Errant

by Armas, Florian

  Reluctantly, Veres moved out from the house to intercept the robber while the girls were retreating slower, facing him. The wounded one was barely moving on the ground, my girls were fast, and while at fourteen Saliné already had some combat training, Vio’s reaction was a surprise.

  I attacked the armored man, with a series of fast blows, hoping that Veres could hold of the other one until father would come, but he was knocked down fast, losing his sword. The robber caught him by his hair and put the sword at his neck.

  “I surrender,” I blurted. “You can do whatever you want to me, just let my children go.”

  “You don’t have much choice,” the armored man said laughing.

  “It will be more pleasant if I cooperate. Don’t you think?”

  The armored man moved his eyes around, and seeing no one else standing – there were no more sounds coming from behind the house – stared at me, grinning, his eyes filled with lust: in the fight my buttons were lost, and my shirt escaped from the belt.

  “Drop your sword and knives,” he said while the one with Veres pushed him closer, and I dropped my weapons. “You too,” he said to Saliné and Vio.

  “Do it,” I glanced at them. Saliné whispered something to Vio and they stuck their weapons into the ground, upright. Good strategy, I could not help thinking, even when I discounted them from any action I could prepare, yet I moved briefly toward the armored man in diagonal, forcing him to do a half-turn.

  “Go away from the weapons,” the armored man gestured toward Saliné and Vio, and with small steps they moved away. “Take down your shirt,” he growled at me eagerly – there is nothing more men want after a fight than a woman. I stepped back this time, again a little to the side, forcing him to come after me. With slow moves, I took down my shirt, keeping him occupied. His eyes bulged while his tongue wet his lips.

  In haste, the other one pushed Veres on the ground, face down, then half-turned to stare at my body. “Don’t move,” he said to Veres, keeping the point of sword on his neck. “We will show you how to behave like a man.”

  I pulled him closer, turning his body even more, and his sword moved a palm away from Veres’s neck.

  “Look into my eyes,” the armored man said. I obeyed. Behind him, I saw Vio and Saliné getting closer to their weapons in silence, and father coming back. He took a longer path to hid behind the robbers.

  I grabbed the armored man’s neck, pulling him closer and I forced myself to numb my feelings and kiss him.

  “She likes it,” the other one laughed with envy, unhidden lust filling his voice.

  When we took a break, Vio sprinted, and her spear pierced the back of the laughing man, who howled in pain. The one in front me did not have time to react, the knife I snatched from him cut his throat, and he slid down, leaving a trail of blood on my body, his hands trying desperate to cling onto me. Saliné attacked the other one too with her dagger, but father arrived and the robber’s head rolled in the grass.

  Dead and dying men lay all around, some screaming or moaning. Shacking silently, all I could do was to take my girls in my arms, pressing my hands over their ears. It was so close to lose you... Father raised Veres and patted his back like a man acknowledging another man. He must talk with Veres. And I must talk with Vio. She is too young to understand the risks. But she helped… I could have sworn we had been fighting for many turns, but the sun was still hidden over the horizon. With sloppy moves revealing his sorrow, father closed the eyelids of our lost men. Our world was calm again and filled with a deep pain that will not pass soon.

  In the afternoon, we buried Horia and Mugur in the back garden, far from the house. Crying silently, my girls covered their tombs with flowers from the huge cerise tree. I stared at the graves with the bitter feeling that another part of my life vanished – I knew Horia and Mugur from my childhood.

  When the ceremony ended, Veres went back to the house followed by Milene and her family. Father remained in front of the graves, and I realized that he wanted to be left alone. He took Horia and Mugur in his service twenty years ago when they were just sixty or seventeen years old, young sons of two captains from our Guard. Father shaped and trained them.

  With my girls, I went to the cerise tree. Sitting down, our back leaning on the old trunk, my arms around their shoulders. A gust of wind passed through the tree, and myriad of petals left their flowers, floating around. Like small butterflies, they surrounded us in a whirlpool of white and pink wings under the golden-yellow brightness of the spring sun.

