The Edge of the Blade

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

  * * *

  A while after midnight, Quillon asleep, the constable lay with his eyes half open, watching his master cut the length of bleached linen into three equal squares. Then, taking one square at a time, Baynard pinched the fabric, using the blade of his dagger to slice a number of shallow crescents in the cloth.

  Satisfied, he walked to a corner of the low-walled roof of the taberna, gazing for a time across the moonlit port of Zarueza…

  Guthric was lulled toward sleep by the buzz of insects, the lapping of waves on the shore. Then came suddenly awake, peering to see Falkan with one of the cowbells suspended from a cauldron hook, his dagger reversed, the young knight tapping the rim of the bell with the pommel. Unaware the Saxon was watching, Baynard Falkan murmured to himself, ‘Should we ever need them… As we might…’

  Chapter Ten

  There were rules.

  The men would travel unencumbered by hauberks, wearing nothing more than an undershift and a full-length surcoat, strong boots and a soft, broad-brim hat. If the way became too rocky, they’d dismount and lead the horses. The thick leather boots would offer protection against snakes, spiders, the venomous dull yellow scorpions.

  However uncomfortable, they were to wear their shapeless woven hats in the heat of the day. It was a lesson learned by earlier Crusaders from the north. Scorn the power of the sun and a man would collapse trembling on the ground. A few hours later and the skin of his neck would blister, his face peeling, fluid running from his nose. As often as not his mind would wander, his resistance weaken and he’d die. Hundreds had already done so, much to the amusement and advantage of the Saracens.

  Here, in Northern Spain, the heat would be less intense, though strong enough to bring down the riders.

  There were rules concerning the money. Knight and constable and safeguard alike, each was responsible for his twenty-pound weight of coins. He would keep his linked saddlebags with him at all times, unless he’d clearly entrusted them to his companions. At night, they would take it in turns to stand watch, two hours awake, four asleep, the duties in strict rotation.

  They would take advantage of a taberna if they found one – so long as they could bar the door to their room. If not, they’d sleep in a deserted shepherd’s hut, at the upper edge of a dry-walled field, in an olive grove, in a shallow cave; but always with one of them on guard.

  If they were forced to camp in the wilderness, as seemed likely, they would sleep close to the horses. Falkan would allow no fires, however cold the night. They would eat what they carried, or go hungry. They would not fill their water flasks from the rivers, nor permit the animals to drink from them. The vast majority of arroyos were polluted, and for a variety of reasons.

  Some were tainted with the carcases of sheep and goats that had drowned and been trapped upstream. Others were fouled by the thousands of pilgrims who trudged westward to what was, after Jerusalem and Rome, Christianity’s most treasured shrine; Santiago de Compostella. Regarded as the final resting place of Christ’s apostle, James the Greater, the shrine of Compostella drew the faithful from the farthest corners of Europe.

  But even the faithful needed to fulfil their bodily functions, wash themselves and their clothes, treat their cuts and sores in the turgid, evaporating streams. By doing so, they turned the arroyos into drains, numberless pilgrims brought low by the water, as the Frankish troops had been smitten by the sun.

  * * *

  There were other rules, though the single most important dictum was quick and unquestioning obedience to Baynard Falkan. Gazing at Quillon, he said, ‘I address this most particularly to you, my young safeguard. Whatever you are told to do, you will do without hesitation. You pride yourself on being – what shall we say? – the black sheep in amongst the white. Well and good. But remember, Master Quillon, my constable here wears a darker coat than you. And as for me – you’d do well to see me as nothing if not a sharp-horned ram.’

  ‘I’m your safeguard, ain’t I?’ Quillon said doggedly. ‘But there’s one thing I’d ask you, m’lord. That meal they served us, back there in the port. We likely to get it again?’

  * * *

  During the first few days, riding inland from the coast, it was easy. Then they swung toward the east, the tracks less travelled, the awesome wall of the Pyrenees nudging them from the north.

  The taverns gave way to crude, slate-roofed huts, these in turn to sheep-pens, then the corner of some long forgotten field-wall. Then to nothing but the ridges and valleys that serrated the land below the mountains.

