The Edge of the Blade

by The Edge of the Blade (retail) (epub)

It was all but dark now, wind drifting spray across the pool, a fine rain falling from the sky. It willed the men to action, all of them soaked to the skin. But Falkan knew the cold, inclement weather worked in their favour. Ranulf’s watchguards would be huddled in doorways, hunched under trees, none of them anxious to patrol the rear of the mill. Why in the devil’s name would they need to do so? The pool was walled in on three sides by a cliff, and the only approach, unless from the well-guarded track, was down the fall. Fish might come down. And driftwood. But on a night like this, such a dirty night as this…

  Even so, he would see to it that the men moved quickly, quietly, edging around the yard. He would give them their orders now, make sure they understood the layout of the mill, warn them that Ranulf Falkan was not to be killed. ‘I want him arrested. Disarmed if he resists. Wounded if your own lives are threatened. But on no account shall anyone slay my brother. There’s things I have to say to him – things he must recount to me – first.’

  The men were nodding obedience when Constable Guthric spoke.

  ‘Which of you was it? Got myself rapped by something under the water. Knocked the air from me. Likely I’d have drowned if—’ He lumbered to his feet, swayed for a moment, then glared at the soldiers, the spade of his right hand offered to his saviour.

  ‘So who was it fished me out? Earned yourself a friend. All the days I might live.’ Then he watched as the three men-at-arms let their gaze slide across to where Quillon crouched on the bank.

  Taking his time, the Saxon dug a deep grave for his voice. ‘It was you, joskin? You?’

  ‘All but fell on you,’ Quillon shrugged. ‘A tangle of limbs like that. Must have caught you as I surfaced.’

  ‘And towed me unwitting to the bank?’

  ‘As for that. It was Sir Baynard came to fish you. Left to me, we’d likely both have drowned.’ Then he parted the wet, luxuriant mane of his hair, grinning at Guthric’s discomfort.

  But the constable’s sense of honour ran as deep as the pitch of his voice. ‘Get to your feet,’ he threatened. ‘Take this hand and count me as a friend. Or know what you risk if you spurn me.’

  Quillon found much to scoff at in the world. But his impudence fell short of rejecting the Saxon. It wouldn’t be so bad to have the flinty old rock as an ally. Knew what he was about, did Guthric. And better to have him as a friend than an enemy. Make a fellow writhe in his dreams, it would, aware he’d crossed the Constable of Tremellion.

  He twisted to his feet, bit back his grin, extended his own strong hand. With touching formality Guthric growled, ‘The both of us might be dead by dawn, Master Quillon. But it’s like I said. You shall count on me. All the days I live.’

  ‘I’ll yell if I’m cornered,’ Quillon told him. ‘And hard though it is to imagine, you do the same.’

  * * *

  They skirted the yard, Falkan and the constable, the poacher and the three men-at-arms. The rain was now drumming with dismal intensity, sluicing the ground to mud. Darkness concealed their stumbling progress, though they seemed to Baynard a vulnerably small force to set against Ranulf and his friends. He did not even know how many there were. Ten at least? Twenty at the most? And were women with them, or were the murderers in conference, ready to kick back their chairs and draw their recently bloodied swords?

  The attackers pressed tight against the rear wall of the mill. One of the soldiers tossed a length of rope over the high, protruding bar. He looped and knotted the free end of the cord, slipped it in place, tested the water-soaked hemp.

  ‘It should bear our weight,’ he reported. ‘Though we’d best go one at a time.’

  Falkan drew the men close. ‘Keep in mind what I told you. If my brother is there, he is only to be arrested. As for the others, his henchmen, they are no concern of mine. Now, pass me the sack, and pray God the bar holds firm.’

  It was an odd, unpleasant feeling, the bag of squirming eels against his body. But it swung away as he hauled himself hand-over-hand to the loading doors of the grain store. Revolving dizzily, he jabbed a knife blade between the doors, held it there as he steadied himself, then eased the blade upward, feeling for the hook. Three attempts and the catch sprang free, the shutters prised apart.

  Rats twittered and scurried as he scrambled into the loft.

  Crouched in the entranceway, Baynard believed he could hear shouts and laughter from the main room of the mill. The squeals of women – the wagonload of women? – and the roared exchanges of men who were drinking, men comparing their pleasures.

