Wars of the Roses: Bloodline: Book 3 (The Wars of the Roses) by Conn Iggulden Read Free Book Online Page B

no longer tied, but then there was no need.
    When he had first encountered the king’s simple innocence, Warwick had wondered for a time if the man was gulling him, so perfectly did Henry play his part. Five years before, there had been tales of the young king returning from his sleeping state with something like a man’s vigour. Warwick shrugged at the thought. If it had been so once, it was not so any longer. As he stared, some noise caught the king’s attention. Henry gripped the earth in his hands and watched the bustle around him in fascination. Warwick knew if he approached, Henry would ask questions and appear to understand the answers, but no spark of will could make him rise from a spot once he was settled. He was a broken thing. Warwick might even have felt pity once, if that amiable child had not caused the death of his father. As it was, he knew only a cold scorn. The house of Lancaster did not deserve a throne, not if Henry was all they had to put on it.
    Warwick turned his horse with a gentle clicking in his cheek and a twitch of the reins. He had seen three figures riding along the edge of the camp and trotted to intercept them. Two of the group were his brother John and their uncle Fauconberg, Neville men wedded to the cause. The third was less of a rock than Warwick might have desired, though de Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, had done nothing to excite his suspicion. Still, the man outranked him and was his senior by a decade. It was true Norfolk had a Neville mother, but the same had been true for the Percy brothers – and they had chosen to support King Henry. Warwicksighed to himself. War made strange allies. For Norfolk’s rank and experience, Warwick had given him the prestigious right wing, standing slightly ahead of the rest of the army in the great staggered line of squares. Of course, it was a coincidence that Norfolk would meet the enemy first in the vanguard. If the duke planned anything like treachery, he would do least damage there and still allow Warwick to fight a desperate defence from further back.
    Warwick shook his head a fraction as the three men reined in. His father’s death had stolen some of the joy from the entire world, tainting things he had once taken for granted, without question. The old man’s absence was a hole in his life, a loss so great he had not done more than peer over the edges of it. Warwick looked at friends and allies, looked even at brothers and uncles – and saw only how they might betray him.
    He inclined his head courteously to William, Lord Fauconberg, but the man walked his horse closer, extending his arm until Warwick was forced to grip it and then drawing them together into a stiff embrace. It did not give Warwick pleasure to see aspects of his father’s face in his uncle. It made the man hard to look upon, and there was always a smouldering resentment when Fauconberg talked intimately of his older brother, almost claiming some ownership out of his much longer knowledge. In some effort to comfort the sons, Fauconberg had told many tales of their father’s childhood, but none of them trusted his versions without their father to confirm or deny the truth of them. In Warwick’s eyes, his uncle was the lesser man. The three sons all honoured him in public, but Fauconberg assumed a far greater love from his nephews than they felt themselves.
    Warwick could sense the man’s dark-eyed gaze on him at that moment, like a hand touching his face. He had not particularly minded Fauconberg before, but since his father’s death, wet-eyed Uncle William could drive him to rage with his mawkish pity and his damned touching.
    Seeing thunder gathering in Warwick, John Neville reached out and clapped Fauconberg roughly on the shoulder. The brothers had agreed the gesture as a signal of private irritation, to be made when one or the other could not bear their uncle’s pale reflection of their father any longer. Fauconberg took it all in good stead, of course, assuming he