Gods.
Mathos stood watching her, not prompting or demanding, simply ceding the decision to her and waiting. His face was badly swollen, the bruises stark in the candlelight, and he was holding his left arm awkwardly. That was what decided her—she had to get him away before they were discovered. If he was recaptured, Dornar would never let him live.
“Let’s go. We can get Penelope and—”
“No.”
Damn it all. Just when she was starting to like the ass. “What do you mean, ‘no’?” she hissed.
He didn’t budge. “The stables will be heavily guarded. Trying to get in there is a death wish. We leave right now, as we are, or we don’t go.”
Leave Penelope? She didn’t want to even imagine leaving her best friend behind. Of all the awful things that had happened to her that day, this was the most painful. What would happen to Penelope without her? How would she know that she was okay?
Mathos’s eyes flickered over her face, his expression softening. “I am sorry. If it helps, the last thing I want to do is leave Heracles. But we can’t help them if we’re dead.”
She rubbed her hands down her arms, wishing that he wasn’t right. That there was something, anything, that they could do to bring Penelope with them. And Heracles.
“This is our only chance,” Mathos said in a low voice, “but if you’d rather stay here with your… Cerdic and Penelope, tell me now.”
No. She’d already decided to go. She didn’t bother to answer, she simply stepped over her former lover’s prone body and toward the door.
Mathos slipped through it ahead of her with a grim look as he whispered, “Don’t look right.”
Of course she immediately looked right and instantly regretted it when she saw a gloomy shape pulled into the bushes, only slightly illuminated by the glow from the window, his head bent at a horrible, unnatural angle. She realized it must be the guard who had been stationed at the door, and immediately looked away, swallowing hard.
Ahead of her, Mathos sighed, but he didn’t say anything other than, “Stay close.”
She huddled up to his back, glad to have his big body in front of hers as they crept down a small path through the kitchen garden. Within seconds they had reached a low stone wall with an open wooden gate, and Mathos paused, listening.
He must have been reassured by whatever her heard, because he quickly sliced a few large pieces off the ham he’d stolen and then sprinkled them around all over the path and the base of the gate. Noticing her raised eyebrows, he whispered, “Hopefully it’ll confuse the dogs.”
He sliced more pieces off the ham and then threw them, increasing the distance each time, onto the path outside the gate, leading away from the tavern. Finally, he took the ham itself and threw it as far as he could in the same direction.
Once the decoy was done, Mathos clambered up onto the wall with a muttered curse and a groan she was sure she wasn’t supposed to hear. He put out his hand, and she grasped it to be pulled up onto the wall.
He took a few careful steps, testing the stones for stability, and then pointed to a large oak with branches spreading high above the wall. “Can you climb it?” he murmured.
“Yes.” She had climbed exactly three trees in her life, all of them extremely slowly and cautiously during her time in the woods, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.
He gave her a doubting look. “Are you sure?”
Damn, whatever had happened to him hadn’t cured him of his ability to make her want to punch him in the face. She narrowed her eyes. “I will climb it.”
“Good.” Without another word, he leaped up, catching the branch with a low grunt, and hauled himself into the branches.
He turned, straddled the thick branch, and then leaned down and lowered his hand to her. She reached up and took it without hesitating. “I’m going to count to three, then you jump. One, two, three—”
She jumped, and he swung her up at the same time. It was awkward and painful, her shoulder screaming at the strain, but he managed to drag her up enough that her belly lay over the branch. He immediately shifted his grip, off her hand and onto the meaty part of her upper arm where he could hold her more firmly, while she lay like an ungainly sack of grain over the branch.
She lifted her foot, scrabbling to reach the branch, breathing hard. At first, it felt as if she wouldn’t make it however far she stretched, and she felt a moment of helpless panic.
But then her toe found a hold and she worked her way up until she found a branch that she could press her foot into, and, with a rough grunt, she pushed herself up, higher into the tree.
Mathos waited until she was steady, his hands ready to catch her, and then urged her on into the dark branches. They circled the trunk and then followed the next branch to an adjoining tree, leading further away from the tavern and the village, deeper into the band of trees that bordered the farmland.
Heading south, away from the bridge and the road to Mathos’s friends, back in the direction they’d come from.
It was exhaustingly difficult. The branches blocked the faint starlight, and she struggled to find handholds in the darkness. Her arms and legs scraped on the rough bark of the trees, while her heart thudded in her chest at the constant fear of falling as they moved rapidly, relentlessly forward.
