The Knights had made a poor job of covering their tracks. Wherever there was a fork in the wide dusty trails that passed for roads in this part of Pulnam, they’d gone a few dozen yards in the wrong direction before circling back. I wasn’t fooled, and from Valiana’s tracks I could see that she hadn’t been deceived either, which meant she was going to reach them before I caught up with her.
We’d gone about ten miles from the village when I counted five horses off in the distance. I was fairly certain one was Valiana’s gray mare, which meant the body I saw in a heap on the ground must be Valiana herself. One of the Knights was holding her down with his foot while his fellows were fending off the sweeping attacks of a young girl wearing a yellow dress made brown by dust. The girl was swinging a blade nearly as tall as she was, which she must have taken from one of the Knights. She wielded it with impressive skill despite its weight, but there were four Knights and I doubted she could keep them off her for long and I was still too far away.
“K’hey!” I called to Monster, drawing one of my rapiers. Fly.
The great beast gave a growl that broke through the distance between us and our quarry and I saw one of the Knights turn to us as we bridged the gap. He wasn’t wearing his helmet and by this time I was close enough to enjoy the wide-eyed look of fear in his eyes as he caught sight of the creature charging for him. He should have kept his attention on the girl. She swung her stolen warsword and, with a single stroke, the Knight’s head flew from his body.
I leapt off Monster’s back and engaged with the man who was holding Valiana down, making a thrust for his face that forced him to step back. Valiana didn’t rise, and a quick glance told me that she was unconscious. The Knight evaded my next strike, only to be struck down by Monster’s hooves. I had to jump out of the way as the beast began crushing the Knight beneath her.
One of the remaining Knights was gaining the advantage on the girl in the yellow dress. Strong as she was, I could tell she was beginning to tire from wielding the heavy blade. As he prepared for a downward strike, I grabbed his sword arm from behind and pulled it back as hard as I could, hoping to make him lose his balance. Knights in armor don’t do well on their backs. When he felt the resistance from my hand he struck back with his elbow. I turned my head—just in time—but he struck my collarbone with a force that made me thankful for the bone plates inside my coat.
I struck at his face with the pommel of my rapier—he was wearing a full-face helmet but I managed to ring his bell hard enough for him to stumble. Unfortunately, the girl had moved into position behind him and as he fell she went down beneath him.
“Don’t worry about me, you idiot,” she shouted as she wriggled a hand holding a dagger out from beneath the Knight’s bulk while he struggled to flip himself around. “The other one’s getting away! If he escapes with her then the whole plan fails!”
In my peripheral vision a blur passed by me: the remaining Knight had grabbed Valiana and was making for the mountains off in the distance on a black horse.
I ran to Monster. I’d barely leapt onto her back she began racing toward the Knight on his black charger. The other horse was fast, but Monster was all speed and fury and we overtook them in a flurry of hoofbeats. Monster barreled into the side of the other horse, throwing the Knight and Valiana to the ground and reminding me once again that there is always a price to pay for using a creature as dangerous as a maddened Greathorse.
The Knight recovered enough to get to his knees and reached for a mace attached to his waist, but by then the point of my rapier was at his throat, carefully placed above the protection of his gorget and just under his chin. “Yield,” I said.
The Knight moved his hand away from his mace. “I yield,” he said.
Keeping my point on him I turned to glance first at Valiana, who looked stunned but was now conscious, then back to see the girl walking toward us, dagger in hand. Several yards back her opponent was on the ground with the others, presumably already dead.
“You have to kill him,” the girl said. “No one can know what happened here.”
“He yielded. He’s our prisoner.”
She kept walking toward us. I could see now that she calling her a girl was inaccurate. She was young, to be sure—perhaps twenty; no more than twenty-five, certainly—and she was short for a woman, only a little over five feet, no taller than Aline. Her face was youthful enough to make it plausible for her to pass as a teenage girl. But one good look in her eyes removed any doubt of her being a child.
“I said kill him—”
“And I said he’s my prisoner. Now tell me your name and—”
The girl walked right by me, so casually that I was surprised when she knocked the blade of my rapier aside and, without so much as a glance at me, drove her dagger into the Knight’s throat. She pushed slowly but surely, forcing his body backward until, with a sudden twist, she yanked the blade free. Blood fountained from his neck as he died.
I was horrified by the indifference with which she’d killed a man who’d already surrendered, but I wasn’t looking for a confrontation. Not yet. “Who are you?” I asked again. She didn’t offer a response and I didn’t wait for one. Valiana was sitting up now, but she still looked dazed. I knelt down to examine her for wounds. “Valiana, it’s me, Falcio. Are you hurt?”
“My name is Dariana,” the woman said from behind me. “And the girl is not half so hurt as you’ll be if you ever get in my way again.”
Valiana had a bruise on her cheek and looked as if she’d taken a hit to the head but I could see no blood. “You’re not half the size you’d need to be to make good on that threat,” I said.
I felt the point of a blade at the back of my neck. This Dariana was smart. If she’d reached around to put the blade at my throat I could have grabbed her arm and thrown her over my shoulder. This way she was in control.
“Haven’t you heard?” she said. “It’s not how tall a man is that matters, it’s how long a blade he wields.”
“You’re working for the Tailor so I assume you’re one of her new Greatcoats. Perhaps you should be acting like one.”
“A Greatcoat?” I heard the woman spit. “Why would I want to be a fucking Greatcoat?”
If Kest had been there he could have suggested half a dozen ways of deflecting the blade, followed by their respective odds of success, followed by a reminder that I should not have turned my back on someone I had just met in the first place. But I ignored his sage, if imaginary, council and instead reached down to lift Valiana up off the ground. If this woman wanted to kill me, she could. I was tired and sore and angry and sick of being tired and sore and angry. “I’m taking Valiana back to the village,” I said. “You can help or not.”
The sharp pressure on the back of my neck disappeared. “I’ll get the other horses,” she said. “Try not to screw anything else up while I’m gone.”