Ardent

by Florian Armas

  “I wouldn’t piss on your Boar,” I said, and the soldier jerked. Undecided for a moment, he finally moved to confront me. His decisiveness died fast and he stopped again. The other four stopped too. “I am not here for a fight. Matei sent me to pay his debt to Boar. I suppose he is in the house to collect it.” I doubt it... I almost smiled.

  “His brother decided to take some interest.” Once it was clear that we would not attack, the soldier’s mouth recovered, and his guffaw rose, followed by four other echoes. He was still laughing when my fist hit his jaw, and he felt to the ground in silence.

  “You should learn some respect when talking about a woman,” I said, shaking my hand.

  Undecided, one of Boar’s remaining men measured the distance to the house: he needed to work around us to go and warn his master.

  “I would not try if I were you.” The truth with these so-called soldiers is that they are tough with people not able to defend themselves, but their courage melts at the first real confrontation. Young as he was, Pintea was more a soldier than they were. “I will not shout either.” I pressed my lips with a finger from my left hand. “Some people may react unwisely,” I gestured toward the house, “and we are not here to fight, just to pay a debt. He could already be dead.” There was no need to point to the fallen man. “And you too.”

  The man stared at me, his eyes wide, and nodded silently. I nodded too, at Vlad, and turned to enter the house; the door was open. Inside, it was silent, until I entered the hall.

  “Please help mother,” a girl whispered. Her head appeared at my feet from nowhere, through a hidden door, just one foot or more high. A hand gripping a knife followed the head as she struggled to leave the little door. “I saw you through the window, before I entered the tunnel going to the kitchen. I can’t defeat them alone. Please, they are harming mother. I will back you,” she shook her knife bravely.

  “Hide there,” I pointed to the small, hidden door, biting my lip to stop a smile. A girl of fourteen years was ready to fight two men. Desperate and courageous, she did not deserve even a hint of mockery. She shook her head, pointing to a normal door, slightly open at the end of the hall, and I decided that I couldn’t wait any longer.

  “You please us, and you can stay a month more in the house,” a man’s voice crept through the door. “But I want to feel you like a loving mistress. Understand?”

  The woman didn’t have much freedom to negotiate. Behind her, one soldier, of whom I could see only an arm and shoulder, was restraining her hands. The man talking was already groping her naked breasts. She was not crying, not complaining, her eyes the only living thing on her marble-white face.

  “What guarantee I have that you will not come again tomorrow?” she asked calmly, staring at me, and there was strength in those deep, blue eyes.

  “None,” the man laughed. “But you need a man, after all. Your vagrant husband has left you alone, and in the winter the nights are long and cold. I will warm you. Trust me; I am good at doing that. See?” He laughed, and his hand slid down, under her waist.

  “Your money,” I said, opening the door, and throwing the purse on the table. “Take it and leave the house.” I went three short paces inside, enough to leave me space for a fight. Behind me, the girl stopped abruptly, against my body. Girl, you could be a problem.

  “You have tough helpers.” The man who had been speaking laughed, eyeing the girl. Even when it was the first time we met, I recognized him. He was almost as large as his brother, and was known as Little Boar. “What a pity she is too small for bedding.” Still talking, he moved slightly aside, his eyes fixed on me. “But some may appreciate her freshness. Such a delicacy...”

  The second man put a knife to the woman’s neck – there was a bloody efficiency in his moves. His hand was down and empty, then, in a blink, at her throat, holding the knife. It wasn’t stealth, exactly, just reflexes and training. He forced the woman to step back until his rear touched a wooden wall. From there, he stared at me in silence, his face strangely pale and calm, the face of a natural killer. For a moment, I compared him with the Assassins, but he did not deserve that. The Assassins were indeed cold blood assassins, but the sect had a code of conduct and found no pleasure in killing; for them it was political business. And they never raped women or stole things. There was only one punishment in their books for such weakness: death. The man before me was cold and evil, and he found pleasure in killing and raping. He is skilled. I considered him, trying to reassess his previous moves. Efficient... His eyes were sulphur-light brown and wide, resembling an owl’s. They seemed not to blink, nor even to shudder. Cold…

  “I don’t think you have too many options,” Little Boar gestured toward the woman and his man.

