The Mongoliad: Book Two (The Foreworld Saga) Read Online Free PDF Page B

young knight. Raphael’s body was tense at first, but gradually the tears broke down his defenses and he relented, weeping openly and freely.
    “‘Create in me a clean heart,’” Brother Leo quoted softly, recalling another part of the fifty-first Psalm, “‘and renew a steadfast spirit within me.’”
    When he spotted the hunched figure totter around the edge of the rocky outcrop and make its way slowly and painfully toward the bridge, he let go of Raphael. “God knows what is in your heart,” he said to Raphael, “that is the true measure of the man.”
    Raphael nodded, wiping at his nose. He looked very much like the boy Brother Leo might have been, had many things been different.
Had God granted him a different path
, Brother Leo reflected.
    “I have been lost, Brother Leo,” Raphael said. “I have not known what to do. Where to go. I just haven’t known...”
    “Very few of us ever do,” Brother Leo said as he made the sign of the cross. He pointed over Raphael’s shoulder.
    As the young man turned to look, Brother Leo departed. He wasn’t needed any more. As he reached the first bend in the path, he heard Raphael’s voice—querulous at first, but stronger in its second attempt.
    “‘
Domine...Domine, labia mea aperies...’”
    Brother Leo did not wait to hear Brother Francis’s reply.

Damietta, 1219
    A storm brewed in the north, dark clouds fuming over the wind-lashed bay, and the only respite the Christian camp received from the summer heat was a sturdy breeze that tried to blow dust through the gaps in the canvas of the tents. Inside the legate’s expansive domicile, there was no dust; the wind billowed the walls of the tent, outraged that it couldn’t be party to the gathering inside.
    Already, Raphael was wishing he could become a leaf, and the next time the heavy flaps were raised, he could escape on a curlicue of warm air.
    The legate was an austere man, like a piece of driftwood—bleached by the sun and dried by the wind. Like all of the Crusaders, he had lost weight since arriving in Egypt, and his skin was stretched tight across his thick bones. He looked as if he did not enjoy the heat; none of them did, truly, but the Egyptian summer left him perpetually breathless. When he became agitated, he began to wheeze like an old hound.
    “I am surprised you do not understand the gravity of our situation,” he said as he rose from the heavy oak chair he kept in his tent as a symbol of his position. He began to stalk back and forth across the wide floor of his tent, his red robes flapping about his lean frame.Raphael knew he was not unaware that the cloth made him appear as if he were drenched in blood. “I was led to believe that your master was a pragmatic man.” He paused to glare at Raphael before continuing to pace.
    Raphael’s back itched. He wanted to look over his shoulder. To seek some sign from either Calpurnius or Sir John of how he should reply. But he didn’t dare. They had warned him already. Once they stepped inside the tent, they were witnesses. They were not allies. They could not be called upon for aid.
    “Calpurnius is a knight initiate of my order,” Raphael said, repeating what the legate already knew. “He is the master of the company of Shield-Brethren that seeks to assist Rome in the matter of this Crusade. He leads us because he has proven himself worthy of that command.”
    The legate whirled on him. “And what of me?”
    “I beg your pardon, Your Grace?”
    “Am I not worthy?”
    Raphael hesitated, seeing the trap before him. Beside him, Eptor shuffled nervously. “Worthy of what, Your Grace?” Raphael replied. It was an impudent reply, but after having suffered through a lengthy speech already on the glory that awaited each of the Crusaders in Heaven once they had accomplished God’s will here in Egypt, he had found himself recalling Calpurnius’s assessment of the man—a gnat with a tiny bite. “The Pope has granted you honorifics that you wear