Free The Orphan King by Sigmund Brouwer Page A

of determination on your face. What do you have in mind?”
    Thomas shrugged. “Something I have been planning over many months.”
    “And something you obviously don’t intend to share with me?”
    “We’re hungry,” Thomas said. He pointed at a woman roasting a pig by turning it slowly over glowing coals. “I’m sure the boy and the girl would like some of that.”
    “Ah, so I’ve become a servant?”
    “I’ll be happy to get the food. After I’ve returned.”
    “We’ll wait then,” William said. Nothing in his voice betrayed how he felt about Thomas’s curt statements.
    Thomas wasn’t too concerned about how the knight felt, however. This was not where he needed the knight.
    Without hesitation, he continued to his destination, where he found the farrier, a burly, bearded man, beside a black horse roped to a post. The man had raised the horse’s hind foot so that the hoof faced the sky. The hoof rested on the man’s thigh, and he was pounding nails into a horseshoe.
    Thomas waited until the man finished.
    “Aye?” the farrier grunted.
    “I’d like to buy a pair of horses,” Thomas said.
    “Aye?” This time, surprise filled the man’s face, and he examined Thomas more closely, looking him up and down. “And I’d like to buy a castle, myself. Now that we’ve shared each other’s dreams, what would you really like?”
    “A pair of horses,” Thomas repeated. He started to reach inside his shirt for his pouch of coins to prove he had enough gold, but someone grabbed his arm from behind.
    “Ignore the dolt,” William told the farrier. “He’s been touched in the head ever since a horse kicked him as a boy.” He laughed. “It’s probably why he wants so badly to have one or two for himself. To deliver a few kicks in return.”
    “Let go,” Thomas said, trying to pull himself loose. He was astonished at the knight’s strength and at the futility of his attempt. “I have plenty of gold!”
    “Certainly I’ll let go,” William said in a laughing voice. “Once I have you back where you belong.” He shook his head at the farrier. “He’s a nice enough boy but suffers delusions that make it difficult on his mother.”
    The farrier grinned in return. “Better your problem than mine.” He stepped to the other side of the horse and lifted the other hind foot.
    William kept what appeared to be a friendly arm on Thomas’s shoulder and moved him away, well out of earshot. Then he hissed, “Want us all arrested?”
    “I want two horses,” Thomas said. He shook himself loose. Rather, it seemed as though William allowed him to shake loose. “It will cut our travel time in half.”
    “Or perhaps now that you have more gold than you can spend, you want the status that comes with sitting on a horse as all the peasants scatter out of your way?”
    Thomas fought a tinge of guilt. He had pictured himself in a noble posture atop a horse’s back. After years of enduring harsh treatment by the monks, didn’t he deserve the elevation that would come with a horse?
    “I don’t need you to lecture me,” Thomas said.
    “How about to give you some perspective that will save your life?”
    “I—”
    “You don’t have a choice in this. I won’t tell you what to decide. Ever. But you’d better have as many facts as possible before you make a choice. So my role will be to supply you with facts that you don’t have. After that, if you prefer suicide, I’ll not stop you.”
    “Suicide? That’s a harsh—”
    “Suicide. First, we had agreed that it was a risk to travel through towns. All of us are fugitives, after all.”
    “I’m no fugitive.”
    “No? What’s a judge going to say after discovering that you assisted the escape of three people condemned to the gallows? You’re as stuck with us as we are stuck with you.”
    Thomas had no reply to this.
    “And you were about to flash a year’s wages of gold in front of that farrier. Think that wouldn’t get some gossip going? Then he’d