Tales of the Old World (51 page)

Tomas, Paul, Gerni and Luc crept as close as they dared and halted again,
looking briefly into each other’s eyes and waiting for what must come next.
Tomas looked at Luc’s blackened face and saw his brown eyes brighter than the
ash, wide and fearful. Gerni wriggled over to Tomas, making too much noise for
Tomas’ liking.

“What’s your plan now, boy?”

Tomas didn’t like the diminutive but could only agree that the doubt on the
older man’s part was justified. He thought quickly.

“I will gain their attention while you and Paul rush them from behind.” A
sound enough plan.

“What about me?” Luc whispered.

“You can go back and bring the others to the hedge, what’s left of it.” Luc
was clearly relieved by this job. He pulled his sword quietly from his belt.

“Give me your knife, Tomas. You will have more need of this.”

Tomas took the sword and felt its cool weight. He looked briefly at the
simple, sturdy ironwork in the moonlight and thought of his father. “Not now,”
he told himself, “not now.”

They watched Luc crawl away down the hedge-line and melt into the black scar,
one more grey lump, and turned to their allotted task. Paul looked up at the
moon.

“Time to move, Tomas.” Tomas was grateful not to be called “boy” this one
time. “How do you mean to get their attention?”

“Be ready and you will know soon enough.” Tomas wished he had a better answer
but he did not. Paul, however, took his brusqueness as evidence that he had
everything under control. Paul and Gerni moved quietly into position.

Tomas crept toward the front of the hedge and the gate. He could see the two
men clearly now, he even thought he knew one of their names. Alain, an older
sergeant, had come to the smithy more than once to have his armour adjusted to
suit his expanding girth. Tomas willed a clever idea to come into his head but
none did, so he fell back on the only notion he had. He stood up, walked several
steps away from the hedge and began to stroll toward the gate. He tried to
whistle but his mouth was shaking so much that he couldn’t form the proper
shape.

Alain and his colleague didn’t see him until he was quite close. “Who’s
there?”

“It’s me, Tomas, I’ve come to see the Marquis.”

“You’ve what?”

“Gilbert. I’ve come to pay him a visit.” The soldiers peered into the night to
ascertain whether Tomas was alone. Alain stepped forward a little and peered at
the boy in the darkness.

“Let me get this right. You’ve come to see the Marquis. We’ve been looking
for you all the last night and day, and you waltz up here, bold as you please,
asking to see the boss?”

“That’s right.”

“Well you got balls on you, boy, even if you don’t have brains.” In a strange
and somewhat terrifying development to Tomas, he was beginning to enjoy himself.

“Please don’t call me ‘boy’. My name is Tomas.” He hoped Paul and Gerni
would not take too much longer and his ears were rewarded with the sound of a
stealthy footfall. If he could just hold the attention of the guards for a
moment longer… Alain’s companion joined the conversation.

“Well, boy, the Marquis will be very pleased to see you, but not with that
sword at your hip. Where did you get it?” Tomas had forgotten the weapon stuffed
through the rope which held his trews up. Tomas still couldn’t see Paul or Gerni
but decided that if they didn’t arrive soon he was in serious trouble anyway.

“This sword?” One last stall.

“Yeah, boy, that sword. What are you going to do with it?”

“I’m going to stick this sword into Gilbert’s soft belly and watch his bright
blood spill out.”

The men stopped for a second and looked at each other. They reached for their
own blades and Tomas dragged his from his belt. For a brief moment he found
himself facing two experienced fighters with a weapon he had never wielded
before. He bit his tongue and opened the wound from the day before, tasting
iron.

Had Paul and Gerni synchronised their attacks a little better it would have
been over instantly. As it was, the younger sergeant went down under a double
handed stroke to his neck, not pretty swordplay by any means but brutally
effective. Alain had a breath after this had happened to turn and put his arm in
the way of Gerni’s upward thrust. The tip of the blade pierced his much repaired
chain-mail vest at the bottom of the ribcage and both men fell to the ground.
Alain was a big man and had taken wounds before, though not for many years. He
punched Gerni in the mouth with a mailed glove and the miller rolled away
spitting blood and teeth.

