The Dragon Throne (14 page)

“You are feeling strong again?” asked Edmund, laying a tentative, gloved hand on Rannulf's shoulder.

The veteran knight lifted his sword arm over his head, gripping an imaginary weapon, showing how he could raise it high.

He let his arm fall.

If only it were true, thought Rannulf.

The man killer did not admire deceit, and yet something kept him from voicing the truth. Indeed, to his own dismay he heard his mouth give out a lie—not that he believed it was a fact, but that he wished it so.

“It has knitted well,” said Rannulf, carefully through his scarred lips, “and I am sound.”

The horses stirred, and one of the mountain guides gave a low whistle of caution. In the pass ahead some sound, an ax fall or a dislodged stone, resounded.

The moment passed, and the horses grew quiet again, but both knights were joined with a single, uneasy thought.

They were being watched.

ESTER WAS THE FIRST TO SEE IT—A STUBBY tower of stone above the trail.

The structure was so far above them that the pilgrims had to shield their eyes to observe it in detail. A pile of stones near the squat edifice and the unfinished, irregular outline of a wall were evidence enough to prompt Edmund to observe, “It's newly thrown together, and falling down about as fast as they can pile it up.”

“It's the usual Saxon work,” Nigel said. “Square and clumsy.”

“Where are these flesh-eating brigands?” asked Ida—timorously, but with a degree of spirit, too.

Ester was relieved when the first outlaw showed himself moments later, a long-legged man in a hood and a thick sheepskin kyrtle—a knee-length coat.

Her relief was real enough. Like Ida, she had been imagining cave-ogres bristling with battle axes and fork-headed pikes. This individual looked like a carter, or a mason's assistant—not a stupid sort, necessarily, but a man used to following instructions.

A second highwayman dropped down onto the trail ahead, a much shorter man, likewise well-padded with clothing. Both carried bows—battle-stained specimens, as far as Ester could make out. Each man sported a quiver, with a few white, goose-feathered arrows.

“The robbers have not put on much fat,” said Ida, “by stealing from the monks' pantries.”

It was true that the men accosting the pilgrims had a sunken look. The taller brigand said something to the lead mountaineer, but the Savoyards did not respond, retaining in their silence a certain proud reserve.

Hubert and Edmund loosened the swords in their scabbards, and Rannulf let his horse feel its way downslope a few lengths so that he could watch what took place from an angle. Ester was proud of the studied calm of her knights, especially of the easy way Edmund stroked Surefoot affectionately, with no sign of anxiety.

Ester reined in her mount and let Clydog and his packhorses draw up to her. She reached out and touched the chief retainer's shoulder.

The servant gave a start, and then a quiet, embarrassed laugh. The venerable servant had long since recovered from his battle injury, but like every one of the pilgrims, he had been altered by recent experience. He was leaner, sun-blistered, and he was quicker to offer praise to his companions.

Ester made a signal, acting out the cocking of a crossbow.

Clydog needed no further instructions, but as always the cordage binding the weapons and blankets was heavily knotted.

The criminals on the trail ahead may have heard the metallic noise the crossbow made as Clydog prepared the weapon. Certainly Nigel did, straightening in his saddle without stopping his cheerful flow of Frankish. The veteran knight spoke all the more loudly, expounding on their destination, and the subsequent holy places in Rome, so that the gangling criminal relaxed somewhat, and slipped the hood off his head. He made his way back along the line of travelers, assessing them. He eyed stirrups, leggings, belt buckles—items of value—and was growing pleased at his prospects.

But not as pleased as the outlaw would have been if he had guessed the truth. Travelers all adopted the same long-sleeved mantle and hood, and while some of the wool fabric was soft-combed, it was difficult to determine at a glance that this band of pilgrims included young women from a queen's court, each worth a healthy ransom.

This swaggering, long-boned brigand would not have been so self-assured unless he had reinforcements waiting, Ester knew, and she saw them at last, creeping up the gravel-strewn slope below. Perhaps a dozen spidery men approached on the downslope, and another two or three perched up above, rising and shielding their eyes against the sunlight.

Another joined them high above, the only man carrying a sword. This nobleman's flowing coat had been scarlet, and now was faded to a pale rose-colored pink. His chain-mail sleeves were rust brown in the sunlight. To her surprise, the far-off aristocrat looked youthful, his fair hair blowing in the easy wind as he watched from the vicinity of his half-built tower.

“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.

“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.”

The young lady, trained to speak artful phrases, could muster no response.

“If that is true, Ester,” said Edmund, “then no blade can touch me.”

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.