Page 96 of Peregrine's Call
Robin picked at her food, uninterested in eating. Acer caught her eye at one point and tipped his head toward the door, wordlessly asking if she still planned to meet him. He looked excited, and she guessed he had news. She nodded once and got a quick smile from him.
After supper, people began to leave the great hall to prepare for bed. The shorter days meant the long twilight evenings of the warmer months were over, and most folk wanted to remain warm near the fires or huddled in beds, like animals ready for winter.
Robin announced she was also going to bed, but once in the cold, dark foyer, she instead walked to the doors of the keep. She peeked out at the courtyard, dazzled by the glimmering of the frost on the stones. Looking up, she saw a crescent moon hanging high, with wisps of clouds catching the light and threading the whole sky with a silvery-white glow. Awed at the sheer beauty of it, she stepped out into the courtyard and then walked to the stairs leading to the parapet along the walls.
At the top, she stared out over bare trees with branches dipped in silver. The frosted ground sparkled as if someone had spilled diamonds over it. Winter was all but knocking on the door. Soon this land would be covered in snow and buffeted by wind, made into a deadly fairyland for anyone who was unprepared.
Robin was entranced by the scene and didn’t notice when she first began to shiver from the cold. She wrapped her arms around herself, wondering just where Acer was. He seemed so eager to meet.
Then something moved in the courtyard, and Robin squinted at the shadows. Finally, she saw him. It was Pierce, quietly leading a horse out of the stable and over to the gate. Why didn’t the guards stop him? She waited, sure that someone would shout or run up to keep Pierce from passing under the gatehouse. But the silence persisted.
She dashed down the stairs and into the stables, then nearly tripped over a body lying in the darkness. She gasped, seeing Acer’s still form. Had Pierce murdered the boy to keep him from sounding the alarm? She knelt down, put her hand to the boy’s neck. She was rewarded with the feeling of warm flesh and a steady heartbeat. Acer had only been knocked out. He’d seen Pierce up to no good, but never got the chance to pass it on to Robin or anyone else.
Her fists balled up, her nails biting into her palms. Piercehadplanned something, and now he was going to get away, unless she could catch him first. Robin rushed back into the keep. In her room, she discarded Angelet’s lovely gown and pulled on the boy’s clothing she felt most comfortable in. Robin looked around the room, hoping she had what she needed. She grabbed her satchel, the quiver, and the bow. No food or supplies, but she’d catch Pierce before he got too far.
In the stables again, Robin tried to wake Acer, who only moaned and told her to let him sleep because it was Sunday. Which it was decidedly not.
Leaving the boy to be helped by others, she saddled a horse as fast as she could, and then led it from the stables. The gatehouse was quiet, so she went to the massive doors of the gate itself. They were closed, but unbolted. No, they weren’t even properly closed. She pulled on the righthand door and it groaned open slowly.
She walked the horse through and pulled the door closed, a task that took most of her strength. How had Pierce managed to unbolt the doors and get out undetected? Robin had no time to find out. She had to track Pierce’s path before all signs of his progress vanished. She mounted up and began to follow the tracks in the direction she’d seen him go.
The cold night and the frost aided her. The clear imprint of iron horseshoes showed in the icy white rime covering the ground. She kept her eyes on the trail until it led into the thicker woods surrounding Martenkeep. With the castle well behind her, Robin was truly on her own. She couldn’t call for help or hope that someone saw her.
Octavian would not be coming to save her.
Well, Robin knew how to survive on her own. She always had. Tossing her head, she pressed her mount forward. She’d catch Pierce before he got to wherever he was going.
As she tracked her quarry, Robin tried to understand Pierce’s motives. Why try to run away when he was going to be escorted safely to the king by none other than Sir Octavian? It made no sense.
“He’s not told us everything,” she muttered to herself.
Of course. Pierce gathered secrets for himself and only told the minimum of what he knew in order to get others to do his bidding. He’d lied to Tav and Robin more than once. He must have lied about even more than that, and now he was escaping so he could meet someone or reach some destination of his own.
She knew this area of the country far better than Pierce did, almost as well as she knew the Ardenwood. In fact, if the trail kept going southeast, they’d be heading directly toward Cleobury itself by tomorrow. She rode at a steady pace, not wishing to catch up to Piercetooquickly. A man on the run always looked over his shoulder, and she wanted to stop him on her terms.
In fact, she’d do that best by overtaking him. She left the established path Pierce was using and rode through the woods, following deer trails and streams to avoid getting her horse caught in the thick overgrowth. She increased her pace, thinking of a particular spot a few miles ahead where all travelers had to cross a river at the shallow point. She increased her pace to reach it in time, and then tethered her horse and got ready to hunt her quarry.
Not long after, Robin was perched in an oak rather like a bird herself. She sat on one of the sturdy lower branches in sight of the narrow road. The sound of hooves echoed through the woods. Robin wrapped her hand around a slender branch to brace herself, and then swung her upper body downward to get a better view.
The clear ring of iron meant a well-shod horse, and the particular volume and frequency of the ringing suggested a heavy animal, moving at slow pace. Pierce. She began to track him from above.
At first, the dense tree cover allowed her to keep to the higher branches, but when the trees thinned out, she slipped down to the forest floor and moved among the trunks, using the smaller shrubs and brush to hide her passing. Robin stepped quietly, with only the occasional crack of a twig or a rustle of leaves as she moved forward. She wasn’t worried, though. Even if Pierce heard it, he’d mark it up to a squirrel or some other creature prowling the woods for food.
She kept him in view, which wasn’t difficult, since he had slowed down since she first saw him. Why slow down when he was trying to escape?
Pierce seemed to be in no hurry, though. He bent down to say something to his horse. She wondered if the horse had gone lame, and when Pierce dismounted, she guessed that was exactly what happened.
He walked the horse onward. Robin actually matched him step for step, despite having to pick through the undergrowth. Still, he didn’t even glance her way. She gripped her bow tighter. The natural tension she felt before any fight began to flow through her blood, making her muscles tense.
A little while later, the path turned sharply to ford the river, and Robin saw the horse standing by the water, happy to take a drink. Pierce was nearby, frowning at the horse and frustrated at the delay in his escape.
Nocking an arrow, she took one step closer to the horse, keeping herself in cover. Its ears flicked backward, and it nickered in response to her approach.
She let the arrow fly, aiming just past Pierce’s head.
When it hit the trunk of a tree behind him, Pierce went still.
“Next one hits you if you try to get away,” she called, even as she readied the next arrow. “Step away from the horse and unfasten your swordbelt.”
