sometime during the night she had either backed into him or he had reached out, but waking up in that intimate proximity was troubling.
He moved quietly until he stood on the other side of Lady Gabriella, who crouched with a wicked-looking dirk in her right hand, a shorter belt knife in her left. He remembered the belt knife, but couldn’t help but wonder where she had been hiding the dirk.
Voices from outside were now intelligible. ‘Bloody nuisance, checking every cave from here to Ran. They’re miles east of here, I’ll wager.’
‘You’re not paid to wager or think,’ said another voice. ‘If the captain wants you to dive into every stream, climb trees, and look under rocks, that’s what you’ll do.’
‘And who made you king of the day?’
A meaty smack followed, and the first voice cried, ‘No need for that, Neely! I was just saying …’
‘Say any more and you’ll be crawling back to the camp. Now, get in and check that cave!’
Hal glanced around. The cave was larger in the rear than at the mouth, with an ‘S’ curve coming in, so they might be able to hide. Hal indicated to the Princess that she should move into the farthest corner and she nodded and hurried over on silent feet.
He then motioned for Lady Gabriella to stand opposite the second curve of the entrance, where she would be seen as soon as the man stepped inside. She indicated she understood and moved to the indicated position. Hal tapped Ty on the shoulder and they moved until their backs were flat against the wall, just beyond the curve that hid them from anyone coming into the cave.
Hal put up his sword and pulled out his belt knife just as a man came into the cave, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. Gabriella moved and the man’s eyes widened. ‘You!’ he began.
Hal stepped up behind him and clamped his hand over his mouth, quickly cutting his throat and with a yank, tossing him to one side. Ty was already moving to protect the entrance, sword at the ready.
After a moment, a shout from outside was heard. ‘Booker! You taking a piss in there or what?’
Ty glanced at Hal who shook his head, indicating that they both should stay silent.
‘Booker?’ came the inquiry as footsteps could be heard entering the cave.
‘Neely!’ shouted Hal, trying to disguise his voice.
‘What?’ came the reply. A beefy man stepped into view.
This time it was Lady Gabriella who stepped out of the shadows and had a blade across the man’s throat before he could react. Even before he had hit the ground, Ty was moving towards the cave mouth to see if any others waited outside.
A moment later he was back. ‘Just the two of them!’
Hal said, ‘We move now. If they’re out in pairs, it means their camp is close by.’
The four of them came out of the cave and saw two horses tied to low-hanging tree limbs. Ty kept his gaze moving and seeing nothing, he clambered up a pile of rocks until he was standing on top of the overhang above the cave entrance. Finally he pointed to the south. ‘Smoke. Campfire. Maybe a mile away, no more.’
He scrambled back down and jumped the last five feet to land beside the Princess. Looking at Hal he said, ‘We ride?’
‘Double,’ said Hal.
‘We won’t be moving fast that way,’ said Ty.
‘If they have patrols out in spokes of a wheel, we travel straight away from this cave and that campfire smoke, and no one will come back here for hours, after those two fail to report back. We may get until tomorrow morning.’ Hal looked around. ‘I know nothing of these mountains. Which way?’
Ty pointed. ‘We follow the water course. There will be a cut in the mountains, or we turn west when we run out of trail. Either way, we’d best be miles from here when they find those two inside the cave.’
Hal nodded agreement and the two women hurried towards the horses. Ty and Hal grabbed some loose brush and moved it around, masking the horse prints back to a patch of rocks, then hurried back up the slope. Hal mounted then extended an arm and the Princess swung up behind him, Ty doing the same with Gabriella.
Without further discussion, Ty took the lead, and they began the slow climb up into the mountains, farther away from civilization every step.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jim kept close to the wall.
The city watch moved down the street in noisy fashion, six men, two abreast, marching as if on parade. It would have looked comical, except that it was the dead of night, hours before dawn, and the city was now officially under martial law. That martial law had been declared mere hours after Jim had slipped out of the palace seemed more than a coincidence.
Jim waited. As he expected, a few minutes after the passing of the watch, a pair of keen-eyed men came peering into every shadow, doorway, and window, moving as quietly as cats. Sir William Alcorn was sparing no effort in locating the ailing Duke’s grandson, apparently.
After leaving Bill the Butcher’s establishment, James had intended to check on one of his safe houses, a small rented room over a dry goods store where he had secreted a fair amount of gold, several different documents and disguises, and a sufficient number of weapons to ensure his ability to defend himself.
He had almost walked into a trap.
His ‘bump of trouble’ had tripped when he started down the street where the shop lay, when he noticed a man lingering at the far corner. Had he approached from that direction he would certainly have been sighted. Depending on how many agents Sir William had nearby he might have been able to escape. Or he might have ended up in chains. Or dead.
He walked into a tavern at the corner, convinced he hadn’t been seen, and sat there nursing a pint of ale, spilling most of it on the floor when no one was looking. The straw covering the stones was changed almost every day, and this early it was relatively fresh. It could soak up a lot of ale.
He waited until to make sure he hadn’t been seen, then ducked out the back. He had wandered the docks, moving in a random fashion, until he was completely certain no one was following him, then headed for what he considered to be his safest safe house on the island. He was especially cautious approaching this one and was relieved to see no hint of anyone watching it.
It was a shack at the end of a long beach just to the east of the southernmost wharf in the city. It was called Old Wharf, for it was the oldest one left standing, and had the benefit of having been neglected to the point of being useless. Jim had seen a couple of recommendations it be torn down for one civil improvement or another, but had managed to misdirect those memoranda so that no one in authority could ever act on them.
There was no reason for keeping the wharf in place, save one: it provided a safe exit out of the city for Jim. There was an ancient culvert, used by fishermen in ages past, where refuse from catches had been dumped before being taken into market. Flotsam, kelp, thrown-away fish, and the occasional corpse had been dumped into the culvert for decades. The high tide would come in and wash it clean twice a day. As the small town became a big city, the wharf proved less and less effective until it had been entirely abandoned more than a century before.
But that culvert still was washed clean of debris every time the high tide went out, and Jim had more than once used it as a way out of the walled city of Rillanon. He reached the shack after sundown, while there was enough twilight to see anyone within a half-mile, and he knew no one had followed him.
The shack was one of a half-dozen or so abandoned buildings from times long past when net mending and other fishing-related activities had taken place on the beach. Fishermen had graduated from the shallow-draught, two- or three-man craft used still on other parts of the island, to larger, deeper-draught boats that now required anchorage in the harbour. So the shacks went unused.
Except by Jim.
The third one from the end, unguarded even by a door, presented a gaping maw of an opening and one
