Knights of the Blood by Katherine Kurtz, Scott MacMillan Read Free Book Online

into death spasms. Two men—at—arms raced forward with spears ready to avenge him, but at their approach the Turk turned and ran between the buildings, headed back from where he had come just a few minutes before.
    Without waiting for the command to follow, the skirmish party took off at a dead run after the wounded Turk, one of the serjeants stopping to help Brabazon to his feet, propping him up with the aid of a spear before hurrying on. As the serjeant came even with the Turk that Brabazon had dispatched with one blow of his sword, the mutilated corpse pushed itself up into a sitting position, its nearly severed head flopping grotesquely to one side.
    The serjeant froze momentarily in his tracks as the corpse struggled to regain its feet; then, with the utmost deliberation, he swung his sword in a downward plunging arc, completing what Brabazon had started. The severed head bounced several times and then rolled to a stop near the horrified Brabazon, and the body collapsed to move no more. Without further regard for the vrykolakas, the serjeant threw the knight a grin and a triumphant salute, and took off after his companion and the wounded Turk.
    The wounded Turk was almost twenty yards ahead of the crusaders when his body, now drained of blood, toppled forward, pitching his conical spiked helmet into the open space in front of the Chapel of the Chalice. The helmet rolled across the barren earth and came to a halt against the naked and battered body of an old woman, savagely raped before her throat was slashed. Other corpses littered the courtyard, some horribly mutilated, others hardly touched. All, however, had had their throats cut.
    The crusaders passed into the courtyard with only a passing glance at the bodies. They were looking for the Turks, not the sign of their passing. Death was their stock in trade, and the death of the villagers elicited only casual professional interest.
    The chapel of the shrine of Chalice Well lay across the square, and de Beq and two of the men from his skirmishing party trotted out in front of the rest of the crusaders and made their way across to it. The door was closed and barred from within, but inside they could hear the wailing moans of someone pleading for mercy, punctuated by screams, and the laughter and coarse chatter of the Turks.
    Quietly, de Beq beckoned for one of the burlier serjeants to come and boost him up so he could look through a tiny window above the door. With a leg up from a man—at—arms, he climbed shakily onto the serjeant’s shoulders and stood up, hooking his fingertips over the windowsill. By stretching, he was just able to peer through the lower part of the little window.
    Inside, to blasphemies and hoots of derision, seven or eight Turks had singled out the guardian of the shrine for their special attention. The old priest had been stripped naked and nailed to the top of his altar, a spike driven through each of his outstretched hands and another pounded through his feet in sacrilegious parody of the crucifix looking down from the wall above him–no work of any Christian or even of Moslems, who at least honored Jesus of Nazareth as God’s prophet, even if they did not accept him .as God’s son.
    Not satisfied with this profanation, the Turks were flaying the priest alive, one of them peeling long, bloody strips from his tightly—stretched chest with a wicked, curved dagger while his fellows crowded round and took delight in each new contortion. Blood streamed from the priest’s wounds, befouling the altar with gore and the sweat of his terror and anguish, but the raw agony of his screams was weakening with every breath he managed to draw.
    The man with the dagger–somehow de Beq knew it could only be Ibn—al—Hassad himself–gave a maniacal laugh and flayed another strip of flesh, then bent langorously to lick the raw wound with an obscene, blood—stained tongue. The old man’s scream shifted into a long, despairing wail of anguish at this