They left the tavern and sneaked through the alleys. Their torches and lanterns were spots of warmth in the darkness of the narrow, unlit streets. The crew stopped again and again to make a show of whispering among themselves and glancing around. From time to time, Zoltan shifted the wrappings on the scepter, letting it peek out for a moment to keep their potential pursuer interested.
“I think I saw something,” Jerome whispered after a while. “Up on one of the rooftops. Don’t turn around!”
“Let’s hope you’re right,” Bernhard replied. He had his two-hander on his back. Its cross-guard was almost the length of Bernhard’s forearm, and its handle poked out above his head, making the giant look even more imposing than he already was. “I wouldn’t mind exchanging a few words with him,” he added with a somber look on his face. “Man to man.”
“Only if I don’t get to him first,” Matthias replied, patting his large crossbow. He’d explained to Lukas that it was a “repeater” crossbow, a weapon invented in far-off China. Ten bolts fit into the strange wooden box above the groove, and Matthias could fire them all off quickly if necessary. The friendly man with the pearls in his hair had offered to stay at the tavern and watch out for Elsa, but Elsa had made it clear that she didn’t need anyone’s help, and then shut herself up in her room with the Grimorium. Lukas wished she would read something else instead.
They hurried onward, hunched down, until they finally reached the stone bridge flanked at each bank by a massive gate tower. The Vltava murmured softly beneath their feet.
“The rear gatehouse is guarded,” Zoltan said quietly. “But I handed out a few coins this afternoon so that we would be allowed to cross.” He winked. “Our pursuer, on the other hand, will have to swim across, so we should take our time.”
They went over the bridge, and sure enough, the bored-looking watchmen merely nodded to Zoltan as they approached the rear tower. After passing the gatehouse, they descended into another labyrinth of dark, grimy streets, past tiny churches, gloomy squares, and dry wells. Before long, Lukas had lost his sense of direction completely.
After what seemed like an eternity, they reached a poor, run-down neighborhood, well away from the marketplace. Only a handful of the homes here were made of stone; the rest were mostly crooked huts and cottages that looked like they might collapse at any second. The foul-smelling morass tugged at Lukas’s boots. Here and there, they heard hasty footsteps down an alley or spotted a pair of eyes staring out at them from a dark corner. In several alcoves and corners, men and women in tattered clothing stood around barrels with fire glowing inside. As Lukas and his friends passed them, their eyes flickered greedily, but none of the ragged figures dared stand in their way.
“All beggars and scoundrels here,” Zoltan murmured to Lukas, wisely tucking the scraps of cloth more tightly around the imperial scepter. “Come here alone, and they’ll eat you alive and spit out your bones. They won’t come near eight armed men, though.”
The troop did, indeed, look quite fearsome. Zoltan was out in front with Bernhard the giant and his two-hander, followed closely by Matthias. After them came Paulus, with his freshly sharpened schiavona prominently displayed on his belt. Lukas, Giovanni, and Jerome were marching along in the middle with their rapiers drawn. As usual, the one-eyed Jurek bore up the rear; a good half dozen knives dangled at his side, all of which he was equally capable of fighting with or throwing. Lukas still didn’t trust the short, wiry man any farther than he could spit.
After a while, they came to a square bordered on two sides by wild, fallow fields. The small church across from them had seen better days. Its stained-glass windows were all broken; the collapsing bell tower loomed in the night sky like a rotten black tooth. The church portal hung crookedly from its hinges. Sounds of lowing cattle and bleating goats came from inside the building.
“A Bohemian herdsman uses the church as his stable,” Zoltan said, shaking his head. “It’s such a shame what the Catholic victors have done with the Protestants and their churches. As though they were not Christians! Well, so much the better for us.” He turned to Jerome, who had the best eyes of any of them. “Did you spot our friend again?”
“I think he’s still following us from the rooftops,” Jerome replied. “I haven’t noticed him in some time, though.”
