CHAPTER IXEscape by Water
In the amazed silence, the young man in the chain mail laughed softly.
“Don’t you see?” he said. “The fellow is trying to force a quarrel. He doesn’t mean to go at all!”
For a moment, no one moved. Then the white-haired man with the gentle face tossed his cloak back over one shoulder.
“I think—” he said quietly, “I think he had better die.”
There was a quick, concerted motion in the room, and Boyce heard a sound he had never heard before—a curious metallic minor note all through the crowd. It was the whine of swords drawn simultaneously from their sheaths.
The shadows were suddenly alive with the flash of bare blades. Boyce’s hand flew to his own belt and the light sword the Crusaders had given him leaped into his fist. But this was no magical blade. It was
