Read Lord of Slaughter for Free Online

offering no reply.
    ‘Four is an impressive tally.’ Azémar moved forward to the first body to inspect it. He felt for a pulse but there was none.
    ‘They were not warlike men and they were surprised to meet resistance. Any of Duke Richard’s warriors could have done it,’ said Mauger.
    ‘They looked warlike enough from where I was standing.’ The young man moved on to the next corpse, checking that too.
    ‘It’s easy to look warlike,’ said Mauger, ‘but to be it is harder work. A sword is put into the true warrior’s hand on the day he is born. Such men as we are not to be bested by vagabonds.’
    Already curious people watched them, the adults too wary to come near, children running to examine the bodies at their feet.
    ‘You didn’t use a sword.’ Azémar checked the remaining robbers for signs of life. None. He crouched and muttered a prayer over the dead men.
    Mauger shrugged. Then he crouched beside Azémar and spoke quietly to him, wary of being overheard. ‘Better to be thought a hardy monk than a warrior, if word of this spreads. These Greeks who call themselves Romans are famous for their spies, and the fewer men who know our purpose the safer we will be.’ He picked up his roll of bedding from the ground and hoisted it to his shoulder. ‘We’ll save the sword for times of greater need.’
    ‘What might constitute greater need than being attacked by four armed men?’
    The warrior, for he was a warrior, leaned down to the monk’s ear and whispered, ‘The need to cut off the head of the scholar Loys. Now let’s move.’
    Azémar got to his feet. ‘He stabbed you. I thought you were dead.’
    Mauger patted his side, which chinked like a purse full of coins. ‘A wise man wears his hauberk in new company,’ he said. ‘So my father told me.’
    The young scholar looked down at the bodies. The man the warrior had punched first was unrecognisable. His nose and mouth were almost as one, a bloody crater.
    ‘Did you know that was going to happen?’
    ‘In these places it’s always a possibility.’
    ‘You seem to relish hurting people. Is it the same with everyone from the old country?’
    ‘My country is your country now. I am a Norman. I left my old life behind me when I took my new name and learned your language.’
    ‘You got off the boat from the north six months ago. You are a Viking to your bones. They love to kill and plunder.’
    ‘My feelings about what I do don’t matter. I have a duty to oppose my enemies and those of my lord.’
    ‘Does Loys deserve his fate?’
    ‘The end is the same if he deserves it or not. Duke Richard has commanded he will have his daughter back and the scholar will die.’
    ‘If we find him.’
    ‘We will find him. Or rather, you will, Master Azémar. If you want your family to prosper.’
    The young man shrugged deeply and put out his hands.
    ‘You could do this alone.’
    ‘No. You will identify the scholar. I want no possibility of a mistake.’
    ‘It is an evil thing you make me do.’
    ‘Not so. The scholar is a rebel against his lord and so against God. You are doing Christ’s work.’
    ‘Or Judas’s. Loys was my friend.’
    ‘I will shed no tears for him. Is friendship a higher calling than your duty to your lord? Or to your family, whose safety and health depend on our success here? Come on.’ He headed off down the alley.
    Azémar recalled the furore at the monastery when it was realised Beatrice and Loys had gone, recalled the duke’s men sweeping through the cloisters, Richard’s boiling rage as he told the abbot he was lucky not to see his abbey burned to the ground.
    Luckily for the monks Beatrice had confided to her sister they were sailing for Constantinople. After a few days of pressure the girl told what she knew. The hope of recapturing his daughter took the edge off Richard’s anger as he threw himself into plans to get her back. They’d sought a monk who could identify without question the disobedient scholar. Azémar