Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 Read Online Free PDF

and confronted the runaways in the stable yard, after they had laid him low with some numbing, bewildering spell on his mind - after Marron had refused to leave them and come to him, but never mind that now; this was sanctified ground, or that was - and after he had recovered himself and run to the broken gate and seen them riding out, even after so much he had gone back to the stables and discovered worse.
    He had discovered the stalls where a squad of men had been waiting as guards and grooms, where they waited now in an eternal stillness and a bath of blood, their ruined bodies not to be distinguished each from each. Some evil curse had torn them, flesh and bone; and the few bound and terror-stricken survivors had accused Marron himself of doing this thing.
    Marshal Fulke had come then and declared that the source of the work was Surayonnaise, whatever the instrument. There in the stables, among a breathless crowd of men, he had called not vengeance but justice on that wicked state; he had declared a holy war, and asked who would ride with him against this evil.
    Used to orders, unused to invitations, the Brothers Ransomers had hesitated; it had taken the knights, the nobles' sons to push forward first, to make a path that the brothers could follow.
    First among the knights - necessarily first, for his own squire's sake who had been first cause of all this horror - had been Sieur Anton d'Escrivey.
    Soon now, any day now, the long ride would begin. Until then, Anton lived as he had not before, side by side and sharing with his confreres. First among equals, his superiors said, though he was not aware of that; he thought himself only a hypocrite and weak, drawing needful strength from others.
    They would ride, and they would find Surayon; and they would destroy it utterly, and that was good.
    He did not expect to find Marron within its borders, and that was good.
    He did expect to find Marron, somehow, somewhere, sometime; and that too, the God forgive him for he himself could not but that too was good, and hungered for.
    In the great hall, on the dais that stood below the sign of the God, Marshal Fulke stepped forward to preach to all the Ransomers, brothers and knights together on their knees. It must look as though we all of us kneel to him. The thought passed suddenly, shockingly through Anton's head, and would not be dismissed. It was a nonsense, of course; there was no arrogance in the man, only great confidence and certainty of purpose that were both of them founded on faith unquestioning, unquestioned. Fulke might stand with his back to that tremendous, overhanging sign, the double loop that spoke of a twinned eternity, but it might as well have been branded on his high forehead, below his receding hairline; it might as well have been contained within his eyes, so that he saw the world in ever-doubled vision. For sure he carried it liquid on his tongue, whether he spoke to one man privately or to an army gathered.
    And yet he was a man and must have all men's faults, however deeply buried beneath the discipline of his belief. How could he face a sight such as this, so many heads bared and faces lifted, so much breathless silence, and feel no possession of the moment? He had been sent by the Church Fathers to be provincial commander of the military arm, no more than that; he was subordinate to the preceptor here at the Roq, and to many men else; and yet this was his army, they were his men, they would rise at his word and he must know it. There was a leashed eagerness in them, they strained to hear that word and to follow him, and he must know that also.
    'My brothers,' he said, his voice soft but carrying, like the whisper of a whip in the air before it cracked, 'all these weeks I have been telling you of the evil nesded like a worm in the heart of Outremer, that nestl es also in the heart of each one of you, eating at your virtue. All these weeks you have waited to hear me cry you forth, like hounds upon a hunt. A