“Conrad of Saxe looks as hungry as the rest,” offered Ida quietly.
Indeed he did. And yet Queen Eleanor had often said that hunger gives the coward a hero’s heart.
Ester leveled her crossbow at the brigand before her.
He was four or five strides away—sure to be a lethal distance—and he remained right where he was, glancing uphill toward his master for advice. But the nobleman was too far away to do more than strain his vision, both hands held against the sun.
Then the tall robber opened his scurvy-spotted mouth in a surprised smile as he met Ester’s gaze. She could read his thought. A woman.
And at once his eyes narrowed. But what sort of woman?
The man was right in wagering his life on the likely assumption that Ester was a merchant’s wife, or even a nun, able to hold a weapon but without the knowledge or the will to use it. Most crossbows required a strong pull of the firing latch, and were difficult to aim and release at once, without some experience. He was assuming that Ester did not know how to employ the weapon.
The blue-eyed brigand paused before Ester, and put a hand out to the hem of her mantle. It was a wool of quality—Ester had applied her own needle to the hem when it had needed repair. The man’s weather-chapped fingers tested the virtue of the fabric with the care of a mercer, and he turned and bawled something down the slope of glittering gravel, a phrase in the Saxon tongue that Ester could understand easily enough.
“There is a lady.”
The message echoed off the cliffs.
At the same time the robber announced this, he realized the implications regarding his own safety. The brigand backed away from Ester, nearly slipping and stumbling from the trail, and as he took his faltering, backward steps, he put out a hand to seize the bridle of Ida’s palfrey, a smile barely masking his anxiety.
Courtly ladies often knew how to hunt, and, judging by his frightened expression, the brigand remembered this fact. Ester mustered what she could of the Saxon language, and said, “Do not lay a hand on her.”
“Hwat?” gasped the long-legged man. He was either startled that Ester could manage a few words, or mystified by her accent. “My lady,” he exclaimed with a laugh, “we will not hurt you.” He said this even as his hand fumbled for and found Ida’s foot in its stirrup.
Ida struggled, but his grasp was firm. He looked up at his prize, and without turning aside called out to his companions, “There are two ladies!”
Ester aimed and fired the crossbow in one easy movement. The long-limbed man released Ida’s foot, brushing at the rough-spun cloth of his front like a man absent-mindedly annoyed by a wasp.
The foreign object marring the front of his kyrtle was not an insect, however, but the protruding shaft of the quarrel. His fellow brigands called out, and the nobleman still far above on the rocky slope shouted a question that echoed and reechoed off the mountains.
“My lady,” said the wounded man, his voice laden with apology as he lifted his hand to execute a shaky sign of the cross. He sank to his knees, and then melted farther. He stretched out unmoving, his eyes wide.
The Savoyard guides called out, leaping into action, waving their arms in an urgent, Hurry! Hurry!
Ride hard.
Ester wanted to cry out for her fellow pilgrims to wait—she had to offer a prayer for the mortally wounded man’s soul.
34
“DO YOU THINK, ESTER,” ASKED IDA, “THAT it was necessary? To kill the man?”
Ester had no ready answer. She observed Edmund’s figure outlined against a snowbank, hands on his hips as he listened to the animated conversation of one of the guides. The Saxon tower, and the small army of brigands, was behind a high reach of cliff. Nigel and Rannulf had selected this site as a pilgrim camp—large, chalk-white boulders would make it easy to defend, even though it was not far from the outlaw fortification.
It was plain that the knights were eager for a fight. Hubert handed Rannulf a whetstone, Nigel pointing out the best place to stake the horses, all with very little speech but an alert companionship. Clydog blew on a fuming snatch of moss, and fire began to work against the gathering darkness.
Ester had no answer to Ida’s questions.
“Now we can’t negotiate with the brigands,” Ida said, flinging down a blanket to cover the stony earth. “They’ll want to chop us into suet.”
Rannulf poured both of them a cup of shocking-cold water from a leather jug. He had pulled the crossbow quarrel from the brigand’s ribs—the wood-and-iron bolt was a precious object so far from a skilled armorer. His fingers were still sticky with blood.
