The Silver Sword (59 page)

The answer, when it came, was not audible, but more real than anything Anika had ever experienced. A presence filled the tent and a new kind of reverential fear shook Anika's body from toe to hair, lighting her face and quieting her heart.

I, the God of your fathers, will defend myself.

Despite her fears and confusion, Anika felt a hot and awful joy flood her soul. God had heard her; this voice was his!

Who are you, daughter of dust, to defend and avenge the Almighty God? Do not take revenge, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is mine to avenge; I will repay. You have looked upon this man of sin and striven to make yourself virtuous, but you have only created yourself in his image. The opposite of sin is not virtue; it is faith.

Anika trembled as a rush of comprehension, love, and compassion flooded her soul. Knowledge too deep for words and emotions too powerful for description lifted her heart and mind from her heavy vow. She opened her hands to heaven and breathed deeply of the celestial air that seemed to have filled the tent.

In a blinding instant she realized that revenge is a sword that wounds the one who wields it. If she killed the cardinal, she would be as corrupt and hate filled as the council that had executed Master Hus.

She had thought that by obeying the rules of knighthood and chivalry she could please God and slake her own thirst for vengeance. But Lord John and Sir Petrov were right. Christ did not want her to wield a sword on his behalf. He didn't want her to
do
anything. He wanted her to have faith in his plan for her life.

Men like Cardinal D'Ailly took great pride in their outward righteousness, just as she had taken pride in her knighthood. She had become as self-centered as the cardinal, thinking that the truth lay in
her
rather than in God. She had been certain that her work and the fulfillment of her vow would set things to right, but faith required that she surrender her will, her desires, her hurts to God. She was more than a knight—she was whatever God wanted her to be. And if that included being a woman, a wife, or a chambermaid, Anika was willing.

The light, the glory, lasted only a moment, but it was enough. As the mighty rushing sound faded, Anika sank back on the carpet beneath her, tears of relief coming in a rush so strong it shook her body.

Cardinal D'Ailly stopped speaking and stared, astounded, at the young knight swaying on his knees. 'Twas probably a Hussite boy whose zeal had caused him to attempt this bit of butchery, but the
Hussites should have known better than to send a boy to do a man's job. The youth was quaking now, his face lifted toward the ceiling of the tent, his eyes closed, his hands clasped in prayer.

D'Ailly opened his mouth to shout for the guards, then thought better of it. This gutless boy was no danger, not anymore, and if he handled the situation himself, he might bring a bit of embarrassment to Laco's pompous knights. They deserved to be humiliated for whatever egregious blunder had allowed this boy to enter the camp.

Quietly, smoothly, he drew his own dagger from a belt under the folds of his cassock. This blade would pierce the boy's mesh hauberk, and he would strike right through the heart, putting an end to this foolish youth.

He lifted the dagger and paused for a moment, distracted by the purity of the boy's delicate face. What was the youth thinking? He had undoubtedly been caught up in that intellectual sweep of comprehension known only to adolescents and university scholars like Hus. Well, in the morning the Hussites would realize the dangers of allowing their zealous and misguided youngsters to wander the woods at night. He would order this boy's body to be left upon a rock, covered in the white and gold banner of the Catholic League.

He smiled, thinking about it.

Open your eyes, Anika.

Her eyes flew open. D'Ailly was leaning forward in his chair, a dagger gleaming in his hand like the tooth of a monstrous serpent. A satanic smile wreathed his face as he moved resolutely forward, his sweeping sleeves fluttering over the table as he rounded toward her—

“No!” she cried, scrambling backward to avoid the blow. The cardinal grimaced and rose from his chair, but his sleeve passed over the open oil lamp. Red-orange flames licked the fabric of his robe, leaping up the cardinal's arm with fiendish exuberance.

A scream clawed in his throat.

Anika rushed toward him, trying to beat the flames out with her gloved hands, but the cardinal resisted her help. For a few moments the two struggled against each other. In a dance of death they circled
around the tent, until the flames ran down the cardinal's cassock and the man became a human torch.

With an inhuman, eternal bellow the cardinal stumbled from the tent, startling the knights outside. A blizzard of anxious commands filled the air as Anika coiled back into the flickering shadows, her mind paralyzed with terror and surprise.

She had to get away. Delay could cost her life.

As a hard fist of fear grew in her stomach, she turned toward the dark forest, then followed her heart into the night.

