“Trust and honor?” His spoke as softly as she did, low-voiced among the trees. The words seemed absurd, impossible to believe. As though she had plucked them from a fairy tale to mock him. But her face was serious and stern, her impatient look told him she thought him a fool for still standing there, staring at her.

“Lack-wit!” She pushed the dagger toward him. “Quickly now, before we are seen. Our only hope is in surprise.” His hand curled around the dagger’s hilt and she immediately turned away, other business to attend to. As though she never thought he might do anything other than fight by her side.

Trust and honor. By God, the things she put her faith in.

He wanted to thank her for the token, and mock her foolishness as he ran away. But his feet seemed rooted to the spot, and his hand would not move from the place where she had pressed the dagger-hilt into it. Vivid and immediate, Alice’s face rose in his mind. Not bloodied and bruised as he had last seen her in life, but smiling in the sun, so real that he thought surely it must be her ghost again, here and now among the trees, as the Ruardean wench moved smoothly to take a knife from her boot.

There was no time to wonder what it meant, or what he should do, because suddenly the thieves were there, stepping through the trees, their faces comical in reaction at finding their quarry here. There was one who reached for her arm as she pulled out her sword, slowing her just enough for two others to realize what was happening and reach for her too while the others still gaped. Ranulf gaped too, standing idle like a fool while he watched her sink her knife into a man’s hand and free her sword arm. Then she turned her back to the nearest tree and began to fight in earnest.

She was so fast. It all happened in a breath and they all gathered around her, as though he was not there at all. He could run now. He should run. Now, he thought. But the sight of her beset on all sides, cutting and thrusting, three against one, sent the blood thrilling through his veins, down his arm and through his fingers until the dagger he held felt alive in his hand. The man closest to him was small but wiry, and he carried a sword. In the same moment that Ranulf really noticed him, the man came at him. It was the work of a moment to bring the dagger up and slash across the man’s chest, then pull the sword out of his victim’s other hand as the bloodied man instinctively clutched at his injury.