watching the action, and at such an hour. Difficult to adequately explain.
Alex dallied, and dallied-was lifting the reins, about to leave, when Daniel rode out of the lane. Sheathing his sword, he looked up, but he couldn’t see Alex tucked deep in the shadows across the road and further down the side street.
Alex watched Daniel walk his horse back to the High Street. Halting, he tugged down his scarf and looked back down the street at the now faltering melee. Then he smiled.
Slowly, Alex smiled, too.
Daniel, his expression tending toward triumphant, turned his horse away from the fight and rode unhurriedly out of the town.
Back in the shadows, Alex relaxed, felt tension drain from muscle and tendon. Daniel had succeeded. He’d got Monteith’s letter, and that was all that mattered.
In increasingly buoyant mood, Alex toyed with the notion of riding after Daniel, catching him up, and joining him in a jubilant race back to Bury, but… how to explain? Daniel wasn’t a fool like Roderick had been. Daniel would instantly see that Alex’s secretive presence in Bedford demonstrated a very real lack of trust.
Which it did. But letting Daniel know that wouldn’t serve the cause.
After several moments’ cogitation, Alex realized that Daniel’s guard, all twelve of them, had yet to come out of the lane. Which almost certainly meant they were engaged-which suggested Alex should leave before some worthy citizen stumbled on some grisly sight and raised a hue and cry.
Urging the chestnut into a slow trot, Alex headed up the High Street, taking the same route Daniel had.
The chestnut was a stronger, more powerful beast than the black Daniel was riding; easy enough, at some point along the way, for Alex to overtake Daniel without him seeing, and so reach Bury ahead of him, to be there, ready and willing to be graciously rewarding, when Daniel arrived, victorious, to lay his prize at Alex’s feet.
Smiling in anticipation, Alex rode on.
The fighting in the yard at the end of the alley was fast, furious, bloody, and desperate.
Somewhat to Logan’s surprise, he, Linnet, Charles, and Deverell were all still alive.
Cut, bruised, scraped, slashed, yet still alive, still on their feet.
They’d managed to turn the alley’s narrowness to their advantage. The instant the cultists had moved, Charles and Deverell had whipped their pistols out. They’d fired at close range, and the first two cultists had crumpled.
The smoke from the pistols hadn’t even dissipated-the other cultists hadn’t recovered from their instinctive recoil-when Linnet had caught his belt and yanked. “Get back!”
He’d stepped back, and she’d sent a pile of crates tumbling half across the end of the alley. Charles had seen, and done the same on the other side.
Knowing it would mean death to leave the higher ground to the assassins, Logan had leapt up to the top of the crates and wildly slashed at the cultist who’d been scrambling to climb over his fallen comrade’s body to claim the advantage.
He hadn’t held back his swing, so that cultist, too, had joined the debris before the crates.
Charles had claimed the top of the crates on the other side, hacking at the cultist who’d come at him. Deverell had worked with Linnet to shore up the wobbling crates with others, until both Logan and Charles had had solid platforms from which to work.
The advantage was incalculable. Added to that, their longer swords, greater reach, and the narrowness of the alley, which meant that no more than two assassins could face them, come at them, at once, meant they had a chance.
They fought to make the most of it.
To Logan’s utter relief, Linnet didn’t try to claim a place on the crates. In such a confined space, the strength behind each blow, behind every block, was critical; she couldn’t face opponents like this, in such a place.
She remained behind him, not safe but safer, yet by no means cowering. When an extra assassin pushed in alongside the one fighting Logan and slashed at his legs-with both saber and dirk engaged, he couldn’t block the strike-Linnet caught the assassin’s blade with her knife before it reached Logan’s thigh, then her cutlass flashed forward, striking hard and deep across the cultist’s exposed wrist.
Blood spurted. The cultist’s blade fell. In the turmoil, Logan couldn’t see what was happening to the assassin, but he doubted the man would live to fight further.
Then he took a thrown dagger in his upper arm. Deverell tapped him on the shoulder and they smoothly changed places.
Before Logan could think, Linnet grabbed him, seized the dagger, yanked it out, clamped her fingers around the wound, staunching the flow, then, wadding her neckerchief over the cut, she slid a belt-her cutlass belt-up around his arm, then cinched it tight.
He looked into her face, saw on it the same expression he knew would be on his. In battle, you stayed alert, did what needed to be done, and pushed all emotions deep.
She arched a brow at him.
He flexed the arm. As a field dressing, it would do. He nodded. “Thank you.” Then he turned back to the fight.
He replaced Charles when he took a slash to his thigh, not incapacitating but bad enough to need tending.
Regaining the top of the crates, Logan dispensed with the assassin responsible. It was touch-and-go, no time for science, just quick, hard, bloody work, going for the kill in any way that offered, but with luck and skill…
He and Deverell finally put paid to the last pair of cultists.
They swayed on the top of their makeshift platforms, staring down at the bodies tumbled and jumbled, blocking the alley.
Then Charles tapped them both on the shoulder, waited until they stepped back and down, then he went over the barricade and walked the alley with his saber in his hand, making sure none of the assassins they’d downed got up again.
His heart thundering, his breath sawing in and out, Logan slumped on an upturned crate. Deverell slowly let himself down against the yard wall.
Charles returned, clambering up and over, then he sat on the edge of their makeshift platform. “That was…” He paused to draw breath. “More action than I think I’ve ever seen-not in such a short space of time.”
Deverell lifted his head, smiled the ghost of a smile. “It’s the closeness-the tightness. You can’t move, can’t find any rhythm, get any real swing. Much harder, fighting so constrained.”
Logan leaned his head back against the crates, looked at Linnet, the only one of them standing, albeit propped against the side of the small porch. The action had been so fast, so intense, he hadn’t had a chance to be frightened for her. Now… relief had never felt so blessed, so utterly swamping. He caught her gaze, after a moment wearily smiled. “Yet we’re all still alive.” Almost giddy with the emotions coursing his veins, he tipped his head toward the alley. “And they’re all dead.”
“True.” Charles heaved a sigh. “However, our night-or rather, morning, this being the next day-is not yet over.” He looked at Logan. “Any idea who he was?”
There was no need to specify whom he meant. Logan shook his head. “I’ve never set eyes on him before.” Pushing away from the crates at his back, he stretched. “That said, he may well have been what he said, or at least implied-someone who wielded the authority of the Black Cobra.”
“So a very trusted lieutenant at least,” Deverell said. “He was well dressed, well spoken, well educated, from his tan had been in India recently, and commanded a large body of the cult elite.” He looked at Charles, then Logan. “Which means we should follow him.”
Logan nodded. “He was so trusted he knew about the letter, about the seal being the important part, although why he was so pleased to retrieve a mere copy I have no idea.” He got to his feet as the other two men got to theirs. “Aside from all else, although he may not be the Black Cobra, there’s an excellent chance he’s taking our copy-”
“To the real Black Cobra. Indeed.” Charles tossed aside two crates. “Let’s go.”
The stables behind the hotel appeared to be deserted. From what they could hear, the fighting was continuing in the street, and less actively on the riverbank. The cultists they’d seen by the stables must have gone out to aid their fellows.
However, as they approached, they saw one lone cultist, a thin, shivering figure crouched beside a cart, clearly
