“Well, boy, the Marquis will be very pleased to see you, but not with that sword at your hip. Where did you get it?” Tomas had forgotten the weapon stuffed through the rope which held his trews up. Tomas still couldn’t see Paul or Gerni but decided that if they didn’t arrive soon he was in serious trouble anyway.
“This sword?” One last stall.
“Yeah, boy, that sword. What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m going to stick this sword into Gilbert’s soft belly and watch his bright blood spill out.”
The men stopped for a second and looked at each other. They reached for their own blades and Tomas dragged his from his belt. For a brief moment he found himself facing two experienced fighters with a weapon he had never wielded before. He bit his tongue and opened the wound from the day before, tasting iron.
Had Paul and Gerni synchronised their attacks a little better it would have been over instantly. As it was, the younger sergeant went down under a double handed stroke to his neck, not pretty swordplay by any means but brutally effective. Alain had a breath after this had happened to turn and put his arm in the way of Gerni’s upward thrust. The tip of the blade pierced his much repaired chain-mail vest at the bottom of the ribcage and both men fell to the ground. Alain was a big man and had taken wounds before, though not for many years. He punched Gerni in the mouth with a mailed glove and the miller rolled away spitting blood and teeth.
Paul was still engaged and so Tomas grabbed his weapon tightly and approached the panting Alain. The fat soldier was having trouble getting his sword out of its scabbard which had fallen underneath him and he was concentrating on this task when Tomas arrived. He looked up at Tomas’ face. “Now, boy…”
Tomas stamped hard on his sword hand and kicked at his face. Looking down at the older man, cradling his broken fingers against his bleeding face Tomas paused, but he quickly realised he had come much too far for remorse. He reversed the sword in both hands and struck downward as hard as he could. The brief battle was over and the three men fought to regain their breaths.
Hardly had they drawn three lungfulls each when they heard Luc cry, “Tomas!”
The distance and the dark made it hard to discern the situation but this is how it seemed to the three at the gate. Luc must have run into the other patrol and now fled across the open ground toward the forest with the two sergeants on his heels. The unarmoured Luc was faster but was done for if the soldiers caught him.
Paul grabbed Tomas, “Quickly! We must help.” Tomas was torn.
“No, wait.”
“There will be more men.”
“We knew we’d have to fight. Wait.”
Luc almost reached the eaves of the forest before he fell. He rolled and tried to stand but he had hurt his leg or his ankle and he pitched forward again. The men were on him. From the trees which offered him safety came a roar and eight villagers sprang out, charging toward the soldiers who stood over Luc. The sergeants did a quick head count and attempted a rapid about face. The farmers caught them and Tomas lost the details in a whirl of bodies and blades. He counted eight men standing at the end of it and that seemed to be a comforting thing. He couldn’t tell if any of them were Luc. A door at the end of the house burst open and six armed sergeants carrying torches ran out and down the hill towards the forest. Paul gripped Tomas’ arm again.
“They need us. They aren’t trained soldiers.” The door stood open and firelight spilled out.
“We’ll never get a better chance to get inside the house.” Tomas heard the sound of raised voices from the barracks on the other side of the manor.
“They’ll be cut to pieces.”
“It’s now or never.”
In the end Paul ran back to help the others and Tomas and Gerni made a dash for the house.
They ran hard, bent double, and plunged without hesitation into the fire-lit kitchen whose door stood open. Tomas led and Gerni followed. Had they stopped to think at the door Tomas might never have found the courage to go in at all. The kitchen was empty as they discovered after picking themselves up off the wooden floor. Gerni had slid all the way under the table and stopped against a sack of flour. A cloud of white snow settled in his hair. Tomas’ elbow caught on the door frame and sent him spinning against the stone trough in the corner. He splashed his face and combed a handful of water through his hair with his fingers. If he strained his ears Tomas could hear the sounds of a battle from outside in the grounds. Inside the house it was silent. Gerni and Tomas shared a “you first” look before gripping their swords and going further into the house.
Heavy carpets lay on the floor and hung on the walls eating the sound of their footfalls so that Tomas and Gerni rounded a corner and found themselves almost seated at a table with two sergeants before either group was aware of the other. One of the men was almost asleep and the other strained to read by the guttering stub of a candle. A bottle lay on its side, resting against the book. Their position stood sentry over the main staircase of the house which swept up to the private apartments of the Marquis. The four men looked at each other, unsure of what might happen next.
Had Gerni or Tomas been a competent assassin the outcome would have been simple and quick but the struggle in the dark at the gate had not prepared them for striking in cold blood. The sergeant with the book, a young man with reading spectacles, woke the other with one hand while folding his spectacles and replacing them with his sword in the other. The sleeper stirred and made an inquisitive snort as his eyes opened. He grasped the situation quite speedily and stood, clearing space as he drew his blade.
