Grail Knight by Angus Donald

Author:Angus Donald [Donald, Angus]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2013-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

I took a firm double grip on the handle of Fidelity and waded into the battle like a man charging into the sea. My first blow struck the head clean off the knight who was grappling with Tuck, and I saw then that I had intervened just in time; blood was shining wetly at my old friend’s waist and there was a flapping rip in his robe. I killed a wounded man who blundered towards me with a bloody dagger in his fist – a straight-arm lunge to the throat – and stepped into the centre of the mêlée, trying to move towards the altar and the Seigneur d’Albret’s place behind it. I took out one of the knights in the jostling ring around Robin and Little John – a simple downward hack that split his skull. And then dropped another knight who had his back to me with a strike to the calf that nearly severed the lower part of his leg.

And then I was fighting for my life.

Two Knights of Our Lady peeled away from Robin and John and came for me at the same time, one either side. I attacked them both – swinging Fidelity back and forth above me, crashing down heavy blows at their heads like a frenetic overhead pendulum, giving them no time to do anything but block, before changing rhythm abruptly and smashing the steel crosspiece of my sword in the right-hand man’s mouth. He screamed and dropped, teeth scattering like spilled peas, and on the back swing I carved my blade deep into the other man’s chest.

I saw Robin eviscerate a knight with a perfectly elegant stroke, and as he came staggering towards me with his guts in his hands I ended him with a double-handed slice that took his head.

Then, as if I were in a strange dream or nightmare, I found that Nur was beside me, her veil gone and her mutilated, horrible, anguished face looking up at mine. She was shrieking and pointing: ‘Alan, Alan – there is d’Albret. There! Get him for me, go towards him, Alan. You must get him for me! I beg you!’

I saw that she was pointing at the far end of the chapel where the Seigneur d’Albret had deigned to join the battle. He was holding off both Roland and Gavin with a sword in one hand and a mace in the other. And, as I watched, he blocked a mighty cross blow from Roland and managed to kick my cousin in the chest and send him reeling away to crash into the wall of the chapel, and almost at the same time, his left hand licked out and caught Gavin a glancing blow on the crown of his head that dropped him boneless to the floor.

The man could fight.

I surged towards d’Albret, with Nur at my heels still shrieking encouragement. Out of nowhere, a Knight of Our Lady lunged at me with his sword and I ducked under the lancing blade,

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