"Ryan!"
Eloise screamed his name with everything she had. Hoofbeats thundered through the dark—fast, closing—and then Ryan was there, off the horse before it had fully stopped, colliding with the deserter in a crash of bodies.
They went down together.
In the darkness it was impossible to follow—two figures tangled and rolling, trading blows without order or form, grunting with the effort. Moonlight filtered through the canopy in broken fragments, catching nothing clearly.
Then something flashed.
*Thunk.*
The dagger drove into the earth to its hilt. The deserter wrenched at it, trying to pull it free, and in that moment of distraction Ryan drove his boot into the man's ribs with full force.
"Kh—!"
The deserter folded, rolling away with a ragged groan. It barely slowed Ryan down.
*Get the weapon. Get it first.*
The lesson came back to him in the instructor's grating voice, that first brutal week of training—the man pacing in front of them with a wooden sword, poking each recruit in the shoulder as he spoke.
"Some men believe that with enough hand-to-hand training, they can overcome an armed opponent. These men are fools who have never actually fought. Such things happen only in novels. One blade is worth more than a hundred years of sparring. So if you face an armed man, your first and only task is to take that weapon. Fail to do so and you will be carried off the field."
Half the recruits had volunteered to prove him wrong that same day, eager at the promise of a bottle of Scotch whisky for whoever managed it. An hour later the parade ground looked like a field hospital, men clutching wooden-sword welts on every tender point the body possessed. Ryan had limped away gripping his shoulder, thoroughly instructed.
*The weapon. Always the weapon first.*
He was stronger than the deserter—he knew that much. But a man fighting from desperation and rage was unpredictable, and the night made everything worse. They locked together again, straining, and the dagger flashed once more as the man finally wrenched it free.
Ryan glanced sideways in the struggle, searching the darkness.
*Eloise—where is she? Did she run?*
He remembered the note on his coat. The single horse left in the yard. The groom's stammering.
---
He'd come up from the basement in a state—shirt torn, blood drying on his lip from someone's stray fist, the fight finally broken up more by shock than sense. When a man who employed you and dressed like gentry stood still and let himself be hit rather than retreating, it had a way of cooling things quickly. He'd grinned at their horrified faces.
"Well. Has everyone cooled down?"
It had taken far too long to untangle the cause of it—a dispute involving someone's wife, voices climbing over each other, Mr. Palmer wringing his hands at the edge of the crowd. By the time Ryan had sorted through enough of it to climb the stairs, the hour had grown late.
*Eloise will have something sharp to say about this.*
But the upstairs hall was empty. He checked the sitting room, the stables—nothing. Then he saw his coat on the entry dresser, and the note pinned beneath it.
He swore under his breath and ran.
One of the two horses was gone. The groom tried to explain—the deserter had been caught, or so word had it, and Miss Severton had insisted the road was safe, and she'd taken Iclipse who knew the night roads well, and she'd had quite a head start—
Ryan didn't hear the end of it.
Mr. Palmer called after him as he vaulted onto the remaining horse. He didn't look back.
He rode hard, the darkness rushing past, and told himself she was fine. She was sensible. She was probably already inside, warming her hands by the Feltham hearth, and he was going to feel foolish arriving disheveled and breathless for nothing.
Then, at the edge of the forest, a horse came toward him at a dead gallop. Riderless. Flanks streaked dark.
Iclipse.
After that he had no clear memory of the next few minutes.
---
The deserter bore down on him now with the energy of a cornered animal, no longer aiming for anywhere easily defended. The knife swung for Ryan's throat.
"Ryan—!"
Eloise's scream split the air—
*Crack.*
A heavy, hollow sound. Then silence.
The deserter went rigid. His eyes rolled back, slow and glassy, and he toppled sideways into the dirt.
Behind him stood Eloise, both hands wrapped around a stone the size of a small anvil, her breath coming in ragged gasps, her arms shaking with the weight of it.