by Peter Telep
Christopher felt that same desire to touch Kier as he , had felt with Sloan. Nothing interrupted him this time as his fingers connected with the back of Kier’s head, the short soft hair that grew there. There was something sharply different about the living and the dead-something beyond the obvious. A living, breathing human being was unlike, say, a sword. The complexities of a person exceeded those of a sword by vast numbers, yet when broken, both were dis posed of in the same fashion. Thrown away. It was hard to think of a dead person as a broken sword, yet they were both the same, inanimate, useless.
You meant something, Kier. You did.
“Condon’s dead!” someone shouted. “Condon and Murdock and Collis, God help us!”
He needed no lesson from Sloan to know they were losing. He had seen the trainer himself die, as well as Conway, Malcolm, and Kier. Now Condon and Hasdale’s two senior squires joined the death ranks. He didn’t see many Saxon bodies littering the ground. In fact, there were none in the immediate area. Only Kier. He rose, and saw that the shout had come from one of two mounted archers. Then he rec ognized the armor on one of the archers, and his red colored tunic below: it was Varney, Doyle’s master.
He ran toward the man, calling, “Varney, do you know where Doyle is?”
“You’re supposed to be back at the camp, squire,” Varney said in a voice that was far too authoritative for an archer.
For a split second, Christopher felt something warm pass near his neck.
A flaming glaive burrowed into Varney’s chest. The pole was thrown with such a force that Varney’s armor did little to protect him. The archer slumped in his saddle, his boots still clamped in their stirrups. His horse trotted away of its own volition.
The other archer fumbled to unfasten his crossbow from its saddlestraps. Christopher turned around and saw six Saxons on foot run toward them, five holding flaming spears, the sixth empty-handed and smiling broadly.
Christopher just stood there. He didn’t run. He didn’t do anything. He imagined the Saxons throwing their spears over his head, missing him completely, and, in fact, some did just that. Behind him, he heard the archer fall from his horse with a blood-choked moan.
Christopher’s knees weakened. The Saxons beat closer. Two of them still held their glaives and pulled their arms back, ready to throw.
The fat, hairy one, who appeared to be the leader, indicated with a hand for all to stop, then to the spearmen to hold their fire. He stepped up to Christopher, breathing heavily over him, the smell like something had died a moon ago in the back of the Saxon’s throat; it was nearly enough to make Christopher pass out.
You could take a Saxon and put him in armor, but you could never take the Saxon out of a Saxon. He seemed more animal than man to Christopher, and all that hair on his face and head did nothing to wash clean the image. The Saxon fired off a salvo of unrecognizable syllables.
Yes, I agree.
The Saxon leader communicated again, this time louder, gesturing broadly with his hands.
I have to make haste now.
Despite the spearmen, and despite the hulk of a man before him, Christopher knew that if he didn’t tum and run, he was either going to be killed now, or going to be killed later. If he was going to die, it would be while trying to escape. He tried to convince himself that that would make it better. But he had seen a great deal of death in a very short time. Nothing was going to make it better. Run!
They started shouting as he leapt over Vamey’s dead partner, whose tunic smoldered from the blaz ing spear homed there.
He ducked behind a tent some twenty yards away, then heard their approaching footsteps, the clanging of their armor, and their strange voices. He caught his breath a second, then dashed toward a distant confrontation of some hundred men on the far oppo site side of the slope.
He saw so many bodies now, picked out by torch light and the firelight of burning tents. But at least he saw some Saxons among the lifeless Celts. He also saw three familiar faces. Squires. Boys.
It was a good run, a run that seemed to have been stored in his body for a long time, a run from many more things than just the Saxons. A pure, simple run from death. From every face gone to pale stiffness, beginning with Airell and leading right up to Varney and his partner. There had to be a way to escape all of it; had to.
