Free Fortress of Mist by Sigmund Brouwer Page A

nearby oaks.
    Thomas stared with horror at the three men. The brand marks nearly spanned the width of each chest. The burned flesh stood raised with pus, a long way from the healing that would eventually leave ugly white scars.
    Thomas sucked in a breath.
    Each brand showed the strange symbol.
    “Who … who …”
    “Who did this?” the Earl of York finished for Thomas.
    Thomas nodded. He fought the urge to glance at the earl’s hand to confirm what he didn’t want to believe. The symbol that matched the earl’s ring. A symbol that had been burned into the grass between two white bulls’ heads, adding to the mysteriousness of bulls’ hooves arranged in a circle. The symbol of conspiracy.
    “It is impossible to tell who did this to these men,” the Earl of Yorkanswered his own question. “Impossible to understand why they have been left for us to find.”
    “Impossible?” Thomas could barely concentrate. “Already the forces of darkness gather …”
    “Yes. Impossible. Their tongues have been removed.” The earl shook his head sadly. “Poor men. And of course they cannot write. We shall feed them, rest them, and let them return to their homes.”
    Could the Earl of York be this fine an actor to stand in front of these tortured men and pretend he had no part of the symbol? Or was his ring simply a bizarre coincidence?
    The earl wiped his face clean of sweat.
    His ring. Gone.
    A tiny band of white marked where the earl had worn it.
    Thomas shook off the feeling of being utterly alone.

S urprisingly, Frederick—Frederick the Fat, as Thomas silently called him—proved to be a gracious loser.
    “This snot-nose has the teeth of a dragon,” he toasted at the council of war that evening.
    “Hear, hear,” the others responded.
    Again, the light of countless campfires spread like flashing diamonds through the valley. Still four days away from the lowland plains and any chance of battle, the army had not dug in behind palisades, and tents were still pitched far enough apart so that neighbors did not have to stumble over neighbors as they searched for firewood or water.
    Thomas accepted the compliment with equal graciousness. “As you rightly guessed,” he said to Frederick, “the power lies within the bows, not the archers.”
    “Still,” Frederick countered, “the Earl of York has again proven his wisdom. I erred to judge you on age or experience.”
    Thomas shrugged. Not necessarily from modesty, but rather because the idea for the ingenious modification of the bows had simply been taken straight from his hidden library.
    As described within one of his ancient books, running the length of the inside of each bow, Thomas had added a strip of wide, thin bronze, giving more strength than the firmest wood. His biggestdifficulty had been finding a drawstring that would not snap under the strain of such a powerful bow.
    “But such archery will prove little in this battle.” An earl sitting beside Frederick interrupted Thomas in his thoughts. “You have only twenty bows with such a capacity for distance.”
    Thomas laughed. “Do the Scots know that? They will only understand arrows suddenly reaching them from an unheard-of distance long beyond their own range. Even if they knew our shortage of these bows, each man on the opposing line still realizes it only takes one arrow to pierce his heart. Surely there is benefit in that.”
    “Yes.” Another earl sipped his broth, then continued in support of Thomas. “The man we have dubbed Sir Snot-Nose …”
    General laughter. Thomas knew immediately it was a name of affection and honor. He smiled in return.
    “Sir Snot-Nose earlier spoke of battle tactics that interest me keenly. I see clearly that even a few of these bows can affect warfare.”
    The Earl of York strode to the campfire as that statement ended.
    All rose in respect.
    “You do well, Sir Steven, to make mention of the tactics of war,” the Earl of York said grimly in response. “I have just