Page 11 of The Knight's Pledge
“He was rather under the weather when we departed.”
“Get him out.”
“I’d not riskmy life, lord.”
“He doesn’t appear to be quite as dangerous as that,” Lucan said with a frown. “If you won’t do it, then getmeout.”
“We’ll be stopping to rest the horses soon,” was his only answer.
Movement of another rider slowing to the opposite side of the wagon drew Lucan’s attention—it was a white-haired old woman dressed in light gray that matched her unsettling clear gaze. She motioned down the length of Lucan’s body.
“Winnie wishes to know how you feel, lord. It was she who tended your foot.”
The frown did not leave Lucan’s face. “Better, I think.”
The woman nodded without a word and urged her horse forward once more.
“How long haveI been asleep?”
Rolf looked up at the sky. “Four hours, perhaps?”
The old woman’s place was filled by Effie, and Lucan felt absurdly self-conscious at the woman seeing him so enfeebled. He pushed with his elbows to sit up just as the oblivious Chumley gave anotherrousing snort.
“Ah, the princess awakes,” Effie goaded him. “Alas, it seems that your prince has been laid low by love’s gentle kiss.”
Lucan struggled to sit against the front board of the wagon, observing the high sides and reinforced metal bracings inside the conveyance that bit into his back and shoulders, and he noticed as his right pinky became painfully wedged that the planks of the bed beneath him were so gapped that he could see the dirt and rocks as the cart rolled over them. He yankedhis hand free.
“Necessary evil, I’m afraid,” she said. “It’s for the liquids to drain.”
Lucan must have pulled a horrified face, for Effie Annesley chuckled before she said, “The good knight is unusually squeamish. Quarter mile to the Break, Rolf.” Then she disappeared past the front of the wagon.
Lucan turned his head to glare up at Rolf, who, much to Lucan’s irritation, appeared to be holding back his own smile. “Not to worry, lord,” he said. “The corpse wagon hasn’t held an actual corpse in years.”
“It seems in good repair,” Lucan grumbled. “Reinforced even, for a conveyance that’s not in use.”
“Oh, it’s in use. Just not for corpses. Quite handy.”
Lucan felt his eyes narrow.
“For this and that,” Rolf elaborated. “It was acquired from a rather disingenuous vicar who”—Rolf paused. “You know, it doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“Probably best that I don’t know,” Lucan said slowly, eyeing thesteward warily.
Rolf nodded.“Quite right.”
Believe me, that’s the very least of whatyou don’t know.
Lucan didn’t trust himself in the moment to say anything civilized to the man he’d known for years to be a trusted servant and friend, and so he held his tongue as the corpse wagon bounced him and his drunken companion overthe rough road.
It slowed to a stop after several moments and Lucan craned his neck to peer over the front board and see beyond the wide rump of the chestnut mare that pulled the wagon.
The party was stopped in the road as, one by one, riders on horseback departed by way of the berm and disappeared over a sudden drop. Raising himself up higher on his hands, Lucan saw that the road disappeared in a ragged chasm, taken up again on the far side of a dark gulf thathe recognized.
They’d reached the Break—a part of the Dillonshire road where a bridge had once spanned the breach but had crumbled away long ago. It was a favorite haunt of bandits, and famous for travelers being waylaid and robbed as they crossed the wide but shallow, rocky river of the gulf. Lucan reached down instinctively to check for the hilt of his sword as Rolf untied Agrios, and was surprised to find his weapon stillin its sheath.
The cart lurched forward again, and Lucan wedged himself into the corner as the cart horse carefully maneuvered the steep descent toward the river. At his side, Chumley’s bent legs slid in increments along the floor of the cart until the man was curled in the fetal position, but it didn’t seem to trouble him at all as there was not even a stutter in his rhythmic snores. Several tense moments later, the cart horse pranced along the flat bank beside the trilling winter river.
Rolf turned Agrios loose at the water’s edge and then swung down from his own mount. He approached the cart, where Lucan was already sliding toward the edge.
