LI

 

 

HE WAS NOT sure how long he had dozed, but the moment he opened his eyes all trace if drowsiness fled. It was still dark, the moon shining through the half open shutter. Mélisande was still there, her arms entwined about him, her soft breaths against his cheek.

With infinite care he extricated himself from her sleeping embrace and stood.

 

 

THE NIGHT WAS supernaturally still. It seemed impossible to believe that this was a city in turmoil, in a kingdom on the edge of chaos. For a moment he paused, listening to the soft sounds of Mélisande as she slept. He gazed back at her willowy, naked form, her tousled hair spread across the white linen of the sheet – her beauty rendered ethereal by the moonlight. He did not know when he would see her again.

Scrabbling in his bag at the foot of the bed, he drew out an irregularly shaped scale of metal, then threw his nightshirt over his head and pulled on his boots.

Creeping across the creaking boards, he took the longbow and quiver from the corner of Galfrid’s chamber, and, as he headed back to the stairs, grabbed the plump leg of ham that had sat upon the table awaiting their return that evening, and which had, until now, been entirely ignored.

 

 

GISBURNE DREW A bodkin point arrow from the quiver at his back, and took aim. At the far end of the yard, the ham hung from the crudely repaired post, and upon it – its dark surface glinting in the pale light – the plate of armour that the Red Hand had lost.

He drew. Loosed the arrow. It glanced off the metal, sailing high across the yards. He nocked another, heaved on the great bow and released. With a sharp crack the shaft shattered, splinters flying in the night air. He took a step forward, and shot again. Again, it went spinning, and did not bite. Another step forward. Another arrow loosed. Time and again he shot and advanced, shot and advanced, each sent towards its mark with increasing fury. Arrows bounced off, sent in all directions, until finally he stopped less than three yards from his target. His last arrow, and that alone, was embedded in it.

He pulled the arrow from the joint of meat. The metal scale came with it. Nearly half the bodkin point arrows were now lost or destroyed. But the last of them had penetrated the battered, deformed plate by almost an inch.