Only the Valiant. Морган Райс

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СКАЧАТЬ small creatures and whistling birds, the rush of water and the rustle of the trees. Somewhere further off, he heard the sound of a forester playing a tin whistle. Royce hoped that he wouldn’t lead the soldiers to him. He didn’t want to bring trouble down on anyone else.

      That thought made him pause among the trees. The men behind him would follow him to his village if he ran there, and yet, if he didn’t, Royce might never be able to gather any support. Worse, the duke’s men might descend on it anyway, determined to punish all those connected to the boy who had brought about his death.

      He needed a way to distract the duke’s men from the village, and buy himself time to do everything he needed to do.

      The sound of the tin whistle came to Royce again, and he headed in that direction, guiding his horse between the trees. Royce pushed it through as quickly as he could. He was only too aware of how little time cutting away the log bridge would have bought him, and now, he felt as though he needed every second that he could find.

      He came across the first pig less than a minute later, rooting among the litter of the woodland floor for fruit or mushrooms, or something else. It stood almost as high as Royce’s waist would have been if he hadn’t been on horseback, snuffling its way forward, apparently oblivious to him.

      More wended their way through the trees, snuffling and hunting for anything they could eat, painted with the marks of at least a couple of farms. The music of the tin whistle was close now, and through a cluster of alder trees, Royce could make out the form of a young man sitting on the stump of a fallen oak.

      “Hoi there,” the young man called out as he saw Royce, waving with the arm that held the whistle. “Don’t go riding too hard through here. The pigs are easygoing enough, but if you scare ’em, they be big enough to trip that horse of yours.”

      “There are men coming this way,” Royce said, guessing that the best way to do this was to be direct. A young man like this wouldn’t appreciate someone trying to trick him. “Men who want me dead or captured.”

      The pig herder looked a little worried by that. “And what’s that to do with me?” he asked. “I’m just out here herding my pigs.”

      “Do you think men like that will care about that?” Royce asked. Every peasant knew what the duke’s men could be like, and how dangerous it was to be in their way while they were hunting.

      “No,” the herder said. He looked Royce over. “What are they hunting you for, then?”

      Royce suspected that if he told the boy the truth, it would be too much for him. Yet what else could he do? He could hardly claim to be a poacher.

      “I’m… I killed the duke,” Royce said, not knowing what else to say. He couldn’t ask what he was about to ask without telling this boy the truth. “His men are chasing me, and if they catch me, then they’ll kill me.”

      “So you’re planning to lead them into my pigs?” the swineherd said. “And what happens to me if I’m still here when they get here?”

      “I have an idea for that,” Royce said. He jumped down from his horse, holding out the reins to the boy. “Take my horse. Ride away from here. It’s the best chance both of us have.”

      “You want me to pretend to be you?” the swineherd demanded. “After what you did? Half the kingdom would be after me.”

      Royce nodded. The two of them didn’t look alike; Royce was much bigger and more heavily muscled, and even though they both had blond hair to their shoulders, it would never be mistaken for the same. Their features were different too: the swine herder’s round and homely where Royce’s were square jawed and sharpened by violence.

      “Not for long. You can ride, can’t you?”

      “Aye, my da insisted. I used to canter the cart horse over the fields.”

      “This horse will go a lot faster than a canter,” Royce promised, still holding out the reins. “Take the horse, ride ahead of them for a while, and then let it go when they can’t see you. They’ll never know that it was you on the horse, and they will still be looking for me.”

      Royce was certain that it would work. If the swineherd kept ahead of the foe, then he would be safe the moment they lost sight of him.

      “And that’s all I would have to do?” the swineherd asked. Royce could see that he was considering it.

      “Just lead them away from any of the villages,” he said. “I need to get back to mine, and you can return to yours the moment you’ve lost them.”

      “So you’re just looking for a way to get away with murder?” the boy asked.

      Royce understood. The swineherd wouldn’t want to help with anything so callous as that. It wasn’t just that though. It hadn’t been, even in the moment when he’d flung the spear.

      “They oppress us in every way they can,” Royce said. “They take and they take, and they never give anything back. The duke took the woman I loved and gave her to his son. He imprisoned me on an island where I saw boys my age slaughtered. I had to fight to the death in a pit! It’s time that we changed things. It’s time that we made things better.”

      He could see the boy considering it.

      “If I don’t get back to my village, a lot of people will die,” Royce said. “But if I go and they follow, even more will. I need your help.”

      The swineherd took a step forward. “Will I be paid for this?”

      Royce spread his hands. He didn’t have anything. “If I can find you again afterward, I’ll find a way to pay you back. How do I find you?”

      “I’m Berwick, from Upper Lesham.”

      Royce nodded, and that seemed to be enough for the swineherd. He took Royce’s horse and mounted it, heeling it forward and setting off through the trees in a direction that had nothing to do with any of the villages Royce knew. Royce breathed a sigh of relief.

      It was short lived. He still needed to get out of sight. He moved back among the trees, finding a spot among the foliage where he could crouch down in the shadow of a trunk, surrounded by fronds of holly.

      He crouched there, perfectly still, barely daring to breathe as he waited. Around him, the pigs continued to forage, and one of them got closer to him, nuzzling at the patch of foliage where he hid.

      “Get away,” Royce whispered, willing the creature to move on. He fell into silence as he heard the sounds of hooves approaching.

      Men came into view, all armored and armed, all looking even angrier than they had in the first flush of the chase. Royce truly hoped that he hadn’t put the swineherd in too much danger by making him a part of his escape.

      The pig continued to move too close to him. Royce thought he could see one of the men there watching it, and he froze so still that he didn’t even risk blinking. If the pig reacted to his presence at all, he felt sure that the men would fall on him and kill him.

      Then the man looked away, and the soldiers surged forward once again.

      “Quickly now!” one of them called. “He can’t have gotten far!”

      The soldiers thundered off, following the path that the swineherd had taken, presumably following his tracks. Even when СКАЧАТЬ