Squire's Honor

by Peter Telep

  The night wind towed along a bit of icy air, yes, but it was a cold, hard idea that sent gooseflesh fanning across Seaver’s chest.

  He still possessed a fleeting authority, an influence that would lift him out of despair. There wasn’t much time to exploit his power. He hopped down from the alcove sill, not bothering to close the shutters. As the shouts of archers grew noticeably louder, Seaver ticked off a short mental list of things to do and acquire. He swung open his chamber door and strode into the torch­ lit hall. There was an excited rhythm in his step, remi­niscent of the day he had first been promoted.

  Seaver stepped from the spiral staircase and emerged outside onto the north wall-walk of the keep. The archers here shouted to each other as they frantically adjusted their positions. Down below, past the curtain walls, Celt archers along the moat played hide and seek behind their wooden mantlets; they fired and ducked, ducked and fired. Celt arrows rained down on the wall­ walk like too much deadly hail, and one Saxon archer close to Seaver wailed as he took an arrow in his chest then back-slammed to his death. Seaver dropped to his hands and knees and enlisted the stone parapet for cover.

  “Shoral!” he shouted. “Lieutenant!”

  A middle-aged man with a forestful of gray and brown hair shifted around the hunkered bodies of sev­eral archers and crawled his way to Seaver. His beefy face glistened with perspiration and his bloodshot eyes mirrored his frustration and lack of sleep. “They’ve brought in their siege engines, sir. Have you seen?”

  “Shift every archer to the south side of the keep. Pass the word. I want them shoulder to shoulder there. And tell the Greek fire bearers to move their cauldrons of pitch as well.” Seaver listened to himself as he spoke, heard his words come out like verbal iron; only once before had he been this intent on giving an order—the day he’d ordered the death of Christopher of Shores.

  The order had to come out forceful—For the order was insane.

  And the lieutenant’s reaction reflected that. “Sir, if we do that, we leave three sides of the castle vulnerable!”

  Seaver felt no remorse as he answered, “Trust me. You will see the merit of my strategy before the night is over. Obey. You know the consequences.”

  Before Shoral could protest further, Seaver turned away and crawled toward the entrance to the staircase. Bowstrings twinged! and crossbows [witted! He heard men swear and fall behind him.

  Once inside the alcove of the stairs he stood and, without a second look, descended quickly.

  His breath was ragged by the time he reached the dungeon. The young jailer there flicked him a quizzical look from his key desk as Seaver ordered the man to unlock the gate and let him pass. Seaver marched down the hall, eyeing cell after cell, until he came upon the sleeping form of a short, Celt armorer who had refused to cooperate with his captors. He knew that the man was scheduled to be executed and Kenric had just for­ gotten to give the order. Seaver called to the jailer, told him to open the cell. The jailer obeyed, and as he found the right key and jammed it into the lock, Seaver noticed a sheathed dagger bound to the young man’s belt. Without asking, Seaver slipped the dagger from its holder, then rushed into the cell. He went to the armorer and slashed open the man’s throat. Then Seaver realized his mistake as he watched blood erupt from the writhing man’s neck.

  “Get in here!” he shouted to the confused jailer. “We have to get his clothes off before he gets them bloody!”

  The armorer did not die quickly, and it took some wrestling before they were able to begin removing the man’s livery. Fortunately, the man was on his back, and most of the blood ran down onto the mattress.

  “My lord, why are we stripping him?” the jailer asked. “Kenric’s orders. Now, help me into these, and cease with your questions.” “Yes, my lord.”

  Dressed in the frayed tunic, leggings, and light boots of a Celt armorer, Seaver left the cell. He ordered the jailer to fall in close behind. They headed for the last cell on the left side of the block. There, Seaver gestured with his head for the jailer to open it.

  The jailer paused, winced with apprehension. “Lord Kenric ordered this cell never to be opened.”

  “I know, jailer. New orders. Open it!”