“I’m sure he’s there. Well, let’s lure him into our trap, shall we?” Zoltan leaned against the church portal, which opened with a creak. In the dim light of the torch, Lukas could make out several pillars, an altar bearing half a dozen empty birdcages, and all manner of junk. The church floor was covered with straw and manure, and the whole room stank terribly of animal waste. A pair of goats and a starved-looking cow stared at them from out of the rough-timbered alcoves in the aisles. There was no sign of the herdsmen themselves.
“They say this church is haunted,” Zoltan remarked, turning toward the others. “After the Battle of White Mountain, the Evangelical priest was stabbed to death here on the altar, and his ghost has been lurking around here ever since, screaming for revenge. Supposedly, although I think the herdsmen merely invented the story so that they wouldn’t have to guard the stalls,” he added, winking. Then he pointed to his right, toward another small side door. “Bernhard, Jurek, Matthias, you hide near the side entrance,” he ordered. “The rest of you, come with me. Remember, we don’t attack until our friend has reached the altar.”
Paulus, Jerome, and Giovanni hunkered down into the dark recesses on either side of the main church portal, while Zoltan and Lukas headed straight for the altar. Zoltan swept the cages and junk aside with a hasty motion, and then unwrapped the imperial scepter, displaying it atop the altar.
The scepter shimmered in the light of Lukas’s torch, golden and seductive. The acorn and leaves at the tip twinkled like stars in the night sky.
“Well, let’s see if our mouse can resist the cheese,” Zoltan whispered and gestured to a staircase to one side of the altar, which apparently led to the crypt. “We want the fellow to think we’re planning to do something with the scepter. Let’s wait down there.”
Zoltan and Lukas descended a few steps, and then came to a low arch with a row of stone sarcophagi. They waited there among the coffins in the darkness, listening.
Nothing happened.
Everything was still, and Lukas began to think they’d lost their unknown spy. He was just about to say as much to Zoltan, who was leaning against a sarcophagus with his eyes closed, as though asleep, when they heard the telltale sound of breaking glass. Zoltan was wide awake in an instant. He put his finger to his lips and signaled to Lukas.
The two of them crept up the stairs, crouching, until they could see the two portals and the interior of the church. Try as Lukas might, though, he couldn’t see anything, apart from his companions’ shadows in the alcoves. They appeared lifeless and frozen, like statues of holy men from some long-forgotten time. Had they been mistaken?
Another crashing sound.
Lukas scanned the room and spotted a figure standing high overhead, against what was left of a church window. The small, slender man was clad in brown leather and wore a black hood. Lukas recognized him immediately. It was the man who had ambushed him in the alley near the marketplace! As his eyes adjusted, he noticed the bow and the quiver on the man’s belt.
The man seemed to hesitate, almost like he suspected a trap. But then he unrolled a rope, tied it to one of the window struts, and slid down without making a sound. When he reached the church floor, he lifted his head, as if trying to pick up a trail. Then he sneaked toward the altar.
Lukas was about to hurry up the stairs, but Zoltan held him back. “Wait until the altar . . .” he mouthed.
But just at that moment, Paulus and Jerome rushed toward the stranger, weapons drawn. The man spun around abruptly and sprinted back to the rope. Lukas dashed forward as well, hoping to block his path.
“God in heaven!” Zoltan shouted, drawing his sword. “Didn’t I tell you to wait? Now go get him, or I
’ll feed you all to the goats!”
Still running, the man turned, lifted his bow, and sent a flurry of arrows at his pursuers. Lukas was amazed all over again at how quickly he could shoot—the arrows were raining down on them like hail. Matthias began firing off his crossbow as well. His bolts hissed through the air like angry hornets, but the stranger dodged every one, still firing back at them as he continued toward the rope.
Now Bernhard and Jurek were storming toward the dangling rope from the side entrance, but the diminutive man beat them there, Lukas close behind him.
The stranger clambered up the rope with the dexterity of an ape. Lukas was right at his heels. He’d always thought of himself as a particularly agile climber, but this hooded archer was even quicker. He reached the window and soon disappeared into the darkness. When Lukas finally came to the window as well, he saw that the fellow had a serious problem.
