by Peter Telep
Spears, axes like the one Christopher was holding, maces, and bolts from crossbows jutted at various angles from the dark corpses lying amid the debris. Christopher began turning over bodies, looking for Sanborn and Cornelia, relieved and yet horrified when he turned over the face of a woman, saw it was not Cornelia, thank God, but that it was, in fact, Ula, their next-door neigh bor. He gagged, but forced himself to continue as Baines stood by watching with blighted eyes.
Finally, Baines took his sword out of the ash-covered earth where he had stabbed it. “Enough. Let’s go. Before we’re caught.”
Christopher ignored Baines; a force drove through him that was unstoppable: the need to know.
Baines stepped out of the church, leaving Christopher inside.
Christopher made it to the front of the chapel, where two more bodies waited for inspection. The larger one had a spear in the head that had entered from the base of the neck and sprouted from the mouth. The smaller had a battle-ax buried in the middle of its back and had fallen forward, obscuring its face.
Christopher came upon the bodies from behind, standing closer to the larger one. As the face came into view, he fell to his knees and lowered his head. His eyelids shut. He couldn’t look anymore. The larger body was Sanborn. Christopher didn’t need to see the smaller one to know it was his mother. Here they were, sitting innocently in church, pray ing to God, praying for salvation. His stomach boiled over and the bile burst from his mouth. He coughed hard and felt his guts turning inside out. The smoke had taken its toll on him. The smoke, and the Saxons.
He saw Baines waiting for him by the rounsey as he came from the chapel. His friend peered nervously over the horse, hunting for potential attackers.
Baines regarded him. Christopher’s face reflected it all. Baines grabbed him and held him. Christopher felt so alone now, but such small comfort was an oasis amid the flames.
“Why?” Christopher asked. “Why?”
Baines pulled back from Christopher and held him by the shoulders. “They invade. They lay waste to our lands, our families-our lives. They want the land. They want what is ours.”
“We can’t let them have it.”
Baines stepped back and picked up the sword. “Today we are both knights.”
Christopher held up the battle-ax until it touched Baines’s sword. “And may we send the animals who did this to their graves!”
Baines mounted the rounsey, Christopher follow ing close behind. They hurried off toward the far end of Shores, where the Saxons waged their battle.
It was foolish, yes. But the feelings were so strong that they made it right. The vision of his father’s speared head, blackened but still familiar, floated in his mind’s eye. Christopher wanted the single man who had thrown that spear. He wanted him alone for thirty seconds. No matter how great a warrior, how large or muscled or mean-he wanted him. Vengeance was like a potion inside him, tensing his limbs and igniting within his heart. It made him kick the rounsey along with Baines, caused his vision to tighten, to blur at times, then to refocus on the mental image of putting his ax into the heathen who had taken his parents from him. It was a powerful image, a controlling one, one so overwhelming that Christopher could not fully perceive its effect on him. He knew only how he felt.
Five Saxons, flaming torches in their hands, sur rounded a farmer’s supply hut. They did not look like the Saxons described to Christopher by the abbot moons ago, but more like Celts in battle armor, their coursers waiting in the road for them. Baines pulled on the reins and directed the rounsey around the smoldering remains of another hut a hundred yards away. Obscured by a pillar of smoke, Christopher and Baines dismounted and grabbed their weapons.
Five against two. Make that five men against two boys. Make that five Saxon animals against two inex perienced children.
“An ambush is our only hope,” Baines said, waving the smoke from his face.
“We have to get them now, while they’re on the ground.” Christopher held the Saxon battle-ax with two hands, preparing himself to storm the attackers.
“Agreed,” Baines said. “But we have to get closer.” They used the smoke and whatever standing walls were left of the surrounding huts for cover. They moved rapidly and secretly, weaving in and out of the rubble until they were only twenty yards away, crouched behind the round, mossy wall of a well.
Christopher’s pulse was a steady drummer; it beat a loud, quick rhythm in his ears. He felt his breath race, and the nerves in his legs quake. The closer they got, the larger the Saxons became. If he was going to do it, something inside him would have to snap.
