Chapter 143 The Hidden Arrow

No one called "Stop" — and yet both sides came to a stop.

The East Manor folk, because they saw their master come; the Windsor men, because out of their dozen and more bully-boys, several were already lying beaten on the ground.

"The young lady?"

No wonder, if you thought of it: with the Countess away from home, no one in that house but the young lady would be riding in a carriage.

Once he made out that what the Odenheims had sent was no more than a slip of a girl, Windsor Fortune toughened up all over again. He pointed at the bully-boy lying "dead" on the ground:

"Is there no one in the Odenheim house whose word carries? Run home and tell your father: your tenants have beaten a Windsor man to death, and we'll have a body set against the debt!"

"You're a Windsor servant — do you not know that the road before East Manor's gate is Odenheim ground as well? You break into my house to do your violence, and you come telling me we've killed your man. Steward Coltrain — have any of ours taken hurt?"

Coltrain looked the field over: "To answer the young lady — not one."

"Good. This once, you go free. Set foot in the East Manor road one time more — look to yourselves, for the arrows will be waiting."

Lora had talked Windsor Fortune clean into a muddle: what was this young lady fed on — bear's heart and leopard's gall? A Windsor man dead at her people's hands, and her voice still this big! Had she clean forgotten that two days more, and the manor would carry the Windsor name?

He was working up his assault when Rowena Ashby pushed the carriage door open; a black-clad guard held out his arm for her to steady on as she came down. She looked Lora up and down, and smiled with nothing well-meaning in it:

"Lora Odenheim. Months of silence out of you — I'd taken it you sat at home washing your face in tears, hating your cousin for choosing Dorothy Dunbar over you! Next time, is it? When I next come, I'll have them one by one on their knees, setting their marks to the tenancy papers. Everyone who stood in my road today — every one driven off the manor, and never a toe into this road again!"

Something in the face struck Lora as familiar, though she could not place her. Lilac bent in close and murmured: "That is Rosalind Ashby's younger sister. In the fourth month, when the Ashby women were put up and sold, she went to the Windsor house..."

Lora smiled too: "No wonder. If you were any proper Windsor master, would you be riding in a carriage this small? Your father and your brothers got no better than they had earned. You kept your one life out of the wreck — shouldn't you be cherishing it? Mind somebody doesn't carry it before the King: the Windsor house abets a bond-mistress in violence, puts shame on a daughter of royal kin, and holds the royal house itself in no account."

That speech, put before any true Windsor, might not have frightened. But Rowena Ashby was a woman pulled living out of a wreck, and she knew what everyone knew: the Empire forbade the doting on mistresses; the law says it out plain — "the slave is a base creature, in law as cattle" — and even were she to bear her master's child, a slave cannot step out of the base register.

Lora despised that law of the Empire. But at this moment, for dealing with a "base one" who had earned the word down to the letter, she found it a very fine thing indeed.

Rowena Ashby — thinking that the wreck of her house and the deaths in it had all come on her by Odenheim doing — could have flown at the girl's throat then and there. In the end she only straightened the stole on her arm and said, cold as well-water:

"We go. Three days from now I'll be here on the very hour to take my land in. And every last one of you — see that you wait for it properly!"

She boarded in a fit of huff. The beaten bully-boys hobbled and leaned on one another after her. And in their hurry to be gone, the whole crew forgot to carry the "corpse."

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One of the old soldiers, out of all patience, sent a kick at it and swore: "Dead cur — bad luck to boot!"

The man had taken the spade across the back of the head — square on the thickest knot of the skull; what had truly knocked him under was the slam of his brow into the ground. The old soldier's kick now fetched him round the other way — he gave a grunt, and his breath came back.

"He's not dead! The man's not dead!"

At that, Lora slipped the Rose Needle quietly into her hand and walked over to him.

Wake he might — but soon his mouth was dragging sideways, his eyes rolled back, and the foam came at his lips. Lora dropped her needles in fast — inner gate, the groove above the lip, the crown of the head, the ravine behind the knuckle, the gushing spring in the sole — and the convulsions stopped.