Paul was still engaged and so Tomas grabbed his weapon tightly and approached
the panting Alain. The fat soldier was having trouble getting his sword out of
its scabbard which had fallen underneath him and he was concentrating on this
task when Tomas arrived. He looked up at Tomas’ face. “Now, boy…”

Tomas stamped hard on his sword hand and kicked at his face. Looking down at
the older man, cradling his broken fingers against his bleeding face Tomas
paused, but he quickly realised he had come much too far for remorse. He
reversed the sword in both hands and struck downward as hard as he could. The
brief battle was over and the three men fought to regain their breaths.

Hardly had they drawn three lungfulls each when they heard Luc cry, “Tomas!”

The distance and the dark made it hard to discern the situation but this is
how it seemed to the three at the gate. Luc must have run into the other patrol
and now fled across the open ground toward the forest with the two sergeants on
his heels. The unarmoured Luc was faster but was done for if the soldiers caught
him.

Paul grabbed Tomas, “Quickly! We must help.” Tomas was torn.

“No, wait.”

“There will be more men.”

“We knew we’d have to fight. Wait.”

Luc almost reached the eaves of the forest before he fell. He rolled and
tried to stand but he had hurt his leg or his ankle and he pitched forward
again. The men were on him. From the trees which offered him safety came a roar
and eight villagers sprang out, charging toward the soldiers who stood over Luc.
The sergeants did a quick head count and attempted a rapid about face. The
farmers caught them and Tomas lost the details in a whirl of bodies and blades.
He counted eight men standing at the end of it and that seemed to be a
comforting thing. He couldn’t tell if any of them were Luc. A door at the end of
the house burst open and six armed sergeants carrying torches ran out and down
the hill towards the forest. Paul gripped Tomas’ arm again.

“They need us. They aren’t trained soldiers.” The door stood open and
firelight spilled out.

“We’ll never get a better chance to get inside the house.” Tomas heard the
sound of raised voices from the barracks on the other side of the manor.

“They’ll be cut to pieces.”

“It’s now or never.”

In the end Paul ran back to help the others and Tomas and Gerni made a dash
for the house.

They ran hard, bent double, and plunged without hesitation into the fire-lit
kitchen whose door stood open. Tomas led and Gerni followed. Had they stopped to
think at the door Tomas might never have found the courage to go in at all. The
kitchen was empty as they discovered after picking themselves up off the wooden
floor. Gerni had slid all the way under the table and stopped against a sack of
flour. A cloud of white snow settled in his hair. Tomas’ elbow caught on the
door frame and sent him spinning against the stone trough in the corner. He
splashed his face and combed a handful of water through his hair with his
fingers. If he strained his ears Tomas could hear the sounds of a battle from
outside in the grounds. Inside the house it was silent. Gerni and Tomas shared a
“you first” look before gripping their swords and going further into the
house.

Heavy carpets lay on the floor and hung on the walls eating the sound of
their footfalls so that Tomas and Gerni rounded a corner and found themselves
almost seated at a table with two sergeants before either group was aware of the
other. One of the men was almost asleep and the other strained to read by the
guttering stub of a candle. A bottle lay on its side, resting against the book.
Their position stood sentry over the main staircase of the house which swept up
to the private apartments of the Marquis. The four men looked at each other,
unsure of what might happen next.

Had Gerni or Tomas been a competent assassin the outcome would have been
simple and quick but the struggle in the dark at the gate had not prepared them
for striking in cold blood. The sergeant with the book, a young man with reading
spectacles, woke the other with one hand while folding his spectacles and
replacing them with his sword in the other. The sleeper stirred and made an
inquisitive snort as his eyes opened. He grasped the situation quite speedily
and stood, clearing space as he drew his blade.

