The Dragon Throne (15 page)

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.

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.

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.

It 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.

“Ride easy, lad,” the veteran knight would say, laying a javelin across the pommel of the prisoner's saddle.

Conrad would give a nod, or turn away with a posture of hurt dignity.

More than once Ester caught the young felon's glance.

Help me
, he seemed to be begging.

THE PILGRIMS LEFT THE SNOW-MANTLED mountains behind.

Edmund and his friends breathed the perfume of rain-rich fields and fermenting fodder, the fertile earth populated with oxen and mules, farmers and flocks of geese. It was an earthy paradise of green land and orchards, crows jeering and chattering in the pear trees, churches lifting bell towers into the forgiving sunlight.

The highway was supplied with vine-shrouded inns featuring fat roasting hens and red wine. Sir Nigel had estimated that the route from the foothills to the great city of Rome would take a fortnight, but the horses were frisky, feeding now on rich hay and freshly scythed field grass.

Conrad either knew little Frankish—the international tongue of fighting men—or he felt that the effort to speak was too much trouble. But the prisoner did have a talent that entertained his captors: He could whistle tunes. Ester recognized the holy “
Jesu Corona Virginum
,” and without blushing she admitted to herself that she recognized the ribald “My Gander's Trapped in Your Pantry.”

Conrad smiled with the rest of them when Hubert capered beside a stream, and he offered Edmund a hand when the tall young knight slipped on a mossy rock. Rannulf was ever-watchful, but their captive showed no further sign of wanting to escape.

 

The pilgrim party left their noble hostage with a fellow countryman in Turin. Duke Conrad of Gam—the Saxon nation was replete with Conrads—was willing to part with a purse of gold marks in exchange for the blond young brigand.

“If his family wants him back,” said Nigel, “they'll pay for him in turn.”

The highwayman was far from strong by then. The wound Edmund had given him was festering, and he limped badly when they bid him farewell. Nigel murmured that the chances were even whether the young aristocrat lived or died.

“But I've met worse young criminals,” the veteran knight allowed as they journeyed south. “And seen them flower, at length, into something fine.”

Ester noted that Hubert and Edmund took no pleasure in the weight of the purse. “Better you should catch a song,” said Edmund. “A tune, and maybe a soul to go with it, and carry that in a catskin bag.”

 

But the band did not remain melancholy for many hours.

The pilgrims journeyed with increasing speed as the road reached down, through the steep passes, and close to a rocky shore. Carts laden with grapes creaked heavily along the route, and farmers greeted them cheerfully. In lands too-long bereft of honorable knights, the return of Crusaders promised fewer felons.

Homebound Crusader knights were numerous on the Italian roads, exhausted in their faded cross-splashed surcoats, most men journeying north as the pilgrims made their way south. The tidings from the Holy Land were that King Richard still failed to capture Jerusalem, and he was rumored to be about to depart and begin his journey back to his kingdom.

And there were accounts of troubles in Rome, the Orsino family all the more powerful, and King Richard's envoy Sir Maurice a virtual hostage in his own well-fortified house.

“And how fares the Lady Galena?” Hubert would ask, his voice high-pitched with anxiety.

 

“The good Lady Galena is well, by all accounts,” said one Sir Joldwin of Exeter, a sunburned and whiskery campaigner, one midday.

“And as beautiful as new-poured cream, as I hear,” he added. “But no one sets eyes on her, by night or by day. The Roman streets are safe for no one but an old crust like myself and my wizened little squire here,” he laughed, indicating a sun-bronzed youth with his sword arm in a sling.

“The Romans need the taste of a few English blades,” offered Sir Nigel.

“I do believe Galena's father is about to offer his own person as hostage,” said Sir Joldwin, enjoying another swallow of wine from Nigel's oft-replenished wineskin. “To secure the Lady Galena's safe passage back to England,” added the knight. Such English travelers enjoyed more than one another's wine—they relished the chance to speak their mother tongue, even when the dialect and accent made conversation a challenge.