He was too preoccupied with the noises and sil houettes of the battle ahead to hear the single horse man that came up behind him. It was only when the steed was a cart’s length away that Christopher turned his head. The nine black fingers of the whip cut across the side of his face with their leather nails, knocked him off-balance, then sent him headlong into a shallow pool.
The cool water instantly stung the cuts across his face. He pulled his head out of the water and blinked hard, the vision in his right eye blurry. He pushed him self up with his hands and sat back on his haunches.
The horseman trotted around, stopped, then swung off his steed. He unsheathed his spatha and walked toward Christopher.
But then he paused, eyeing Christopher with an odd look, as if he recognized the boy. He came closer, lowered his blade, and reached out a hand as if to touch the cuts on Christopher’s face. Christopher recoiled. Then the horseman offered his hand to pull Christopher up.
Christopher didn’t take the hand; instead he asked, “Who are you?” There was something about this Saxon that looked intelligent.
“I am Garrett,” the man answered in a tongue he understood.
His premonition was right. Bitterly right.
Christopher edged slowly away from the Saxon lord. He was a part of the scene now, and was more frightened than he had ever been in his life. Here he was at the mercy of the man who had killed his par ents. He should engage the man with his broadsword, as in his dream, but everything was so different, the meeting and the man so utterly real, the blade so utterly gone. Garrett wasn’t even the man he imag ined. He almost looked kind.
M y God, that is scary.
“I have never seen junior squires engage in combat, as so many of Hasdale’s have this evening. Did he allow you to ride along?”
Here they were in the middle of the battlefield, and the enemy of his black sleep wanted to have a chat?
Christopher would not talk to the man. He made an immediate vow never to address him.
“Which knight do you, or should I say did you serve?”
He tensed the muscles in his legs, prepared them to carry him away from this nightmare. He was fast, and he knew if he had a single moment’s surprise, he would gain some lead.
Christopher darted, but his boots found no traction in the mire under them. He fell flat on his side.
Garrett shook his head, eyeing Christopher as he would some small, pathetic creature in his path. “Let’s go.”
19
Hasdale’s rear guard never attacked. Christopher didn’t know exactly why, but he sus pected that word of the deaths of Sloan, Condon, Malcolm, and Conway had reached the camp and had been ample persuasion for retreat. The purpose of the last fifty was to attack in the face of such an event, but no one actually believed it would happen. And when it did, Christopher assumed that the men had run.
Outside Garrett’s tent, the Saxons stripped Hasdale and tied him across a pair of his banner poles, making him look very much like a crucified Jesus. He had taken a crossbow bolt in the shoulder, and there was a long, deep slash on his right forearm, bone flashing underneath the flapping skin. The positioning of Hasdale’s arms, and the stretching of his shoulder muscles served to increase his suffering.
Beyond Hasdale, small clusters of Saxons put captured men to death, the Celts’ horrible last cries rolling into an ugly harmony that fell on deaf, Saxon ears.
Christopher’s legs and arms were bound with leather straps, and he sat on the wet grass near Garrett’s tent, viewing the horror before him and listening to the horror in the distance. He tried to stand, but could not gather the balance. He could only watch as Hasdale
was paraded around in the middle of a circle of Garrett’s filthy, hairy men.
One of the Saxons escorting Hasdale put a torch up to the captured lord’s face, singeing Hasdale’s beard, then let the flames continue to curl most of the blond hairs off. Then the Saxon moved the torch up to Hasdale’s head, repeating the process on his hair, the putrid odor making Hasdale cough and nearly choke. Then the torch went to Hasdale’s groin. Garrett came out of the tent and waved the Hasdale parade over toward him.
Christopher was about to close his eyes. He knew they would kill his lord, and it seemed they would drag it out. He wouldn’t watch any more of it. But if he closed his eyes … what?
There were none of the expected words exchanged between Garrett and Hasdale. Christopher assumed the Saxon would lap up the moment, suck in the pleasure of Hasdale’s capture and the lording over his fragile life. But Garrett just stared hard and unblinkingly into Hasdale’s eyes.