  On the eleventh day of their journey from Zarueza, the riders were forced to skirt a jagged outcrop of rock, nudging their horses down to a stony rambla. A torrent in winter, the riverbed was now dry, sandy cliffs hardening to a high, rocky ravine.

  Lost in the depths of it, their infrequent exchanges echoing from the walls, the travellers were watched by eagles soaring above them, the broad-winged predators assessing the movement below.

  Falkan lifted his head in admiration, glimpsed something as he raised his eyes, lowered his gaze to see – yes, a glint at the end of the ravine.

  He reined in gently, dropped back between the others, then murmured, ‘Be ready with your weapons. Draw them if I tell you. But otherwise, here’s what you’ll do.’

  Guthric and Quillon obeyed their lord without question.

  They drew the squares of bleached linen from their pouches. Soaked them with water from their flasks.

  Hung the upper curl of the cauldron hooks over their wrists, suspending the domed brass bells from the lower curl.

  Then they leaned forward, the broad-brim hats concealing them, and covered their faces with the damp, clinging fabric.

  His own face masked, Falkan said, ‘If God wills it, we’ll get through without bloodshed. If not, then I pray He protects you, messires. If it comes to blood, we’ll see this river runs high. But before it’s spilled, just copy what I’m about.’

  With that, he moved his horse onward, hat brim tipped forward, his right hand near the bell. Gazing through the eye-holes of the cloth, he led the way along the bed of the ravine.

  Once more the glint of sunlight on metal. Then a faint churn of dust from the mouth of the rambla. The chink of pebbles dislodged from the opposite bank.

  Starting low, Baynard Falkan moaned a warning to those ahead. ‘Enfermos … Leprosos… Quedese lejos de nosotros… Somos enfermos… Somos leprosos… ’ Keep your distance… We are lepers…

  He slapped his hand against the bell, heard Quillon moan in wordless warning, heard both his companions toll their unhappy approach.

  Ahead of them, a voice called out across the rambla. ‘I would not believe it. They sit too well. I would not believe those riders have the disease.’

  Another voice answered. ‘Do you not see their colour? How palsied they are? And why would they then have the bells?’

  Pressing at their doubts, Falkan called, ‘No miracle for us at Compostella! We have what we have, and are cursed to spread it like pollen.’

  Pebbles fell, dust spurting as the brigands backed away. Turning to Guthric, the same message for Quillon, the knight said, ‘The instant we emerge from the cliffs, set in your heels and we’ll run. Now ring your bells again. Ring them! Keep up with me – and run!’

  The horsemen charged into sunlight, masks snatched away, their shoulders hunched as they risked the gauntlet of the ambush. There were eight scrawny men scrabbling backward – then forward – to their right. Ten or a dozen to their left, the brigands seeing it now, aware they’d been hoodwinked, screaming and cursing and mindlessly hurling blades in the wake of the riders. ‘All this time!’ they howled. ‘Three days and nights we have nested! And now we are greeted by this! We are taken for fools!’

  * * *

  Fools, maybe, but dangerous fools. So Falkan made his men ride hard along the riverbed before guiding his mount up a natural sandy ramp and into the foothills. Most of the way Quillon was laughing, delighted by the grotesque trick. �
�If you weren’t the Lord of Tremellion, nobility an’ that, we could go ’round the villages, showin’ ’em bits of magic! How’d it be, eh? The three of us, with a bright painted cart—’

  The scarred flesh of his face suffused with anger, Guthric swung close to clamp the safeguard around the neck. Biting deep with his fingers, he pulled the one-time poacher sideways in the saddle. ‘You ain’t got it right yet, ’ave you, joskin? No one addresses Lord Falkan like they was equal, ’less he’s a knight of the Christian realm. Which you’re not, and never likely to be. Now tell me, joskin. Am I clear to you?’

  Quillon gabbled no, then yes, then no again, before wrenching himself from Guthric’s bruising grip. Lurching back in his saddle, he massaged his neck, aware there were stairs in life a fellow was never meant to climb. All he could do was get seasick, come near to drowning, then be half-strangled when he dared to make a joke.

