72
Rinaldo knew he had made a mistake.
He had been paying for it most of the day.
And now, with the cold night wrapped all around him, he still continued to pay.
The morning’s search had proven as fruitless as the one the day before. He rode Bayard along snow-buried trails that he thought Bradamante might have taken if she were trying to find her way back to camp.
Without Egalite, she couldn’t have gone far. And she wouldn’t have ridden any other horse, that wasn’t her way.
Where would she go on foot? And why?
Had she been in too much of a hurry for some reason to go to the corral to retrieve her horse?
Had she fallen ill, and in her delirium wandered off somewhere? But then again, she couldn’t have gone far, especially not if she was as weak as everyone else who was sick.
Wouldn’
