King Raven 2 - Scarlet by Stephen R. Lawhead

Author:Stephen R. Lawhead
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-02-22T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 29

See now, Odo,” I tell my dull if dutiful scribe, “we did not plan to attack the sheriff and his men—we were sorely out-manned, as you well know—but we came ready to lend muscle to Abbot Daffyd’s demand to stop the hangings.”

“But you killed four men and wounded seven,” Odo points out. “You must have known it would come to a fight.”

“Bran suspected the sheriff would betray himself, and he wanted to be there to prevent the executions if it came to that. As it happens, he was right. So, if you’re looking for someone to blame for the Twelfth Night slaughter, you need look no further than Richard de Glanville’s door.”

Odo accepts this without further question, and we resume our slow dance towards my own appointment with the hangman.

Bran was angry. Furious. I’d never seen him so enraged—not even in the heat of battle. When fighting, an icy calm descended over him. With swift but studied motion, he bent the belly of the bow and sent shaft after shaft of winged death to bite deep into enemy flesh. He did not exult; neither did he rage. But this! This was something different—a black, impenetrable fury had swept him up, and he shook with it as he stalked around the fire ring in his hut, his face twisted into a rictus of ferocity. Like a terrible, monstrous beast, anger had consumed him completely.

Seeing him now, a body would not have known him as the same man from the night before. For as we stood in the town square on Twelfth Night and the realisation broke upon us that Sheriff Bloody de Glanville would hang those three men even after recovering the treasure, Bran simply turned to us as we gathered close about and said in a low voice, “String your bows.”

Then he calmly set about the destruction of our enemies.

As I said to Odo, it was no great surprise that the vile sheriff would betray his own promise. Truth be told, we fairly expected it. That is why we had hurried from the abbey to the town ahead of Abbot Daffyd to ensure that the sheriff would release the captives once the stolen goods were returned. I reckon that each of us, in some corner of our hearts, knew it was all too likely de Glanville would show his true colours that grim night.

Now that it was over, however, Bran had stewed and fretted and worked himself into a towering rampage. “The man is a craven butcher,” spat Bran, pacing around the hearth. Fleeing the town, we had ridden all night to reach Cél Craidd; none of us had slept, nor could we. Though exhaustion heaved heavy rollers upon us, we sat around the low-flickering fire and listened to our lord give voice to his anger.

In the time I had been among the Grellon, I had picked up hints and suggestions that our Lord Bran Page 128

sometimes suffered from black, unreasoning rages. But I had never seen it for myself .

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