Free The Last Crusaders: The Great Siege by William Napier

sword and scabbard indeed. Not the fine rapier of a court fop to impress his lady, but a weighty broadsword very much made for use. He rested his hand lightly on the gilded pommel, and with his other hand drew back his hood a little. His eyes were darkly bloodshot.
    ‘I say,’ said the first, ‘the boys should be let loose, for the sake of Christian mercy. And the hanged one should be cut down and buried, for shame.’
    The crowd stared agog, pressing closer – but not too close. An air of danger hung over the two horsemen like mist over a river.
    One of the sturdy constables standing nearby must have tried some trick at this moment, but the response was so fast that none ever knew what it was. With a bull-roar that seemed to shake the windowpanes, the blackbeard neatly side-stepped his horse, slipped his booted foot from the stirrup and thumped it like a battering ram into the constable’s chest. The fellow staggered back over the cobbles and then collapsed, desperately trying to suck air into his shocked lungs.
    Blackbeard whipped out his sword and stationed his huge mount over the man’s prostrate body. Like all horses it hated to tread on a living creature, delicately setting its vast fringed hooves on either side of the fellow. Blackbeard leaned over to his right and dangled his swordpoint above the constable’s belly as he lay there winded and terrified, looking up at the huge beast that shadowed him.
    ‘Now don’t stir,’ murmured Blackbeard. ‘And the rain won’t wet you down there. Though the horse may piss on you.’
    In perfect unison, the fair one had also drawn his sword from his scabbard once again, and was holding the gleaming steel point anunwavering hair’s breadth from Crake’s thin white throat.
    ‘I say again,’ he said pleasantly, ‘that the boys should be let go.’
    Without further discussion, Blackbeard kicked his horse forward over the fallen constable, touching not a hair of his head. He slipped the point of his sword flat between the ropes and the boys’ wrists. One false move and such a blade would have opened a red flood from their veins. But not this swordsman. A sharp twist and the rope was cut, then the next. The boys dropped and staggered back from the cart, shaking their numb hands gingerly. It was their backs that burned with pain.
    Blackbeard speared their shirts in the carts with his swordpoint and tossed them over.
    ‘You,’ said the fairhead to Crake. ‘Strip.’
    ‘You will not live to see another—’
    The swordpoint pricked his throat as delicately as a needle. ‘I said strip. And let’s have no idle threats to accompany your disrobing.’
    Eyes black with hatred, Crake removed his cloak and his doublet.
    ‘More. Much more.’
    He removed his shirt and then his linen undershirt and showed his white body. Some women tittered, some looked away.
    ‘Still more. As bare as a beggar on the heath.’
    Eventually the shivering Justice was reduced to nothing but his underwhittles. Only the swordpoint at his throat prevented him from speaking his mind, coursing with direst promises.
    The boys got up behind the riders, Nicholas behind Edward Stanley, Hodge behind Smith.
    ‘This is going to hurt you,’ murmured Stanley over his shoulder. ‘But we need to shift. Hold on.’ Nicholas gritted his teeth.
    Stanley’s voice rang out once more. ‘Good people! You have a worm for a Justice. A white and trembling worm. Her Majesty’s representative? Her Majesty deserves better. You should petition her in such terms. Meanwhile, you will see us no more. Our business is elsewhere.’
    He and Smith pulled their giant horses around, and the crowd parted before them like the Red Sea before Moses.

8
     
    They cantered out of town, the heavy horses needing whipping over the hard streets, the boys trembling with pain at the jolting. They crossed a wild range of rocky hills and put many miles between them and the town, finding cover in woodland before Stanley pulled up.
    ‘Tell