Free In Camelot’s Shadow: Book One of The Paths to Camelot Series (Prologue Fantasy) by Sarah Zettel

stare, for the moonlight also showed her where the sorcerer’s knife had landed. She snatched it up and held it out low by her waist as she had seen Whitcomb do while helping train young men who came to her father for fostering. Her flesh seemed to recoil at the touch of its smooth, warm hilt but she clutched it tightly nonetheless.
    Again, the horseman wheeled. This time, the blow struck Euberacon flat on the ground. Now it was his turn to struggle to rise. Blood stained his temple black and he clawed at something under his robes. The horseman pulled his mount to a halt and leapt from its back, sword still in his hand. Euberacon looked directly at Risa with his snake’s eyes and she raised his knife defiantly.
    “Do you yield?” demanded the horseman as he put himself between Risa and Euberacon.
    In answer, Euberacon’s mouth curled into a smile, and he made a gesture as if to throw something at them both. Suddenly, there was a roaring wind and a foul cloud of smoke. The gale knocked Risa off her feet and she lay coughing in the damp grass, unable to do anything for a long moment but squeeze her eyes shut and clutch at her mouth and try not to breathe.
    At last, there came silence and stillness.
    Risa opened her eyes and scrambled to her feet. A thick lock of hair had come loose and tumbled in front of her eyes. She pushed it aside and for a moment saw only a man’s broad back corsleted in a leather coat with bright mail rings over it. He was breathing hard, and staring at the place where Euberacon had been. Soft sounds she suspected were oaths came from him.
    Of the sorcerer, there was no sign.
    The horseman turned toward her and for the first time, Risa could see the whole of her rescuer. Broad and strong, he stood against the night. Behind him, to one side, her bewildered eyes saw his white horse and his shield that hung from the saddle. Its device shone clearly; a five pointed star of green on a silver field, the symbol of the Virgin Mother.
    It seemed that her prayer had been heard after all.
    To the other side of him lay Whitcomb, her dear friend and protector, still as stone, his eyes open and staring at the stars, but seeing Heaven.
    It was too much. Relief, wonder and sorrow poured over her and Risa began to cry. Not quietly with a maiden’s gentle grief, but in great, inconsolable sobs that shuddered through her frame. The strength in her legs gave way, and, still sobbing, she fell to her knees on the cold and sodden ground.

Chapter Three
    The violence of the maiden’s weeping shook the whole of her body. Gawain tightened his arm around her shoulders to keep her from throwing the whole of herself into the mud. Sudden violence, fear and loss had clearly robbed her of all composure.
    “My lady, do not grieve so,” he murmured, not knowing if she could understand him in her state, but hoping the sound of his voice would bring her comfort. “You are safe now, I swear it. On my life, I swear it.”
    Even as he spoke those words, his eyes searched the shadows of trees and bracken that crowded this disused length of road. There were too many places to hide here, too many ways to watch unseen. Sorcerers were full of more tricks than man could number, and there was no knowing if her attacker had taken himself miles away, or simply vanished into the trees behind the cover of his smoke.
    He had to get her safe away from here.
    But having begun to weep so hard, she did not seem to be able to stop herself. Her tears ran down in rivers and her sobs clogged a throat that seemed too tight to release them all.
    “Come away, lady. Come with me.”
    She lifted her head, her tears coating her cheeks like a layer of ice. She looked not at him, but at the dead man stretched out before them. “I cannot leave him like this.”
    Cursing hard necessity, Gawain took her hands in far too familiar a fashion so that she looked from the corpse to him. “Lady, there is nothing more that can be done for him, and we do not know where