Next chapter! A bit longer. Please review (especially if you catch a typo-I'm bad about those!) and follow. :)
The alter-Jose is here, too, now. :)
Anastasia bit the hand that pressed against her mouth and slammed her head backwards against her captor's chest. The man gave a smothered yelp, but his arm only tightened around her neck.
"Lady, do you want to get us all killed?" he hissed into her ear. "We are friends, my lady—do not scream."
Anastasia stilled and nodded, pretending to surrender but keeping her muscles tensed for flight. The arms around her eased, but only enough to grip her shoulders and turn her. Anastasia recognized the man at once—one of Sir Geoffrey's soldiers, the archer who had stared when Sir Giles was leading her away.
"Joseph, my lady. I humbly beg your pardon." He flashed a grin that looked less sincere than his words. "I was afraid that you'd make a noise in your surprise, and the woods are crawling with Greyholm's spies." His expression turned sober, and he turned to lead her into a thicket. "We didn't think that you would try to run. We only hoped to kill that traitor—" He spat.
"You ambushed us?" If Anastasia taken a moment to think, she would have assumed that fitz Grey ordered the attack.
"Killed the lot of them," he confirmed, standing aside and holding back a branch.
Anastasia passed him and stopped when she found herself a foot away from a small knot of men, resting on the ground. There were three other archers, one of whom she recognized from the permanent castle garrison. Sir Amaury was with them, his face gray-tinged but with no visible sign of injury. One bowman was not so lucky; his arm was bandaged with a dirty strip of linen, and sweat stood out in beads against his upper lip.
"Can we stay here?" she asked the marshal softly, casting a look at the wall of bushes that hid them from the surrounding forest.
"My lady, the men tell me that it would not be safe."
"The woods are crawling with spies," Joseph put in.
"Then we shall return to the field. With a such loyal guard around me, I need not fear another betrayal," she said.
The other archers straightened visibly at her compliment, but Joseph shook his head. "Beg your pardon, my lady, but fitz Grey was hiding more than spies in the woods. A company of knights flanked your men. There was no one to warn them of the attack or rally them after, and now it is only a matter of time before they are defeated."
"And without a horse, I would be walking into the enemy's arms." The news came like a blow to her heart. Her hopes had been riding on her knights' surging chargers, everything she had struggled for since her brother's death so close on the heels of her father's demise. And now…gone.
She looked at the small company and sighed. "Very well, then. It seems we have no choice. We shall go to Astlingsmead." If no one else had betrayed her and Astlingsmead still stood, if they reached the castle before Greyholm's army cut them off… All the things that could go wrong welled up in a welter of doubt to drown her, and she shunted them from her mind. They would know soon enough if her fears were valid.
"Wise choice, my lady," Sir Amaury said.
"Then let us make haste. Does anyone know aught of woodcraft?"
"I do, my lady," Joseph volunteered.
"Then lead on." She smiled grimly. "Whether you fight for silver or honor, if we arrive at Astlingsmead whole, you shall have plenty of both."
Joseph ducked his head in acknowledgement and slipped back through the bushes, and the others fell in behind. Anastasia found herself next to Sir Amaury, who wore a mask of pale determination and whose breath had a worrying catch.
"Good marshal," Anastasia asked softly when she was certain that all eyes and ears were focused elsewhere, "do you bear some injury that I do not see?"
Sir Amaury grunted. "My shoulder. I—I fell from my horse, and I think it broke." He dropped his eyes to the ground in front of him, flushing.
"The ambush took us both by surprise, Sir Amaury. You are not to blame. We should stop to bind your arm to your chest, to keep it from swinging so."
He shook his head abruptly. "No, my lady. It would not do to let the soldiers know I am wounded. They cannot be expected to share a knight's courage, and they might lose heart."
Anastasia cast a doubtful glance at their companions, but she kept her incredulity to herself. If being brave for the archers meant that Sir Amaury could find more strength in himself, she would not rob him of that comfort.
Anastasia's little band moved west as their guide led them on a winding path through the forest. They traveled faster than she could have managed alone, for Joseph was able to find the easiest route through the forest instead of trying to follow the stream as she would have been forced to do.
But the noise of their passage almost made her wish that she were on her own again. Every crunching leaf, every snapping branch cracked like thunder beneath a dozen feet. Anastasia held her breath, remembering Joseph's reports of spies, certain that each new sound would bring arrows spearing through the woods to slaughter her small company.
No birds sang; no small animals scurried for cover through the undergrowth. When they neared the battlefield again, shrill whinnies and distant screams split the air, but close around them, the forest was preternaturally tense and silent, as if the trees themselves were holding vigil for their erstwhile lords.
No. Not yet erstwhile. If she only could make it to Astlingsmead before Greyholm's army…
The sounds of battle became abruptly muted long before they had passed out of the range of hearing, and Anastasia clenched her hands as she realized it meant that her men must have surrendered. She could no longer even hope that her army would slow Greyholm's advance upon the castle.