  With a half-stifled sigh, the jailer heeded the command. Seaver pulled the barred door open the second he heard the tumbler on the lock fall. He nearly knocked over the jailer in the process. Seaver’s gaze came to rest upon a stone in the far wall, one with an iron manacle loop set into its face. The edge where this stone met the others was clean and betrayed the fact that the stone had recently been moved.

  Seaver knelt, grasped the loop and pulled. The stone budged a little, but it was too heavy for him. “Get down here and help me pull this out.”

  “My lord?”

  “You heard me!”

  “These are Kenric’s orders?”

  “They’ll find you like that armorer if you don’t help me now.”

  Seaver saw the guard’s Adam’s apple work. The young man crouched next to Seaver. Together, they tugged, and finally the stone came free from the wall. Before the dust settled to reveal what lay beyond the stone, Seaver moved into the rectangular hole. For once it was good to be small.

  “My lord. What shall I do now?”

  “Return to your desk and wait,” Seaver called back.

  The smell of stagnant water polluted the air. He fanned it out of his face and stood. Light from the hole revealed a stone floor identical to the cell’s, save for the fact it ended a few yards ahead, giving way to a trench­ like pool. The hall was narrow, even by a small man’s standards. He was within the north side curtain wall of the castle. He looked up, saw that the ashlar walls extended up past several different sets of loopholes to a stone ceiling which was, in effect, the floor of the wall­ walks. Torchlight drifted down from a few of the loop­ holes and drew long, yellow-edged shadows across the gridwork of piled stones. He listened. Faint cries from the distance. Nothing from the loopholes immediately above.

  Good. They’ve all moved to the south wall. It will only be a few more moments before the real noise begins.

  A few trace remnants of the flint and rubble that once filled this wall trailed under his boots as he stepped toward the pool. The water came into focus, and Seaver saw that it looked as bad as it smelled, near­ black, a sludgy goo. He felt his stomach heave, his cheeks sink.

  A tiny sound registered from behind the wall that faced outside. Seaver stepped to the wall, pressed his ear against it. The stone vibrated.

  Then he heard the shouts. The shouts of Celts who stormed this side of the castle. He shifted away from the wall to the pool, slid off his boots, tightened his lips, and drew a deep breath. With a brief, silent prayer to Woden, he let himself fall into the warm slime.

  Seaver swam forward, then closed his eyes and ducked at the point where the water disappeared under the wall. He felt his way into a narrow tunnel, the walls of which were slick and made pushing off difficult. He kicked desperately with his feet and wondered how long this blind journey was going to last. He had to give Christopher a small measure of credit. The squire had slipped into the castle this way and it was, to say the least, unnerving to swim through the muck of this tunnel. Seaver hadn’t even finished tipping his mental hat to the boy when he found his hands abruptly free of the walls. He reached out, probed for more of the ceiling; it was gone. He wanted to open his eyes and orient him­ self, but remembered the murk of the water. He instinc­tively swam upward, and in a few strokes his head popped above the surface.

  A thunder of battle cries met his ears. He snapped open his eyes, then resumed his ·kicking to stay afloat. Struggling through the water-induced disorientation, Seaver’s vision finally focused on the north curtain wall. He cocked his head sharply toward the encroaching roar, saw what he had hoped for: a human wall of lad­ der-carrying Celts that splashed into the moat. They would swim across the water, dig their ladders into the muddy berm, and attempt to scale the curtain walls.

 
The first wave of men swam toward him, and Seaver shouted, “Thanks be to St. George. I’m free. Free”! His Celt was a bit awkward, but he knew it was convincing enough to fool this peasant levy.

  “Out of the way, man!” one of the ladder-carriers growled.

  “Ho! We’re coming through!” another cried.

  “To victory!” Seaver yelled back, then ducked his head under the water. He paddled out of the way of the Celts and toward the shoreline.

  There were scores and scores of men in the water with Seaver; he was one of the many, nondescript. Soon, the moat became shallow, and Seaver rose. He dragged himself toward the shoreline, and once there he collapsed, partly for the benefit of the archers and siege machine operators watching, partly for himself. He hadn’t been swimming in many, many moons.

