The Shadow of the Lion

by Mercedes Lackey

  "Herbs with Artemis' blessing," said Chiano quietly.

  Marco smiled wryly, remembering the nausea and the delirium. "I know; it just keeps you from dying—but makes you feel like you want to! Remember? I got it first winter I was out here."

  "An' ye can get it agin—"

  "So I'll keep some for myself. Deal, Sophia?"

  "Si—oh si si, boy, 'tis a deal." She grinned, a twisted half-toothless grin, as one hand caressed one of the damp blankets. "This stuff'll make livin' right comfy out here, come winter. Tell ye what—I'll pick all I kin find, dry it up nice. Ye figger ye need for more, why just come on out here—by daylight this time, boy!—an' ye bring old Sophia more things to trade."

  "You got yourself a bargain." Marco smiled inwardly, at peace with an old debt. Sophia would somehow not keep many, if any, of the "luxuries." They'd all end up with marsh-folk, keeping other people alive. Sophia was the one person in the reed-fringed Jesolo marshes who slept deeply. She could. Not even the most loco would put a hand to her. Her reputation as a healer was more potent even than Chiano's reputation as a worker of magics.

  "You've got to go back t'night?" Chiano interrupted.

  Marco looked at the swamp and shivered, but nodded reluctantly. "Got no choice, Chiano. My friend's bad sick, and you heard Sophia."

  "No, no—not soaked through like that, and it getting up chilly. Sophia, pack your herbs in the boy's sack. This old man knows the harbor day or night. I got a dry blanket here. You wrap up in't. I'll pole you back to the wharf. Say some words over those damned weeds for you too, I will."

  Marco accepted the shred of blanket, speechless with gratitude. And, witnessing the witchlight and certain hitherto unexplained mysteries of his time in the swamp, maybe those words held more power than he'd realized previously. Ecclesiastical magic could heal. Perhaps Strega magics were not the fraud the Petrine church claimed they were, nor the unadulterated evil which the Paulines labeled them.

  Chapter 15

  The church door had been slightly ajar. The rain and wind had sent more than just Kat scurrying for shelter. Two bridge-brats, a boy and a girl, had decided it would be warmer than huddling under a bridge. They were engaged in bridge-brat mischief, down at the altar, playing with one of the candles that burned there. Doubtless a sacristan would emerge in a minute or two and give them both a thick ear. In the meanwhile they were having fun.

  Kat shivered slightly. She pulled out a dry scarf and covered her hair. She was cold and wet. If she'd been close to a tavern she might have broken her own rules and slipped into the warmth. Instead she took a seat on a pew at the back. The brats hadn't even noticed her.

  They noticed the next incursion, however. Kat was so startled she almost leapt from the pew.

  The door swung open forcefully, slamming noise through the church. Kat spun her head in time to see a party of knights and monks pushing into the church. They'd obviously been to some function, or off on some official business, because the knights were in full armor, sheened and dripping with rain. Seeing the triple red crosses of the famous twin orders of the Pauline creed, Kat felt a sharp rush of fear.

  In times past, the Servants and Knights of the Holy Trinity had not held much sway in Venice, since the city was traditionally a stronghold of the Petrine creed. The more so since the Servants and Knights were closely associated with the Holy Roman Empire—as was, in a different way, the Montagnard faction in Italian politics. The Montagnards had their adherents in Venice, of course. But Venice was traditionally a neutral in the bitter Montagnard-Metropolitan conflict. If anything, the city's populace was inclined to the Metropolitans. So the Servants and the Knights were double-damned in the eyes of most Venetians—by religious and political creed alike.

  But . . . since the current Doge began favoring the two orders, they had begun throwing their weight around—and the Servants, especially, were notorious for their heavy hand.

  Katerina's mouth dried up. Surely they couldn't be looking for her?

  They couldn't be. Anyway, she reminded herself, the cargo had been delivered. All she had now was the money. Quite a lot of it, true, but still just money. Probably they'd just come to get out of the rain.

  This was confirmed by one knight's comment. "Off that God-forsaken water!" he snarled. "I thought we'd drown there, when that tub started to take water. Abbot Sachs, when do we leave this cursed city? A knight should ride. This boatwork is not for nobles."

  The abbot was the same stooped man that Kat had seen perform the rite of enclosure on the Imperial embassy. "We leave this place of sin when God's work is done!" he snapped in reply.

  The abbot's eyes left the knight and quickly ranged through the church. He did not spot Kat, sitting all the way in the back, since his gaze became fixed almost instantly on the two bridge-brats at the altar.

  "And look!" he cried triumphantly, pointing an accusing finger at the children. "God has guided us to his work! The Devil cannot triumph against the workings of the Lord!"

  Katerina was astonished to see the abbot striding down to the altar, for all the world as if he were marching on the forces of the Antichrist at Armageddon. Was he insane? The two terrified children who were the subject of his wrath stared at him, guilt written all over their small, hungry faces.

  The abbot grabbed one of the children successfully. The other, the girl, ran screaming for the door. One of the knights slammed the door closed. He tried to catch the girl. The child squirmed clear, to find herself in the steel gauntlets of another knight.

