Virgins: An Outlander Novella (Outlander #0.5)(16)

That was one word he kent in Spanish—“thieves.” One of the ladrones was already skittering up the side of the coach like an eight-legged cob, and the driver promptly dived off the box, hit the ground, and ran for it.

“Coward!” Ian bellowed, and gave out with a Hieland screech that set the coach horses dancing, flinging their heads to and fro, and giving the would-be kidnapper fits with the reins. He forced his own horse—which hadn’t liked the screeching any better than the coach horses did—through the narrow gap between the brush and the coach and, as he came even with the driver, had his pistol out. He drew down on the fellow—a young chap with long yellow hair—and shouted at him to pull up.

The man glanced at him, crouched low, and slapped the reins on the horses’ backs, shouting at them in a voice like iron. Ian fired and missed—but the delay had let Jamie catch them up; he saw Jamie’s red head poke up as he climbed the back of the coach, and there were more screams from inside as Jamie pounded across the roof and launched himself at the yellow-haired driver.

Leaving that bit of trouble to Jamie to deal with, Ian kicked his horse forward, meaning to get ahead and seize the reins, but another of the thieves had beat him to it and was hauling down on one horse’s head. Aye, well, it worked once. Ian inflated his lungs as far as they’d go and let rip.

The coach horses bolted in a spray of mud. Jamie and the yellow-haired driver fell off the box, and the whoreson in the road disappeared, possibly trampled into the mire. Ian hoped so. Blood in his eye, he reined up his own agitated mount, drew his broadsword, and charged across the road, shrieking like a ban-sidhe and slashing wildly. Two thieves stared up at him openmouthed, then broke and ran for it.

He chased them a wee bit into the brush, but the going was too thick for his horse, and he turned back to find Jamie rolling about in the road, earnestly hammering the yellow-haired laddie. Ian hesitated—help him, or see to the coach? A loud crash and horrible screams decided him at once, and he charged down the road.

The coach, driver-less, had run off the road, hit the bog, and fallen sideways into a ditch. From the clishmaclaver coming from inside, he thought the women were likely all right and, swinging off his horse, wrapped the reins hastily round a tree and went to take care of the coach horses before they killed themselves.

It took no little while to disentangle the mess single-handed—luckily the horses had not managed to damage themselves significantly—and his efforts were not aided by the emergence from the coach of two agitated and very disheveled women carrying on in an incomprehensible mix of French and Ladino.

Just as well, he thought, giving them a vague wave of a hand he could ill spare at the moment. It wouldna help to hear what they’re saying. Then he picked up the word “dead” and changed his mind. Monsieur Peretz was normally so silent that Ian had in fact forgotten his presence, in the confusion of the moment. He was even more silent now, Ian learned, having broken his neck when the coach overturned.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said, running to look. But the man was undeniably dead, and the horses were still creating a ruckus, slipping and stamping in the mud of the ditch. He was too busy for a bit to worry about how Jamie was faring, but as he got the second horse detached from the coach and safely tethered to a tree, he did begin to wonder where the wean was.

He didn’t think it safe to leave the women; the banditti might come back, and a right numpty he’d look if they did. There was no sign of their driver, who had evidently abandoned them out of fright. He told the ladies to sit down under a sycamore tree and gave them his canteen to drink from, and, after a bit, they stopped talking quite so fast.

“Where is Diego?” Rebekah said, quite intelligibly.

“Och, he’ll be along presently,” Ian said, hoping it was true. He was beginning to be worrit himself.

“Perhaps he’s been killed, too,” said the maidservant, who shot an ill-tempered glare at her mistress. “How would you feel then?”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t—I mean, he’s not. I’m sure,” Rebekah repeated, not sounding all that sure.

She was right, though; no sooner had Ian decided to march the women back along the road to have a keek when Jamie came shambling around the bend and sank down in the dry grass, closing his eyes.

“Are you all right?” Rebekah asked, bending down anxiously to look at him from under the brim of her straw traveling hat. He didn’t look very peart, Ian thought.

“Aye, fine.” He touched the back of his head, wincing slightly. “Just a wee dunt on the heid. The fellow who fell down in the road,” he explained to Ian, closing his eyes again. “He got up again and hit me from behind. Didna knock me clean out, but it distracted me for a wee bit, and when I got my wits back, they’d both gone—the fellow that hit me, and the one I was hittin’.”

“Mmphm,” said Ian, and, squatting in front of his friend, thumbed up one of Jamie’s eyelids and peered intently into the bloodshot blue eye behind it. He had no idea what to look for, but he’d seen Père Renault do that, after which he usually applied leeches somewhere. As it was, both that eye and the other one looked fine to him; just as well, as he hadn’t any leeches. He handed Jamie the canteen and went to look the horses over.

“Two of them are sound enough,” he reported, coming back. “The light bay’s lame. Did the bandits take your horse? And what about the driver?”