Behind the Veil Read Online Free PDF Page B

here among the trees.”
    Bardas came running up and Tancred took his medical satchel and followed after Norris. “Guard your mistress,” he told Bardas. “Remember that slave that Leif spotted spying about.”
    “A slave, spying?” Norris inquired. “I saw Leif twenty minutes ago and he said nothing of this.”
    Tancred stopped, and briefly told Norris what the house guard had communicated.
    Norris scowled, and Tancred grew uneasy. “If he had told me of someone other than Rufus and his son, I’d have cause to wonder.”
    Norris kept scowling and they walked on. Their boots crunched over the gravel walkway.
    “The sooner Nicholas arrives and we leave this place the better,” Tancred said quietly. The sun was breaking through the morning haze.
    A private mercenary soldier was waiting some hundred feet from the slave quarters. Seeing them, he walked forward.
    “Do you know him?” Norris inquired.
    “I have seen him with Rufus at the armory.”
    Tancred was concerned about whether his medical supplies were adequate. “How badly is he wounded?”
    “The messenger did not say.”
    “Did you actually see Rufus?” Tancred asked bluntly.
    “No, I”— Norris sucked in an incriminating breath. “Fool that I am!”
    Tancred glanced about the trees. He tossed his satchel to the bushes and unleashed his sword.
    Norris, looking confused, nevertheless followed suit. “What is it?” he breathed between his teeth, glancing about.
    Like a wolf smelling a trap, Tancred scanned the chinar trees. The soldier walking toward them hesitated, as though he noticed their suspicion.
    Tancred touched his cousin’s arm. “A trap. Quick! Away! Toward those trees—”
    Their action forced the hand of soldiers in hiding, who emerged from the trees on both sides of the path. Philip the Noble angrily pushed his way past his men. “Do not let them get away!”
    The soldiers rushed the two Normans. At once Tancred and Norris were fighting for their lives, dealing blow after blow to hold off the advancing soldiers in service to Philip. It was madness; they could not hope to survive. The fighting raged for a timeless period when suddenly Bardas rushed up with sword drawn and entered the onslaught. The sound of heavy blows of steel upon steel captured the morning. With Bardas beside Tancred and Norris on his left they fought for a clearing in which to escape back to the house. Soldiers lay gravely wounded, strewn across the path, but Philip stalked at a safe distance. His voice rang above the ringing steel and grunts of men: “Pursue them! After them! Do not let them escape!” 
    One bold young Byzantine lunged with gritted teeth at Tancred who struck past his sword and smashed the side of his head.
    They were far outnumbered, and at last Philip’s sanity seemed to rouse itself. “Circle behind them, you fools! Trap them like wolves in a pen!”
    Norris was in deadly trouble with three soldiers closing in upon him. Tancred tried to help, his blade exchanging furious blows, when he heard Norris gasp as a spear pierced his chest. Norris grasped it, falling to his right knee.
    “I want Tancred alive!” Philip shouted.
    Tancred did not hear him. At that moment, little else mattered when he saw Norris dying among the dew-drenched flowers into which he had fallen. Tancred knelt beside him, wiping sweat from his eyes in order to see. Norris was slipping into unconsciousness, blood on his lips. A final breath, then stillness—It was over.
    Tancred’s fist clenched. He heard nothing but the thudding his own heart, like a war drum, in in his ears.
    Lord God, he prayed, broken in spirit, Norris, my cousin, like a brother ….
    When he became aware again, soldiers had surrounded him with pointed blades, their breathing coming hard, their sweating faces grim. Bardas was sprawled on the ground holding his shoulder where blood soaked his sleeve.
    Philip strode up and pushed his way through his men, his dark eyes cold and brittle. He refused to