LITMIR.BIZ

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thundering into view along the forest road, they saw their quarry dismounted—the man bent above the near fore hoof of the gray mare as if to fix its shoe, the woman crying out and pointing, turning to flee.

      Sight of the man made Aymon stand in his stirrups and wave his sword. Sight of the woman caused his hot-blooded companions to forget everything but her long yellow hair and the tantalizing glimpses of white flesh that gleamed through her torn garments.

      The knight was aiming a downward stroke with his blade when Jean whirled and leaped for the headstall of his mount, shouting, “À Valois for vengeance! À Valois for vengeance!”

      The horse reared high. Men exploded from the forests on both sides of the road, daggers in their hands and hot greed in their eyes. The road became a confusion of shouts and stabbings. Riderless horses went plunging through the melee, one or two dragging the corpses of their recent masters along the ground.

      The Sieur Aymon rasped curses but was unable to still the frightened dancings of his horse. The man clinging to the bridle was darting this way and that, avoiding the thrusts of his blade, reaching up powerful hands to clasp them on boot top and breeches, yanking sideways overbalancing him.

      Étienne Aymon gave a loud cry as he felt the saddle slipping out from under him. He sought to ward off the wild-eyed stranger whom he was beginning to suspect was Asmodeus come up from hellfire to slay him. He screamed and struggled when those fingers wrapped about his throat.

      “For your murderous lusts, seigneur!” a voice panted at him. “For your foul treachery! For your lack of manhood, which made you call for help in an affair of honor!”

      Madness rode Jean le Batard in this moment of his revenge. His fingers sank deep into soft flesh. His powerful arms bore the full weight of his body down on his enemy. Only when Étienne Aymon lay limp and lifeless under him did he roll free and kneel dazed and trembling in the bloody dirt.

      Simone touched him with a hand.

      “Jean—the hairy man!”

      His glazed eyes rose to find the bandits motionless, the dead bodies of the young hotbloods stripped and bare at their feet. Their eyes touched their leader, who was advancing slowly with a bared sword in his hand.

      Jean moved his eyes this way and that before he caught sight of the Sieur Aymon’s fallen sword. His hand caught it up. The haft felt familiar; with a thrill of recognition he knew the Missiglia blade. At least Aymon had understood good steel when he saw it, he thought, and braced himself.

      The hairy man charged, point ripping through the air to disembowel. Jean swung. Sparks flew as steel met steel. The bandit leader cursed, but Jean wasted no time in words. His arm completed its swing. Now his blade towered straight up into the air, a glittering length of death.

      The brute screamed.

      The steel sheared into his bare poll, splitting his skull with an overhand molinello. He crumpled and lay twitching in muscular spasms for several moments.

      Jean stared at him, then looked around at the dumb faces of the riffraff. Awe and fear looked back at him from those brute features, together with an emotion that seemed very much out of place among such clapperclaws as these. After a moment Jean knew it for pride.

      “You made us rich, seigneur!”

      “Oui! You shall be our chief!”

      “There’s none can stand against us wi’ you showing the way.”

      Simone was warm against his arm, pressing close. “They’re telling you that you can give them their manhood back, Jean,” she whispered. “Most of them used to be soldiers, I gather from what little I heard of their talk while you fought.”

      He snorted, “What need have I for leadership of such a pack? As well aspire to lead wolves.”

      When he would have moved toward the black gelding, he found his way blocked. They were respectful but stubborn. Their hands stretched out, pleading. In their eyes he saw shame and guilt for sins without number, for murder, rape and torture.

      “Lead us! Lead us!”

      “We be your men. You won us in fair fight.”

      “Killed Pol, you did. You take his place!”

      Half of them wore the rotting skins of beasts, the other half were clad in little more than their own hides, hairy and unwashed. They clasped crude weapons—a knotted club, a rusted scythe blade, a barnyard ax. And yet Jean fancied that he saw, deep in their eyes, a tiny flicker of pride, lost amid the years of murder and rapine, that said these were men, not animals.

      In anger at himself he cursed softly. “What do you want of me?” he shouted, counting heads. There were more than forty of them, each man seemingly more ragged and less human than the next. Lead such as these to pillage and steal? He shuddered.

      “I fought at Beauge,” a man called out.

      “And I at Verneuil!”

      “This stump of wrist I came by at Agincourt ten years ago,” yelled a third, waving a handless arm over his head.

      A tall man, lean with starvation but with a twinkle in his eyes, slipped to the fore. “We all be soldiers, lord. When there was no more fighting, we went home and found our homes burned, our wives and children slain. There was none to care for us. We had to care for ourselves as best we could.”

      “And you stole and raped.”

      The thin man grinned wryly. “It was the only way we knew. When we went to till our lands, the English and Burgundians came and whipped us, driving us off.”

      “What do men call you?”

      “Jean, lord. Jean of Lorraine.”

      The Bastard grunted and looked at Simone. Her hands were idly braiding a strand of thick yellow hair, but he saw pity in her face.

      His voice raised above the mutterings. “All right, all right. I’ll lead you if you want to be led. Where’s your camp?”

      “In the deep woods, lord, where none but us can go.”

      Jean shrugged and turned to Simone. “At least we can rest for the night in safety,” he told her. “Tomorrow we’ll worry about everything else.”

      His cupped hands made a rest for her foot as she swung up on the gray mare. The blue velvet kirtle she had donned so proudly in the bedchamber of the Inn of the Gray Mule hung in tatters from her shoulders. Jean could see one pale breast in its entirety and a smoothly rounded hip where a dagger had slashed the velvet.

      “We left so suddenly I had no time to bring other clothes,” she murmured, trying to pull the bodice together.

      “I’m not complaining,” he grinned, and slid his palm along her smooth thigh. She did not push his hand away but only laughed, softly and provocatively.

      The brigands lead the way on silent feet, moving like shadows between the tree boles. Overhead the moon was a yellow fruit, glimpsed between tree branches. An aura of fantasy held Jean in its grip. He swayed to the movement of the gelding, staring at the bare heads and shoulders of the men who surrounded him, wondering a little at the fate that had brought him so far from his estates in Dauphiné to this lonely Brie forest. Just beyond the bobbing head of his mount rode a woman he had not know a week ago, a woman whom he had passed off as his wife, who did not resent the casual manner in which he stroked her naked thigh.

      He wondered about Marie Louvet.

      And if he would ever see her again.

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