To Defy a King Read Online Free PDF

the away with gusto. As if flung from a catapult, mounts and men hurtled over the line. Clods churned and flew, showering the onlookers. Hugh followed Arrow's surging white rump and the banner of her silver tail. Briefly she was hemmed in by a sea of bay, chestnut and black, but soon edged in front and sped away from them like a wind-blown cloud.

    'He's riding her too hard.' Hugh craned on tiptoe as the horses disappeared from sight. 'He should be pacing her; she'll be caught!' Hearing the strain in his own voice, he collected himself, aware that people were watching him.
    As heir to the Earldom of Norfolk, he had a duty to appear strong before his peers, especially when speculation was rife concerning the Marshal alliance.
    A man who showed weakness over a horse was a man who might be weak in other areas.

    The rapid drumming of hoofbeats vibrated through his boot soles. Ralph was yelling in a voice like a raw knife blade: 'They're winning! They're winning! Come on, girl, fly like the wind!'

    Arrow was indeed still leading as the horses hurtled back towards the starting line, but with each stride, de Braose's black was gaining ground, and so was the Archbishop's bay. The mare was galloping hard, but that first spark had been spent on the outward journey and now she was straining and under pressure.

    'Go on!' Ralph roared, punching the air. 'Go on!'

    Arrow's ears were pressed against her skull as she lunged for the next stride and the next, while the black closed her down on the right and the bay on the left. A length, half a length, a head. Longespee raised his arm and the whip came down once and again and the mare almost flattened herself to the ground in a final burst of speed that brought her over the sand line a head and shoulders in front of the other two. Still galloping, still carried forward by her momentum, she stumbled, pitched and went down, mane over tail, legs thrashing. Longespee rolled clear, staying down and curled up as the rest of the horses thundered past. Uttering a howl of denial, Hugh ran out to the mare and fell to his knees at her side. Scarlet rivulets streamed from her nostrils and although she was still breathing, and struggling to rise, he knew he was looking at a dead horse.

    Longespee lurched to his feet and staggered across the churned grass to the dying mare. 'Christ,' he gasped, ashen-faced, and wiped his hand across his mouth. 'Dear Christ.'

    Hugh didn't hear him. He was watching the light go from Arrow's eyes and the shuddering of her limbs as the effort to rise became death throes. Her blood flowed hot against his folded knees. Leaning over her, he cupped her cheek and rubbed the coronet of hair starring her forehead.

    Her last breath fluttered out and her limbs ceased to twitch. Hugh felt his own blood congeal. People crowded round, looking, exclaiming, drawn to the tragedy and the spectacle. William de Braose arrived, stared for a moment with curling lip, and then shoved a heavy pouch into Longespee's hand.

    'Count yourself fortunate that the line wasn't ten yards further,' he growled.
    'No good having a fast horse if it's going to drop dead under you.' With a single, scornful glance over his shoulder, he stalked off in the direction of his sweating stallion.

    Rage flickered through Hugh's numbness like a jag of lightning. He lurched to his feet, the hem of his blue tunic blotched with Arrow's blood. 'You used the whip,' he accused Longespee in a fury-clogged voice.

    'Only the once.' Longespee drew shallow breaths, one hand pressed to his ribs. 'God's life, she died because she wasn't sound, not because I struck her. It could have happened at any time. Better now than in the midst of a hunt or a battle campaign.'

    The excuses shattered Hugh's control and he seized Longespee by the throat.
    'You rode her to death!' he sobbed, his voice breaking. 'Her blood is on your hands!' But the blood was on his own, rimmed around his fingernails, staining the creases in his knuckles.

    His