Scarlet by Stephen R. Lawhead Page B

lone wounded man who had taken the arrow in his back. He lay with the dead, moaning and trying now and then to rise, but lacking the strength. I felt that sorry for the fella, I thought that if someone did not come back for him soon, I might risk putting him out of his misery. But my orders were to watch and wait, so that is what I would do until told otherwise. I kept my eyes sharp and bided my time.
    Winter twilight deepened the shadows, and the snow had been steadily melting into my cloak; the icy damp was spreading across my shoulders. As night came on, I knew I would have to leave my post soon or freeze there with the corpses on the trail.
    As I was pondering this, I heard someone approaching on the road from the dingle where the wagons had disappeared in the direction of Elfael. In a moment, a man on horseback emerged from the gathering gloom. Not a tall man, he sat his saddle straight as a rod, his head high. Across his legs was folded a deerskin robe; his hat had a thin, folded brim which was pointed in front like the sharp prow of a seagoing ship. Heavily swaddled against the winter storm, he wore a monk’s cloak of brown coarse-woven cloth secured at the throat with a thick brooch of heavy silver. Even from a distance in the failing light, I could tell he was more devil than monk: something about that narrow hatchet-shaped nose and jutting chin, the cruel slant of those close-set eyes, gave me to know that Richard de Glanville was happier with a noose in his hand than a rosary.
    He reined up at the carcase of the first dead horse, regarded it, and then slowly swept his eyes across to one of the dead knights. He observed the arrows jutting rudely from the corpses and, after due contemplation, let out a shrill whistle. I’ve heard the same when falconers call their hawks to roost and, quick enough, four riders emerged from the gloaming to join him on the road . . .
    Y es, Odo, this was the first time I laid eyes on the sheriff,” I tell him. My monkish friend knows well of whom I speak. Our sheriff is a right sharp thorn of a man and that nasty—a man who thinks frailty a fatal contagion, and considers mercy the way most folk view the Black Death.
    “If it was the first time,” says my scribe, “how did you know it was the sheriff ?”
    “Well,” says I with a scratch of my head, “the authority of the man could not be mistaken.”
    “Even in a snowstorm?” asks Brother Odo with the smarmy smile he uses when he thinks he has caught me decorating the truth a little too extravagantly for his taste.
    “Even in a snowstorm, monk,” I tell him. “Anyway, it was the same with Abbot Hugo and Marshal Guy—if I did not know their names right off the first I saw them, I knew them well enough before the day was over. More’s the pity, Odo, my friend. More’s the pity.”
    Odo grunts in begrudging agreement, and we stumble on . . .
    T he sheriff ’s men quickly dismounted and began searching among the dead men and horses for survivors. De Glanville remained in the saddle; he did not deign to get his fine boots wet, I reckon.
    Well, they found the bundled-up wagon drivers, untied them, and brought them to stand before the sheriff. The drivers were still quaking from fright and gawking around as if they expected to be swooped upon by the phantom bird again. Under the sheriff ’s stern questioning, however, they soon lost their fear of the great preying bird. The sheriff had them now, and he was flesh-and-blood fiercer than any phantom or host of unseen archers.
    I could tell from the way the ox handlers were gesturing and squawking that they were filling the sheriff ’s ears with their weird and wonderful tale. Oh, yes! And I could tell by the way the sheriff ’s scowl deepened by the moment that he was having none of it. He listened to them prate a while, and then cut off their mewling with a shout that travelled through the silent wood like a clap. Wheeling his mount, he cantered down the King’s Road in the