Squire's Honor

by Peter Telep

  “Did you come up here for me?” Christopher asked, probing Doyle’s eyes with his gaze. “Or for yourself.”

  “I came here so that justice could be done in both of our lives,” Doyle replied, his tone softer.

  Christopher considered Doyle’s words as he wiped sweat from his beard. Then he reached a conclusion. “If we kill Seaver, in a way, we kill her. Do you under­ stand?”

  “He tried to kill you. He stole your bride-to-be. How can you sit here?” Doyle asked, flipping him a sardonic half grin.

  Christopher lowered his head and closed his eyes. “What has it been, twelve moons? In all that time I never thought they would come to know each other, to actually—I cannot believe it—love each other.” He opened his eyes. “My God, maybe she is right. Maybe I will never accept her. But I’m a fool! I should have remembered what happened to Garrett and me. I hated the man. Then I came to respect him. And it tore me up when he died. It’s no different between the two of them. Then again, it is; it’s deeper.” He looked up to the sky. “Why didn’t I see it?”

  “I take it back, Monte,” Doyle said. “He’s been calm because he’s gone mad.”

  Christopher turned around and bent down to pick up a clump of pine needles; he threw them as hard as he could. “I’m not mad. I’m just a fool. A fool for dragging you up here.” He started walking. “Let’s go.”

  “Go where, laddie?” Montague asked. “Our ride home won’t be shoving off for another day or two, and I’m not sleeping there with all that loading and unload­ ing going on.”

  “What about the inn?” Christopher asked, pausing. “What about money?” Montague countered.

  Christopher shot him an accusing look. “I thought you were taking care of that.”

  “An easy job. I’ve none to care for.”

  Doyle wiped a bead of sweat from his lip. “We’ve no money at all?”

  “I wasn’t sure how long we’d be here,” Montague confessed. “And I frowned on borrowing more from Morna. She’s done enough already.”

  “All right, then.”We’ve got packs. We’ll camp here this eve. We’ll go down to the cog on the morrow and ask the boatswain when she’s drawing anchor.”

  Montague and Doyle reflected on that, and the fat man was the first to nod. Doyle followed him with a shrug and then a sigh of disgust.

  “And don’t try anything this eve,” Christopher warned his blood brother. “You know I sleep lightly.”

  “What’s this?” Montague asked, taking a step forward and squinting over Christopher’s shoulder. Doyle noticed it too.

  Christopher spun around.

  There he was, the short Saxon whom Marigween now had feelings for, running from the main house to the barn. He vanished behind the door.

  “He must be fetching his mount,” Doyle hazarded.

  Montague huffed. “Where’s he going in such a rush?” “He knows we’re here,” Christopher heard himself say. Seaver appeared atop his rounsey. He quirted the horse into a gallop away from the barn. He was not headed in the direction of the port proper, but north toward another toft.

  “You’re right, Christopher. She probably told him we’re here,” Doyle concluded darkly. “We should have stayed there, waited for him, and killed him—like I said.”

  As he was becoming wont to do, Christopher darted off and headed down the slope toward the main house.

  He crossed the stretch of grassy ground between the base of the slope and the house in what seemed like only a handful of moments. Out of breath, he arrived at the front door. “Marigween? It’s Christopher again. Open up.”

  The door yawned inward, and there she was. She had the baby in the crook of one arm, and she looked as tearful as he had left her. He moved into the doorway. “Where did he go?”

  “He’s … I’ve never seen him like …”

  Christopher turned and beat a fist on the front door. “You told him we were here?”

  She nodded. “He … he went mad. He said he never finished Woden’s work. I think he wants to kill you.”

  And her words came back to him. “Don’t think,” he corrected her, “know.”

  “I couldn’t,” she gasped, “I’m sorry. I just had to tell him. He kept asking why I was crying.”

  Christopher drew in a long breath and gathered his thoughts. “I’m going back to Blytheheart. I want you to come with me. Let me prove to you that I accept you.” He raised his fist and spoke slowly. “Give me the chance.”

