Accidental Warrior: The Unlikely Tale of Bloody Hal

by Colin Alexander

  As suddenly as the fight began, it turned against the woodsrangers. The man Hal did not know went to parry a thrust from his opponent, only to have his sword break off near the hilt. In dismay, he looked at the nub of blade left to him. The guard howled in triumph and hacked down into the woodsranger’s neck. The man fell, his blood spilling out into a pool on the floor. That left the Provi free to come to the aid of his fellow, who was hard pressed by Bel.

  If she was dismayed at facing two men, Bel’s face did not show it. She froze one with a feint, then attacked the other in a series of lightning thrusts that drew blood, then shifted back to the first as the second man clapped a hand to his wounded forearm. Always she glided, light on her feet, seeking to line up her enemies so one blocked the other. Whenever she could achieve that, she shifted to a furious attack on the closer one, breaking off only when his partner could move around to offer support. Her maneuvering brought her to a spot near a loose piece of wood that lay on the floor. It was two feet long, useful as an additional weapon or a partial shield. When the Provi closest to her retreated, she reached for it. The other one jumped forward as she did, slashing down with his sword. It was almost enough to take her arm off, but she snatched it back just in time, then had barely enough time to bring her blade up to parry the other Provi’s thrust at her head. Fortunately for her, the first one lost his balance on his jump and could not follow up his attack. That gave Bel the chance to leap backward, out of range for the seconds she needed to re-group.

  Hal gulped, watching from his position at the end of the dividing wall. It was as though he was watching a show, except the blood was real and the body on the floor was real. As skillful as Bel was, if ten Eyck could not dispatch his opponent soon, she would lose her battle. Hal’s mind kept screaming that he should do something, but he could not think of what.

  Hal became so absorbed in watching the fight that he forgot he was supposed to be watching from hiding. To see better, he unconsciously stepped away from the wall and a little bit forward. He was no longer hidden from view. One of the Provi guards engaging Bel happened to look past her and his eyes fell on Hal, a man with a naked sword. With an oath, he hurled himself at Hal, leaving his partner to fight Bel alone. He lunged, sword point aimed at Hal’s head.

  Hal could not think. He could not think. But he did not need to. His eyes saw the sword coming. His arm and wrist reacted, just the way they had so many times in fencing practice.

  Parry. The Provi’s blade went off line.

  Hal’s eyes saw the opening that was created. Again, arm and wrist moved as they had been trained. Riposte. Hal did not even feel the resistance as the point of his blade took the guard in the sternum.

  Hal’s mind was still trying to catch up with his eyes and wrist. The moment seemed frozen in time while his mind tried to make sense of it. The guard’s face was in front of his, a mere foot away. The eyes in the bearded face were wide with astonishment. The mouth was just as wide, but nothing came out of it, save for a fetid odor from rotten teeth or draining sinuses. Hal’s sword seemed to end just six inches from the hilt, right at the man’s chest. Past the man’s shoulder, Hal noticed the rest of his sword, smeared red as it stuck up from the man’s back. It was not until the guard crumpled in front of him that Hal realized what he had done.

  Elsewhere in the barn the fight continued, but not for long. Bel ran through her remaining opponent almost immediately. The Provi facing ten Eyck looked for a way to escape when he saw the other guards killed. He was able to disengage from ten Eyck, but Bel cut him off before he could reach the door. He was no match for the two of them and was cut down where he stood. That left just the three of them standing in the stable.

  Hal saw Bel and ten Eyck looking at him. Ten Eyck was breathing hard but Bel, save for a bloodstain on one sleeve, looked no different than she had in town. Were they going to attack him, too? He had killed an enemy of theirs, but it had almost been a mistake. If they took him for an enemy—well, he would probably be even with ten Eyck in a fencing match, but these swords were real. He would be no match at all for Bel. The alcove with its side door was behind him, but he didn’t run. He did not even raise his sword from where the point rested on the floor.

