The Book of the Lion Read Online Free PDF

bickering and celebrating.
    The peasant fixed me with his eye— You stay here. Then he hurried to the young woman, caught up with her, and pushed her hard, without a word, sending her full length into a puddle. He kicked her, a full-strength, bone-ringing blow. It was as though this fieldman was demonstrating to me, This, sir, is a kick.
    Before I could stop myself I was at the man’s side, my hand on him. I meant no injury, but shook him by the shoulder, as one might shake a dreamer, urging him from a nightmare. He pushed me away. One part of my mind cautioned me to bid him a good day and leave.
    But he gave me another push, one that reminded me of Sir Nigel. I hit the peasant with my right hand, without putting much effort into it, a slap.
    The man fell hard, and sat there gaping at me. He groped for his ax, and leaped to his feet.
    His glance searched my garb, mud-freckled dyed wool and new buckles, wondering what a young man would be doing, out so far from town without so much as a palfrey to carry him. And without so much as a small-sword in his belt. With a right hand that could strike as well as any smith’s.
    He called something to the goose girl, words I could not make out. She fled back to the cottage, shouting. The sound took me back to the mornings of my boyhood, when country dwellers would greet each other across the open land with a shout, cowherds and craftsmen alike, each with his own way of giving voice to a greeting.
    â€œI’ll pay you a quartered cross-penny for a loaf, if you please,” I said. “And a wedge of cheese.”
    The man put a finger to his chin. A silver penny was a year’s plow-alms, a year’s tax on a team of oxen. A quarter-penny was no small amount of money. By offering silver for a common meal I was close to gibbering like a madman—or a man in flight from the law.
    The lusty cries of the young woman had brought a young man her age from the confines of the house. He ran hard toward her, carrying what looked like a clay-cutter, a blade designed to slice earth for cottage walls. The young man spoke briefly with the young woman and took off across the land yelling some alarm in peasant speech. The young woman hefted her skirts and sprinted off in another direction, calling, “An outlaw, an outlaw!”
    As this cry drifted through the morning sun, the axman realized that it was too late to charge me the price of a prize bull for a cup of beer. Field folk were running from far around.
    I brushed the axman aside and breathed a prayer. I ran painfully as fast as I was able through green goose-mud to the cottage and stepped inside.
    Thick smoke stung my eyes, and the heavy, sour funk of long human habitation. A half-moon of black bread sat on a platter, beside an earthen pitcher. A wife in coarse-spun cloth stood before an infant’s bunk, the babe squirming pink in the shadow. The wife held a pitchfork, and defended a kid goat with the sweep of her skirt. The kid frisked in place, held by a tether.
    The brave wife stayed as she was, work-polished wooden fork level at me. She watched as I drank deeply of barley beer and tore off a healthy chunk of bread. Chewing fast and swallowing, I left one of my quartered pennies on the soot-caked firestones in the middle of the room.
    The axman was waiting for me, but at his wife’s cry, “Silver!” — Selfer! —he leaned on his ax. He said something I did not understand.
    And then I worked out his heavy accent, each word becoming clear in my mind. I scampered away, geese flapping and honking before me.
    Hurry.
    A knight is coming.
    Â 
    I hobbled through the dew-thick grass to the crest of a low hill, and turned in the warm morning sun. A charger, the best sort of warhorse, was in full gallop, heading right toward me. The steed shook his head, foam flying, his mane tossing in the sunlight, brass jingling. I stood my ground.
    His rider, a young knight, dragged and sawed at the reins. The