Orphan of Destiny Read Online Free Page A

concentrated and lunged up from the depths of unconsciousness. My eyes flew open and I gasped aloud, “Hornets!”
    Light reflected off a large boulder where I lay sprawled on the ground, and in an instant the faces of Angel, Maryam and Robard appeared above me.
    “He’s finally awake,” Robard said.
    “Tristan, how are you feeling?” Maryam asked.
    Angel barked.
    “I feel . . . Where did . . . pain?”
    “Where did the pain come from?” Maryam tried to finish my sentence for me. “You were shot. By a crossbow. You lost a lot of blood. We thought we were going to lose you more than once.” Her hand tenderly pushed the hair from my eyes.
    “What happened?” I asked.
    “What do you remember?” Robard asked back.
    “We were on the street, close to the docks. Then something punched me in the side and I looked down to see a bolt. Not much after that. The King’s Guards showed up, didn’t they?” The pain in my hip rose up and nausea overtook me. Closing my eyes and breathing deeply, I tried to settle myself.
    “He should rest,” Maryam said. “It makes no difference what happened. We’re safe for now.”
    I opened my eyes again and saw something pass between Robard and Maryam. He stalked away from the fire out of my line of sight. I tried to follow him with my eyes but couldn’t yet.
    “What’s wrong?” I asked her quietly.
    She pushed a log deeper into the fire. “He blames himself for your getting shot. He insisted we sail immediately, and now he feels foolish and selfish. I’ve told him you would never blame him, but he’s a hard one. Hardest on himself, actually. He—”
    “I’m standing right here. I can hear you!” Robard exclaimed from somewhere behind me.
    Finally I was able to rise up on my elbows and scoot around to sit leaning against the boulder. Angel scurried next to me and curled herself up next to my hip and went immediately to sleep. How often I envied dogs.
    “Robard, don’t fret about it. We were surrounded, with pursuers all over the town. Trouble would have found us no matter where we went.”
    He relaxed his stance a bit. We had traveled together long enough for me to know he would condemn himself for a long time over my wound.
    “It’s my fault, squire,” he said. “If I weren’t so headstrong on the idea of getting home—”
    “Robard, had you not insisted on heading straight to the docks, I would have worried something was wrong with you. Since I met you in Outremer, you’ve spoken of little else but returning to your forest. It was wrong of me to think otherwise. It’s done. I’m going to be fine, so let us speak no more of it.” He looked at me and smiled. His hair now reached his big shoulders, and his fair skin was windburned. But his blue eyes were clear and strong. When I was growing up at St. Alban’s, Brother Rupert often told me tales of the Viking hordes who swept over England many hundreds of years ago. I had no doubt Robard was their heir. He finally relaxed a little more, then rested with his bow on the ground and his arms crossed over it.
    “You gave us a fright,” he said. Maryam concurred.
    “You were delirious and running a horrible fever. Ranting out of your head,” she said. “For a while, I didn’t think we’d ever make the shore. But we finally landed not too far from here.”
    “Where is here? Where are we?” I asked.
    Robard smiled. “We’re home, Tristan. We’re in England.”

4
    R obard and Maryam recounted the events of the last two days. My memory ended at the docks, with the crossbow bolt sticking out of my hip.
    “There were four of them waiting there,” Maryam said. “Sir Hugh will be furious they let us slip away. Robard wounded two of them. My daggers claimed another. The other one turned and ran.”
    “We gathered you up,” Robard went on, “and found a suitable vessel, small, much like the one in Tyre, only less of a wreck. It had three oars to a side, and we cut it loose and I started rowing while Maryam