The Devil's Knight

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The Devil's Knight

Pocket

Prologue

Siobhan scrambled through the thorny brush at the foot of the hill, the Norman knight hot on her heels. "You'd best hope I never catch you, poppet," he shouted, hacking away at the vines and brambles with his sword. "You'll be begging me to kill you."

Siobhan wished she was already dead, that it had been her head cleaved off in the first shock of the attack instead of her father's. The Norman king's men hadn't even bothered with a royal proclamation this time. With no warning at all, they had poured into her father's village in the middle of the night, setting the wooden walls aflame. She and her mother had run from their burning manor house just in time to see her father's head fall from his shoulders in the narrow street and roll into the gutter, his angry face still moving. If Siobhan should somehow survive this night and live to be an old woman of a hundred years, she would never forget the sight, the way his eyes had blinked and his mouth still moved as if to curse them all.

But she couldn't stop to think about it now. She dropped to her knees to crawl under a thicket, the thorns tearing at her back as she reached the bare face of the druid's hill. She had never thought she would have to run so far; she had assumed the Norman knight would give her up when she reached the thick of the woods, where his horse couldn't follow. But no such luck.

"I will catch you, poppet!" he promised from behind her, closer now. She huddled in the briars, hoping he had lost her trail, but his voice grew closer still. "Where will you go now?"

She straightened up against the rock, a long thorn tearing at her cheek. The steep hillside was completely overgrown, a natural defense for the ancient tower on its summit. When the king had issued his first proclamation, her mother had wanted to come here, to give up their cozy manor house for the cramped stone tower. "We can defend the druid's keep forever," she had insisted. But her father would not be moved. The old king had given his father these lands in his treaty with the Saxons, making Da a noble lord the same as the Norman bastard the new king meant to replace him. He had made a formal protest, written in his own beautiful hand, and had insisted that would be the end of it. But maybe young King Henry couldn't read.

"Come back here now," the knight who was chasing her called out, stopping at the worst of the briar thicket. "Come back, and I won't hurt you."

Siobhan looked back and snorted -- did he think she was stupid? She had seen what his friends had done to her mother before their captain had shown her the mercy of cutting her throat; she knew what this one had in mind for her. She might be only eleven years old, but she wasn't stupid. She turned back to the rock face and started looking for a way to climb.

"Little bitch," she heard him grunt, struggling through the thorns, and her heart raced faster with panic. What would Sean do? she thought, kicking off her shoes. If her older brother had been there, she was convinced that none of this would have happened. He would have reasoned with their father, made him run or at least put up a better defense than noble right and pride. But Sean was far away, learning how to be a knight himself.

"Come down here, you little monkey," the Norman said from behind her, laughing. He was very close now. "Where do you mean to go?" He was right, of course. The rock face before her was too high and steep; she would never have the strength to make it all the way to the top. Even if she managed to climb out of his reach, he would only have to wait for her to come back down again or fall. But she couldn't just give up and let him have her.

She saw something shiny in the rock a foot or so above and to the right of her hand, a bit of quartz, perhaps, and she moved toward it just to give herself a goal. Glancing down, she saw the knight break free of the thicket and touch the rock face just below her, cursing the brambles as he came. She looked away, refusing to be distracted.

Her hand closed over the glimmer in the rock, and the cliff gave way around it like sand. The stone was not a stone at all; it was metal, a handle. Clinging with her other hand and feet, she pulled, drawing something from the rock. It was a sword, barely half as long as her father's but perfect for her, gleaming dully in the moonlight.

"Got you!" The knight grabbed her ankle and yanked her down from the wall so abruptly she fell, scraping both knees and her nose and spraining her wrist. But she didn't let go of the sword.

"Aren't you the pretty little thing?" He had taken off his bucket-shaped helmet somewhere in the brush, and his face was shiny with sweat, a round white cheese in the moonlight. "That was quite a chase." He towered over her as she straightened up, one fist planted on the wall by her head, the other hand already fumbling with his hose. "You'd better learn how to behave."

She brought the sword up hard into his stomach, clutching the hilt in both hands. If he had been wearing chain mail, she couldn't have given him more than a scratch -- she wasn't very strong. But the night was hot, and the battle hadn't been much; the knight had left his heavy armor in his tent. The blade pierced him straight through the gut.

He clamped a hand around her throat, and for a moment Siobhan was certain they would die together. She twisted the sword, dots of color appearing in front of her eyes, and his eyes glazed over. His fingers loosened, and she wriggled free and stepped aside as he crashed to the ground.

"Murder," she whispered, still clutching her weapon in her fist. She held it up and saw the Norman's blood gleaming scarlet on the dull silver blade. "I have done murder." A cold tremor shook her in spite of the warm summer night, but she smiled. Tucking the blade into her belt, she bent down to look for her shoes.

Copyright ©2006 by Jayel Wylie

Continues...

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Excerpted from The Devil's Knight by Lucy Blue Copyright © 2006 by Lucy Blue. Excerpted by permission.
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