  “It’s too late, Christopher,” she said between sobs. “It’s too late.”

  “Christopher?” Doyle called from somewhere outside. “Look!”

  Christopher hurried to the doorway and saw that Montague and Doyle now jogged toward the house. The fat man appeared flushed and pressed a palm to his heart. Doyle pointed to the north, where three horsemen rose over a slope. Sunlight reflected off what had to be spathas in their grips. Apparently, Seaver had friends who were not only loyal, but avail­ able at the drop of a denier. Which was, of course, Christopher’s luck. He craned his head, and fixed Marigween with a wide-eyed gaze. “Do you have any other mounts.”

  “There are two more rounseys in the barn,” she said.

  He flipped a look back to the horsemen, then back to her. He proffered his hand. “Come with me now.”

  She closed her eyes tightly and shook her head.

  He took another look at the horsemen, then glimpsed at Marigween, who now sobbed into a palm.

  You will be with me. Someda y.

  Christopher shot out of the doorway. “To the barn!” he screamed to his friends.

  He ran around the main house, and as he did so, he felt a twinge of pain run through his calf: the old arrow wound. The pain sparked a bad memory that at this moment was darkly fitting, for it was Seaver’s forces that had been responsible for the injury.

  Christopher reached the barn, pushed in one of the doors, then limped inside. In the hazy light filtering in from the doorway behind him, he probed the barn for the horses. There, one, two, in the rear stalls on the right. Panting, he hobbled to the back of the barn, opened one stall door, then the other. Good and bad luck were almost evenly balanced: the mounts, though not saddled, were bridled, and their saddles hung on the wall behind them.

  Doyle ran into the barn. “Why don’t we stay and take them on?” he asked, as he came to a halt.

  “It’s not worth it,” Christopher argued. “She won’t come with me. Let’s leave.” He fetched the first roun­sey’s reins. “I’ll ride behind you. We’ll give Montague the other horse.”

  “’I’ll put my dagger against his sword any day,” Doyle said.

  Christopher replied through gritted teeth. “I know Montague wants to leave. If you want to take on all three of them yourself, then I won’t stop you.”

  Montague trudged into the barn. “Lads, if they do not kill me, all of this running will.”

  “Monte, get over here and saddle up this horse,” Doyle ordered his partner, then turned to Christopher and yanked the reins out of his hand. “I don’t know where you think we’re going to ride to …” Doyle led the rounsey out of the stall. Christopher took his friend’s cue and removed the saddle from the wall.

  “We’ll get back to the cog, lads,” Montague said, reaching for his own saddle. “If they try anything there, at least we’ll have an armed deck crew to back us up.”

  “Maybe,” Doyle said in an ominous tone, “but were I one of them, I wouldn’t risk my life to defend passengers.” “Even if they do not help us, they certainly won’t per­ mit Saxons on board. All we have to do is make it to the cog first,” Montague said.

  “I hate running away,” Doyle said to anyone caring to listen.

  Christopher’s hands trembled as he made all of the usual preparations to ride, things he had done so many times he could do them in his sleep, but now they seemed impossibly hard. He struggled with the saddle’s buckle.

  “What’s the matter?” Doyle asked urgently. “It won’t … t
here! Let’s go.”

  Doyle helped him up, and he hung on to the rear of the saddle, his feet dangling in midair. They charged out of the barn.

  But even before the harsh sunlight filled his gaze, Christopher heard the dangerously close thunder of hooves. He craned his head toward the sound, squinted, saw flashes of bouncing light, then a clouded view of the landscape, and finally the three riders, who made a wide tum in unison around the main house.

  He’d figured they would have at least a ten-horse­ length lead on the Saxons, but they’d spent too much time in the barn. As Doyle guided their rounsey over a long, lazy hogback that ran parallel to the slope they had hidden in, the Saxons came within two lengths.

  Christopher stole a glance back at them. He saw Seaver furiously heeling his mount, his reins pulled up tight and clenched firmly in one hand, his spatha held steady and pointed forward in the other. The short man seemed to lack something, a sense of regality, a cocksure demeanor, a glow of what Christopher could only imagine and describe as power. Seaver was no longer the leader of men who had paraded around the wall-walk and had casually ordered Christopher’s death. With no army to back him up, the Saxon should be less intimi­dating.