  He hoped being wet, covered in mire, and wearing the garb of a Celt armorer was enough to conceal him from the levy. He heard a gruff voice shout, “Get that man up and behind cover.”

  Hands were suddenly upon Seaver’s arms and legs. He shut his eyes and let them take him. He marveled at how he calmly surrendered to the enemy; if they discovered who he really was, they would castrate and kill him-in that order, of course. He chanced a peek and saw that they were taking him behind a bulwark of mantlets. He was placed upon the back of a two-rounsey wagon driven by a portly old Celt. He turned his head, feigned a dizzy spell. Already draped across the flatbed were two archers, one bleeding from a wound in his neck, the other gripping his left side, the linen shirt around his hand darkened by blood. Seaver closed his eyes.

  “Where’d that one come from?” he heard the fat wagon driver ask.

  “I think he was trampled near the shoreline,” some­ one to the right of Seaver answered. “Poor little man. Get him and these other two down to Hallam’s tent.”

  The driver cracked his reins, and the pair of roun­seys hitched to the cart started forward, away from the castle. The path ahead would take them through a dense wood.

  After only a few moments of travel, Seaver could no longer shackle his emotions. He laughed out loud, so hard that he felt his ribs grow sore. The archers and the driver must have thought he was mad, but he didn’t care. He was, after all, truly free. Free of Kenric’s rule, free of fighting a now-hopeless battle against the Celts, free of both a certain loss of command and certain death.

  He sat up, threw the first archer off the wagon even as the other shouted his question. A second later, the other tumbled onto the dirt path. Seaver moved to the front of the wagon. He tore the reins from the driver’s grip and wrapped them around the fat man’s neck. He choked the life out of the driver, pleased that it took less time than usual. The driver joined his human cargo on the road, not as lucky as they.

  Wagon driver Seaver steered the cart along the path, now passing row after row of abandoned cookfires and empty Celt tents. Every peasant and soldier now stormed the castle walls. He flipped a glance back to the fortress, considered how he had just recently ruled over the scores of Saxon men there, thought of the honor and prestige of it all.

  He felt the leathery reins in his hands and the sensation put it all into perspective for him.

  Seaver had already lost everything. Oh, he would love to run a pike through Christopher’s head, to exact a revenge so potent anyone who witnessed it would fear him forever. But he wouldn’t let his thirst for revenge keep him here and tum him into a fool. It was time to go back to Caledonia, to Ivory Point. Home. He would hop on a Saxon cog at the port of Blytheheart and sail up the Irish Sea to a new life, founded on one he had left too many moons ago.

  3

  “What happened to your hand? Come now, tell me the story, laddie.”

  Doyle would be asked that question for the rest of his life. Seventeen was, in his estimation, too young for one to wear the scars of battle. If he were older, he might actually take pride in his deformity, boast of it to younger men, use it to prove that he’d once been cap­tured and tortured by the Saxons. He would be a proud warrior. He could say he was there.

  But he was seventeen. And deformed. And he had yet to find a true love. No woman would want him now. He would be the tall, lean boy with “the hand.”

  “It’s nothing,” he answered Montague.

  The fat brigand threw his head back and pressed the nozzle of his flagon to his lips. After a few gulps of ale he exhaled in delight, adjusted one of the many gem­ stone rings on his thick, soiled fingers, and answered, “If I lost my thumb and forefinger, laddie, I wouldn’t call it nothing. He chuckled, his breath coming with a force that would bend the flames of the cookfire, were he close enough.”Will you ever tell the tale?”

  Doyle turned his head away, tried to tuck the memory of how Seaver had butchered off his fingers back into the farthest, deepest crease of his mind.

  “I believe you won’t,” Montague added.

  Doyle remembered his scream of agony, heard his own voice now, shrill, piercing, accompanied by the pain that shot up his arm. He stiffened away a chill, tried to repress all thought, and eyed the landscape.

