Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures (62 page)

“I like it not,” I repeated.

“A bird calling its mate,” he scoffed.

“I was born and raised in the forest,” I answered impatiently. “Yonder was no bird. Men are signalling one another out there in the forest. Somehow I believe ’tis connected with that rogue who fled from the path.”

“You have the instincts of an old soldier,” laughed Guiscard, doffing his helmet for the coolness and hanging it on his saddle bow. “Suspicious – alert – ’tis well enough. But your wariness is wasted in this wood, Agnès. I have no enemies hereabouts. Nay, I am well known and friend to all. And since there are no robbers nigh, it follows that we have naught to fear from anyone.”

“I tell you,” I protested as we rode on, “I have a haunting presentment that all is not well. Why should that rogue run from us, and then whistle to some hidden mate as we passed? Let us leave the road and take to a path.”

By this time we had passed some distance beyond where we had heard the first whistle, and had entered a broken region traversed by a shallow river. Here the road broadened out somewhat, though still walled by thick trees and bushes. On the left hand the bushes grew densely, close to the road. On the right hand they were straggling, bordering a shallow stream whose opposite bank rose in sheer cliffs. The brush-grown space between road and stream was perhaps a hundred paces broad.

“Agnès, girl,” Guiscard was saying, “I tell thee, we are as safe as – ”

Crash!
A thundering volley ripped out of the bushes on the left, masking the road with whirling smoke. My horse screamed and I felt him stagger. I saw Guiscard de Clisson throw up his hands and sway backward in his saddle, then his horse reared and fell with him. All this I saw in a brief instant, for my horse bolted, crashing frantically through the bushes on the right hand side of the road, and a branch knocked me from the saddle, to lie half stunned among the bushes.

As I lay there, unable to see the road for the denseness of the covert, I heard loud rough voices, and the sound of men coming out of their ambush into the road.

“Dead as Judas Iscariot!” bawled one. “Where did the wench go?”

“Yonder goes her horse, splashing across the stream, gushing blood, and with empty saddle,” quoth another. “She fell among the bushes somewhere.”

“Would we could have taken her alive,” said yet another. “She would have furnished rare sport. But take no chances, the Duke said. Ah, here is Captain de Valence!”

There was a drumming of hoofs up the road, and the rider shouted: “I heard the volley; where is the girl?”

“Lying dead among the bushes somewhere,” he was answered. “Here is the man.”

An instant’s silence, then: “Thunders of hell!” roared the captain. “Fools! Bunglers! Dogs!
This is not Étienne Villiers!
You’ve murdered Guiscard de Clisson!”

A babble of confusion rose, curses, accusations and denials, dominated by the voice of him they called de Valence.

“I tell you, I would know de Clisson in hell, and this is he, for all his head is a mass of blood. Oh, you fools!”

“We but obeyed orders,” another growled. “When you heard the signal, you put us in ambush and bade us shoot who ever came down the road. How did we know who it was we were to murder? You never spoke his name; our business was but to shoot the man you should designate. Why did you not remain with us and see it well done?”

“Because this is the Duke’s service, fool!” snapped de Valence. “I am too well known. I could not take the chance of being seen and recognized, if the ambush failed.”

They then turned on someone else. There was the sound of a blow, and a yelp of pain.

“Dog!” swore de Valence. “Did you not give the signal that Étienne Villiers was riding this way?”

“ ’Tis not my fault!” howled the wretch, a peasant by his accent. “I knew him not. The taverner of the Knave’s Fingers bade me watch for a man riding with a red-haired wench in a man’s garb, and when I saw her riding by with the soldier, I thought he must be this Étienne Villiers – ahhh – mercy!”

There was a report, a shriek and the sound of a falling body.

“We will hang for this, if the Duke learns of it,” said the captain. “Guiscard was high in the favor of the Vicomte de Lautrec, governor of Milan. D’Alençon will hang us to conciliate the Vicomte. We must guard our own necks. We will hide the bodies in the stream, and none will be the wiser. Scatter now, and look for the corpse of the girl. If she still lives, we must close her mouth forever.”

