely the vespers bell, which would be bringing the mendicants off the fields and out of the gardens after a hard day's work.

Another familiar sound brought her head tilting to one side. She was within bowshot of the river, two hundred yards more or less, and could not only hear the clatter of the water passing over the rocky shoreline, she could smell the deeper, damper musk in the air.

Moving slower now, stealthier through the tangle of saplings and gorse, Brenna listened for any alarms her presence might make. Deer, hare, and other small creatures would be sidling down to the embankment for their evening drinks. If she startled them off too suddenly, any fish in the pools would heed the warning and swim into the middle of the river. In her favor, it was also the time of day when colonies of blackbirds and swallows were returning to their rookeries in the forest, and they were making enough noise to cover anything short of a shout.

Another hundred yards and she could see the River Loire through the thinning trees. It moved leisurely toward the sea, a hundred fifty miles to the west, like a wide ribbon of molten silver. The tops of the trees on the opposite bank were burnished bronze by the settling sun, and high above, the purpled bellies of wind-dragged clouds wore crowns of pink and gold and amber. Dusk would not be far behind, all grays and blues and darkest blacks.

Creeping closer to the bank, she used a fallen tree to cloak her movements as she emerged from the edge of the forest and slipped down onto the wide, shingled shoreline. The bank here was flat, not very wide—there were perhaps ten feet between the ledge of jutting roots and the silky rush of water. This particular pool was tucked into an elbow of rocks, shadowed by the huge oaks and pines that crowded the shore, the trapped water so still and dark it looked like spilled ink. And whether it was because the closeness of the trees had exaggerated every squeak and snap, or because she simply felt overly exposed standing under an open sky after so many hours of moving from shadow to shadow, the sudden unearthly silence brought her to a frozen standstill.

A cool shiver rippled down her spine as she recalled a story Sparrow once told her of a pool in England, cursed for a thousand years to languish in utter silence despite being in the heart of a greenwood teeming with creatures of every size and description. He further claimed that Robin had been conceived in those magical waters, and his conception had broken the spell and brought a cacophony of sound to the forest such as had never been heard there before.

But that was England and this was France and Sparrow was always full of such tales, embellishing them shamelessly with his own exploits so that they rarely were recounted twice the same way. She certainly did not believe in faeries or magic spells (although when she was younger, she did believe that Sparrow could fly). She believed in what she saw, and in this case it was only the shadows pressed hard against the water, black on black. It was likely the rocks and few sparse trees on the narrow promontory that were buffering the sounds from the wind and the water beyond. As for curses and ill-fated lovers ...

Brenna squeezed her eyes tightly shut and opened them again quickly but this was no trick of the failing light. It was not an elf and certainly not a tragic prince agonizing over a lost love. It was a half-naked satyr bent down on one knee by the waters edge, a gleaming, bejeweled dagger clutched in his right hand, raised to strike.

It was not a satyr, of course. It was a man. A very big an leaning over a flat rock and using his knife to clean d gut a fish. Brenna's first instinct was to tighten her grip on her bow and pull tension into the string. She had the brief advantage, for he was not yet aware of her presence, and a clean shot, taken now, could certainly rid the forest of a poacher, if he was one, or disarm a potential threat before it had a chance to develop. She had no idea who he was.

His face was turned away, his profile shielded by a long, shaggy mane of jet-black hair. His hose and boots were black as well, the latter worn high to the knee and bound with rawhide strapping. In the thickening dusk, she thought she might have been mistaken about the state of his upper body, that he wore a buff-colored hauberk of padded leather. But no. The only armor he wore was the incredible bulk of solid muscle that strained and flexed with the slightest movement he asked of it. Even the powerful thews that sculpted his thighs seemed to challenge the bounds of the stretched woolen hose, and his arms, solid and splendid, were like oak, tanned and weathered and bulging with untapped strength.

She doubted he was anything so mundane as a poacher in spite of the fact he was trespassing in a private forest miles from any common tract. Judging by the sheer size of him, he was too well fed to have been subsisting off roots and berries; he ate meat and goodly quantities of it on a regular basis to maintain his superb physique. Having grown up in a household of knights and champions, she could recognize a member of the Order if he wore sackcloth and rode an ass, yet if this man was a knight, what was he doing out here, alone, catching and cooking his own dinner?

The thought took her eyes away from the stranger for a split second but she saw no animal of any kind tethered nearby. She saw some clothes—a shirt, tunic, and surcoat by the look of it—draped over a boulder nearby, and beside it a swordbelt with an enormous double-edged blade slung through the steel and leather scabbard. Higher up on the bank was a saddle pouch propped beside what appeared to be the makings of a fire. A small pile of dried leaves and pine knots had been gathered and stacked into a smoking pyramid.