Rannulf gave a quiet laugh, seeing Ester’s troubled gaze. “Your act was a boon, my lady,” he said. “Now we can fight.”
A boon—a thing to be desired, nearly a blessing. That was how these men viewed unshriven death, Ester thought bleakly, so far from priest or chapel.
Ester could not share this outlook. She begged Heaven’s mercy for the sin of causing a human death.
Ida put her hand on Ester’s. “It’s quite true, Ester,” she admitted at last, “that I did not enjoy his scabby hand feeling my foot.”
Ester had spent long evenings sitting with her father, the wick in the candle smoking and hissing, as the scholar leafed through priceless books of legends, stories of emperors in far-off countries, wise men who studied the triangle and the spleen, voyagers who encountered one-eyed giants.
One of Ester’s favorite legends was the story of Hannibal the Great, a general from the ancient country of Carthage, who devised a way of marching elephants over these same Alps, so that he might do battle with the ancient Romans. Ester recalled, too, a ploy the famous general from Carthage had used to deceive an enemy shadowing him, perhaps here in this very same Alpine pass.
“The great general lit many cooking fires,” Ester recounted to her friends, “and his enemy was confused into thinking he had been joined by reinforcements.”
“That would be a cunning deceit!” exclaimed Sir Nigel, running a thumb along the blade of a dagger. “Conrad will think some band of stalwart monks, or even knights, has butchered and roasted a horse with us, and swelled our ranks by a score.”
If Ester had felt superior to any knight at any time during her life, especially a storied killer like Rannulf, she felt chastened, and shocked into a more modest view of her own virtues, now that she had taken a life herself. At the same time she heard the voice of Queen Eleanor chiding her, Be of good heart. And sing of the turtledove.
They had to break up a half-ruined shrine for fuel. Soon it looked like a camp of forty travelers. The heat from the flames shivered the stars.
Ester did not want Edmund to depart from this firelight, but she knew Nigel’s military enthusiasm paralleled that of Hannibal the Great. “While the enemy stalks closer, too afraid to attack,” Nigel counseled, “we’ll send a force up and around their flank. What think you, Rannulf? Will you climb the slope to trade blows with a few brigands?”
This last question was good-natured but challenging.
Rannulf bowed his head.
None of his companions spoke, the fire snapping and spitting.
“My love for my companions,” confessed Rannulf at last, “is stronger than my sword arm.”
Nigel gave a nod, as though to say, I guessed as much.
Before he set forth, Edmund found a moment alone with Ester.
She cradled the crossbow, at the very edge of the firelight. Wowen and the young servants were shifting back and forth throughout the now sprawling camp, trying to sound like a crowd of men, banging cooking pots, singing.
“Where is your mail shirt?” she asked.
Edmund arranged his mantle, and adjusted his belt. “It makes a climber feel clumsy,” he said. “Or so the guides advise, if I understand them.”
“But you’ll carry your shield,” she prompted.
“They say,” said Edmund, choosing his words with care, “that a loving heart can suffer no wound.”
Th
e young lady, trained to speak artful phrases, could muster no response.
“If that is true, Ester,” said Edmund, “then no blade can touch me.”
35
EDMUND AND HUBERT CLIMBED THE STEEP incline in the starlight.
Edmund climbed with as much faith in the enterprise as he could gather, but he kept turning to look back. He was worried about his friends.
The Savoyard guides had continued to impress Edmund. While not warriors, the mountaineers had showed stamina and pluck, and now they had supplied the two young knights with a length of rope, gesturing that the two might secure the cordage around each other’s waists.
It probably would have been a good plan, if only they had experience and ability enough to put it into effect. As it was, Edmund carried the coil of hempen rope over his shoulder—he thought it might provide some protection against a sword.
Too high.
They were far too high above the campfires, the pin-pricks of light far below. One further glance and Hubert whispered, “Edmund, don’t look down.” Dunna loke dun.
