Honor Among Thieves Read Free Page B

up and saw the sun was still well above the horizon. “We have all that time?”
    Later, in the dark of a night with no moon, he kissed the sweat from her cooling body, while she simply tried to get her breath back. She knew she was playing a dangerous game, but she couldn’t help herself. “Do you still think I want to change my mind?”
    “You frightened me with all that talk of betrothals,” he said.
    “As I meant to.”
    He drew back a little. In the dark, she couldn’t read his face. “Tell me you’ll break your promise to him. Tell me you love me. Please.”
    “I do,” she said, and there was no part of her that disagreed. “And I will. But you know it can’t be so easy. From the moment I tell Croy about us he’ll be determined to kill you.”
    “You think I’m afraid of him?”
    “I think you should be.” Croy had trained all his life in the military arts. He would be one of the most dangerous men in the world if he wasn’t bound by an iron code of honor. Which in itself was the problem. “He won’t want to do it. He thinks of you as his best friend. Honor will require it, though. And you know how he is about anything that touches his honor.”
    “Let him try me! I can’t stand the idea of you marrying him. Not anymore,” Malden protested.
    “I’ll tell him everything. I’ll renounce the betrothal and beg his forgiveness,” Cythera said, rearing up to kiss his cheeks and chin. “I swear it. But Malden—I’ll only do it when we’re back in Ness. And when I’m sure you have a generous head start.”

Chapter Three
    A t dawn—as promised—Croy returned, looking a little tousled after riding in the woods all night. He was all blond hair and muscles and stupid grins, but Malden did his best not to hate the man. After all, Croy had already lost the game for Cythera’s heart—he just didn’t know it yet.
    The three of them returned to the abandoned hill fort where they’d left their horses and their prisoner. Balint the dwarf looked angry enough to spit blood, but they’d kept her bound and gagged so she couldn’t get into mischief. They threw her over the back of Croy’s saddle and headed out, toward Helstrow. Balint was the last errand they had to run before they could finally head back to Ness.
    Riding west toward the king’s fortress proved far less tedious than the voyage east had been. Back then they’d had to ford the river Strow at one of its wilder bends, but now they could approach the fortress directly. The sun had not even reached its apex by the time they saw Helstrow’s towers rising above the rolling hills.
    Malden was thrilled by the prospect of returning to civilization, but just outside the gates Croy called a stop. The riders stood their horses in the road so they could watch a field full of archers lift bows all at once and take aim.
    Bowstrings twanged and a hundred arrows lifted into the sky, the thin shafts spinning and tumbling. Some clattered together in midair, others flew true and arced downward to slam into a pile of rusted armor on the far edge of the field. Their wicked points cut through the old iron as easily as through parchment and lodged in the earth below.
    Watching from a safe distance atop his horse, Malden jerked back in surprise.
    “What are they doing?” he asked.
    “Practicing, I think,” Sir Croy replied, bringing his rounsey up level with Malden’s jennet. “There was a time when every male peasant in the kingdom was expected to know how to draw a bow and hit a target at one hundred yards. The law required them to practice for an hour every day, to keep their arms strong and their eyes true.”
    The line of peasants—villein farmers, Malden judged, by their russet tunics and the close-fitting cowls they wore—each nocked another arrow and drew back on their strings. A serjeant in leather jack and a kettle helmet shouted an order, and once more the bowmen let fly.
    Most of the arrows landed well short of the target. One, knocked off