“Kick it away. That’s better. Now, I’m—”
Raven’s arm moved so quickly it was a blur. Heloise saw him move at the same instant the arms restraining her went limp and the man’s body dropped away. A thud and a hideous gargling noise sounded behind her. Confused, she started to turn, even as Raven shouted, “Don’t—!”
She glanced down. Her captor was on the ground, a knife protruding from the front of his throat. He clutched at it feebly, his eyes wide with shock. His heels dug tracks in the stony gravel as he writhed and then stilled.
Horror crawled like maggots under her skin. That was Raven’s knife. He’d thrown it right past her head. She backed away. A wave of nausea threatened and she pressed her hand to her mouth. A buzzing sounded in her ears.
A muffled whimper made her turn. The soldier Raven had punched had regained consciousness and was trying to crawl away back to the horses, dragging his injured body over the rocky ground. Heloise turned her head and found Raven watching her with an expression that was impossible to define; dark and helpless and furious all in one.
“I told you not to look,” he said.
There was no inflection in his voice. He shot her a last hard look, as if to satisfy himself she wasn’t going to faint, picked up his discarded knife, and strode over to the retreating survivor.
Heloise murmured a protest as he grabbed the man’s shirt and threw him over onto his back. The man cried out and raised his hands to protect his face but Raven dodged them easily and slapped him across the face with an open palm.
Heloise let out a moan at his brutality. “Don’t—”
He ignored her, bent down to place his face in the whimpering man’s line of vision. “Why are you here. Who sent you?”
The very quietness of his voice acted as a warning. Raven rarely raised his voice; a whisper was far more effective than a shout. The man was trying to scuttle backward like a crab, but Raven kept hold of his shirt.
“No one! We were just going to steal the horses, that’s all. I swear.”
Another slap. “I don’t believe you. Who sent you?” Raven raised his hand again but did not strike.
It was threat enough. Blabbering now, the man spat blood and wiped his mouth with a shaking hand. “I don’t—nobody sent me.” He glanced in horror at his two dead comrades and started to sob. “Let me go. I just want to go home. Please. Just let me go home.”
Raven nodded, as if the information were confirmation of what he already knew. He transferred the knife to his right hand.
“No!” Heloise cried.
He looked over at her and his eyes were cold. He bent over the man, ready to kill.
“No!” she repeated. She kept her eyes on him, knew they must be wide with horror and fear. “Don’t kill him.”
“Why not?” The cool, inhuman look on his face was terrifying and Heloise took a step back from the casual savagery she read there. He seemed a stranger, suddenly remote, with infinity between them; a distance so vast it could never be breached.
“Let him go.” She heard the quaver of panic in her own voice but didn’t dare look away.
Raven’s knuckles whitened on the man’s shirt. He shook his head. “He would have killed you. Raped you.”
“He’s a victim, too.” She took a tentative step toward him, maintaining eye contact, certain that if she broke the connection, the man would die. “Desperate men do desperate things. You of all people should understand that.” She kept her voice low, reasonable. “Let him go. You don’t need another murder on your conscience. Have mercy.”
Raven shot the man a disgusted, uncomprehending glance, like a wolf being ordered to spare the lamb. “He would have killed you,” he repeated. “How can you have any compassion for such a piece of human filth?” He made clemency sound like the worst kind of insult. A defect. A weakness.
“Please,” she whispered. “For me.”
He stilled. And then all the tension leeched out of him. He gave the man a disgusted shake and dropped him back into the dirt. The man moaned in wordless relief, then shrank back as Raven leaned in close.
“You will not touch her. Not so long as I draw breath. If I see you again, I will kill you.”
The man whimpered in agreement.
Heloise almost sagged in relief as Raven sheathed his dagger and stepped back, but then his fist whipped round and he punched the man clean across the jaw, causing him to slump senseless onto the ground. She shot Raven a look of reproach, of condemnation.
He returned it with his own, mocking, insolent. “Stop looking at me like that. He’s not dead, is he?”
Her breath caught on a shuddery sob as she pressed shaking fingers to her lips. “You were going to kill him.”