Crown of the Realm (A White Knight Adventure Book 2) (14 page)

She balled up her bound hands.
“If only I could slap you across that smug face of yours, Drake fitzAlan.”

“You already have,” he said, rubbing his cheek. “Twice, if memory serves.”
In a billow of upset rushes and dust, he urged the palfrey forward. Before the daughter of an alewife was able to muster a retreat, he leaned over and delivered a kiss, quick and savage.

Drawing his horse around, Drake saluted all and galloped out of the gatehouse.

* * *

Two miles west, thundering hoofs plowed down the wheel-rutted road and caught up with Drake. He did not look at the lad, whose roan nickered and settled into a rhythmic lope at the gray’s left flank.

“My place is with you,” Devon said. “And with Stephen.”

Drake did not quarrel with him.

Initially traveling west through Amboise and Tour, they bypassed Chinon and followed the River Vienne through Châtelleraut and Chauvigny before sidetracking west again toward the River Charente.

“Where is Richard now?” Devon asked the first day.

“Still in Chinon. In a fortnight he’ll work his way south. Angoulême is as good a place as any to wait for him. No doubt we’ll get wind of the king’s train long before he arrives.”

“What will we do then?”

“Pray.”

Their pace was brisk but not onerous. They stayed over in towns along the way, taking a meal of an evening, bedding down in crude lodgings, and moving on before dawn broke.

On the second day, Devon twisted in the saddle and gazed into the foreshortened distance. “We’re being followed.”

Drake nodded. “They’ve been following us since Chinon.”

Devon settled back. “Who are they?”

“The
routiers
.”

The boy’s eyes, not as innocent as they were mere weeks before, threw Drake an interested look. “Is that why you sent the others back?”

“One of the reasons.”

“What are we going to do about them?”

“Naught. They’re only making sure of one thing. Otherwise they shan’t bother us.”

“But you’re hoping they will.”

Drake studied his squire with a keen eye. “’Twould seem serving time with three king’s knights in Nonancourt Tower has favorably influenced an impressionable lad of limited experience.”

The boy blushed as red as his hair. “’Twould seem so.”

“Then it was time well-spent.” He let out a resigned sigh. “Aye, they may get careless with just the two of us and lead us unintentionally to Stephen. If not, my hand will be forced, and the rest of you will be well out of it. Worry not. I’ll send you back to England long before then.”

“I won’t go.”

Again Drake regarded knight’s squire Devon of Wheeling with mounting respect, and nodded lamentably. The boy beamed.

In Angoulême, after
seeing to their horses and making arrangements at a local inn, knight and squire picked their way through the town’s labyrinthine streets and found a bustling tavern serving hot meals. The hungry men made short work of the salty pork, beans cooked in the tasteless monastic fashion, and stale barley bread. Equally unimpressed by the watered-down wine, they liberally consumed it anyway, at first just to wash down the meal and then for the poorest of excuses: simply to get drunk.

“As long as we’re in the district, you’ll want to look up your betrothed and see what she looks like.”

“I know what Matilda of Angoulême looks like. Plain, pale, and shapeless. She also has a bad temper.”

“You have met her?”

“In my nightmares.”

The smoking fingers rising from the central hearth snaked to the vented roof. The walls were gray with soot. Lamps distributed among the ten or so tables
illumined only the nearest faces, some pocked, some scarred, and others grizzled. The talk had been boisterous early on but in the late hours descended to occasional mumbles and chance commentary.
Couvre-feu
was not far off. Flea-infested pallets awaited Drake and Devon, but they weren’t in any hurry. Devon excused himself for a needed trip out back. Drake went on contemplating his sediment-ridden cup when a
gentil-homme
, loosely defined as such, took up Devon’s unoccupied stool.

Drake glanced tiredly up and smiled without conviction. “I believe the name is Botolphe.”

The yellow-haired
routier
grinned. He carried no visible weapon and was light of baggage or other encumbrances, such as tunic and cap. His hair glittered gold in the cresset light and his eyes, violet and translucent, radiated a glow of their own. “Does the rib I broke still torment you?” His Norman-French was accented.

“Only when I turn over in bed.” Drake noted the curious object glistening brightly on the
routier
’s left hand. “You weren’t wearing that at Chinon.”

Botolphe flexed his fingers, where a blood-red almandine cabochon inlaid with a golden cross sparkled in dim lamplight. “You must think me stupid.”

“Never that.”

The
routier
signaled for drink. The proprietor came over, took one look at the fearful dawn-tinted eyes, and served him briskly before retreating to his watchful perch.

