The Forest Laird(105)

Now, however, our stillness had a purpose. Shoomy had chosen this spot with care, deeming it most likely to yield rewards, and now we were waiting for someone to appear, and the need for silent immobility was absolute.

I was unsure what the first sound I heard actually was. It was too distant and indistinct to identify, but mere moments later it came again, and this time I recognized it as the fluttering sound of air being snorted through a horse’s nostrils. I knew the others must have heard it, too, and I forced myself not to move. A long time passed, it seemed, before the next sound came, and then it was the heavy, muffled thump of a stamped hoof on soft ground, and it was accompanied by a whispered shushing as the animal’s rider sought to keep it calm. Another long silence followed that, with none of us daring to breathe, lest the sound be too loud, but eventually there came another sound of movement, accompanied by the unmistakable creak of leather saddlery. The screen of leaves near where I lay shivered, then parted infinitely slowly, pushed aside by an extended hand, to reveal a man leaning far forward over the neck of a horse, his chin almost against its mane and his eyes peering between the beast’s twitching ears.

Nothing moved as the scout examined everything he could see ahead of him and on each side. He wore a conical steel helmet, which forced him to keep his head tilted severely back, and he was highly alert and vigilant, his very life dependent upon both. He examined everything minutely, meticulous and unhurried in his inspection, so that long before his questing eyes turned in my direction I had pulled myself down into the smallest possible bulk, hugging the ground as I sought to keep my head and the curve of my back beneath the gentle ridge that separated me from his line of sight. I waited to be discovered, but nothing happened, and then I heard him move again, the soft fall of hooves as he walked his horse quietly away. I heard no sound of sweeping branches, though, and so I raised my head again as slowly as I could and looked for him. He had vanished, evidently circling the clearing behind the screen of leaves that marked its edges.

I caught sight of him again moments later, emerging as before from the screening bushes, too far away now to see me easily even had he been looking in my direction. This time, however, he came through the screen, peering carefully about him as he rode into the green-shaded glade. His shield was slung diagonally across his back, and he held the reins easily in his left hand, his right grasping the hilt of a long-bladed sword in a grip that allowed the bare blade to lie along his thigh and rest gently against his knee, featherlight and unobtrusive, yet ready for instant action at the first flicker of movement.

Clear of the bushes, he drew rein for a moment at the very edge of the clearing, his eyes sweeping the open, seemingly innocuous space on both sides of him. Then he nudged his mount on again, leaning forward in the saddle as before and seeming to shrink even lower as he passed beneath the low-hanging branches of the huge elm that dominated the glade. He was in no danger from the overhanging boughs, for the lowest of them cleared his head by almost two feet, but his reaction was an instinctive avoidance of a sensed, potential threat. I remember thinking, though, that it clearly had not occurred to him that he might be attacked from above, for he did not once look up, and in consequence the man who leapt down on him caught him completely unprepared and drove him crashing to the ground and into unconsciousness. The only sound we watchers heard was the abrupt, wrenching thud of two bodies colliding and then hitting the earth concussively before the startled horse could even snort in fright.

The attacker rolled and rose quickly to his feet, and I saw that it was Alan Crawford, now one of Will’s senior lieutenants. He spun back to the unhorsed man, crouching over him quickly with a bared dagger in his upraised fist. But a moment later he straightened up and sheathed the weapon, then summoned the others to come forward, giving orders to some to secure the prisoner and to others to fan out into the forest from which the rider had come. Now, as two of his men gagged the fallen man and bound him at wrists and ankles, Alan crossed to where I crouched beside Mirren and two other women.

“Right,” he said quietly. “This should have been the point man on our side. The others, four of them, will be behind him, spread out on either flank. They may not have met our people yet, but when they do, if anything goes wrong, we’ll hear about it quickly enough. Keep your ears open for noises on both sides of the road. We’ll give them another quarter of an hour to reach us, and if they don’t appear, we’ll know they’ve been dealt with. Then we’ll head across the road and join Long John and the others.”