They followed a goat path, or perhaps a trail worn into the naked ground by hell-inspired devils. Edmund’s sword was an awkward weight, half tripping him, dragging on the rock’s weathered surface. As the young knight found yet another foothold, pulling himself higher, he prayed that Saint John the Baptist, who had lived on flies and honeycomb in the wilderness, might give them strength.
It was colder up here, the path ahead a mere ghost across the gravel. There was no sign of Conrad. Edmund shivered, breathing into his hands. He felt breathless, and his lungs ached.
Hubert touched his arm.
A shadow was leaning against the moon-pale concretion of stone, the half-built tower. This particular shape was human, and wore a sword.
The camp far below did indeed look like the gathering of a few dozen folk, fires dancing, and Clydog made a great show of singing, some drinking song about a cat in love with a cow. His voice echoed and reechoed as Edmund’s feet slipped silently across the snow.
Conrad folded his arms, his head to one side as though the merry, ribald music woke some longing in him. Nigel was joining in now, the verses rising upward into the night, a fine old song about a frog swelling to the size of an ox.
The brigand chief did not hear their approach. Edmund slipped, caught himself, inching forward. His fingertips were numb. Their enemy was a stone’s-throw away. If only my steps did not slip so, thought Edmund, or make such a leaden crunch, crunch.
But their adversary still did not hear them, drinking from a wineskin, and then drinking again.
Edmund put his finger to his lips, and Hubert gave an impatient nod.
But then Conrad drew his sword.
“Yield yourself into our hands,” said Edmund, closing the gap in a few bounds, “and by Jesu we’ll do you no harm.”
Or this is what he tried to say. His words were thin at this altitude, and he felt dizzy. Starlight gleamed on Conrad’s smile. The outlaw knelt, picked up a flat, ax-head-sized stone, and skimmed it easily through the air. The rock struck Hubert in the face.
The young knight fell, scrambling and struggling, trying to keep his body from pinwheeling down the rocky incline. He failed. Rocks chimed and clashed, tumbling downslope after him.
This was followed by a wind-marred silence. Edmund cried out his friend’s name, and there was no response.
Conrad cut at Edmund as the young knight approached, a nearly accurate strike.
The noble brigand fought hard. Conrad’s attack was so heavy that Edmund steadied his blade with his gloved left hand at times, closing his fingers around the steel and holding his weapon crosswise. Conrad fought very much like a nobleman’s son, the moonlight in his golden hair. Edmund parried and countered like a fledgling knight, soon to fall before superior craft.
At last Edmund found solid footing, and thrust hard with his weapon.
The assault caught Conrad by surprise. Edmund tried another, even more well-aimed thrust, and found bone, just above the nobleman’s knee.
Conrad turned and ran, with a loping, off-rhythm gait. He tried to climb the half-built steps to his tower, but the stones tumbled and slipped, unmortared and poorly set. The outlaw fled across the mountainside, and Edmund followed, the thin air burning his lungs.
He was able to pursue the outlaw, matching him stride for stride across the silver expanse of ice, until not far ahead the young nobleman stopped, his arms wheeling, fighting for balance.
The nobleman wavered, his ashen face looking back, his lips parted.
And then he vanished.
Edmund fell to his knees and crept forward.
An icy wind exhaled upward out of a cavernous emptiness, and even before he peered over the ledge, Edmund knew what he would see.
So what he actually beheld surprised him.
On a shelf of rocks, not far below, Conrad of Saxe was stirring, searching his body with tentative hands. The drop had not been far, and the nobleman rose to one knee, looking around at the deep blue moonlight reflected from the snow.
Steps approached, and Edmund gripped his sword.
“These Saxon brigands cannot fight,” said Hubert, breathing hard, blood streaming from his nose.
Edmund uncoiled the rope from around his arm. The cordage was hacked in places, but the rope was entire for the most part. He threw a length down to Conrad, who backed away from it as from a viper.
36
EVEN WHEN THE MANY CAMPFIRES EBBED, fuel spent, the wind swept the embers in slow, crazy spirals.
