Kathryn Le Veque (20 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“There he is,” Bowen muttered from beneath his heavy hood. “Do you
see him?”

Joseph Ari’s dark eyes were fixed on the beaten figure of Roane as
they paraded him down the street like a prize buck.
 
The rain was pounding, the wind whistling,
and some in the crowd were throwing objects at him, mostly clumps of mud.
 
Someone actually hit him in the head with a
sharp or hard object and the blood ran.
 
Joseph Ari heard Bowen growl.

“I see him,” the priest replied. “It looks as if the Hospitallers
have not been kind to him.”

Bowen’s jaw ticked. “I can only imagine what they have done to
him,” he murmured. “Even so, he is still a very big man and, even in his
weakened state, I would imagine very powerful.”

Joseph Ari was well aware of what Roane was capable of.
 
The man had the strength of Samson. “The men
await your signal, my lord. You should not wait too long. Once he is on the
scaffold, it will be more difficult to retrieve him.”

“I am aware of that,” Bowen said.
 
“The men are waiting for me to throw back my cloak and lift my
sword.
 
It is my sense that it will be easiest
to take him when they try to remove him from the cart.
 
We can rush them then and overpower them.”

“Agreed, my lord,” Joseph Ari whispered anxiously. “They are
nearing the scaffold now. We should move forward so we are closer to your
brother.”

Bowen began to move.
 
As he
did, men in the crowd, cloaked men against the elements, began to move as
well.
 
There was an entire sea of men
moving towards the scaffolding, men who were burdened with heavy armor and
weapons beneath their rain cloaks.
  
Bowen had brought two hundred and eleven men with him into town, all of
them concealed for what was sure to be a vicious fight.
 
Hospitallers were warriors as well as priests
and from what Bowen could see, there were more than a hundred of them
surrounding the scaffolding and monitoring the crowd.
 
Coniston’s men easily out-numbered them,
which was a mark in their favor.

As Bowen and Joseph Ari neared the scaffold, a bolt of lightning
clipped the church that was off to their left about a dozen yards away.
 
The crowd cried out in fear as a piece of the
bell tower chipped off and fell to the ground.
 
Many peasants were scared off by the display, which filtered out the
crowd and created a clearer path between Bowen and his brother.
 
The odds in their favor were increasing and
Bowen continued to push forward.

The wagon carrying Roane began to slow as it neared the
scaffold.
 
Bowen was close enough that he
could see the details on his brother’s lowered head. His body tensed as he
prepared to act but he wanted to wait until Roane’s guards were in motion
before he did anything so that there would be more confusion and more of an
opportunity to wrest Roane away from the guards. Chaos would be to his
advantage.

Bowen glanced over to his right and saw several of his men gathered
a few feet away; all of them had crossbows slung beneath their cloaks.
 
Since the village hugging the perimeter of
Clavell Hill wasn’t walled, it had been easy to slip in with weapons because
there hadn’t been any check points.
 
If
was evident that the Hospitallers felt very safe in their old Roman fortress,
so much so that security for the village was lax. In fact, all of Bowen’s men
were heavily armed. They were ready for a fight.

The wagon came to a halt and the villagers began to surge forward,
crowding around the cart as the guards yelled at them and shoved them
back.
 
One guard in particular jumped
into the wagon bed with Roane and grabbed the big pole across his shoulders to
turn him around.
 
It was clear that he
was preparing to take him off the wagon.
 
When Bowen saw this, he knew he could wait no longer.
 
He made sure he was making eye contact with
the group of his men several feet away when he tossed back his hood and flashed
his broadsword.
 
The group of soldiers
collectively raised their crossbows and projectiles began to fly at the guards
surrounding the wagon.
 

In an instant, chaos ensued.
 
Screams went up and people started to
scramble. Several men were hit by the arrows, including Albert.
 
Hit in the shoulder, he lurched sideways and
fell off the cart completely, and Roane was unable to grab him. As the
lightning flashed and the thunder rolled, Roane heard himself screaming in
anguish.

“
Nay
!” he cried.

His focus was on Albert but in short order he realized there was a
vicious fight going on around him.
 
Men
in armor and weapons were charging at him, fighting off the Hospitallers
guards, and suddenly a man he recognized was leaping onto the wagon. The man
was moving so fast that he nearly knocked Roane over, his momentum nearly
carrying them both over the side.
Roane’s eyes widened in
astonishment as he focused on the familiar features.

“Bowen!” he hissed.

Bowen flashed a grin at his brother, slapping him lightly on the
cheek as he went to release him from the shackles.

“You silly lad,” Bowen grunted as he yanked off a shackle. “Did
you really think I would let these idiots execute you? Did you really believe I
would not come? God’s Bones, why are these shackles so loose? You could have
freed yourself!”

The chains came off and the big pole fell away. “I was going to,” Roane
said as he took the
pole
and launched it into the
writhing mass of men.
 
He took a brief
moment to gaze at his beloved older brother appreciatively.
 
“’Tis good to see you,
brother.”

Bowen grabbed him by the face and kissed his cheek loudly. “And
you.”

Roane couldn’t help grin at his brother’s show of affection, a
moment of sweetness in the hell going on around them. “That knight you hit with
your arrow was helping me,” he said. “We must help him, Bowen.”

As several of Bowen’s men had leapt onto the wagon to defend both
Bowen and Roane, a couple of them knocked the wagon driver off and took his
place.
 
Suddenly, the cart lurched
forward and everyone standing on the wagon bed went down, including Roane.
 
He grabbed hold of the sides to steady
himself.

