Page 27 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
“Could you not speak with Mr. Campbell yourself?” his wife asked in a shaken voice.
“I cannot.” I crushed the grub under my heel. The skin split, the back splaying oddly. “I have tarried too long already. Fetch paper, then point me to the Blackcoats.”
10
TOLERABLE
DARCY
I crawled belly-down,hidden by ferns and brush, my coat buttons snagging the forest loam.
The Blackcoat camp was forty yards ahead. I had approached from downwind, an unnecessary precaution as they had neither dogs nor horses. Even if they had, my scent would have been overwhelmed by their cookfires and general reek. Animal offal and human waste had been dumped and left to rot.
Ten men, poorly shaven and presented, wandered in flapping black coats. There were two large tents, probably stolen from some festival as the canvas was striped lemon yellow. Those might hold more. And if the camp was more competent at raiding than hygiene, there would be sentries out of sight.
My heart sped in my chest. Coming so close was dangerous but exhilarating. I had found my bait. Elizabeth would find them, too.
Only one thing nagged at me. Why had she not found them already? The first two nights after her return, bands of Blackcoats were ruthlessly eliminated. Then the attacks stopped, leaving only vague rumors of “the angel.” If I had found these men ahorse, how did she fail on dragonback?
Perhaps she was gone, flown away. She might be unthinkably remote. France. Ireland.
A tent flapped open, and a woman emerged. I tensed, but she was theantithesis of Elizabeth—blonde, slovenly, and hunched, as unkempt as the rest. She stared at the dirt while a man spoke to her.
I squirmed backward, collecting scratchy dead leaves in my collar, until I was screened by the underbrush. Then I walked a third of a mile through forest to where Escalus waited, tied in a clearing and grazing on lush spring growth.
I buckled my sword and pistol to the saddle and untied his reins from the tree branch. Then I watched his teeth methodically crop grass. My hands bunched the leather reins until they creaked.
What now? Follow the Blackcoats. Assume that, when Elizabeth came, she would see me. Would speak to me.
That plan, which for days seemed sensible, felt like a fool’s errand.
Irritated, I turned to mount. The buckle where I hung my sword was empty.
I whirled, expecting a lunging Blackcoat.
Elizabeth stood four paces away, examining my sheathed sword. She still wore Mary’s striking black gown, a finely finished garment but fraying where it had been hacked off ankle-short. Her feet were bare. She wore no bonnet, and her nose and cheeks were sunburned and peeling. Her hair was gathered behind her neck with a piece of twine, then fell in a chestnut cascade that brushed her hips. I had only seen her hair loose in our bedroom, and the sight, misplaced and intimate, stole my breath.
She rapped the sword’s shell guard, testing its thickness. I carried an English small sword, a gentleman’s dueling weapon, lighter and more practical than a military saber. Usually, they were shorter as well. Mine was two inches longer to suit my reach.
Eyes still on the sword, she said, “You have tracked them for two days. Why?”
“To find you. You are hunting Blackcoats.”
She looked up, and the words I had prepared vanished at the sight of her brown eyes. I remembered stumbling through inanities when we first met.
She moved one hand to the grip and raised an eyebrow.May I?
That was swordsman’s etiquette, unsettling from Elizabeth who, to my knowledge, had never held a sword, but it was habit to nod in answer.
She drew the sword and studied the blade, triangular and hollow-ground for lightness, then ran her thumb across the edge. “Not sharp.”
“It is a thrusting blade. The point is sharp.”
She cast me an amused glance, then tossed the sword to me, a perfect throw that seemed to hang in the air to be caught, which I did.
“Attack me,” she said.
“You know me,” I burst out. “You remember me. I see it in your eyes.”