Baines’s own anxiety snapped first, and without warning, Christopher’s friend charged the Saxons.
And it was that action that caused Christopher to leap from his nest behind the well and drive forward alongside his friend.
Christopher had never felt like this before. His body had a mind of its own; it flexed and moved and readied the battle-ax as if a demon had taken hold of it. But it was him. He ran head-on with his friend toward the Saxons.
The attackers turned from the hut they had fired and dropped their torches. They ran toward the spathas hanging from their coursers and sringed! them from their scabbards.
Could he do it? Could he engage a Saxon, man against man, he against another in a battle for their lives?
Christopher ran out of time to wonder. He brought his ax up and slammed it home into the first Saxon he came upon, knocking the soot-faced barbarian onto his back. But the Saxon managed to swing at Christopher with his blade; the riposte cut a thin line across Christopher’s breeches and nicked his calf.
Baines thrust his sword forward, trying to wedge it in the crease of another Saxon’s armor, near the man’s shoulder. But the Saxon took a free arm and, utilizing his metal protection, pushed the blade aside and out of Baines’s grasp. The sword tumbled to the ground and the Saxon chuckled with delight.
Baines went for his lost sword, but found the tip of the Saxon’s spatha poised before his nose.
Christopher turned his attention away from his bleeding calf and saw Baines’s dilemma. He rushed forward to help his friend.
The seconds ticked away. Too many of them.
I can’t make it! I can’t stop him!
The Saxon drove his blade into Baines’s mouth, jerked it abruptly forward until it sprouted in a crim son pop frorn the back of the boy’s head.
The Saxon released his spatha, and Baines fell backward into the dirt, the tip of the blade pinning him to the earth. His arms and legs jerked, guided by runaway nerves and reflexes, and his bowels emptied themselves into his breeches. His eyes were open and very still. Very still.
The Saxon freed his blade from Baines as Christopher arrived.
“Baines! Baines!” For a moment, Christopher forgot about the Saxons around him, feeling only the death of his friend, as if the spatha had dug a hole in his own head and sent ripples of pain through his own body. All of it was even more unreal now: his parents in the church, the villagers he’d known, and now Baines. It was black sleep, it was. He shook his head, no, not able to accept any more. It was too much, too much in one day. He felt the world tumble around him, the ground spin up and smack him in the head, the sky rush in circles around him. Something wanted to escape inside him, an animal whose bite was lethal and whose roar would shatter eardrums.
Christopher fell to his knees and let out a cry such as he had never sounded before. Even the Saxons were taken aback by it as they stood over him with their spathas trained on his back.
The cry was followed by other cries, these from behind Christopher. The Saxons cocked their heads. Christopher looked up from Baines.
A dozen of Hasdale’s mounted men galloped toward them, the two lead men armed with cross bows. A pair of bolts found two of the Saxons and the men fell in twin heaps to the ground.
The other three Saxons stood ready with their blades. A Celtic horseman drew near to one of the barbarians and engaged the man wit
h a mace. The Saxon struck a futile blow to the Celt’s chest and the Celt answered the blow with a riposte to the side of the Saxon’s skull. Bone collapsed and hair sank deep into the head, swal lowed by blood. The man fell with a strangled moan.
Two left. The Saxons knew better than to play such odds and beat a hasty retreat toward their coursers. Christopher rose and darted after one of the Saxons, the battle-ax vised in his hand. He pulled his ax arm back and brought the weapon high in the air. He was on the heels of the man when he brought the ax down.
CRACK!
Christopher was both glad and repulsed as the man dropped, and he tripped over the , Saxon, sailed through the air, and rolled onto the ground. The dust cleared, gave way to the enemy soldier, whose head leaked blood around the ax buried in it.
At thirteen, he’d killed a man.