  It was a world away from netting fish in the Hexel.

  But more exciting. He’d have to say that. Face an’ arse an’ whichever way about, it was a good deal more exciting.

  * * *

  They rode deeper into the countryside of Navarre. For three days they followed an eastward tributary of the Rio Yesa, passing between the Pyrenees and the Sierra de la Pena. Several times they abruptly altered direction, swinging wide of their intended route. Notwithstanding their escape in the rambla, Falkan was in no mind to court disaster. He would not again risk their being hemmed in by the walls of a ravine, or trapped on some innocent riverside track. If they were forced to fight, they would do so, killing without hesitation. On the other hand, if a snare could be side-stepped, an ambush avoided, they would take the more prudent path. Their crusade was not against the brigands of Northern Spain, but the armies of Sultan Saladin, in the East. And only that, when the coins were safe in the Christian coffers.

  Seventeen days after leaving the coast, they approached an unnamed hilltop village in the region of Maladeta. The upper slopes of the hill were terraced and tangled with vines, the fields below planted with maize or fruit trees, other vineyards, an occasional olive grove. Their progress was watched in silence from the orchards, the stony, sun-scorched plantations. Men straightened from their work, pressed a hand to the ache in their spines, then gazed with shadowed eyes at the passing horsemen.

  Airing phrases he’d learned from Baynard, the safeguard called, ‘Buenos dias, señores. Que trabajen con gratia,’ but none of the peasants responded to his greeting. Quillon shrugged. God rot ’em then, the surly bastards. Last time I waste my breath on the likes of them.

  The horsemen continued up the steep, winding track. Guthric was frowning now, worried by something, but unable to say what it was. Not just their lack of response to the joskin’s greeting… But the absence of – what?

  Then it came to him, and he glanced around sharply, glimpsing the peasants halt where they were. But away from the fields. Closer to the track. That was the difference! The sweep of their scythes, thud of their pruning knives was gone. They were no longer working, but advancing stealthily to bar the riders’ retreat…

  The Saxon growled at Baynard. ‘Seems it’s an ill-chosen place to get supplies. Those men back there in the orchards, they’re closing in on us. And bringing their blades.’

  Gazing ahead, Falkan answered, ‘We must hope for another way out. If they mean to harm us, they’ve doubtless practised their plan. Master Quillon? Are you close enough to hear me?’

  ‘Hear you well enough, m’lord. And the padding of feet.’

  Without turning his head, Falkan looked down from the track to where the lower slopes levelled to a rock and scrub dotted plain. Some two miles away to the south a more significant formation reared from the mesa. ‘You see that jumble of rocks? Looks like a child’s puppet on its knees. If we need to separate, get yourselves to the far side of it, along by its heel. I trust we won’t, but—’

  Twenty yards back a man yelled in the dialect of the region. The riders could not understand what he shouted, though the sense was translated by his tone. He was warning those in the village. Spring the trap!

  No longer feigning ignorance, Falkan unsheathed his sword.

  Quillon drew a wicked long-knife from its scabbard, reaching to loose another in his boot. The Saxon was the last to make ready, for it took him a moment to unbuckle the straps that secured the flat, triangular pouches on his belt. Then he grunted, slipped a loop over each wrist and cupped his hands to catch the shafts of two crescent-shaped axes.

  None of them had time to don hauberks or helmets, each vulnerable to arrows, lances, slingshots. Their horses were untrained and would rear in the face of flame, baulk at a barricade. If the villagers were as practised in murder as Baynard Falkan suspected, then the place was indeed ill-chosen.

  Five hundred yards and they’d know.

  Chapter Eleven

  His voice roughened by dust and the fear of death, the young Tremellion yelled to spur his companions. ‘At all speed! At all speed!’ Then he dug in with his boot heels, prayed the others would keep pace with him, and charged at the unwalled entrance to the village.

  The layout of the streets confused them. There was no central thoroughfare, only a narrow circlet that divided, containing the ring of hovels. Faced with a blank wall of yellow baked brick, the riders were at the mercy of their mounts. Falkan’s ran to the left, Guthric’s to the right, Quillon’s stampeding in pursuit of the constable.

