A rough hand clamped over my mouth.
Before I knew what was happening, I was pulled from my hiding place; my breath was crushed from my lungs as I was tucked under a stone-hard arm like I was a bundle of sticks. My captor loped away from the lantern light, deeper into the forest, weaving around the trees, carrying me as if I weighed nothing more than an idle thought. Behind were confused shouts, followed by the sounds of several men crashing through the underbrush. Above it all I recognized the Captain’s voice, shouting for order, trying to stop his men as they fanned out in the woods, calling for them to be quiet, all to no avail. We drove straight into the forest while the sounds of their frantic search covered our retreat, and within a minute the noise of their thrashing faded entirely. All I heard was the deep, rhythmic breathing of the man who carried me, and the steady thump of his boots on the humus of the forest floor.
His hand was like a vise over my mouth, and his arm crushed my chest, making it difficult to breathe. Tears blurred my eyes. After a time—probably only a few minutes, although it felt like more—just when I thought I might faint, I heard the sound of running water, and abruptly we broke out of the trees and crashed through a shallow river, its ripples scattering the reflected light of the dimmed suns overhead. Cold drops spattered my face, shocking me back to consciousness. As soon as we were on the other side, and behind the cover of a thicket, my conveyor deposited me roughly on the ground and collapsed in front of me, gasping to catch his breath.
Kite.
I pulled myself up unsteadily, still dizzy. “I’ve got to go back,” I managed to croak.
He looked at me as if I was crazed.
“If I don’t, they will kill the others.”
Kite reached over and, with barely an effort, pulled me down so hard my backside slammed the ground painfully. I glared at him, and he returned my gaze with indifference. “No.”
“Why? Why won’t you let me go?”
“You wouldn’t understand, boy.”
“Maybe I understand more than you think.”
He arched his eyebrows slightly.
“You knew Ignatius,” I said. “From before, when you were both at the Vatican. You were in the Cent Suisse. There are only one hundred Papal Guards, and there’s only one choir-master at Capella Sixtina. You had to know each other.”
There might have been a twitch at the corner of his mouth.
“Your meeting with Ignatius wasn’t coincidental.”
He spat. In the one day we’d been together, I hadn’t heard Kite string together more than two words; mostly he made himself understood with dark, pointed silences. So it surprised me when he wiped the back of his mouth on his sleeve and said, “You’re smarter than any pretty boy has a right to be.” He narrowed his eyes. “What else do you understand?”
There was no reason for holding back. “That Ignatius was excommunicated around the same time you were expelled from the Cent Suisse.” I paused. “Or maybe at exactly the same time.”
This time there was a definite twitch.
“I saw the way you looked at him when he put his hand on your shoulder,” I said. “I saw the way he reacted.”
“You know nothing.”
I leaned forward and, though I was scared to, forced myself to put a hand on his shoulder, the same shoulder Ignatius had clasped. It was like grasping a rock. “I know you love Ignatius. Or once did.” Kite went rigid. “You needn’t surrender. I heard them talking. I don’t know why, but they seem only interested in me.”
He batted my hand away. “They will kill the others, regardless.” He said it with the certainty of a man who’d dealt with their kind before.
“Are you so angry at Ignatius for betraying you that you’d let him die?”
“Betraying me?” He barked out a harsh laugh. “You got that backwards.”
I knew Ignatius had been excommunicated because of his expansive appetites. Despite his professed disbelief, he had once been pious. So I had assumed that his guilt over his transgressions with Kite had gotten the better of him, and led to a confession that ended in their joint downfall.
“You betrayed Ignatius,” I said aloud, rearranging things in my mind. “So you owe him.” The Cent Suisse were nothing if not honourable. He had come back for me because it had been part of a debt he believed he owed Ignatius. “You promised something, to atone for what you did. You promised Ignatius you’d protect me.”
“I don’t care a whit about you, boy.”
“Then you promised to get me to Rome.”
He didn’t deny it. Instead, he said, “I will not let you surrender yourself.”
“If you won’t let me go back, then rescue them.”
He snorted. “Eight men—”
“Nine,” I said, “counting the Captain.”
