The Orphan King (22 page)

The winds held steady.

Thomas ignored the cold as he raced to final readiness. He tied leather shoulder straps to the cross members of the structure and another wide leather band that would secure his legs.

Do not think of failure
.

He drove a peg into the ground with the hammer Katherine had smuggled out earlier.

My death here would be of no matter. Should I fail, life will not be important to me. I will never have a chance like this again
.

To the peg, he attached one end of a roll of twine, the last object from his bundle.

Do not think of failure
.

The other end of twine he tied to a belt of leather around his waist. Between both ends, the remaining twine was rolled neatly on a large spool. Small knots every three feet thickened the twine.

Will the knight be inside waiting with the new army?

Thomas looped the handles of a small, heavy bag around his neck. The cords of the bag bit fiercely into his skin and brought water to his eyes.

Do not think of failure
.

Finally, he slipped his hands into crudely sewn gloves of heavy leather.

Will the winds be strong enough? Katherine, pray hard for me
.

“I will lie down on this,” he said. “Attach the straps around my shoulders. That will leave me movement with my arms. When I am ready, please help me to my feet. Then stand aside. The wind should do the rest.”

Moving onto his back relieved some of the pressure of the cords around his neck. Katherine helped him fasten the straps securely, and Thomas took a deep breath.

You have dreamed long enough of this moment. Wait no longer
.

“I am ready.”

Katherine reached for his outstretched hand. She braced herself, then heaved backward. Thomas lurched to his feet with the huge structure on his back.

“Wings of an angel,” Katherine breathed in awe.

T
he wind snatched at Thomas. He grabbed the twine where it was secured to the peg. It took all his strength to hold to the ground.

“Thomas!” Katherine pointed behind him at the castle. “Soldiers! At the gate!”

He glanced over. Four of them, running hard toward them. But he was helpless to do anything. He was bound to a kite that was at the mercy of the wind, about to drive him toward a brutally high castle wall, two hundred carefully paced steps away. Would that distance give him time to gain the height to soar over it?

The wind screamed at the sail on his back.

Soldiers.

“Run, Katherine!” he shouted. “Away from the castle. Rejoin me tomorrow!”

“Go! God be with you!” She pushed him, and a gust of wind pulled the twine through his hands.

Airborne!

In the next frenzied seconds, Thomas could not afford to worry about the approaching soldiers. The kite picked up momentum so quickly that twine sang through his fingers. Even through heavy leather gloves, Thomas felt the heat.

The moon cast his shadow on the ground, and from his height, it appeared like a huge darting bat. The soldiers below him shouted and pointed upward.

Thomas dismissed any joy in this flight. He forced the soldiers from his mind. Instead, he concentrated sharply on counting each knot. His mind became a blur of numbers. He reached one hundred once, then began over. At eighty again, he clutched hard and the kite swooped upward even more sharply. His fingers froze.

Katherine!

The same moon that cut such clear black shadows also showed too clearly that the soldiers had reached her.

Why hasn’t she fled?

Thomas understood immediately. She protected the peg! Once the soldiers reached it, a single slash of a sword would sever Thomas from the ground. She knew it.

“Run!” he screamed again. But his words were lost to the wind.

The knight had been watching from the nearest trees.

As the soldiers rushed toward Katherine, he stepped out and closed the distance. His blood surged with the familiar adrenaline of battle. This is what he’d been born to do. Not to play the games of deceit that had been so necessary until now.

He was a fighter, a man of action.

He roared with savage joy, and the sound was enough to distract the approaching soldiers but not enough to slow them down.

William took a stand in front of Katherine.

“Watch Thomas,” he said to her. “These are mine.”

The four soldiers should have separated more quickly, but they were overconfident. Instead of allowing them to take the battle to him as they probably expected, William attacked, his sword clanging hard against the first soldier’s sword, snapping it in half.

With a startled cry, the man dropped the hilt and fled.

Down to three.

It would be tricky, and William had no illusions. Three against one were easy odds if it was a knight against three peasants, but these men were equally armed and well trained. Without doubt, they wore chain mail as protection. William did not. It would give him an advantage of sorts, for the weight of the chain mail would make them slower and tire them faster.

One of the soldiers advanced, showing a degree of swordsmanship in his stance. The other two spread apart to begin to form a triangle.

Without Katherine to protect, the battle would have been easier, for William could have slashed his way out of the triangle.

Already he was breathing heavily. He expected this and hoped the time in the jail cell had not robbed him of too much of his strength.

A movement came from the side. William whirled and parried, able to get his sword up in time, but the blow was still jarring. These men were equal to him in fighting ability.

He began to realize he’d pay with his life to keep Thomas safe in the air.

