Deathknight

by Andrew J Offutt

  The pistol was in Falc’s fist. It had worked. It had served him. Too, he had been wounded in his sword arm and knew he was bleeding. The blood was rushing straight down from his head and out of him, leaving him increasingly light of head. The zinger was in his hand and it had proved not silly; it had served him. He twitched that hand over and triggered the weapon.

  He heard nothing and smelled nothing. Neither did the short burly man who was not ill; obviously he also felt nothing. His sword scraped out and started coming around at a dizzy and increasingly weak Falc of Risskor.

  Something made a whish sound past the omo’s cheek, from behind.

  The guardless hilt of a throwing knife — his — appeared in the man’s thigh. He let out a yell as he jerked violently and actually dropped his sword.

  Incompetent ass, Falc thought, whose life had just been saved by a woman. The un-sick man’s legs had jerked involuntarily and his darg responded to the inadvertent signal with dargish reflexes and competence. It lurched ahead at speed, and kept going. Sudden acceleration combined with laxness of hands and body caused its wounded rider to be thrust violently and jerkily backward. He toppled back over his mount’s croup and fell off. The darg kept going. Falc moved swiftly, despite his pain and the effort that exacerbated it. As he rather stupidly bent for the fellow’s sword, he heard the stomp of darg feet and something made a whish sound above his head. He knew that this time it was no knife intended for another; he had just accidentally and most fortuitously ducked under a vicious sword-slash at the back of his neck.

  Oh. Oh yes, he thought muzzily, or almost-thought. There are three.

  One leg stiffened while one bent to throw himself aside. He grunted again at the pain that tore into his arm and up his side like a bolt of lightning. He sagged to his knees while some invisible beast gnawed at his whole left side and murky water flowed through his brain. He was aware of a growing lightness in his head, and a faint humming that existed only inside his skull. He hated it. He felt ridiculous, and shamed. Caught! Hurt!

  And with Jinnery to see!

  Even then he was dropping the pistol and, awkwardly cranking his right elbow high and out to the side, drawing his dagger. The fallen man was moaning, awkwardly scrabbling to retrieve his sword even though one leg clad in russet and a spreading blotch of darker red was useless to him, its thigh muscle pierced through and pinned almost to the bone. The ground rumbled and no one could afford to pay attention. The omo’s lurching slash at the downed man’s wrist missed as Falc lost his balance. He succeeded only in cutting the man’s weapon-hand open and felt stupid, incompetent and ridiculous. He heard the fellow cry out but that small exertion sent more pain sizzling into Falc, and he fell.

  What a mess, he thought, while the pain lessened with the muddy water enveloping his brain, turning the hum to a buzzing sound. The only competent fighter among us is Jinnery!

  He didn’t even know that the third man was wrestling his semicompetent darg around again, intent on his omo quarry, stupidly and incompetently forgetting or ignoring the skinny woman in the silly blue-green balloon-leggings, who blindsided him and stabbed him just below the ribs with a jeweled dagger, and that the fellow cried out and rode away wounded and reeling in his saddle, wearing that handsome sticker of Chasmal of Lango in his side. Many meters away, it worked its way out and fell to the ground. Falc knew nothing. Falc was down, lying sprawled as if dead.

  2

  “Falc! Oh Falc, you’re hurt!”

  “Uh,” he said, and saw no reason for further comment on the obvious. “The — the dismounted one...”

  “Two fled, both wounded. The one on the ground I — I just saw to. But Falc, you —”

  “Saw to?”

  She answered in a rush of words: “If you must know I picked up his sword and chopped his neck.” She shuddered. “This is not my blood.”

  Falc tried to look at whatever she was showing him, but couldn’t see very well. He knew what she was trying to show him: blood. She had gotten caught in the red fountain when she chopped through the jugular of the man with the wounded thigh and hand. It was unfortunate that she had put him beyond telling them anything, but Falc refrained from castigating her. It looked very much, he thought muzzily, as if he had been the target not of thieves or highwaymen but of assassins. Again.

  Because I am Falc or because I am an omo?

  “But about you, Falc —”

  “My left arm. It is leaking quite a bit.”