  A small part of my dream became true, I stared up at the large tree shedding petals, and silent tears flown down my face mourning everyone we lost during the last year. Malin warned me again. His first warning was just before the day he died.

  By tacit understanding neither father nor I tried to assess the attack that evening, there was too much sadness in our house. The next morning came with not much relief, but after breakfast we stood together at the table, each waiting for the other one to make the opening.

  “They were not here to steal,” I decided to speak first, father’s grief was deeper. “Orban…” I did not finish, letting him take over.

  “Orban would have sent trained people. They were just robbers,” he said casually, but something in his voice told me that it was just a mask to hide things from me.

  “Or maybe he wanted things to look that way. They killed our horses, four of them. My mare escaped only because she wasn’t in the stable. Robbers don’t kill horses, they steal them. They wanted us grounded,” I suddenly realized. Why? To stop us running? “They tried to burn the house, and I had the impression… I am not sure, but I think they were here for the girls.”

  “Saliné is protected by the Circle,” father said, “the Sages will not allow anyone to harm her.”

  “Who can find and punish some petty robbers hiding a girl? Should we contact the Sages of the Circle?” Our relationship with the Circle was glacial at best, several times the Sages had helped our enemies. They even helped Orban defeat us.

  “Maybe we should keep this hidden,” he said.

  “At least contact Mohor. He might be able to watch the roads.”

  “That I can do.” There was a restraint in father that worried me, he was hiding something, trying to protect me. “I’ll need to go north soon, to hire two of our old people,” he sighed. “We are more vulnerable now.”

  I nodded to him, feeling that he did not want to talk further. He left the table in silence.

  Chapter 6 - Codrin

  Before dawn, I left Movil’s inn, moving through a silent city sleeping under darkness. Three hundred steps from the gate I stopped, unwilling to be the first one leaving the city – it could raise dangerous questions. The stillness of the early morning enabled me to overcome my fear and to think. After a quarter of turn, two small groups went to the gate, ghostly figures against a darkening grey background. A few minutes later I followed them in the low light of the nascent dawn.

  A single guard intercepted me when I got in front of the gate. “Boy, where are you going?”

  “Arad,” I said dryly, while two other guards came and surrounded me. “I have an errand there,” I tried to add a sense of urgency, the growing light was my enemy, as the quality of both my horse and gear would raise unwanted questions.

  “You have a funny accent,” the first guard said. “You are not from here.” There was some strangeness in his tone when he spoke.

  Maybe he doesn’t like strangers. “No, I come from Baia.” That was the region where I spent the winter in Gran’s house. “We don’t speak as well as people in Hateg.” I smiled, trying to placate him.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Eighteen,” I lied.

  “How long did you stay in Hateg?” he asked edgy, annoyed by my presence.

  “One week. I stayed at Caravan’s Inn,” I tried to anticipate his next question just to shorten the interrogatory and leave before the light got stronger.

  “It’s
expensive,” he found another annoying thing about me.

  “I know Movil,” I said, hoping that his reputation will calm the guard.

  “Come here,” someone ordered. As the speaker got closer, and from his uniform I realized he was a captain of the guards. He stared at me under the torch’s light. “Yes, I saw you there.” We recognized each other at the same time, he was a habitual customer – Movil’s inn was not far from the gate. “You tamed the beast,” he laughed. “You are good for an eighteen-year-old.”

  “I trained hard,” I shrugged to enhance an impression of toughness.

  “Did you see any people from Arenia on the road to Hateg?” he asked – both roads from Silvania to Hateg passed through Baia. “A sixteen-year-old boy and an escort?”

  The Arenian embassy worked fast. “How can I recognize an Arenian?” I replied, and he just shrugged with no answer. “They don’t know our language, or at least most of them don’t. Any simple question in Livonian will unmask a stranger.”

