Fortune's Fools

by Paul Tomlinson

  “Who are you?” Sheldrake hissed, turning to find the clown gone.

  A cloaked figure sat on a low wall surrounding the paved terrace. He was looking out over the town, and did not turn at Sheldrake’s approach. “Ah, Captain Sheldrake. I believe we have unfinished business, you and I.”

  “You!”

  Sheldrake had his sword halfway from its scabbard before Anton turned to face him, his clown make-up now gone. “There is only one way to settle this,” Sheldrake snarled and leaped forward, sword in hand.

  Anton had drawn his sword as he turned, and parried the first blow easily. The cloak fell from his shoulders as he stood.

  Steel rang against steel, and sparks flew. The two circled each other warily. Flashes of light danced on their blades. Anton stabbed quickly, the point of his sword piercing Sheldrake’s shoulder, drawing first blood. Sheldrake barely spared the wound a glance, before advancing on his opponent, who fell back in his attempt to fend off a series of vicious swipes and thrusts. When Sheldrake paused to draw breath, Anton’s sword flicked out and drew a bloody line across the captain’s forehead.

  “Bastard!” Sheldrake roared. He wiped the blood from his forehead with the back of his hand. His thrust was parried, again and again. He whipped his blade down to swipe aside a jab aimed for his side, but the jab became an upward flick that caught took him under the chin.

  Anton grinned.

  “You treat this as a game?” Sheldrake asked.

  “It is a mistake to take one’s life too seriously.”

  “Make the most of the moments you have left, your life is almost over.” Sheldrake attacked suddenly, a thrust missing Anton’s heart by little more than an inch and grazing a rib.

  “Pardon me. This might seem like a bizarre request, but I cannot undo myself and need to answer a call of nature. Would you step into the corridor and assist me?” Gosling held up a left hand which he had hastily bandaged in a silk cloth to pretend some injury.

  The clown seemed doubtful, but shrugged and followed the rabbit-faced assassin out into the corridor. “I am sure I have been asked to perform stranger tasks, but off-hand I can remember none.”

  In the deserted corridor, the clown knelt in front of Gosling and set to work on the laces which fastened the front of his breeches. “If you seek only to expose yourself to me, be warned that I am not easily impressed,” the clown said, slightly drunk. “This fastening is really well-knotted: was it fastened for you by someone who meant you ill?”

  Two young men, one a tipsy Guardsman, the other in the costume of a mythical hero, staggered into the corridor. As they passed, one turned to his companion: “Tell me, am I more drunk than I thought, or was that really a clown engaged in fellatio with a five-foot brown rabbit.”

  “Aha! I have it!” the clown said.

  As the two party-goers turned the corner, Gosling drew his dagger and stabbed the man in the throat.

  The clown made ‘ack, ack’ sounds and slumped forwards.

  Gosling stood propping the dead man up against the wall as the two men returned.

  “Still at it?” They giggled and staggered on towards the main hall.

  Grimwade’s bear-headed arbiter appeared as Gosling examined his latest victim up close. “This is neither Anton nor Edison,” he said.

  “Then who?”

  The man shrugged.

  “Damn!” Gosling let the corpse fall and went off in search of other victims.

  Blades clashed, ringing in the night air. Drawn by the sound, two Guardsmen came to the terrace entrance, drawing their swords and advancing on the fighting duo.

  “No! He is mine!” Sheldrake ordered them back. They became spectators, and were soon joined by others in uniform, and by curious guests.

  Again and again the swords darted towards each other, scintillating in the moonlight, and filling the air with metallic strikes and rasping. And then a brief lull, as the blades locked at their hilts, and the two fighters leaned towards each other.

  Sheldrake tried to use his weight advantage to shove Anton back, but Anton had planted his feet firmly, and Sheldrake found himself having to take a backwards step to maintain his balance.

  Anton’s sword swept left to right, cutting a bloody stripe across the front of the captain’s uniform jacket.

  Sheldrake staggered and wiped blood from his eyes, mouth twisted into a snarl.