A sudden splash brought Brenna's heart pounding into her throat again, and she added more tension to her bowstring as the stranger finished rinsing the fish and rose to his feet. He rose a very long way, for he was tall. Taller than Will and possibly even Robin—either of whom she would have gladly loved to hear emerging from the woods behind her. She considered ducking and creeping back to the forest's edge, but she could see the stranger's profile now and knew that any slight move she made would draw his attention. It was a handsome profile, all planes and angles, with a deep, square jaw and a wide, sensuous mouth. He might have been whistling under his breath as he worked with the fish, for when he turned fully around, his lips were still slightly puckered, a shape they held for another two frozen seconds as he looked up and saw her standing by the skeleton of the tree.

He came to a complete, startled halt. Even his breathing seemed to become trapped somewhere, keeping his chest swelled as he stared across the ten or so paces that separated them. She was surrounded by shadows but there was enough light reflecting off the river and the distant shoreline to gild both her and the tautly held longbow in glowing detail.

She forced herself to exhale slowly and evenly. His eyes were commanding all of her attention, for they were like those of a big cat, luminous and glowing, an eerie shade somewhere between palest green and gray, given even more prominence by long ebony lashes and a bold, straight nose. His hair was very black, very thick, brushed back from a wide forehead and left to fall in careless waves over shoulders broad enough to humble two ordinary men. His jaw was chiseled from a block of granite, the chin cleft by a sharp dividing crevice that served to emphasize what could only be a perpetual shading of dark stubble, no matter how keen a blade he used to shave. It was a hard face, with an uncompromising mouth twisted now in an expression that suggested he was not a man easily amused by arrows pointed at his chest, regardless if they were held by a man or a woman.

His gaze, which had been studying Brenna's features with equal intensity, followed the smooth arch of her neck down to the open lacing of her jerkin. Her breasts were not overly large, but they were firm and well shaped, and she watched his eyes trace their obvious contours, clearly visible beneath the thin weave of her shirt. She thought she saw a flicker of surprise as they confirmed her sex, but then he was all business again, assessing the length and stoutness of her bow, weighing it against the slenderness of her arm and the strength it was taking to maintain the unwavering tension in the bowstring.

"An unusual weapon for a woman to carry about," he said quietly. "I would have thought a hunting bow more suited to size and strength."

Without communicating her intention until the last split second, Brenna drew back on the string and snapped her fingers clear, sending the arrow streaking past his ear to f-f'thud into the trunk of a tree half a dozen paces behind him. The fletching had barely left her fingers before she was nocking another arrow to the string. And while the echo of the strike still hummed on the air, she had it drawn back and aimed dead center of the broad, hairless chest again.

The stranger slowly turned his head, keeping his eyes locked on hers until the last possible moment before casting a glance over his shoulder. The tree was young, the trunk no more than eight inches across, but it was oak, as hard a wood as could be found in these woods, and the steel tip of the arrow had been driven cleanly through the solid core to protrude more than a hand's width on the other side.

His mouth had a slightly less casual twist to it as he looked back. "Impressive. You have my full attention, I assure you."

"Who are you? What are you doing in these woods?"

"I might ask you the same thing."

"You might," she agreed. "But I have the bow and I am in no mood to waste any more arrows on pointless demonstrations."

He considered the unspoken threat behind her words and offered up what might have been considered a dazzling smile under any other conditions. "I am in these woods because I am lost. I took a wrong turn some miles back and was beginning to think I might fall off the edge of the earth before I found my way back to the road."

"This is not the road," she pointed out.

"A road, a river." He shrugged his shoulders to indicate they were one and the same thing. "I have been following it since Orleans."

"Following it to where?"

"To where my business takes me," he answered with deliberate avoidance.

"It may take you to hell in a moment, sirrah, if you are not more candid with your answers."

"I find it difficult to be candid—or anything else for that matter—when I am speaking to the wrong end of an arrow."

"Whereas you think it more warming to the heart to speak with a knife clutched in your hand?"

He looked down and seemed genuinely surprised to see it there. "An unintentional discourtesy, I assure you. And hardly a comparable threat. In fact"—he smiled again, a truly ravishing display of strong, even teeth—"no manner of one whatsoever if you would care to relieve me of it."

He reversed the blade with a flip of his wrist and extended it, hilt first, toward her.

Brenna's skin had been undergoing all manner of unusual sensations, growing cool and tight across her breasts when he had inspected them, flushing warm and dry where his words seemed to make physical contact with her flesh. His voice was deep, his French tainted with an accent she could not quite place, but combined with the fact he was a stranger and a foreigner, it caused her to remember the conversation she and Will had been having about assassins only moments before they had gone to Robin's rescue.

The last assassin the English king had sent to Amboise had been a handsome foreigner recruited from Aragon who spoke with similarly rolled vowels and a soft burr. He had assumed the guise of a troubadour, complete with mottled hose, particolored jerkin, and a repertoire of blood-warming chansons d'amour. He sang well enough, and might even had made it as far as the private solar shared by Lord Randwulf and his romantic lady wife had Brenna not noticed his fingers, pink and skinless from too recent an acquaintance with his harp strings.