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She gritted her teeth, refusing to give in, to relax against him, every nerve-ending in her body fighting him, refusing to acknowledge the tantalising closeness of his touch. The muscles along her spine strained with the effort. She sighed with relief as he threw her up onto his horse, then tensed once more as he jumped up behind her.
‘Fighting me will merely slow us down,’ Lussac pointed out slowly. ‘Do you really want those … whoever they are … to catch up with you?’
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Katerina was convinced. Body quaking with fear, she threw the bag over. Sheathing his knife, the soldier caught the bundle in his meaty fingers. ‘Thanks very much, young squire,’ he addressed her, his tone mocking, false. ‘And now you, young man—’ he kept a firm grip on Waleran’s upper sleeve ‘—you’re coming with us. We need someone to lead us to the nearest village.’
‘Let him go!’ Katerina’s voice rose perilously close to a screech. Stop playing with us! she wanted to shout out loud. We are nothing, nobody. We are just humble travellers, trying to earn a living, trying to find a morsel of food to fill our stomachs from one day to the next. And now these fat-bellied soldiers had stolen them, stolen the rabbits that they had spent all morning trying to catch. They couldn’t, they wouldn’t get away with this!
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