  The forest where they had spent the night was just south of the River Cam; it stood atop a slope about one thousand yards from the water. From this vantage point Doyle could see Queen’s Camel Abbey to the far north,flagged by a line of smoke that rose above it. To the east lay the headwaters of the River Cale, and to the south­ west he could barely make out the highest tower of the castle of Rain. A large banner flew from that tower, but he could not see if it bore Lord Nolan’s coat of arms. The castle was probably still under Saxon rule. He turned his gaze to the Cam, saw the morning mist unroll from the shoreline reeds. As his eyes continued their sweep, he spotted a pair of Saxon scouts. The soldiers were dismounted and conversed as they watered their horses. They were probably on their way to the castle.

  “What are you looking at, laddie?” Montague asked.

  Doyle uncrossed his legs and pushed himself up. He put a hand to his forehead, squinted. “Two Saxon scouts. They’ve got a pair of rounseys.”

  “Splendid,” Montague said, his tone lifting in light of the news. “I’m tired of walking. Help me up, will you?”

  Doyle turned from the Saxons and eyed Montague, the huge hill of flesh with the long, filthy, slick hair and matted beard.

  How did I ever wind up with this whoreson round an?

  This was the price paid for murder: banishment. King Arthur had been merciful. By law, Doyle should have ornamented the gallows tree for what he had done. He considered whether that might have been better; at least death was a destination. Now, with the village of Falls and the castle of Rain in the hands of the Saxons, there weren’t too many places in this part of Britain to go.

  Doyle had hoped he would join a jewelry merchant in Falls and start a trade with him, a trade that would extend to Glastonbury, to Brent Knoll, and to the ports on the south side of the Bristol channel. Everyone here knew Weylin, the man who had raised Doyle, and every­ one knew that Weylin had taught Doyle to be an expert merchant of jewels. Doyle had developed a keen eye for quality gems and settings. The problem was, those who could employ Doyle’s talent were either captured or dead. Besides that, jewelry wasn’t very important when one’s home and family were threatened. Banishment was worse now than it would have been had the Saxons not invaded. Doyle had two skills: archery and the buy­ ing and selling of jewelry. With his fingers gone, the only thing he’d be shooting was a crossbow—and not in any Celt army. The demand for jewelry had dropped off to nothing. If he was, however, an armorer or bow maker, then perhaps there would be some way for him to make a living. But what master craftsman would take a deformed boy as an apprentice? Besides, he was already too old for that.

  He could go back to Gore and seek the aid of his par­ents, though that would violate his banishment. Besides, they had never been real parents to him. The only parent he’d ever really had was Weylin. Even after he had discovered that Weylin had kidnapped him as an infant and had raised him as his own, Doyle had still
loved the man. He was glad to have lived his young life with the merchant. Weylin was intelligent and kind, and he could not get the man’s soft gaze and tiny smile out of his mind—nor would he ever forget that fateful day when Shores came under siege and the Saxons had murdered the man before his eyes. Doyle had had to run. It wasn’t his fault that Weylin had died. But it hurt, it hurt badly. He could never forget.

  Many moons later, his parents wanted to resume their roles, and worse, control his life. It was far too late for that. Doyle would never be so desperate as to need them—even now, when desperation was the dominant feeling.

  If he would not forget Weylin, then he would forget his parents. Ale was a friend he had hired to help. But ale had become a foe that had driven him to murder. He could guzzle firkin after firkin and never be able to drown away what he had done. Christopher had tried to stop him. He should have listened to his blood brother. Instead Doyle’s anger had taken the lives of two young Celts. It was not Innis’s murder that bothered him, for that wretch deserved to die. No, Leslie’s death clung to his shoulder and whispered black words in his ear. Such a little boy. Only thirteen. And he died … pathetically. He could still see the vivid picture in his mind, how the arrow had caught the squire just under the earlobe.

  Doyle heard Christopher’s cry in his mind: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHO ARE YOU? YOU KILLED THEM! YOU KILLED BOTH OF THEM”!

  Leslie, you shouldn’t have threatened to turn me in! In your heart, you wanted to see Innis killed as well! Why did you have to be so honest!