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floor. Her eyes were nearly starting from her head, and she screamed on a single high note until her breath gave out, gasped in more air, and began to scream again. First Sybelle grasped her shoulders and tried to pull her away from the wall, but she was rigid as steel. Then she gestured to a man and said, "Carry her out into the other chamber." |
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Until Marie's staring had fixed her own attention on the scene, Sybelle had been too busy, too concerned for Walter, to notice. She was not unaccustomed to blood, but this was a bit too much, and the sight of Heribert's pale pink guts slipping through his pierced belly was doing unpleasant things to her own inner workings. Heribert? Sybelle's mind caught on that. How did she know it was Heribert? He was wearing a closed helmet, not a simple basinet. Then she remembered that Walter had said it was Heribert. As her man-at-arms lifted Marie, still rigid as a statue and shrieking, and carried her out, Sybelle noticed that the device on the dead knight's shield was not the same as that Sir Heribert had used. |
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She dismissed the problem from her mind, following the man and bidding him hold Marie steady. Then she delivered several stinging slaps on Marie's face. The shrill screech checked, Marie's breath caught, and then she would have crumpled to the ground if Sybelle's man had not been holding her. |
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"Put her in a chair," Sybelle directed. |
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The limp body would have fallen over, but Sybelle gripped it by a shoulder and waved the man away. She was paying little attention to Marie. The door to the main room of the manor house had been left open when she and her men rushed in. Through it she could hear Walter bellowing at the top of his lungs words she could not quite make out above the thud of the ram. Then the heavy thwack of wood on wood stopped. There was another exchange, longer and even more indistinguishable because the voices were lower. Marie began to stir. Her breast heaved, drawing air. |
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"Do not begin to scream again," Sybelle said loudly. "There is nothing to scream for anymore. I will slap you silly if you yell again." |
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Her lips tightened on the last words because Walter walked in just as she said them, but he did not even look at Marie. |
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"The men are leaving," he told Sybelle. "I thought they might have some idea of holding us for ransom, but I think |
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