Fools' Gold Read Online Free PDF Page A

hatchet and, with three or four quick, frenzied blows, hacked through the rope which held the heavy ship’s anchor against the side of the boat.
    Solid hammered iron, it plunged downwards, monstrously heavy and crashed straight through the galley’s light wood deck, and straight through the bottom of the galley, smashing an enormous hole and breaking the sides of the craft so the water rushed in from the bottom and from the sides.
    In a second Ishraq had jumped to be at her side, and had thrown her knife straight into the man’s face. He took the blade in his mouth and screamed as blood gushed out. Luca, Freize, and Brother Peter took the grappling irons and flung them onto the heads of the rowers below them, as water poured into the galley and the waves engulfed the ship.
    ‘Hoist the sail!’ Luca yelled, but already the boatman and his lad were hauling on the ropes and the sail bellied, flapped and then filled with the light wind and the ship started to move away from the sinking galley. Some of the rowers were in the water already, thrashing about and shouting for help.
    ‘Go back!’ Isolde shouted. ‘We can’t leave them to drown.’
    ‘We can,’ Ishraq said fiercely. ‘They would have killed us.’
    There were some wooden battens at the front of the boat. Isolde ran to them and started to haul on them. Freize went to help her, lifted them to the rail and pushed them into the water to serve as life rafts. ‘Someone will pick them up,’ he assured her. ‘There are ships up and down this coast all the time and it will soon be light.’
    Her eyes were filled with tears, she was white with distress. ‘That man! The knife in his face!’
    ‘He would have sold me into slavery!’ Ishraq shouted at her angrily. ‘He was taking you back to your brother! What did you want to happen?’
    ‘You could have killed him!’
    ‘I don’t care! I won’t care! You’re a fool to worry about him.’
    Isolde turned, shaking, to Brother Peter. ‘It is a sin, isn’t it, to kill a man, whatever the circumstances?’
    ‘It is,’ he allowed. ‘But Ishraq was defending herself . . . ’
    ‘I don’t care!’ Ishraq repeated. ‘I think you are mad to even think about him. He was your enemy. He was going to take you back to your brother. He was going to sell me into slavery. He would have killed us both. Of course I would defend myself. But if I had wanted to kill him, I would have put the knife through his eye and he would be dead now, instead of just missing his teeth.’
    Isolde looked back. Some of the crew had clambered back aboard the wreckage of their boat. The commander, his face still red with blood, was hanging on to the battens that she and Freize had thrown into the water.
    ‘The main thing is that you saved yourself and Ishraq,’ Luca said to her. ‘And they’ll have to report back to your brother, so you should be safe for a while. Ishraq was wonderful, and so were you. Don’t regret being brave, Isolde. You saved all of us.’
    She laughed shakily. ‘I don’t know how I thought of it!’
    Ishraq hugged her tightly. ‘You were brilliant,’ she said warmly. ‘I had no idea what you were doing. It was perfect.’
    ‘It just came to me. When they said they would take you.’
    ‘You would have gone with them rather than fight?’
    Isolde nodded. ‘But I couldn’t let you be taken. Not into slavery.’
    ‘It was the right thing to do,’ Luca ruled, glancing at Brother Peter, who nodded in agreement.
    ‘A just cause,’ he said thoughtfully.
    ‘And your knife throw!’ Luca turned to Ishraq. ‘Where did you ever learn to throw like that?’
    ‘My mother was determined I should know how to defend myself,’ Ishraq smiled. ‘She taught me how to throw a knife, and Isolde’s father the Lord of Lucretili sent me to the masters in Spain to learn fighting skills. I learned it at the same time as my archery – and other things.’
    ‘We should give thanks for our escape,’ Brother Peter said,