eBooks Base 2000

The four who confronted him were as ill-looking a quartet as Duke William's
motley host could show. One, the leader, was an unfrocked priest of Rouen;
one was a hedge-robber from the western marches who had followed Alan of
Brittany; a third had the olive cheeks and the long nose of the south; and
the fourth was a heavy German from beyond the Rhine. They were the kites
that batten on the offal of war, and the great battle on the seashore
having been won by better men, were creeping into the conquered land for
the firstfruits of its plunder.
An English porker," cried the leader. "We will have the tusks off him."
Indeed, in the wild light the wounded man, with his flat face and forked
beard, had the look of a boar cornered by hounds.
"'Ware his teeth," said the one they called Gil. "He has a knife in his
trotter."
The evil faces of the four were growing merry. They were worthless
soldiers, but adepts in murder. Loot was their first thought, but after
that furtive slaying. There seemed nothing to rob here, but there was weak
flesh to make sport of.


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