  “Good hint,” the captain said appreciatively. “There is a wealthy reward for capturing or giving information about the boy.”

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Two hundred galbeni for information. Two thousand for capturing him dead or alive.”

  “That’s a lot of money,” I said, trying to fill my voice with greed. Two thousand galbeni for the head of a vagrant king. “Anyone can kill a nameless child and pretend he captured the right one. I will come to you, if I find something.” My eventual collaboration was an interesting incentive for him.

  “Good,” he said. “Daniel, open the gate.”

  I passed through the gate at leisure, like any man having nothing to hide and took the road going to Frankis. In the mountains bordering Livonia and Frankis, I left the road, going in parallel through the forest, keeping pace with the caravans I met – it was safer to stay closer to them. Or so I thought. Sometimes it was not possible, deep ravines forced me back to the road – usually in the early mornings or late evenings, for safety reasons. I had enough time as the caravans were moving slowly, and my spyglass – another Assassin’s gift from Tudor – helped me track things from far away, without being discovered. It took three days for the caravans to pass the Frankis border, slow days yet safer than the ones ahead; the law was better enforced in Livonia.

  Two days later, a band of ten riders came into my sight: well organized, with an established hierarchy, having some heraldic insignia on their armor and shields. I ignored them; they did not look like the usual robbers. One small caravan intersected them a turn later, and in a minute, it was conquered, leaving the merchants dead on the ground. Moving fast, the soldiers took the bodies from the road, hiding them in the forest, and everything looked peaceful again. The wagons, filled with precious merchandise, followed the robbers away from the main road through a small side road. A warlord thief, I realized. Frankis is more dangerous than I thought. Things had happened so fast that nobody could help the unlucky merchants, and anyway I could not interfere; there were too many soldiers. Nothing else happened until the next morning.

  There was something familiar about the man down on the road, but it was too far to recognize him, even with my spyglass. Riding toward me, sometimes hidden by the sinuous road, he eventually arrived at a point where I could see his face well. The old man from the Protector’s Arena… Followed by four others, he was riding fast. Intrigued, I tried to keep pace with them through the forest, but after a while, I lost sight of them. Just for safety reasons, I went up into the forest, keeping a longer distance from the road, and my pace slowed as the path was more rugged, though there was compensation: I had a better overview, going further in both directions. The next half day was quiet, the five riders never appeared again, and I stopped above a large fork that offered a good view.

  “Time to eat,” I patted Zor and took the gear from his back, apart from the saddle. I am hungry too. Opening the backpack, I estimated the left food. Three, four days maximum. I will be out from the mountains. I can hunt… Down in the valley, the road was curiously silent. I rode too fast. The thought half annoyed me as I bit a chunk of meat from the inn’s kitchen. Movil has good food. No wonder the merchants appreciate him. Sometimes, in the evenings, we stood together in the main room; the huge man never made a scene again while I was there, and that brought some perks for me. Like any innkeeper, he traded not only food and rooms, but information too, and I left with a better view of what was waiting for me in Frankis.

  In the evening, four caravans of different sizes and richness camped in the small meadow between the forking roads. Forty-two wagons, I counted. Each caravan is larger than the captured one. Better tactic to group together. There was a swarm of people moving between the wagons and campfires, and involuntarily I caught the smell of roasted meat. Just an illusion… I was far from them. My own loneliness struck at me, and though it was still early, I decided to stay there overnight, just for the pleasure of seeing people caught up in normal activities. A small comfort.