If he wanted to get down the church wall on the other side, he would need a rope. Specifically, the rope that Lukas had just finished climbing.
The hooded man was standing on a narrow ledge, apparently trying to decide what to do next. There was an alley between the church and the nearest roof, creating a gap likely five, six paces wide.
Lukas smiled triumphantly. There wasn’t a chance that . . .
The man jumped.
Lukas gaped at the slender man, who landed on the opposite roof with catlike grace.
“What’s going on up there, boy?” Zoltan barked from below. “Do you have him?”
Lukas recalled Zoltan’s very recent threat to feed them all to the goats. He didn’t actually believe the commander would make good on it, but fear of Zoltan’s rage put the added spring in Lukas’s step. After taking a few deep breaths, Lukas took off sprinting and leapt across the alley to the roof on the other side.
He landed hard on the slippery roof shingles, stumbled, and nearly fell off, before finding his footing again. The hooded stranger was already on another rooftop. As the silvery crescent moon rose over Prague, Lukas followed his adversary from roof to roof, always a few steps behind. He was determined to catch the man—if for no other reason than to prove to the others that he was capable of such a thing!
After a few more leaps, the stranger stopped abruptly in his tracks. Lukas looked around, trying to figure out why. He soon understood. The large stone house they were now standing on was surrounded by a rose garden and a tall iron fence with sharp spear points along the top. It was at least eight paces to the next roof.
That’s too far, even for you, Lukas thought, relieved. Now I have you.
He reached for his rapier. The other man turned around and fired off three arrows in quick succession, but Lukas managed to duck behind a chimney for cover.
Then the arrows stopped.
His quiver is empty! Lukas realized.
“Give up!” he shouted. “Now!” He stormed out from behind the chimney, rushing straight toward the man.
But the stranger spread his arms out and did the impossible.
He jumped.
At first, Lukas thought the man might actually make it. He flew through the air like a great bird. But then gravity caught up to him after all. He flailed his arms like a drowning man as he tumbled down.
The man landed on the spear points of the iron fence, which bored through him like daggers.
“My God!” Lukas stammered. “That wasn’t what I wanted to happen. I swear, that wasn’t what I wanted!”
The delicate-looking man twitched like a fish on dry land as he tried desperately to escape his situation. He was obviously still alive, but his injuries had to be awful. Lukas glanced around, searching for another way down. He hurried to the other side of the building, the direction they’d come from, and discovered a fragile trellis covered in climbing roses. He carefully clambered down to the ground and then ran around to the fence on the other side. The archer was still hanging there, bent across one of the spear points. Lukas heard only soft moaning.
“I’m so sorry!” Lukas gasped. “If you’d only listened to me, this wouldn’t have happened! Why did you have to try that impossible jump?”
Now he saw the man up close for the first time. Blood dripped from his body down the metal spikes, one of which had indeed pierced through the stranger’s doublet. Lukas stroked the bloody leather cautiously.
“Hurts . . . ,” the short, slight man whispered from beneath the hood. “Hurts . . . so . . . much . . .”
“Wait, I’ll help you,” Lukas said, once he had made sure that the man really no longer posed a threat. Gently he lifted the man up, and discovered he was far lighter than Lukas would have expected. As Lukas laid him between two rosebushes, the stranger’s hood slipped off, revealing a mane of long red hair. A pale, freckled face shimmered in the moonlight.
Lukas was so startled that he nearly dropped her.
Her.
XI
Only at second glance did Lukas realize that the redheaded woman was still quite young—more of a girl, really. Probably fifteen or sixteen, he guessed.
The wavy red hair that had been hidden beneath her hood now surrounded her face like a halo. She was extremely pale; a thin rivulet of blood trickled from one corner of her mouth. Around her abdomen, where the fence point had gone through her, a dark, wet blotch was spreading steadily across her leather doublet.
Although Lukas knew the girl had to be in terrible pain, a delicate smile still played on her lips. “Congrat . . . ulations, little . . . hunter,” she murmured. Lukas detected a trace of a foreign accent. “Shot . . . the deer . . . in the end . . . after all.”
