The Orphan King (8 page)

“Wiilliaammm!” came the boy’s voice.

William paused. “Will we meet soon?”

“In Magnus. If he is following all that Sarah taught him, Thomas will take you there. I shall go ahead and wait for your arrival.”

“The girl? You said the girl—”

“Watch her closely, William. Would not the enemy expect us to arrange to have you rescued from the hanging?”

“Yes.”

“Would it suit the enemy’s purpose more to guard against the rescue and have you killed, or to let you escape and see where you lead them?”

William took a breath and said in rueful tones, “I am more valuable to them alive and in flight. Thus, they would need some method to track my flight.”

“Yes. Is it the pickpocket boy who watches you? Or the girl? Or Thomas? That is why I spent long hours waiting for the proper moment to appear as an old hag. I cannot afford to be seen.”

“Wiillliamm!” The boy was near enough that they could hear the crashing of underbrush.

“Guard yourself, and do what Thomas demands,” Hawkwood said with urgency. “If he is not one of the enemy, he will desperately need our help.”

“I will guard myself carefully,” William vowed, “and wait for you to greet me in Magnus, whatever your guise when you next appear.”

Hawkwood began to edge into the shadows.

“My friend,” William called softly. “If I discover Thomas belongs to the enemy?”

“Play his game until you have learned as much as you can,” Hawkwood whispered back. “Then end his life.”

C
ompline
. Already.

Three bundles lay beside him. One, a small sack of gold and silver given by the monks. The second, the materials he had taken from the cave. And the third, the bundle of stilts and cloth he had used at the gallows at the beginning of the day.

Thomas could do no more to prepare for his next test. Yet the waiting skimmed too quickly. He merely had to turn his head to see the distant gallows etched black against the light of the moon when it broke through uneven clouds.

If I could pray
, Thomas thought,
I would pray for the clouds to grow thicker
.

The gold was not in place yet. He had chosen this place to hide because it was near the road from Helmsley. It would let him see how many men the sheriff sent to guard the gold on its short journey.

Not for the first time in the last few cold hours did Thomas wonder about the mysterious old man who had confronted him at the gallows. In front of the panicked crowd, he had taken great pains to force Thomas to demand more gold than five men could earn in five years. Enough to provision a small army.

Thomas shivered. Not because of the cold.

How had he known Thomas was not a specter but an impostor on stilts? How had the old man known what Thomas wanted? And how
had the old man deceived them all with a trick of such proportion that it appeared the sun had run from the sky?

The question that burned hottest—Thomas wanted to pound the earth with his fists in frustration—was one simple word.
Why?

If this unknown old man had such power, why the actions of the morning? He could have revealed Thomas as an impostor, yet he had toyed with him, then disappeared. Why would—

Thomas sat bolt upright.

For how long had the old man disappeared? Would he suddenly appear to recapture the gold?

Then came another question. Not why—
Who?

In her dying words, Sarah had given Thomas his quest. But she also left him with a puzzle that haunted him every day.

“My prayer was to watch you grow into a man and become one of us, one of the Immortals.”

Who were the Immortals? How did Sarah belong to them? How was he to become one of them and why?

And now it occurred to Thomas.

Did the old man have the answer to those questions?

With that final thought to taunt him, Thomas discovered that time could move slowly. Very slowly indeed.

“I’ll not rest until this gold has been safely borne away by the specter.”

The voice reached Thomas clearly in the cold night air. By reflex, he put his hand on the bundles. Reassured by their touch, he listened hard.

“Fool!” a harsh voice replied. “The sheriff has promised a third of this gold to the man who brings down the specter. I, for one, have sharpened my long sword.”

“I’m no fool,” the first voice replied with a definite tremble. “I was there when the sky turned black. The ghostly specter is welcome to his ransom. I only pray we never see him again.”

“Shut your jaws!” commanded a third voice. “This is a military operation. Not a gathering of old wives.”

After that, only the drumming of heavy feet.

Thomas counted eight men in the flitting moonlight. Eight men!

Was he a village idiot to think he might overcome eight well-trained sheriff’s men? And if he did succeed at midnight, what might he face next?

Again, Thomas regretted that he could not pray.