  In the meantime Sachs, the struggling little boy held in one hand, was peering at the candle. "See!" he shouted triumphantly. "See the Devil's work! They make waxen mammets from this consecrated candle to work their evil. Here, within the very nave of the Church. Venice, the corrupt and rotten! They will burn for this! You shall not suffer a witch to live!"

  Several things happened with all the outcry. First the sacristan, bleary eyed and none too steady on his feet, appeared through a side door with a branch of candles, demanding querulously to know what all the noise in the house of God was about. The second was that two of the knights finally spotted Katerina, before she could decide whether to slide under the pew or run for the door.

  Moving much faster than she would have imagined an armored man could do, one of the knights grabbed her shoulders with rough steel hands. The same one who had complained about the weather. Then, even more roughly, dragged her out to face the abbot.

  "Got another one, Abbot Sachs!"

  "Hold her there!" commanded Sachs. Almost violently, he thrust the boy into the hands of a monk who had come to join him. Then, stalked back up the aisle to stand before Kat.

  The abbot gripped her jaw and lifted her chin, examining her as he might a vial of poison. With his left hand, roughly, he pulled off her scarf.

  "The witch mistress," he pronounced solemnly. "Overseeing her children and their demonic work. We have made a fine haul tonight! Truly, the hand of God must have guided that storm."

  Panic surged through Kat. "I'm not a witch! I'm not! I just came to get out of the rai—"

  The abbot slapped her, hard and with obvious satisfaction. "Silence, witch! You will be put to the question and you will answer when we tell you."

  Kat's cheek burned. The blow had been savage enough to leave her dazed, for a moment. Her mouth tasted of blood, and her head was cloudy with fear and fury. The moment was so—insane—that she couldn't seem to bring her mind into focus. The only clear thought she had was: Why hadn't she stayed outside and gotten wet?

  * * *

  A new voice spoke. One of the knights, Kat dimly realized. A very cold voice.

  "Abbot—"

  The abbot turned on him. "Go and ready our boat, Erik. We must take these prisoners back and put them to the question."

  The knight shook his head. The gesture was abbreviated, quick; and very firm. "No, My Lord Abbot. We cannot do that."

  "Why?" demanded Sachs angrily. "The weather is not so bad! Not for
pious men."

  The implied slur did no more than cause the knight to square his already very square shoulders. And harden a face that, to Kat, already looked as hard as an axe-blade. She was almost shocked to see that the knight was not much older than she was.

  "Because we cannot remove these people from the sanctuary of the Church," said the knight. Calmly, even though Kat could sense the effort the knight was making to keep his teeth from clenching. "It is my solemnly sworn oath," he continued, almost grinding out the words, "as a Knight of the Holy Trinity, to defend the Sanctuary of the Holy Church. I will not break my oath."

  * * *

  Sanctuary! For a moment, Kat simply gawped at the young knight. Of all the scary-looking armed and armored men who surrounded her, he was the scariest. The last one she would have expected to come to her assistance!

  Thunder pealed, and she could hear a fresh squall of rain sheeting down outside in the sudden silence. Even the two terrified children seemed to realize their survival hung on this rigid man with the harshly Nordic appearance.

  The young knight seemed made entirely of sharp angles and icy ridges—as if his body and face had been shaped by the same glaciers that created the Norse landscape from which he so obviously came. His hair, long enough to peek below the rim of his helmet, was so blond it was almost white. His eyes were a shade of blue so pale they were almost gray. His chin was a shield, his nose a sword—even his lips looked as if they had been shaped by a chisel. And . . .

  Scariest of all: lurking beneath that superficial calm, she could sense an eruption building. Kat had been told once, by her tutor Marina, that Iceland had been forged in the earth's furnace. Not knowing why, she was suddenly certain that this man was an Icelander himself—a land as famous for its clan feuds as its volcanoes. And that he possessed the full measure of the berserk fury that slept—fretfully—just beneath an outwardly still and chilly surface.

  She noticed, finally, the peculiar weapon attached to his belt. A hatchet of some kind, an oddly plain thing compared to the aristocratic sword hanging from his baldric.

  * * *

  Then her wits finally returned, and Kat seized the opening as a drowning man might an entire haystack.

  "I claim sanctuary, in the name of—"

  The knight holding her clamped a gauntleted hand across her mouth. Kat tasted blood inside her lips.

  "Remove your hand, Pappenheim!"

  The blond knight's command was not a shout so much as a curse—or a sneer, driven into words. A challenge so cold, so full of contempt, that an angel facing hellspawn would have envied it.

  Except Kat could imagine no angel looking as purely murderous as this man. The young knight was on his toes now, as light on his feet as if he were wearing nightclothes instead of armor. He seemed to prance, almost, his whole body as springy and coiled as a lion about to pounce. And his thin lips were peeled back in a smile that was no smile at all. Teeth showing like fangs.

