The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [124]
“My father might well be the wrong master,” Berimund said. “But the holy Church is behind us.”
“You think you can trust the Church?”
“Yes. But even if I couldn’t, there is someone I do trust. Someone very dear to me. And I know we have to fight your daughter.”
“Then we are enemies, Berimund.”
“Yes, we are. But we shall be civil ones, yes? We shall behave honorably.”
“You’re still hung over,” Muriele said.
“Indeed. And as soon as possible I shall cure that by being drunk.”
“And your men?”
“My wulfbrothars. I’ve known them all since childhood. Our first oaths are all to one another. None of them will betray me.”
Muriele nodded, but in her mind’s eye she saw Robert watching her being led off and the words he had mouthed at her. She hadn’t caught them then, but now with sudden clarity she knew what he had been saying:
I’ll see you soon.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE COMMANDER
ACREDO’S POINT struck the knight just below the gorget and slipped up beneath the helm. Helped by the man’s reflex of throwing his head back, the weapon lodged in his throat. Cazio let his elbow bend as the blade struck home, but the shock was still terrific. The knight flipped back out of the saddle, and Cazio, helpless to control his flight, followed him to the ground.
He hit hard on his off-weapon hand and used it to tumble head over heels, but he had too much momentum and ended up rolling four times before he could come back up on his feet. When he did, he turned unsteadily to meet his fate, Acredo still in his hand.
But the other knights weren’t paying much attention to him. The men swarming out of the woods were filling them full of arrows or stabbing at them with pikes, and that seemed to have distracted them.
He recognized them then. They were what remained of the troops Anne had given him to invest Dunmrogh.
He checked the fellow he had hit and found him without breath, then watched Anne’s soldiers finish off the knights. He rubbed his shoulder, which hurt as if Lord Aita were racking it in his halls of punishment. He wondered if it was dislocated.
Z’Acatto peered up from the front of the carriage.
“What are you doing back there?” he asked.
“A lot more than I needed to, it appears,” he replied.
“Nothing new there.”
A few moments later, one of the men came over and doffed his helm, revealing a seamed face with a long white scar across the forehead and a nose that looked like it had been broken a few times. Cazio recognized him as a fellow named Jan something or other.
“That was timely,” Cazio said. “Many thanks.”
“It was at that,” Jan said, his tone cool. “We reckoned you dead, Sir Cazio.”
“I’m not a knight,” he pointed out.
“No? I reckon you’re not, are you? But we were put in your charge.”
“Yes, and look how well I did for you,” Cazio said. “I led you straight into a trap.”
Jan nodded. Some more of the men were walking up.
“Yeah, you did, didn’t you?” another of them agreed, an older, nearly bald fellow with thick features. “Near half of us are dead or missing. Playing sausage with Her Majesty don’t make you a commander, does it?”
Cazio’s hand twitched on Acredo’s hilt. “I’ll agree I’m no commander, but you’ll take that back about Queen Anne, and you’ll do it now.”
The man spit. “Pig guts, I will,” he snarled. “If you want—”
“Easy, Hemm,” Jan said. “No good dragging the queen into this.”
“She put us here as much as he did,” Hemm said.
Cazio lifted his weapon toward the guard. “Take it back.”
The men had surrounded him.
“You’ll take us all, then, with your fancy little sword?” Hemm asked.
“I’ll certainly kill you,” Cazio promised.
“And I’ll help him kill the rest of you,” z’Acatto’s voice said sharply from outside the circle. “Are you pigs or soldiers?”
Hemm looked puzzled. “Pigs or soldiers?” he repeated. Then his face lit up oddly, and he spun toward the old man. “Emrature? Cassro dachi Purcii?”
“Ah, zmierda,” z’Acatto swore.
“It is you,” Hemm said.
“Sodding saints, it is!” another gray-haired soldier agreed. “Older and uglier than ever.”
“You