Drake coolly scraped back his stool
but remained sitting. “Have you come to inquire about my health? Or to tell me where I can find my brother?”

The mercenary chortled. “Neither.
Regarding your brother, he was given over to other men, who can rightly tell you where to find him. But as to where you can find these men …?” He rolled his shoulders. The grin had never once left his lips.

“Yet you follow me.”

Scratching a clean-shaven jaw, the
routier
laughed hollowly. He had the ways of a girl, and the face of one, too, without the faintest deformity unbalancing the crass beauty except for his nose, which bent slightly askew, favoring the fist of a right-handed man who must have taken a disliking to him. “You know why.”

Drake
casually braced his boots on the floor. His sword lay adjacent to his right foot. “You hate Richard so?”

“Many men scorn the man. For each, there is a reason. But that is not why we hound him … or you.”

“To put coin in your purse then?” The lavender eyes were marked with something Drake could not read. “Whatever they’re paying you, I will pay you twice.”

“You don’t have
enough silver.” Madness hid behind the round-eyed glimmer.

“If it’s not silver …” Drake ran his finger along a crack
in the age-worn table. “… then it must be a seductive kind of coin.”

The
routier
showed his white teeth.

Drake asked casually, “Where are your friends?”

“Taking your squire on a long ride. But—”

Drake had already crashed back
his stool, drawing attention from the patrons, but also drawing a dagger, braced now in the arch of his hand.

The
routier
did not flinch. “But … if I do not catch up with them within the hour, they bury him.”

Drake aimed for the mercenary’s pulsating throat. “Then I will bury you.”

“Except you will be minus one squire.”

Drake’s hand
worked the haft of the dagger. The deadly point had made an indentation in the
routier
’s yielding flesh and was drawing a thread of oozing blood.

Arms held in abeyance, the mercenary rose cautiously to his feet. The blade
followed the distance. The shock of yellow hair, catching candlelight, shone like a halo about the placid face and insane eyes.

Drake withdrew
his weapon.

“Go do what you have to do, Drake fitzAlan, and all will be well.” Taking his leave, he retreated into the tavern’s caliginous shadows and made a silent exit.

THE WAY WAS
slow-going down the crags and crevices of a steep and sometimes hazardous descent.

Drake had been following the
routiers
for six days. They didn’t know it. They didn’t know it because he had been trailing them at least a half-day behind.

They chose the narrow wheel-rutted paths to travel, sometimes picking up an old Roman road or a forgotten pilgrim’s way. But their horses—one high-stepping Arabian with a familiar gait, one gentle roan, and three others—marked the trail well enough with hoof prints and foul matter.

The
routiers
filled their stomachs with what they killed on the road. That and their generous stores of wine were all they needed to lose themselves without once venturing into town or village. By the third day, Drake could not say where exactly he was or where they were leading him. One path was like another and one stream or creek like all the rest.

At the start of the sixth day, they aimlessly ascended rocky cliffs skirting a fast-moving river. From beneath the hoofs of Drake’s gray, loose rocks and pebbles tumbled over the precipitous drop-off. The sun was high and unencumbered by clouds but the air was refreshingly cool this high up. By day’s end, numb and exhausted, Drake alighted into the valley below, muffling trees thickening before him, jackdaws cawing behind, and night descending.

Making camp beside the river, Botolphe and his band settled in with banter and drink. By then Drake had closed the gap. If they had pointed their noses in the right direction, they could have smelled him.

They left Devon lashed to a broad oak, his arms secured at his back, the ropes drawn tight across his chest, his feet spread out before him. Grudgingly they fed him something resembling squirrel. They laughed often and laughed hard, and huddled like filthy hounds about the campfire, flames licking their vapid faces as they stared at nothing but their own meager lives. The wine revivified briefly and eventually stupefied. Then the rains came.

The Brabançons wrapped themselves in canvas and drew close to the sputtering campfire. While they grumbled in restive sleep, the winds and pelting storm dowsed the flames to sizzling embers. From his cramped perch above, Drake listened to the ping of the raindrops, felt the biting wetness course down his upturned face, and waited for the far-distant but rhythmic snoring to deepen. Every bone ached. Sleep, which he desperately needed, had to wait. The thought of hot food made his belly grumble. He caught himself dropping off once but forced himself awake by grisly means. Round about midnight, he embarked on an uncertain road which, once begun, granted no retreat.