The lord was in great pain. The bums on his face and head and groin had to be crying out, and the wounds in his arm and shoulder were definitely join ing the chorus. Despite all of it, Hasdale mustered enough saliva to spit on his enemy. The glob was thick and heavy and caught Garrett on the right cheek.
Garrett wiped Hasdale’s spittle off his face, then licked the hand he used to do it, tasting Hasdale’s phlegm. Christopher felt sick.
There was a diamond flash of steel as Garrett pulled his dagger and sheathed it in Hasdale’s heart, twisting it around in short, winding motions as the blood fountained over his hand.
The entire murder took no more than ten seconds, and when it was done, Garrett turned away and took in a long breath of the cool night air. He exhaled hard.
Wiping his hands on a linen rag handed to him by one of his men, Garrett squatted down in front of Christopher, leveling his gaze with the squire’s. “You served him, didn’t you?” He spoke the fact, not the question.
Christopher tightened his jaw, caged the rage in his throat.
“Not anymore,” Garrett continued, again speaking evenly and only of the fact. “I believe most of the other boys have been killed. And if they haven’t, well, they will be. But you”-Garrett pointed with an index finger-“you remind me of my brother. Quinn was an excellent servant of his lord, as I’m sure you were of yours-even in the face of death. But Quinn could never learn to serve another. Will you?”
PART THREE
GARRETT AND MALLORY
1
Over four hundred looted bodies were strewn over the green slopes, fleshy tors that drew blue black rooks and gray pigeons and speckled starlings. The birds pecked happily away at the forms that had once been men, then soared away toward their chil dren, the carrion clenched in their beaks.
There was no wood to kindle the funeral pyres. What little oak and beech the Saxons did possess they kept selfishly to themselves. No Saxon hand would wrap itself around a grave shovel.
Christopher sat where he’d been all night, on the ground outside Garrett’s small, tarpaulined hovel. He could barely feel his legs, and rods of stiffness spiked his shoulders. His eyes were heavy with sleep grit and his mouth tasted of something metallic and bitter. The cuts on his face still stung; they were not deep and he hoped they would heal quickly, though he sus pected he would be scarred.
He shivered in the morning wind. He shivered as he thought about the utter defeat of last night, and the utter darkness of his future. He shivered as he heard the voice of Garrett come from within the tent, calling out in the Saxon tongue. He shivered as he saw two Saxon soldiers strip another infantryman, pull his breastplate off hard, let the edge of it slam into the dead man’s cold face. The rag doll of a Celt felt no pain; Christopher felt it for him, pulling his head back under an imaginary blow. Garrett called out again, and the soldiers stopped their plundering and marched, one behind the other, toward the tent. They rounded Christopher, paying him no heed.
The scent of meat spitted over a nearby cookfire made Christopher’s stomach groan. His flesh said eat, but his spirit said no. How could he eat while sit ting in the middle of such carnage?
Inwardly, he told his stomach to be quiet. His spirit was right. Somewhere out there among those bodies was Doyle. It seemed unlikely Baines’s brother had escaped. He was part of the Vaward Battle, and the odds were overwhelmingly small that he had made it out. And even if he had survived the battlefield engagement, the failure of the last fifty to attack left the surviving Celts vulnerable. Doyle and Bryan were dead. If Christopher could accept that now, perhaps the pain would not burn deeply and dwindle quickly.
But he couldn’t trick himself. Accepting it now would not have anything to do with the hurt. The loss was the loss. Now or later. It would always burn.
My lord is dead. Orvin, your son is dead. But there will be no funeral pyres today.
Christopher looked up at the sky. Large rolls of soft, gray-looking clouds floated slowly by, the sun peeking through the thin deck and sending down diffused beams of light. If Orvin was right about those beams, the souls of the dead men were being carried up on them. Christopher wondered if there was enough room in Heaven for the dead Celts. There were so many … . There was certainly enough room in Hell for the dead Saxons; their losses were few.