  “Oh!”

  “Little matter; my right’s the better one anyhow. I’n do ’thout the left awhile. No wait — woman, I am an omo! You can’t —”

  Yes she could. Ignoring the Order and its rules, Jinnery sliced open his left sleeve to find a deep chop-wound that was beyond “leaking quite a bit”; it had bled a lot and was still flowing. She told him so, and that the same swordcut had hit him in the side, too. That slash had made a shallow gash and might have hit a rib.

  “I can hold it. I — I’ll just mount...”

  “Can’t even bring yourself to say ‘Help me onto Harr,’ can you?” Then she tried to mitigate that sneering although entirely true observation by saying, “You do have an arm like a big gnarly branch! And if you had any meat on your body this cut in the side couldn’t have hit the rib!”

  “Got to — got to get on... Harr...”

  Her breath came out hard, with a gusty sound. “You are not going to like this or find it easy, Sir Falc of Risskor, but... you needed my help just then, and still do.”

  “N-n...”

  “Your job is to be quiet and be still. My job is to patch you a bit. Here, this will work,” she said, and he heard ripping cloth. He lay supine, staring upward, and suddenly the sky looked like trouble.

  “Sky’s gone... all... hazy... darkening...”

  “Oh, Falc! No,” she said in a pained voice, working, hurting him though he would never show it. “No, cousin; you’ve lost so much blood that it’s affecting your — you can’t see straight.”

  Damn, Falc thought, I am hurt! But Jinnery was talking on, far more rapidly than usual.

  “You could spend the rest of the day trying to get up and get to Harr, too. No; you’d not last that long; you’re ‘leaking’ too much. I have an idea that just getting him loose is beyond you right now, much less mounting.”

  She grunted with effort, talking to be talking, babbling because she had fought, and had even killed a man, and Falc was hurt and if she didn’t talk she was sure she’d get the shakes and she needed to do something other than look at all this blood. She kept talking, in a rush that left her brain no time to find proper words. It and she were functioning on pure adrenaline, anyhow.

  “That’s a — whatever you call it, when you tie something around a wound above the around your arm above the wound to stop the blood from just pumping right into it and out; I saw a phik — physikan do that once in Lango and I’ve got a bandage on it, too. Now listen, Falc. You be still. Just rest a minute while I go fetch the dargs over here. Then we’ll see how many people it takes to get you on Harr.” She rose with a rustle of her sections and stood looking down at him. “We really should stay here for a while in the shade and let you rest and better still sleep, but those two might come back and maybe with friends too and besides staying here isn’t doing anything really good for your arm. Remember the house you said you saw, way over there? I hope you were right. We’ll head that way, and just stay off the road. Be still and quiet now. I’ll be right back.”

  Sure does talk a lot, Falc thought.

  He passed out or at least drifted off for a minute or three, to regain some semblance of his senses when she was again standing over him. So was Harr. Harr was nuzzling his master.

  “The dead one’s darg stayed instead of following the others isn’t that ridiculous I think he’s interested in Tain anyhow we have the beast. Oh, my blood did not boil I just just had to uh I barely knew what I was doing. Now we have to get you on Harr.”

  “I’n do it,” Fa
lc said, and started to rise, and accidentally put weight on his left arm. Lightning jolted through the rush of darkness in his brain and he fell back.

  “This sure would be a good chance for me to get you to admit a few things, wouldn’t it! Well, I won’t. Shall we leave the — Falc? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes.” He waited a moment before making a sentence’s worth of effort: “Can you get the dead one on his darg?”

  “Oh Falc! You mean you want to take him along?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ugh.”

  “I under... stand. Perhap... tie a rope around his... ankles and... to saddle?”

  “Oh, oh, that’s worse! The trouble is he’s so messy and besides a dead man weighs a lot more than a live one!”

  How do you know that, Falc of Rissjcor thought, but said only, “Yes.”

  “Well... I’ll try.”

  “Wait. I’ll get... I’ll –” Falc broke off and released a long sigh. “Help me up and I can help.”