Tomas and Gerni circled away from each other a little and exchanged a nervous
glance. The odds were hardly even. The sergeants were veterans and the older one
wore armour, Tomas and Gerni were farmers with weapons they had never, until
recently, even held in their hands. Neither side seemed willing to make the
first move. Tomas realised that the sergeants had everything to gain by waiting,
and he much to lose. It was unlikely the battle outside would go his way and
soon more soldiers would return to the house. Tomas swallowed the urge to run
and hide. An indistinct shout made its way in from outside and he could wait no
longer. The soldiers continued to stand at the table, blocking the stairs. Gerni
hung back, the point of his sword wandering aimlessly in front of his face.

In what he was sure would be his last and most foolish action, Tomas leapt
forward with his sword in front of him, almost closing his eyes in silent
supplication to the memory of his father.

You never hear the sound which wakes you. He was fairly sure something was
amiss in his house, however, and so Marquis Gilbert sat up, letting the satin
sheet slide down his naked, hairless chest. He heard something then, a thud and
a crash from outside his room. He dressed quickly but clumsily, missing the aid
of his dresser who had left for the evening. In the polished silver mirror he
frowned at his paunch as he did every morning. He had to admit to himself that
he was not the lean and dangerous man he had once been, but there wasn’t much
that could conceivably be in his house which could cause him to raise a sweat.
He buckled on his rapier, which hadn’t struck a blow in all its elegant life,
and composed himself, risking one more glance in the looking glass before
unbolting the door and walking onto the landing.

At the top of the stairs stood two boys. One, the elder of the two, was
bleeding seriously from a cut in his cheek. Gilbert looked to the bottom of the
staircase. Two of his men lay there, probably dead, certainly on the way. On the
table the stub of a candle illuminated one of his books, some spectacles and an
empty bottle which would once have contained port, his port.

He snorted. His useless soldiers spent more time drunk than sober. Gilbert’s
eyes climbed the stairs and settled again on the boys. They held swords in their
hands. They held them far from their bodies, as if the blood on the blades might
poison them. A good swordsman loved his blade, especially when bloody. Gilbert
walked quietly towards the pair. One of them, the younger one, yelled something
indistinct and charged along the balcony toward him. The other, the bleeding
one, stayed put. Gilbert sank into a fencing stance and waited patiently. The
charger realised he was alone about three quarters of the way to his objective
and spun around, exposing his back. The older boy was clearly too scared to
charge; clever boy.

Gilbert lunged forward, hopping on his back foot first for extra distance,
and whipped his blade across the younger boy’s back. It raised a welt from waist
to shoulder and the lad fell, screaming. Gilbert gently broke his nose by
stepping on the back of his head with his boot heel and walked over to attend to
the frightened one.

He seemed to find a morsel of courage as he squared up and faced the Marquis
rather than run down the stairs as he clearly wanted to. Gilbert feinted low and
the boy followed like a trout to a fly. The Marquis’ knee connected with his
face and the lad cart-wheeled backward and down the stairs, taking every third
one as if he were eager to reach the bottom. He lay still and Gilbert turned
around.

The young boy had got up again. Bravo. Gilbert assumed a dueling stance with
all of the proper flourishes and detail, and signaled as was proper that his
opponent might begin when he was ready. As the boy looked into his eyes, with
some anger it must be said, Gilbert noted with amusement that it was the wretch
they had all been looking for. How fitting that he might kill him here, with the
sword made by his own father. Gilbert doubted that the child would appreciate
the irony.

The Marquis set about playing with his victim a little. He stepped out of the
way of the increasingly desperate attacks, spinning and pirouetting like a
dancer. In between each of the boy’s sorties he gave him a little cut, on the
face or the arm, with the tip of the blade. Eventually Gilbert tired of the game
and it occurred to him he should find out if there were other intruders in his
house. He imagined with a certain amount of grim glee the retribution he would
exact from whoever was responsible for this little insurrection. He turned to
his opponent.

The boy lunged, straight and unimaginative, slow and clumsy. Gilbert was an
enthusiastic user of the stop-hit, a manoeuvre in which one fencer, instead of
parrying his opponent’s offence, attacks instead, hitting before the original
blow lands. He employed it now, bringing his blade inside the boy’s, and placing
the tip accurately at the base of his ribcage. The golden-hilted rapier cut the
boy a little, bent—and then snapped.