  It was Bel who moved first. Silently, she brought her bloody sword up to vertical in front of her face. She held the position briefly, then slashed the blade down. Hal gasped. It was a salute. They were not going to attack him. In fact, after the salute, Bel ignored him. She cleaned her blade using the tunic of the dead guard nearest her. Then she went to check the fallen woodsranger. She knelt next to him but did not bother to feel for a pulse. Even from where Hal stood, the man was clearly dead. Bel stood up again, the expression on her face unchanged. She made a little, circular hand gesture to ten Eyck. Come on, it said. Ten Eyck responded by walking over to where Billy Johnson lay. A moan and a feeble attempt to crawl showed that the boy was alive. Ten Eyck picked the boy up as though he weighed no more than a feather pillow and slung him over one shoulder. Meanwhile, Bel retrieved a bow and quiver of arrows from where they had been left by the barn door. Ten Eyck did not head for the door immediately, however. Instead, he walked over to where Hal stood.

  “Thank you for your help, Hal,” he said. “I’m saying that for both of us.”

  “You’re welcome.” Hal wondered if he really meant it.

  Bel signaled ten Eyck again from the doorway, but he was not ready to go just yet. “Let me offer some words to the wise,” he said to Hal. “I’d clean off your sword.” He indicated the sticky red running the length of Hal’s sword. “There’s no need to help anybody understand who killed who, if you know what I mean. You might also give some thought to how you want this to be found.” He gave Hal a sly wink.

  Bel signaled again, more forcefully. This time, ten Eyck moved to join her. They peered around the side of the barn, then dashed out. The falling snow hid them almost immediately. Hal was left alone with the blood and the bodies.

  The silence in the barn served to snap him out of his daze. The heavy snowfall was keeping people inside, so there was little chance of someone noticing the scene by accident, but when the guards did not return to the inn someone would come looking for them. The thought of Tewes finding out that he had killed one of the guards made Hal shake. He was going to follow ten Eyck’s suggestion, but then he noticed that the blood had flowed over the hilt, staining his glove and sleeve. He would never be able to clean it off. Instead, he took some straw and carefully cleaned off the Provi’s sword. Then he took the broken blade from the woodsranger’s sword and smeared it with the guard’s blood. His mind screamed about fingerprints and DNA, but those things were somewhere else, not here. It would look like Hal had killed the woodsranger, not the guard.

  When he was done arranging the bodies and the blades, he began to feel sick. These people were really dead, not just players killed out of a computer game. Hal had killed one of them himself. He looked at the blood on his sword and was only able to take a couple of steps away from the body before his stomach formed a fist and forced its contents out through his mouth. The vomit spilled over the floor, mingling with some of the blood. Hal stood bent over, gasping for breath.

  Dammit, what is wrong with me? That guard was certainly going to kill me. The four of them would have killed that boy. I did what I had to do. He walked over to the open door, where snow had drifted up. A scoop of that helped clean his mouth. He remembered Bel’s salute after the fight. A very formal way of saying ‘thank you,’ it seemed. With that memory, and the cold touch of snow, he began to feel if not better, at least in control of himself.

  • • •

  John Slade was standing at the desk near the entryway when Hal burst through the door waving a bloody sword and screaming something barely understandable about invaders. John backed away from the desk, his eyes wide.

  “Easy, Hal, easy,” John said. “Let’s be careful with that sword. I’m nobody’s enemy. What were you saying about being invaded? And, dear
God, is that blood on that sword?”

  “They attacked the barn. Everybody’s dead. All of them. You’ve got to come down there with me.”

  “What do you mean, ‘everybody’s dead’? Who killed them?”

  “Woodsrangers!”

  John’s face went white. He leaned forward on the desk to keep his hands from shaking. “Woodsrangers attacked someone in town? At our inn? That’s never happened before. Are you sure they were woodsrangers?” His eyes fixed on the sword. “No, you must be sure.” He turned around to yell behind him. “Father!”

  The shout, and the terror in it, carried back to the dining hall where Old Jack was still entertaining Captain Tewes. It brought Slade hurrying to the front entrance as fast as his limp would allow. Trailing behind him was Tewes. The noise carried to Gustavus and Hayry where they sat in the front room. They were only moments behind Tewes in arriving. Slade was the first to demand an explanation.

