Quicksilver's Knight

by Christopher Stasheff

  "Why, how kind!" Jane forced herself to show a bright cheeriness that she did not feel. "Maidservants are well paid, after all, Mother. Surely the Count knows of Father's death, and has taken this chance to give us some money—he must know we will be in need of it." But she realized that the Count had indeed known of Father's death, and realized even more, with a stab of fire, that it was only the old man's presence that had kept her safe from the Count's grasp. Her father's presence, and her brothers', of course—but it had been easy enough for the Count to get them out of the way for the time being. Anxiety churned within her—surely Count Laeg would not have them slain in some contrived border skirmish! But if he did not, what would happen when they came home? A vision of bloody swords stabbing flashed before her mind's eye, and with grim resolve she determined that no matter what happened to her, her brothers would not learn of it.

  "It is true," said the knight who led the troop of soldiers.

  Jane looked up, startled and frightened. Had he heard her thoughts?

  "Count Laeg will give you silver," the knight assured her.

  Silver, when what he meant to have was far dearer than gold—dearer than life!

  But her mother's face had smoothed with the fiction Jane had given her, for she wanted desperately to believe there was no danger to her daughter. "Of course! But you must be presentable for the Countess and her daughters, my dear. Run and pack your things—quickly now, and I'll see to it that Gertrude fixes you some food to take on the journey."

  Jane could have protested that the journey would take less than a day, and in any case, she had no appetite—but she knew her mother needed to believe it was all innocent, and that Jane was delighted at the prospect of serving the Countess and her daughters, so she turned and tripped gaily up the stairs, pretending for all she was worth.

  In her chamber, she dropped the mask and let the grimness show in her face. Hot tears burned her eyes, but she blinked them away angrily as she changed into travelling garb and made a bundle of her four dresses and other clothes—but in the center of the bundle she packed the dagger her father had given her, so long ago.

  Then, forcing herself to seem cheerful again, she went to join the soldiers.

  The men-at-arms treated her with courtesy, at least whether it was out of sympathy, or because they knew better than to seek to taste of their lord's sweetmeats, she didn't know. She was only grateful for one less worry.

  As they rode, though, she burned with fury inside. Who was Count Laeg to order her about at his whim, especially to so vile a usage? Having defeated four young knights, she had lost respect for them—they were no better than the village boys in what they wanted and how they chose to get it. Oh, they were better fighters, it was true, for they knew swordplay—but not so well as Jane herself, it seemed. They were certainly of no higher quality than she was, and somewhat less, for all she could tell, in both swordplay and morality. No better than her village swains indeed! By what right were they knights? By what right was this corrupt old Count Laeg a lord, while she was only a commoner?

  Why, by right of birth, of course—or by accident, rather; for if they were no better than Jane or her brothers, it was only accident that they were born of knights and ladies, while she was born the daughter of a mere squire and a peasant woman. Perhaps she should be a lord herself, if all it took was a quick blade and quicker wits.

  He offered her silver, did he? Well, she prized her virginity more dearly than that! Better dead than bedded, she vowed silently—but she knew her surest way out was through His Lordship's chamber.

  Sure enough, that was where they took her, as soon as they had come to his castle—come to it through a postern gate, and led her up a back stairs. Apparently, none were to know of her arrival except the knight and soldiers who had brought her. Oh, she did not doubt she would wait upon the Countess and her daughters—when the Count was done with her! After all, he had to have some excuse for having brought her to his castle—but he could not let his wife see her before he had used her, or the Countess might grow suspicious. No, straight to his chamber she was brought, and there given water to wash away the dust of the journey. She was given a little food, too, and wine—a whole bottle of wine.

  The door closed behind the soldiers, and she glared at the bottle with contempt. She did not doubt that the poor girls he had summoned here before her had drunk themselves senseless in hope of diminishing their fear and pain—but she had need of a clear head.

  However, she did not want Count Laeg to know that. So she poured half the bottle into a chamber pot, then opened her bundle of clothes just long enough to take out the dagger.