Yet another white-feathered arrow hummed through the dark, an angry, vicious sound, and Ester gathered her cloak more tightly around her. Another arrow struck the drowsy coals with an explosion of sparks, and somewhere beyond the camp a Saxon voice was lifted in a blaspheming taunt.
“The archer sounds tired,” said Ida.
“And young,” added Ester.
“They’ll be out of arrows soon, my ladies,” said Rannulf.
He stood near them, to shield the two from the metal-tipped shafts.
Clydog and his helpers joined Wowen in making a show of noise, laughing, shouting, splitting wood, as though a congregation of pilgrims populated the camp. “The Gib Cat in Love with His Lady Cow” was one of Queen Eleanor’s favorite tunes. Bernard used to sing the ballad of the frog and the ox, so Ester was able to join in singing, too, as Rannulf and Nigel patrolled the perimeter of the camp on horseback, firelight glinting off their armor.
Eventually, Clydog chanted songs only he could remember. These were battle songs, obscure but thrilling verses, ballads of slain ranks of enemies, and of heroic ghosts rising up to join their living companions.
“Sing that one again, Clydog,” Ester said. “The one about the young man no steel could wound.”
The brigands commenced a probing assault well before dawn, but Rannulf’s horsemanship was equal to running them down, sending them hoof-scored and scrambling. A further skirmish near the horses would have succeeded in cutting mounts free, except that Ida and Ester called out like furies, and joined in driving back the attackers.
Once during the night Ester was nearly certain that she heard the sound of swords clashing from somewhere very high in the mountain darkness. Surely not, she prayed. Surely Edmund had not climbed so far.
Ester saw Conrad of Saxe before she could make out either Hubert or Edmund, the nobleman finding his way down the trail with a curious stride.
It was a slow process, seeking footing on the steep decline, and when she saw Hubert waving, calling out some excited message, Ester’s hopes began to stir anew.
But there was still no sign of Edmund.
She climbed to a nearby hillock, a jutting, flat-topped outcropping of blue stone.
As long as he lived, Edmund would remember that moment as the only time he had been truly frightened during those challenging hours. He was lagging behind Hubert and their captive, burdened by Conrad’s sword as well as his own.
I
t was the only instant that hope left him, as he looked around and saw all of his friends.
But no sign of Ester.
He set Conrad’s sword down carefully, leaning it against a lichen-spotted stone. Old stories told of a curse that lingered on a man who showed disrespect to a weapon. Even in this moment of high feeling, it was important not to cause bad luck.
Rannulf’s tanned features folded into a smile, and Nigel was pounding Edmund on the back. But the young knight could not see her and did not dare speak her name.
Until she swept down from her stony outlook.
And into his arms.
Conrad of Saxe accepted a slice of smoked ham and a rock-hard knob of cheese, glancing about the pilgrim camp with an ironic smile and a shrug.
If he expected to be rescued by his remaining brigands, he was disappointed. Just as the pilgrims were mounted and ready to set forth, the sound of a prayer was heard on the morning wind, and the creak and jingle of armor. A band of monks approached on horseback, accompanied by men-at-arms, many of them wearing sun-faded Crusader crosses.
The abbot was a white-haired man, rugged and easy in the saddle for all his years, and he met the sight of Conrad with a laugh of relief. “You have caught the robber!” he cried.
Conrad leaned forward in his saddle, and refused to meet anyone’s eye. Rannulf rode beside him, and put out a hand to steady him—or remind him where he belonged.
There was much sharing of wine sacks, and friendly exchanges, and word of how King Richard was faring, Jerusalem as yet unrescued from the Infidel. The monks called out blessings and thanksgiving as they passed, and Nigel sang out best wishes. For the first time, Ester began to believe that perhaps the fighting she had seen—and taken part in—had been good and necessary after all.
Conrad must have known the custom: A man taken hostage was expected to accept his lot with a degree of grace. His arms were unbound—personal honor, and the fear of a lance in his back, were usually enough to keep a hostage captive. But more than once that day, Rannulf had to make a hiss of warning, reaching in and taking Conrad’s reins.
The Dragon Throne Page 11