Blood on the Sand Read Online Free

sword or bow was welcome. For every man who could be counted on, who was reliable, there was another who was
viewed askance by those who knew him, suspecting that his shifty manner meant he had something to hide.
    And Berenger was convinced that Tyler was such a man.
    ‘You all right, Vintener?’ John of Essex called.
    Berenger grunted, his attention returning to the galley behind them. It was gaining far too quickly. ‘Shipman! How long till we reach the port?’ he bellowed.
    The ship’s master, a dour old fisherman with a round face framed by grey whiskers and the expression of a man who had bitten by accident into a sloe, curled his lip as he peered over
Berenger’s shoulder at their pursuer. ‘If he keeps on like that, us’ll never reach the port, boy.’

‘They’re preparing!’
    The shipman’s cries from the crow’s nest came down to the decks during a brief lull in the storm, and for a moment, Fripper was startled to hear the voice coming from so high up.
Then the deck pitched once more and he was forced to clutch at a rope. Staring back at their pursuers, he saw the enemy gathering at the forecastle. They were only a matter of yards away now.
    ‘
Vintaine!
’ he yelled. ‘String your bows!’
    Usually, before he went into battle, Fripper would find a strange peace washing over him, his breath coming more calmly. As a young man, he had known only terror, his heart beating faster, his
armpits and hands growing clammy with sweat at the realisation that he was about to risk his life once more, but with age, that had deadened. Now there was only the sense of a task to be
undertaken. Nothing more. It was just a job.
    Not this time, however. Today, his fear was smothering him. Fighting on ships felt unnatural at the best of times. He had done so before, but on ships bound together, so that it was like
fighting on land. To the vintener, the risk of drowning was more alarming than the thought of a stab to the heart or being hit by a crossbow bolt.
    He was terrified, and the realisation sucked at his will. Clinging to his rope as the galley crawled ever closer, he could not muster the energy to draw his sword.
    Berenger had come here to France with the intention of making money. Many years ago, his parents had died, and afterwards he had been taken in by the old King, Edward II, the present
King’s father. Growing up in the court, shown how to behave as a chivalric man should, he had loved the King like a father. But then the nation rose against Edward II, and suddenly his life
was turned topsy-turvy. His King, his lord, was captured and held in prison; he himself was taken and gaoled. Only later, when the disastrous reign of terror of the arch-traitor, Roger Mortimer,
had ended was Berenger fully free at last. He travelled widely, and when he returned to England, he was held as a traitor himself. Only the intervention of King Edward III had saved him. The
King’s son had shown him every courtesy, and perhaps then Berenger could have made something of his life. Maybe he could have settled and raised a family. But instead the lure of loot and
pillage took hold of him. With no roots, no family, no land to hold him, he became a freebooter, fighting wherever there was a battle.
    Having learned about chivalry when he lived in the King’s court, he could have worked harder to become a knight himself, perhaps. But nothing had come of that. His life had progressed from
one war to another – fighting those against whom he had no quarrel, purely to win the largesse of his master. At least in recent months he had been fighting with Sir John de Sully, but now
Sir John was far away. Only Berenger and his men were here, and that felt awfully lonely. And he, Berenger, had absolutely no idea why he stood on this rolling deck facing a force of Genoese and
French and about to join the slaughter once again.
    If he survived this, if he came out after the Siege of Calais whole, he vowed that he would find a