Tomas and Gerni circled away from each other a little and exchanged a nervous glance. The odds were hardly even. The sergeants were veterans and the older one wore armour, Tomas and Gerni were farmers with weapons they had never, until recently, even held in their hands. Neither side seemed willing to make the first move. Tomas realised that the sergeants had everything to gain by waiting, and he much to lose. It was unlikely the battle outside would go his way and soon more soldiers would return to the house. Tomas swallowed the urge to run and hide. An indistinct shout made its way in from outside and he could wait no longer. The soldiers continued to stand at the table, blocking the stairs. Gerni hung back, the point of his sword wandering aimlessly in front of his face.
In what he was sure would be his last and most foolish action, Tomas leapt forward with his sword in front of him, almost closing his eyes in silent supplication to the memory of his father.
You never hear the sound which wakes you. He was fairly sure something was amiss in his house, however, and so Marquis Gilbert sat up, letting the satin sheet slide down his naked, hairless chest. He heard something then, a thud and a crash from outside his room. He dressed quickly but clumsily, missing the aid of his dresser who had left for the evening. In the polished silver mirror he frowned at his paunch as he did every morning. He had to admit to himself that he was not the lean and dangerous man he had once been, but there wasn’t much that could conceivably be in his house which could cause him to raise a sweat. He buckled on his rapier, which hadn’t struck a blow in all its elegant life, and composed himself, risking one more glance in the looking glass before unbolting the door and walking onto the landing.
At the top of the stairs stood two boys. One, the elder of the two, was bleeding seriously from a cut in his cheek. Gilbert looked to the bottom of the staircase. Two of his men lay there, probably dead, certainly on the way. On the table the stub of a candle illuminated one of his books, some spectacles and an empty bottle which would once have contained port, his port.
He snorted. His useless soldiers spent more time drunk than sober. Gilbert’s eyes climbed the stairs and settled again on the boys. They held swords in their hands. They held them far from their bodies, as if the blood on the blades might poison them. A good swordsman loved his blade, especially when bloody. Gilbert walked quietly towards the pair. One of them, the younger one, yelled something indistinct and charged along the bal
cony toward him. The other, the bleeding one, stayed put. Gilbert sank into a fencing stance and waited patiently. The charger realised he was alone about three quarters of the way to his objective and spun around, exposing his back. The older boy was clearly too scared to charge; clever boy.
Gilbert lunged forward, hopping on his back foot first for extra distance, and whipped his blade across the younger boy’s back. It raised a welt from waist to shoulder and the lad fell, screaming. Gilbert gently broke his nose by stepping on the back of his head with his boot heel and walked over to attend to the frightened one.
He seemed to find a morsel of courage as he squared up and faced the Marquis rather than run down the stairs as he clearly wanted to. Gilbert feinted low and the boy followed like a trout to a fly. The Marquis’ knee connected with his face and the lad cart-wheeled backward and down the stairs, taking every third one as if he were eager to reach the bottom. He lay still and Gilbert turned around.
The young boy had got up again. Bravo. Gilbert assumed a dueling stance with all of the proper flourishes and detail, and signaled as was proper that his opponent might begin when he was ready. As the boy looked into his eyes, with some anger it must be said, Gilbert noted with amusement that it was the wretch they had all been looking for. How fitting that he might kill him here, with the sword made by his own father. Gilbert doubted that the child would appreciate the irony.
The Marquis set about playing with his victim a little. He stepped out of the way of the increasingly desperate attacks, spinning and pirouetting like a dancer. In between each of the boy’s sorties he gave him a little cut, on the face or the arm, with the tip of the blade. Eventually Gilbert tired of the game and it occurred to him he should find out if there were other intruders in his house. He imagined with a certain amount of grim glee the retribution he would exact from whoever was responsible for this little insurrection. He turned to his opponent.
The boy lunged, straight and unimaginative, slow and clumsy. Gilbert was an enthusiastic user of the stop-hit, a manoeuvre in which one fencer, instead of parrying his opponent’s offence, attacks instead, hitting before the original blow lands. He employed it now, bringing his blade inside the boy’s, and placing the tip accurately at the base of his ribcage. The golden-hilted rapier cut the boy a little, bent—and then snapped.
Gilbert had a brief, very brief, moment to comprehend his mortal danger before the boy’s sword penetrated deep into his stomach. Both fell to the floor and blood poured from two wounds. Only the boy managed to stand, however.
It occurred to Gilbert, only in his very last moment, that in truth he had never fully trusted the smith, and had been unsurprised when he had discovered that the smith’s son was a troublemaker.
Like father, like son, he thought, as he died.
The aftermath of the battle at the manor was a sad time in Montreuil. The surviving sergeants, which turned out to be most of them, drifted away when it was discovered that the Marquis would no longer be paying their wages. One stayed on and married a village girl, when their affair was made public, and another downed his weapons and installed himself at the mill, now that Gerni was gone.
Tomas didn’t stay long in Montreuil and not all were sad when he left. Though nobody was sorry to see the end of the Marquis, many thought that the cost in lives was too steep, and that things had been bearable as they were. Tomas didn’t say where he was going, though perhaps he told his mother.
The manor house stood mostly empty at one end of the village and fell quickly into disrepair. It became custom in Montreuil, when a roof was leaking, or a hinge fell off a door, for the villager in need to make a trip to the manor and to take what he sought to make the repair.