"He'll not hold out long. Carry him to my carriage — we take him to the shire court now and charge them with breaking into a private holding by force. Their house we may not bring down with it, but at the least our own people will come out clear." So Lora gave her orders.

But Windsor Fortune, still short of the road's mouth, counted heads over his shoulder, saw on the instant that the body had not been carried along, and roared back at the bully-boys behind:

"Back for that body, quick! We'll have the Odenheims pay a life for a life!"

The Windsor men ran back — and found Avery being helped up onto his feet.

"Eh! What are you about, carrying off our man?" somebody bawled — and at that, the whole column ahead came to a stop.

Norton lifted the man's chin; the man grunted twice and wagged his head. Norton said: "This man is our witness — your forcing your way into the Odenheim manor with violence in mind. He does not go with you."

The Windsor men saw for themselves that Avery still had breath in him — though his face was white as paper, and who could say how long it would hold — and they hurried back to make their report to Windsor Fortune:

"Avery's not dead — grunting yet! They say they mean to carry him under guard to the shire court... If the man lives long enough to reach it, the dumb loss falls on us."

"They're not to get through! Lora Odenheim knows her needles — poison swallowed down, she'd needle it back out of a body. Who knows but she's the very one who's brought him round." So said Rowena Ashby.

Just then Leon and Lyle and their men came up on horseback — all ten in black, faces masked. They went past the Windsor people like a gust of wind and swept in to Lora's side.

Lyle, riding at their head, pulled down the mask, and Shawn knew him.

"You're all right?" Leon dismounted and came to her; one look at the groaning bully-boy — one look at the livery on him, and Windsor livery past doubting — "Our work?"

"Yours. Near dead already. We're taking him to the shire court now — he must not die on East Manor ground."

"Load him up. We'll ride escort for the carriage."

Windsor Fortune had meant to plant himself in the road and seize Avery back — and now a squad of masked men had come out of nowhere, every sign of them Odenheim covert guards, and the seizing had gone hard. In her carriage Rowena Ashby said it through her teeth:

"Why is that girl always the lucky one? Windsor Fortune — you go up ahead and demand our man of them!"

The moment Fortune and his lot were off, she turned to the man standing bolt upright beside her window:

"Hugh Kestrel — where is that famous bow of yours? We're outside the city walls, and the woods lie straight ahead. Put an arrow through that Lora Odenheim — then you go hide away at the villa. No archer in hand, and what can they do to us?"

She had watched the young lord kill a man just so, with her own eyes.

No one taken in the end, and the offices were glad enough to let the thing melt away of itself — no need to cross the Windsor house.

Hugh Kestrel was the black-clad man who had stood at the carriage's side the whole while: Windsor Yves's own bodyguard.

Today Windsor Yves had been bidden to the Lohenheim Iron Plate, to drink to Second Master Hugo's new opening — he had meant at first to ride out with Rowena to the abbey beyond the city; the plan changed, and so he'd sent his own bodyguard and his steward, with a dozen men at their backs, to see her out of the walls.

Hugh Kestrel knew the young lord's novelty had not yet worn through — this was the very heat of his favor for the bond-mistress; and at their parting today, to put Rowena in good humor, he had indeed said the words: Hugh Kestrel was to take his orders from the lady.

And besides — he set no account whatever by these Odenheim covert guards. The thinking took no more than an instant: Hugh Kestrel drew an arrow from his quiver.

His arrows were beautiful things to the eye. What set them apart was the dark-green fletching — broader, heavier-seeming than another man's.

Rowena Ashby pressed herself to the carriage window and held her breath. Never in her life had she stood at a killer's very elbow — and it set her blood leaping.

The more so with the mark an Odenheim — the very family she hated.

Windsor Fortune and his men were still planted in the road, demanding their man; the covert guards walled them off with their blades and walked the carriage out. Amid all the pushing and shoving, not one soul marked the bowman crouched beside the carriage ahead.

Lora stood with Leon's body between her and the shot, their flank turned toward Rowena Ashby's carriage.

"Careful!"

Norton saw the movement up ahead — too late: the arrow was already off the string, screaming down on Lora.