He didn’t fall to the ground, but the imbalance was enough for her to slip away.
He was rubbing his jaw when she turned back to him. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “That was good instinct. When you’re ready we’ll try again, but this time we’ll practice what to do if someone has you backed against a wall with a knife to your throat.”
She nodded, taking in the focused expression on his face. She knew she should be glad that he was taking her training seriously—veryseriously—but she sensed a larger purpose at work. He was working her much harder than he ever had before. Almost as if he was trying to cram every possible horrible situation she could come up against into a single training session.
Gregor retrieved a skin he’d filled with well water from a pile of weapons he’d brought for practice, drank deeply from it, and then handed it to her. Although it was a cold, overcast day, with an occasional light flurry of snow swirling in the air, her cheeks were flushed and warm from her exertions.
She handed the skin back to him when she was done. “Is something bothering you, Gregor?”
“Nay.”
She frowned. “Are you sure? You seem ratherintensetoday. I wondered if it might have something to do with earlier? I thought you said you didn’t find anyone.”
“I didn’t. But someone had been there. More than someone—I counted at least five sets of footprints.”
“It was probably just travelers passing through.”
His mouth fell in a tight line.
“What?” she asked.
His eyes were a very sharp and intense green when they met hers. “It wasn’t anyone passing through. They’d been there for at least a few days.”
“How could you tell?”
“What they left behind. They left quickly and didn’t have time to cover their rubbish.”
She wrinkled her nose at the unpleasant thought. “So even if they were there for a few days, why does it bother you, and what does it have to do with me?”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with you,” he said. “At least not directly. And it might not be anything. Hell, it probably isn’t anything.”
He looked so unsettled—so unlike himself—that she reached for him. “What is it, Gregor? What are you not telling me?”
He held her gaze for a long moment. Finally, he sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. “I suppose you have a right to know, and since the secret is already out, I won’t be breaking my oath.”
“What oath?”
He looked around as if he wanted to make sure no one was close enough to hear. Seeing a few of his clansmen moving around near the barracks, he motioned her a short distance away to the far side of the practice yard near the wooden palisade wall. “I haven’t been completely honest with you about my place in the king’s army.”
Her heart stopped, then started to pound furiously. “You haven’t?”
He shook his head. “You were right; there is a little bit more to what I do than serve as a bowman.”
She waited for him to continue, feeling mildly vindicated, but far more concerned about what he was going to reveal. The way was acting, so mysterious and secretive, made her wary.
“Have you ever heard of Bruce’s Phantoms?”
She smiled. “Of course. Everyone has heard of them, but…”
She stopped, her eyes widening and her mouth rounding in surprise. Suddenly, everything fell into place. It was as if her mind clicked, and things that hadn’t made sense now were clear. “You are a Phantom?”
His mouth quirked with amusement. “So to speak, although as you can see I am not a ghost. Nor was it our idea to be mistaken as such, but the rumor has proved useful over the years to prevent out enemies from finding us.”
“‘Us’? How many of there are you?”
He hesitated. “I do not want to tell you more than you need to know. I would not be telling you any of this, but it seems my place in the Guard has been compromised.” He gave her a short explanation of what had happened at Berwick, leaving out the tickets. Hawk was bad enough; he didn’t need to hear it from her, too. “We decided to keep our identities secret not only to protect us from our enemies, but also to protect our families. If they could not get to us directly, they might be able to get to us through our loved ones. But this was before most of the men took wives.” He smiled. “Let’s just say keeping the secret from the wives has worked better in theory than in practice. But we have largely been able to keep our identities from being known by others with a couple of exceptions—and now, it seems, with me.”
