the problem at hand; you must concentrate on defeating the ogre if you want to live …
And at some point in this strange half-dreaming, half-anxious state, I fell truly asleep.
I awoke just after dawn and drank some more water. And then I sat and waited, munching a handful of loose oats, sitting on the barley sacks, and I waited and waited. After what must have been several hours I started hammering on the elm door, and demanding proper food and more water. I heard footsteps and a harsh voice in English told me to hold my noise. And then the footsteps went away and I sat for hours in the darkness thinking about my fate and singing long, jolly cansos loudly to myself to keep my spirits up. I must have dozed again, for the next time I was awoken it was by the door of the cell crashing open and the dim light of the corridor outside spilling violently into the room. Four men-at-arms burst in and grabbed me by the arms and hustled me out into the passageway. I had no time to resist, and before I knew it I was being marched up the stone steps to the ground floor of the great tower, out of its iron gate, past the eastern side of the great hall and across the middle bailey with the afternoon sun slanting down. I was escorted roughly out of the barbican and north towards the new brewhouse, with the four men-at-arms close around me until we approached the wood-and-earth palisade at the east of the outer bailey that marked the limits of the castle.
The whole outer bailey was buzzing with men-at-arms and servants and clergy; almost every one of Prince John’s dependants, it seemed, wanted to watch the afternoon’s ‘amusement’. And there in the centre of the roped-off area of the list, sixty foot by sixty foot, stood Milo.
He was even bigger and uglier than I remembered. Dressed only in a loincloth and a pair of heavy leather boots, I could see that his entire body was covered in sweat-matted black hair. Thick slabs of muscle stood out on his chest, his belly was huge and round but did not look remotely soft, his arms were as big as my thighs and his short legs were like the crossbeams of a great hall. He smiled at me cruelly from across the list, his little piggy eyes buried deep in a doughy baby’s face. I scowled back at him: but the ice snake slithered in my belly once more and I knew he could break my spine as easily as a man snapping a stick of kindling. I realized, too, that I had been misled about his height, for without lanky Rix to make him seem short – and the tall swordsman was nowhere to be seen on that afternoon – I saw that he was almost as tall as me, and I am six foot high in my hose.
I tore my gaze away from his mountainous muscle-bound shape and studied Prince John, seated in his customary highbacked chair on the north side of the list. Sir Ralph was beside him, standing on his left, looking over at me with a placid, contented stare. A knight in a dark blue surcoat on the other side of Prince John was whispering urgently in his ear: he was a slight man of medium height, with cropped grey and black hair. And I saw, with a little leap of hope in my heart, that it was Sir Nicholas de Scras.
At that moment, Prince John nodded and said something quietly to Sir Nicholas, and the former Hospitaller came striding across the open space of the list towards me. His face bore a warm, slightly sad smile of greeting and he started to speak when he was still more than ten paces from me.
‘Alan, Alan, we can stop all this unpleasantness. We can stop it right now. But I will need your help.’
I spread my hands in a query. ‘What can I do for you, Nicholas?’ I said.
‘You can stop this barbaric display with just a few words, just a few well chosen words.’
I frowned: ‘You want me to beg? You want me to plead for my life – to them?’ I gestured at Prince John and Sir Ralph Murdac, who were eyeing me from beyond the ropes. I put my shoulders back, and jutted my jaw. ‘I will not!’