  Hal’s voice was steadier than when he first came in. “A group of woodsrangers attacked the barn. They took Billy Johnson and killed everybody else.”

  That silenced Old Jack. He stood there with his mouth open, looking like nothing more than a confused old man. Tewes stood next to him, swaying slightly. It was Gustavus who broke the silence.

  “You said they took the Johnson boy with them?”

  Hal nodded.

  “Well then,” Gustavus said, “I think that answers our questions. The boy must have been their lookout.” He grunted. “So much for the usefulness of your patrols, Tewes.”

  “What about my guardsmen?” Tewes pushed forward unsteadily. He had obviously had more than one mug of Slade’s beer. He reached out as if to grab Hal’s collar, but Hal still had the sword raised. Tewes had to stop out of arm’s reach. It did not stop him from being truculent. “My men were killed, you said. How come you’re still alive, then? Ran away, I don’t doubt.”

  Hal flushed at the words. His parents had drilled into him that fighting never settled anything, that it was wrong. He hadn’t fought on the playground, nor after school. Schoolmates had called him a coward for refusing to fight. He did not think that made him a coward, not really, although sometimes he was not sure. This time he had fought. But it was much better to be thought a coward than to tell Tewes what had really happened.

  “I make no apologies for being alive,” was all Hal said. That brought a thin smile to Hayry’s face, although it only deepened the scowl Tewes wore.

  “No apologies for being alive,” Tewes mimicked in a falsetto tone. “You should apologize to your mother for being alive. What were you doing there anyway? I’ll bet you helped the woodsranger scum. That’s why you’re still alive.”

  The words sent a chill through Hal. Stay cool. Tewes is drunk, spouting off without knowing anything. Don’t convict yourself.

  It was Gustavus who saved him for the moment. “The lad was sent out there to clean that sword, so you can stop looking for a conspiracy here. If Hal had fought with the woodsrangers, he’d have gone with them, too. Don’t be a fool, Tewes. We’ll get a better idea of what went on if we go look at it instead of standing here talking.”

  For once, Hal thought, Tewes was not being such a fool, but this was not the time to point it out. Meanwhile, Gustavus did not wait for any further discussion but pushed past Hal, ignoring the sword. Hayry followed, and the others straggled after them. Hal did not want to go back to the barn at all. But he was more afraid of not being there while they examined the aftermath of the fight than he was of seeing the bodies again.

  The scene was just as Hal had left it. Five bodies sprawled on the floor, their faces and bodies contorted. The smells of blood and vomit mingled with the more usual odors of the stable.

  Tewes paused to kick at Jenkins’ body. “A fine sergeant you were,” he said. “Shot in the back.”

  Hayry ignored Tewes and walked over to where the second arrow stuck in the wall. He pushed gently at the shaft with his finger. “How many of them were there?” he asked Hal.

  “Three. In here, anyway.”

  “That’s probably all there were,” Hayry said. “This was fired from the doorway, probably from the same spot as the one that killed him.” He pointed at Jenkins. “I’d guess they were hoping to shoot most, if not all, of them. When this missed,” he paused and shrugged, “they charged.” Hayry continued his circuit of the barn, stopping to look at each man’s wounds and sword while Hal held his breath. “Your men didn’t give a very good account of themselves, Tewes,” he said at last. “All four dead and it doesn’t even look as if they nicked anyone.” He walked back over to the dead woodsranger. “Is this the first time you killed a man?” he asked Hal.

  “Yes.” Hal felt as though he was going to vomit again.

  “It’s just lucky the man’s sword broke,” said Tewes, coming over to stand next to Hayry.

  “Maybe,” was all Hayry said in reply. Then, to Hal, he said, “At the end, there were two men left. They just took the boy and let you go. Is that right?”

