Free The Templar Inheritance by Mario Reading Page B

knew it. Neither cared.
    Two weeks into their alpine crossing, somewhere near the Brenner Pass, the column was attacked by Italian banditti . Despite the explicitness of his indulgences, Hartelius had somehow managed to maintain the loyalty of his knights. Perhaps it was the otherworldliness of his infatuation? The near sanctity of his position as the Lance carrier? For whatever reason, his Templar knights fought nobly, despite the odds against them. The banditti were guerrilla fighters – mountain men. Used to dealing with merchants and their wagon trains. Soft targets.
    The knights drove them off for the loss of seven of their number. Fifteen camp followers were also killed, and two of the women stolen, including one of the princess’s handmaidens.
    At one point in the skirmish, Hartelius had placed himself in front of the princess’s pavilion, burning tents all around him, the dead and dying calling on God to save them, and had raised his sword high above his head, as a Viking berserker will, and had run at the approaching enemy, with no thought for his own life, but only that of the princess.
    Three banditti had marked him out – men used to fighting as a team – but they had wilted beneath Hartelius’s onslaught. They had merely been seeking booty – their souls were not involved in the fight. To Hartelius, death was a small price to pay for his annexation of another man’s intended bride. He left it up to God whether he would live or die. The lengths of the odds he faced seemed somehow apposite.
    He killed first one, then another of his assailants. Twice he was struck from behind, but his chainmail deflected the blows. A third time he was caught on the neck, near the trapezius muscle. He felt his arm go limp, and switched hands, as he had so often trained himself to do. The third bandito , sensing weakness, attacked low. Hartelius parried and dropped to one knee. He made as if to fall forwards and the bandito lunged. Hartelius feinted to one side and the man hesitated for one fatal second, uncertain what was happening. Hartelius scythed anti-clockwise with his sword arm and cut the bandito ’s leg to the bone. The bandito fell and Hartelius lunged across the man’s upper body, his sword nethermost. The dead weight of him as he dropped, confident that his chainmail would protect him from his own sword edge, was enough to almost sever the man in two. Hartelius lay on top of his assailant. He could feel the blood pulsing from his neck wound onto the ground.
    He rolled away and tried to rise to one knee, but he could not. The princess ran from the safety of her pavilion, a dagger held out before her. She crouched by Hartelius and feverishly searched his body for wounds. His eyes were wild with looking for other assailants. Two of his knights, seeing their commander down and their princess out in the open and with no cover, made a shield round Hartelius, while the princess tried to staunch his wound.
    Later, when the skirmish died down, they carried Hartelius into the princess’s pavilion and laid him on her bed. The bleeding, by this time, had stopped, thanks to a pad the princess had made of part of her shift, which she had tightenedin place by using her dagger as a tourniquet handle and her ornamental leather belt as a strap. The bandito ’s sword cut had struck no artery, or Hartelius would have been dead. His wound was purely muscular.
    The princess, as skilled a seamstress as all young ladies at the convent were, cleaned the cut with Rhenish wine and sewed it together with Persian silk from her depository. With the aid of the two Templar knights she stripped Hartelius of his chainmail, and then later, when they were alone, she took off his cambric shirt and sheepskin breeches and climbed into bed beside him, warming his fever-ridden body against hers.
    The princess’s party remained where they were for three days, burying their dead, tending to their wounded, and regrouping. On the final day, Hartelius,