Eric Flint - The Shadow of the Lion

The abbot grabbed one of the children successfully. The other, the girl, ran screaming for the door. One of the knights slammed the door closed. He tried to catch the girl. The child squirmed clear, to find herself in the steel gauntlets of another knight.

In the meantime Sachs, the struggling little boy held in one hand, was peering at the candle. "See!" he shouted triumphantly. "See the Devil's work! They make waxen mammets from this consecrated candle to work their evil. Here, within the very nave of the Church. Venice, the corrupt and rotten! They will burn for this! You shall not suffer a witch to live!"

Several things happened with all the outcry. First the sacristan, bleary eyed and none too steady on his feet, appeared through a side door with a branch of candles, demanding querulously to know what all the noise in the house of God was about. The second was that two of the knights finally spotted Katerina, before she could decide whether to slide under the pew or run for the door.

Moving much faster than she would have imagined an armored man could do, one of the knights grabbed her shoulders with rough steel hands. The same one who had complained about the weather. Then, even more roughly, dragged her out to face the abbot.

"Got another one, Abbot Sachs!"

"Hold her there!" commanded Sachs. Almost violently, he thrust the boy into the hands of a monk who had come to join him. Then, stalked back up the aisle to stand before Kat.

The abbot gripped her jaw and lifted her chin, examining her as he might a vial of poison. With his left hand, roughly, he pulled off her scarf.

"The witch mistress," he pronounced solemnly. "Overseeing her children and their demonic work. We have made a fine haul tonight! Truly, the hand of God must have guided that storm."

Panic surged through Kat. "I'm not a witch! I'm not! I just came to get out of the rai?"

The abbot slapped her, hard and with obvious satisfaction. "Silence, witch! You will be put to the question and you will answer when we tell you."

Kat's cheek burned. The blow had been savage enough to leave her dazed, for a moment. Her mouth tasted of blood, and her head was cloudy with fear and fury. The moment was so?insane?that she couldn't seem to bring her mind into focus. The only clear thought she had was: Why hadn't she stayed outside and gotten wet?

A new voice spoke. One of the knights, Kat dimly realized. A very cold voice.

"Abbot?"

The abbot turned on him. "Go and ready our boat, Erik. We must take these prisoners back and put them to the question."

The knight shook his head. The gesture was abbreviated, quick; and very firm. "No, My Lord Abbot. We cannot do that."

"Why?" demanded Sachs angrily. "The weather is not so bad! Not for pious men."

The implied slur did no more than cause the knight to square his already very square shoulders. And harden a face that, to Kat, already looked as hard as an axe-blade. She was almost shocked to see that the knight was not much older than she was.

"Because we cannot remove these people from the sanctuary of the Church," said the knight. Calmly, even though Kat could sense the effort the knight was making to keep his teeth from clenching. "It is my solemnly sworn oath," he continued, almost grinding out the words, "as a Knight of the Holy Trinity, to defend the Sanctuary of the Holy Church. I will not break my oath."

Sanctuary! For a moment, Kat simply gawped at the young knight. Of all the scary-looking armed and armored men who surrounded her, he was the scariest. The last one she would have expected to come to her assistance!

Thunder pealed, and she could hear a fresh squall of rain sheeting down outside in the sudden silence. Even the two terrified children seemed to realize their survival hung on this rigid man with the harshly Nordic appearance.

The young knight seemed made entirely of sharp angles and icy ridges?as if his body and face had been shaped by the same glaciers that created the Norse landscape from which he so obviously came. His hair, long enough to peek below the rim of his helmet, was so blond it was almost white. His eyes were a shade of blue so pale they were almost gray. His chin was a shield, his nose a sword?even his lips looked as if they had been shaped by a chisel. And…

Scariest of all: lurking beneath that superficial calm, she could sense an eruption building. Kat had been told once, by her tutor Marina, that Iceland had been forged in the earth's furnace. Not knowing why, she was suddenly certain that this man was an Icelander himself?a land as famous for its clan feuds as its volcanoes. And that he possessed the full measure of the berserk fury that slept?fretfully?just beneath an outwardly still and chilly surface.

She noticed, finally, the peculiar weapon attached to his belt. A hatchet of some kind, an oddly plain thing compared to the aristocratic sword hanging from his baldric.

Then her wits finally returned, and Kat seized the opening as a drowning man might an entire haystack.

"I claim sanctuary, in the name of?"

The knight holding her clamped a gauntleted hand across her mouth. Kat tasted blood inside her lips.

"Remove your hand, Pappenheim!"

The blond knight's command was not a shout so much as a curse?or a sneer, driven into words. A challenge so cold, so full of contempt, that an angel facing hellspawn would have envied it.

Except Kat could imagine no angel looking as purely murderous as this man. The young knight was on his toes now, as light on his feet as if he were wearing nightclothes instead of armor. He seemed to prance, almost, his whole body as springy and coiled as a lion about to pounce. And his thin lips were peeled back in a smile that was no smile at all. Teeth showing like fangs.

His hand flashed to his belt, so quick she could not follow the movement. The next she saw, the hatchet was held in his fist, in a loose and easy grasp that even Kat?no expert on such matters?could recognize as that of an expert. And she realized now that this was not really a hatchet at all. No utilitarian woodsman's tool, this?it was a cruel and savage weapon, from a cruel and savage forest. What was sometimes called a tomahawk, she remembered.

"Remove your hand, Pappenheim," the knight repeated, as coldly if not as forcefully. "As well as the hand on her shoulder."

His hand flickered, the war hatchet blurring back and forth. The lion lashing his tail. "Or I will remove them for you."

The sheer, sudden violence of the young knight's words and actions?all the more violent for that they had not yet erupted in the blood and mayhem they promised?had momentarily paralyzed everyone else in the church. Now, finally, the other knights began to react.

Kat felt the knight holding her flinch, his fingers almost trembling. She understood then that her own impression of the blond Norseman was no figment of her imagination. The knight, too, found him just as frightening. And presumably, in his case, from past experience.

The other knights shifted their feet, their hands fumbling uncertainly at their own weapons. It was clear as day that they had no idea how to handle the situation.

Suddenly, one of the knights who had been standing in the background moved forward. A very large knight, this one, built so squarely he resembled a block of granite on thick legs. Very young, also. Kat thought he was perhaps her own age.

"For God's sake, Erik!" he exclaimed. "Why are you??"

The blond knight held out his other hand, staying the youngster with a commanding gesture.

"Be silent, Manfred. Do you think the world is nothing but a toy for your pleasure? You are nothing but an oaf. A spoiled child. Begone! This is a man's business."

The words caused the young knight's face to flush a sudden bright pink. Then, grow pale with rage. Then?