Fetching a canteen from a saddle on the ground close by, she held it out to him. Waylander took it from her and drank deeply. ‘Do not be so sure,’ he said. ‘You are alive. The others are not. You stayed cool and you used your mind.’
‘I was lucky,’ she said, a note of anger in her voice.
‘Yes, you were. But you planted the seed of fear in the leader. For that he kept you alive.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You told him the Grey Man was coming.’
‘You were there?’
‘I was there when he told his sergeant what you had said. I was about to slay them both when the sergeant grabbed you by the hair and dragged you back to the fire. That caught me out of position. Had you not crushed that man’s nose I would not have had time to come to your aid. So, yes, you were lucky. But you made the best use of that luck.’
‘I did not see you or hear you,’ she said.
‘Neither did they.’ Then he lay back and slept again.
When he awoke she was snuggled down alongside him, sleeping peacefully. It was pleasant to be this close to another human being, and he realized he had been alone too long. Easing himself away from her, he rose to his feet and pulled on his boots. As he did so, a group of crows detached themselves from the bodies of the dead and rose into the air, cawing raucously. The sound woke Keeva. She sat up, smiled at him, then moved away behind the boulders. Waylander saddled two of the horses she had tethered, the effort causing his wounds to throb.
He was still angry about the first wound to his shoulder. He should have guessed the leader would send out a rearguard. They almost had him. The first had been crouched on a tree branch above the trail, the second hiding in the bushes. Only the scraping of the first man’s boot upon the bark above had alerted him. Bringing up his crossbow he had sent a bolt into the man as he leapt. It had entered at the belly, slicing up through the heart. He had fallen almost on top of Waylander, his sword slashing across his shoulder. Luckily the man was dead as the blow struck, and there was no real force in it. The second man had lunged from the bushes, a single-bladed axe in his hand. The steeldust gelding had reared, forcing the attacker back. In that moment Waylander sent the second bolt through the man’s forehead. You are getting old and slow, he chided himself. Two clumsy assassins and they almost had you.
It had probably been this anger that had led him to attack their camp – a need to prove to himself that he could still move as he once had. Waylander sighed. He had been lucky to escape with his life. Even so, one of the men had managed to slam a blade into his hip. An inch or so higher and he would have been disembowelled, a few inches lower and the blade would have sliced the femoral artery, killing him for sure.
Keeva returned, smiling and waving as she came. He felt a touch of guilt. He had not known, at first, that the raiders had a captive. He had hunted them purely because they raided his lands. Her rescue, though it gave him great pleasure, was merely a fluke, a fortunate happenstance.
Keeva rolled the blankets and tied them to the back of her saddle. Then she brought him his cloak and weapons.
‘Do you have a name, Lord?’ she asked. ‘Apart from the Grey Man.’
‘I am not a lord,’ he said again, ignoring her question.
‘Yes, Grey Man,’ she said, with an impudent smile. ‘I will remember that.’
How resilient the young are, he thought. Keeva had witnessed death and destruction, had been raped and abused, and was now miles from home in the company of a stranger. Yet she could still smile. Then he looked into her dark eyes, and saw beneath the smile the traces of sorrow and fear. She was making a great effort to appear carefree, to charm him. And why not? he thought. She is a peasant girl with no rights, save those her master allows her. And these were few. If Waylander were to rape and kill her, there would be no inquest and few questions asked. In essence he owned her as if she were a slave. Why would she not seek to please him?