  “You seem a bit more of a soldier than your tamed rabble outside the house, but not by much.” It was my turn to gesture, pointing toward the door behind me. It may seem gratuitous, but words and gestures are ways of conveying things. You may win a fight at the mental level. In some ways, we are like animals; I often watched them, avoiding physical clashes through clever gestures, like miming food gathering. “Hurt her, and you no longer need that money,” I pointed to the table this time.

  “You are trying to impress me.” Derogatory, his voice was now a pitch higher, his shoulders lowered, ready to react.

  “What will be left to impress after I kill you?” I stepped forward, a small shift, more a suggestion than a move.

  That’s when the girl threw her knife. With a thump, it hit the wall behind the pale killer, fixing his hair in the hard wood. “I kill squirrels like that,” she said, another small knife ready in her hand. At her waist, a small belt carried three more knives.

  Showing good restraint, neither Little Boar nor the pale killer reacted in a precipitous way. The woman’s hand gestured slightly to the girl, in what looked like a coded signal.

  “You were right about my helper,” I said, moving slowly aside to cover the girl, and stop another flying knife. Her action might indeed help, but it was double-edged, and there was no need for it. It’s not over...

  The pale killer finally reacted, freeing his hair, still keeping the woman under his tight grip. Inside the room, Little Boar and me moved like dancers on a crowded ring. One small step aside, a half step forward, back a little. In silence. More like skaters, I realized that all of us were in fact dragging our feet on the floor. At a certain point, one of us would have to act or to concede. I am not that one. Arriving again at the spot in front of the door where I had started, I stopped moving, placing a hand on the girl’s shoulder.

  Little Boar’s eyes slid a few times between the girl and me. There was nothing I could read in them. “How much money is in that purse?” he asked, in a cold voice.

  He is more dangerous than his brother. Where Boar was ruled by his passions and his temper, and sometimes acted erratically, his cadet brother was a cold man. Like his hired killer. “Two hundred galbeni.” It’s just a truce, I observed Little Boar’s icy demeanor. They will come again with more men...

  “They owe us two hundred and fifty.”

  “I have another forty-five,” Matei’s wife said.

  “Two hundred and fifty,” Little Boar snarled, his eyes sparkling in expectation that the deal would fail. At length, his eyes fixed the woman’s naked breasts.

  “Two hundred and fifty.” From my purse, I lined five more galbeni up on the table. “Bring the rest,” I told the woman.

  Relaxed, even with all that tension filling the room, the pale killer let her go, his left hand lingering over her body. She ignored his touch, stepped forward, tightening her dress around her body, left the room and came back with a small purse.

  “Two hundred and fifty galbeni,” she threw her purse on the table. It landed with a dull sound on the one Matei had given me. “Count them, sign the paper and leave.” Her voice was calm, like nothing had really happened, but it carried a strange inflexion, and made me think that I had heard that voice somewhere.

&n
bsp; I am damn sure that I never saw this woman before.

  Little Boar counted the money as slowly he could, ignoring us. Mother and daughter switched places with me at the door. Composed, the pale killer was leaning against the wooden pole, cleaning his nails with the knife. After a while, Little Boar signed the paper. His fingers swept it from the table, and in slow motion the paper fluttered down to the floor, shifting from side to side, continuing our dance. Both women moved away from the door, so the men could pass.

  “Quite a nice body you have.” Little Boar glanced at the mother for some moments, before leaving the room. She ignored him. Without looking back, the pale killer followed him in silence, and we followed them.

  There was no more business for any of us outside the house, and the two walked toward their horses, ignoring even their own men. In the yard, people were split into two groups. Boar’s men in front of the house. Vlad and Pintea, with the four housemen, forty paces away. Vlad’s strategy. Boar’s soldiers were caught in the middle. In a minute, Little Boar and his men left the yard. They did not ride in haste.

