Read Online Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims by Toby Clements - Free Book Online Page B

face. The canon tries to pull away but the giant is too strong. He seems to stroke his cheek and look into his eyes and then he places his thumb over the canon’s eyeball. The canon screams.
    Without thinking Katherine leaves the stones and rushes the last few paces to the boat and, with all her remaining strength, she brings the ferryman’s pole down on the back of the giant’s head. It makes a crack she feels in her knees.
    The giant lets the canon go and stands, as if he has just thought of something he ought to do. He turns and looks down at her. He is confused.
    She takes a step back, lifts the pole again. The giant takes a step towards her. He stretches his hands out. She is about to bring it down on him when his face seems to go blank, his eyes roll up into his head, he cants to one side, staggers, then slips, and finally falls to the ground.
    After a moment he is still.
    The canon is gasping, muttering some prayer, his hands clapped over his eyes. After a moment he stops, removes his hands and now he too looks at her. Then he lifts himself to peer down at the giant’s body.
    ‘Is he dead?’ she asks.
    The canon gets up and looks at the giant more closely.
    ‘I don’t think so,’ he says.
    She is only partly relieved. There is a pause. A breeze has picked up. The rainclouds have retreated, and the sky is a scrim of white clouds again. They look to the walls of the priory, then at each other.
    ‘Are you expelled?’ he asks.
    Katherine nods.
    ‘I was seen talking to you,’ she says.
    She looks back at the priory. Three figures have appeared in the canons’ beggars’ gateway, one limping, coming down towards them. All are carrying swords. The men from the day before.
    ‘Brother?’ she points.
    ‘They will kill us this time,’ he says. He stoops for the giant’s axe. It is a fearsome thing: four feet of chamfered oak pole with long steel points at both ends, its axe blade balanced by a vicious pick. It is crusted with dried blood, as if dipped in brown lace, and it looks oddly light in his hands.
    ‘You cannot fight them,’ she says. ‘Not three of them, not even with that thing.’
    ‘God is by my side,’ he says. ‘He will provide.’
    ‘Where was God when he was about to put out your eyes?’ she asks, pointing at the giant.
    The canon flinches. He stares at her open-mouthed.
    ‘Besides,’ she says, hurrying him on past her blasphemy, ‘God has provided. Look. We must take this boat. Come. Help me.’
    She slides the boat pole under the lighter’s edge and tries again to right it. Still it will not move.
    Seeing her struggle, he joins her, pushing the axe under the boat’s side and helping her lever it over, revealing grey grass and a family of dead rats. He puts the axe aside and helps shove the lighter across the mud and down into the water where the river is running high, thronging with brown meltwater, the ice long gone.
    The men from the priory are running now, down across the furlong. They are shouting.
    He stands with his feet in the water and holds the boat steady while she throws in the pole and then clambers in after it.
    ‘Come!’ she says, holding out a hand. ‘Come!’
    Still he hesitates. Is he mad?
    ‘You cannot fight three,’ she shouts. ‘They will kill you! Then me! They’ll kill us both. Come!’
    This decides him. He collects the axe and slides it into the boat. Then he launches himself in after it, sending the boat out into the rolling current. The boat staggers, dips as if it will sink, then rises and spins in the water.
    The men are near now. She can see their expressions. One has blood on his face. They are shouting. They run past the giant and the one in a white shirt comes down the bank and wades into the water up to his thighs. They are too late and they know it. The man in the water smacks its surface in frustration.
    The canon plunges the boat pole into the water and heaves, sending the boat off into the current as the two men on the bank start following