Then one of the soldiers yelped and brought his hand to his face.

“Got more where that came from,” Tiny John yelled with glee. Another rock found its target on another soldier’s face. Not enough damage to put either of them down, but John’s sling provided a satisfying distraction for the knight. He pressed in on one of the soldiers, dropped to his non-sword hand, and kicked outward, feeling the
impact of the bottom of his foot against the man’s groin. No chain mail there.

The man fell to his knees as William bounced to his feet again, whirling his sword in a wide arc of protection.

“Here I am,” Tiny John shouted. “Can’t you catch a boy?”

He fired another rock, drawing another oath of anger.

With a flurry of swings, William drove the third soldier away, then found an open spot in the man’s defenses. He swung for the man’s head, and at the last second gave a twist of the wrist, smacking him solidly with the flat of his blade. The man dropped.

That left one soldier.

William squared his body to the man. Now the odds were favorable.

Except the man who fallen to his knees reached out with a hand and tripped him. William fell sideways, trying to turn to stay facing his final opponent. On his own knees, he parried twice, thrice. But he felt the sword get knocked out of his hands as he parried the fourth blow. With the leverage that came with standing, his opponent had much more power.

The soldier stood over him and placed the tip of his sword against William’s chest, preparing to shove it forward.

“Is he over the castle walls?” William asked.

“You’ll not distract me,” the soldier said, keeping his focus on William.

But William had distracted the soldier. Tiny John had pocketed his sling and found the broken sword dropped by the first solider. The boy was advancing.

It was only a stub of a sword, with about two feet of the original four-foot blade.

But enough.

Tiny John took a mighty swipe and swung the blade’s edge across the soldier’s buttocks.

“Take that!” the boy shouted.

William took advantage of his opponent’s shock, spun sideways, found his own sword, and leapt to his feet.

But there was no fight left in the last soldier. Tiny John’s mighty swipe had undoubtedly cut deeply into the man’s buttocks, and he was clutching the wound, attempting to staunch the blood loss.

“And you take that!” Tiny John kicked the groaning soldier who had reached out to trip William.

Tiny John dropped his broken sword and picked up the one that had fallen from the soldier who had taken the swipe across the buttocks. He struggled with the weight but managed to lift it.

“Give me that,” William said. “Before you hurt someone with it.”

“But you’re supposed to do that with a sword.”

“Not anymore,” William said. “This battle is over.”

Thomas ached to try to look behind him. Yet he needed all his attention to be on what was ahead. How far from the castle walls? He only knew he was not high enough yet to get over the rough stone.

He willed his fingers to release the cord. Eighty-one. Eighty-two. Eighty-three.

A scream pierced the darkness.

Concentrate!

At ninety-nine, he stopped the unraveling by swiftly lashing the twine around his wrist in two loops. It felt as if the sudden stop tore his
hand loose. With his other hand, he fumbled with the sack at his neck and pulled free a grappling hook. It, too, was attached to twine, and Thomas dropped it like an anchor, knowing there was ample cord remaining attached to the sack around his neck.

Without the extra weight of the grapple, the kite bobbed upward, high enough to clear the castle wall.

At the same time, the tremendous pressure on his lashed wrist ceased.

The rope’s been cut! Katherine!

“Please, God. Be with us now!” Thomas cried into the black wind, startled that at the moment of his greatest terror, he called out to a deity he did not want to acknowledge.

The grappling hook hit the surface of the drawbridge and bounced as the wind took the kite. Savagely, with all the anger he wanted to direct at the soldiers who had made Katherine scream, Thomas wrapped his fingers around the twine that unraveled from the sack around his neck. The grapple hopped upward again and clacked against the wall of the gate before spinning away.

By then, Thomas was over the walls and in sight of anyone within Magnus. A great shout rose to meet him. William
had
gathered the army!

Clank
. The grapple bounced against the lower part of the walls. Thomas held his breath.

The kite tore upward so quickly that barely any wall remained between the grapple and the night sky. If it did not catch, the wings of an angel would carry Thomas far, far away from Magnus. Without Thomas, William’s army would scurry homeward. Never would Magnus be freed from …

Thud
.

Twine spun through his gloves at the sudden lurch of kite against wind as the grapple dug into the top of the castle wall.

The shouts of people below him grew louder.

Thomas still did not dare look downward. He fought the twine to a standstill, then looped it around his waist. Then, and only then, did he survey Magnus.

The kite hung as high as the highest tower. Suspended as it was against the moon, people gathered below could only see the outspread wings of white. They roared, “Delivered on the wings of an angel, he shall free us from oppression! Delivered on the wings of an angel, he shall free us from oppression!”