Wake of the Bloody Angel Read Online Free

would give you.”
    “He’s right, son, give up,” the older man croaked. “We tried our best. We’ll have to trust in Lord Corrett’s conscience.”
    “Like hell,” the younger man said, and was about to turn and run, when Jane’s sword suddenly slipped under his chin.
    “I don’t like hell, since you mention it,” she said as she grabbed him by the hair. “But I’ll probably go there anyway. Now, don’t move. Pops, get over here and tie your son’s wrists. Do a good job of it and I won’t have to hamstring him.”
    “He’s innocent,” the older man insisted, the words barely getting out. He was a disturbing shade of red, and seemed to be having no luck catching his breath.
    “Then he’s the one man in the world who is,” Jane said. “Now, do what I say. Please, for everyone’s sake, okay? You’re both out of your league here. Eddie and I do this for a living.”
    The old man tried to say something else, but he had no wind left. His eyes rolled back and he collapsed beside the tree, rolling down the slight slope to land in the wet leaves at my feet.
    I stuck my sword in the ground and knelt over him. I heard Jane tell his son, “Stay put. If you so much as think about running away, I’ll catch you and geld you before sundown.”
    Then she was on her knees on the other side of the fallen man. She bent and put her ear to his mouth, listening for breath. When she found none, she put her lips over the old man’s and repeatedly blew hard into his lungs.
    Meanwhile, I ripped open his tunic to expose his pale, still- muscular chest. I put my palm flat over his heart and felt nothing. I drove my fist into the back of my hand, trying to get his heart going again, just as a moon priestess once showed me on a battlefield. Sometimes this worked; most of the time it didn’t. And it was tricky not to break a rib and puncture a lung. But any chance was better than none.
    And in this case, luck was with us. After the third whack, his whole body spasmed and he began to cough. Jane looked back at his son, still standing where she’d left him. “Go get the canteen off my saddle. And no funny stuff.”
    He left, while Jane and I helped the old man sit up. He was now a bad shade of pale blue, and I knew we’d just stirred the coals and not really restoked the furnace. “My son didn’t do anything wrong,” he wheezed. I admired his tenacity. “He’s innocent, I tell you.”
    “Look, pops, let it go,” Jane said patiently. “It’s not for us to say. My job is to take him from point A to point B, that’s all. Guilt or innocence is way above my pay grade.”
    He looked at me. “And you?”
    “I just happened to be in the neighborhood.”
    The son returned with the canteen, and his father sipped from it. The younger man looked at Jane and said, “Now what?”
    “Well, now we take pops back home and make sure he’s comfortable, then we finish taking you to jail.”
    “How can you do that? You taking me to jail is what nearly killed him!”
    Jane jumped up, grabbed the front of his tunic, and yanked him nose to nose. “I’ve about had it with you simpering barn swallows questioning my ethics. What nearly killed pops here was running uphill after cutting you loose.” She shoved him back. “Now, if you want to help take him home, pick him up and carry him to his wagon. If you don’t, you can just stay here tied to a tree until we come back. It’s your call, so make it. Now! ”
    Sensibly, the boy gently picked up his father. He might really have been innocent of whatever crime he was accused of, but as Jane said, that wasn’t her problem. And that was what I liked about her. She looked at the world the same way I did, and operated under the same rules.
     
     
    AFTER we delivered the old man back home, where his wife shed copious tears both for his return and her son’s imminent departure, we took the boy on to Barre Dumoth. We arrived at sunset.
    It was an old manor town, where the population lived