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mistakes, he would kill her with his own bare
hands.
     

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Odo de Langois
did, indeed, take great pleasure in killing. He was kneeling beside
a thin bright stream of water and washing smears of blood from his
hands. The deer he had just gutted hung from a nearby tree. The
carcass was steaming in the cool air, the entrails were lying in a
pile to one side being fought over by a pack of long-nosed
hounds.
    He had made
camp by the stream four days ago and the portable trappings of
thirty men and horses were everywhere. Several small fires sent
columns of smoke into the leafy growth overhead. There were
blankets and saddles, bundles of armor and weaponry scattered
throughout the clearing. Several canopies had been hung from the
trees, practical only for keeping the heavy mists at bay during the
night.
    His own
pavilion was large and comfortable, for Odo was not a man who liked
to travel without certain necessities. Aside from the nearly three
dozen men at arms who accompanied him, he had two squires, several
lackeys, and an armorer in his retinue. The latter travelled with
all the tools of his trade packed into a large, square wagon. Odo
also had a full string of horses, two suits of armor—one of chain
mail and thick plated iron, the other of molded bullhide. His
swords, shield, lances, and glaives were carried in a warwagon
along with items of a more personal nature—clothes, cooking
utensils, tables and chairs that could be broken apart and moved
with ease—as well as a cot for sleeping.
    He had not
departed his castle at Belmane expecting to need more than a paring
knife and a long length of rope to hang his runaway wife when he
found her. Three days into the hunt, however, she had seemed to
simply vanish into the dark forest mists. He had dispatched men
back to the castle for supplies and more men, and now, more than a
month later, they seemed no closer to finding the murderous bitch.
A sennight ago they seemed to have had success within their grasp.
An almoner had mentioned seeing a woman and a priest on the road
headed south. A storm had kept Odo and his men huddled in caves for
a full day, but when it passed and scouts were sent out, a second
report identified those same two travellers taking refuge in a
small village.
    With his head
still bound in bandages and his balance affected by the blow he had
suffered to his skull, Odo had bowed to his brother's insistence
that he, Rolf de Langois, be the one to approach the village and
determine if the pair were indeed Elizabeth and the poxy priest,
and to bring them both back to camp if it proved true. But
something had gone wrong. Rolf had returned with an arrow lodged in
his thigh and a tale of foresters ambushing them from the woods.
The three highly paid assassins who had accompanied Rolf to the
village were dead along with nearly a dozen of his best
crossbowmen.
    While his
barber cut the arrowhead out of his thigh, Rolf related how he had
given the archers free reign to raid the village and take away
whatever they could find of value. He said it had begun as cleanly
and neatly as any surprise attack could, but out of nowhere, men
had appeared to defend the village. They were foresters by the look
of it, whose arrows cut them down with the precision of outlaws.
Rolf had regrouped and sent men back within the hour but when they
returned, the vill was deserted apart from the bodies. They had
searched among the dead, but the corpse of Elizabeth Amaranth de
Langois was not among them.
    Odo’s rage had
very nearly accomplished what Elizabeth’s aim with the heavy pewter
candlestick had not. His blood had risen in such a fury that the
pressure inside his skull came close to bursting. His face boiled
as red as his hair and the pain became so great, he eventually had
to be held down by six men just to keep him from smashing his head
against a tree trunk. It took four days for the agony in his brain
to subside, for the pressure to ease, for the fury to cool into