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along with Fallstowe’s dark, foggy silhouette, and he was relieved that he would not have to contend with her disjointed ramblings about the two of them being married.
    Piers shook his head in disbelief as he crouched down to inspect the wounds received by the unusual Layla. The bites weren’t as deep as he’d first feared, although they throbbed like black hell. The cuts were already scabbed over within rings of vivid bruises, and so he simply wrapped them tightly in some of the bandages given to him by the monk.
    Married.
Lady Alys Foxe, married to Piers Mallory, common dairy master and notorious bastard son of the lord of Gillwick Manor. If little Alys had only known what a close call she’d had, she’d likely have wet her underdress. And he was certain Lady Sybilla would not have been amused in the least.
    Married!
Ha!
    No one would marry you save a goatherd, or mayhap one of the goats. Crude, penniless bastard.
    So now he was to contend with the voices in his head alone, but at least with them Piers felt no compulsion to answer. He heaved a great sigh as he rocked from his heels to his backside, drawing up his knees and pulling his pack toward him, rifling through it for his sustenance.
    Warin was to have you drowned upon your birth, but his heart had been softened by our little Bevan. He chose to simply forget all about you! Isn’t that amusing? You should thank my son for saving your life!
    Even though Piers was relatively certain that his father’d had no such malicious intentions toward him after hisbirth, it was true that Warin Mallory had largely forgotten his second son was alive. Piers’s mother had died when he was only six, and Warin had the decency to keep him in the manor’s dairy. Now he was master of that enterprise, but he knew it was not a courtesy stemming from the circumstances of his birth. He was simply the best at what he did, and even cruel Judith Angwedd had made begrudging mention of his talent.
    “Peasant blood will tell,” she’d sneered.
    He could still remember that first, traumatic year without his mother, leaning his face against the warm side-belly of a cow and sobbing soundlessly while he milked. Sleeping with the other village orphans in the lofts of the stables, learning to fight for what was his out of necessity, and then later, for coin. There had been no one to protect him after his mother was dead, and there was no one to aid him now.
    He choked down the last bite of the day’s ration of bread—the stuff was like eating wet wool—and took a swig of wine from his jug. He sighed and corked the jug, replacing it in his pack and shoving the bag deep into the tree den. At least now he could escape into sleep.
    He had just crawled into his makeshift bed when he heard a horrendous crashing through the underbrush of the forest. Satisfied that his hiding place would not be discovered by any happening by on the road just beyond the tree line, Piers squirmed farther back into the shadows and closed his eyes.
    He heard a squealing chattering, and more rustling of leaves.
    Likely just some forest creature, out to break the fast,
he told himself and squeezed his eyes shut more tightly.
    “Piers! Piers, where are you? Do you see him, Layla? Neither do I. Pie—eers!”
    His eyes snapped open.
Surely not.
    “Piers, I’m tired and I’m cold and I’m frightened.”
    Piers frowned. She did sound rather fearful.
    “Where are you, dammit?”
    Or perhaps she wasn’t.
    He couldn’t let her wander farther into the woods to die. Well, no, he
could,
but then he would be no better than Judith Angwedd. He would point her back toward Fallstowe, grudgingly give her a bit of his dear supply of bread and wine, and send her on her way. ‘Twas full daylight now, and she would be on Foxe lands within the hour. Two, at most, should she wander a bit from the straightaway.
    He was just about to undertake the massive task of moving his exhausted body when the monkey dashed into his den, scrambling