The Dinosaur Knights Read Free Page B

back against the wall and closed his eyes. Rob scowled even more furiously. Which did him as much good as you’d expect any face made, to appearances, at a sleeping man.
    Karyl wore his usual mendicant-monk outfit, and cradled his blackwood walking-stick against one shoulder like a child its stuffed toy. The instant the town guards had stepped up to arrest them on the rainy Western Road, Karyl had spontaneously developed a grievous limp. Whether they thought he’d been hurt in the rout at Blueflowers, or an old campaign injury was acting up, the guardsmen hadn’t interfered when Karyl asked an archer to bring his stick from the farm. Nor had anyone bothered to inspect it.
    â€œWhat of our Brother Cuget, who set aside his dislike for violence to put himself in the path of those who despoil our Garden?” Sister Violette’s voice rang like a malicious bell.
    Melchor’s head-shake made his sideburned jowls jiggle portentously. “Dead, Sister Violette. Dead and abandoned on the battlefield by those cowards there.”
    He thrust a theatrical arm like a spear at Karyl and Rob. Heads turned. Faces flushed with fury or furrowed with interest or hung slack with incomprehension.
    Rob stood up and took a bow.
    Violette nodded her head of long, silver hair, done up in a complicated bun at the back of her fine head. Her eyes, which matched her name, flashed with passion and triumph.
    â€œAllow me to sum up the indictments against you,” she declaimed to Rob and Karyl. “The terrible raids by Count Guillaume of Crève Coeur’s knights forced us, in violation of our principles, to hire you to defend us. Yet when the time came to face a Brokenheart invasion in the field, you hung back. And so because of your cowardice—to call it plainly what it was—disaster befell our nobles, and our people.”
    â€œThat’s a lie!” a voice shouted from the crowd.
    It was the old farmer Pierre. Mud still caked his face and streaked his raptor-scarred leg. A rag whose bloodstains barely stood out against the filth encircled his head. A knot of his fellow peasants stood around him at the hall’s left front.
    Violette’s face became a mask of almost insane rage. But only Rob, it seemed, was looking at her.
    â€œThe captain tried to stop a foolish attack,” Pierre said. “He ordered us to stand fast. We—I disobeyed. To my bitter cost. My eldest son lies in that field. Raptors rip his limbs, and fliers are pecking the eyes from the head I used to tousle when he was small. It was the lords who did it, and Karyl and his lieutenant who tried to stop it.”
    If Melchor could have incinerated the old man with his eyes, he would have. But he left it to Violette to reply.
    â€œWho’s most to be believed? A man of gentle birth, or some rude farmer who brings his dirt with him into our hall?”
    â€œDoes our Garden value birth over worth?” asked Bogardus. “Haven’t you always been among our most insistent, Sister Violette, that each shoot be allowed to grow as high as it can, without regard to antecedents?”
    Her face pinched like a sea-scorpion’s claws. “Melchor’s a man of education.”
    â€œUndoubtedly. Does that make him infallible?”
    â€œYou saw what happened,” Pierre called to the town craftsmen who had fought in the battle. Cleaner and more neatly dressed for visits to their own homes before coming here, they mostly stood clumped at the other side of the room. “You were there. Tell them.”
    They looked to Reyn the carpenter. After a moment, he grimaced and nodded.
    â€œIt’s true. Captain Karyl told us to set up a strong defense and wait. The lords rode out in front and ordered us to charge.”
    He shrugged big shoulders. “We obeyed. Betrayed by habit, I guess. We all lost friends and kin too, thanks to the lords. Or no thanks to them!”
    â€œYou’ll pay for this!” Yannic