The Iron Lance by Stephen R. Lawhead Read Free Book Online

Dalassenus disagreed mildly. “We could not ask for better soldiers, nor would we find them.”
    â€œDo not misunderstand me. I agree: they are brave men—the most disciplined and courageous soldiers in the world—but they are too few. The constant warring has taken its toll, and we must begin rebuilding the themes. There is so much to be done, but it is within our very grasp now, and—”
    The smile on Dalassenus’ face arrested his kinsman’s familiar tirade.
    â€œForgive me, cousin,” Alexius said, “I am forgetting myself. You, who have been with me from the beginning, know it all as well as I. Better, perhaps, in many respects.”
    Dalassenus turned to the table, refilled the emperor’s cup and handed it to him. “Let us savor the victory a moment longer, basileus.” Raising his cup, he said, “For the glory of God, and the welfare of the empire.”
    â€œAmen!” replied the emperor, adding, “May the peace we have won this day last a thousand years.”

THREE
    Murdo wilted under the abbot’s interminable prayers and wished he was far away from Kirkjuvágr. His knees ached from kneeling so long, and the smoke from the incense made his empty stomach queasy. The dim interior of the great church reminded him of a cave: dank and cool and dark. Save for a smattering of candles around the altar, and a few tiny slit windows, he might have been deep in an earth-howe, or one of the ancient chambered tombs scattered among the low hills. Outside it was balmy midsummer, but here inside the cathedral it was, ever and always, dreary mid-November.
    Craning his neck sharply to the right, he could see the stern countenances of saints Luke and John staring from the nearest wall in sharp disapproval at his fidgeting. Higher up, under the roof-tree, a frog-eyed gargoyle grinned down from a corbel—as if in merry mockery of Murdo’s growing discomfort. To his left knelt his mother and father, and before him his brothers and cousin. None of them, he knew, shared his distress, which made it all the worse.
    The Feast of Saint John was one of the few holy days Murdo truly enjoyed, and here he was spending it in the worst way possible. If he had been at the bú, the morning service would have been over long since and he would be filling himself with roast pork and barley wine. Instead, he was trapped in a damp, dark cavern of a church listening to some lickspit priest gabble on and on and on in irksome Latin.
    Why, of all possible days, did it have to be this one? He moaned inwardly, contemplating the ruin of the day. The waste of a good feast-day was a mortal sin, yet the bishop, in typical ignorant clerical selfishness, had decreed the Feast of Saint John for the cross-taking. The only consolation, and it was cold comfort indeed, lay in the fact that at least Murdo was not alone in his misery.
    Indeed, the entire church was full and so was the yard outside—full of men and women of rank, as well as merchants and tenants of various holdings large and small, from many of Orkney’s low-scattered isles: hundreds of islanders in clutches and knots, all of them kneeling, like himself, heads down, faces almost touching the clammy stone, intoning their dull responses in a low, mumbled drone. Murdo imagined they were each and every one praying that the abbot would, for God’s sake, stop.
    Seeing them like this, their backs all bent, put Murdo in mind of a field of boulders, and it was all he could do to stop himself leaping up and making his escape by skipping from one humped back to the next like stepping stones. Instead, he lowered his head once more, squeezed his eyes shut, and tried not to think of the succulent roast pork and sweet ale he was missing.
    When at last the ox-brained abbot did stop, Murdo rose to his feet, almost faint with hunger. He stared glumly, forlornly ahead, as yet another black-robed cleric ascended to the pulpit high above