‘A knight?’ spluttered the pinned man.

‘Thomas Blackstone.’

The bowman blinked, realizing who had bested him. He nodded. ‘Towards the cliff. There’s a path down. A boat’s waiting.’

‘How many more men?’

De Hayle’s man shook his head. ‘None. Him and the woman. Alone. We lost a man on the cliff face back there.’

Blackstone punched him unconscious and turned him over, slashing his knife across one leg. Blackstone had spared him. Hamstrung, he could not give chase or ever fight in a war again but, if he made it down the mountain, he would find a living begging somewhere with his one good leg and a crutch.

Blackstone raised his face to the wind. There was more than the damp smell of moss and water on the air. The wind brought the unmistakable tang of the sea.

And justice.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

Blackstone battled the paralysing waves threatening to engulf him. He knelt by the stream, forced himself to chew and swallow more charcoal and then plunged his head beneath the icy water, trying to wash the numbness from his mind. He cupped water and drank deeply. His mind taunted him: a ghost within warning he would soon die. That he was too weak to fight and win. But he would not let go, not now. His eye caught movement on the edge of the forest. His hunter’s instinct kept him unmoving. The witch and de Hayle. The two killers he tracked were moving along the edge of the forest on the plateau between forest and clifftop. His archer’s eye put them at twenty yards short of four hundred. The woman led the way towards the cliff and what must be a path down to the shore. Close to where the pair walked, the stream broadened as another tributary joined it in a display of power. White water smashed against boulders, calmed and then gathered pace and strength as it raced towards the cliff edge and fell as a waterfall to the beach far below.

Unyielding determination forced him to his feet. He banished the creeping fatigue and lengthened his stride. The uneven ground made it hard going; his ankle went from under him. He steadied himself, shaking away the sweat stinging his eyes. When he had covered half the distance, he stopped to gather his breath and drink more from the stream, lifting his heavy head again towards his goal. De Hayle and Velasquita had still not turned. They appeared to be in no hurry, confident perhaps that they would not be pursued by a man stricken with poison and who, if he still lived, was unlikely to get past a crossbowman.