The rose hedge slowly grew back, but was kept to a modest height, perhaps the waist of a tall man, and on festival days in honour of the Lady the village was covered in a garland of roses.
It was purely speculation on the behalf of some villagers that the new flowers were brighter and more fragrant than those which had grown there before.
THE SLEEP OF THE DEAD
Darius Hinks
Count Rothenburg finished his gruesome tale with a wry smile and leant back into the comfortable leather of his chair. As he viewed us over the rim of his wineglass, the light of the fire glinted in his vivid blue eyes, and he gave a mischievous laugh. “Well? Have I stunned you all into silence?”
There was a round of manly coughs and laughter, as we attempted to dispel the sombre mood he had created. “Bored us into silence maybe,” chortled one gentleman. “I’ve heard that story several times before, and at least once from your own lips!”
“Aye,” said another, with an exaggerated yawn. “I think maybe you’ve been enjoying a little too much of your own hospitality.”
With some difficulty I managed to rise from my chair and wander unsteadily over to the window. The count’s cellar was stocked beyond the wildest dreams of most of Nuln’s citizens, and we had spent the better part of the evening attempting to make a small dent in it. As I gazed drunkenly out into the moonlit splendour of Rothenburg’s ornamental garden, I struggled to remove the more unpleasant details of his story from my memory.
Tales of unspeakable horrors and strange happenings seemed to have become the mainstay of our conversation whenever we met. I doubt any of us could pinpoint the exact genesis of this morbid tradition, but it seemed now that every gathering was simply an excuse to plumb to new depths of absurd fantasy. I shivered.
Bravado insisted that we make light of even the most shocking yarns, but I could not help wondering where it might all lead. This passionate desire to outdo each other made me somehow nervous.
Stories sometimes have a way of returning to haunt you.
“I have a tale,” murmured a voice from behind me, “though… though I am not sure it is right that… that I should share it.”
A ripple of derisory laughter filled the room.
“Ho!” exclaimed the count, leaning forward in his chair, “what a coy temptress you are, Gormont! ‘Not sure it is right’ you say! What a tease! Do you take us for a bunch of prudes?”
I turned from the window and saw that the Gormont in question was a small, anonymous-looking youth I had not previously noticed. He was sat away from the light of the fire, in the shadows by the door, and was obviously very drunk. As the party turned their attention towards him, he retreated back into the folds of his huge chair like a cornered rat, and seemed to regret having spoken.
“Well?” demanded our host, obviously intrigued, “what have you to share with us, nephew?”
“I’m not totally sure—not sure I should…” he whispered, shuffling nervously in his seat.
There was an expectant silence, as we all waited for him to continue.
“I have brought something with me, you see…”
There was another chorus of laughter, and one of the guests began slapping his thighs dramatically. “He has something with him! He has something with him! Speak, boy! We demand entertainment!”
I peered through the smoky gloom to get a clearer view. There was a manic quality to the boy’s expression that seemed to go beyond mere drunkenness; he was obviously torn between an eagerness to impress his audience, and fear.
For several more moments he prevaricated and evaded, and soon the haranguing of the group reached such a deafening volume that even the servants began to look nervous.
“Very well,” he shouted finally over the din, looking somehow triumphant and terrified at the same time, “I will speak!”
A grin spread across the count’s handsome face and the room grew quiet. I looked around at the circle of rapt faces. The combined effect of the wine and the glow of the fire gave us the appearance of hungry daemons, leering over a defenceless prey. I knew all too well the urbane derision that would greet the conclusion of the boy’s tale, yet we were all, to a man, desperate to hear it relayed.
“I must beg of you that this go no further!” hissed Gormont dramatically.
The count rolled his eyes as this cheap showmanship, but shooed his servants from the room nevertheless.
Gormont cleared his throat nervously and began. “My family has employed the same physician for decades,” he said, turning away from us to rummage in a bag. “Gustav Insel. You may have heard of him?” He turned to face us questioningly, holding up a few scraps of paper. “This is his journal. Well, some of his journal, that is. Do you swear to secrecy gentlemen?”
“Get on with it boy!” cried the count in an imperious tone, which caused Gormont to flinch.
“Very… very well,” he stammered. “I’m sure we all understand these matters require discretion.”
We nodded impatiently, without the slightest idea what he was talking about.
“Yes, Gustav Insel. When I was a child he treated me for every imaginable ailment, and has bled my family regularly for almost every year of my life. Every year, that is, until last year. We heard rumours that he had gone abroad, or been killed even, and my father was forced—at some inconvenience—to find another doctor. However, just a few months back, he returned and the change in him was awful to behold.” An expression of almost comical dismay came over the boy’s face. That a man can be so altered, in the space of a year is hard to comprehend.
“I would not have given any credence to this,” he continued, holding up the papers, “were it not for the fact that some of the incidents mentioned seem to have a basis in actual facts. Ships’ records and the like seem to concur; and the baron he describes is no fictional character—I have made some enquiries, and not only did he exist, but also he did indeed disappear in a most mysterious fashion. And the foreigner—Mansoul—I have discovered that he also exists.”
Tales of the Old World Page 39
