by J. K. Swift
He set a spearman on Thomas’s left and a crossbow wielding guard on his right, with his weapon trained on Thomas’s head just a few feet away.
“Precautions you understand. I hope they do not interfere with your concentration,” he said to Thomas.
“Give him a bolt. One bolt,” Leopold said and someone snickered.
All conversation died down as a soldier stepped in and held out a black, leather-fletched quarrel, to Thomas. He took the bolt in his hand by the iron tip and let out a deep breath. In his other hand he held the crossbow down at his side. Still holding it by the point, he raised the bolt to eye level and sighted down it, checking for defects. Satisfied he turned towards Seraina.
As he turned towards the crossbowman at his side, Thomas reached out with the leather vane end of his arrow and flicked it against the tickler on the underside of the man’s bow. There was an audible click and the crossbow jumped in the man’s hands as it ejected its missile.
Thomas leaned his head an inch to the side and the bolt whirred by his ear, taking the spearman on his left high in the chest. Thomas stepped inside the dying soldier’s spear and drew his belt knife before he slumped to the ground. A spin and a step later, the crossbowman’s throat was cut, but with a crazed look on his face, he continued squeezing the trigger on his spent weapon until he finally collapsed.
Leopold did not recognize what was happening until both men were dead on the ground and Thomas was moving unerringly towards him, his black eyes focused on Leopold’s throat.
Fortunately for Leopold, a young soldier, with reflexes better than his lord, jumped in front of him with his sword drawn. His death gave Leopold enough time to back out of immediate danger. Other soldiers rushed in.
Thomas sliced a man’s leg in three places and sent him screaming to the ground. One soldier shot at Thomas but his bolt missed and hit one of his comrades in the shoulder.
“Hold your fire!” It was Gissler, sitting atop his horse with his sword drawn. “Give him room. Back up, but close the circle.”
Thomas stood in a half crouch, one hand stretched out before him and the other one clutching the knife close to his body. Leopold was shocked at how calm he appeared. He had just killed at least three men, but he wore the unconcerned expression of a man sampling cheeses in the marketplace.
“Give up the weapon, Thomas,” Gissler said.
Thomas heard nothing, for his eyes were fixed on the same thing most everyone else was watching.
Seraina had suddenly appeared outside the circle of spears and crossbows. She reached out one slender hand and lifted the point of a spear enough to allow her entry. She stepped over a wounded man as easily as a breeze blowing through deadfalls and walked slowly up to Thomas. She raised a hand to his face and held out the other. He looked into her eyes, closed his own, and with only another moment’s hesitation, he set the knife in her palm. She let the blade fall to the earth and then pulled Thomas’s head to her breast.
The soldiers were on them a second after Thomas’s knife hit the ground. They pulled the couple from each other’s arms and began beating Thomas with fists, hobnailed boots, and spear shafts. The girl screamed as leering soldiers manhandled her into the cage wagon and padlocked the door.
Gissler rode his horse into the midst of the soldiers beating on Thomas and drove them back.
“The next man to put a boot to him will find himself quivering on the end of my blade,” he said. He gestured with his sword to emphasize his words. The soldiers grudgingly backed away from the prone figure in the dirt.
And while all this was happening, Leopold sensed a shift in the crowd about him. One that he did not care for.
“The ferryman is right. Seraina is no witch. She is a gifted healer. Nothing more,” Leopold heard a voice saying.
He would have paid it no heed, except it was the parish priest of Altdorf doing the talking. Others nodded their heads and murmured curses at the soldiers under their breaths.
Leopold beckoned Landenberg over from the cage wagon.
“Send the Hospitaller to Habsburg by boat. Then disperse this crowd. I do not like the looks of it. Gissler and I will take the wagon and the witch to Habsburg now.”
Landenberg’s face fell like that of an unwanted child.
Leopold rolled his eyes. “Very well. Follow us tomorrow. We will wait for you before we proceed with the girl’s trial.”
