Secret Heart (41 page)

“
Ah, but
I do, and I will guide us there,” Walderon told him.

Jenia began to hope Mott would drop back to
his usual position a little behind his master so she could quietly
suggest to him that Walderon would very likely kill him before they
reached the demolished bridge over the Nalo River. She was sure
Walderon wanted no witnesses left alive to report the truth of what
he was doing. Even more likely was the possibility that Walderon
would order Mott to dismount and kill the women. Then Walderon,
still on his horse and with the advantage of height, could easily
employ his sword to kill Mott.

Having dispatched anyone who could hinder his
clever scheme of escape, Walderon would ride through the pass
alone, carrying his bags of jewelry and coins and with two spare
horses to sell or to keep. He probably knew of a way to cross the
river, despite the ruined bridge. If not, he could head upstream
along the riverbank until he reached Lake Nalo and his own land,
from where passage into the Dominion would be easy over the
northern bridge he had ordered repaired.

Walderon’s plan was clear to Jenia, as was her course of
action. She had to convince Mott that she was correct about her
uncle’s intentions. And she must not use her small degree of Power
against Walderon’s greater strength until she had no alternatives
left.

Before
Roarke and the others could set out to find Jenia and Sanal,
Garit’s squire, Anders, appeared from the bailey with one of the
men-at-arms in tow.

“
Sir
Roarke,” Anders said, “I may have some useful information. I’ve
been asking the men who’ve been on guard duty whether they noticed
anything unusual. This fellow has something to tell.”

“
Speak,
man,” Roarke ordered the sentry.

“
A few
moments before my watch was to end,” the sentry said, “I noticed
several people crossing the moat by the hidden stepping
stones.”

“
Did you,
now?” Roarke regarded the sentry with great interest.

“
Aye, and
what’s more, someone met them on the other side,” the sentry
continued. “I saw at least two horses. There seemed to be some
confusion before they left. It’s been a dark night out there, with
clouds and only occasional moonlight, so I can’t be sure exactly
how many people I saw. I called down an alarm to the men in the
bailey and Anders heard what I said. He told me to come and speak
to you at once. But just before I left my post, I looked toward the
same place again and I couldn’t see any movement at all. So, I may
have been mistaken about the whole incident.”

“
No,”
Roarke assured him, “you were not mistaken. I’ll go up to the
battlements with you right now. I want you to show me exactly where
you were standing and which way you were looking when you noticed
the disruption below.”

“
Yes, I
see,” the sentry said. “That will give you a fair idea where to
begin searching for those people.”

The direction proved to be northeastward, and
Roarke returned to the great hall with some hope of finding Jenia
quickly, before Walderon could do her serious harm. Within half an
hour he, Lord Giles, and their company were riding that way. Once
daylight appeared they found some fresh horse droppings and a few
broken branches, but no sign of the fugitives.

As the
autumn morning lengthened toward midday and Roarke was on the verge
of despair for Jenia’s safety, they met a troop of horsemen, about
twenty in number, who were heading for Thury. Roarke recognized the
colorful but now bedraggled clothing of Walderon’s company that had
gathered in the meadow on the previous day. At his quiet command
the men with him blocked the track so the oncoming horsemen were
forced to halt.

Lord
Giles sat mounted beside Roarke, waiting with his usual outward
calm, though Roarke sensed an inner tension on the older man’s
part.

“
Are you
Walderon’s men?” Roarke demanded of the fellow who appeared to be
the leader.

“
We
were,” the leader said, “until our lord directed us to ride
west.”

“
Are you
saying you disobeyed him?” Roarke asked in some surprise. Seldom
did simple men-at-arms dare to defy the master to whom they had
sworn their services.

“
Aye,”
came the ready answer. “We talked it over among ourselves and
agreed that Walderon has deserted us, which no honest lord would
ever do to his people. We belong to Thury, so we are returning
there. We’ve no place else to go.”