  For a moment, the opponents stood at opposite sides of the terrace, gasping for breath. Sheldrake bloodied from half-a-dozen small wounds, Anton unmarked. They stared into each other’s eyes, trying to anticipate the next move, ready to parry. At the same time, each watched the blade of their opponent, seeking a lapse in the defence, ready to take advantage with a decisive thrust.

   Sheldrake moved first, striking towards Anton’s eye.

  Anton barely raised his sword in time to block the move. He hadn’t time to recover before Sheldrake’s blade sliced downwards, narrowly missing the neck’s main artery and cutting open the skin over the collar bone.

  Anton’s arms were heavy, his entire body weighed down by the bruises it had sustained during the past days. A jab pierced his shirt, a flower of blood blossoming where his upper arm was stabbed through. Anton swayed on his feet, his sword held loosely before him. Sweat trickled into his eyes, blurring his vision.

  Sheldrake’s sword swept in a low arc, striking Anton’s weapon from his grasp. Anton bent to retrieve it, but found the point of the captain’s sword at his throat.

  Anton looked up into Sheldrake’s eyes. A single thrust would finish it.

  Sheldrake smiled and leaped suddenly, up onto the terrace wall. He gestured to Anton to follow. “Are you afraid?”

  Anton picked up his sword, ran, jumped and landed lightly on the wall. He looked to his left and saw the town laid out, a hundred feet below. “A spectacular view,” he said.

  Their first strokes were cautious, each aware of their precipitous position. But they were soon pacing quickly back and forth along the narrow wall, as first one and then the other held the advantage.

  *

  Gosling tripped the clown and sent him tumbling down the stone stairs. He heard the muffled thud when the body hit the ground five floors down, at the bottom of the tower.

  Grimwade’s adjudicator was waiting at the bottom, standing over the broken corpse, his bear mask held under his arm. He looked up as the assassin approached, shaking his head sadly.

  In a fluid motion, Gosling drew his dagger and threw it. Grimwade’s man stood for a moment with the hilt of the knife protruding from his left eye socket. A single bloody tear. The man fell forwards onto the corpse of the clown.

  Gosling shrugged. “It is all good practice, I suppose,” he muttered. The assassin went off in search of a drink, deciding that clown season was ended.

  Sheldrake stood, doubled over, on the wall. The sword fell from his numbed fingers and clattered to the stone terrace.

  Anton pulled his blade free, shivered involuntarily as he felt it grate against Sheldrake’s rib. Sheldrake made a strange sound of defeat, a sigh and a sob combined.

  Someone among the watching crowd giggled. Sheldrake turned to stare at them. He blinked sweat from his eyes, and as his vision cleared he could make out the people who had watched him fight.

  The faces he saw were oddly distorted, too large for their bodies. Eyes and noses were disproportionate too. The planes of the faces were all wrong, each feature exaggerated like a street performer’s puppet. Grotesque parodies of human beings, with sharp yellow teeth in fixed smiles. Unblinking fish-like eyes. There was Leland and his mother with her lover. Next to her, Henrik. Captain Torrance and Lord Eòghan, of course. And they were laughing. They were all laughing at him.

  In that insane moment, Gareth Sheldrake confessed to the assembled crowd. Into their misshaped faces he shouted of his crimes, of his torment. Eyes glaring. Spittle flying.

  Standing next to him on the wall, was Anton Leyander, whose face was smooth, untouched by the
ravages of Sheldrake’s imagination, his smile mocking. His bloodied sword raised.

  Sheldrake screamed, lunging wildly towards his opponent. His boot slipped on a smooth-edged stone, and he lost his balance. His leg slipped sideways, skinning his knee on the capstone. Sheldrake fell from the wall that overlooked the town, falling into the darkness.

  Sheldrake held on to the edge of the terrace wall, hanging over the town below.

  Anton leaped from the wall onto the terrace and seized Sheldrake’s arms.

  “You should let me fall,” Sheldrake said.

  “I did not come here to kill you.” Anton hauled Sheldrake up and over the edge of the wall, laying him on the terrace.

  “Only to ruin my life?” Sheldrake gasped.

  “You did not require my actions to do that,” Anton said.

