Hugh curdy nodded his head at Raffe, somehow managing to invest the gesture with utter contempt. But Raffe's back remained obstinately rigid.
Hugh was slightly built, a hand's length shorter than his brother, and clean-shaven. Unlike Osborn, he still boasted a full head of crow-black hair. There was no disputing that women, on the whole, found Hugh handsome. His features were altogether finer than his brother's, as if he had been painstakingly carved by a master craftsman. In contrast, Osborn's face appeared to have been roughly hewn by an incompetent apprentice. A man seeing them apart would not have noticed the family resemblance, but put them together and there was no mistaking the fraternal bond. For Hugh seemed to have made a study of his elder brother's mannerisms and wore them self-consciously like a little boy walking in hand-me- down shoes.
Now the same barely suppressed smile hovered on Hugh's face. 'If it isn't the gelding, and now without a rider. We shall have to take steps to rectify that.'
Raffe fought to keep his temper. He'd been made to learn early in life that bridling at insults from men of higher rank was not worth a bloody back or the humiliation that went with it.
Osborn plucked at his beard. 'I hope you're not suggesting I should ride him, little brother. School him to the leading rein I will most certainly do, mount him never.'
Both Hugh and Raoul laughed, but Osborn's lips merely dickered in a smile.
Raffe had only ever heard Osborn laugh once, but the sound of that laughter had been seared into his soul, burning more fiercely than any executioner's branding-iron. He remembered every detail of that night at Acre. When he closed his eyes, he could still hear it, taste it, smell it.
It had been a blistering day and the darkness had brought little relief from the heat which still shimmered up from the sun-baked rocks. The air was thick with the stench of rank goat's meat spit-roasted over fires of dried dung. The foot- soldiers sprawled on the ground with their mouths hanging open, trying to suck in enough air to breathe. They were too weary to stamp on the scavenging cockroaches, or brush away clouds of mosquitoes gorging on bodies slippery with sweat. Some had fallen asleep as they ate, pieces of flat bread still gripped in their hands.
It was the silence that Raffe remembered most keenly. For once, there had been no buzzing of gossip or banter across the camp, no shouts of triumph or angry curses as men diced for spoils. Even the horses were too sapped by the heat to flick the insects away with a toss of their heads. The silver stars hung motionless as drowned herring in the black sea above his head.
Raffe had been watching them through the open flap of the tent: Osborn, seated at a low table, Hugh leaning across him for a flagon of wine, Gerard facing them, making his report. Three thousand dead. Gerard was trying to hold himself upright in the chair; trying to stop his hands from shaking as they clenched around the stem of a goblet; trying not to vomit again, though he had retched so many times since his return to camp there was surely nothing left in his stomach. Illuminated from within by the flickering red torchlight, the tent glowed like the pit of hell in the darkness binding the shadows of the men in ropes of flame.
Gerard was murmuring so quietly that Osborn and Hugh had to lean forward to hear him. A question, an answer, another question, another weary response. Raffe could not hear what was being said, but he didn't have to, he knew. He'd been there. The questioning continued, but then without warning Osborn laughed, a deep belly-rumble of mirth, slapping his hand on the flimsy table so hard that it almost collapsed beneath the blow. Gerard leapt to his feet, his hand darting to his knife. The blade flashed in the torchlight. Just as swiftly Osborn ducked, bringing his arm up to shield himself, but it was Hugh who had saved his brother's life, grabbing Gerard's wrist and twisting it until the knife clattered on to the table. For a moment none of the men moved. Gerard stared down in horror at the knife, unable to believe how close he had come to murder. Then, gabbling incoherent pleas for pardon, he staggered from the tent and ran out into the night.