The Lost Stories (30 page)

Jenny said nothing. There was no answer she could make to that, other than
Why should I?
And if she said that, it would only serve to infuriate Tomas even further.

“We've got to get out of here!” Nuttal interrupted. His eyes were flicking around the kitchen as if he expected Gilan to walk in the door at any moment. “We'd better make a run for it!”

“Don't be an idiot!” Tomas turned his anger on the smaller man, much to Jenny's relief. “We can't leave now! It's still broad daylight outside. We'll be seen!” He turned back to Jenny. “I won't forget this,” he told her ominously. He spat out a string of curses again, and Jenny flinched with the intensity of it all. “Let me think . . . ,” he muttered to himself. But it was Mound who came up with the answer.

“We do as we planned to do all along,” he said. “We wait till a few hours after dark and then we leave.”

“And wave good-bye to the Ranger as we go?” Tomas demanded sarcastically.

Mound met his gaze evenly, allowing the other man to see that he wasn't cowed. Then he replied deliberately. “There are three of us. One of him.”

“But he's a Ranger!” Nuttal's voice rose to a near shriek and Mound shot him a disparaging look.

“That's right. And he's not expecting us to be here. He's expecting to walk in and have dinner with his girlfriend here.”

Tomas was starting to nod as he saw where the big man was heading. “And when he does?”

“When he does, we'll simply knock him on the head before he realizes what's happening. Then everything's back to normal,” Mound continued.

Knock him on the head.
It sounded relatively harmless, Jenny thought. But she knew it was anything but. Mound confirmed it a few seconds later as Nuttal continued his whining protest.

“But he's a
Ranger
!” he repeated frantically. The big man placed a hand on his shoulder and turned him so that their eyes met.

“Yes,” he agreed. “And two seconds after he walks in that door, he'll be a dead Ranger.”

TIME DRAGGED. EACH MINUTE THAT PASSED SEEMED LIKE HALF an hour. Jenny had a water clock in her kitchen and she glanced at it constantly. The level seemed to remain unchanged for minutes at a time, and once, she rose to make sure that the water was dripping freely from the upper vessel into the lower.

It was barely a quarter past five and Gilan wasn't due until six. Somehow, she thought, she had to prevent him from walking into the trap that Tomas and Mound would set for him. Skilled as Gilan was, he would have little chance of avoiding their ambush. She glanced at the door. The robbers had discussed their plan. Ten minutes before Gilan was due to arrive, they would place Jenny, bound and gagged, in a chair facing the door. Mound would stand beside the doorway while Tomas and Nuttal hid in the adjoining room. When Gilan opened the door, he would immediately see Jenny. His first instinct would be to rush forward to free her, and when he did, Mound would strike from his hiding place behind the open door. He had a heavy cudgel—hard wood studded with blunt iron spikes. One blow would crush Gilan's skull, Jenny knew. Then Tomas and Nuttal would finish the job with their daggers.

In her mind's eye, she could see Gilan facedown on the floor, blood seeping from his head, still and lifeless. Her eyes misted with tears and she shook her head to dispel the vision.

Then she was seized with anger as she looked at the three men. Mound and Tomas were playing a game of dice on the kitchen table, bickering from time to time over the scores. Tomas was a particularly bad loser, she thought. Then anger slowly gave way to hatred as she watched the bearded man, listening to his boasting when he won a hand and his complaints and whining when he lost.

Mound was silent. He was actually the real danger man of the three, she thought. He was big and muscular. And he seemed a type who would remain calm in a crisis. Tomas was a self-centered bully and Nuttal was a sniveling coward. But Mound was the one to watch. If she could find a way to stop him, she would be well on the way to saving Gilan's life.

And her own. She realized the fact with a jolt. Her own life was in just as much danger as Gilan's. She had realized earlier that the three men would not leave her behind to tell where they had gone. Yet, somehow, she could face the thought of her own fate far more easily than Gilan's.

Her gaze went back to Mound. Powerful. Brooding. Unflustered. How could she stop him? She knew she couldn't wait much longer. Soon they would tie her up and place her in the chair opposite the door. She glanced at the clock, heard a minute
plop!
as a drop fell, spreading ripples across the surface of the water in the bottom cylinder, and glanced at the scale. It was nearly half past five.