  “If only things had turned out differently.” Sheldrake’s eyes closed.

  “A physician has been sent for,” Julianne said. “Will he live?”

  “Aye. But probably against his wishes,” Anton said.

   

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  While Anton’s wounds were being covered, a Guardsman wearing Lord Eòghan’s emblem on his chest delivered a message. It was a request for him to make his way to one of the castle’s private rooms. Anton presumed Lady Julianne wished to thank him personally for exposing Sheldrake’s villainy. He would accept her thanks, and then ask a favour in return. The amulet he and Edison had purchased with Grimwade’s silver was folded in a cloth in the purse on his belt: he would ask her to take it to Varian and use it to heal him.

  Outside, the fireworks had begun, staining the sky above the castle red and green and gold, and filling the night with more explosions than a week-long battle. Anton felt weary, and more than ready to leave this place behind him. Not for the first time he considered the direction his life had taken, trying to imagine where he would be a year from now. But he found nothing worth dwelling on there.

  The room was empty when he found it, and dark save for a single candle on a side table. A tray with two glasses and an open bottle of wine sat next to the candle-holder.

  “Fighting again, Master Leyander?” said a voice behind him.

  Anton turned. “Varian?”

  “I thought you had forgotten me.”

  “Never!” Anton moved towards him, not daring to embrace him. “Are you...?”

  “Quite healed,” Varian said. He pulled out the amulet that hung on a leather cord around his neck. “Lady Julianne had her personal physician attend me.”

  “I never meant for you to be harmed,” Anton said.

  “I know.”

  “How is...”

  “There are scars,” Varian said, “as there should be. A reminder.”

  “What will happen to you now?”

  “I am a free man,” Varian said. “If I choose, I may be reinstated in the Guard.”

  “And will you?” Anton asked.

  “I am not yet decided. It will depend, I think, on whether they will award me back-pay for these last weeks...”

  “I would ask you to leave with me,” Anton said.

  Varian shook his head. “That is not my journey to make.”

  Anton nodded. There was an awkward silence then. He looked around the room, as if admiring the décor. “Do you have your own room in the castle?”

  Varian grinned. “The bed is enormous. You must see it, before you leave.”

  “I would like that.”

  “But not tonight?” Varian said, reading his expression.

  “There are things I must finish,” Anton said.

  Varian nodded.

  Anton picked up the bottle of wine. “May I?”

  “Be careful where you leave the empty bottle this time,” Varian said.

  *

  Anton entered his rooms to find a small, leathery man sitting in the darkness, waiting. Gosling.

  Anton lit a pair of candles, setting one down on the table by the bottle of wine, carrying the other as he sought two glasses.

  “You do not seem surprised to find me here,” the assassin said.

  Anton poured two glasses of the thick red wine, passed one to Gosling.

  “If you still work for Sheldrake, he has been placed under arrest,” Anton said.

  Gosling examined his drink in the candlelight. “The hunchback sent me to kill you,” he said.

  Anton sipped his wine. “I see.”

  *

  His business with Julianne had been successfully concluded, and Grimwade left the castle soon after midnight, hurrying home. He had decided to celebrate, and there was a little treat waiting for him in the cell beneath his house.

  “I really do feel guilty about keeping you locked away down here in the dirt and the damp,” Grimwade told Bryn. “Your friend will return soon: in the meanwhile, won’t you come upstairs? I will have a bath drawn for you – you must be in need of a little warmth and relaxation.”

  Deciding that his opportunities for escape would be greater in the house above, Bryn agreed. He was taken to a room filled with cane furnishings and soft cushions, exquisite rugs and tapestries, and cool green foliage growing in terra-cotta pots. A large wooden tub had been placed before the fire, and was filled by a succession of house maids from steaming kettles brought up from the kitchen.

  “I want you to see that I am a generous man, Bryn,” Grimwade said. “I want you to like me, to see me as your friend. You and I are very much alike in many ways... but we must not let your bath get cold.” Grimwade excused himself, claiming to have urgent business elsewhere. “Please do not attempt to leave before Mr. Gosling gets back,” the hunchback said as he left the room. “I would hate for one of my people to have to damage you.” He locked the door behind him.

