Free The Hostility of Hanno: An Outlaw Chronicles short story by Angus Donald Page A

flopped back down
     on to his cot. The shaven-headed man spoke then, a harsh unintelligible cackle, neither French nor English, nor any kind of
     local Latin – languages the young man might have comprehended. But it sounded very much like a deadly insult, or some vile
     curse.
    ‘What did you just say?’ the young man said, sitting up once again though this time with a little more care for his wounded
     middle. He had received a crossbow bolt to the lower side of his belly at a fierce battle in Cyprus more than two months before,
     and while the wound was healing under the skilled care of the Order of Hospitallers, it was still tender when forced into
     sudden movement.
    He was answered by a tall old man in a grey robe, one of the brother infirmarians of the Order, not a knight, but a learned
     physician and a skilled healer of men, who had appeared unobserved at the end of the shaven-headed man’s bed carrying a bowl
     filled with bloody water. ‘Hanno asks if you maybe have some problem with him,’ the tall man said. ‘If I were you, young Alan
     Dale, I would say no. And smile politely at the fellow as you do so.’
    ‘Why does he not speak a proper language?’ asked Alan, frowning at the hairy oaf, who was looking at him once again with a
     hostile challenge in his eyes. ‘What is that foul barbarian tongue that he yaps away in, anyway?’
    ‘I doubt he thinks his native tongue is improper. He is from the German-speaking lands, as indeed am I, and while he does
     not speak a pure form of the language – he is only a simple man from the deep forests of Bavaria, after all – I do not think
     you should call him a barbarian to his face. He is a dangerous fellow, or so I’ve gathered from the accounts of his compatriots,
     and not someone you should insult lightly.’
    ‘Well, tell him to stop glaring at me like a demon with a grudge, then.’
    The physician sighed, said something long and authoritative to Hanno, and the Bavarian backwoodsman gave a short bark of laughter
     and lay back in his cot.
    ‘You must make some allowances for him,’ said the physician. ‘Hanno is not a happy fellow; he is all alone in the world.’
    ‘With his demeanour, I can understand why his fellows shun him,’ said Alan.
    ‘No, you do not understand. His countrymen have left the Holy Land, they departed when Duke Leopold of Austria took ship for
     his homeland, but Hanno was abandoned in our care for he was too sick with fever. There were half a dozen others of his kind
     left in Acre, but they have been gathered unto the arms of our merciful Lord. Only he remains.’
    ***
    Hanno felt the thrum of pain in his leg and tried to ignore it. But the sensation had swelled like some cruel music since
     the early morning, rising into his body, up through his spine, and was now pulsing in the back of his head and across his
     shoulders. The break was mending cleanly, the physicians had told him the day before, and he had been offered milk of the
     poppy. But Hanno refused: he did not want his wits fuddled while the Chiavari brothers were on the loose in Acre. He would
     rather be in pain than be in his grave. He reached a hand up above his head, sliding it under the limp canvas pillow, and
     felt the wooden handle of the dagger that lay there. Given a heartbeat’s warning, he believed that he could make the Chiavaris,
     or any of their hirelings, regret it if they came for him in the infirmary. And after what had passed, they’d come for him
     one day, that was certain.
    He had always slept lightly, even during the worst of the fever, and yet still he did his best to resist the pull of oblivion
     as long as he could. But no man can go without sleep for ever, not even oak-tough Bavarians, and he had plunged into a vulnerable
     dreamless state the day before for more than an hour – only to be harshly awakened by a huge blond fellow quacking away far
     too loudly in the English tongue to the beardless stripling in the bed next to