She looked back at Mound. He was sitting closest to the oven, where the leg of lamb was sizzling quietly inside. For the first time in an hour, she became conscious of the mouthwatering smell of the roasting lamb. She looked at the kitchen bench beside the oven. Her heavy rolling pin, the one she had used to roll out the pastry for the ruined plum tart, was standing in its rack on the bench. A few centimeters beyond that was her array of knives, every one of them razor sharp. If she could get her hands on one of them, she thought, she could show these ruffians a thing or two. But she knew they would never let her get close to the knives. The rolling pin was another matter. That and the heavy iron skillet hanging from a hook on the wall. If she could just find some way to distract the robbers' attention for a few seconds . . .

She thought nothing of the fact that she was prepared to take on three armed criminals with nothing more than a couple of kitchen utensils. Jenny's protective instincts had been aroused. If she didn't do something, Gilan would die.

She realized she could never live with that. Then, with another shock, she realized that she
wouldn't
live with that.

Plop!
Another drop of water. Another thirty seconds gone.

“Any sign of him?” Tomas asked, looking up from the desultory dice game. Nuttal moved to the kitchen window, pulled the curtain back a crack and peered out at the darkening street.

“Nothing,” he said, letting the curtain fall again. Jenny held her breath, willing him to move away from the window over the kitchen bench. An idea had formed in her mind, but if they were all grouped close to the oven and the bench, her task would be more difficult. She let the breath go as Nuttal returned to his seat across the kitchen, sitting down and staring aimlessly into space.

Time to act, she thought.

“The lamb's done,” she said. All three of them looked at her. She'd been silent for the past twenty minutes, and for a moment, none of them knew what she was talking about. She gestured to the oven.

“There's a leg of lamb roasting. I should take it out or it'll be burned and dried out.”

“What do we care about that?” said Nuttal in his whining voice.

Mound glared at him.“I care about it. I'm hungry and we'll need food for the road. A roast leg of lamb would go very nicely, I reckon.”

“Oh,” said Nuttal, looking somewhat crestfallen. “Yeah. I suppose so.”

Jenny glanced at Tomas. “What do you say?” she asked. “If it doesn't come out now, it'll be ruined.” In fact, she knew the lamb could easily take another thirty minutes or so of slow roasting. But these three wouldn't know that.

Tomas sneered at her. “Ruined like you ruined the plum tart?” he said. Then he waved a hand toward the oven. “Yeah. Go ahead if you want to.”

She rose, picked up a cloth and opened the oven door. The rich aroma of the lamb filled the room. There was a set of wooden tongs on the bench and she casually picked them up, holding them ready under her arm as she reached in, her hands protected from the heat by the kitchen cloth, and seized the iron roasting pan with the brown, sizzling leg of lamb in it.

Mound had turned to watch as she took the lamb from the oven. Fat sizzled and jumped off the leg and he unconsciously ran his tongue over his lips. He hadn't eaten all day, he realized.

Tomas, across the table, watched with equal interest and appetite. As Jenny straightened, holding the heavy iron roasting pan, she contrived to let the wooden tongs fall from under her arm. They clattered on the floor and she feigned a moment of confusion.

“Oh! Blast!” she said. She started to stoop as if to retrieve them, then seemed to realize she was still encumbered by the roasting pan. She hesitated uncertainly. As she had hoped, Mound rose from his chair and moved toward her. He began to stoop to pick up the tongs, but she stopped him, stepping toward him.

“I'll get them,” she said. “Hold this for a second.”

She thrust the iron pan toward him, and unthinkingly, he took it in both hands. It was a natural reaction. There was a second's pause before he registered the fact that the pan was hot and the blazing iron seared the flesh of both his hands. He screamed in agony and recoiled, dropping the pan and thrusting his hands into his armpits to try to ease the breathtaking agony of the burns. He crashed into the table, sending it sliding into Tomas, who was just coming to his feet.

