Jester Leaps In: A Medieval Mystery Read Online Free PDF

second, suspecting some trick, but I was fresh out. He started laughing as he walked toward me. Again, not at all the right kind of laugh. My leg throbbing, I scuttled backward toward where my sword still stuck in the ground. He took another step, reversing the knife in his hand to throw it.
    Then there was a faint
twung
from off to the right. He sat down heavily, an arrow piercing his neck. We looked at each other for a long time, sitting there a few feet apart. I shrugged. He shrugged back, then fell over, blood streaming from his mouth.
    Viola stood some twenty paces away, a bow in her hand, another arrow notched and ready. Three men lay dead around her.
    “Do you know,” she said conversationally, “I somehow made it through the first thirty-two years of my life without killing anyone. Then you reenter the picture, and that’s five dead men to my account since the New Year.”
    I forced myself upright, my leg on fire. “All justifiable, my love.”
    “As for that, why was Routine Eleven necessary? The nice man who spoke bad Greek said they would let us go.”
    “But what the leader actually said was, ‘Let them put on their little show, and then we’ll slit their throats and take their horses.’ ”
    She looked around for her sword. It was embedded in the chest of one of them. She pulled it out and wiped it off on the nearby grass.
    “What language were they speaking?” she asked.
    “Bulgarian.”
    “You speak Bulgarian?”
    “Fluently.”
    She sheathed her sword. “You must teach me. It sounds like a useful language to know.”
    I limped over to Zeus and pulled a rope from my pack. I looped one end around the feet of the nearest casualty and tied the other to the saddle.
    “We’re not going to bury them,” she said, taking a rope out of her bag and following my lead.
    “No. They may be missed soon. But I don’t want to leave them lying in the middle of the road.” I threw myself up onto the horse, then sat and waited for the pain to subside. “Remind me not to use that move next time.”
    “Sorry. I was a bit busy at that particular moment.”
    There was a whinny from off to the left of the road. I leaned over, snatched my sword from the ground, and rode in that direction, dragging the body behind me.
    Seven horses were tied there, shying away from their late master. Viola rode up behind me as I dismounted. I pulled the body into the bushes where it would be out of sight. There was a slight rustling, and Viola called, “Feste! Behind you!”
    I whirled, sword in hand, to see a boy of eight standing before me, a knife in his hand.
    “Put it down, boy,” I said in Bulgarian. “My quarrel is not with you.”
    “Mine is with you,” he replied. He charged, brave stupid soul that he was. I sidestepped, caught his knife-hand in my left, and thumped him solidly with the hilt of my sword on the side of his head. He dropped like a stone.
    We looked at him, lying on the forest floor, looking like any nonmurderous child lost in dreams.
    “I suppose we have to take him with us,” I said finally. She nodded, relieved. I tied his hands behind his back, then tied him to a tree. We hauled the remaining bodies off the road. Viola kept the bow she had picked up. I added another to my gear, and as many arrows as we could find. I then went through the pockets and saddlebags, collecting whatever coins and provisions I could find.
    Viola looked at me distastefully. “Doesn’t that make us as bad as them?”
    “Not yet, my love. Give me some time.”
    I slapped the boy a few times until he came to. He gave me a look of pure hatred.
    “These were your family?” I asked him.
    He nodded.
    “Father?”
    He nodded again. “And brother. And uncles and cousins.”
    “Are there any women you can go to?”
    He shook his head. “All gone.”
    “How far is home for you?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t know where I am now.”
    I untied him from the tree, leaving his hands bound, then hoisted him onto one of the