  Bryn surveyed the room, seeking some means of escape. The windows seemed to be nailed shut. He could, of course, throw a chair through them, but the noise would attract swift reaction.

  From the corner of his eye, Bryn saw one of the tapestries ripple, as if stirred by a breeze. He smiled. Since there was no breeze, the movement must have another source. The hunchback for instance. Did it seem too unlikely that Grimwade would have a secret passageway in his house? Or that he would use it to spy on a man taking a bath?

  Such a passage might also provide a means of escape. Any sudden movement in that direction would have Grimwade slamming the door closed, but if the hunchback was sufficiently distracted, unprepared for any attack...

  Bryn grinned. He knew the perfect distraction.

  Keeping himself in clear view of Grimwade’s hiding place, Bryn began to undress. He pulled off his boots, laying them carefully to one side. He tugged his shirt free of his breeches, and pulled it slowly up over his head.

  Grimwade pushed the tapestry out a little further, to widen his field of vision, and pushed the eyeglasses back up his nose. The young assassin really was quite beautiful. Beneath the smooth, bronzed skin, the assassin’s stomach was a sequence of clearly defined, symmetrical muscles. As he relaxed out of the stretch, his chest and shoulder muscles seemed to swell, flowing into their perfectly proportioned resting form. Grimwade imagined the young man dressed in a wine-red loin cloth, holding the broadsword of a mythological hero, his white-blond hair gently stirring in a warm breeze. The hunchback’s heart beat rapidly, the fear of discovery and the guilt over his voyeurism heightening his enjoyment of the experience. He leaned forward as Bryn stepped out of his breeches.

  Bryn turned slightly so the hunchback had the clearest possible view of his broad shoulders, and v-shaped back tapering to a narrow waist. He stretched again, to show the movement of the muscles beneath skin, knowing that as he moved, the blond hairs on his arms and legs would catch the light. Then he bent to remove his undergarment, revealing paler flesh.

  “He has the most perfectly formed buttocks, does he not?” a voice behind the hunchback asked.

  Grimwade whirled about, startled. Afraid and guilty.

  Anton Leyander st
ood in the dark passageway, a large sack at his feet.

  “Anton! What an... unexpected pleasure,” Grimwade said.

  “Unexpected, I am sure it must be, since you sent an assassin to ensure you would never set eyes upon me again.”

  “A mistake, I assure you. And one I honestly regret making. You cannot know how pleased I am to see that the man I sent failed in his mission,” Grimwade said.

  “Then you have changed your mind? You do not wish him to kill me?” Anton asked.

  “Anton, of course I do not want you dead. You are my friend. It was a silly misunderstanding.”

  “Did you hear that?” Anton kicked the sack.

  “Yes,” the sack said, muffled.

  Anton bent and untied the neck of the sack, releasing Gosling. “I think it would be best if you went through there and helped your associate to escape,” Anton said. “There is no need to mention to him that we are here.”

  “Perhaps that would be for the best,” Grimwade said sadly, glancing through the opening into the next room. He gave Gosling the key to the door.

  “I have had enough of this town,” Gosling said. “It seems to be peopled entirely by madmen.” He squeezed through the gap behind the tapestry, and startled the unsuspecting Bryn, who was just lowering himself into the tub.

  “Where is the ugly one?” Bryn asked.

  “Unconscious behind the tapestry.”

  “Why did you not kill him?” Bryn asked.

  “Because I have already killed more men tonight than we did in the whole of the last three months,” Gosling said.

  “Including those people from the village in the forest?” Bryn asked.

  Gosling shook his head. “The undead don’t count.”

  “I could have escaped without your help, you know,” Bryn said sulkily. “I had agreed to the bath in order the distract him with my nakedness; then I would have overpowered him and made my escape.” He pulled on his shirt.

  “You were not intending to buy your freedom in some way then? By performing certain acts?” Gosling asked.

  “You do not think I would do such a thing, do you? At least not with so hideous a captor?” Bryn reached for his boots.