Ignoring the pan on the floor, Jenny reached back and seized the heavy rolling pin from the bench. Mound, with both his hands cradled in his armpits, was completely vulnerable as she stepped forward and swung the heavy piece of hardwood into the side of his head.

Mound looked up at her, his eyes glazing from the blow.“You—” he began, but she swung the pin again, slamming it against the other side of his head this time.

His eyes rolled up and he crashed to the floor, unconscious. But she felt a shaft of panic strike her as the handle of the rolling pin snapped at the second impact, sending the heavy cylinder of wood spinning away across the room and leaving her unarmed. Tomas came around the table, his dagger drawn, held at waist height. She saw the fury in his eyes and realized he would kill her if she didn't act. The bench, with its knives and the heavy skillet, was out of reach. But there was another potential weapon at her feet.

She bent quickly, just as Tomas lunged. The dagger passed just over her as she stooped unexpectedly. Then Tomas, stepping over Mound's unconscious body, put his foot in a patch of grease from the lamb and his feet skidded apart. As he struggled to regain his balance, Jenny had time to grab the shank end of the heavy leg of lamb. She swung it up from the floor blindly, with all her strength.

Tomas was caught with his legs spread wide apart and the leg of lamb thudded between them. His eyes opened wide with surprise at the sudden jolt of pain, and the breath was driven from his body in an explosive
whoof
.

The dagger dropped from his hand. Jenny, still holding the unwieldy leg of lamb in both hands, straightened and spun in a full circle to gain momentum, then slammed the thick end of the roast into Tomas's jaw. It made a solid, meaty thud and the bearded robber, his face smeared with hot fat and grease, was sent sprawling across the kitchen table. He rolled off the far side, knocked over a chair and hit the floor, out cold.

It had all happened in the space of a few seconds. Nuttal, with his customary inability to react quickly to a situation, stood goggle-eyed across the kitchen, staring at Jenny and his two unconscious companions. Then his hand dropped to his own dagger and he started toward her, mouthing a curse.

Only to stop and duck hurriedly as she sent the leg of lamb whirling across the room at him. He felt it pass just above his head, then came upright again and saw that his delay had given the young woman time to reach her knife rack. He stepped backward as the first knife, a heavy-bladed carver, followed the leg of lamb, catching the light as it spun end over end toward him.

With a shrill neigh of fright, he ducked again, only to realize that a smaller but equally sharp vegetable knife was following the first. This one bounced off the wall behind him and, as it spun back, nicked his ear. Blood ran down his neck.

A two-tined carving fork followed in rapid succession. This one hit the wall point first and stuck there, vibrating fiercely. Nuttal looked at it, his resolve weakening by the second. He looked back at Jenny, saw that she had a heavy cleaver in her hand and was drawing it back to throw. And there were still another four knives in the knife rack.

He ran for the door—and just in time. The cleaver whirred end over end and thudded into the wall beside the carving fork, right where he had been standing. It vibrated with a much more ominous tone. Mewling with fear once more, he wrenched open the front door and ran outside.

Straight into Gilan, who was walking up the path from the front gate. Nuttal rebounded, then threw himself at the Ranger, his dagger sweeping up for a killing stroke.

Like all Rangers, Gilan had superb reflexes. He had no idea who his attacker might be, but he reacted instantly. He swept his right arm across his body to deflect the hand holding the dagger and, in the same movement, pivoted on his right foot and brought the heel of his open left hand up to smash into Nuttal's jaw. Nuttal's head jerked backward. His heels left the ground by several centimeters and he crashed backward onto the front steps of the house, out cold. Gilan paid him no further attention. He sprang up the three low stairs to Jenny's house. He sensed that the pretty blond girl who had come to mean so much to him was in danger. The door was open a few inches and he shouldered it aside and sprang through into the kitchen, his heavy saxe knife appearing in his hand as if by magic. He crouched, his eyes darting from side to side, searching for danger.

And saw Jenny by the kitchen table, her face in her hands, weeping. At her feet were the still forms of two men. One large and heavyset, the other slightly smaller and heavily bearded. Both were either dead or unconscious, Gilan saw. In any case, neither one offered any threat to him or Jenny. He resheathed the saxe.