  She heard his words all right, heard what the massively independent Falc of Risskor said: the admission. Yet contrary to what she’d have thought, she wasn’t quite able to smile. “We can get you on your feet easily enough but that won’t make you able to help.”

  “Yes.” Falc gave her instructions.

  She was right; getting him onto his feet was not all that difficult. His left arm was obviously totally useless to him, but he had his legs and his other arm, and skinny or not Jinnery was a farmer and stronger than she looked. Then he proved to be right, too: with Harr crowding the dead man’s mount while Falc leaned against the dutiful and seemingly placid darg, he and Jinnery got the short thick man across the saddle. She had not exaggerated: he was a mess, with his head dangling sidewise on half a neck covered with blood. Acting on Falc’s instructions, she was even able to use the man’s own rope to tie both his ankles, pass the line under the darg, and secure it to both his dangling wrists.

  “Pull,” Falc enjoined.

  She grunted to let him know she was, and tied the rope. “Should I use cord from your pack to tie to the darg’s halter, to lead him?”

  “He stayed,” Falc said. “He will follow. Let’s... mount.” You mean let’s get you somehow into the saddle, she corrected mentally, but uncharacteristically kept the thought to herself. She no longer felt the need to push it.

  It took a while. Once Falc’s wounded arm got somehow between his body and Harr and took pressure, and Falc blacked out. Jinnery held him up until he came back and they began again. Harr helped by standing still as rock. Somehow the three of them got his master into the saddle. Wincing and trying not to show it, he laid his useless arm across his left thigh and accepted Harr’s reins from Jinnery. She patted his thigh without thinking, and swung to her mount. Falc saw that one of her sections’ legs was tom and missing some fabric.

  The dargs bore them slowly, plodding away from the trees into a grassy field dotted with bushes. The dead man’s darg followed. Pausing only long enough for her to retrieve her dagger, they rode across a broad field and descended a short sloping hill to cross a tree-edged gulley, where for the first time Falc let her hear him groan. Somehow he managed to stay in the saddle while they ascended the other side. His head was aswim and after a while he dared not look down. Through more grassland, and around a bushy outgrowth left alone so long it had achieved great height and spread wide with aerial rooting. As they rounded it they saw that Falc had seen aright: here was a farmhouse with two outbuildings. They heard hammering, inside the smaller building.

  Fergs hissed and hurried, getting out of their way. The shed door opened and a man appeared. He wore farmer’s skirts and a great big old wide-brimmed hat, and he bore a hammer at the end of one burly arm. His brows were dark and what they could see of his hair was too, while his unkempt beard and moustache were grey and white with a few strands of slate blue. His big-nosed face was adorned with something one seldom saw, despite the glass industry and old knowledge: he wore spectacles.

  They did not have to say a word. He saw it all in a glance.

  “Must have been more than just that one, Sir Knight of the Order, since you’re hurt. Let’s get you off that darg and into the house. I’ve got some good powder, and sure do know how to make a poultice.”

  “So do I,” Jinnery couldn’t help saying.

  *

  Falc tried to refuse the bed, but Parshann told them it had been his son’s until the boy had grown up and took off for city life. It was unoccupied and had been for two years.

  Parshann lived alone, unless one counted no fewer than six lean and sinuous cacks, all meandering in and out of the house at will and draping themselves colourfully anywhere they pleased.

  Parshann joined Falc in his insistence: Jinnery must not help get the omo’s clothing off, and furthermore must leave the room. Parshann closed the door and Jinnery fumed. A cack brushed her balloon-legginged ankle. She glanced down and said nice words. Red and gold and white with a bluish tail, the cack paused and looked back. Jinnery squatted and the cack quite forgot where it had been going. Soon Jinnery was sitting on the floor holding and stroking the animal while she wept and wept.

  *

  Parshann and Falc were meanwhile relieving the omo of his upper garments. The farmer saw the dark man’s pain and only nodded, saying nothing; to mention such a man’s stoic bravery would be to insult him.

  He removed the tourniquet and rubbed the arm, muttering an apology. It leaked a little more, and then the flow slacked. Parshann eased off the bandage.

  “She done a good job, Sir Knight of the Order.”

