Stormbringers (Order of Darkness) Read Online Free Page B

did he find you?’
     
    ‘I was working on a farm outside Verona.’ She reached for her little feet and chafed them as she spoke. At once her hands were stained red with her blood but she paid no attention. ‘Johann the Good and his followers came to the farm to ask for food and to be allowed to sleep in a barn for the night, but my master was a hard man and drove them away. I waited till he was asleep and then my brother and I ran away after them.’
     
    ‘Your brother’s here?’ Freize asked, looking round. ‘You have an older brother? Someone to look after you?’
     
    She shook her head. ‘No, for he’s dead now. He took a fever and he died one night and we had to leave him in a village; they said they would bury him in the churchyard.’
     
    Freize put a firm hand on Luca’s collar and pulled him back from the child. ‘What sort of fever?’ he asked suspiciously.
     
    ‘I don’t know, it was weeks ago.’
     
    ‘Where were you? What was the village?’
     
    ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, I am not to grieve for I will see my brother again, when he rises from the dead. Johann said that he will meet us in the Promised Land where the dead live again and the wicked burn.’
     
    ‘Johann said that the dead will rise?’ Luca asked. ‘Rise from their graves and we will see them?’
     
    Freize had his own question. ‘So who takes care of you, now that your brother is dead?’
     
    She shrugged her thin shoulders, as if the answer must be obvious. ‘God takes care of me,’ she said. ‘He called me and He guides me. He guides all of us and Johann tells us what He wants.’
     
    Luca straightened up. ‘I’d like to speak with this Johann,’ he said.
     
    The girl rose to her feet, wincing with the pain. ‘There he is,’ she said simply, and pointed to a circle of young boys who had come through the town gate all together and were leaning their sticks against the harbour wall and dropping their knapsacks down on the cobbles.
     
    ‘Get Brother Peter,’ Luca said shortly to Freize. ‘I’m going to need him to take notes of what this lad says. We should understand what is happening here. It may be a true calling.’
     
    Freize nodded, and put a gentle hand on the little girl’s shoulder. ‘You stay here,’ he said. ‘I’ll wash your feet when I get back and find you some shoes. What’s your name?’
     
    ‘Rosa,’ she said. ‘But my feet are all right. God will heal them.’
     
    ‘I’ll help Him,’ Freize said firmly. ‘He likes a bit of help.’
     
    She laughed, a childish giggle at his impertinence. ‘He is all powerful,’ she corrected him gravely.
     
    ‘Then He must get extra help all the time,’ Freize said with a warm smile to her.
     
    Luca stood watching the child-pilgrims as Freize jogged up the narrow street from the quayside to the market square, where the church stood, raised above the square by a flight of broad steps. As Freize went upwards, two at a time, the door of the church above him opened, and Brother Peter came out.
     
    ‘Luca needs you,’ Freize said shortly. ‘He wants you to take notes as he speaks to the youth who leads the pilgrims. They call him, Johann the Good.’
     
    ‘An inquiry?’ Brother Peter asked eagerly.
     
    ‘For sure, something strange is going on.’
     
    Brother Peter followed Freize back to the quayside to find it even more crowded. Every moment brought new arrivals through the main gate of the town and through the little gate from the north. Some of them were children of nine or ten, some of them were young men, apprentices who had run from their masters, or farm boys who had left the plough. A group of little girls trailed in last, holding hands in pairs as if they were on their way to school. Luca guessed that at every halt the smaller, weaker children caught up with the others; and sometimes some of them never caught up at all.
     
    Brother Peter spoke to Luca. ‘The priest is a good man and has money to buy food