  There was a sumptuous dressing gown laid out on the bed, but no linen to wear beneath it, so she kept her own linen on, though she doffed her travelling dress to put on the gown—and hid her dagger beneath it.

  Then she waited while the sun went down, growing more and more apprehensive, more and more tense. Finally, the door opened, and His Lordship came in smelling like a winery, and like decay. He smiled through his yellowed beard as he came up to lay a hand on her waist. "Well met, sweeting!"

  Jane forced herself to smile, though she felt like gnashing her teeth. "Good evening, my lord."

  He chuckled. "So the vixen Rumor speaks of is so easily tamed as this! My captain tells me you are quick for silver."

  "Quick enough, my lord," she said, seething.

  "Are you truly! Come, let us see!" And he swept her into an embrace with an arm that was still strong enough to surprise her, swept her up against him, fondling with the other hand, and lowering his mouth to hers.

  Noisome though it was, she forced herself to bear his kiss, for she needed his mouth muffled. She slid one hand up behind his neck while the other slipped the dagger out from beneath her robe and plunged it into his chest.

  He cried out, but her hand tightened on his neck like a vise, forcing his mouth to stay tight to hers, muffling the scream. Then his whole body went slack, dragging down, and she loosed her hold, letting him slip to the floor. She stared down at the crumpled body and the spreading pool of blood, hardly able to believe he was really dead—but he did not move and, bending down to look, she saw his eyes had glazed. So much, then, for the debaucher of maidens! She felt not the slightest qualm of guilt; he had deserved a violent death a hundred times over. In fact, she found room to regret that it had been so quick.

  Moving deliberately, she lifted the goblet; now she could allow herself a swallow, though she used it to rinse her mouth first, then took another mouthful to drink. Then, without hurrying, she changed back into her travelling dress; she knew no one dared disturb the lord at his pleasures, so none would come looking for him until morning. Finally, she pulled her knife from his chest, turned away so that she would not see the blood that must come pumping out, wiped the blade, and tucked it away in her sleeve. Then she opened the door.

  The guards outside looked up, then frowned to see the clothes she wore.

  "His Lordship requires more wine," she said, slurring her words and blinking blearily.

  One guard smiled, relaxing, and nodded, moving away.

  "So you drank it all, and saved none for him?" the other guard asked, chuckling.

  "Aye..." She stared at his halberd, blinking stupidly as she listened to the other guard's footsteps fade away. "Why do you hold that ... that..."

  "Halberd," he supplied. "To protect His Lordship, little miss."

  "How will it do that?" she asked, taking hold of the shaft.

  He chuckled indulgently and let go, letting her have the weapon. She took a staggering step backwards ... then swept the butt around with blinding speed and unerring accuracy. It cracked on bone; the guard crumpled.

  Quickly, Jane caught him under the arms and straightened up, heaving. Staggering, she managed to drag him back inside the Count's chamber and closed the door. She bound the guard with his own belt, gagged him with a strip from his own tunic, then rolled him in a bedsheet, so that he would not be able to s
ee the Count's body when he waked, and would perhaps be a little less frantic to call for help. Then she went back to collect her bundle and ran to the door. But she paused in the portal, considering, then reflected that it was hanged for the kid, hanged for the goat—if her life was forfeit for killing a nobleman, what mattered the punishment for stealing his sword? She hurried back to his dead body, unbuckled the swordbelt, and fastened it about her own waist. Then, with no further ado, she hurried out of the chamber.

  She closed the door firmly behind her, turned the key in the huge old lock, then tucked it into her bundle and was off.

  She knew where to go—they had brought her in that way, after all, to avoid notice. She avoided notice again as she slipped out, down the back stairs, through the servants' door, and across to the postern gate. If anyone saw her, they took no notice—least of all the guard at the postern, who knew only that there were suddenly a great many more stars than usual, then a deeper darkness. Jane slipped out, closed the gate softly behind her, and was gone into the night.

  CHAPTER 5

  "So you are still a virgin?" Geoffrey asked. "I am," Quicksilver replied.

