Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) by Giles Kristian Read Free Book Online

stroking the tuft of brown hair that jutted from his chin.
    Captain Crafte was a small, neat man with a neat man’s economy of movement, so that when he walked, as he did nowtowards the window, he barely disturbed the old straw on the farm kitchen’s earthen floor.
    ‘Are you perchance a relation of Sir Francis Rivers, who died at Kineton Fight?’
    ‘He was my father,’ Tom said, seeing no reason to lie. Crafte stopped still, staring out of the narrow, stone-mullioned window whose pane afforded a murky light. Candles burnt here and there about the room.
    ‘And may I ask how you came to fight against your father’s master the King?’
    ‘You may ask, sir, but you’ll get no answer. I have my reasons.’
    His back to Tom, Crafte was still as stone, hands clasped behind him. ‘You come to me seeking employment and yet your tongue barely stirs to promote your cause.’
    ‘I come seeking nothing. I do not know why I am here,’ Tom said, growing irritated by the incessant scratching of quills on paper. ‘Captain Clement might not want a killer in his troop, and that makes him a strange officer if you ask me, but I never thought the man a fool. He told me to find you and so here I am.’ He shrugged. ‘Clearly there has been some mistake, sir. By your leave I will go and find a troop that wants fighters.’
    Crafte turned round, his small nose crinkling like a mole’s. ‘Of course you don’t know why you are here,’ he said, a smile touching his watery eyes. ‘I dare say Captain Clement has only the vaguest notion of what it is I do here. How I labour for the cause and do it all unseen. Imagine, Thomas, if you would, a band of bell-ringers pulling on the ropes. Well, I am the man who tells them which ropes to pull and in what order. The resulting peal, that euphony which carries far on the wind, is my design. And yet I am never seen.’ He tugged his tuft of beard, his small eyes boring into Tom’s. Tom had the sudden notion that the man might be mad, that perhaps the dour Captain Clement had a sense of humour after all and had sent him to Crafte for his own amusement.
    ‘But I need men to pull the ropes,’ Crafte said. ‘What wouldyou say are your … talents, Thomas Rivers? And I would not include geniality amongst them,’ he added with the merest twitch of a smile.
    ‘I can ride,’ Tom replied. ‘There are few men in England who can handle a stallion as I can.’
    ‘Yet you came here riding a mare,’ Crafte said.
    ‘My stallion was killed under me at Kineton Fight,’ Tom said. ‘He would have galloped through the gates of Hell for me.’
    Crafte seemed to consider this for a moment. ‘What other abilities do you possess, young man?’
    ‘I can shoot straight and I can use a sword.’
    Crafte flapped a hand as though shooing a fly. ‘Firelocks and blades. Mere tools,’ he said. ‘Useless without the intent of the hands wielding them. How many men have you killed for our most righteous cause?’
    For the cause? Or for myself?
Tom wondered. ‘I do not know,’ he said honestly. ‘Many.’
    ‘That’s a good sign,’ Crafte acknowledged with a careful nod. ‘You are not plagued by foul, dark dreams after taking a man’s life?’
    Tom shook his head. He had known dark dreams but they were of Martha Green hanging by the neck, swinging gently beneath a stone bridge, and Crafte had no business knowing about them.
    ‘Can you hear that?’ Crafte said, cupping a hand to his right ear, his head half turned towards the window.
    Tom shrugged. ‘Just the sounds of the camp,’ he said.
    ‘Precisely,’ Crafte said, ‘but soon you will hear the peal of bells. They will chime for England and her people. For I have a job for you, Thomas Rivers.’

CHAPTER FOUR

    THOUGH HER CHEEKS were numbing, Bess felt the faintest touch of the tear coursing down her cheek. She cuffed it away just as Joseph glanced at her from his saddle, the concern in his eyes not quite daring to find voice and offer words of