Calling on his reserves, he let
the night sounds mask his final descent. Climbing down a steep and slippery escarpment in the black of night was an arduous race against time. When at last he reached bottom and sniffed the
routiers
upwind, he chose not to launch his attack, at least not directly. Drake was a patient man when he had to be.

After the storm blew off, he used the pitter-pat of rain-drenched leaves and the hoot of the tawny owl to cover his deeds.

Drake clamped his hand across Devon’s mouth. Bleary-eyed, the lad tried to focus. But only after his nightmares scattered into the misty dark did he recognize the mud-stained phantom. A damascened dagger efficiently dispatched the ropes. Putting a silencing finger to his mouth, the specter moved stealthily off.

He slit the simpleton’s throat, clean and decisive, not giving him the remotest chance of waking. A moronic smile frozen on his face, he looked to die in the throes of an erotic dream.

Haplessly, the tall one moved in his sleep, then came awake all at once. The blade, longer than the span of a hand and whetted lethal, missed the man’s throat but stuck him in the shoulder. His yelp of agony was swiftly and permanently silenced.

Though Botolphe sprang to his feet, a familiar damascened sword clutched gamely in his hand, and roared like the lion engraved on the tang, he did not
fully appreciate the danger lying within a hand’s width. The sickening smell of blood, cloying and unmistakable, should have given the man fair warning. Instead, the dragon sword’s sharp prick, which skittered across his neck only because he moved reflexively, made him more keenly aware though not fully. He reached up a tentative hand. Felt the slippery wetness. Saw blood drenching his fingertips. And went on wondering.

He gaped at the apparition then, a shadow only against the night gloom, taller than the trees and more vengeful than Moloch. When lightning flickered in the distance, it was enough to outline Botolphe’s adversary, the knight Drake fitzAlan, who gripped two deadly lengths of steel that invited him to the
danse macabre
. Looking beyond fitzAlan, he caught sight of the sprawled corpses, which at last revealed to him his probable fate.

Unless he killed fitzAlan first.

His pretty face grinned. His yellow hair, flattened by the wet, sluiced down his face like the mud Drake had streaked across his fair cheeks. A second weapon, a damascened dagger—the twin to Drake’s—appeared in the mercenary’s other hand and flared danger from its double-edged planes. Botolphe swiped his arm across a sugary mouth and lovingly massaged the weapon as if it were a prick in his masturbating clutch. A channel of blood, self-inflicted, wept across his thumb.

Balanced
on ready haunches, Drake prepared for the
routier
’s attack, which arrived at the end of a snake-quick upsurge. He finessed the assault of both sword and dagger in practiced symmetry, executing a counterattack that somehow missed the man’s belly. Being a mercenary used to low and dirty tricks, Botolphe also knew how to use both weapons to his advantage. He sliced Drake’s arm on a feint, and on a continuing dodge, etched a line of dripping blood across Drake’s cheekbone.

Because
Drake was leaner, younger, and better trained, he was swifter and possessed the mean talent to cut and run. But like the dragon slayers of legend, Botolphe felt none of it, being cut to ribbons like that. His strength was inexhaustible, even against quickness, dexterity, and a doggedness that Drake had mastered against countless knights who were meaner, bigger, and tougher than Botolphe.

They backed off to regroup and catch their breaths.

Raising sword and dagger, Drake charged. Botolphe waited for the right moment, and with an underhanded twist of the lion sword, a spin of his feet, and a downward thrust of the matching dagger, he disarmed Drake, first of the dragon sword and then of the dagger.

Both weapons whirled like scythes and became lost in the undergrowth.

His wrists throbbing from the buffet, Drake staggered. The bemused grin of the yellow-haired villain reappeared. The lion sword swiped at Drake’s midsection. Drake vaulted back, just out of reach. Botolphe advanced, his smirk widening. Drake dived low and lunged for his feet. Seeing the tackle coming, Botolphe kicked out his foot and caught Drake in the throat. Drake landed on his back, arms flung out, choking for breath. The cold touch of steel pricked his throat.

“And so,” Drake
wheezed in English, “it has come to this.”

Botolphe inclined his head, and deciding it didn’t matter what Drake
had said, prepared for the final death stroke.

A dagger with
wings impaled his chest.

S
creeching in agony, he staggered. The lion sword fell from his hand. He dropped to the ground. His eyes, violet no more, searched out Devon, who had thrown the damascened dagger and was now helping his master to his feet.

Death flattered the night. In return
, night stilled for its call.