  "Then most definitely I shall not touch you, though I shall tell you truly, the urge to do so burns and' rages within me. Lessen my strain, I beseech you—distract me with your tale again. Tell me how you came to rule a county."

  Quicksilver gave him a long, gauging look, as though measuring just how much turmoil he was hiding, and whether or not it was enough to satisfy her thirst for vengeance. Apparently what she saw pleased her, for she gave him a slanting smile and turned half away, to take up her history again.

  "I had bought some time, for none would intrude in the Count's chamber until morning, and the sentry in the garderobe was not likely to be discovered unless someone should wake in the night. His fellow guard would think him fled after a wench, like as not, and would surely wait long before searching for him. I had at the least some hours, at most till mid-morning."

  "Then, though," said Geoffrey, "they would be after you in earnest, with dogs and horses."

  "Oh, they were," Quicksilver said softly, "as I knew they would be. But it was my county too, look you, and I knew its fields and woodlots better than any lord. Nay, I was into the trees within the hour, and buried in the depths of the greenwood before the air turned chill to wait for dawn. There I sat me down in the hollow of a huge old oak, to wait and plan—for I had thought no further than flight."

  "Small wonder there," Geoffrey said, with a taut smile. "It was amazing you thought so clearly as you did, and so far ahead. Few men would have had the courage to plan so, let alone to carry out those plans."

  "I ... thank you," she said, surprised. "Yet what choice had I?" She must have thought it was a rhetorical question, for she went right on. "I knew there were dangers awaiting me that, though not as bad as the Count's men, would be bad enough. I hid to catch what sleep I could, then woke to find the sun up and the forest filled with its light, straying through the leaves in scattered beams. There I laid my plans."

  "Did not the dogs find your trail?"

  For answer, Quicksilver only flashed him a hard smile. "Of course," Geoffrey said slowly. "You knew the ways of the wood, and how to hide all evidence of your passage."

  "Far better than any dog, I assure you, whether he had four legs or two. Nay, I came out for my morning's ablutions, then was amazed to find that I was a-hungered. I ate of the food my mother had packed, then went back to my hollow to plan. I knew that I had become an outlaw by my night's work, for a dead lord is far more proof than is needed to hang a squire's daughter—and hang I would, if they caught me. I knew some anxiety for my brothers and my mother and sister, that the Count's son—the new Count, now—might seek to revenge his father on them; but I could not deal with it all, and had to take what fights came first."

  "A sound plan," Geoffrey agreed.

  "It was no plan at all," Quicksilver said tartly. "I began with what I knew—that I was dead if caught, probably torture first and hanging later; that I would have to live outside the law, where my life was any man's who wished to take it."

  "The more fool he," Geoffrey grunted.

  "Oh, I had no doubt he would come," Quicksilver said softly. "The world is filled with men who are fools. I bethought me how I should deal with them when they came, and was glad I had taken the Count's sword."

  "How long did it take the gentlemen of the greenwood to find you?" Geoffrey asked.

  "Call them not gentlemen, but men of the midden, for they were the refuse of manhood if ever I saw it. They came at noon, for they were more clever at following a trail than the Count's men—or, at least, the trail I had laid just for them, which began not at the edge of the wood, but only some few hundred feet from where I waited in hiding."

  Geoffrey nodded judiciously. "So you chose the time and the place for the battle. Wisely done. Where was it?"

  "A clearing," Quicksilver answered, "only a clearing in the woods, perhaps fifty feet across. I stood at the southern edge, screened by brush..."

  "So the sun would be behind you, and in their eyes."

  "Even so. They were a ragtag bunch, unwashed and unkempt... "

  The bandits halted in the middle of the clearing, looking about them, puzzled. "She came this far," said one. "You see well enough, Much," the biggest bandit said impatiently. "Who cannot see those prints of tiny shoes? Aye, she came this far—but how did she disappear?"

  "Perhaps an eagle lifted her up and took her away, Bulin," one of his cronies suggested.

  Bulin backhanded him across the mouth, but with a weary negligence that allowed the man to duck the blow easily; he seemed quite adept at it. "Be still, Tolb," Bulin growled. "She may be small, as women are, but far too big for any bird to carry."

