The Belt of Gold Read Online Free PDF

like a drop of heavenly fire. The jug was empty. Turning his back to the wind, he trudged onward toward the inn.
    He went in through the back of the yard, where cats fought over a mountain of garbage, and circling upwind of the stench, he headed for the side door into the inn. Halfway there, he stopped dead in his tracks. Off in the front of the inn, barely in sight around the corner, stood a man in leather armor, holding the reins of a group of horses.
    Hagen recognized him at once: it was one of the Greeks from the little stone church. He broke into a run toward the front of the inn. His room was on the far side, in the second story. Just as he reached the corner of the inn, the other three Greeks from the church burst running out the front door.
    The leader, the fat man with the red rosettes on his shoulders, saw Hagen and yelled. He leapt up into his saddle, whipped his reins out of his friend’s hands, and charged straight at Hagen. The two men behind him were slower; one was dragging his leg.
    The horse bolted down on Hagen, who dodged to one side, coming up against the wall of the inn. Wrenching his mount’s head around, the Greek with the rosettes spurred it at a gallop toward the gate, and without waiting around for his men fled away down the road. The others were scrambling into their saddles and turning to follow. Hagen ran into the inn.
    The common room was packed with people. He had to fight through the press of bodies to the stairs. There, the crowd eased; he went up the stairs two steps at a time and raced down the narrow corridor. The door to his room stood halfway open. Hagen shouted his brother’s name and rushed into the room.
    The bed was all pulled apart, the covers strewn halfway across the room, and the window shutters were thrown wide open. The only occupant was Rogerius, who lay naked in the middle of the room on his back, a great puddle of blood spreading across the floor. Hagen knelt down by his brother and lifted him, and from the first touch he knew that Rogerius was dead.
    Still, he lifted him up carefully, to keep from hurting him, and held him in his arms, his mind stuck, waiting for his brother to come alive again.
    A shadow across the door brought his attention that way. The innkeeper, spitting out an oath, strode into the room.
    â€œWho did this? Who are you people?”
    Hagen was struggling with himself; he loved his brother more than any other creature alive. Slowly he got himself to carry Rogerius across the room to the bed and lay him down there. A great wound in Rogerius’s chest smeared blood all over Hagen’s clothes, and there was a wound in the side of his neck also, a wound given from behind.
    The innkeeper was pressing after him, shouting, “Who did this? Who did it?” With a sharp twist of his head Hagen faced him.
    â€œGet out of here.”
    â€œThis is my inn!”
    â€œI don’t care; get out of here before I kill you.”
    The innkeeper’s jowls sagged. Slowly he backed up, away from Hagen, into the crowd of curious gawkers that now packed the doorway and the corridor outside. Whirling, the innkeeper drove them all out of the room again. The door shut.
    Hagen took the patched and ragged sheet from the floor and laid it over his brother’s body, and knelt down and said some prayers for Rogerius’s soul, still fresh from life. He imagined the soul a white moth that fluttered up and up toward Heaven, burdened down by the weight of sin, and he sent his prayers to it like helping wings. Slowly, as he ran out of holy words, a red tide of rage drowned the white vision. He began to weep. Clutching his brother’s hand, he cried and swore and thought about the four Greeks who had done this.
    He thought about Theophano. She had not been with them when they ran out of the inn, and on the evidence, he guessed she had gone out the window.
    He mastered himself; he opened the door, and finding the innkeeper outside in the hall he