Reckoning Read Online Free PDF Page A

at bay for six months. Until, in frustration, the Marquis de Pianessa, dark commander of the expedition, hired mercenary forces that increased his army to almost 8,000 men.
    Enraged to insanity and vowing to see indomitable Rora razed to the ground, the Marquis ordered the entire Militia of Piedmont to the field beside his mercenary troops, and with a combined force of 15,000 men launched a three-front attack. In the long and savage end, Rora's defenders died holding their positions or were captured and burned at the stake, father and son holding each other upon the pyre.
    Some, however, including Gianavel, slashed a path through the mercenary troops and escaped into the mountains where, in time, they reorganized to launch merciless and cunning counterattacks against the Marquis's army. Until the winter of August, 1656, when the diminutive force was cornered in the monastery of St. Constantine.
    And it was there that the final, bloody battle ensued.
    Lost to a past that he knew as well as the present, Malachi ran his hand across the scarred wooden timbers of the door, wondering at what savage conflict had passed this portal in that doomed and defiant last stand.
    "Yes ... an age of heroes," he whispered softly, his fingers touching a smooth, deeply carved cleft that was once slashed into the wood by ax or sword.
    Slowly, the memory moving him, Malachi lowered his hand and ascended the staircase that led to his bedchamber. But he knew that he would not sleep tonight. Indeed, with the sad news that he had received in recent days, he was uncertain that he would ever sleep again. For Simon, wasting away beneath that malignant illness which physicians could still not fully diagnose, had returned to the Vatican, presumably to die.
    Malachi knew that this malady was not the bane of nature; it was the hand of man. And he suspected that soon he, too, would fall to this mysterious and unseen foe. For he had stood beside Simon deep within that ancient grave in the Negeb, had seen what was unearthed, and witnessed the testament that stretched forth from the tomb in that skeletal hand ...
    Feeling anew the initial sensation of the unexpected discovery, Professor Malachi Halder, revered Harvard archeologist and man of science, saw once more in his mind the spectral scene: the sight of the long-dead messenger, still armored in rusted iron, locked in a mortal embrace with his slayer.
    Long buried within the subterranean corridor beneath ancient Horvat Beter skeletal arms intertwined, the dead men had lain for two millennium, each the victim of the other. Each warrior still held the iron blade of the era buried deeply through the petrified ribs of his foe. Malachi could only imagine what hideous drama had unfolded in the tunnel during that distant, desperate hour. But he believed that he knew. Even as he had retrieved, shoulder to shoulder with Simon, the all but obliterated parchment from the armored hand and initiated the thrilling translation, he had begun to understand.
    As Malachi reached the top of the stairs, walking heavily towards his bedchambers, he cursed that unexpected discovery and swore sorrowfully that the crumbling manuscript had not been buried deeply enough.
    "No," he whispered, and he felt the plague of the abomination darken him within, "it could never be buried deeply enough."
    Rome itself, the Citie del Vaticano, had financed the archeological dig on the ruins of Horvat Beter, just as the Vatican had financed many of Malachi's expeditions over the years. And faithful Father Simon, longtime friend of Malachi and himself a respected archeological scholar within the Catholic hierarchy, had accompanied Malachi on the excavation, just as he had accompanied the professor on a hundred similar expeditions over the last half-century.
    As always, Malachi was grateful for the wise company. For he had long ago found a valuable and faithful friendship with old Simon. Mutually beneficial, Malachi provided the higher under-standing of