The Forgotten (Brotherhood of the Sword #3)

Prologue

Outremer

The cold night wind carried laughter on it as it blew against Sin’s desert-blistered cheeks and dry, cracked lips. Unused to such a sound, he crouched down low in the shadows on the outskirts of the pilgrim camp and listened. It had been a long time since he’d heard such.

But his hesitation cost him as Marr rammed his barbed stick into his spine. “Why do you stop, maggot? Go!”

Sin turned to his Saracen master with a look so feral that for once Marr shrank back.

Barely ten-and-eight years old, Sin had spent the last four and a half years of his life beneath the harsh hand of his trainers. Four and a half long years of being beaten, tortured and cursed. Of having his morals, his language and his identity stripped from him.

At long last he’d become the animal they called him. There was nothing left inside now. No pain, no past.

Nothing but an emptiness so vast that he wondered if anything could ever make him feel again.

He was death, in every sense of the word.

Rad handed him the long, curved dagger. “You know what to do.”

Aye, he did. Sin took the dagger in his hand and stared at it. His hand was one of a youth just barely entering his manhood and yet he had committed sins and crimes that had aged him into an ancient.

Marr urged him forward. “Finish quickly and tonight you will eat well and have a bed for your comfort.”

Sin looked back at Marr as his stomach rumbled from hunger.

Day to day, they fed him only enough to barely keep him alive.

He had to kill for anything more than a crust of rotten bread or stale water.

They knew he would do anything for a decent meal to lessen the hunger cramps in his belly.

Anything for a night free of torture and pain.

From the shadows, Sin watched the English knights sitting in their camp. Some of them ate while others played games and passed wartime stories. Their tents were bright even in the darkness. Their colors faded by the night, but still evident.

Again, he heard their music and songs.

It had been so long since he last heard Norman French spoken, let alone sung… It even took him a few minutes to remember and understand the foreign words they used.

On his hands and knees like the animal they had trained him to be, Sin crept toward the camp. He was a shadow. An unseen phantom who had but one purpose.

Destruction.

He slipped easily through the pilgrims and guards until he reached the largest and grandest of the tents.

Here was the target for the night.

Lifting the bottom of the tent, he looked inside.

A gold brazier stood in the center. The coals from low fire cast shadows on the linen canvas.

In one corner was a bed so large and golden that for a minute Sin thought he was dreaming the sight.

But it was real. The carved dragon heads were regal and bespoke the high station of the man who slept in blissful ignorance while he clutched at covers made from snow leopards and lions.

A man who had no idea his life was about to end.

Sin focused his gaze on the target. One quick cut and he would be dining on figs and roasted lamb. Drinking wine and sleeping on a feather tick instead of scratchy sand where he had to be vigilant against scorpions and asps, and other things that scavenged in the night.

Peace.

But as he stared at all the finery, a new idea came to him while the wounds and welts on his back throbbed. He looked about the tent again, noting the wealth and power of the man on the bed.

This was a king. A fierce king who made the Saracens tremble with fear. One who might be able to free him from his owners.

Freedom.

That one word rang in his head. If he had any soul left, he would gladly trade it for a night’s sleep where chains didn’t hold him down. Trade it for a life where no one ruled him.

No one tortured him.

He curled his lip at the thought. When had he ever known anything else? Even in England he had known nothing but torment. Nothing but ridicule.

He had never belonged anywhere.

Kill him and be done with it. Eat well tonight and worry about the morrow when it comes.

That was all he knew. That basic philosophy was what had gotten him through his short, hard life.

Determined to eat again, Sin crept forward.

Henry came awake the instant he felt a hand on his throat. Then, he felt a cold, sharp blade pressing against his Adam’s apple.

“One word and you die,” the cold, harsh words were tinged in an accent that was a strange blend of Scottish, noble Norman-French and Saracen.

Terrified, he looked to see what sort of man could infiltrate his guard and...

Henry blinked in disbelief as he caught sight of his killer. It was a scrawny, frail boy dressed in Saracen rags. Wreaking of hunger and with black eyes devoid of emotions, the boy stared at him as if he were weighing the value of Henry’s life.

“What do you want?” Henry asked.

“Freedom.”

He frowned at the child and the strange, thick accent he spoke in. “Freedom?”

The boy nodded, his eyes burning eerily in the darkness. Those eyes didn’t belong to a child. They belonged to a demon who had seen hell firsthand.

One half of the boy’s face was swollen and blackened from a beating and his lips were split and cracked. His neck was red, raw and bleeding as if he normally wore a steel collar around it that he fought against.

Henry looked down to see similar injuries on both of his wrists. Aye, someone made a habit of chaining the child like an animal. And the boy had made a habit of fighting his manacles.

By the child’s expression, Henry could tell he waited for betrayal. That the boy expected it.

Still, he tried to bargain. “If you will give me my freedom, I will spare you life tonight and give you my loyalty until the day I die.”