Leopold was well aware that sometimes you had to let your dogs run wild.
Chapter 36
GISSLER’S MEN marched Thomas down the steep slope to the edge of the lake where their boat was tied to the dock. It was a sleek craft designed for speed and to carry no more than seven people, one steersman at the rear and the other six crowded onto three bench seats spaced out equally down the length of the boat. It had one large triangular sail, lateen-rigged to a twenty foot mast and the bottom to a ten foot boom that swung from side to side depending on the wind, and which caused the passengers to sit slightly hunched over to keep from banging their heads on the heavy wooden beam.
It was a new boat; its overlapping plank hull not yet darkened with age. Even though Thomas’s head throbbed and his wrists burned where the ropes were cutting into the flesh, he still found a moment to pause and appreciate her fine workmanship—until ‘One-eye’ jabbed him in the center of his back and sent him stumbling. Thomas caught himself with his tied hands on the side of the boat, but a shooting pain burst through his shoulder to match the one in his back.
“Something wrong? Afraid of the water? Get moving Schwyzer scum.”
Since there were already seven soldiers, One-eye pushed Thomas down to the floor of the boat at the helmsman’s feet, on top of several spare coiled up lines, and sat backwards on the first bench to watch him. The rest of the men clambered into the packed boat. It had one set of oars in the middle and with a man on each side heaving to, they pulled away from the dock.
They soon stowed the oars and the helmsman shouted curses at a soldier in the middle as he fumbled with the sail. Obviously not a sailor, he finally succeeded in trimming the sail properly and the boat shuddered to life. It creaked for a moment, until the sail filled completely, and then the boat sprang forward and picked up speed. The helmsman skillfully pointed the bow as close to the oncoming wind as the boat could manage while still making good forward speed.
Thomas kept his eyes on the floor of the boat as he flexed his fingers trying to work some circulation into his wrists. The rope binding his hands was slick with blood. He could feel One-eye staring at him, looking for any excuse to hit him again. He wracked his mind to come up with a plan to escape, but could not focus. He was too worried about Seraina. She had been accused of witchcraft, and as sure as there was a god in heaven, she was headed for a painful, horrible death. And Gissler knew that all too well. He had betrayed them all. Thomas, the entire crew of The Wyvern, and of course Pirmin….
Thomas cringed and felt grief and rage course through his blood in equal measures, paralyzing his mind. He tried to blank them out and concentrate.
Think, man. Think!
He squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. For a moment he was on his own ship, with the smell of saltwater and the heat of the Palestine sun on his face. He saw Pirmin’s laughing face, and heard the cry of a sea gull, and when he opened his eyes he heard it again.
But this was no local sea gull—it was the shrill cry of a black-crested gull.
Ever so slowly he raised his head to look over the side of the boat. Either there was one very lost bird out there or….
One-eye cuffed Thomas across the face.
“Stay down there. I do not want any good folk to see me traveling with a dog like you.” The helmsman laughed at this, and Thomas grunted and eased himself up to his knees to face the man.
The helmsman was the only true sailor on the boat.
Thomas raised his hands up over his head and groaned as though injured, then, lowering them until they were level with the helmsman’s face,
he traced a slow cross in the air.
One-eye laughed and said, “Looks like you just got blessed by a witch lover. Or maybe he cursed you.”
The man shook his head and swatted Thomas’s hands away.
“Save your prayers for—”
His words were cut short by a hiss, followed by a wet plop, like the sound a smooth, round rock makes when thrown into a pond. A high-powered crossbow bolt had entered one side of his neck and exited the other, leaving no trace of its existence save for a plume of blood spurting from the exit wound.
The helmsman’s eyes rolled up inside his head and he pitched forward. As he fell away from the steerboard, the boat began a lazy arc off course. One-eye stared dumbfounded at the helmsman until another crossbow bolt whistled through the air over his head. He threw himself backward to the floor of the boat and yelled, “Ambush!”