  Fine yellow earth was churned from the street, swirling around them. Blind to each other’s position, they had no choice but to separate, Falkan riding hard and alone around the lefthand crown of the hill.

  In response to the shouted warning from the fields, two men were already waiting for the knight. These two alone, so far as he could judge, though one of them armed with a long-reaching scythe, the other with a murderous, olive-wood club.

  If he stayed in the saddle, the sweep of the scythe would gout blood from his horse, spilling animal and rider alike. Caught in the stirrups, or crushed by the fall, he’d be easy prey for the whirling, knob-headed club. This was no place for cavalry, even less for a chevalier whose armour was packed and out of reach.

  Wrenching the horse’s neck, Falkan hauled in on the reins. More dust spurted, obscuring the enemy, the palfrey trampling close to the outer edge of the street. A few more steps and they’d have pitched from the unwalled brink, falling twenty feet to the vines.

  But if ignorance and mischance had brought them to this village, the balance was tipped – at least for the instant – in their favour. His feet free of the stirrups, Baynard threw his weight to the side, felt the animal stagger, steady itself, then back away from the edge. Aware that his mind was hammering his thanks to God, the young knight swung from the saddle, slapped the palfrey away, then crouched in the fresh explosion of dirt and dust.

  Last seen, the enemy were ahead of him, to the right… The one with the club closer to the house walls… Yet the man he most feared, the one with the scythe, maybe less than ten feet away…

  He sensed the air clearing in the wind. A leaking of time. The moment had come to emerge from cover. To go forward and kill, or be killed.

  * * *

  Quillon would remember the scene all his days. Four men barred the righthand curve of the street, two of them armed with scythes, another with an iron-pronged pitchfork, the last with a heavy wooden flail. The swingle of the flail spun in the air.

  Like their separated master, Guthric and Quillon had reined in hard, dismounted in the dust cloud, then gone forward ahead of the horses. Whatever they did, they’d have to do it fast, for the peasants were even now pounding up the track from the fields and orchards. A few moments more and the constable and safeguard would be trapped, the treasure-laden horses seized and looted.

  So, blinded by the dust storm, Quillon turned in astonishment as Guthric said, ‘You got your water flask with you?’

  ‘What? No, it’s—’

  ‘Take mine then. Here. Here!’
r />   ‘For the love of God, Guthric, there’s men—’

  ‘Wash your eyes with it, joskin. Do it, boy! Do it to clear your sight!’ He thrust the flask at Quillon, the carved wooden stopper already knocked aside. The young man lifted it, splashing his face, then hurriedly rinsed the yellow dust from his eyes. Discarding the flask, he heard Guthric snarl at him. ‘That one, the one with the flail. Fish him, joskin. Fish him with your knife. Then him, with the pitchfork. Throw at both of ’em. Poach ’em for me, the way you’ve done for years.’

  His face now smeared with rivulets of mud, Quillon no longer defended his crimes. He’d been accepted by both Falkan and Guthric, offered adventure, entrusted with a third part of the treasure. He was now regarded as someone worthy of more than mutilation or the noose.

  Apart from which, the moments were worn to a ravel.

  His long-knife took the man with the flail in the chest, the laden air seeming to stir with the shriek of pain. He reached into his boot, hurled a different, wider blade, then cursed as it did no more than slice skin from the one with the pitchfork.

  Unarmed now, he turned helplessly to Guthric. But the Saxon was no longer beside him.

  * * *

  Memories tumbled like fragments of glass in Baynard Falkan’s mind. Sir Geoffrey, dying in ambush… His younger son being trained to fight in the mud and rain of the fens… The attack on the mill, Ranulf escaping so easily… The need to see Tremellion’s money delivered… Live to see it done… Once again to see Christiane…

  He came low and fast from the dust cloud, his sword arm bent, elbow couched tight to his body. Going first for the man with the scythe, he managed to slip beneath the sweep of the blade. Then he thrust upward, hearing the man gasp, seeing him glare with dying disapproval. The man’s eyes seemed to say, you should have been upright; I’ve been killed unfairly.