Intense exhaustion bore down on her with an irresistible warm and delicious weight. Tired of running, Anika stopped in the forest and curled up on a large boulder beneath a tree. As tides of weariness and despair engulfed her body, she pressed her hand over her eyes and thanked God that the cardinal still lived.

She had barely managed to escape, for as soon as Lord Laco's knights doused the flames, they spread into the woods to search for the young man the cardinal insisted had tried to kill him.

Hiding in the brush only a few feet away from her horse, Anika heard Midnight's whinny and a knight's triumphant cry. She crouched in a hollowed-out spot in the earth, too frightened to move, as the knights of Lidice led Midnight away.

For hours she shivered there, occasionally lifting her head to catch voices that brushed past her on the wind: “He'll live, thank God.” “Who do you suppose could have done it?” “He was never a handsome man, but nobody deserves the face he'll have after this.” Finally the woods grew quiet, and the only sounds Anika heard were fluttering leaves and the quiet sigh of the night.

She rose to her unsteady feet and turned so that the cardinal's camp lay behind her. She knew she would have to be miles away by the time the sun rose or Laco's knights would be able to track her. And so she ran and walked and ran again, trying to follow the stars, hoping that she ran toward Chlum, toward
home.

The first tangerine tints of the rising sun had lit the forest when she awoke the next morning. She climbed down from her rock,
grateful for the silence of the moist black earth and wet parchment texture of the leaves beneath her feet. The woods vibrated softly with insect life, and a few feet away a road pointed a curving finger through the trees.

That road led home—to Chlum, and to Lord John, if he still cared for her. Though she had spurned his offer of protection and flown in the face of his convictions, she knew she could stand before him now as a woman and as a knight and say she had been wrong.

If only Lord John would forgive and receive her again.

The morning had nearly died when she spied another pair of riders on the road. Two men were coming her way on horseback, both horses walking at a slow and steady pace. The man on the biggest horse carried the reins of the second rider, and even from this distance Anika could see that the second rider's head was bent forward as if he'd had too much to drink.

The fool.
A sour grin twisted the corners of her mouth. Someone's master would be terribly displeased. She grimaced and kept walking, determined to ask for water or a bit of bread, but stopped when one of the horses lifted his head in a broken whinny. Lord John's favorite stallion had always trumpeted in just that way.

She took a deep breath, resisting the sudden bands of tightness in her chest. The horses wore blue and gold livery like that of Chlum, but neither rider wore a knight's surcoat. The horses moved closer, and Anika felt the wings of tragedy brush lightly past her, stirring the air and raising the hair on her forearms.

“Greetings!” she heard the first rider call, his voice high-pitched, reedy, and horribly familiar. Her breath caught in her lungs. Miloslav! He seemed not at all surprised to see her and lifted his hand in a casual gesture. “I am glad to see you again, my dear. Your lord is wounded and needs attention.”

As the horses drew nearer, a cold lump grew in her stomach, spreading chilly tendrils of apprehension through her body. A frightened glance at the second rider confirmed what she feared—Lord John was wounded, and Miloslav's prisoner.

Was her ordeal not over? Had God spared her yesterday only to kill both her and Lord John today?

Lifting his head, Lord John met her eyes. His gaze held no rancor or blame, but a familiar softness settled around his mouth, the way he always looked just before he smiled. “Sir Kafka,” he called, his voice breaking with huskiness. “Faith, it is good to see you.”

“My lord,” she began, eager to explain, but Miloslav stopped her with a cold glance.

“If you are loyal to this man, you will do as I say,” he said, grinning at her with cruel confidence. “I have no loyalty to him, so I care not whether he lives or dies. And since he is wounded, it may be a mercy to place a dagger in his heart and ease his pain.”

Anika knew hurt and longing lay naked in her eyes. “Don't,” she replied in a low, tormented voice. “Don't hurt him … any more. Tell me what you want.”

“That's much better.” Miloslav eyed her with a calculating expression. “Much more cooperative today, aren't you? That's good.” His dark gaze traveled from her helmet to her shoes. “You are walking today. Where is your horse?”

Anika shook her head. “Lost. In the woods.”

“And that sharp sword of yours?”

She shook her head again. “Lost.”

He winked at her broadly. “Ah, the trials of knighthood. Not what you expected, is it, little woman?”