Read Dispensation of Death: (Knights Templar 23) for Free Online Page B

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    No. That would be the act of a much younger man, he grinned wryly to himself. He picked up his pack and shouldered his staff once more, setting off back the way he had come.
    He only managed to cover fifty or sixty yards, and wassome ten yards from a thicket, when he suddenly felt a hand grasp his shoulder.
    ‘Wait there, you. I saw you back there, staring down at our boats. What were you thinkin’ of, old man?’
    Jack found himself pulled around to face a man of maybe two- or three-and-twenty. The fool had a leather cap, and a coif that was stained and marked with sweat. He was a man of no importance, that much was obvious, just a scruffy guard in the pay of the Archbishop, probably.
    ‘Friend, I am just a traveller. I wanted to look at the river, that’s all.’
    ‘That’s all, eh? I saw you staring out at the river, all right, but you were mainly watching what was happening all about here, weren’t you?’
    ‘Why should I want to do that?’
    ‘No honest man would, that is certain,’ the man said, standing back a little and eyeing him doubtfully. ‘But we’ve had some things stolen in the last weeks, and my master told me to stop anyone who looked suspicious.’
    ‘Me? Do you think I look suspicious, then?’ Jack chuckled. He rolled his eyes. The palace was in full view behind this interfering guard.
    ‘No, master. I suppose not. But you can’t blame me for checking, can you?’
    ‘Of course not. But …’ Jack paused, clutching at his chest, the breath hissing from clenched teeth.
    ‘Master? Christ’s ballocks … Master? Are you all right?’
    ‘Please, I need to sit under those trees. Their coolness will … ah! The pain!’
    The guard threw an anxious look over his shoulder. Then, slipping his gauntleted hand under Jack’s armpit, he half-carried him to the thicket. There was a log, and he took Jack to it, helping him to sit down on it.
    ‘Thank you.’ Jack smiled up at him, and then slammed his right forearm upwards, the hand cupped back. As soon as the palm and ball of his thumb met the fellow’s chin, he straightened his arm and simultaneously launched his whole body up with all the power in his legs. There was a snap as the man’s teeth crashed together, and then a louder, harsher crack. The body was thrown back, and Jack caught him before he could hit the ground, gently turning him over and feeling the neck to make sure. There was a slight tension there, and he could feel some spasms in the thighs making the torso move, so he set the guard on the ground, put his knee in the small of his back, gripped the head, and pulled sharply backwards and to the side.
    There was no one about. He took a rock and eyed the guard speculatively for a few moments, and then brought it down hard on the man’s left temple. The rock was tossed to the side of the roadway, and he picked up the guard and set his body down so that the head met the rock. Taking another large stone, he put that near the guard’s feet, as though he had tripped and pitched headlong onto the rock, and then he pushed the guard gently until he rolled slowly away from the road and into the drainage ditch at the side of the road.
    There was no snow about here yet, but a thick layer of ice crunched and crackled as the body landed on it. There was enough blood on the roadway about the rock to show what he wanted.
    And then Jack took up his staff again, and with a quick glance about him, he set off for the bridge once more.
    He wanted no one left about either bank of the river who could remember him.

Furnshill Manor, Devon
    Sir Baldwin de Furnshill was a tall man in his early fifties, and although he had the aches and pains which were the natural concomitants of his age, he was still proud enough of his past life as a fighter to practise each day with his sword and to ride and hunt as often as possible. He liked to remind his wife, when she remonstrated with him for his over-enthusiastic training, that there was little use to a knight,