  He leaned into the cold slant of rain, beckoning the others.

  One by one they climbed to the grain store, smothered their gasps as they slumped against the sacks. Baynard allowed them a while to recover, time to check that their knives and swords would slip easy from their sheaths.

  He left the store first, edging cautiously down the steps to the long railed gallery. Guthric followed; then Quillon; then the soldiers. All of them crouched low behind the rail, peering at the ill-lit scene the young Falkan had feared, expected, even hoped for. A ripped-out page from the Devil’s calendar. An obscenity of amusement in this dank and distant place.

  He recognized Ranulf, straddling a woman on a bench near the main door of the mill.

  He saw other men, their grey uniform surcoats cast aside. He counted fourteen of them, half with undressed women splayed or sprawled, the others drinking, advising on the performance, bellowing at some indicated joke.

  And away to the right, on a sturdy side table, Baynard Falkan saw a row of small, iron-strapped chests, the ones Sir Geoffrey had filled with the plate and coins and jewellery of Tremellion. The lids were tipped back and, so far as he could see, the chests were empty.

  He tasted blood. Not merely the blood of vengeance, but the scarlet trickle that emerged from the bitten channel in his lip. Just for an instant, his mouth twitched in a humourless smile. It was once again typical of Ranulf, who could mount his woman and yet somehow cause his brother’s blood to spill.

  * * *

  A glance at Guthric, another at Quillon and the soldiers, and the younger son of Tremellion reached for the neck of the sack. Not until you hear me,’ he whispered. ‘Not until I yell. Then he peered again at the gloomy, candle-lit turmoil of the orgy. Heard the moans and giggles of the women. The grunts and offered humour of the men.

  And rose silently to his feet.

  His drawn-out howl slashed their throats to silence. Bodies twisted, heads turning, minds unwilling to comprehend what they’d heard. No mere threat. No name. Nothing they could believe was meant for them. Just a single, extended syllable, springing their eyes and mouths open in shock.

  ‘Snaaaakes…’

  He followed it quickly – give those bastards no time to react! – calling down to them, ‘Snakes in the room! All about you! Everywhere! There’s snakes!’

  He loosed the cord of the sack, pulled the neck open, jerked half the imprisoned river eels from the rail. Then he swung the sack behind him, hurled it forward and watched as the moss and serpents sprayed from the bag.

  He was rewarded by a scene of shrieking, screaming panic. He saw men withdrawing from their women, rearing back from the chairs and benches, snatching mindlessly at their clothes, a candle, here and there a sword. They recoiled from the spread of the serpents, the shadowed floor seeming to move.

  Baynard pulled a dagger from his belt, drew his sword and plunged down the steps from the gallery. They mustn’t be given time, those bastards! Allow them to recollect their wits and they’d once again be fifteen hardened murderers, enraged to be had for fools. The thing to do now was – cut them to ribbons – overrun them – then corner the gaping Ranulf!

  A man dressed in a thick woollen undershirt slashed wildly at Falkan. Deflecting the blade, he jabbed his assailant in the belly with his knife. The man gave a blurt of surprise, then sank away, a hand in retarded surrender.

  Guthric went amongst them like a scythe at harvest time, not caring one whit if the men he sl
ew were unarmed, undressed, unfitted for the fight. They were here with Lord Ranulf, they and the chests the Saxon had helped to fill. Their very presence condemned them – as did their being unprepared. Call themselves knights? They weren’t worthy of the name! Deceitful murderers, that’s all they were, and Guthric had little time for murderers-cum-robbers-cum-whorehounds.

  He cut two men so deep they were dead before they fell among the eels. Stabbed another in the throat, swept a fourth across the groin. Glancing around, he saw two of Tremellion’s garrison brought low, one of the women gaping in disbelief at the shortened fingers of her hand.

  Baynard fought his way toward Ranulf, the elder brother only now thinking to scrabble for a weapon.

  Quillon saw one of the enemy lurch from the far end of a table, rearing to hack at Baynard’s unhelmeted neck. There was no time to shout. Would it anyway be heard? So all he could do was wrench one of the balanced knives from his belt, flick it underhand, without style, and pray to God it skewered the man before his high-raised sword—

  Baynard’s attacker jerked forward, an inch of the blade in his spine. His cry of pain alerted Falkan to danger, the young knight stooping, slicing backward, cutting through the cage of his ribs. Quillon glimpsed it, decided to make much of it later, then turned to find himself trapped by two of Ranulf’s men.