  His hand flashed to his belt, so quick she could not follow the movement. The next she saw, the hatchet was held in his fist, in a loose and easy grasp that even Kat—no expert on such matters—could recognize as that of an expert. And she realized now that this was not really a hatchet at all. No utilitarian woodsman's tool, this—it was a cruel and savage weapon, from a cruel and savage forest. What was sometimes called a tomahawk, she remembered.

  "Remove your hand, Pappenheim," the knight repeated, as coldly if not as forcefully. "As well as the hand on her shoulder."

  His hand flickered, the war hatchet blurring back and forth. The lion lashing his tail. "Or I will remove them for you."

  The sheer, sudden violence of the young knight's words and actions—all the more violent for that they had not yet erupted in the blood and mayhem they promised—had momentarily paralyzed everyone else in the church. Now, finally, the other knights began to react.

  Kat felt the knight holding her flinch, his fingers almost trembling. She understood then that her own impression of the blond Norseman was no figment of her imagination. The knight, too, found him just as frightening. And presumably, in his case, from past experience.

  The other knights shifted their feet, their hands fumbling uncertainly at their own weapons. It was clear as day that they had no idea how to handle the situation.

  Suddenly, one of the knights who had been standing in the background moved forward. A very large knight, this one, built so squarely he resembled a block of granite on thick legs. Very young, also. Kat thought he was perhaps her own age.

  "For God's sake, Erik!" he exclaimed. "Why are you—?"

  The blond knight held out his other hand, staying the youngster with a commanding gesture.

  "Be silent, Manfred. Do you think the world is nothing but a toy for your pleasure? You are nothing but an oaf. A spoiled child. Begone! This is a man's business."

  The words caused the young knight's face to flush a sudden bright pink. Then, grow pale with rage. Then—

  Grow paler still; and paler still. Shock, now, Kat realized. The young knight's jaw sagged loose. He stared at the one named Erik as if he were seeing him for the first time.

  Then, as suddenly as everything else was happening, his face seemed to snap shut. He shouted something Kat did not understand—words in Gaelic, she thought—and strode forward to the knight holding her.

  An instant later, Manfred's huge hands closed upon her captor's own shoulders and wrenched him loose as easily as a man wrestles a boy. Suddenly released, Kat staggered on her feet for a moment. By the time she regained her balance, the knight who had seized her was crashing down onto one of the pews, turning the cheaply made wooden bench into so much kindling. She found herself marveling at the strength that could send an armored knight flying through the air like a toy; almost giggling at the sheer absurdity of the sight.

  But she had no real difficulty suppressing the giggle. The situation was now on the brink of utter carnage, almost a dozen knights ready to hack each other into pieces—with herself right in the middle of them.

  The young knight named Manfred whipped out his own great sword and brandished it. "Dia a coir!" he shouted. Then, took two steps toward the abbot and commanded him: "Unhand the child, Sachs!"

  The abbot, through all this, had been paralyzed. Kat realized, now, that he was a man whose authority had always come from his position—not respect gained from his subordinates in action. It was obvious that Sachs had absolutely no idea what to do, now that he was faced with open rebellion.

  Neither did any of the other knights, for that matter. But it was also obvious, even to Kat, that they were about to react the way fighting men will when faced with such a naked challenge. These men were cut from the same cloth as the bravos of any great house of Venice—but were far better trained, and more deadly. In open combat, at least, if not in the subtler skill of the assassin.

  The hands on swords were clenched now, not loose. And two or three of those swords were beginning to come out of their scabbards. Frightened they might be, at Erik's savagery and Manfred's incredible strength—but they were not going to crumple under it. Not men like these.

  Suddenly, one of the other knights thrust out his hands, his arms spread wide in a gesture commanding peace. A somewhat older knight, this one. Most of them were men in their early twenties. His face, though not creased with middle age, was that of a man in his thirties. A man accustomed to command.

  "Enough!" he shouted. "Enough! No weapons!"

  His voice seemed to calm the situation instantly. Kat thought he must be the knight in command of the party. The hands on sword hilts loosened; some were removed entirely. Even Erik and Manfred seemed to settle back a little.

  "Erik is right," the older knight said forcefully. "Quite right! And every true Knight here knows it!"

  He turned to Sachs and glared at him. "You have completely exceeded your authority here, Abbot. Abused it grossly, in fact."

  The abbot gaped at him. "But—Von Gherens . . ."

  "Shut
up," growled the older knight. "You disgust me, Sachs." Seeing the abbot's hand still on the child's shoulder, the knight reached out his own hand and flicked it off as he might flick off an insect.

  "My family has held the frontier in Livonia for six generations. Unlike you, Sachs, I have faced real demons—not figments of your fevered imagination."

  Stolidly, the knight examined the still-trembling boy. "Had you ever seen a child's body on a pagan altar, Abbot"—the term was a pure sneer—"you would understand the difference."

  Von Gherens. Erik. Manfred. As always, Kat found northern names harsh and peculiar. But for the first time in her life, she began to understand them better also. Harsh, yes; rigid and intolerant, yes. Yet . . . sometimes, at least, names which rang clear. Clearer, perhaps, than any of the soft names in fog-shrouded Venice.