Read Online Devil's Lair by David Wisehart - Free Book Online Page A

And then it was gone.
    The thought of hens made him
hungry. There was little food left in the cart, and Marco was tired of living
on porridge and groats. He craved coddled eggs and a flitch of bacon.
    He also needed better
clothes. The tall man’s clothes were an awkward fit. The byrnie stank of a
corpse. The belt worried his sunburn. The boots were bloody and tighter than
torture. If the cottars were home, Marco would ask politely for a hot meal and
fresh supplies; if they were away, he would take what he needed and continue
north.
    The house looked peaceful,
but Marco felt uneasy. Doors held dangers. Might someone else be waiting
inside? These hills must be teaming with outlaws. Marco wished he had better interrogated those men at
the bridge, especially the one who ran off. Be
smart, he thought, and decided to
investigate the surround before he knocked.
    Marco stopped the cart short
of the house and tethered the donkey to the bole of a young oak. With the
friar’s belt he secured the poet to one wheel, then ordered the old man to
climb into the cart and tied him back-to-back with the girl, making sure their
wrists were held fast together.
    “Not a sound,” he said,
leaving the punishment implied.
    With the dead man’s sword in
his right hand and the dagger in his belt, Marco stepped off the road, into the
forest, and went slinking toward the cottage.
     
    William sat in the cart with
his back to Nadja’s back, their hands tied together. The rope bit into his
wrists as Nadja struggled to free herself. He looked over his shoulder to gauge
her progress. Nadja’s fingers curled and brushed against the knot. She twisted
her hands to create more slack. She held her breath, grunted, then sighed with
frustration. Catching her breath, she tried again.
    Glancing down over the
sideboard, William saw Giovanni struggling to untie the Franciscan belt that
trussed him to the wheel. In forty years that belt, made of tough English hemp,
had lost little of its strength. Giovanni would soon discover for himself that
the cord was stronger than the wheel. Marco had looped the rope around the
felly and three spokes. Giovanni could get free if he tore out the spokes and
snapped the felly, but if the wheel broke from the axle, William and Nadja
would tumble to the road. The girl might get hurt. Would they be able to repair
the wheel? Unlikely. They needed to keep it intact if they hoped to arrive at
Lake Averus with all of their supplies. If they wanted to escape, they were
going about it the wrong way.
    William was not inclined to
escape. He had traveled too far in search of the last Knight Templar to flee
him now. William did not trust the knight, but he did not have to. He trusted
God. This journey back to Rome was unforeseen, but if God allowed it there must
be a reason.
    Marco was a harsh man, but
William did not think him evil. The knight had not raped the girl, who he
obviously liked, nor murdered the poet, who he clearly despised. Marco was
wounded, addled, unsure of his surroundings. He did not seem to know himself.
His impulses were violent, but he seemed capable of regret. In time the warrior
might be gentled, the mercenary reformed. Marco’s injuries would heal. He would
find his better self. It was William’s charge to show him the way.
    As Nadja struggled with the
rope, William’s hands purpled. His fingers numbed. If the girl persisted, they
would both lose their extremities.
    There is another way, he thought. He could use the glass
lentil. Roger Bacon had discovered, and William had confirmed, that sunlight
focused through the lentil to a single point burned hot enough to kindle fire.
Just as Archimedes had focused sunlight with a giant mirror to burn the Roman
ships at Syracuse, William might use the glass lentil to burn these knotted
ropes.
    The sunlight was inconstant,
dappling the weald in shifting patterns at the mercy of the trees and the
teasing wind. William had demonstrated the lentil’s incendiary effect to