  No one has much to say in the course of hand-to-hand conflict. But Quillon heard one of the men observe, ‘Stuff a nice warm cushion, your hair, you pretty.’ They came at him then, one from each quarter, giving themselves a decent space to swing.

  Issued with both a sword and the belt of knives, the impudent young poacher was at a loss with the long-bladed weapon. Swords were for knights, constables, wardens and sergeants; not for the likes of soft-stepping fishermen, busy with rods and nets in the Hexel River.

  So the first blow spun the sword from his grasp, the enemy whirling closer. He flicked one of his daggers, saw a fount of blood as it sliced along a jawbone, then reeled away, shocked as he came up hard against a wall.

  I’ll yell if I’m cornered.

  A joke at the time. But now the joke had curdled, the two men closing in to finish him, each of them eager to claim his cinnamon hair.

  ‘Mine,’ one of them asserted. ‘It’s me that’s dripping from his knife.’

  His companion faltered, muttered with ill grace, then levelled his sword, hoping to stab the poacher as he sank.

  The confrontation had taken less time than the flinting of a candle. The whirl of blades, the flick of the dagger, the thud of Quillon’s head against the wall. Even so, it surprised him when Guthric chopped his way forward, cutting the first man’s arm clean through at the elbow, catching his balance and driving forward again, left foot slapping the blood-spattered floor as he all but transfixed the second unarmoured knight.

  The dismembered man lay dazed, his life flooding away. The other was already dead, Quillon staring vacantly at Guthric. ‘How are you so quick?’ he asked, as a child might ask a magician at a fair. ‘Brawny as you are, how are you so quick?’

  ‘Pick up your sword. Keep with me. There’s a few of them left as’ll fight.’

  * * *

  But in this the Saxon was wrong. Eight of the fifteen murderers had been slain or severely wounded. Two of Tremellion’s garrison were dead, the third soldier unscathed. But Baynard had been cut on the thigh, struck a glancing blow on the head, a trickle of blood leaking from the bruise. Quillon was fine, save for the rap when he’d backed against the wall. But Guthric – the indestructible Guthric – was now seen to be bleeding from three separate slashes, all down the left side of his body.

  ‘Bastards caught me from the shadows,’ he growled. ‘You’ll find ’em there, if you look.’

  Apart from Ranulf, the seven uninjured survivors had retreated to the north-west corner of the room. They’d been joined there by a number of the women, and it made Guthric snarl with disgust to see the whores fencing the whorehounds. A pity there were women here at all, he thought. Without them I’d as ready mop that corner.

  But the lodestone of attention was now Ranulf. Fumbling for his weapon, he’d been late to defend himself, dropping his sword as Baynard had speared a knifeblade at his throat.

  He’d already asked, ‘Those snakes? Will you see they’re swept clear? You know my aversion to them, brother. Anything else, but not snakes.’

  ‘I’ve a mind to hand you one,’ Baynard told him. ‘How would it be if I picked one out of the gloom and—

  Then he watched Ranulf recoil, probed after him with the knifeblade, beckoned him to come into the light. ‘Don’t be concerned. You’re more venomous than any creature in England. And I haven’t tracked you here to discuss the serpents of the hedgerow. I’m here to exchange a word about our father. And how he was ambushed. And how his attackers were slashed by you and your friends. And why those chests over there – why they’re empty.’

  Ranulf lifted his broad, square-framed head from the prick of the knife. ‘You’ve been hasty, young Baynard. Hasty and misled. Sir Geoffrey’s death was accidental. A clumsy, ill-aimed shaft. Seeing he’d been killed, then yes, I’ll admit the injustice of it enraged me, and I saw to it the bowmen were cut down. But should you ever think—’

  ‘Hush,’ Baynard told him, lifting the needle-point knife. ‘A clumsy, ill-aimed shaft, is that what you’d say?’

  ‘The man exceeded his orders. He was merely told to halt – they all were – halt the train and—’

  ‘You miss my point, brother Ranulf. I asked you if it was a clumsy, ill-aimed shaft that killed Sir Geoffrey?’