Instead, he silently sang lines from a chant that had so often comforted him in his childhood. A chant Sarah had taught him. She’d shown him how to read and write and how to calculate numbers. She’d taught him herbal medicines. History. Geography. Enough so that when she died just after his tenth birthday, he was able to continue to teach himself. But of all the legacy she’d given him, it was the chant that held the most value to him. His destiny.

Delivered on the wings of an angel,

he shall free us from oppression.

Delivered on the wings of an angel,

he shall free us from oppression.

As the clouds came and went, the mute-and-deaf girl watched from the opposite side of the gallows, intent on the well-armed men setting themselves in a rough circle around it.

She had the power to destroy these men, inflicting death upon them with a weapon none had seen before and would not understand until the last had fallen.

She had a narrow, long tube beside her and a bundle of small darts, a weapon and ammunition easily hidden beneath her clothing. It was a combination that she’d been trained to use with great effectiveness. The tips of the darts were protected by hard wax, for even a tiny scratch would result in immediate convulsions of agony and a slow, shuddering death; she’d seen the poison work on a healthy, full-grown pig. She hoped she wouldn’t need to use the weapon, for that risked revealing too much of why she’d been placed on the gallows. Still, she’d been given her orders. Thomas needed to be protected.

The bells for
matins
began to ring. Midnight.

The promised phantom did not keep the sheriff’s men in suspense.

It appeared as if from the ground, not more than a stone’s throw from the circle of men around the gold.

Ghostly white, the phantom moved serenely toward the gallows. It was merely a full hand taller than the largest of the sheriff’s men, not four or five hands taller as the black specter had been. In the dim moonlight, it did not show arms. Nor a face. A motionless cowl covered its head.

“All saints preserve us!” screamed the voice of the first soldier.

“Advance or you’ll lose your head!” immediately countered the commander’s voice. “Move together or die in the morning!”

All eight men began to step slowly forward with swords drawn.

The deaf-and-mute girl plucked the protective wax tip off one of the darts and slipped it into the blowing tube. She lifted it to her mouth in preparation and waited, holding her breath.

The phantom stopped. It did not speak.

A cloud blotted the moon completely. The men hesitated, then gasped as an eerie glow came from within the pale body of the phantom. A few soldiers stumbled backward on the uneven ground.

“Hold, you cowards,” came the tense voice of the commander. The retreating men froze.

“A third of the gold to the one who defeats this apparition!” called someone in the pack.

The phantom held its position.

Finally, just as the cloud began to break away from the moon, one soldier rushed at the phantom. “Join me!” he shouted. “Show no fear!”

The girl drew a breath to fire the dart. She had no doubt she’d be able to hit the man squarely in the back, but she still waited. Surely Thomas had planned something; it was not going to be this easy for the sheriff’s men, was it?

But she couldn’t take the risk. She made her decision to give the sharp, hard burst of breath that would fire the tiny dart through the darkness, but just before the point of the soldier’s outstretched sword reached the outline of the phantom, a roaring explosion of white filled the soldier’s face. It etched sharply for one split heartbeat every ripple of the ground for yards in every direction.

The soldier screamed, falling sideways as his sword clattered uselessly to the ground.

Unseen, the mute-and-deaf girl turned her head and let out a breath. She gathered her darts and blowing tube and slipped away. Now was the time to return to the camp the knight had set up, before
Thomas reached it and discovered she was missing. She knew she’d arrive before Thomas did, for she would not have his burden to carry. She had seen what the sheriff’s men had not.

No man had time to react. The phantom moaned as it became a giant torch of anger. Flames reached for the soldier on the ground, and he crabbed his way backward, screaming in terror.

The other soldiers huddled in a frightened knot. Each man stared wild-eyed at the flames that outlined the figure of the phantom. They whispered hurried prayers, crossing and recrossing themselves.

“A spirit from the depths of hell,” one soldier groaned. “Spreading upon us the fires that burn eternally.”

As if in response, the flames grew more intense, still clearly showing the shape of the phantom. And it said nothing.

The men stood transfixed. The last flame died abruptly, and the phantom collapsed upon itself. The men did not approach.

One soldier finally thought to glance at the gallows. The large bag of gold was missing.