The Red Cross of Gold I:. The Knight of Death (48 page)

“Oh?” Valentino eyed her suspiciously. “Why
didn’t you tell me first? Did you think you could handle them all
by yourself? Dressed like a prima donna?”

“Yes! No! I don’t know!” Merry set her jaw
stubbornly. She was desperate to know what had happened after she
had been knocked out, but was afraid to ask anything. If Valentino
sensed her concern for Mark Andrew, she would never tell her a
thing. She knew that Valentino would eventually tell her what had
happened… in her own time and as long as she didn’t ask.

“Well, it didn’t look like you were trying to
help,” Valentino frowned at her. “I don’t understand how you found
them in the basement. Did they make you go? I should have known
something was up with Herr Schroeder. That guy wasn’t Herr
Schroeder! These guys are real slick. I guess that’s how they
manage to live so long fooling stupid people like us. I should have
known something was up when Schroeder tried to flirt with me.
Everybody knows he’s a flaming fucking faggot. Men! I guess that
one thinks he’s a bad-ass like Ramsay,” the woman muttered this
last under her breath and went to pour herself a glass of water at
the desk. Typical of her self-centered nature, she offered Merry
nothing.

“Now we have prisoners to worry about, but we
almost got all of them,” she announced proudly after a few moments.
Her tone was one of satisfaction. “And one of them is real scary,”
she grinned at Merry. “You’d better be glad that he wasn’t the one
that came looking for Anthony.”

“The dark one all dressed in black?” Merry
asked and narrowed her eyes. She would have to pull the information
out of her. Play her along. “He was scary, wasn’t he?” she added,
trying to egg her on.

“Uh, huh,” Valentino drank the water in tiny
sips as if to intentionally irritate Merry. “He’s been praying
constantly since we nabbed him. Not at all like your oh-so-friendly
Ramsay, huh? He has a decidedly evil aura about him. Strange, isn’t
it? And Ramsay is supposed to be the Knight of Death. I wonder what
this one’s secret is? It must be really, really deep, dark and
mysterious.”

“Yeah. I guess so,” Merry didn’t want to
think about it. “Who did we miss? Are we still looking?”

“Just Ramsay.” Valentino looked disgusted.
“We got four. Your precious Knight made off on Raven. The bastard
stole my horse! Boy, he’s really something. Now he’s a horse thief.
That saddle cost twelve hundred bucks. Didn’t they used to hang
horse thieves in Coryelle County? I think we got the young one that
used the two weapons. He’s probably an apprentice. Too young to be
a Knight, I think.”

“What?” Merry frowned as her head ached
miserably.

There should have been five prisoners if only
Mark had escaped. There had been five Templars in the basement with
him. Mark made six. She wondered how many more of them would come
out of the woodwork. What had they gotten themselves into and how
would they ever get out? Valentino had no idea what she was doing.
Prisoners?! Did she really think they were going to be able to
outmatch these men? These guys were serious. Especially the skinny
blond one who wanted Mark’s head, but not all of them seemed to
want him dead. It had looked as if they were divided on the issue
of what to do with him. The short blond one might have taken his
head, but the younger one and the one disguised as Schroeder seemed
unwilling to actually kill him. The one Cecile thought was evil was
definitely on Mark’s side. That would possibly be three against
three if…

“He took your horse?” she asked. Schroeder.
Not Schroeder. She wondered what his name was. Perhaps she would
have the chance to ask him personally if all went well and she
could somehow survive long enough to see things set right.

“Yes and he took Chevaliere Davenport’s
palomino as well,” Valentino moaned and poured herself another
drink of water. “What will she say when she finds out? The bitch
will probably expect me to pay damages.”

Merry hoped that the one on the palomino was
not the horrid Frenchman with the thinning hair. The rude one that
had shouted for Mark’s head.

“My head really hurts, Cecile.” Merry rubbed
the back of her neck. “What happened to the ceremony?”