Thomas leaned over the helmsman’s body and fumbled with his bound hands to draw his belt knife. He could hear One-eye shouting at his men as they scrambled over one another in confusion. Two more bolts pounded into the side of the boat near the front. He tried to focus on cutting his ropes with the knife, but the going was awkward with his hands tied. He glanced up to see One-eye glaring at him and drawing his sword. The heavyset man crouched and stepped over the seat separating them. He tried to cut his bonds again but the knife slipped out of his hands and clattered to the bottom of the boat. Thomas realized he was out of time.
He grabbed the dead man’s body and pulled it between himself and One-eye. The soldier hacked at it once with his sword and screamed obscenities at Thomas.
“A corpse will not protect you for long, Schwyzer!”
As he attempted to clamber over the body in the narrow confines of the boat, Thomas grabbed the steerboard handle and pushed hard, keeping his eye on how the sail fluttered and died as the boat came around. He felt the wind move to the other side of his face and he ducked. With a groan of protest the heavy wooden boom holding the bottom of the sail swung from one side of the boat to the other, catching One-eye square in the chest and launching him and one other man out of the boat. Dressed in full chainmail, they screamed and hit the water hard, surfaced once, thrashed silently for a moment, and then disappeared below the surface, their heavy armor dragging them down.
The four men in the front of the boat managed to avoid the boom. One pointed at Thomas and shouted something to the other two. They all drew swords and began moving towards Thomas in a crouch. Thomas looked to the shore and estimated they were over three hundred yards away; far out of crossbow range.
They had been moving steadily towards deeper waters since the helmsman had been killed, and that was why there had been no bolts hitting the side of the boat for some time. There was only one man in a thousand that could have made the shot that took out the helmsman, but Thomas could expect no further assistance from his benefactor on land.
Thomas glanced briefly at the dead helmsman’s sword, still in its scabbard, and then dismissed the idea just as quickly. Four armored men against one in the cramped space of a rocking boat would be a glorious but stupid death. He gritted his teeth and felt the scar on the side of his face tighten.
If he knew Seraina was already dead he would not have hesitated. But so long as there was a chance she yet lived, he would do everything in his power to survive. Yes, he could jump off the boat and swim for the shore. He might survive the cold water, and looking at the awkward swaying of the four soldiers he doubted they had the skill to turn the boat quickly enough and catch him, but he could not take the chance. Besides, Thomas had to get to Seraina quickly.
And for that, he had need of a fast boat.
Thomas stood in the back of the boat, his hands still bound in front, and watched the four armed soldiers close the distance. They would be on him in seconds. The time for planning was over.
He took a deep breath and reached his tied hands down to snatch up the helmsman’s knife resting on the coils of rope at his feet, then raising his arms up high, he drove the blade deep into the helmsman’s wooden seat. He rubbed his bonds up and down once against the sharp blade and his hands snapped apart.
He was free.
He picked up one of the coiled lines, put it over his head and shoulder, and then pulled the steerboard hard to one side, wedging it in place with the helmsman’s body.
The boat began turning across the wind again and the boom began moving across. The soldiers were past the midpoint of the boat now, and when they saw the boom swinging around they ducked beneath it, well aware of how it had knocked their comrades over the side of the boat. Grim-faced, they continued their approach. A few more steps and they would be in sword range.
But Thomas had no intention of waiting. As the boom reached the end of its arc and slammed into place, the boat leaned dangerously. With the rudder locked in place and the sail filling with wind, all she needed was the slightest encouragement and she would go over. Thomas hopped up onto the side of the boat, took a couple of quick, agile steps and jumped out just past the mast as high in the air as he could. As he hurtled by the mast he reached out with one arm to snag the tall pole, letting his body weight tip the boat even further into the direction it was already leaning.
