She noticed, finally, the peculiar weapon attached to his belt. A hatchet of some kind, an oddly plain thing compared to the aristocratic sword hanging from his baldric.
* * *
Then her wits finally returned, and Kat seized the opening as a drowning man might an entire haystack.
“I claim sanctuary, in the name of—”
The knight holding her clamped a gauntleted hand across her mouth. Kat tasted blood inside her lips.
“Remove your hand, Pappenheim!”
The blond knight’s command was not a shout so much as a curse—or a sneer, driven into words. A challenge so cold, so full of contempt, that an angel facing hellspawn would have envied it.
Except Kat could imagine no angel looking as purely murderous as this man. The young knight was on his toes now, as light on his feet as if he were wearing nightclothes instead of armor. He seemed to prance, almost, his whole body as springy and coiled as a lion about to pounce. And his thin lips were peeled back in a smile that was no smile at all. Teeth showing like fangs.
His hand flashed to his belt, so quick she could not follow the movement. The next she saw, the hatchet was held in his fist, in a loose and easy grasp that even Kat—no expert on such matters—could recognize as that of an expert. And she realized now that this was not really a hatchet at all. No utilitarian woodsman’s tool, this—it was a cruel and savage weapon, from a cruel and savage forest. What was sometimes called a tomahawk, she remembered.
“Remove your hand, Pappenheim,” the knight repeated, as coldly if not as forcefully. “As well as the hand on her shoulder.”
His hand flickered, the war hatchet blurring back and forth. The lion lashing his tail. “Or I will remove them for you.”
The sheer, sudden violence of the young knight’s words and actions—all the more violent for that they had not yet erupted in the blood and mayhem they promised—had momentarily paralyzed everyone else in the church. Now, finally, the other knights began to react.
Kat felt the knight holding her flinch, his fingers almost trembling. She understood then that her own impression of the blond Norseman was no figment of her imagination. The knight, too, found him just as frightening. And presumably, in his case, from past experience.
The other knights shifted their feet, their hands fumbling uncertainly at their own weapons. It was clear as day that they had no idea how to handle the situation.
Suddenly, one of the knights who had been standing in the background moved forward. A very large knight, this one, built so squarely he resembled a block of granite on thick legs. Very young, also. Kat thought he was perhaps her own age.
“For God’s sake, Erik!” he exclaimed. “Why are you—?”
The blond knight held out his other hand, staying the youngster with a commanding gesture.
“Be silent, Manfred. Do you think the world is nothing but a toy for your pleasure? You are nothing but an oaf. A spoiled child. Begone! This is a man’s business.”
The words caused the young knight’s face to flush a sudden bright pink. Then, grow pale with rage. Then—
Grow paler still; and paler still. Shock, now, Kat realized. The young knight’s jaw sagged loose. He stared at the one named Erik as if he were seeing him for the first time.
Then, as suddenly as everything else was happening, his face seemed to snap shut. He shouted something Kat did not understand—words in Gaelic, she thought—and strode forward to the knight holding her.
An instant later, Manfred’s huge hands closed upon her captor’s own shoulders and wrenched him loose as easily as a man wrestles a boy. Suddenly released, Kat staggered on her feet for a moment. By the time she regained her balance, the knight who had seized her was crashing down onto one of the pews, turning the cheaply made wooden bench into so much kindling. She found herself marveling at the strength that could send an armored knight flying through the air like a toy; almost giggling at the sheer absurdity of the sight.