ALTDORF (The Forest Knights: Book 1) (31 page)

Leopold stopped beside one of the saddled horses his page still held, and rooted through its saddlebags.

“The king arranged a test.” Leopold pulled out a red apple and held it up for all to see, and then pushed his soldier’s spears aside and re-entered the circle. He stopped in front of Seraina. He reached down and put his fingers under her chin like he was caressing a lover. Seraina twisted her head away and averted her eyes. She heard Landenberg’s deep-throated laugh.

“Stand her up,” Leopold said. A large, one-eyed soldier grabbed her left arm and a smaller man her right, and they jerked her to her feet. Her legs ached as the blood returned to them and she stumbled. The soldier with the patch put his arms around her from behind and chuckled as he ground himself against her. Seraina broke free of his grip and pushed him back. He winked at her and grinned with a mouth full of broken yellow teeth.

Landenberg had watched her brief struggle with interest.

“Think your legs are weak now, girl? Wait till you spend the night in my jails.” He laughed at his own joke until he caught Leopold staring at him.

“I will continue my story,” Leopold said, “if your courtship is over.”

Chastised, Landenberg nodded and stared at the ground.

“The king called in Palnatoki’s young son and placed the apple on his head. He then told Palnatoki he had one shot to prove himself. The archer removed three arrows from his quiver, and on his first try, split the apple in two. The king then asked him why he took three arrows when he was allowed only one.”

Leopold tossed the apple up once and caught it. He turned to Thomas. “And do you know what he said?”

“To avenge myself on thee, in the event that I caused harm to my boy,” Thomas said, as though reading the words. “It is a common enough tale.”

“It is good you are familiar with it,” Leopold said. “As you may already suspect, we shall use it as the basis for my test.”

Seraina could see Thomas’s jaw muscles twitch, but he said nothing.

“You and I together shall play the part of Palnatoki. There will be no evil king in our story.” He smiled and held up the apple. “Only two heroes.”

“This is how it shall work. We place the apple on the witch’s head and take turns shooting until one of us hits it. The apple, I mean.”

“You are mad,” Thomas said.

“God will protect the girl if she is truly innocent. If, however, she is a witch, well…we will just have to see. Now, since you are in my future home, I give you the choice. Would you prefer to shoot first or second?”

“I refuse,” Thomas said. “This is utter madness. The girl is innocent.”

“Fine. I will shoot first.” Leopold grabbed a loaded crossbow from the nearest guard and as he did so his hand brushed the tickler and the bow went off. Everyone within earshot of the loud twang ducked or flinched not sure where the bolt was going. But Leopold had had it pointed at the ground and the heavy shaft thudded harmlessly into the hard earth.

Leopold smiled at Thomas. “I suppose it has been some years since I last shot one of these. But I expect it will come back quickly enough. Someone load me another quarrel.”

Seraina knew what Leopold was doing, as, she suspected, did everyone else watching the young Duke.

“Thomas,” she said.

His face turned and their eyes met. The weight bearing down on each of them lifted for the briefest of moments. She stepped away from her captors and walked to stand in front of Leopold. Ever so slowly she reached out her hand and plucked the apple from Leopold’s grasp. His lips spread into a thin line and he mocked her with a bow.

“Seraina, no…” Thomas began, but she leaned in and put her finger to his lips.

“Do not let him choose my fate,” she said. “I would leave that to the Weave. And you, Thomas.”

She backed away a few steps and then the guards were on her arms once again. They led her in the direction of the main keep and left her standing in an open work site with shattered rocks and dusty ground chewed up by the hooves of oxen. The only flower she could see was a half-trampled autumn crocus.

A
naked lady
, bent and withered.

***

Leopold handed Thomas a drawn crossbow with no bolt and showed him where to stand. Anticipation was growing in the crowd, and Leopold could feel the people’s excitement building and mixing with his own. Gissler had returned with the cage wagon, and he now stood holding the horses, a scowl on his face. He was not a man who appreciated theatrics, Leopold decided.

He set a spearman on Thomas’s left and a crossbow wielding guard on his right, with his weapon trained on Thomas’s head just a few feet away.

“Precautions you understand. I hope they do not interfere with your concentration,” he said to Thomas.

“Give him a bolt.
One
bolt,” Leopold said and someone snickered.

All conversation died down as a soldier stepped in and held out a black, leather-fletched quarrel, to Thomas. He took the bolt in his hand by the iron tip and let out a deep breath. In his other hand he held the crossbow down at his side. Still holding it by the point, he raised the bolt to eye level and sighted down it, checking for defects. Satisfied he turned towards Seraina.

As he turned towards the crossbowman at his side, Thomas reached out with the leather vane end of his arrow and flicked it against the tickler on the underside of the man’s bow. There was an audible click and the crossbow jumped in the man’s hands as it ejected its missile.

Thomas leaned his head an inch to the side and the bolt whirred by his ear, taking the spearman on his left high in the chest. Thomas stepped inside the dying soldier’s spear and drew his belt knife before he slumped to the ground. A spin and a step later, the crossbowman’s throat was cut, but with a crazed look on his face, he continued squeezing the trigger on his spent weapon until he finally collapsed.

Leopold did not recognize what was happening until both men were dead on the ground and Thomas was moving unerringly towards him, his black eyes focused on Leopold’s throat.