  But if the regality and power were missing, they had been replaced by something else, a glow in the Saxon’s eyes that now chilled Christopher. The Saxons called it the light of Woden. Christopher called it the light of obsession. And though he’d seen it drive men to their deaths, it also made them much more dangerous. It was an alluring light, one Christopher had stepped into far too many times. Yes, Seaver would fight for his new life with as much force as Christopher would summon to restore his old one.

  He turned his gaze ahead, tightened his grip on the saddle, and pressed · his legs against the horse. “Remember that day you tried to outrace me over the tourney ground?” he asked Doyle.

  “Yes,” Doyle called back.

  “Can you ride even faster than that?” “As long as Monte keeps up his pace.”

  Christopher guessed that if Montague were to take a motto it would be: First to eat, first to retreat. And the brigand could engage in both of those acts faster than anyone. The fat man may not have been able to run, but he rode now like a man half his size. He found his way away around ruts in the ground and made it onto the trail that led east to the port as if he were atop a bird instead of a horse.

  Christopher knew that riding at breakneck speeds in the slopes and foothills that meandered down to the port was difficult, but as they gradually proved, not impossible.

  The impossible lay ahead. Montague directed his horse for the main east-west path that ran through the heart of the port. Granted, it was the most direct route to the Celt cog—

  But it was also Ivory Point’s Merchant Row, and it was clogged with seamen, serf farmers, and traders. The booths of craftsmen lined both sides of the narrow street, and many of them had set up tables in front of their booths to further display their wares. Some of these tables extended two to three yards into the road.

  He craned his head to the Saxons: an arrowhead of horsemen coming on, locked onto their target. He looked ahead, and sensed what was about to happen.

  Had it been up to Christopher, he would have reined to a halt and taken off on foot through the maze of peo­ple. But Montague led this escape, and the fat man was not about to inconvenience himself just because three­ or fourscore merchants and shoppers were in his way.

  “Hang on!” Doyle shouted, then slammed his heels twice into the mount’s ribs.

  Montague’s horse hit the cobblestoned street, and amid the clatter of his rounsey’s hooves, he shouted, “Out of the way! OUT OF THE WAY”!

  Jarred as the rounsey crossed from dirt to stone, Christopher nearly lost his grip on the saddle. Preoccupied by trying to hang on, he failed to see what was happening ahead. But he heard the first cries.

  And the first crash.

  Christopher looked up and saw that Montague had plowed into a table of fresh produce and knocked it onto its side. Onions, potatoes, and several roots Christopher did not recognize lay in a heap beside the table, and on his knees before the heap was the gray­ bearded proprietor, who shook a fist in the air. Then the whole scene of destruction fell back into their wake.

  Faces flashed into view, most of them wearing the same expression. And the aftermath of Montague’s rid­ ing blurred by with equal speed. Shoppers, in their effort to avoid Montague’s horse, slammed themselves into each other and into the booths on either side of the street. One fat man’s arm got caught on the awning pole of a tanner’s booth, and the support snapped, bringing the whole awning down on top of him and the tanner. A few yards ahead, on the opposite side of the street, a woman lay on her back across a merchant’s table, sur­rounded by several men. Had Montague hit her, or had she fainted?

  Christopher peered over Doyle’s shoulder and noted that Montague was swiftly approaching an intersection, and in the middle of the cross street, stopped dead and blocking their path, was a cart hitched to a mule. The driver of the cart repeatedly whipped the rump of the animal, but the beast refused to move.

  The fat man attempted to steer right around the cart,putting himself very close to the booths to his right, but he failed to notice the overhanging shingle of a baker. He looked up just as his face connected with the hard, wooden sign. The brigand fell backward, and his boots slipped from his stirrups. For a second, he hung in the air, a bloated pigeon whose wings had just failed, then he came down and made a perfect and complete landing on top of a table that was stacked four-high with freshly baked loaves. The legs of the table leaned so far to the right that they snapped off, and once again, the fat man fell.

