Shadows on a Sword Read Online Free PDF Page B

assured of it.”
    The tavern was overflowing with customers, many of them knights such as themselves, dressed in the rough homespuns of the north. For the most part, these knights were hearty men with simple tastes. They were relaxing after their long march, reveling in the good food and drink, and the warmth. As Theo and Amalric thrust their way among the crowd, a solid wall of smoke and smells hit them. A huge fire at one end of the timbered room blazed, welcome after the early winter chill outside, but contributing its own share to the thick fug within. The room was drowned in noise and loud, raucous laughter. A harried and slightly distraught young maid appeared soon after they had settled themselves at a long trestle table as near the fire as possible. She tucked a few strands of hair behind an ear with one hand, and wiped at the sweat on her forehead with the back of the other. She gave them a wary glance, but smiled nonetheless.
    “Your pleasure, my lords?” she asked, her words barely discernible above the clamor.
    “Ale, my maid!” Amalric cried. “And food. We hunger for your good victuals.” She disappeared,with another smile and a more flirtatious glance at Amalric, and reappeared with tankards of ale. Platters of food soon followed, and within minutes Amalric and Theo were attacking a joint of venison and dipping chunks of coarse, hearty brown bread into a savory-smelling stew. Theo hadn’t realized just how hungry he was.
    It wasn’t until he had filled his belly that he sat back and took a look around. A group in one corner caught his attention. A young woman—a girl, really, probably not even as old as he—was sitting slumped against the wall. A child was sleeping on her lap. The child’s long, silver-fair hair was matted and dirty, and hung across her face. The girl’s head rested against the timbers behind her; her eyes were closed. Beside her, stretched out on the same bench, with limbs flung out in the loose abandonment of exhaustion, a young man also slept. A dog lay at their feet. They seemed to exist on a silent island of their own, separate from all the hubbub surrounding them.
    The landlady bustled up at that moment to enquire if all was well with them.
    “Who are those people?” Theo asked.
    Her eyes followed his. Her smile dimmed and her brows drew together.
    “Those poor young things,” she said. “With Peter the Hermit, they were—he that did such terrible things here last summer. There’s many who will have nothing to do with them because of it, but I say it wasnone of their doing, what those soldiers did. They’re just poor innocents who got caught up in the whole thing. They say nearly every soul who followed that mad monk was massacred, out there in the heathen lands. They’re the first ones we’ve seen back, and it’s a sorry state they’re in. If they did do any harm, they’ve certainly suffered for it.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “The wee one will not talk at all, just stares as if her wits are gone completely, and the boy … Well, he looks as if he’s walking with the devil himself.” She quickly made a sign to ward off evil. “The poor girl’s done in completely, but she’s determined to get them all back to her own land in Germany.”
    The girl’s eyes suddenly opened. She looked straight at Theo, but her gaze was unfocused. Whatever she was seeing was not in that room. She sighed deeply, pulled the ragged cloak she wore more tightly around herself and the child on her lap, and then her lids fell shut again. One hand stroked the child’s brow, brushing the hair back out of the little girl’s eyes.
    “Gave them some soup, I did.” The woman’s voice broke back in. “They didn’t have a copper to pay for it, of course, but they have been on the crusade. It was only Christian charity. The crusade’s a wondrous thing, the pope has said so himself—despite some evil men.” She crossed herself and bustled off.
    “The crusade’s a wondrous