  ‘What else? The man loosing wide.’

  ‘Then explain to me – in your own good time – how our father was riddled by arrows. In every part of his body. And the saddle. And the satchels. And the palfrey itself, pierced from every side. But before you insult me with lies, add this. Explain what you’ve done with Tremellion’s treasure. Is that what you meant by deal with the Levantine? Sell it all off and pocket the proceeds? You and your scavenging friends?’

  Edging back from the knifeblade, Ranulf Falkan managed a weary, long-suffering smile.

  ‘You’ve misunderstood so much of it, brother. Caused undeserving deaths. I’ll agree I stormed from the castle, thinking Sir Geoffrey quite mad. I’ll agree I set his lunacy to be halted, but not to have him killed, no, never. Why would I, when I loved him as deeply as you? As for the treasure, he’d no sense of value, our father, and would as likely have exchanged each chest for a suit of armour. God’s teeth, my dear Baynard, just look at the row of coffers assembled there on the table. You, too, Guthric – you hear what I’m saying – just look at those chests and ask yourselves what Sir Geoffrey might have done.’

  It was a clever speech, this accelerated outpouring of words. It made the listeners pause to unravel it, query it for the nonsense it was, turn toward the heavy, iron-rimmed chests.

  And allowed Ranulf Falkan to duck Baynard’s blade, edge to one side, then hurl his weighty body through the weather-worn doors of the mill.

  It was the survivor of the garrison who yelled, ‘My lords! The prisoner! He’s out!’

  Guthric and Quillon spun in concert, the constable’s sword already probing the air.

  But by then it was too late, the mill doors swinging, Baynard lurching forward in pursuit. He howled in fury, his voice lost in the rainswept night, for all the world like a blinded brachet in search of a skittering fox.

  Chapter Eight

  Guthric beckoned the women from the corner. There were nine of them in all, three of whom had been injured in the brief but bloody fight. The constable did what he could for them, then asked who’d brought them to the mill. ‘Come to that, where’s the miller himself?’

  Whimpering with fear, one of the whores pointed across the walled front yard of the building. ‘Over there, may it please you, master. There’s a room of sorts by the stables. The miller and ’im what brought us, they was told to keep company there.’

&nb
sp; ‘How long have you been here, rutting with these pig-swills?’

  Uncertain of time, the woman shrugged. ‘We was brought ’ere, what’d it be, two nights past? Are we to be handed over, master? I swear we only came along to – what you said.’

  Falkan had meanwhile garnered other information, and was now shaking his head at the irony of events. The climbing of the terraced escarpment had been for nothing; likewise the near-tragic descent of the linn. The attackers might as well have burst in through the main doors, why not? For there were no guards posted around the mill. Ranulf had been so sure of himself – and in the exclusive company of his peers – that he’d simply not troubled to hire men to ring the building.

  ‘I swear it,’ Baynard murmured. ‘My brother must think he enjoys divine protection. Or more likely the shadow of Satan’s scaly wings.’ At a loss to understand Ranulf’s immeasurable conceit, he conferred with Constable Guthric. Quillon was sent to collect the miller and the man who’d delivered the whores, while the unscathed member of the garrison kept watch over the seven cowed survivors.

  Denied participation in the orgy, the miller and wagoner had drowned their disappointment in rough Cornish cider. When they entered the mill it was with Quillon’s hands on the collarless necks of their jerkins, their faces suffused, eyes glazed, knees scraping the floor. ‘Bit the worse for the apple,’ Quillon reported. ‘Wouldn’t count on ’em threadin’ a needle for a while.’

  ‘Take them out,’ Baynard snapped. ‘Lower them down the well, if you must, but I want them sobered quickly.’

  Guthric jabbed a thumb along the room. ‘Some of your brother’s men, my lord – you can hear them – they’ve been left this side of dying. You want me an’ the man-at-arms to – well, sort of nudge them over the edge?’

  ‘I’d sleep just as sweet if you did,’ Falkan told him. ‘But you’d best tie their wounds. We’ll be rid of them soon enough. The moment our friends in the corner have said their piece.’ He turned then, his sword in one hand, knife in the other, and went back to address the prisoners, these titled killers who’d been so readily deserted by their leader.