Warrior's Lady Read Online Free PDF Page B

manacles from his wrists and ankles, then offered him the shirt and breeches she had taken from the Giant. The shirt covered Jarrett like a shroud, falling to his knees. A faint smile curved her lips as she handed him the Giant’s sword, his bow and a quiver of arrows.
    Jarrett took the weapons. Slinging the bow and the quiver over his left shoulder, he made a pass with the sword. It was a powerful weapon, longer and heavier than he was accustomed to. “Ready?” he asked, and she nodded in reply, too frightened to speak now that the hour of their escape had come.
    He took her hand and they left the chamber on silent feet. Outside, she led the way down the dimly lit corridor to the winding staircase.
    Slowly, step by step, they made their way up from the dungeon to the kitchens. They paused in the doorway, listening, but it was still too early for the cooks to be about. Their footsteps echoed as they crossed the plank floor to the door that opened onto the stable yard.
    Her heart was pounding so loudly, it drowned out every other sound as Jarrett stepped into the yard. A helldog rose from the dirt, hackles bristling as it walked, stiff-legged, toward them.
    Jarrett froze in mid-stride, but she went forward, unafraid. She spoke a single quiet word and the helldog returned to its place.
    They entered the first barn. Jarrett drew a deep breath, filling his lungs with the scent of horses and hay, of freedom. In moments, he had two horses saddled.
    He had just lifted her onto the back of a long-legged bay mare when a herdboy rose from behind a pile of straw where he’d been sleeping.
    For a moment, Jarrett and the boy stared at each other. “Say nothing,” Jarrett warned, the sword a hairsbreadth from the boy’s throat. “I do not want to kill you.”
    The boy’s face turned pale. He slid a glance at the Maje, his eyes begging for help.
    “Thee had best do as he says,” she told him, despising the cowardly quiver in her voice.
    “You’re Jarrett,” the boy said. “I have heard of you.”
    “Have you, indeed?”
    “Yes. You are the most famous of all the participants in the Games.”
    A wry grin twitched at the corners of Jarrett’s mouth. “A great honor, to be sure. What will it be, your silence or your life?”
    “I will not sound the alarm,” the herdboy said. “You have my word upon it.”
    With a nod, Jarrett swung aboard the big white stallion he had chosen for himself. “Your word, boy. Remember.”
    The boy nodded, his eyes narrowed as he watched the Gweneth warrior ride away in company with the silver-haired Maje. As they reached the north gate, he drew a handbow from beneath his jerkin. He had promised not to sound the alarm, he thought, but he had not promised he wouldn’t kill the man.
    He was smiling as he let the arrow fly, thinking of the reward that would be his when the Minister of War learned he had prevented one of the participants from escaping.
    Jarrett grunted as the iron-tipped arrow buried itself in his right thigh. With an oath, he turned in the saddle, his hands putting an arrow to the Giant’s bow, his eyes blazing with fury as he sighted down the shaft, released the bowstring. The arrow flew straight and true, burying itself in the middle of the boy’s jerkin, and Jarrett grimaced with satisfaction.
    “Lying wretch,” he muttered as he rode out of the gate. “You’ll lie no more!”
    They rode for hours. He refused to stop, refused to let her treat his wound, though it was bleeding badly. He was driven by a deep-seated need to get as far away from the Pavilion as possible, to forget the hood and the Games, the fear that never left him, even when he was alone in the darkness of his chamber, to ride away from the pain and the humiliation of his captivity. He wanted to be Lord Jarrett again, Master of Gweneth. But it was not to be. He was a renegade, deemed a traitor by the Fen sovereignty. But, more than that, life in the bowels of the Pavilion had changed him and he knew he