She kept her eyes averted from Sir Amaury's, knowing that she would see her fears reflected there. They wouldn't make it in time, not on foot. She imagined Astlingsmead's keep rising above the curtain walls, her family's pennant replaced with Greyholm's silver leopards. She pushed her despair aside as she stepped over a fallen limb. Giving in to hopelessness would not save her—her or the five men with her. An elderly marshal and four archers. A fine guard for a baroness.
It impinged upon Anastasia's consciousness that the noise of their progress had acquired a strange echo, and abruptly, she realized that the new sounds were not theirs. She grabbed Sir Amaury's good arm and threw herself to the ground, pulling him down beside her as she hissed a warning to the others. Their heads turned, and they dropped to the leaves. She waved them close.
"Someone's coming. Listen," she whispered.
They all held their breaths for a moment, and Anastasia strained to place the direction of the sound. It might be one of her knights who had escaped capture, she told herself. But she did not dare to hope.
"This way, with your permission, lady, sir marshal," Joseph breathed.
Anastasia gave a minute nod, and the man rose to a crouch and scuttled behind an enormous fallen log. Anastasia led the others to join him. Joseph cocked his head toward the crest of a rise a mere dozen paces away. Anastasia nodded again.
"Lie flat," she whispered.
Her belly pressed against the cold ground, eyes inches from the rotting trunk, Anastasia willed herself into invisibility. The noise of the approaching men grew louder with every passing moment, and it seemed to Anastasia that time contracted and expanded all at once—that she had be lying there with a stick digging into her belly for an eternity, that the enemy was rushing upon them at an impossible rate.
Her heart pumped faster when the amorphous rustling resolved itself into separate footsteps. It was a bold sound, one that told of firm strides and unflinching advance. Not the furtive sound of one of her soldiers fleeing the battlefield. No, she thought grimly, it hadn't been a battlefield. Battlefield was too noble a word to encompass the infamy of Sir Giles' betrayal. Bile rose in her throat. Honorable combat could never have shattered her forces, not even against Greyholm. But then again, when had a Greyholm ever fought honorably?
The links of her mail dug into her ribs. It was made for horseback, not lying belly-down in the detritus of ten winters. She ignored it and the cold damp that soaked though her skirts to chill her legs.
Beside her, the injured archer's breathing was ragged, from pain or anger or some other more complex emotion, she could not tell. The white linen of his bandaged arm was already stained with crimson, and she wondered if he would last the night.
The sounds were closer now, more distinct. Over the crackling leaves, she could hear the jingle of mail and the bark of rough laughter. Her knuckles went white around her bow; the Greyholm soldiers did not even fear her men enough to take even the most basic precautions.
Ignoring Sir Amaury's warning hiss, Anastasia raised her head slowly above the edge of the log and peered through the screen of undergrowth. After three more breaths, the men came into sight, half-glimpsed shapes moving between the trees. Four foot soldiers, two abreast. Her hands ached to send arrows whistling into those arrogant backs. But sense reined in her anger, and she did not stir as the men neared their hiding place.
The foot soldiers were only half a dozen paces away when she heard the other noise. Another party approaching from behind, and much faster than the ambling soldiers. Anastasia's breath lurched in her lungs, and her heart skipped a beat before pounding even faster. Her small company was well hidden from the first party of soldiers by a rise, but the same slope left them painfully exposed from below. If they moved, they would be discovered by the foot soldiers. If they did not, they would be found by the newcomers.
This was it. Capture or death. Anastasia remembered her father, toppling to the ground with splinters of Greyholm's lance jutting from his helm—and her brother's body, brought in from the hunt with a quarrel that belonged to none of his huntsmen or companions piercing his heart.
Coldness washed over her, sending shivers of sick anticipation along her limbs. No. She would not be the next victim of a too-convenient accident. If she must die, she would die fighting. The chroniclers might deny a woman's right to vengeance in arms, but she would wrest it from them even with her last breath.
With a feeling of inevitability, she ducked back behind the shelter of the log and pivoted slowly on her belly until she faced the new threat. Pulled by the slope, her arrows slid from the quiver to rest against the back of her head. She reached back and planted half a dozen in the ground before her.
Her men watched silently, and she read in their eyes the realization that she was preparing for a last stand. Slowly, the archers moved to copy her motions. Sir Amaury gripped his sword; without a bow, he could do no more. Anastasia could do nothing to save him, no more than he could her. That knowledge knotted in her belly like a lead rope. Her men would be of no use to Greyholm, and Christian fitz Grey would order their deaths in his father's name as easily as he called for his horse.
She rose to a crouch—carefully, because the foot soldiers were still close and could turn and see her at any moment. The others just waited. Their longbows could only be used standing; the first volley would be hers alone. Anastasia acknowledged their gaze with a small nod and nocked an arrow. Her hunting bow, intended for deer, would now be tested against steel.