  Hal nodded. It was, of course, not exactly right. There were not two ‘men’ left; one of them was Bel. He did not correct Hayry, however. If he did, Slade might recall his original suspicions about Bel and ten Eyck. Then the whole story of the beaver pelts might come out. At that point, it really would begin to look like a conspiracy, with Hal in the middle of it. My God, what have I gotten myself into? But Hayry seemed satisfied with that ending.

  Tewes was not. “Two men carried the boy out of here and you let them go? You didn’t try to stop them even though they had their hands full?”

  “It only took one of them to carry Billy Johnson,” Hal said. “Over his shoulder.”

  “Well, that still left only one man with his hands free. You’d already killed one man, right? Didn’t you think you could kill another?”

  “Leave the lad alone, already,” Gustavus said. “All the other one would have to do is put the boy down and it’s two on one. It’s over. I will double my own guard from now on. That’s it.”

  “It is definitely not over,” Tewes bellowed. “Billy Johnson helped the woodsrangers and they killed four of my men. Gamble Johnson’s farm will burn for that.”

  “Wait,” Hal protested. “How do you know his father had anything to do with it?”

  “The father pays for the son.” Tewes spat in the direction of the door.

  “So, that’s how you do it, is it?” Gustavus asked. “When in doubt, burn them out. No wonder your woods are filling up with bandits. Have you forgotten, Tewes, that the Provis were able to throw out the governor and the patroons because this is just what they used to do? That’s why people supported the Provis ten years ago. Keep it up and they’ll be rising to support someone else. This time, they may not let you turn your coat.”

  “You stick to your trading and your money, merchant,” Tewes snapped. “I’ll stick to keeping the peace. And I haven’t forgotten about you either,” he said to Hal. Then, he stomped out of the barn.

  • • •

  Hal went about his work in a somber mood. He did his tasks mechanically, hands and feet doing the work while his mind was elsewhere. It dwelt on himself, for the most part, on what kind of a man he was. He had killed a man, lied to cover it up by claiming he had killed someone else, then lied again to cover up the fact that he might have exposed the culprits before any of this had happened. What would his parents—the ones he seemed to remember, that is—think of him now? What did he think of himself? Not very much. But what should he have done differently? Told Slade that Bel was lying about selling pelts, maybe, but that still might not have changed anything.

  The worst of it was that it was not going to stop. The Johnsons’ farm was going to be burned. Tewes would probably come back and dunk Hal’s head in the trough. The fact that John Slade approached him like a hero, the fact that Johanna regarded him with what he thought was real respect—neither of those things lifted his spirits. He was glad the snow lightened in the afternoon so that he could w
ork outside, away from everybody else. The day could not get worse.

  It did, of course. Hal was clearing the walk from the doorway to the street when hoofbeats made him look up. Three mounted men were riding in on the road to the west. Something large was slung across the back of the lead rider’s horse. As they came closer, Hal could see that they wore the Provi orange with white sleeve stripes. Closer still and Hal could see it was a man’s body slung across the horse, the feet facing Hal’s side of the street.

  “Hoy, there,” called out the leader. “Is Captain Tewes still here at the inn?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ask him to come out.”

  “He may be indisposed,” Hal said. In fact, Hal suspected that by this time, Tewes was too drunk to walk, if he was even still awake.

  “Indisposed or not, tell him we got one of the woodsrangers! He’ll come.”

  Hal stared at the body. Its backside was facing him. Too small for ten Eyck, he thought. Too big for Bel. He ran inside for the others. Tewes was, indeed, very drunk, but not too drunk to stand up when Hal delivered the news. Old Jack had been talking with Gustavus. Both of them came as well.

  “So you got one, Micah!” Tewes shouted as he walked down the path Hal had cleared. “How?”

  “Taking the road west,” Micah responded. “Caught up with him by Porre’s farm, first one on the road out of town. I guess he didn’t think we would be patrolling in the snow.” The last seemed to be said for Gustavus’ benefit.

  “Well, let’s see the blackguard,” said Tewes.

  Micah pulled a knife from his belt and cut a cord tying the body to the horse. Then he gave a yank in Tewes’ direction. The body slipped from the horse. It landed on its back in the snow.