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between the horses to the ground. Dafydd leaped from Bedwyr, shoving at his horse so that he blocked us from the English arrows, and bent over me. My fall had dislodged the arrow and blood poured from the wound.
    I gazed into his face, trying to speak. “Hush,” Dafydd said. Then a look crossed his face, one I’d seen a few times before. It was one of resolution and I wanted to shout at him, “Whatever your plan, don’t do it! Your life is worth so much more than mine! Leave me and run!” But I choked on my own bile and couldn’t speak.
    Hooves pounded along the road. They were almost upon us. Dafydd put his head close to mine. “Can you rise?”
    I managed a nod. We clasped hands and he pulled me up, but instead of requiring me to walk, he stooped, grasped my arm and my waist, and threw me over his shoulder so my head hung down his back. Without looking behind us again, he took three long strides in the direction Aaron had gone. Unlike Aaron, however, Dafydd didn’t follow the path to the village. Instead, he hovered on the edge of the cliff. Christ, what’s he doing?
    He jumped.
    Rocks rush passed us. I closed my eyes, waiting for the impact and the pain. But there was only darkness.
     
     

Chapter Three
    Bronwen
     
     
    I had a big bite of hamburger in my mouth, with mayonnaise and ketchup dripping onto the napkin in my lap, when word came from on high that my professor wanted to see me. I knew it was important because the departmental secretary had actually gotten up from her desk and walked down the hall to the graduate lounge to find me.
    Now I faced a dilemma. Do I finish the hamburger, thus delaying my visit to Professor Tillman, or do I leave the rest of the hamburger uneaten? I’d decided that morning that I needed to augment my four major food groups (coffee, diet cola, onion rings, doughnuts) with more nutritious fare if I was going to survive a second year of graduate school. Thus, the banana I ate for breakfast, and the hamburger for lunch.
    I set the hamburger on the table. It looked forlorn and I knew it would be cold by the time I got back. I left it and headed down the hall to Professor Tillman’s office. I’d not seen him in some time, as I’d taken to working late to avoid him. Ever since his divorce, he’d become overly friendly. I was hardly a man-magnet (nice looking...sure...but normal ), so it could have been all my imagination. At the same time, he wasn’t helping me with my thesis as much as in past months and I feared that he could tell that my enthusiasm for graduate school was waning. It wasn’t the enormous amount of work—I could handle that, including the interminable round of classes and papers—but that so much of it seemed to be work for work’s sake. Ultimately, however, it was the endless self-promotion that had caught me unprepared and still left me with a sour taste in my mouth.
    I knocked on the office door and poked in my head. Jim Tillman sat behind a large wooden desk at one end of the room. The office wasn’t very big, but lined floor to ceiling with books. A guest chair sat on the opposite side of the desk, only two paces away. Tillman held up one hand to stop me before I spoke, finished what he was typing on his laptop, and then looked up.
    “Hello, Bronwen. Come in and shut the door.”
    Ugh . I came in but only closed the door most of the way. I hoped he wouldn’t notice.
    “Give it another shove,” he said.
    I spun in the chair and kicked the door with my foot. It latched. I spun back and looked at him, trying to affect a bright and expectant face.
    “Coffee?” He held out a small French press.
    “Sure,” I said. It is one of the four food groups, after all .
    “Not that we should drink this stuff with all the latest findings,” he murmured as he poured some into a cracked mug and handed it to me. “Sorry, there’s only a half a cup left.”
    Despite myself, I smiled. “Well, I guess I don’t have to worry about it damaging me, since I only