“Nine, then, against one? And without my halberd?”
“You have a dirk in each boot.”
He sneered. “You think too highly of me.”
“I think well of a man who honours his debts, but not of one who does so at the cost of a friend’s life.”
He growled at me, and I flinched backwards. Yet he looked shamed, too. I knew then I had a chance. “They won’t be expecting you to return. None of them came straight after us, which means that none of them saw you grab me. As far as they know, you’d already run off for good, or else the Captain wouldn’t have said what he did about you. They think you a mercenary who values his own skin more than his word.”
He rolled forward onto his haunches; anger creasing his features. “I’m no coward.”
“I didn’t say you were.” I paused, waiting for him to speak. Waiting for him to tell me what he needed to tell me.
He did, after a moment’s silence. “Ignatius was on watch. I stupidly gave him my halberd. I’d have fought without it, but there were too many of them, and it was easy to see they weren’t new at this business. I’d have only gotten myself killed.” He glared at me. “What use would I be then?”
“You did what you had to do.”
His shoulders slouched the tiniest bit, and he stared off into the gloom.
“There were four skins of undiluted wine on Cross,” I said. “There’s a pretty good chance they will be emptied in the next hour.” That caught his attention. “If you go back after that, it will still be dark. . . .”
“No.”
“What choice have we? To flee? You can’t force me to go with you. I suppose you could carry me under your arm. But how far could you get?” He glowered at me, but said nothing. “I don’t know why, but they seem eager to find me. Eager enough to track me into the forest. Come sun-on, they will see the broken twigs and our footprints, the moss scraped from the rocks in the stream bed. Without food, with me squirming under your arm, you won’t be able to outrun them. They will overtake us and kill you, and so your promise to Ignatius, whatever it might be, will go unfulfilled.”
All expression drained from his face, masking whatever thoughts were passing through his mind. I suppose it was a deeply ingrained habit from years of service, where an inscrutable expression was an asset. He mumbled something I couldn’t make out, then looked at me in a calculating way that chilled my blood. “Do you know what you’re asking, boy?”
His tone unnerved me, made me hesitate, though I thought I had reasoned it out pretty well. “I’m . . . I’m asking you to save my friends. To save Ignatius.”
“Then a clever boy like you must know I can’t do it alone.” Pulling the dirk from his left boot, he tossed it on the ground in front of me. “So the real question, boy, is how do you feel about doing some of your own dirty work?”
I stared at the knife, dubious about what use I might be in a fight. Still, I didn’t doubt that Kite knew his trade. Otherwise he wouldn’t have tossed the knife towards me.
I was scared. Of being killed, yes. But I think I was even more afraid of killing. Several thoughts plagued me. First, when it came to the moment, would I have the nerve to do it? Second, what about the men I wi
shed dead—did they deserve to die? Lastly, I wondered if I might be condemning myself to eternal damnation. To kill another man was a mortal sin; the only exception, Exodus tells us, is that of self-defence: If a thief be found breaking in, and be smitten that he die, there shall no blood be shed for him. Creeping up on sleeping men hardly seemed to qualify, no matter their moral makeup.
But wasn’t it as shameful a sin to allow my friends to be killed?
I knew the Church’s teachings well enough to know that God doesn’t split hairs, and that evil done for the sake of good is evil nonetheless. What I would be doing would be murder. And even if I didn’t wield a knife, Kite’s point still pertained: your own dirty work, he had called it. It was my idea. Some think God judges us on our actions, but this is not true. It is our intentions. In asking Kite to do murder, I was as culpable as he was in wielding the knife.
One way or the other, I was damned.
I picked up the knife.
A Skirmish at Night
Gripping the worn cloth handle of the dirk tightly, I followed Kite through the woods. He moved like a shadow, as silent and sure of himself as any man I have ever met. I watched where he planted his feet and tried as best I could to mimic him. Even so, every few paces I managed to snap a twig or rustle some fallen leaves. I was so engrossed in this process that I nearly ran into him when he stopped. He put his lips next to my ear and whispered, “Stay,” then vanished into the shadows. A few moments later he rematerialized and motioned me to come after. I judged we were pretty close to the campsite, and thought it curious that Kite, as silent as a ghost, seemed indifferent to the noise I was making. In a moment, though, I saw the blaze of a large fire through the tree trunks, and heard its intermittent pops and crackles, loud enough now to cover any sounds I might make.