“
What is
your name?” Roarke asked, impressed in spite of himself with the
rough dignity of the men who faced him.

“
I’m Hal,
sir, and I swear to you, we have no stomach for a fight.” As if to
prove his point, Hal spread wide his weaponless hands. “You see in
us a band of weary men. We’ve been riding for five days now, first
toward Calean in a grand cavalcade, then back to Thury at top
speed, only to spend a day in the woods waiting for Lord Walderon
to return from the castle. And now we’ve spent the better part of a
night and another day in the saddle since Walderon escaped from
Thury. You must be looking for the women. Lady Jenia told me to
find you,” Hal ended with a shrewd glance at Roarke.

“
Are the
ladies safe?” Lord Giles asked.

“
The last
time I saw them, Walderon had his wife mounted with him and Lady
Jenia was on a horse by herself. Sir Roarke, she told me that
Walderon caused Lady Chantal’s death.”

“
He did.”
Roarke sensed that Jenia had meant that last detail as a message to
him by Hal, so he’d know he was on the right track to find her. “Do
you know which way Walderon was planning to travel after you left
him?”

“
When you
come to the fork in the road,” Hal said, “head east.”

“
And hope
Walderon stayed on the same road,” Roarke said. Looking over the
band of horsemen with Hal, he asked, “How many men does he have
left?”

“
Eighteen, plus Burke and Mott,” said Hal. “And the two
women, of course. My lords, will we be accepted back into Thury?
Some of us have wives there, and a few of us have
children.”

“
Return
to Thury,” Roarke instructed. “Call up to the sentries and ask to
speak to Lord Garit. Tell him that Sir Roarke said you could camp
in the meadow until I return so long as you stay well away from the
moat and the drawbridge. If you want to get word to your families
that you are safe, Lord Garit will do that for you. But you are to
make no attempt to storm the castle gates or to enter by any other
way. Your futures, and the lives of your families, depend on your
good behavior.”

“
You have
my word on it, Sir Roarke, and my thanks,” Hal said. “We’ll do as
you ordered.”

“‘
The
lives of their families?’“ Lord Giles repeated as Walderon’s former
men-at-arms rode on toward Thury. “Roarke, you have never in your
life harmed a woman or a child, nor ordered any to be
killed.”

“
Ah, but
Hal doesn’t know that, does he?” Roarke asked with a quick smile.
“He probably thinks we are the same kind of uncaring nobles as
Walderon. He’ll see to it that his men do as I
instructed.”

“
We must
find the women,” Lord Giles said, his face grim. “I promised Sanal
she would be safe from Walderon and then I failed to protect her.
Poor woman, she cannot defend herself against him. She never
could.”

“
I want
Jenia safe just as much as you want to rescue Lady Sanal,” Roarke
responded. “I swear to you, we’ll have both of them out of
Walderon’s clutches before night falls.”

They rode on, heading for the fork Hal had
mentioned and then turning east. Occasionally, they discerned signs
of horses having passed, so they knew they were on the right path.
In mid afternoon they came upon another band of men who were
heading north.

“
I know
the leader,” Lord Giles said when the troop wheeled to face them.
“He is Walderon’s primary henchman. But, where is
Walderon?”

“
Perhaps
the henchman will tell us,” Roarke suggested.

“
Don’t
expect Burke to be as accommodating as Hal was,” Lord Giles warned.
“From the look of those men, we are going to have to
fight.”

“
Good,”
Roarke replied. “I am in a mood to use my sword on
someone.”

Burke
refused to discuss where Walderon might be. Furthermore, he would
not allow Roarke and his company to pass. Roarke decided they had
no choice but to fight, so fight they all did, in a brief but
extremely fierce encounter. When it was over, one of Lord Giles’s
squires and four men-at-arms were injured. On the other side, a
dozen of Burke’s men were dead, with several more
wounded.

“
Burke is
dead, too, I see,” Lord Giles remarked as they counted up the
casualties. “That’s too bad. We might have persuaded him to provide
information about Walderon’s intentions.”