“Wait!” he bellowed. “We cannot leave Albert!”

Bowen was hollering orders to the struggling crowd of men they
were leaving in their wake, commanding someone, anyone, to collect the Hospitallers
knight who lay off to the side with an arrow in his shoulder.
 
Roane couldn’t see what was happening as
Bowen’s men turned the cart about and prepared to make haste towards the city
outskirts. When he realized they were about to take him out of the village, he grabbed
his brother.

“I cannot go yet!” he yelled. “I must find Alisanne!”

Bowen knew that.
 
There was
also the matter of leaving Joseph Ari behind, which he would not do.
 
Somehow, he and the priest had gotten
separated. He began to look around frantically.

“Where is Joseph Ari?” he demanded, to anyone who could answer.
“He was with me a moment ago. Damnation,
where
is he
?”
    
No one could answer him; the soldiers
on the rear of the wagon were fighting off more Hospitallers who had come
rushing down from the scaffold and were now trying to jump onto the wagon.
 
Roane, seeing that they were about to be
swamped, noticed the broadsword hanging from the hip of the wagon driver and he
lunged for it, grabbing the weapon off of the man, and goring a Hospitaller who
was trying to climb over the side of the wagon.
 
As the mortally wounded Hospitaller was kicked away, Roane turned to his
brother.

“Alisanne is around here somewhere,” he said, yelling above the
noise and bedlam. “I have to find her!”

Bowen opened his mouth to reply but he was interrupted by a column
of fire that suddenly exploded next to them. Heat and flames roared, and the
horses pulling the wagon panicked. The cart toppled over on its side, spilling
everyone out across the wet and muddy ground.
 
Roane rolled across the mud and scrambled to his knees just as another
burst of fire hit the ground several feet to his right and shot up into the
heavens.
  
He could feel the heat of the
explosion, even
through
the cold and the rain.

At first he thought it might be lightning strikes, but he had
never seen lightning such as this; it was like balls of flame exploding,
spraying those nearby with bits of flaming debris.
 
The flaming debris would then stick to
whatever it happen to land upon and continue to burn. Nay, this wasn’t
lightning. This was something else entirely and it only added to the
pandemonium going on around them.

“Satan’s followers!”
came
a booming voice
from the roof of the building directly in front of him.
“Demon
soldiers who call yourselves men of God!
Here me now! God will punish
you for sentencing Roane de Garr, do you hear? He has given me the power to
destroy all of you if you do not let him go!”

Over the wind and thunder, the man’s voice still carried astonishingly
well.
 
Both Roane and Bowen craned their
neck back to see who was shouting such curses from the rooftop when they saw
the man launch another projectile.
 
This
one sailed over their heads and hit the ground very close to the scaffold,
bursting into a giant ball of flame.
 
Some of the flame splashed on to the
relatively dry underbelly of the scaffold where it clung fast and ignited the
wood.
 
Smoke began to rise as the great
wooden scaffold began to burn.

“Evil doers!” the man roared.
“Sinners, all of
you!
Judgment is coming for you and you shall all perish in the lake of brimstone!”

By now, the entire town center was a writhing quagmire of frightened
and fighting men.
 
The villagers had long
since fled, leaving a battle in their wake.
 
Bowen’s men were engaging more Hospitallers
who had poured from the old Roman fortress and were now rushing to join the
fight. While the majority of the men Bowen brought with him were occupying the
Hospitallers, Bowen and several soldiers were huddling around Roane, shoving
him away from the engagement.

“Who is that old man?” Bowen demanded, pointing up to the roof top.

Roane shook his head, going along with the group as he continued
to search frantically for Alisanne. “I have no idea,” he said.
“Evidently someone who hates the Hospitallers as much as I do.”

“I would agree with that.”

“Those bursting flame projectiles were most effective.
 
I have never seen such things.”

Bowen didn’t particularly care about the bursting bombs of flame;
he was more concerned in removing his brother, who was quite unwilling to go.
 
“Whoever he is, his intervention is most
welcome,” he said, trying to get his stubborn brother to move. “Roane, we must
leave. The longer we remain, the more chance of you being captured again.”

“I am not leaving Alisanne,” Roane said, struggling against the
men who were pulling at him.
 
He realized
they were moving him away, heading for the village edge, and he began to
bellow. “Alisanne, where are you?
Alisanne!
”

No reply was forthcoming and he fought off his rising panic. There
was no way he was going to leave without her. He knew she was here, somewhere;
he knew it
.

“Alisanne!” he cried again. “Alisanne, answer me!”

“Roane!”

He heard the distant scream and he froze, as did the men around
him, all desperately trying to search out the direction and source of the
cry.
 
The rain was intensifying, falling
in great silver sheets and seriously compromising visibility.
 
As they all strained to see, the cry came
again and through the crystalline wall of rain, a figure emerged on the square
near the main well.
  
It was small and
slight, fighting through the rain as it approached.

It was Alisanne.

Roane could see her through the mist, a few dozen yards away.
 
She was waving her arms frantically, rushing
towards him, and he broke away from his brother and began racing towards her.

“Alisanne!” he bellowed.

“Roane!” she cried in return, slipping on the mud and ending up on
her knees.
 

Roane saw her go down but it wasn’t a terrible fall, simply
slippery. The hood of her cloak came away, rain falling upon her silky brown
head. Roane was straining with every fiber of his being to reach her, to get to
her and bring her to safety.
 
He had to
hold her, touch her, and smell her.
 
Only
then would his soul be healed. Only then would he be whole.
  
Dashing across that mud was the longest run
of his life.