  “I am Livia,” the girl said in her spontaneous way, a large smile filling her face. The gap between her upper front teeth made her look pleasant and witty at the same time. “And this is my mother, Varia.”

  “Codrin,” I said with a thin smile. The corner of my eye caught a slight frown on her mother’s face. She knows me. The girl just stared at me, her eyes wide. “You are skilled knife thrower, Livia,” I continued, ignoring their reaction. Let things come slowly. “But you should not have interfered. It was not needed; they were just trying to save face and take the money.” And come back later.

  “That’s what I was thinking too. I just sped them up.” She smiled innocently at me.

  “Well,” I shrugged, defeated by the girl.

  “And I’ve heard about you.” She spoke slyly, as if betraying a secret.

  “Who taught you to throw knives?” I decided to keep her secret hidden for a while.

  “My aunt, Lena.”

  Aunt Lena... Unconsciously, my eyes slid over her mother’s face, which suddenly looked familiar to me, then back at the girl. Lena... How blind I was. The best knife throwers. “Is your aunt a Wanderer?” I asked, anticipating their surprise.

  Livia’s mouth opened and closed but made no sound. She glanced at her mother, who stayed silent too.

  A careful girl... I sneaked my hand under my ring-mail and took out the Wing Talisman that hung on a silver chain around my neck. “I suppose you have one too, and your aunt’s Wanderer name is Dochia.”

  “Yes, I have one,” Varia said. “Dochia is my cousin, and we are close to the Wanderers. Only my children and I know about them.” The four men of the house had come closer to us, and I nodded at her warning. “Damian and Lisandru,” Varia presented her children. “My brother, Taun. Ian and his family work for us,” she pointed to the last man. “And our savior, Codrin. My husband, Matei, fought under your command in Mehadia. Where is he now?”

  “We will talk about this later. Now we must take down Boar’s men, before they reach the castle.” We have to kill them outside the village. More turmoil would be in Boar’s castle, and they will forget about Matei’s family. One enemy less for Jara, too.

  “Please don’t,” Varia pleaded. “I understand that you want to help us, but Boar will avenge his brother. And we are still in his debt. In one year from now, we have to pay the same amount, then again in two years...”

  “Boar is dead, but his men are not aware of that yet. Unless we stop them, they will return tomorrow to avenge what happened today. Little Boar was not happy, and he doesn’t forgive easily. Trust me, Varia, it’s better this way; nobody will bother you again.” Her mouth opened abruptly, but she remained silent, her eyes fixed on me. “Damian,” I said to her elder son. “Is there any shortcut between here and Boar’s castle?”

  Undecided, he glanced at his mother, who nodded slightly. “Yes, there is one. I will go and get my horse.”

  “Take a bow too.”

  “What about me?” Taun asked.

  “You and Lisandru stay and guard the house. Just in case.”

  “I will guard it too,” Livia interjected.

  “Yes, your knives will guard it too,” I smiled, and mounted Zor.

  Damian knew the forest around the village, and he was a good rider. Any trained man can assess this from the moment one mounts a horse. His horse was another story. The old jade was slow, and there was some nervousness on Damian’s face, but he never whipped his horse.

  “We will get there in good time,” he shouted, and I just nodded.

  The forest road climbed fast to the top of the tall hill separating the Long Valley in two unequal parts, and once we’d reached it, Boar’s castle became visible, far down in the other basin, which was larger.

  “From here, we have to walk for a while,” Damian said, when we arrived at a long ravine blocking the old road. “There was a bridge here in the past.” He pointed to the ruined remnants of what was indeed a wooden bridge, many years ago. “Very few people still use the road now, but don’t worry; I’ve been along this path many times. It’s safe.”

  A gust of wind blew over the naked hilltop, and glancing up, I saw some clouds gathering in the west.

  “It will snow,” Damian said, “but not today. Follow me.”

  I don’t like those clouds...