At that, I began to edge my way backwards, towards the stream. Glancing across, I saw that the opposite bank was low and level, grown with bushes, and walled by the cliffs I have mentioned, in which I saw what looked like the mouth of a ravine. That seemed to offer a way of retreat. Crawling until I came nearly to the water’s edge, I rose and ran lightly toward the stream, which glided over a rocky bed scarcely knee-deep there. The bravos had spread out in a sort of crescent, beating the bushes. I heard them behind me, and, further away, on either side of me. And suddenly one gave tongue like a hound who sights the prey.

“There she goes! Halt, damn you!”

A matchlock cracked and the bullet whined past my ear, but I ran fleetly on. They came crashing and roaring through the bushes after me – a dozen men in morions and cuirasses, with swords in their hands.

One broke cover on the very edge of the stream, as I was splashing across, and fearing a thrust in the back, I turned and met him in mid-stream. He came on, splashing like a bull, a great, whiskered, roaring swashbuckler, sword in hand.

We fell to it, thrusting, slashing and parrying, in water knee-deep, and I was at a disadvantage, for the swirling stream hindered my foot-work. His sword beat down on my helmet, making sparks glint before my eyes, and seeing the others closing in, I cast all on a desperate attack, and drove my sword so fiercely through his teeth that the point transfixed his skull and rang on the lining of his morion.

I wrenched my blade free as he sank down, crimsoning the stream, and even at that instant a pistol ball struck me in the thigh. I staggered, then recovered myself and limped swiftly out of the water and across the shore. The bravos were thrashing across the stream, bawling threats and waving their swords. Some loosed pistols at me, but their aim was vile, and I reached the cliff, dragging my injured leg. My boot was full of blood, and the whole limb numbed.

I plunged through the bushes at the mouth of the ravine – then halted with icy despair gripping my heart. I was in a trap. It was no ravine into which I had come, but merely a wide cleft in the rock of the cliff, which ran back a few yards and then narrowed to a crack. It formed a sharp triangle, the walls of which were too high and sheer to be climbed, wounded leg or no.

The bravos realized my plight, and came on with shouts of triumph. Dropping on my uninjured knee, behind the bushes at the cleft’s mouth, I drew pistol and shot the foremost ruffian through the head. That halted their rush and sent them scattering for cover. Those on the other side of the stream ducked back into the trees, while those who had gained this side spread out among the bushes near the bank.

I reloaded my pistol and lay close, while they bawled to one another, and began loosing at my covert with matchlocks. But the heavy balls whined high overhead or spattered futilely on the rocky walls, and presently, noting a black-whiskered rogue squirming across an open space toward a bush nearer my retreat, I put a ball through his body, whereat the others yelled blood-thirstily and renewed their fire. But the range was too far for those across the stream to do good shooting, and the others were shooting from difficult angles, not daring to show any part of themselves.

Presently one shouted: “Why do not some of you bastards go down stream and find a place to climb the cliff, and so come at the wench from above?”

“Because we could not injure her without showing ourselves,” answered de Valence from his covert, “and she shoots like the devil himself. Wait! Night will soon fall, and in the darkness she can not aim. She can not escape. When it is too dusky for good shooting, we’ll rush her and finish this matter with the steel. The bitch is wounded, I know. Bide your time!”

I chanced a long shot at the bushes whence de Valence’s voice issued, and from the burst of scorching profanity evoked thereby, do guess that my lead came too close for comfort.

Then followed a period of waiting, punctuated now and then by a shot from the trees. My injured leg throbbed, and flies gathered in a cloud about me. The sun, which had at first beat down fiercely into the crevice, withdrew, leaving me in deep shade, for which I was thankful. But hunger bit me, until my thirst grew so fierce that it drove hunger from mind. The sight and rippling noise of the stream nigh maddened. And the ball in my thigh burned so intolerably that I made shift to cut it out with my dagger, and then stanched the bleeding by cramming crumpled leaves into the wound.

