Free Lord of the Dark by Dawn Thompson Page B

bounds!” He pranced close and yanked his arrow out of the oak tree. “And you!” he thundered at the tree. “Stop your puling! Your bark is thick enough to bear my arrow without harm. You have forgotten who rules here, I think. I shall deal with you later. High time your branches were pruned.”
    Gideon ordered himself and strode away from the tree. “Do not fault him,” he said. “The wood nymphs are quite irresistible, and ’tis my fault in any case. If I hadn’t stopped to pay homage—”
    “He tethered you while you were paying homage?” Marius interrupted him. He turned to the tree. “Mica’s toenails! I ought to cut you down!” he seethed.
    Gideon had rarely seen his friend and fellow guardian in a rage. Marius, Lord of the Forest, was rarely in a good humor at the dark of the moon, when he took the form of the centaur, but this was different. Marius’s eyes were glowing iridescent green. This was not a good sign. Even the magpie, always close enough to the forest lord to qualify as his familiar, kept his distance, opting for an upper branch in a nearby pine instead of its customary perch on the centaur’s back.
    “Leave him,” Gideon said, gesturing toward the chastised tree. “No harm has been done. I cannot stay. We need to talk.”
    “Come,” Marius said, leading him out of the wood toward a little clearing, where his lodge stood at the edge of the forest.
    No sooner had they cleared the shelter of the trees than the watcher’s lightning bolt seared down pitching Gideon over in the meadow. Stunned, the dark lord righted himself and raised his fist toward the hovering creature.
    “I will not be held responsible for being ambushed !” he railed.
    Muttering a string of blasphemies, Marius raised his longbow, taking dead aim upon the watcher who had struck Gideon down, for there were more than one aloft.
    Staggering to his feet, Gideon arrested Marius’s arm, but Marius shook himself free. “Eeee nough !” he trumpeted, letting loose the arrow. It hit its mark, for Marius rarely missed his target, and Gideon groaned. What would be the punishment for this ?
    The watcher the centaur shot shrieked, then spiraled off, his companions with him. “They have no jurisdiction here!” Marius shouted, loud enough for the watchers to hear. “This is my isle, and I will have no truck with harpy watchers of the gods! My quiver is full—moon dark or no. They come here again, and they will all carry my arrows back to Mica in their bony arses!”
    “There will be reprisals,” Gideon said dourly. “I’m sorry, my friend.”
    “Reprisals?” Marius seethed. “You have not begun to see reprisals! When a man cannot have guests to his home without them being set upon by sex-obsessed wood nymphs, it is time for reprisals!” He brandished his longbow, shaking it toward the sky in a white-knuckled fist. “He who seeks refuge here has sanctuary!” he thundered. “I, too, have the favor of powerful gods. Zaar, god of land masses, protects this isle.”
    “And I have brought discord down upon it,” Gideon regretted. “Let me state my business and be away before those damnable creatures return. Something is amiss. They rarely come in pairs or larger numbers. I counted three. Something untoward is happening here; I feel it.”
    Marius nodded, waiting.
    “A female washed up on my shore in the storm,” Gideon began. “She cannot stay on the Dark Isle, but she is in danger from one of the crewmen on her ship. From her description, I believe it to be the very one we brought up from your beach. I would have a word with him.”
    “He is gone,” Marius said. “He left on the supply ferry from the mainland at dawn.”
    “Did he tell you his name?”
    “He called himself Rolf.”
    “Mica’s beard!”
    “He’s the one?” Marius queried. “If I’d known…”
    “Did he say where he was going…anything at all?”
    Marius shook his head. “He wanted to know if anyone else had come ashore. When he