  Morning came again with a need for another decision; the left road was going south to Histria, the right one west to Arad, and in those quiet moments as I waited for the world to wake, my mind was grinding out dire memories that I could not escape. I was on the chain of mountains rising on the northern part of the road, and to reach the other slope I would need to wait for all the caravans to leave. Lazy people, I thought; the caravans were still there. Maybe they are just longing for safety. They are splitting, I realized. Slowly, I pushed Zor forward, to the west; it made no sense to wait. Fate decided again for me. After a while, looking back I saw two caravans were going west, the largest ones; the bending road prevented me from counting the carts. The other two went south…

  “Histria is larger than Arad,” I remembered Movil, the innkeeper, saying. “But not by much. There are two other average-sized cities on the same road, so some caravans are going there. The road to Arad is almost straight, only one city between here and there, and then it goes further, to Midia and Dorna. More caravans are going north-west, to Arges, the old Frankis capital. It’s a ducal residence now. There is another ducal place between Arges and Livonia, but it lies on the northern road. The third dukedom lies far in the south; it takes the southern road to go there.”

  Panait and Iaru are going to Arad. I suddenly realized to whom the caravans belonged. If the old man is in front...

  The attack started early the next morning, and loud shouts pierced the forest, waking me up. I should have been awake; the thought mildly surprised me; it was never usually an issue to wake up early. Tired? In haste, I mounted Zor, and galloped down. Something had gone wrong for the robbers. It was supposed to be a surprise assault, after the two real protectors were killed by the false ones. My judgment, based on the previous day’s observations; just that my plans went awry by waking too late. The merchants and their men were up, gathered in one place around a large fire-place, three spears and many clubs filling their hands – five people already dead in the grass. By the time of my arrival, the dead had already gone up to eight. Only two robbers, I counted, charging them, a moment later. The old man heard hoofs behind him, and turned his horse to face me.

  “A boy with a sword,” he sneered, pushing his horse with a savage kick. “A rare thing,” he laughed, and our swords met for the first time – strangely, his sword was curved, yet two palm smaller than usual, the size of Tudor’s short one. In a strange coincidence, both of us underestimated our adversaries. A second clash of swords and we had to turn the horses to face each other again. “You are good, but I will still have your head and sword at the end,” he bragged. He was wrong, but it took me more than two minutes to put him down, and in a fight against many, even a minute may be too long. Four dead robbers, I counted again. Five still alive. The real protectors were dead too, so everything was on me and merchants armed with clubs and spears. Weak, but many, I encouraged myself. Another robber died before realizing it; my sword killed silently from behind. The next one turne
d to engage me, alarmed by a neighing horse carrying a body with one leg jammed in the stirrup. Caught between my sword and three clubs, he died fast when my sword pierced his throat, and things were almost settled. I rushed Zor to the left, where the last three robbers were still fighting. One saw me and ran away, leaving the last two robbers alone. My sword cut the shoulder of the closest one, and from the right, a club came at full speed toward me – the last thing I remembered.

  I woke with a hard thumping in my head, and my body was moving in a slow rhythm, shaken slowly. A wagon... I am alive. The realization took longer than one might have thought. I opened my eyes to the face of a woman smiling at me. Am I really alive? She was in her mid-twenties. Attractive... Her hand was on my head, pressing a cold, wet cloth against my skull, and pain suddenly announced itself. The club, I abruptly remembered, trying to stand – pain had a different opinion, and I lay back. It hit the helmet; I realized why I was still alive.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “You were wounded,” she stated, simply, as if I could not know.

  “I am aware of that,” I pointed to my head. “Who wounded me? There was no robber on my right side.”

  “He was scared.”

  “Who?” I asked again, irritated.

  “My cousin. You had a horse, and he mistook you for one of the robbers. He was scared,” she repeated, struggling to find her words. “I apologize, and thank you for saving us. I am Delia. You know my husband, Panait.”

  Staying in a wagon leaves you much time for thought, and looking back, I realized how poor my strategy was. I could not even call it a strategy, just a blind attack against a force that was far superior. Without the merchants’ fight... Next time I might not be so lucky.

  When I could stand, I saw my things packed close to me, and a new curved sword in its sheath. The old man’s sword, I realized and glanced at Delia.

  “Winner’s Right,” she said with a thin smile, at the same time holding out a purse that felt heavy in my hand. “From the old man that led the robbers.”