Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (read with me TXT) 📕

were forking hay, but the effort lessened her precision, and Etienne caught her arm and twisted her wrist. Otto heard the crunch of breaking bones. Vanessa screamed and dropped the candlestick.

Not satisfied, Etienne picked it up and backhanded her across the face with it. In an instant, Vanessa's features turned into a ruin of pulped, red flesh and the stark whiteness of bone fragments. Her huge eyes still staring out from a welter of blood, she lifted an arm to ward off Etienne's return stroke, but, battered away, it dropped limply to her side, bent at a crazy angle.

More blows. Vanessa's face was unrecognizable now, and Etienne, still raging, started on her chest. Her ribs caved in first on one side, then the other. Otto could stand no more. Old and unarmed though he was, he tottered forward and seized Etienne's arm from behind.

He was immediately flattened by a fist to his face. Etienne turned back to finish with Vanessa, but the girl, scrambling with the blank urgency of a wounded bird, had used the churchman's momentary distraction to turn for the windowsill, drag herself up, and leap.

***

This late, the town of Aurverelle was quiet, its streets deserted. The night was warm, the stars were very, very bright, and when the Green Man Inn came into view, upper windows open and glowing with lamplight, Christopher stared at it hungrily. Here were people—not nobles, not churchmen, not anyone important—just people. People trying to get along. People trying to live as best they could. People trying to snatch some sleep. People traveling. People fornicating, gambling, blaspheming . . . or maybe praying. Christopher himself, though, a ghost, lapped futilely at the flow of life about him, craving desperately the substance that he had lost—by death or by Nicopolis, it was all the same.

He lived at arm's length. And had he not, in refusing to deal immediately and directly with Etienne, moved even further away from connection and reconciliation? A ghost of a ghost.

He had spent the last several days raging at himself, raging at Etienne, raging at a society and a land that allowed slimy little things like barons and monsignors to prolong their existence at the expense of others. But, in the end, his oath had won out. Slimy little thing he might be, but he had Etienne to deal with. This had gone on long enough.

“It's always like this, isn't it, Pytor?” he said as they went towards the inn that shimmered in the heat waves coming off the street. “The nobles fight, but the peasants suffer. Etienne can't get back at me, so he'll take it out on my people.”

Pytor was nodding. “As master has said.”

But out of the glowing windows of the inn came a scream. It was a cry of fright, of pain, of utter despair.

Pytor crossed himself. “God of my fathers.”

“No,” said Christopher, running for the inn, “it's Etienne. Come on.”

The door was barred, as were the lower windows. From within came stamps, scuffles, frightened screams and shouts:

“Let us out! Let us out!”

“Castle guards! Help! For the love of God!”

Swords clashed within as Pytor tried the door once more. No use. “It would be better if master perhaps called for his men.”

A sudden flurry at a second floor window. A cry as if from a mouth that had lost all connection with its brain. With a rush and a thump, a body dropped, struck the roof above the inn's porch with a wet sound, and fell to the ground at Christopher's feet.

The baron bent over it, horrified. It was apparently a young woman, but her features had been pulped into shapelessness. Blond hair, blood, broken bones. She was breathing, but barely.

Pytor turned towards the castle. “Guards of Aurverelle!” he shouted. “To the Green Man Inn!”

A horn answered him. On the other side of the door, the fight continued. At his feet, the girl's breath frothed and bubbled through a smashed larynx.

Christopher's anger at Etienne had turned white-hot. There was little that he could do for the girl right now. There might be nothing that anyone could do. But he could deal with the legate. “No peasants, no guards, no soldiers,” he muttered. “Just you and me.”

“Master . . .”

“Take care of her, Pytor. Wait for the guards. I'll have the door open by the time they get here, one way or another.” And without waiting for a reply, Christopher caught hold of the end of a projecting beam and swung up to the porch roof. His simple clothing did not hamper him, and he sprang in through the open shutters of the second floor window just as Etienne was turning to aim a kick at the head of the fallen innkeeper.

Christopher hit the churchman soundly with his shoulder, smashing him back against the wall. Etienne slid to the floor, dazed. As Christopher drew his knife, he saw a bloody candlestick lying nearby, and he noticed that Etienne was disheveled and bleeding. The girl, whoever she was, had obviously put up a fight.

The hungry ghost in him smiled. A fighter. He liked that.

But Etienne was getting to his feet. “You wanted to speak with me, dog?” said Christopher. “Well, start talking.”

His face gashed from chin to cheek, Etienne shrugged. “About what?”

“You can start with that girl down in the street.”

More shouts from below. Edged metal rang, and Christopher heard the distinctive sound of a mail-clad body crashing to a wooden floor. Otto, dazed, scrambled uselessly.

Etienne shrugged again. “She struck me.”

“You womanizing lout!”

“What then? Did you think Frenchmen were eunuchs?”

Dagger in hand, Christopher lunged, but Etienne ducked the blow, darted out the open door, and fled down the hall. Christopher followed, angry enough for the moment to give no thought to the fact that the legate had brought numerous attendants with him, most of whom, from the sound of it, were downstairs at present, armed and fighting.

With Etienne just ahead of him, Christopher plunged down the stairs, but when he reached the common room, he stopped for a