Kite led us right back to the blackberry bushes in which I had hidden, and this close we were greeted with the loud snores and mumbles of men who’d had their fill of drink. They had posted a sentry facing the woods. He sat on the ground, legs pulled up, a short sword across his lap, his head resting on his knees. He appeared to be asleep. At the other end of the camp I could make out another figure sitting up; only this one looked wide-awake, for I could see the glint of the flames as they danced in his eyes. Behind the fire were the prone figures of the other brigands, fallen into their stupefied sleep; set apart slightly from them were shapes I took to be Ali, Lark, and Ignatius. I was surprised things seemed to have fallen out exactly as I had told Kite they would.
With hand gestures, Kite made it clear that I should stay here, while he was going to leave the cover of the forest out of sight of the camp and circle round to approach from the rear, where the grass was long enough to allow him to creep right up on the man who was awake. I was to wait until Kite struck, and when he did, I was to run at the sentry whose attention would have turned to Kite and whose back would now be presented to me.
As plans go, it didn’t strike me as a terribly clever one. Later, however, I realized this was probably its greatest strength. Kite knew from experience that a plan is only good in the first few seconds of a fight, and the simpler the plan, the less likely it is to go awry.
Kite slipped away.
I inched as close as I dared, watching the sentry for the least sign of movement. Then I waited, holding the hilt of the dirk as tightly as I had ever held anything, focusing on the man whose life I was supposed to soon end.
He looked peaceful. I felt like I was going to vomit.
Our plan fell apart almost immediately.
There was a commotion, and the sentry rose, turning his back to me as Kite had said he would. I dashed from cover—and immediately tripped over a root and sprawled to the ground, grunting loudly. I looked up in time to see the startled sentry spin around and stare at me. A few of the other brigands had been roused, and Cross, who I’d forgotten about, was also on her feet, braying loudly, kicking her hind legs into the air. One of the brigands, a tall fellow, had the end of Cross’s rope wrapped around his hand and was struggling to control her. In all of this, however, Kite was nowhere to be seen. The sentry who’d been sleeping stepped forward and grabbed me by the collar, hauling me to my knees, pulling my face to within inches of his. Maybe he was still half drunk or half-asleep, or maybe he expected that I was surrendering myself. In any case, he didn’t expect the dirk in my hand. I planted it in his neck. He wrenched backwards, yanking the knife from my grip, making a strangled screeching sound. I watched him, horrified, as he reeled through the fire, hands clasped around his own throat; I shall never forget the sound of his blood, jetting from the base of the dirk, sizzling as it hit the flames. He collapsed, small licks of flames nibbling at the edges of his trousers and shirt.
I was still on my knees. Everyone was staring at me now. On the ground in front of me was the sentry’s short sword. I swept it up and staggered to my feet. The one holding Cross’s rope said, “Get him!” in the Captain’s unmistakeable voice.
Three of them fumbled in their blankets for their weapons; the third came straight at me. I slashed prematurely, and this fellow was sober enough to leap out of way. He pulled a knife from his boot and circled me.
“Don’t hurt him,” the Captain barked. “He’s worth nothing to us dead.”
Despite what the Captain said, the sentry took a step towards me, murder in his eyes.
That’s when I finally saw Kite.
He flitted out of cover and streaked past the Captain, slashing with his dirk so fast his arm was a blur. He was on the other three before the Captain’s knees buckled and he fell to the ground, Cross’s rope still wrapped around his hand, his throat gaping open. The others fared no better, even though one had managed to grab hold of Kite’s halberd and spin around to face him. Kite darted in under his first awkward swing, his hand plunging the dirk into the man’s breast. Releasing his knife, Kite sprang back, snatching the halberd from the dying man’s hands. He swung it towards the brigand in front of me, and in that instant I wondered how he could hope to strike a target so far away; but he let the force of the swing pull the shaft through his palms so that, with his arms, its arc extended four metres. It struck off the right arm of the brigand and sliced into his ribs like a butcher’s cleaver would slice into a side of beef. Kite planted his feet, twisted and jerked his halberd free, and the man’s body crumpled towards him.
