Saints preserve him, he wished she were here.
“Another way than what?” Hob asked.
“Than Belmaine’s choices.”
Hob spat into the mud. “Belmaine’s choices are a piss-poor set.”
“Aye.”
“Lose Ashcombe, lose the woman, or let him make you dance to his tune.”
Thomas’s jaw tightened. “I don’t dance.”
“I have seen you at Yuletide after Edith’s plum wine. You shuffle rather well.”
Thomas would have laughed on any other day. On this day the sound stuck behind his breastbone, where fear had made itself a nest.
They rode on. Rain ran down Thomas’s neck beneath the edge of his mail coif. His cloak, good dark wool when they left Ashcombe, had already gone heavy and cold across his shoulders. Beneath it he wore a plain linen shirt, a padded aketon, mail that needed mending at one sleeve, his sword at his hip, dagger at his belt, and enough fury to warm half the county if fury were as useful as firewood.
The road dipped into a hollow where the trees crowded closer, their branches knitting overhead until the gray day thinned into something almost dusk-like. Galahad slowed before Thomas asked it of him.
The horse’s ears went forward. His neck arched. His breath blew white in the damp air.
Hob saw it too and eased his axe free.
Thomas lifted a hand.
Rain ticked from leaf to leaf. Water moved somewhere to the left, running down a hidden ditch. A crow called once, harsh and annoyed, then flapped from the branches above them with all the moral judgment of Edith discovering boys in her pantry.
Then came the sound. A low groan, almost swallowed by mud and rain. Thomas was out of the saddle before the second one came.
Galahad stamped, but held. Good horse. Better sense than half the men Thomas had commanded and nearly all the lords he had known.
Thomas drew his sword and moved toward the sound, pushing through a screen of bramble and wet hazel. Thorns caught his cloak and tugged, as if the hedgerow itself wished to slow him. He tore free and found the ditch.
At first he saw only mud, dead leaves, and dark water sliding sluggishly between banks. Then the mud moved.
A man lay half in the ditch, one shoulder twisted beneath him, his boots sunk in the muck, his cloak tangled around his bound wrists. The cloak was fine wool, dark blue beneath the filth, lined with fur now soaked into rat-tailed misery. His tunic had been good once, cut for a man who served in halls where candles were plentiful and rushes were changed before they stank. One glove remained on his right hand, the cuff embroidered in silver thread. The other hand was bare, the fingers blue with cold.
Blood ran from a cut above his brow into one eye. His belt was empty where a sword should have hung.
Thomas crouched. “Can you hear me?”
The man’s lips moved. French came first, slurred and bitter. Then English, pulled through clenched teeth.
“Letters.”
Hob shoved through the brush behind him. “Saints. That’s no hedge-knave.”
“No,” Thomas said.
The man dragged one clear eye open. It was brown, bloodshot, furious, and very much alive. Fury was useful. Fury kept men breathing when sense had already gone to find a warm hearth.
“Name,” Thomas said.
The man swallowed. “Sir Aymon de Sauveterre.”
Hob went still. “Bloody hell.”