“Since you refuse to speak, and I do not know your name, I will call you Kimball, royally brave, and for you, boy, I think it’s appropriate.” Garrett wiped bits of meat from the corners of his lips with the back of his index finger, then belched loudly. He knelt on a single knee in front of Christopher, the miasma ema- nating from him thick and rank on the air. “You truly remind me of my brother.”
Do I remind you of a killer? Christopher thought blackly. Do I remind you of your own killer? Oh, how I would like to carve up your charming face with my sword, you bastard.
Garrett continued, “I’ve sent my two oafs to fetch you some pork. And some eggs. You’ll find them to your liking. The cooks at Hasdale’s castle have pro duced some fine delights, as I know you’re aware.”
The pork and eggs might have once been good, but, with Saxon hands on them, were now spoiled.
He forced all emotion from his face as Garrett stud ied him. He did not want to show this Saxon or Celt or whatever he was that he feared him. It was true that the longer he was around Garrett, the more com fortable the thought of killing him became; it was much stronger than the occasional whitecaps of fright that broke his mind’s sea. He could look the Saxon leader in the eye, blank his own face, and remain that way in silent defiance. He could do it for as long as it took. To do what? That was the question. First thought: to escape. He would begin planning immedi ately. Even in the first hours of his capture.
“I can have your bindings removed if you’ll behave.” Garrett stood, brushing his right poleyn free of dirt. “Will you?”
Like a good little squire. Just find me my sword.
“I will tolerate your silence only so long.” Garrett’s voice was tied with loose knots of tension. He turned away from Christopher, then another thought hit him and he turned back. “You’ll be home in ten days, if it makes you feel better.”
Garrett’s smile twisted in Christopher’s heart.
2
She volunteered to change the sheets on the trestle beds in the garrison quarters, not because she enjoyed the job or wished to be among the young, brawny men who shifted about the quarters, but because she thought she might hear the first word about Christopher there.
Brenna was right. One of the lieutenants who had returned the previous night from the Mendip hills clanked into the long, narrow room. She did not know his name and felt awkward about asking him the fate of the army. She continued absently to remove the dirty linens and listen as the lieutenant addressed a sergeant who sat on his bed, honing his dagger on a whetstone.
“Is Uryens’s garrison on their way?” “He has loaned us ten lances of men.” “Not enough!”
“Lot has promised another five.” “And what of the other lords?”
>
“The king has ordered them to spare as many as they can.”
“How do we defend without a leader?” “I don’t know.”
“I say we abandon the castle.”
“No. But we can send our women and children to Uryens’s castle.”
“Agreed. I’ll pass the word. Let a few armorers, the hostlers, and the cooks remain. All else will ride.”
The sergeant rose and marched past Brenna. As he left the room, the lieutenant collapsed noisily onto the sergeant’s bed. “Do not make this one, maid. I wish to sleep now.” His voice reflected his weariness, if not the grave state of affairs that surrounded all of them.
We lost. And the Saxons are coming to attack. Christopher, where are you? Are you dead? Please be alive. Lord, please let him be alive.
She hid her tears from the lieutenant, even after she heard him begin to snore. She wanted to cry out her pain, to let some of it go. She wanted to fall to her knees and just cry. But she kept her hands busy and swallowed and sniffled back her hurt. If she were alone, she knew she would be hysterical. In a small way, she was glad for the sleeping lieutenant. He wasn’t someone she could talk to, but he kept her sorrow in check. She really did not know if Christopher were alive or dead, and until then she had to keep heart and not bemoan him.
Her eyes caught a flicker of green tunic and white hair near the doorway. She looked up from the trestle bed she was stripping and saw Orvin.
“Morning, young raven maid.”
“There is nothing good about this morning,” she shot back coldly.
Orvin’s brow rose. ‘“Good’ did not pass these lips.” Suddenly she felt a little foolish. It was just … She changed the subject. “Do your linens need changing?