He surfaced from the cool dark of oblivion into the agony of life.
‘Where is the Templar treasure?’
It was the first thing the Seeker of Demons had asked, the first time he had spoken and the only sound he had made other than the crooning gentleness of song.
Widikind, who wondered what he had babbled while his mind cowered elsewhere, grinned a bloody grin, for he knew by the question that he had said nothing of value. He remembered the feeling of his own flesh melting on his cheek like gold and what Brother Amicus had promised. For his pride. He was proud of resisting, yet aware that such arrogance was unfit for a Templar, proscribed or no.
Yet he could not resist it.
‘Found any demons?’ he mushed and laughed his way back to the coverlet of dark.
The sluice of cold water slashed him into the light again, into the world of pain the torturer had made with vicious beatings. He could feel his arms and realized he had been lowered a little and refastened so that his hands were now bound with rope rather than chain and the suspension on his dangling arms could be alleviated if he raised himself on the balls of his feet.
Whose toes had been broken, so that doing so seared agony through him like a knife.
He raised his wobbling head and stared with his one good eye into the face of the torturer and saw no pleasure in the other’s witnessing of his realization. Which was, he thought, worse than a leering grin; Widikind let his head loll, though he could see the man’s face through the spider-legs of his remaining lashes.
The Seeker of Demons, his face still blank, touched the white-hot iron to Widikind’s abdomen and, for the first time, showed emotion: surprise at the lack of response.
He wonders if he has gone too far, Widikind thought.
‘Where is the Templar treasure?’
Widikind heard the querulous note in his voice and knew it was time. He wanted him near, wanted him close with his hot iron. He felt fingers at his neck, checking pulse, felt the length of forearm on his chest, so he knew where the Seeker of Demons stood. He was a Knight of the Temple and had the power of God still with him …
He swept his legs up and locked them round the man’s waist, crossing his ankles until his broken feet flared howls from him; he welcomed the pain, for there was more triumph and anger in it now and the agony fuelled his strength like fire in his veins. God give me strength …
The man was strong but Widikind had trained every day for years in every facet of horsemanship; his feet were broken, but the thighs and calves on him were crippling and the Seeker of Demons arched and shrieked, unable to break free. He tried to beat Widikind with his one free hand, the one with the hot iron in it, but each time he began, Widikind crushed him further until something snapped. The man twisted and screamed.
‘That was a rib breaking,’ Widikind told him, so close that the blood from his cracking lips spotted the Seeker of Demons’s cheek. ‘There will be more if you do not do as I say. If you resist me further, I will break your back and you will never stand unaided again.’
‘Let … me…’
‘No.’
They strained, panting like dogs.
‘Raise the iron,’ Widikind hoarsed at him, panting close to the man’s ear, feeling the rank fear-sweat of him cinched tight and obscene as a lover. ‘Raise it slowly and touch it to the ropes on my wrist. If you do anything else, I will crack all feeling from your back, so that you will drag yourself around with padded rags on your hands the rest of your short and miserable life.’
The torturer was hovering at the edge of fainting, so the cooling red tip of the iron wavered back and forth, searing Widikind’s flesh as it charred through the rope. The parting brought them crashing down, but Widikind was ready for it, sprang free, grabbed the iron and smashed it on the Seeker of Demons’s head.
He did it twice more before the pain in his feet seemed to drive up into the core of him and he fell over into emptiness. When he woke, he stared up into a sweat-gleamed familiar face, whose wild eyes looked at the splintered gourd that was the head of the torturer, then into Widkind’s melted ruin of a face.
Piculph, the German thought and almost sobbed with how close he had come to escape. The Moor licked his lips, stuck out a hand and hauled Widikind to his agony of broken feet.
‘Move,’ he said in good French, ‘if you want to live.’
There was a thump and a crash which brought heads up. Then came the unmistakable sound of the bar being lifted from the far side of the door and, even as they crouched and lifted their weapons, the door flung open and a body fell in.
For a moment, no one moved — and then everyone did. De Bissot and Kirkpatrick sprang to the body, Hal and de Villers moved to the open door, beyond which lay the guard, his head cracked and leaking over the flagstones; Sim covered the gallery, just in case. But the hissed, broken, bubbling voice stopped them all.
‘Stay,’ Widikind managed. ‘Piculph says there is no way we can escape this way, so he brought me here. Listen closely — I have much to tell and no time left to tell it.’
He spoke, hoarse and swift and laid out what he knew. When his voice trailed off, de Bissot straightened and looked at Kirkpatrick.
‘You were right.’
‘Bar the door,’ Hal advised and they fell to it, moving the heavy trestles. Then they shifted the lolling Widikind, his naked, streaked body trailing fluids like a bad winesack; Kirkpatrick did not say it, but he thought the man was not long for this world. Unless they could find a way out of this place, at once prison and fortress, none of them were.
‘This Guillermo will come to talk soon,’ Kirkpatrick informed everyone with certainty. ‘He will threaten and cajole. After that will come the hard part.’
Hal was on the point of demanding to know the whole of it, annoyed at being kept so in the dark, but Kirkpatrick’s prophecy was proved true with the innocuous twitch of the hanging over the gallery entrance. Sim, watching carefully, called the warning.
‘Cover,’ he snapped and Hal, glancing backwards as he scurried behind a table, saw the figures move smoothly out on to the gallery, latchbows ready. Behind them came the tall, saturnine figure of Guillermo, a scowl on his handsome face.
‘Ach,’ Sim declared with disgust, cranking the arbalest like a madman. ‘There are times when I wish you were no’ as sharp in your thinkin’, Kirkpatrick, but I prig the blissin’ o’ the blue heaven on you for it.’
‘God be praised,’ Kirkpatrick answered piously.
‘For ever and ever.’
Guillermo stared down at them and silence fell, broken only by the harsh of breathing and the clank of Sim resting his arbalest on a steadying edge. That slight sound seemed to break the moment.
‘You would be wise not to trigger that monster,’ Guillermo warned. ‘Those tables will not stand against the quarrels from my own bows at this range.’
‘You dare not kill us,’ Rossal said quietly and stepped from behind cover. Hal moved as if to drag him back and felt Kirkpatrick’s hand on his forearm; when he looked, he was given a quiet smile and a shake of the head, which only left him more bewildered than ever.
‘You do not know which of us holds the secret of the treasure you seek,’ Rossal went on, ‘now that you have discovered the truth.’
Hal’s gaze was wide-eyed, matched only by Sim, but Kirkpatrick merely flashed them a smile and put his fingers to his lips.
‘Sand,’ Guillermo declared with disgust. ‘Boxes of sand. And some lead for the weight. Clever. Now you will tell us where you have hidden the treasure. You will do this or suffer.’
‘You should not’, Rossal flung back, ‘have left the likes of us our arms, for you cannot inflict suffering without a fight and we will neither step back nor surrender, so you will have to kill us. You cannot do that, my lord, if you want the secret you seek. So your threats are an empty mistake. And not nearly as bad as the one which led you to this betrayal. You are a serpent in Eden, my lord, whose own bite will be fatal for you.’