The Book of the Lion by Michael Cadnum Read Free Book Online Page B

and sliced off a mastiff’s head. Rannulf accepted his lance from Miles, balanced it, squared his shoulders, and ran down the second offending dog. The lance skewered the brute’s haunch, and the great mastiff hung on the point of the lance as Rannulf lifted the kicking body clear of the road, shook his weapon, and let the body fall.
    Field men ran calling out, armed with ax and staff, but when they saw the Crusader star and Rannulf’s lance they fell silent.
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    Nigel and Wenstan headed along the high way again, Nigel without a second glance at what had happened. The knight gossiped about whose maidenhead had been lost under what hayloft. He said that a poacher had been hanged by this oak up ahead, for stealing a flitch of venison, already dressed. Or perhaps not that oak, he said, but another similar tree, back a mile or so.
    I let Winter Star pace more slowly, so I might overhear what Rannulf and his man were saying. To my delight, the horse obeyed my touch at once.
    â€œBalance, my lord,” I heard Miles say. Balaunce. “Of course, in the case of a man, unhorsing is all that matters. Knock him, nick him.”
    Rannulf spoke at last. “Still, it was a pity the point was so wide of the heart.”
    Before we drifted to sleep, Hubert whispered from his pallet, “Did you see how angry Rannulf was, when he saw those dragons hurting our dog?”
    I considered this. “He acted with due haste,” I said.
    â€œSo if you or I were attacked, he would come to our aid,” said Hubert.
    I said that this was undoubtedly true. But privately I was not certain. I could easily imagine Rannulf watching bears consume either one of us, out of interest in the way the beasts used their claws.
    When I closed my eyes I saw my master’s hand, spiked to the anvil. I saw the startled eyes of our dog companion, and the spreading blood of the suddenly headless mastiff.
    They say that a lion sleeps with his eyes open. Despite my fatigue, Saint Mark sent me watchfulness that night, and I kept waking to hear the slow, steady breathing of my companions.
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    The next morning I could scarcely stand, crippled by a day of riding, and my injured foot was aching again. I hid my discomfort, although Sir Nigel rode beside me later that morning, and said, “I’ve known fighting men to start the day with three flagons of the strongest cider, to ease the road-ache.”
    â€œThey have my pity, my lord,” I said.
    Sir Nigel gave a laugh. “I bet a Flemish penny you would fall off yesterday. Rannulf collected on the wager last night.”
    Sometimes, even armed as we were, we traveled in a tight phalanx, Nigel at the point, sometimes standing upright in his stirrups as he rode, his gaze sweeping the forest. At times like this I dared not meet Hubert’s eye, but I could sense him, tense, one hand on the pommel of his sword.
    Even knights were sometimes attacked by the bandits and madmen who lived in the woods.

chapter TEN
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    Innkeeper and ferryman alike greeted us with forced smiles and hollow heartiness.
    Crusaders often slept in inns and forded rivers without lightening their purses, since their quest was sacred, and even the burliest wine seller had no means to enforce his fee. But Nigel paid with pennies, quartered and halved after the custom of our countryside, and the metal was always the soundest quality. Maiden and matron poured us all an extra measure of beer, and kept the tapers burning until the last of us had lurched off to our pallet in the warmest corner of the inn.
    If I could be my lady’s hound, no hare could hide.
    Day by day, we heard all the verses of this lay as Miles sang them. We traveled south. Rain fell, the sun broke through, the wind was cold, then swung from the west and blew warm, sometimes all within an afternoon. Rivers overflowed their banks in places, and a fire had erased the shambles, the butcher’s district, in one town we