Free The Honor Due a King by N. Gemini Sasson Page B

to the wall across from where I had stood and put his hand upon the stones.
    “There. A moment.”
    I waited for her at the doorway, then left her with a fleeting kiss. Stepping out into the dim corridor, the door groaned shut behind me.

Ch. 6
    James Douglas – Selkirk Forest, 1315
    I fingered the goose-fledged arrow at my belt and slid it free. Snow crunched underfoot as I shifted my weight. I grimaced. The stag raised his head, flicked his ears and looked about. Clouds of steam billowed from his black nostrils. I stood as rigid as the tree against which I leaned, my bow stave gripped in my left hand. A long minute later, he lowered his great, pronged crown and wandered forward a few steps. With a black hoof, he dug at the ground and began to nibble.
    Recently, Robert had stirred with fever for a hunt. The winter had been both too long and too trying, and so we were all as eager as he was to escape the city. On the first March, we rode southward – the king, his brother Edward, Walter and I – only to arrive in Selkirk Forest and be reminded that winter was not yet over with. For two days we huddled in an abandoned woodsman’s hut, tending a meager fire while snow fell thick and fast. The third morning, we rose to the steady drip of snow melting through the decaying thatch of the roof.
    After a bland meal of beans and salted pork eaten in silence, we set out together on the one discernible trail we could find. We stumbled across deer tracks not a mile out, but there was more than one set and so Robert and Edward went one way and Walter and I another. Walter had long since bored of the hunt and I of him. I abandoned him on a fallen log as he whined about sore feet and frozen toes. Following the tracks alone to a thick stand of woods midway down a gentle slope, I had found the noble beast.
    Slowly, I pulled back on my string and brought the bow up, leaning out from the tree to eye my prize. But the stag was directly on the other side of a thick beech tree. I had a clear mark on his brownish-gray rump, but a shaft to the heart would bring him down quicker. I had no desire to chase after him through the forests of Selkirk, following a thinning trail of blood. My fingers stung with cold as I waited for him to move, but he was content where he was, tearing at the stems of winter dead grass. Finally, he twitched and shook his head, then moved forward a step. I held my breath, pulled long until the string cut into my cheek and –
    Hissss. Thud!
    I whipped my head sideways to see an arrow deep in the trunk of the tree next to me. The feathered end hummed. Before I could look back to the stag, he was already bounding away. The tuft of his tail flicked tauntingly from side to side with each ground-swallowing stride. Vainly, I loosed my arrow. The arc was not high enough and it dipped too soon and skidded over snow-dusted earth.
    Angered, I tossed my bow to the ground and looked behind me. Walter stumbled from the woods just up the ridgeline from me, his face long with shock. For a few moments, he stood there with his bow dangling from one hand.
    I dug my heels in and raced uphill toward him, slipping on the muddy ground. I threw a hand out and caught myself on a sapling, then lunged forward again. As I bore down on Walter, he began to scramble backward, then run. The bow dropped from his grasp. I snatched it up and flailed it against a tree with a loud crack. As he faltered, I snagged the hem of his short riding cloak and swung him to the ground.
    I stamped a foot on his chest, pinning him down. “You’re either a damn poor shot ... or a damn good one.”
    He quaked. “I swear, James ... I swear, I only misjudged. I didn’t know you were about to shoot. I didn’t want to lose him. God in Heaven, I swear! Now let me go.”
    I lifted my foot from his chest.
    Instantly swept with relief, he began to breathe more deeply. “I thank –”
    “You saw me there and you let go anyway?” I roared, slamming my boot against the side