“Everyone left,” Valentino moaned again.
“This thing cost me six thousand dollars plus nits and now we’ve
had to put it off. Everything was ruined. It took a great deal of
fancy footwork just to keep Brother Sentiment from calling the
constable. I assured him that Maxie would handle it, but some of
the guys stayed to help look for the horses for a while. I told Mr.
Petrie that Maxie had already called the police before he left. Oh,
he was in a fine mood. He’ll never trust me with anything again.
They think the horses just ran off by themselves in the uproar.
They also think the Templars are a gang of burglars. At least I was
able to salvage that much. The last thing we need is the constable
poking around. I have to think of a follow up story. You know I’ll
have to tell what happened to them eventually.”

“Would you mind then if I just went up to
bed?” Merry asked sweetly. “I need a nice, long bath and some
aspirin.”

“Of course,” Valentino said with more
sympathy as she put the water down and finally showed a bit of
concern for Merry by patting her head as she passed her. “You go on
up now. I have to go see what those idiots are doing out
there.”

Merry stood up slowly, deliberately trying
not to seem in a hurry, but she was desperate to get away. Her
heart raced. She had to go after Mark Andrew. He had seemed awfully
sick when she had seen him in the basement office. She remembered
how he had staggered out of the room and how the perspiration had
gleamed on his face under the lights in the corridor. He had been
half-blind and the bloody foam he had spit on the floor had not
been a good sign either. There was no telling what the dark Knight
had done to him in the basement. And now this other one was after
him before he’d had half a chance to recover. He needed her help
and he needed it now.

“Goodnight then,” Merry called after
Valentino as she headed out of the library by way of the patio
doors.

As soon as Valentino was out of sight, Merry
rushed up the stairs to her room, she considered changing clothes,
but only grabbed a light sweater and threw it on over her gown.
Creeping down the back stairs, she met no one on her way out. She
went out the laundry room door into the moonlight and made a mad
dash across the open ground to the stables.

The gentle bay mare that she called her own
was happy to see her. She was ready to join her companions for a
moonlight ride. Taking only enough time to put a bridle on her,
Merry kicked off her shoes, cursing herself for not having at least
put on her socks and boots. She hoisted her long skirt and leaped
onto the mare’s back. It would be easier to control her without the
heels as long as she didn’t get stranded in a prickly pear patch.
She rode the mare around in front of the stables briefly, looking
for signs of the other two horses while the distant sounds of
four-wheelers rumbling around the hills indicated that Valentino's
friends were still bumbling in the dark.

Scouting was not in Merry’s list of skilled
accomplishments, but the signs of two horses’ recent passing were
easy enough to follow. She kicked the horse to a gallop as the
sounds of jeeps and four-wheelers somewhere off to her right grew
louder. They would be good for a few loops through the nearby
trails that Valentino had constructed for recreational purposes and
they would be gone. Of this, she was quite sure. Most of them had
been up in the rocks before, riding and acting like fools whenever
they threw parties. At the moment, she didn’t give a damn about any
of it any more. Her only thought was to get to Mark before the rest
of them did.

The further she rode from the house, the
harder the trail was to follow as the ground became increasingly
rocky and hard packed. Her progress slowed to a painstaking walk
and twice she lost the trail altogether and had to backtrack. In
the hills on either side of the dry wash, coyotes yapped and howled
at the moon, causing chills to course up her spine. It wouldn’t do
to get stranded in the rough countryside, in the dark with no
shoes, no rifle and no radio. She hadn’t even thought to bring her
cell phone, not that there was a signal out here.

Mark had been right about everything.
Valentino was a fraud. The entire Order of the Rose was a fraud and
she had been brainwashed into thinking it was all magick and
nonsense. Now, here she was, in the middle of nowhere in the dead
of night, trying to save an assassin who was being chased by a
homicidal maniac with a sword. If she had any sense, she would turn
around and go back to her bath, after calling the police, but that
wouldn’t help matters and she would be arrested as well. Just as
Mark had said: Kidnapping was a serious crime.