By now, the remaining men were awake and huddled together in a small defensive knot. They were a sorry looking lot, and I think two of them were still so drunk they hadn’t any clear idea of what was transpiring. I had expected Kite to make short work of them, but instead he stepped back, planting the shaft of his halberd on the ground; blood slipped from its blade and ticked onto his boot.
“Your Captain’s dead,” he said matter-of-factly. “If you drop your weapons, you may leave.”
I hadn’t expected this from him.
The brigands eyed him nervously. None seemed willing to challenge him.
“I’m as good as my word,” Kite said. “I will not harm any man that leaves now.”
One of the brigands immediately dropped his sword and bolted. The other three shrank back, clutching their swords and knives.
“Without your weapons,” Kite repeated, raising his halberd and taking a step towards them. This was enough; all three dropped whatever they were holding and fled into the field.
I dashed over to where Ali and Lark lay; both sported bruises, but otherwise seemed fine. With the short sword, I sawed through the rope binding them. I had imagined they would leap and embrace me with joy. Instead, Lark just rubbed at the ligature marks on his arms and stared at me sullenly, while Ali raced after Cross, who’d bolted, dragging the Captain’s corpse back towards the road.
I turned my attention to poor Ignatius.
He wasn’t bound; there was no need. He’d been sorely wounded, and was prone and shivering, his pale face covered with a sheen of sweat, as if in the grip of an ague. Through parched lips, which moved like those of a landed
fish, he wheezed moistly.
“Out of the way, boy,” Kite said, and I let myself be pulled aside.
Kite knelt, and lifted a dirty rag that had been pressed on Ignatius’s stomach wound. Gently, he let the cloth back down. Cupping Ignatius’s head, he levered it up slightly. That’s when I noticed the unstoppered wineskin in his other hand. He upended the skin and dribbled its dregs between Ignatius’s lips, and I saw the big man’s throat muscles contract under his chins. Kite looked at me, and I knew immediately what he wanted—I pulled a brand from the fire, and in short order found two of the three other discarded skins. I handed them to Kite, who repeated the process, then lay Ignatius’s head back down. Ignatius’s breathing slowed and became regular. For a few minutes he seemed at peace, and it would have been easy to imagine he was just sleeping.
Then, with Kite kneeling next to him, and his choir surrounding him, Ignatius shuddered and drew his last earthly breath.
Our New Master
We buried them in shallow graves, scraping parched earth over top of them as best we could. I knew there was no chance of a Christian burial, but I had insisted that we do at least this, and to my surprise Kite had acquiesced. I made small crosses for each of the brigands out of twigs and bits of rope, and said a prayer over the remains of the one I’d killed. After that, we dug a deeper hole for Ignatius. It took all four of us to wrestle his body into the grave. When I tried to plant a cross at its head, Kite would not countenance it. He took the sticks and flung them deep into the forest. “He wouldn’t have us petition God on his behalf,” he said.
There’s not much else to tell about that night. We broke camp as hastily as we could, Kite choosing a few of the brigands’ better weapons and securing them to Cross, then we were back on the road before sun-on. Though no one said anything, I’m sure those men who had fled were on everyone’s mind. We marched quickly and in silence, Kite leading Cross at a taxing pace, the three boys in the mule’s wake. After a while, I noticed Lark and Ali had lagged behind. Initially, I thought they were having trouble keeping up, but when I glanced back they had fallen behind no farther, and I realized they had done so, consciously or not, to keep their distance from me. I suppose it should have bothered me more than it did, but I’d had little sleep that night and was too exhausted to worry about much of anything other than trying to maintain Kite’s exacting pace. I was also working hard not to think about the blood on my hands—and Ignatius’s death. I walked as in a fever-dream, my head bowed, grateful for the other boys’ silence when I thought about it at all.
The Book of Thomas - Volume One: Heaven Page 6