Christopher sat up and pulled his knees into his chest. He stared at the dead Saxon a moment as Hasdale’s men put the last of the attackers to death behind him. The gurgling sounds of the men they were killing didn’t bother Christopher. Numbness set in, a retreat from reality that had begun with Baines’s death. He felt the warm wetness around his calf, but ignored it. Images again. His father. His mother. Baines. Another one, distant, cloudy, but there. The knight. Airell. His eyes. All of it was the same. Death. Someone called him, called him “boy,” said it over and over again. He didn’t move. He was afraid to do anything. He sat in the road.
14
It was a sight: Kenneth marched toward Garrett with the child in his arms. Garrett could not contain the emotions rolling inside him. “Look, Elgar,” he said to his old companion. “Behold Hasdale’s child-as promised. Kenneth did not fail me.”
They had made camp in a wide expanse of grass a mile outside Shores, and now stood, reeling in victory, their gazes captured by the soft skin and tiny hands of the baby before them. Garrett took the baby from Kenneth and nestled it in his vambraced arms. A sight it was, he in all his metallic power, holding this frail, helpless boy.
“You don’t realize how much power you possess,” Garrett said to the baby. “You can do something that no man in this army-including myself-can do.”
Kenneth and Elgar smiled. They knew Garrett referred to Hasdale’s love for the child, his willing ness to tum over his castle for the return of his son. They bargained on love-and knew they would win.
“Was there much trouble?” Garrett asked Kenneth. “None,” Kenneth answered, his voice full of self
satisfaction.
Garrett nodded. “Indeed.” He turned to Elgar. “Send off the messenger.”
Elgar lowered his head in obedience and stepped away from the men. He marched toward the tent which housed the messenger.
Garrett brimmed with joy. “Tonight we’ll feast in Hasdale’s great hall! A castle at last. Dear St. George, a castle.”
Kenneth regarded his masfor with disdain. “Lord, must you always refer to your Celtic gods in the fields of victory?”
“Each man owes his debts,” Garrett shot back. “Yours are to me. Remember that.”
Kenneth nodded, and Garrett watched his spy bite back something further. It would be better if Kenneth did not challenge Garrett. He would hate to kill the man, but if he continued to question orders as he had in the past and continued to scrutinize every word Garrett uttered, enough would be enough. A great loss, yes. But if so, a necessary one.
By dusk a small party of Celts cantered their way across the field toward the Saxon camp, torches cast” ing elongated shadows in their wake. Garrett and Elgar watched as the party approached, saw it was led by knight banneret Wells, Hasdale’s champion, a lean, gray”haired man whose body was as fit as any young man’s, and whose fighting skills had earned him the title he wore boldly.
At this point, perfection made Garrett nervous. Somewhere along the trail something had to go wrong. Garrett knew his plan was not perfect, but so far it had proved him wrong.
What could happen now? The party was small, surely his army outnumbered them twenty to one. Perhaps Hasdale had something else brewing in his mind. But what? He would have to wait and find out. The Celts paused fifty yards away and four of them dismounted. Wells led the way, three others march ing behind him. Garrett recognized two of them as Sloan and Condon. He had engaged both men in combat and respected their hand-to-hand fighting skills. The third was unfamiliar, clean-shaven, look
ing far too young to be associated with the others.
Elgar leaned close to him. “Our men stand ready.” “Good.”
There was something wrong. Garrett could feel it. The men stepped closer, narrowing the distance between them. Then they were face-to-face. What was it?
Wells spoke first, his voice flat, steady. “We must see the child.”
“Hello, Wells.” Garrett felt his nerves relax. They were going to bargain, and now he would toy with them, fill himself with the heavy wine of domination. He had them. “Can we share a jug first?”
Wells’s sharp face was set, and if the man had any fears, he did not betray them to Garrett. “We must see the child,” he repeated curtly.
Garrett frowned. “Very well.” He saw the resent ment in all their faces, knew it was driven by their defeat, and their defeat made him feel even more alive. He gestured for Elgar to fetch the child.
He took a step closer to Wells, his own pair of guards drawing closer with him. “You are well, I trust?”
