Free Camulod Chronicles Book 8 - Clothar the Frank by Jack Whyte Page A

begun adapting its design to protect themselves in the saddle, reshaping and extending the blanket so that one flap of it could cover their legs. My father had taken the adaptation one step further, fashioning a kind of divided skirt that covered him from waist to ankle, separate from the cataphractus itself but serving the same purpose for the rider that the armoured blanket served for the horse he rode. The resultant leggings were little more than hanging flaps of ring mail, leather panels held in place by a thick belt and encrusted with thousands upon thousands of tiny rings of bronze, sewn to overlap each other thickly enough to deflect a sword blade or a spear point, but they could be laced at knee and ankle to wrap around and cover the vulnerable parts of a rider's legs. It was obvious to me that before I entered his quarters that day he had already started to remove his leggings, for the laces at both knees and ankles hung free, and the belt tongue threaded through the heavy bronze buckle at his waist had been pulled through on one side, then left hanging. He had removed his scabbarded sword belt, too—it was worn over the belted leggings—and hooked it over the back of his chair.
    As I watched him, thinking he had already lost awareness of my being there, he crossed one arm in front of his chest to support the other, drew back his upper lip in a rictus of frowning thought, and began to tap the back of one fingernail against his upper teeth. The sound of it carried clearly to me, and I listened as the tempo of his tapping increased, then stopped. He sniffed sharply, then sighed and looked up at me, sweeping me from head to toe with his eyes before turning away to gaze out of the window.
    "You look like a casualty. Mud, blood and crusted dirt. Your mother's going to be very pleased with you."
    I gazed at his back, unsure whether to speak and trying to gauge how angry he was with me. He hadn't sounded angry. But before I could respond he spoke again, still facing the garden.
    "You're ten years old now, boy, more than halfway to manhood and big for your age. Do you think you'll ever make a decent man?" He didn't wait for a reply this time, but swung back to face me. "Chulderic thought you would, until today, but now he's not so sure. And from what he has told me, I have to wonder, too." He gazed at me for three long, pounding heartbeats, then closed his eyes, leaving his face expressionless. "Now tell me, do I need to wonder? What happened out there?"
    My face was crimson, my chest crushed with shame.
    "I got into a fight."
    He opened his eyes wide and raised one eyebrow high. I did not know the word sardonic at the time, but I recognized the expression on his face.
    "I know that. You against three others, bigger and older than you. You won. That's not what worries Chulderic. He's the one who taught you to fight, and he might have been proud of you. But he tells me that when everything was over, and you had thrashed all three of them, you went wild and tried to kill the biggest one. Frotto, is it?"
    When I nodded, he frowned. "Aye. Well, Chulderic is my Master-at-Arms, and a fighter born and bred, not some terrified old woman. He says you stopped, stepped back, chased off the other two and then went after the big one again, even though there was no fight left in the fellow. Chulderic believes you were trying to kill him. He says he yelled at you and you ignored him. He says that if he hadn't torn you away and thrown you down you would have smashed the boy's head in. So you tell me, now, the truth. Is Chulderic lying?"
    I shook my head, trying to swallow the lump in my throat and blinking my eyes fiercely to stem the tears that threatened to spill out of me. "No," I whispered, almost choking as I tried to speak. "But I wasn't trying to kill him . . . I only wanted to beat him badly, to teach him a lesson."
    My father's eyes narrowed to slits. "Why? And what lesson?"
    'To keep his big mouth shut and stop telling those lies