  The slope going down into the ravine was steep, but it was not rocky. Nature had played her games with the landscape, and some parts of the hill were filled with sand kept in places by grass and old, hardened roots. We slid more than walked, leading the uneasy horses by the halters. Down in the ravine, it was a different story; the small stream found its way between slippery stones, and the way down the hill was almost flat to start with, but then began to run steeply, becoming dangerous. That slowed us even more. After a while, it turned sharply to the right, round the corner of a large sandstone rock of bright orange, seeming to lead us in the wrong direction, but I trusted Damian. From there, the path ran smoothly under a low cliff overhung with old willows, and after a while, the main road became visible through the forest. We stopped on a small wooded cliff presenting a good view in both directions. A cold wind was now blowing down the valley, and glancing up, I saw even more clouds gathering in the west. On the road, there was no sign of any rider or footman to be seen.

  “I am sure they have not passed yet,” Damian said. Fate seemed to be in a good mood, and a faint noise of hoofs answered him from the east. “I told you,” he smiled, with sudden relief.

  The riders remained unseen, hidden by the many windings of the road. The sound of hoofs drew nearer, echoing between the walls channeling the course of a larger stream.

  “Let’s go down,” I said. The small cliff offered good visibility, but not much opportunity to attack. “We need to a place where we can use both sword and bow.”

  “I want to kill Little Boar in a duel,” Damian protested, unsheathing his sword.

  “Do as I say,” I snapped at him, and before he could answer, I spurred Zor onward, plunging down the steep trail through the forest.

  At its end, the path morphed into a peculiar short tunnel, digging through the frail sandstone, before merging with the road. The orange arch offered beauty where we needed a tactical advantage. On the left, it led into the main road at a smooth angle, not a good place to hide an archer. Polished by water and wind, the tall walls pressed on the road. There was no way to climb them.

  “There is a small cave down the road. A hundred paces from here.” Damian understood my worries, and I just nodded to him.

  It was a small hole at the height of a horse’s head. Only one man could hide inside.

  Good enough... “Pintea, take your bow,” I gestured toward the cave. “You cover Damian and Vlad,” I whispered when he was ready to climb. “I can take care of myself.”

  The incoming party saw us after leaving the last curve, two hundred paces from us. They slowed do
wn.

  “Little Boar is mine,” I stared at Damian. You need some discipline. He frowned, but this time nodded without complaints.

  The riders stopped some twenty paces from us, and for a moment silence reigned over all of us. You have to speak first.

  “You’ve lost one man,” Little Boar said when the silence had gone on too long, unsheathing his sword.

  “The same as you.” The pale killer was missing, and that was the only reason stopping me from attacking; maybe he just went to piss in the forest, and would turn up later.

  “What a greedy man you are.” Little Boar pointed to the large purse at his waist. “This belongs to my brother, Boar. Mind your own business and step away. You are no match for us.” It was strange, such a misreading of the situation from a man who I assumed to have some intelligence. For him, it was just a repeat of the game we had played in Matei’s house. In a way it was, just the rules were different; not who blinks first, but who dies first.

  Could more men be coming with the pale killer? For the safety of Varia and her children, I needed him dead too.

  “What do you want?” Little Boar asked.

  “The pale man who was with you inside the house,” I said.

  “Sharpe? Why?”

  “There is bad blood between us,” I said, only to delay things. “Give Sharpe to me, and you are free to go.”

  “Sharpe must already be at the castle. More soldiers will come, and then you are trapped.” He gestured toward the walls of the gorge.

  “There is another path from the village to the castle,” Damian pointed south, when I glanced at him.

  “So the Crushed Bridge road still can be used.” Little Boar was now even more inclined to talk. “Give Damian to me, and you are free to go. I will be a good host to him, and an ever better one to his mother,” he laughed. “You are strangers. Leave our land and never come back.” Whether from his laughter or some other cause, his horse pranced nervously.

  “Now!” I growled, and pushed Zor forward. He went straight into Little Boar’s horse, which jerked aside. My sword struck at the same time.