  "She may have hidden her tracks," another bandit said. "The village folk do say she is keen for woodcraft."

  "Aye, Lambert, and that she had oft gone a-poaching by herself, in the little Home Wood."

  "She will be well poached surely," Bulin grunted, "as the game, not the hunter. She is in the forest now, not some little Home Wood."

  "Still, let us go warily about this poaching," Lambert counseled. "The village lad told us that she slew the Count!"

  "A mishap," Bulin grunted, "and like as not he died in the throes of ecstasy, for he was very old. How else could so slight a girl slay a lord?"

  "With a dagger." Quicksilver stepped forward from her screen of brush.

  The outlaws' heads snapped up; they gawked. They had been prepared for a grimy urchin in clothing torn by brambles; they had expected anything but a lady in a good broadcloth traveling dress, though it was hiked up to her knees to give her more freedom of movement. Still, she was clean and, frankly, more beautiful than any woman any of them had ever seen.

  Bulin recovered from his surprise and smiled, a curve of the lips that widened into a wolfish grin as he said, "Well, then! You have seen that you cannot live in the greenwood without a man to protect you, eh?"

  "Oh," said Jane, "I think I can manage."

  "Then why did she draw us?" Lambert grumbled.

  "Be still, fool!" Bulin snapped. "You do not think she would admit to her need, to you? Nay, need of a man in more ways than one, by the look of her."

  Jane's lips tightened. Why, she wondered, did men seem to think that the prettier a woman was, the more she needed a man's caresses?

  "Even one man alone will not protect you well enough, lass," Bulin informed her, "for there are many bands of outlaws in this wood, and no one fighter can stand against them. Nay, you are wise to seek out a band to join with and ours is the strongest band in the forest!"

  Jane hoped that it was true—it would make her task simpler—but she doubted it. "To have a band about me seems wise. But what is the price of your protection?"

  Some of the men snickered, some chuckled, and some guffawed. "Why, what do you think the price would be?" asked one.

  "Cooking and nursing, like as not
," Jane said airily. "There is that," Bulin conceded, "and making beds."

  "And sleeping in them," one of the men said with a chuckle.

  "What, all?" Jane widened her eyes in mock innocence. "Well, not all in one night," Bulin conceded. "Nay, each night you would have a new bed."

  "Why would I need so many beds?"

  "Come, do not play the fool!" Bulin snapped. "You would share each man's bed, and couple with him!" Now Jane could let her brows draw down in the anger she really felt. "Nay, I like not the sound of that."

  "More's the pity, then," Bulin grunted, "for if you will not come willingly, you will come by force but you will come to bed, pretty one, be sure of that."

  "Have I no choice, then?"

  "To come willingly, or by force." Bulin grinned, and several of his men chuckled, gloating, as though they would prefer the second. "Those are your choices."

  Jane fought to keep her voice from shaking with the anger she felt. "Well enough, then—you have named your price. Now I shall name mine."

  "I had thought you might," Bulin said smugly. "Women are quick enough, for silver."

  "Nay, I am quick to fight," Jane said, "and my silver is here." She brought Count Laeg's sword out from behind her skirts.

  The bandits lost their grins and exclaimed to one another in a roar of confusion. Bulin, though, only kept his grim gaze fixed on Jane and held up a hand to quiet them. They did, and Bulin said, "You had best give us that toy, lass, ere you hurt yourself with it."

  "Not myself," she assured him. "Have the villagers not told you why the soldiers seek me?"

  "For killing the Count," Lambert said, frowning. "I doubt not 'twas because you were too frisky in bed..."

  "Nay." Jane's tone was ice. "I slew him with this." She flourished the dagger in her left hand. "This sword was Count Laeg's—but by right of conquest, it is now mine." She moved her feet slightly, bending her knees just a little, and stood guard in a stance that any practiced swordsman would have recognized—but these men were peasants, and had never been taught proper swordplay. Bulin only frowned. "Then what is your price?"