I saw no way out; it seemed I must die there, perish all my dreams of pageantry and glory and the bright splendor of adventure. The dim drums whose beat I had sought to follow seemed fading and receding, like a distant knell, leaving only the dying ashes of death and oblivion.

But when I searched my soul for fear I found it not, nor regret nor any sorrow. Better to die there than live and grow old as the women I had known had grown old. I thought of Guiscard de Clisson, lying beside his dead horse, with his head in a pool of blood, and knew regret that death had come to him in such a sorry way, and that he had not died as he would have wished, on a field of battle, with the banner of his king flowing above him, and the blast of the trumpets in his ears.

The slow hours dragged on. Once I thought I heard a horse galloping, but the sound faded and ceased. I shifted my numb body and cursed the gnats, wishing mine enemies would charge while there was yet enough light for shooting.

Then, even as I heard them begin to shout to each other in the gathering dusk, a voice above and behind me brought me about, pistols raised, thinking they had climbed the cliff after all.

“Agnès!” The voice was low and urgent. “Hold your fire! It is I, Étienne!” The bushes were thrust aside, and a pale face looked over the brink of the cleft.

“Back, fool!” I exclaimed. “They’ll shoot you like a pigeon!”

“They can not see me from where they hide,” he answered. “Speak softly, girl. Look, I lower this rope. It is knotted. Can you climb? I can never haul you up, with but one good arm.”

Quick hope fired my nerves.

“Aye!” I hissed. “Let it down swiftly, and make the end fast. I hear them splashing across the stream.”

Quickly then, in the gathering darkness, a snaky length came sliding down the cliff, and I laid hands upon it. Crooking a knee about it, I dragged myself up hand over hand, and sinew-stretching work it was, for the lower end of the rope dangled free, and I turned like a pendulum. Then, the whole task must be done by my hands alone, for my injured leg was stiff as a sword sheath, and anyway, my Spanish boots were not made for rope-climbing.

But I accomplished it, and I dragged myself over the lip of the cliff just as the cautious scrape of leather on sand and the clink of steel told me that the bravos were gathering close to the crevice mouth for the rush.

Étienne swiftly gathered up the rope, and motioning to me, led the way through the bushes, talking in a hurried, nervous undertone. “I heard the shooting as I came along the road; left my horse tied in the forest and stole forward on foot to see what was forward. I saw Guiscard lying dead in the road, and understood from the shouts of the bravos that you were at bay. I know this place from of old. I stole back to my horse, rode along the stream until I found a place where I could ride up on the cliffs through a ravine. The rope I made of my cloak, torn to strips and spliced with my girdle and bridle-reins. Hark!”

Behind and below us broke out a mad clamor of yells and oaths.

“D’Alençon yearns indeed for my head,” muttered Étienne. “I heard the bravos’ talk while I crouched among the trees. Every road within leagues of Alençon is being patrolled by such bands as these, since that dog of an innkeeper divulged to the Duke that I was again in this part of the kingdom.

“And now you will be hunted as desperately. I know Renault de Valence, captain of those rogues. So long as he lives, your life will not be safe, for he will endeavor to destroy all proof that it was his knaves who slew Guiscard de Clisson. Here is my horse. We must not tarry.”

“But why did you follow me?” I asked.

He turned and faced me, a pale-faced shadow in the dusk.

“You were wrong when you said no debt lay between us,” quoth he. “I owe you my life. It was for me that you fought and slew Tristan Pelligny and his thieves. Why cling to your old hatred of me? You have well avenged a plotted wrong. You accepted Guiscard de Clisson as comrade. Will you not let me ride to the wars with you?”

“As comrade, no more,” I said. “Remember, I am woman no longer.”

“As brothers-in-arms,” he agreed.

I thrust forth my hand, and he his, and our fingers locked briefly.

“Once more we must ride both on the same horse,” he laughed, with a gay lilt of his old-time spirit. “Let us begone before those dogs find their way up here. D’Alençon has blocked the roads to Chartres, to Paris and to Orléans, but the world is ours! I think there are brave times ahead of us, adventures and wars and plunder! Then hey for Italy, and all brave adventurers!”