Botolphe reached up and dislodged the dagger.
Gripping the bloody weapon, smeared black in the night, he contemplated the tool of his inevitable demise. He scooped up a fresh round of power, lumbered to his feet, and charged. In the explosive assault, he flung Drake aside and captured Devon in the crook of his choking elbow. Twin daggers gripped in both hands, he pressed one against the boy’s throat and dragged him toward the horses. Drake pushed himself fecklessly forward. Devon’s blue eyes flashed with dread. Botolphe used the blade cruelly and flung the limp body at Drake, who grabbed the boy and lowered him gently to the ground. The
routier
cackled once and mounted Stephen’s dappled gray.

Sprinting forward with a leaping twist, Drake wrenched the
routier
off the horse. Hand-to-hand, they migrated toward the river. At their backs the river gurgled on its speedy course. Botolphe lurched. One of the daggers fell from his hand and became lost in the mire. But the other, streaked with Devon’s blood, flirted with Drake’s stretched neck. The defensive grip Drake employed on the
routier
’s wrist was weak from the first. When Botolphe broke free and the knife descended, Drake rammed a shoulder into his chest. The mercenary’s arm flew out. They broke apart, reeled, and landed with a splash. The muddy riverbank, riddled with sharp gravel and cutting stones, embraced two warriors. Disengaging, they pressed to unsteady feet. The remaining dagger, firmly lodged in Botolphe’s fist, played with the night. Now here, now there, fingers flagellating, steel prancing. Laughter rumbled from his throat. Opalescent eyes radiated from a face marbled with mud and gore. He leered once and came for Drake.

The blade threatened ribs and belly. Drake leapt back with each pass. His diaphragm heaved. His legs ached. The landscape spun. On the next charge, he burst sideways. Botolphe followed the movement, mindless by now, and lost his balance. In the frenzied splashing to follow, the riverbank dropped out from beneath him. He regained his feet but slipped backwards into open water.

Drake stumbled away and sought higher ground.

Kicking and hacking, Botolphe floated to the surface.
He did not know how to swim. Since the water was shallow enough this close to shore, had he simply put his feet down, he would have found a foothold. But in his terror, he groped blindly for a saving hand, a convenient limb, a solidity to the water’s surface, all the while squawking and sobbing and begging incoherently for rescue.

“My brother! Where is my brother
?!”

The dagger waved benignly. He gulped river water by the mouthful. “I … I don’t …” The crazy bastard was drowning. Unable to help himself, he begged shamelessly. “Please, oh God, please …”

“God can’t help you, but I can.” Drake waded into the shallows. “You delivered him to another. Who? Where?”

Water funneled into his mouth a second time. An unnatural quiet took hold. He splashed back to the surface, coughing and sobbing like a child, his hair-snaked eyes
fevered with fear. His head bobbed at the simmering surface. He strained his chin above the water line and threw out a name.

“Where did he take him?”

The water swirled around him. He named a locale.

“What does he look like?”

Inhaling river and air together, he spit out a curt description that could match a thousand men.

“Where was the hand-off point?”

His arms slapped the water. “Bourges. South of Bourges … that’s all I know … by the God above, I swear it!” He gasped for air. And disappeared below the swirling waters. When he floated weakly to the surface, his milky eyes silently begged.

Drake
sloshed toward the waters. “Your hand!” he shouted. “Give me your hand!”

The
drowning man reached out. One of the fingers pulsated with a blood-red gem. Drake hacked the mercenary’s left arm at the wrist. The blade caught the edge of a silver bracelet but still wreaked mortal damage. The man screamed. Drake shoved Botolphe back into the roiling stew. Blood churned the indigo waters. The mercenary flailed impotently, dismay, confusion, and disbelief consuming his bloodless face. His lips sought air like a fish drowning on the hook. He said something that turned Drake’s stomach. And repeated the words. “He’s dead already. I killed him myself.” His colorless eyes, bewildered at their final glimpses of life … and of his murderer … remained open until the end.

Clouds parted. The moon
appeared, full and effulgent, illuminating the
routier’s
comely face. Floating peacefully in the lunar-rippled water, he drifted downstream, the river embracing him like a lover.

Drake was squatting on the riverbank by then, his head bent over drawn-up knees, two damascened daggers grasped in each hand and two cabochon rings sparkling brilliantly in their clutch. The loss of blood from his arm was taking its toll. He collapsed onto the embankment with little ado.

“Devon,” he called out as a last hope, but received no answer.

Prostate in the muddy shallows, he blinked blearily up at the moon. And the moon, having witnessed all, sneaked once again behind stormy clouds and disappeared, sequestering everything into profound blackness.