There was no time for further thinking when
the double trail of hoof prints became an odd mess in the waning
light of the setting moon. The tracks went in circles and the
ground was covered with deep prints and lighter prints. The riders
must have dismounted at some point. There were dark, almost black,
splotches on the light-colored soil in the moon light, numerous
gouges and scuff marks in the dark soil and as far as she could
tell, only one set of boot prints. With a sinking feeling, she slid
from the horse and looked more closely at the dark spots on the
ground. She touched one with her finger. It was still damp. No
doubt blood.

The site where Mark had lain impaled with his
own sword, stopped her dead in her tracks. Here and there, puddles
glistened in the hollows of small rocks embedded in the dry
riverbed. Obviously, this was where they had met. One, if not both
of the Knights were in serious trouble. Here she also found human
footprints. Smeared and bloody. One set of bloody boot tracks and
another without blood. Both had remounted their horses, nearby. As
best as she could determine, it looked like one of them had turned
back south and east headed toward the highway, but the horse
trailed off to the west toward the creek. There was only one
explanation. One of them had left the other for dead.

She mounted the bay and kicked him into a
gallop, heading west. The blood was easier to follow and the tracks
were deeper, indicating a heavier horse and rider. Mrs. Davenport’s
pony was a much smaller horse than Cecile’s stallion and Mark was
at least thirty or forty pounds heavier than the skinny French
Knight. She reasoned that Mark had chosen the best horse in the
stables, therefore, it was Mark she was following… she hoped. It
was Mark who had suffered the massive blood loss and Mark that she
would eventually find at the end of the trail.

After an hour or so the dark spots gradually
disappeared and she had to slow down enough to look for the hoof
prints again. Her mind raced and her nerves were on end as she
allowed her horse to walk along slowly, while she leaned over its
neck, searching the ground. Her shoulders hurt and she was
beginning to appreciate Lady Godiva’s troubles more and more.
Horseback riding required sturdy clothes. Her flimsy gown and
undergarments were far from appropriate attire and she regretted
not having taken two minutes to change into jeans before leaving
the house.

She tried to redirect her attention from her
aches and pains by laying some sort of plan. What would she do when
she finally caught up with whomever was ahead of her? What if she
was wrong? What if she were following the wrong man? How could he
have lost that much blood and stayed mounted on a horse at all? No
coherent plans of action came to mind only more questions she could
not answer.

Time dragged on and the horse she followed
showed no signs of stopping. She felt truly alone for the first
time in her life, somewhere between the comfort of her old life and
the desperate situation into which Mark had fallen, without friends
and no safe haven. She was being forced to make the first real
decisions in her life and those decisions would have profound
effects on the remaining portion of it, however long that might
be.

The first gray light of dawn had just begun
to make the sky lighter behind her when a dark stand of cottonwoods
loomed up in front of her. She had reached the creek bottom and she
was a long way from home, but certainly not as far from home as
Mark Andrew Ramsay. The track she was following began to zigzag
lazily as the stallion finally tired and began to forage for food
along the ancient river banks. It was obvious that the rider was
not controlling the horse’s movement any more, if he ever had been.
With the growing light to aid her, she kicked the bay to a gallop
and headed straight for the creek where she assumed the big
stallion would go for water after such a long ride and there would
be green grass there to graze on.

Merry tied her horse to a small bush on the
creek bank and edged her way down to the water, very glad to be off
horseback again. Valentino's stallion had tramped around under the
trees for quite some time and she could not tell which way he had
gone after he finally entered the stream. A flat rock over-hanging
the gurgling stream offered an inviting place for her to sit for a
short rest. Merry let her tired feet hang in the water and
stretched her arms over her head, arching her aching back, trying
to pop out the kinks she had accumulated on the ride. It was a
wonderful relief to be off the horse, but the early morning air was
almost chilly in the deep shade under the cottonwoods. The headache
dissipated, but she felt hollow, unable to remember when she had
last eaten solid food. She was miserable, but at least she still
had all her blood in her veins. It must have taken a great deal of
dogged determination to hang onto the skittish stallion to make it
this far with such a devastating wound.