that account.”
“What were you doing in Al-Rassan?” she asked. He hadn’t expected that.
He cleared his throat. “A raiding party. Among the infidels.”
“If you met Rodrigo you must have been near Fezana, then.”
How did a woman know these things? “Somewhat near,” Garcia agreed. He was becoming a little uneasy.
“Then Rodrigo was dealing with you as the king’s officer responsible for protecting that territory in exchange for the parias. On what basis do you claim a right to steal our horses?”
Garcia found himself unable, for the moment, to speak.
“Further, if you were captured and released without your mounts you will have given him your parole in exchange for a ransom to be determined by the heralds at court. Is that not so?”
It would have been pleasant to be able to deny this, but he could only nod.
“Then you have broken your oath by coming here, have you not?” The woman’s voice was flat, her gaze implacable.
This was becoming ridiculous. Garcia’s temper flared. “Your husband ordered a cousin of mine slain, after we surrendered and sued for ransom!”
“Ah. So it is more than horses and armor, is it?” The woman on the wall smiled grimly. “Would it not be the king’s task to judge whether his officer exceeded authority, Ser Garcia?” Her formality, in the circumstances, felt like mockery. He had never in his life been so spoken to by a woman.
“A man who slays a de Rada must answer for it,” he said, glaring up at her, using his coldest voice.
“I see,” the woman said, undisturbed. “So you came here to make him answer for it. How?”
He hesitated. “The horses,” he replied finally.
“Just the horses?” And abruptly he realized where this questioning was going. “Then why were you riding towards these walls, Ser Garcia? The horses are pastured south of us; they are not hard to see.”
“I am tired of answering questions,” Garcia de Rada said, with as much dignity as he could manage. “I have surrendered and so have my men. I am content to let the king’s heralds in Esteren determine fair ransom.”
“You already agreed to that in Al-Rassan with Rodrigo, yet you are here with drawn swords and ill intent. I regret to say I cannot accept your parole. And tired or not, you will answer my question. Why were you riding towards these walls, young fellow?”
It was a deliberate insult. Humiliated, seething with rage, Garcia de Rada looked up at the woman on the wall above him, and said, “Your husband must learn that there is a price to be paid for certain kinds of action.”
There was a murmur from the boys and ranch hands. It fell away into silence. The woman only nodded her head, as if this was what she had been waiting to hear.
“And that price was to have been exacted by you?” she asked calmly.
Garcia said nothing.
“Might I guess further, that it was to have been exacted upon myself and my sons?”
There was silence in the space before the walls. Overhead the clouds were beginning to lift and scatter as a breeze came up.
“He had a lesson to learn,” said Garcia de Rada grimly.
She shot him then. Lifting the man’s bow smoothly, drawing and releasing in one motion, with considerable grace. An arrow in the throat.
“A lesson to learn,” said Miranda Belmonte d’Alveda, thoughtfully, looking down from the wall at the man she had killed.
“The rest of you may go,” she added, a moment later. “Start walking. You will not be harmed. You may give report in Esteren that I have executed an oath-breaker and a common brigand who threatened a Valledan woman and her children. I will make answer directly to the king should he wish me to do so. Say that in Esteren. Diego, Fernan, collect their mounts and arms. Some of the horses look decent enough.”
“I don’t think Father would have wanted you to shoot him,” Fernan ventured hesitantly.
“Be silent. When I wish the opinions of my child I will solicit them,” his mother said icily. “And your father may consider himself fortunate if I do not loose a like arrow at him when he ventures to return. Now do what I told you.”
“Yes, Mother,” said her two sons, as one.
As the boys and ranch hands hastened to do her bidding and Garcia de Rada’s surviving companions began stumbling away to the west, the afternoon sun broke through the clouds overhead and the green grass grew bright, wet with rain in the branching light.
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