Fortunately for Leopold, a young soldier, with reflexes better than his lord, jumped in front of him with his sword drawn. His death gave Leopold enough time to back out of immediate danger. Other soldiers rushed in.

Thomas sliced a man’s leg in three places and sent him screaming to the ground. One soldier shot at Thomas but his bolt missed and hit one of his comrades in the shoulder.

“Hold your fire!” It was Gissler, sitting atop his horse with his sword drawn. “Give him room. Back up, but close the circle.”

Thomas stood in a half crouch, one hand stretched out before him and the other one clutching the knife close to his body. Leopold was shocked at how calm he appeared. He had just killed at least three men, but he wore the unconcerned expression of a man sampling cheeses in the marketplace.

“Give up the weapon, Thomas,” Gissler said.

Thomas heard nothing, for his eyes were fixed on the same thing most everyone else was watching.

Seraina had suddenly appeared outside the circle of spears and crossbows. She reached out one slender hand and lifted the point of a spear enough to allow her entry. She stepped over a wounded man as easily as a breeze blowing through deadfalls and walked slowly up to Thomas. She raised a hand to his face and held out the other. He looked into her eyes, closed his own, and with only another moment’s hesitation, he set the knife in her palm. She let the blade fall to the earth and then pulled Thomas’s head to her breast.

The soldiers were on them a second after Thomas’s knife hit the ground. They pulled the couple from each other’s arms and began beating Thomas with fists, hobnailed boots, and spear shafts. The girl screamed as leering soldiers manhandled her into the cage wagon and padlocked the door.

Gissler rode his horse into the midst of the soldiers beating on Thomas and drove them back.

“The next man to put a boot to him will find himself quivering on the end of my blade,” he said. He gestured with his sword to emphasize his words. The soldiers grudgingly backed away from the prone figure in the dirt.

And while all this was happening, Leopold sensed a shift in the crowd about him. One that he did not care for.

“The ferryman is right. Seraina is no witch. She is a gifted healer. Nothing more,” Leopold heard a voice saying.

He would have paid it no heed, except it was the parish priest of Altdorf doing the talking. Others nodded their heads and murmured curses at the soldiers under their breaths.

Leopold beckoned Landenberg over from the cage wagon.

“Send the Hospitaller to Habsburg by boat. Then disperse this crowd. I do not like the looks of it. Gissler and I will take the wagon and the witch to Habsburg now.”

Landenberg’s face fell like that of an unwanted child.

Leopold rolled his eyes. “Very well. Follow us tomorrow. We will wait for you before we proceed with the girl’s trial.”

Leopold was well aware that sometimes you had to let your dogs run wild.

Chapter 36

G
ISSLER’S MEN marched Thomas down the steep slope to the edge of the lake where their boat was tied to the dock. It was a sleek craft designed for speed and to carry no more than seven people, one steersman at the rear and the other six crowded onto three bench seats spaced out equally down the length of the boat. It had one large triangular sail, lateen-rigged to a twenty foot mast and the bottom to a ten foot boom that swung from side to side depending on the wind, and which caused the passengers to sit slightly hunched over to keep from banging their heads on the heavy wooden beam.

It was a new boat; its overlapping plank hull not yet darkened with age. Even though Thomas’s head throbbed and his wrists burned where the ropes were cutting into the flesh, he still found a moment to pause and appreciate her fine workmanship—until ‘One-eye’ jabbed him in the center of his back and sent him stumbling. Thomas caught himself with his tied hands on the side of the boat, but a shooting pain burst through his shoulder to match the one in his back.

“Something wrong? Afraid of the water? Get moving Schwyzer scum.”

Since there were already seven soldiers, One-eye pushed Thomas down to the floor of the boat at the helmsman’s feet, on top of several spare coiled up lines, and sat backwards on the first bench to watch him. The rest of the men clambered into the packed boat. It had one set of oars in the middle and with a man on each side heaving to, they pulled away from the dock.

They soon stowed the oars and the helmsman shouted curses at a soldier in the middle as he fumbled with the sail. Obviously not a sailor, he finally succeeded in trimming the sail properly and the boat shuddered to life. It creaked for a moment, until the sail filled completely, and then the boat sprang forward and picked up speed. The helmsman skillfully pointed the bow as close to the oncoming wind as the boat could manage while still making good forward speed.

Thomas kept his eyes on the floor of the boat as he flexed his fingers trying to work some circulation into his wrists. The rope binding his hands was slick with blood. He could feel One-eye staring at him, looking for any excuse to hit him again. He wracked his mind to come up with a plan to escape, but could not focus. He was too worried about Seraina. She had been accused of witchcraft, and as sure as there was a god in heaven, she was headed for a painful, horrible death. And Gissler knew that all too well. He had betrayed them all. Thomas, the entire crew of
The Wyvern
, and of course Pirmin….

Thomas cringed and felt grief and rage course through his blood in equal measures, paralyzing his mind. He tried to blank them out and concentrate.

Think, man. Think!

He squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. For a moment he was on his own ship, with the smell of saltwater and the heat of the Palestine sun on his face. He saw Pirmin’s laughing face, and heard the cry of a sea gull, and when he opened his eyes he heard it again.

But this was no local sea gull—it was the shrill cry of a black-crested gull.

Ever so slowly he raised his head to look over the side of the boat.
Either there was one very lost bird out there or….