If those words had come from anyone else, Henry would have laughed. But there was something about this child that let him know gaining this boy’s loyalty was quite a feat and that once given, it was truly valuable.

“If I say no?”

“I will kill you.”

“My guard will capture you if you do and they will kill you.”

The boy shook his head slowly. “They will not capture me. They will only die trying.”

Henry didn’t doubt that in the least. It had been quite a herculean feat for the child to get this far already.

He looked at the boy’s long, black hair and black eyes. Still, his sun-blistered skin was fairer than most of those born to this region. “Are you Saracen?”

“I am...” He paused at the answer. The sharpness faded from his eyes and revealed a pain so profound that it made Henry ache from the rawness of it. “I am not Saracen. I was squire to an English knight who sold me to the Saracens so that he could buy passage home.”

Henry lay stunned at the news. Now he understood the poor shape of the boy. There was no telling what abuse and depravity the Saracens had heaped onto him. What kind of monster would sell a child into the hands of an enemy? The cruelty of it overwhelmed him.

Henry let out a tired breath. “I will see you free.”

The boy narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “This had best not be a trick.”

“It’s not.”

The boy released him and moved away from the bed.

Henry watched as the child went to crouch by a wall with one hand on the canvas, no doubt ready to flee should Henry make any sudden move. Slowly, so as not to frighten him, Henry got up and left the bed.

The boy looked about nervously. “They will be coming for me.”

“Who will?”

“My masters. They always find me when I escape. They find me and they...”

Henry saw the horror on the boy’s face as if he were reliving whatever they had put him through. The boy began to pant in panic.

“I have to kill you.” The boy rose to his feet. He drew his dagger again and moved toward Henry. “If I don’t, they will come for me.”

Henry grabbed his hand before he could sink the dagger into his chest. “I can protect you from them.”

“No one protects me. I have only myself.”

They wrestled for the dagger.

Someone drew back the tent flap. “Majesty, we found...” The guard’s voice died as he caught sight of their struggle.

The guard shouted for reinforcements.

With a fierce grunt, the boy let go of the dagger as guards swarmed into the tent.

Henry watched in awe as the scrawny child fought like a cornered lion.

Had the boy possessed any strength on his starved bones, he would have easily defeated the twelve-man guard.

But as it was, they brought him down hard on the floor.

Still the boy fought so furiously that it took five guards to keep him there.

“Release him.”

All twelve of his guards looked at him as if he were crazed.

“Majesty?” his captain asked hesitantly.

“Do it.”

It wasn’t until they let go that Henry realized the boy’s arm had been broken during the fight.

His nose was bleeding and he had a cut on his forehead.

Still, the child made no sound as he pushed himself to his feet.

He merely held the broken arm to his side while he watched them warily as if expecting the absolute worst from them.

The child neither begged nor pleaded, and that told him much about what horrors the boy must have lived through. He stood strong and defiant before all of them.

His guards regained their feet, and the captain came forward to address Henry, but he still kept a jaundiced eye on the child. “We found two Saracens on the edge of camp, Sire. I am sure he is one of them.”

“As are we,” Henry said. “Boy, what is your name?”

The boy dropped his gaze to the floor. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible. “My masters call me Kurt.”

Henry frowned at the foreign term he’d learned the first few weeks they had been in this land. It was used to mean either maggot or worm. “What is your Christian name?”

“When I served the Earl of Ravenswood, I was called Sin.”

Henry’s breath caught at the name, for he knew who this child was. “You’re MacAllister’s son?”

Again, the emptiness returned to the boy’s eyes. “I am no man’s son.”

Indeed. When Henry had offered to return this boy home to his father in Scotland, the old laird had said as much. Sin was the only one of the Scottish boys they’d held whose father had refused to have him return home.

Not knowing what else to do about the matter and having little time to deal with it, Henry had left the boy in Harold of Ravenswood’s custody.

Obviously, that had been a mistake.

It wasn’t often Henry felt guilt. But he felt it now. It gripped his heart with unfamiliar pain and burned in his soul. This poor, unwanted boy had been his ward, and he had left him to a fate no child should ever know.

“Fetch a surgeon,” Henry said to his captain. “And bring food and wine for the boy.”

Sin looked up in shock of the order. Part of him still expected the king to hang him. At the very least beat him. That was all he was fit for.

That and killing.

King Henry tsked at him. “Don’t looked so surprised, boy.Come the morrow, we shall see you home.”

Home. The vague, illusive dream of that word had haunted him his entire life. It was all he’d ever wanted. A home where he could be welcomed, a people who would accept him.

His father had thrown him out of Scotland where no one had ever wanted him, and the Saracens had spurned and spat on him in Outremer. But maybe this time when he went to England the people there might want him.

Maybe this time, he would at last find the home he had ached for.

Aye, in England, he would find peace.