The Bleeding Land Read Online Free PDF Page B

Lunsford was about the Hall making threats, had come to add their spleen to the growing discord. Any who had come looking for trouble had found it and now Mun and Sir Francis had their swords in their hands and their backs to the wall.
    Lunsford will get us all killed, Mun thought, flicking his rapier’s point high to deter the fiery-eyed apprentice who had clearly chosen him as a sheath for that dagger of his.
    ‘Keep your guard up, Edmund,’ Sir Francis said calmly, ‘and cut if you have to.’
    Mun nodded, trying to match his father’s composure whilst inside his heart was pounding madly. For though he was confident in his skill with the sword – had trained with it most of his life – this had nothing of the art of fencing in it and he feared having to plunge that sharp steel into another man’s flesh.
    ‘Bastard Cavaliers think you own us all,’ a short-haired apprentice snarled, brandishing a cudgel at Lunsford but keeping his distance from the colonel’s wicked-looking blade.
    ‘Have ’im, Daniel!’ another apprentice growled, and the mass of them edged nearer, so that Lunsford’s men drew closer to one another, presenting an arc of swords to the mob.
    Sweat sluicing between his shoulder blades, Mun recalled what he had heard about Lunsford, that he was a cannibal, that he had even on occasion eaten babies, though who could believe such a thing? They also said Lunsford feared neither man nor God, and this Mun suspected was likely true, as he glanced across and saw the twist of a smile beneath the soldier’s flamboyant moustaches. He was enjoying this.
    ‘What are you waiting for, traitorous scum?’ Lunsford asked this Daniel, who appeared to have appointed himself the mob’s captain, with their consent from the looks they gave him. Lunsford’s coiffured head was half turned so he could glare at the man with his one remaining eye. ‘It will be a pleasure spilling your rancid guts across this stone.’ Then he lunged, slashing his blade through Daniel’s doublet into the flesh just below his collarbone, and the apprentice screeched in pained surprise, dropping his cudgel. There was a collective gasp and some curses from the crowd, though they instinctively retreated from the colonel’s bloodied blade. Lunsford turned and grinned at Sir Francis.
    ‘They whine but they have no bite, Sir Francis,’ he said. ‘I’ll wager it’s been a while since your blade slaked a thirst, hey?’
    Sir Francis seemed to swallow the words his eyes betrayed. ‘I’d appreciate it, Colonel,’ he said, ‘if I could get my boy out of here without further bloodshed.’ Lunsford laughed, then feinted low at another apprentice’s legs but pulled the blade at the last.
    Mun had watched the blunt-toothed man’s courage bloom and now the apprentice leapt forward, the dagger flashing, but Mun sidestepped neatly and cracked the rapier’s knuckle guard into his jaw, dropping him like a rock.
    ‘Your boy looks like a fighter to me, Sir Francis,’ Lunsford remarked. ‘The apple has not fallen far from the tree, I see.’ Then one of the colonel’s men slashed another apprentice across his thigh and this was enough to break the mob, so that they parted, giving clear passage to the eleven men who were better armed and clearly not afraid to spill blood.
    To Mun’s relief, Thomas Lunsford was not so big a fool as to ignore the opportunity to quit the Hall, though he suspected that had more to do with the soldier having already been a guest of Newgate and knowing that the death of one of these petitioners might lead to his calling on the prison’s hospitality again. Yet kill one he still might, for some of them were now hurling singlesticks at them as they made for the open door of St Stephen’s Porch. Holding his sword arm in front of his face and with his father behind him, Mun followed Lunsford and heard one of the colonel’s men yell with pain as something struck his head. Then he was through the door and into the