I RECOGNIZED HIM as one of the thugs who had dragged the mayor into the keep the previous night.

His head was covered by a dark hood, and the eyes peering out were as dark as sunken caves. He wore his sword belted over a threadbare robe and stood, hands on hips, grinning down on the two of us.

Go ahead, have a poke. He shrugged. The whore won't mind, fool. Anyway, she'll be dead in a week. Just be careful you don't get the pox all over your dick.

I stared at his mocking face, and the greatest rage I had ever known tightened inside me, a boiling, uncontrollable force.

I reached for an iron poker lying next to me on the floor. In my mind, this grinning lizard represented every cruelty that had been heaped on my wife and child, all the suffering and loss I had witnessed since I first went away. My world had been hurled upside down.

With a cry, I rushed at him, a wild exhalation escaping from my lungs. I swung the poker at his head before he could draw his sword. The startled knight threw up an arm to defend himself, and the rod smacked against it with a sickening crack.

He yelped and staggered back in pain, one arm............