“
I
consider your life more important than anything Burke could tell
us,” Roarke said. “He was about to strike you from behind when I
stopped him. I do not regret his death.”

“
It was
not a knightly blow on his part,” Lord Giles observed dryly,
looking down at Burke’s still form. “Perhaps he would have lied to
us. Roarke, I thank you for protecting my back.”

“
Let’s
find out if any of the living know where Walderon has gone,” Roarke
suggested.

A short
time later, after leaving half a dozen men-at-arms to bury the dead
and stand guard over the wounded, Roarke and Lord Giles remounted
and rode on, directed by one of the wounded men from Burke’s
company, who was even more angry over Walderon’s desertion than Hal
and his troop had been earlier.

Toward sunset they found Walderon.

“
Two men,
two women, and three horses,” Roarke said, lifting his right hand
to signal their troop to halt. “Why didn’t Walderon keep a guard to
protect himself?”

“
Perhaps
because he couldn’t trust his men-at-arms,” Lord Giles suggested.
“The men we’ve talked with have expressed a strong dislike for
him.”

They sat
for a time, unnoticed as far as they could tell, watching the
little party plod onward through a winding, narrow defile where the
stony mountains pressed close on either side. A limp figure,
presumably Sanal, was draped face down in front of Walderon. The
sight elicited a soft curse from Lord Giles that made Roarke smile
to himself, though he made no comment. He felt like uttering a far
more powerful oath when he noticed Jenia’s plight.

On the horse directly behind Walderon sat a
burly man in leather armor who held the reins of the third horse.
And on that horse rode Jenia, with her back straight and her chin
high as if she was daring Walderon to break her spirit or defeat
her. Even from such a distance, Roarke could see her hands were
tied.

His heart
lifted with joy and relief that she was still alive, and then sank
with apprehension at the difficulty he faced in extricating her
from Walderon’s clutches without harm. There had to be a way. He’d
have to move rapidly, and silently, too, until the very last
instant. His mind began to worry over the problem like a dog with a
bone too large for its mouth.

“
From the
look of them, they are all exhausted, and the horses even more so,”
Lord Giles remarked. “We could surround them, but Walderon is sure
to use the women as hostages for his own escape. Never doubt that
he will use his Power if he feels himself personally threatened,
though I doubt he will expend himself if he sees a way to avoid
it.”

“
We can’t
let him escape,” Roarke insisted. “He must answer for his crimes.
And we have to make certain Jenia and Lady Sanal aren’t hurt in the
melee.”

“
We’ll
need a trick, then, and I prefer that it not be a magical trick.
Walderon would only respond with his own corrupt Power, and who
knows what damage he would cause to the women?” Lord Giles raised
his eyebrows and looked at Roarke. “As I recall, in the days when
you were a squire, you were rather clever at devising tricky
military maneuvers. I shall enjoy watching you turn one of those
maneuvers into action.”

“
Oh, no,
my friend,” Roarke said. “You won’t merely watch; you will
participate. I’m going to need your help. “Before we left Thury, I
took a close look at the map in the guardroom. Somewhere near us is
a sort of side corridor, a loop that rejoins the pass farther on. I
want you to lead half our men through that corridor quickly enough
to head off Walderon and quietly enough that he won’t suspect what
is happening.

“
Helping
you will be my pleasure,” Lord Giles responded, his gaze returning
to Lady Sanal’s unmoving form.

As
Walderon and his captives rode on, Jenia frequently looked around,
hoping she’d see Roarke approaching. She prayed he would arrive
soon, for darkness was about to fall and she did not want to face
the night with Walderon and Mott. In addition, she was seriously
worried about Sanal, who had sobbed loudly once too often and then
fainted when Walderon struck her on the side of her head to silence
her. Sanal hadn’t moved since Walderon had flung her head down
across his horse, with her still-bound hands dangling along the
horse’s flank.