Iny Lorentz - The Marie Series 02 by The Lady of the Castle Read Free Book Online Page B

in advance. The same goes for the other knights and their people from now on.”
    Gunter von Losen gasped. “You can’t do that! The wine belongs to the count palatine.”
    Michel brought his hand down so heavily on the man’s shoulder that his knees buckled. “You’re wrong, my friend. The wine was paid for with my money, as were all the provisions, and I’m done sharing them with people like you. So eat what you brought and don’t even think about pillaging farmers along the way. You’d come out the worse for it.”
    The Frankish knight glared angrily at Michel. “What do you think we are, traveling shopkeepers dragging cartloads of provisions around with us? Either you provide for us, or we take what we need from the peasants—whether you like it or not.”
    This presented Michel with a dilemma. On the one hand, he didn’t want to give even a stale crust of bread to this arrogant pack of knights. But as the group leader, he had been given responsibility for the palatine knights, and so he tried to find a compromise.
    “The knights and their followers who have come with me from Rheinsobern will receive enough provisions so they won’t go hungry. But you, your friend, and your people have nothing to do with me. Either you get out, or you beg for crumbs from the Palatinates.” His face turning crimson, the knight opened and closed his mouth without being able to speak a word. Enraged, he grabbed at the cup, but Michel held it high above his head. “Three pennies, or you can go thirsty.”
    “Go to hell, innkeeper’s brat!” The knight bared his teeth but didn’t dare grab Michel’s arm, so instead turned and left.
    “Here, you forgot something.” Michel poured the wine out of the cup with exaggerated regret and threw the man his empty cup. Losen caught it, then walked back to his peers, swearing and grumbling. As he loudly reported what Michel had said, the other knights and their men stared at Michel with murderous looks and made threatening gestures.
    Unintimidated, Michel told the cook and his kitchen hands to allot smaller portions to the noble lords and their men and to start charging for wine. His men, who had been angered more than once by their arrogant companions, grinned approvingly and laughed at the noble lords’ followers, who now had to content themselves with water while they still enjoyed Michel’s wine. This didn’t particularly help lighten the mood of the troops, however, and Michel breathed a sigh of relief when he spotted the city of Nuremberg in the distance.
    Half a mile from the fortified gate with its two massive towers, an imperial provost marshal approached the procession and directed them to a campsite at the Pegnitz River. When Michel asked him why they were made to camp so far from town, the man bared his teeth. “It’s because of the women. The men are supposed to stick to the camp prostitutes instead of molesting honorable townswomen.”
    The provost marshal pointed upriver, where several colorful tents were visible among the green alder trees in the wetlands. “Their tents are over there: those for the gentlemen of rank on the right, and those to the left for the foot soldiers.”
    Since Michel wasn’t interested in their services, he asked which troops had already arrived. The sour expression on the provost marshal’s face told Michel that fewer soldiers had arrived than he and his imperial master had expected. Michel was surprised, because he’d imagined counts and knights would come streaming from all directions when their kaiser called. But when he walked through the camp a short while later, he realized that the response had been a trickle at most. Barely more than five hundred armed knights had come to join Sigismund’s crusade, and the rest of the army consisted of only around a thousand lightly armed horsemen, bowmen, and pikemen, almost none of whom was as well equipped as his foot soldiers. Most of them were still wearing their peasant shirts and looked