“Who are you?” Lukas asked, dabbing the blood from her lips, though he knew it wasn’t doing her any good. The injury to her stomach was undoubtedly fatal.
“My friends . . . call me Gwendolyn,” the girl coughed. “Though I doubt you’re a friend.” She smiled again.
“Well, friends don’t spy on each other and follow each other around, either,” Lukas replied dully. He regarded the redheaded girl. She was certainly pretty. He’d have liked to be her friend, but fate obviously had other plans for them. “Why did you follow us, anyway?”
Gwendolyn let out a rattling laugh. “Thieves like to work in the shadows,” she replied wearily after a while. “You should know that, since you are thieves yourselves. I saw you coming out of the palace of the marquis, just as I was about to go in. I . . . eavesdropped on your . . . conversation. The Imperial Regalia . . . sounds like quite a treasure,” she said between labored breaths.
“You think we’re thieves?” Lukas furrowed his brow. So she wasn’t following them on the orders of Schönborn or some other evil power? This girl was just a simple thief with her eye on their gold. In that case, her death would be even more senseless than he’d thought.
“What about your arrows?” he asked. “I saw the runes on them. Runes like the ones in the Grimorium Nocturnum.”
“The what?” The girl’s voice was growing weaker. “They’re letters. An F and an E. I carve them . . . in memory of my . . . father. Falcon Eye . . . He was a famous . . . Welsh . . . archer . . .” Before she could say anything more, she closed her eyes and her head lolled to one side.
“No!” Lukas cried. “You can’t die! Oh, God, I’m so sorry, damn it, damn it . . .” Tears ran down his face. This girl was no tool of Schönborn’s—she was just a harmless thief, and he’d driven her to her death. He’d never forgive himself for this.
Clumsily, he ran his hand through her hair, patted her cheeks, shook her gently, but Gwendolyn remained unconscious. Lukas wished desperately that Matthias would come by with his bandaging supplies, even though he suspected that there was nothing in the world that could heal the girl.
Nothing in the world . . .
Lukas gave a start when he realized what he had just thought. His mother’s words came into his mind again: The power is in you, Lukas. Not only in your sister.
He closed his eyes, laid both hands on Gwendolyn’s blood-soaked doublet, an
d murmured the phrase over and over again. “The power is in me. The power is in me.”
But nothing happened.
Lukas cursed softly. It had all been in his imagination, a fever dream. His wound had healed naturally. Maybe it had been a miracle, maybe chance, but it was certainly no magic. All was in vain.
Heavy of heart, Lukas gazed down at the dying red-haired girl. She was so beautiful. Lukas felt strangely connected to her, even though he barely knew her. Her death seemed to reflect all the senselessness of this war, all the cold cruelty it represented.
“Don’t die,” Lukas whispered and shut his eyes again. He felt like he could see inside a body, as he had when his own wound healed, only it was Gwendolyn’s this time rather than his own. He saw the torn tissue, the injured organs, the blood . . .
The power . . .
There was a soft ringing sound.
Lukas felt some sort of lightning bolt shoot from his fingertips. A slight tingling sensation swept through his body.
Gwendolyn twitched for a moment, and then her eyes opened. She looked at Lukas in astonishment.
“What did you do?” she began. Then she fell unconscious again.
Lukas stumbled backward and fell into the dewy grass of the garden. He felt unexpectedly weak, and his sweat-soaked shirt was clinging to him. He waited for a while before he got up and knelt beside Gwendolyn. Trembling in excitement, he cut a slit in her doublet with his knife and examined the skin underneath.
The puncture wound was gone; the skin was healed.
“Oh, Mother!” Lukas whispered. “You were right. The power is in me, too!” He still couldn’t believe it. He could do magic, even if he wasn’t sure how. He seemed to be able to heal people magically, without using any magic books or spells. Could Elsa do the same?
Sword of Power (The Black Musketeers Book 2) Page 9