“You fool! You will capsize us,” the nearest soldier shouted. There was a moment when the boat resisted, but the combination of Thomas’s weight and the wind blowing into the sail, proved too much. It swayed, faltered, and then fell over sideways, slowly at first, but soon picked up speed, until the mast and sail slapped the water throwing up a wall of spray and tossing everyone into the cold alpine lake.
The cold water shocked the breath out of Thomas. This was no Mid-Earth sea, and he knew water this temperature could sap the strength out of a man in minutes. He needed to work fast, but at least he was not in as much peril as the armored men around him splashing, fighting for their lives to keep their heads above water. Swimming with thirty pounds of steel and leather dragging one beneath the waves was no easy feat. It was for this very reason that the crew of The Wyvern had adopted the use of the Saracen’s lightweight Damascan mail shirts for their own armor.
As the soldiers thrashed and kicked, struggling to remove their heavy armor or swim to the side of the tipped over boat, Thomas fastened one end of his line around the narrow top of the mast. He swam back to the boat and clambered up onto the side sticking high out of the water, and then took up the line’s slack. Gradually, like a man climbing a rock wall, he leaned back and heaved on the rope. With his body parallel to the water, the mast began lifting out of the water, encouraging him to ignore the pain in his shoulder and pull harder. The line dug into his hands, bloodying them, and every muscle in his body felt like it was going to snap off his skeleton, but still the boat would not turn over that last bit to right herself.
“Come on girl,” Thomas said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Do not let us down now.” He could feel himself weakening. He leaned back further, his hair brushing the water, and pulled for all he was worth. The boat shuddered, but refused to flip upright. He did not have the strength, or the weight.
A strong hand grabbed his hair, twisting his neck painfully and dunking his head under the water. He lashed out blindly with one hand and felt it connect with a fleshy nose. The hand released him and as he pulled his head up he caught sight of One-eye reaching an arm out to grab him again.
Somehow, the veteran soldier had managed to remove his chainmail hauberk and boots, and with the frenzied strength of a drowning man, was now clawing his way through the water towards Thomas. Thomas knew he did not have the time, or the will, to fight off the crazed man. But perhaps he could enlist his aid.
Still holding the taut mast rope wrapped around one arm, he leaned back and extended his other arm. One-eye latched on and began dragging himself up Thomas’s limb. Thomas screamed and with all the strength he had left, pulled One-eye as far out of the water as he could while simultaneously heaving on the mast line.
The extra weight lifted the entire l
ength of the mast out of the water. The sail followed, shedding water as it rose, and then the boat popped upright like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Thomas half-rolled, half-collapsed into the boat as she righted herself, but One-eye remained hanging over the side still clutching Thomas’s arm. The boat creaked and rocked from side to side, showering them with lakewater that hid in the folds of its canvas sail. Both men remained motionless breathing hard through their mouths, exhausted.
Finally, Thomas forced himself to his knees and leaned over the edge of the boat. One-eye had both his arms wrapped around Thomas’s arm. His skin was ashen and his lips thick and bluing around the edges.
Thomas hit him hard in the face once, twice, and finally, after a third time, the one-eyed soldier slid off his arm like an over-ripe carcass from a meat hook. He sunk below the water without a sound, his eyes wide in terror.
Thomas collapsed backward into the boat and wrapped his arms around himself. He groaned and tried to rub some feeling back into them. He felt like he had been pulled apart by horses.
Finally, once his chest stopped heaving, and he could feel the blood moving again in his limbs, he poked his head up and surveyed the situation.
He immediately picked out a bearded figure waving on the shore. One Habsburg soldier still clung to the side of the boat. There was no sign of any others.
“Please…help me up,” he said. “I was only following orders. Please…”
Thomas leaned over and undid the chinstrap on the man’s helmet.
“I got nothin’ against you Schwyzers.” The man spoke faster when Thomas did not answer. “Nothin’ against you, or the girl. It was just orders.”
Thomas removed the man’s helmet and threw it into the boat. There was a lot of water in the boat and he would need something to bail with. Then he retrieved one of the two stowed oars.
