Free Crown of the Realm (A White Knight Adventure Book 2) by Jude Chapman Page B

standing. A sleeve facilely wiped the sputum away. Then his fist did its methodical work. When Drake raised his head, gasping for air, he stared blankly at his invisible enemy.
    “Say it. Say his name. You know he is there, waiting to hear you speak.”
    He shifted blinded eyes to the other man, struggling silently and violently beyond the veil. With a single shake of his head, Drake refused.
    “If you don’t say it, I will cut off a finger. His.”
    He vainly tried to shrug off the locking fists. A sword rang lethally from its scabbard. The wait dragged on. There was nothing else for it. He licked his lips and tentatively said, “Stephen?”
    “Drake!” Stephen yelled out.
    Greek fire consumed twin souls. Drake shot out of the chair and tried to reach his brother. Using his weight, his elbows, his legs, he exploded with an unpredictability meant to create upheaval. Create upheaval he did, connecting more than once. Across the unreachable barrier, Stephen foisted an equally mettlesome fight. Pottery crashed. A chair and then a table toppled. A body thudded to the floor . A defeated grunt followed. Captive inside his cage, the bird squawked and flapped its wings.
    The fight was lost from the very beginning. Stephen, like Drake, was routed by overwhelming numbers.
    “Take him away!” the cultured voice said.
    “Stephen!” Drake yelled. “Aveline!”
    Amid muffled grunts and shuffling footsteps, Stephen was spirited away.
    Drake struggled to escape his bonds. Fought to break free of the iron fists that held him fast to his chair. Strained to see through the entrapping blindfold, more confining than the ropes ensnaring his arms. On the rise and fall of his breath, a pathetic mewling cleft the air. On and on it went, nothing to stop it, not even the well-met slap of a hand across his mouth. Drake grasped, sickeningly, that the depraved noise was coming from him. He bent his head into his hands, bound before him, and stifled the sound.
    Restless feet meandered. Drake sensed the jerk of a head. The coercive hands withdrew. Spur-jangled footsteps pounded out of the salle. One knight remained, shifting restlessly from foot to foot. Drake waited, attentive. His adversary strolled a short distance away, the ambergris spiraling from his clothes like noxious fumes. Liquid was poured into two goblets. The returning footsteps brought the rim of one of the vessels to his lips. Reaching up his hands, Drake upended the cup and drank.
    As if disinterested in the wine and the circumstances, the gentleman settled himself in a chair and sipped idly from his own cup. “ Alors ,” he finally said, “you see the predicament in which you have been placed.” He spoke in the langue d’oïl , the mother tongue of France.
    For the past weeks, Drake had grown accustomed to speaking in the Norman-French dialect. Or in the lenga d’oc, the tongue of the Aquitaine, of troubadours, and of his king. Drake answered in that same tongue now. “You want something. Something I don’t wish to give.”
    The nobleman translated swiftly and answered in his native language. “ Bon, vous comprenez .” The goblet slid to a perch on the table separating them. “You are to assassinate your king.”
    Drake held his breath.
    “You understand?”
    “I understand my brother’s life hangs in the balance.”
    He sat back. “ Bon , let it be so. You wish more wine?”
    “I wish a feast.”
    “Regrettably, I cannot accommodate.” The nobleman rose and paced. Drake followed him with unseeing eyes.
    “Further, you are to make it seem as if you are a lone madman. Which you are, n’est-ce pas ? You have had angry words with Richard, we are aware. You are enraged over his presumptions, are you not? It is so. Vengeance is to be yours and yours alone.”
    He refilled Drake’s cup to the brim. Drake flung it away. The drinking vessel clanged across the floor. Wine dribbled audibly.
    “ C’est dommage . A waste of good wine.”
    “Let it be so.”
    The