Wells remained silent. There was something miss ing from the man Garrett had known, as if he were without a soul, just a mound of flesh before him acting out the will of another without question. But he had known another Wells, a man who desired to be a lord himself, who, before serving Hasdale, had served his own father. All was not right. The change in Wells edged around Garrett’s mind. Where was the man? He needed to bring the answer closer but it lingered on the fringes, gnawing at Garrett.
Elgar came forth with the child and stood next to Garrett. Wells leaned in to view the baby.
The horror came from a man who had intentionally turned off his emotions, and when it did, everything clicked inside Garrett’s mind. In that second he rec ognized the pure brilliance of it.
There was a flash. A tiny knife appeared in Wells’s hand and he thrust it into the child’s head.
Elgar’s mouth hung open as he pulled back from the Celts, the dying infant jittering and gurgling in his trembling arms.
Wells stepped back. “The castle of Shores is Hasdale’s!” Then he turned and stormed with the other three knights back toward their coursers. The Saxon guards snapped into pursuit.
Garrett stood in awe. Hasdale had ordered his own son put to death in order to save his castle. What kind of a man could make that decision? The beauty of it. Garrett did not know if he could do that himself. Then, slowly, his own defeat began to take hold, giving way to anger. He turned toward the tents, shouting, “We lay siege to the castle. Now!” Then he paused.
The taller of Garrett’s guards caught the youngest Celt in the back of the neck with his javelin. The Celt stumbled forward, then collapsed with a fromp into the grass. The other three Celts vaulted onto their horses as the other guard split the air with his javelin; the spear landed between man and courser, impaling the earth.
The Celts galloped off as the guards stood. Behind them, Saxons mounted and prepared to charge after the party. The taller guard withdrew the javelin from the Celt he had slain, then marched away.
Inside his tent, Garrett was in a frenzy, slipping on his gambeson and then his hauberk, smoothing out the shirt of link-mail over his chest.
Kenneth entered; his face bore his concern. “Lord.
We make a grave error.”
Garrett studied his spy, considered what means of death he would use on the man. The anger was a wild boar, impaling his head with its sharp tusks. He was about to find his spatha and do it quickly, sim ply. But as he studied Kenneth, he wondered if the spy’s concern was genuine, perhaps not born of jeal ousy or ambi
tion. He softened a little. “Why do you say that?”
“I remind you, lord, I was sent to take Hasdale’s child so we would not have to attack the castle. Hasdale continues to add men to his garrison. I believe an assault now would be futile.”
Was he right? Was Garrett being rash, planning with his heart and not his head? And if he was, was his ability to lead becoming frayed, the tight coils of his spirit unwinding into a shapeless, powerless lump? Garrett considered Kenneth’s words, and with regret, began to see the truth in them.
Garrett placed a hand on Kenneth’s shoulder. “I have doubted you in the past, and feared your own ambition. But now I listen.”
“I only seek the same things you do, lord. A castle to rule, a victory to celebrate.”
Garrett turned away from Kenneth, his eyes run ning idly over the seams that bound the tent together. “Call our men back.”
“Yes, lord.”
Garrett heard Kenneth leave. He remained still, thinking. His adversary had revealed unexpected strength to him. Hasdale was strong, much too strong. It was a new challenge he would have to meet, but by the blood of his brother and the curse of his father he would do it.
15
“See there, boy, the beams of light? Those shafts that wedge through the clouds and strike the earth? They carry souls to Heaven. Did you know that?”
The survivors of Shores had been brought back to the castle: Christopher; a short old man and his shorter wife, whom Christopher recognized as farm ers, having seen them on Sundays at the chapel; and a plump, vociferous merchant, whose leg had been badly burned. The others’ wounds were being tended to inside the keep, while Christopher sat on a stone bench in the outer bailey listening to Orvin, Hasdale’s father, a man he had heard much about but had never met. Orvin refused to let the women of the keep attend to Christopher-he demanded to do so himself; the reasoning behind his insistence was a mystery to Christopher.