  “Name’s Falc.”

  “No! I’ve heard of you, Sir Falc! I’m Parshann,’n’ you’d never believe I was born just within Risskor, would you! Never mind, never mind. I’m older ’n you and remember it but just sort of hazy. You’ve sure atoned for all of it an’ more, bein’ not only an omo but the best, for a lot of years.’Nough about that, Sir Falc. Let’s see... huh! This rib’s cracked, sure. Feel that?”

  “Uh.”

  “Sorry. Cracked all right. Hurts worser ’n a big cut, don’t it! Well, we’ll powder the arm and get a poultice on it. A little powder on your side’ll do. Then we’d best see how tight we can get some cloth and maybe rope around you. That’ll keep that rib from biting you ever’ time you move. I’ve heard you’ve took as many as four sworders at a time, Sir Falc. How many’d it take to do this?”

  “Three.”

  “Um. Sometimes a man gets took by surprise, don’t he. That hurt?”

  “Not for long.”

  “Good attitude. Now we’ll just... there. Ever hear of Sir Pameris?”

  “Of course. He — ah! Kin to you, friend Parshann?”

  “My brother. You know all about ’im, then. Joined the Order long ’fore you did b’cause we’re both a deal older ’n you. Died three years ago. Is it true it was just natural causes?”

  “It’s — uh! Sorry — true, Parshann. Our brother Pameris was visiting the High Temple, and one morning he just didn’t wake up. Heart, likely. It happens.”

  “Um. Now if you can just bend this way a little — good! Now what I need you to do, Sir Falc, is just lay back and be real still while I go put together a poultice. That’s something I learned real good, when Helky was alive.”

  “Your wife?”

  “Nahh. Widow of a neighbour who died. Pretty homely, but she was a good worker, cooked good, and knew how to give a man a good screw even when she wasn’t in heat.”

  “Ah.” Falc saw no reason to say anything more.

  “She died last year, damn it — no, it was year b’fore last. Real shame, her leavin’ me that way. About the same as Pameris, I guess; just keeled over one day. Couldn’t breathe and her arm had gone dead, and then she did. Damn. You get to like a woman, you know? I’d lived alone ten years before that. But her man died and there was Helky, needin’, and I didn’t even know I was. But I must’ve was; I sure got accustomed to company. A man gets accustomed to com
pany, don’t he.”

  This time Falc elected not to reply. He couldn’t say no to this man, and didn’t want to say yes. Couldn’t.

  “I expect that woman ’th you has had enough time to cry by now. I’ll go fix up the poultice. Maybe get her to do it while I plant that man you brought in.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Parshann,” Falc said, realising that any man who misjudged Parshann as unwise was worse than unwise.

  “Uh-huh,” Parshann said. “Lay quiet!”

  He left the room to find Jinnery in the kitchen, sweeping, while four cackoni watched. Jinnery’s eyes were bloodshot and all dark and puffy under.

  “He’s going to do all right,” Parshann told her. “Hard part’s going to keep a man like that layin’ still. Might be better if I didn’t tape his rib! Know anything about making poultices?”

  “Uh... yes... but not for a wound like that.”

  Still wearing his hat, he was gathering this and that from a cupboard. “Well, listen. You can be cookin’ it while I go bury that man you brought in.”

  “Burn the swine!”

  Parshann shook his head, still hatted. “Can’t stand the stink,” he said, and gave her instructions, and went for a shovel.

  3

  They could not stay here, Falc told Jinnery. They damned well were going to stay here, Jinnery told Falc. Parshann had forced upon her a tunic and leggings. Both were too large, but they were clean and they were female, and the nice soft gold-coloured cord tied the pale green tunic well.

  “It is not going to be easy on us, Falc; either of us, having to lie there and be tended by me. But we have to stay, and Parshann’s got things he has to do. Just set your mind to it, cousin: staying here and being tended by me is what you have to do.”

  Powdered, poulticed, taped and on his back in the bed that had been Parshann’s son’s, Falc turned his face away. “No, and it is not easy living with knowledge that a — that you saved my live. A Son of Ashah does not have to have his life saved.”