Just as Beast nods in agreement, a man steps out of the mill and hurries toward us. When he is half a bowshot away, he stops. “The mill is closed today,” he calls out. “Broken, and needing repair.”
“Something is not right,” Beast says quietly. “The man is whey-faced, and sweat beads his brow.”
“My job is to get you to Rennes in one piece, not to stop and offer assistance to every peasant in need we come across. Perhaps he has simply been working hard this morning? Besides, once you dismount, I am not sure we can get you back on that horse.” But something isn’t right. The man’s heart is beating at a frantic pace.
“For one, he is a miller, not a peasant. And two”—Beast gives me a grin as infectious as the plague—“I can kill without getting off my horse.”
Easing my own horse forward with small, unthreatening steps, I allow myself to draw closer. “We have no need of the mill,” I call out to him. “We are just passing through and thought to refill our water skins.”
The miller wrings his hands. “This is not a good place for that. The bank is too steep. There is a much shallower access just a short way up the road.”
I nudge my horse to take another step, then another, and that is when I feel four more heartbeats nearby. One of those is lighter than the others but racing as wildly as the miller’s.
“Ah, but we are thirsty now.” I swing out of my saddle and onto the ground. “And the sound of all that sweet water so close by is like torture to our dry throats.” I keep my voice and movements light as I turn and remove one of the water skins from my saddle. While my body is blocking my movements, I also load and c**k the crossbow, poke an extra bolt through the fabric of my gown, then unhitch the bow. I give Beast a pointed look, and he nods. Hiding the crossbow in my skirts, I turn around and head toward the miller.
He hurries forward, nearly dancing in distress. “No, no. You must not—”
I put one hand to my stomach as if I am ill and stumble into him. “Who is it they have?” I whisper. “Your wife? Your daughter?”
His eyes widen in fright, and he crosses himself, then nods.
“All will be well,” I tell him, and hope that it is not a lie. There! A glint of steel from the barn door. Another from the branches of the tree in the yard. “The barn!” I shout to Beast as I pull my crossbow out and aim for the man in the tree. I hear his grunt as the bolt finds him. Before his body hits the ground, I slap the second bolt in place. A girl screams and darts from the mill into the yard, followed by a soldier. He raises his crossbow in my direction, but mine is already trained on him, and my bolt catches him in the chest before he can release his own. The girl screams again as he tumbles to the ground, nearly taking her down with him. The man from the tree is not moving, and there is no heartbeat coming from the barn, so Beast’s aim must have been as good as mine. Just to be certain, I draw a knife before hurrying to the girl and the fallen soldier.
Beast steers his horse to the miller. “Peace,” he says. “We will not harm you. We merely wanted to stop trouble in its tracks.”
The miller’s relief is tempered with wariness and he begins talking fast, proclaiming his own innocence, telling how these soldiers, these thugs, showed up at their door and began beating and questioning them. “They had just gone into the mill to cut open all the sacks of grain when they heard you coming.”
It would, I admit, be a good place to hide. I let Beast deal with the outraged man and turn to the daughter. Her blouse is torn and she is breathing fast, too fast, as if she has run some great distance, and I can still feel her heart beating frantically in her breast, like a small, frightened bird. “Did they harm you?” I ask quietly.
She looks at me, her eyes wild with barely checked terror, then shakes her head no.
But I know it for a lie, even if she does not. Those men have destroyed her sense of safety for months—possibly years—to come. Unable to stop myself, I reach out and grip her shoulder. “It was not your fault,” I whisper fiercely. “You and your father did nothing to deserve this except be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was not a punishment from God nor any of His saints—it was simply brutish thugs who happened upon you.”
Something in her frightened eyes shifts slightly, and I can see her grasp my words like a drowning man grabs a rope. I nod, then turn to retrieve my crossbow bolts.
We do not tarry long. Between Yannic and the miller and myself, we hoist the three dead bodies back onto their horses, and take the horses with us when we go.
“We will have to veer farther west if we wish to avoid d’Albret’s men,” I tell Beast as we ride away.
Beast nods in agreement, then grins. “I’ve never met a lady who enjoys her work as much as I enjoy mine.”
“My work?”
“Killing. Assassin-ing.”
“What are you implying?”
He looks puzzled at the anger in my voice. “That you are very good at what you do. It was a compliment, nothing more.”
Of course, he would mean it as a compliment. “Just how many other lady assassins have you met?”
“Other than you? Only Ismae. And she seemed to approach her duty with more earnestness than true joy, whereas you come alive with a knife in your hand.”
Hotly uncomfortable with his assessment, I fall silent.
Do I enjoy killing? Is it the act itself that brings me joy? Or do I embrace the sense of higher purpose it gives me?
Or do I simply enjoy having something at which I excel, as there are few enough skills that I possess?
However, if I do enjoy killing, how does that make me any different from d’Albret?
It is only Mortain—His guidance and blessing that separates us. And I have rejected that.
But Beast kills as well, efficiently and expertly, and does not seem tainted by the same darkness that colors d’Albret and myself. I have never seen anyone kill so cheerfully or eagerly, and yet he is light of heart. “How did you come to serve your god?” I ask, breaking a long silence.
Beast grows quiet, grim even. Just when I have decided that he is not going to answer, he speaks. “It is said that when a man rapes a woman while the battle lust is still upon him, any child that results belongs to Saint Camulos. I was such a babe. My lady mother was assaulted by a soldier while her own husband was off fighting against King Charles.”
“And yet she loved you and raised you as any of her other children?” I ask, somewhat in awe of her charitable nature.