  Doyle pulled hard on the reins and came nearly as close to the shingle as Montague had—close enough for Christopher to reach up and grab it with both hands. He let himself be pulled off of the rounsey to hang from the sign a moment, then he dropped to the cobblestone and spun around. “Montague?”

  The fat man groaned as he rubbed his nose with one hand, and reached back for a loaf with the other. “The world’s a blur, but it smells so sweet,” he said weakly.

  Seaver and his comrades rode up and reined to a halt. The short man shot him a fierce look. “Kimball!” Then he began to swing himself out of his saddle.

  “Monte! Get up!” Doyle shouted, then he dismounted in a flash and drew his dagger from his hip sheath. He locked his gaze on Seaver and the other two Saxons.

  Christopher trembled and his breath was ragged. He heard a growing chorus of shouts from down the street, but they didn’t matter now. His gaze left Doyle and went to the Saxons, then it fell upon Montague, who sat up with a deep sigh. There, belted at the fat man’s ample waist, was his dagger. Christopher leaned over, snatched the blade from the brigand, then turned it on Seaver.

  The short Saxon made a lopsided grin, then turned his head to glance at Doyle. “Quite an escape you made from the castle. Too bad you couldn’t take your fingers with you.”

  Doyle exhaled—a sound that was more growl than breath. He narrowed his gaze. A nerve in his neck throbbed, and his face was flushed. Christopher was sure that in the next second his blood brother would charge the short man.

  “Laddie, we’d better finish this later,” Montague said from somewhere behind Christopher.

  And then Christopher turned his head left, drawn by a sound he’d heard a moment ago, a sound that was now much louder. A wave of merchants and patrons, some of them armed with swords and shortbows, rolled wildly toward them. Even if they and the Saxons joined ranks—an absurd idea, to be sure—they were out­ numbered by at least five to one. That fact alone was enough to convince Christopher that Montague was right; a glance down at the pathetic dagger in his hand carved the decision in stone.

  Seaver and the other two Saxons turned to regard the mob, and that was the second Christopher needed. “Run!” he screamed. “Run!” And then he sprinted by Doyle.

  Christopher arced past the cart that was stuck in the
road, then continued on. Soon, the road dropped into a lazy grade all the way down to the wharves.

  Abandoning the horses had been both a good and bad idea. It had been easier to weave through the crowd on foot, but now it seemed just as disruptive. He looked back over his shoulder. Doyle was a score of yards behind, Montague a yard or so farther back. He could not see Seaver, whose head was surely obscured by the taller shoppers, but he picked out the other two Saxons, who elbowed a clear path for themselves. He turned back to the road ahead—

  And at the nearest intersection, two lances of armored crossbowmen jogged into view and began to cordon off the street. Christopher had seen a few of these guards when they had first come ashore, and had been told by the cog;s captain to steer well clear of them; the port was presently controlled by a Saxon warlord, and he’d placed his elite guard at the dockside. They were excellent men-at-arms, with short tempers and orders to kill troublemakers. The trick now would be to hide and let the guards finish off Seaver and his friends. A simple idea amid a not-so-simple situation.

  Christopher shuffled right. He turned the dagger upside down in his hand and held it close to his hip. Here, at the end of the street, the buildings were two stories, and the place was devoid of merchant booths. He moved to the nearest door, found it open, then paused before entering to look for Doyle and Montague. He squinted but saw only the crowd. He decided to duck into the building and peer at the street from behind the cracked open door. If Montague and Doyle were to pass, he’d call to them. He opened the door and stepped into a room lined on both sides with barrels and firkins that were stacked nearly to the ceiling. At the rear of the room was a high counter, and behind it, a hallway that led off to a rear door. There was an inter­secting hall that in one direction probably led to a stair­ case. The merchant who resided here was in the ale and cider business, a middleman exporter, and wherever he was, Christopher hoped he stayed there. He turned back toward the door, shut it to a crack, then moved to—