by Jack Porter
I hadn’t forgotten that the whole city was looking for me. I had my hood up, covering my head before we reached the stairs, and I hunched further into it when we reached the main floor.
The Goose and Quill was starting to get busy. The sounds of conversation, with some laughter, filled the air, and I could see the lute player setting himself up for a repeat of his show. Along with the sights and sounds of a successful tavern operation, I could almost taste the aroma of good, hot food in the air. Cooked meats and potatoes, and bread fresh from the oven, and all by itself, that was enough to set my mouth to water.
I was already looking forward to an enjoyable evening, and I could sense that Sir George was as well by the way he was shifting about in anticipation on my shoulder.
But as soon as I caught sight of Ember and Jacob at the bar, I knew there was something amiss. Ember was doing the talking. She must have just returned from her meetings with her suppliers. Even from a distance, I could see that her coat was black with moisture from the rain outside.
All at once, my relaxed, languid mood disappeared, and I headed straight over.
“Here he is now,” Jacob said, and Ember turned my way with an expression of hope mixed with fear. She was so caught up in the moment that she didn’t seem to notice Elaine by my side. Instead, she just started talking.
“Mordie, good,” she said. “The Blackcoats are coming. We have to do something with Rolf.”
All at once, I understood the reason for Ember’s concern. I thought back to that morning, when Jacob had asked how long our guest would be staying, and I had asked him for a day so I could figure it out. But then Elaine had arrived, and I hadn’t given the problem another thought since.
“Blackcoats? What do you mean, they are coming?” I asked.
“There’s a whole bunch of them. I passed them on my way back. They’re going door to door, and heading this way.”
Almost instinctively, I turned to the door, half expecting it to open on cue and admit the King’s men.
“How long have we got?” I demanded.
“Minutes,” Ember replied.
Elaine understood only a part of the danger. “Mordie, you have to get out of here.”
As she spoke, Ember glanced in her direction for the first time. She looked confused for a moment, then stared at me, and back to Elaine, and I could see her drawing conclusions. Yet whatever the two women might have thought about each other were secondary just at that moment.
“They’re not looking for just me,” I said to Elaine. “They’re looking for Rolf as well.”
The taller of the two women didn’t understand. But that was hardly a surprise. I hadn’t yet told her all my secrets.
“If the King’s men search the cellar beneath our feet, they will find him.”
The shock in Elaine’s eyes was obvious. “Rolf?” she exclaimed. “I thought you killed him.”
I breathed a sigh. “Maybe I should have,” I said with regret. Then I cast about for inspiration, wondering what to do. At the very least, I knew that the Blackcoats couldn’t be allowed to find Rolf. Not here, not in Ember’s tavern. She and Jacob had worked too hard on their business, and I wouldn’t let something I’d done put that in jeopardy.
“We have to move him,” I said. “Does anyone have any ideas as to where?”
“I might know a place,” Elaine said.
That was enough for me. “Good,” I said.
But Ember was still staring at the taller, beautiful woman in leather. “Who are you?” she said.
I didn’t have time for that particular drama just then. None of us did. “She is someone who can help,” I said. “Jacob, come with me. We’ll bring Rolf up together. You two, keep a look out, and shout if the Blackcoats get here too soon.”
With that, I started to move, but it was already too late.
Before Jacob had even opened the trapdoor to the cellar stairs, the main tavern door opened and three Blackcoats came in.
I froze in place, not knowing what to do, and saw mirrored looks of panic appear on Ember and Jacob’s faces. It was the first time I had seen any sort of family resemblance between the two of them.
Only Elaine maintained her poise, casually stepping in front of me, to block me from the Blackcoats’ immediate view.
It was apparent that the Blackcoats were there for an ale. The leader of them, a skinny man with a patchy beard and a knob-ended club in his hand, began to speak.
“We are here on the King’s business,” he said. “We are looking for three persons, each of whom has committed crimes against the King’s very person. Attempting to hide or otherwise aid any of the three will be counted as treason against the King himself, and will bring those involved a swift death.”
Once again, I was acutely aware of the potential trouble I had brought Ember’s way, and thought hard how I might still avert it.
“The three fugitives are by name, Mordred, a bastard who has earned no last name and who goes by the shortened form Mordie. He is a pickpocket who was sentenced to hang for his crimes, but somehow survived. The second named fugitive as Rolf ap Tor, a Blackcoat once held in high regard who betrayed his King. Like Mordred before, he was sentenced to hang also, yet escaped before the sentence could be carried out. Finally, we are looking for Anwen de Maris, the daughter of a prominent merchant. Anwen took part in a recent plot against the Crown itself, and will be hanged as a warning.”
The man surveyed the room with a cold, hard stare. “If anyone here knows the whereabouts of any of the three people so named, say your piece,” the Blackcoat finished.
I held my breath, hiding behind Elaine, half expecting three quarters of those present to point in my direction. Instead, one of the customers, an old man with a flagon of ale before him, asked a question.
“Is there a reward?” he asked.
“The reward is a safe and secure Camelot within which we all get to live,” the lead Blackcoat said, filling his voice with an unnecessary amount of pompousness.
I wasn’t the only one to feel that way. There was a smattering of laughter throughout the tavern, and a younger man foolishly piped up. “You say two out of the three have already been sentenced to hang,” he ventured. “Doesn’t sound as hard a punishment as I’d been led to believe.”
It wasn’t particularly funny. A long way from the height of fine wit. Yet it was enough to set at least some of the customers laughing, and the comedian himself favored the Blackcoats with a big grin.
The lead Blackcoat didn’t have much of a sense of humor. He strode toward the man who had cracked the joke, and without saying a word, lashed out with his knob-ended club, catching the comedian in the stomach.
The unfortunate man let all the air in his lungs out in one go, and buckled in his seat. I thought the lead Blackcoat might leave it at that, but it turned out that he was more vindictive than I expected. He followed up with a sharp crack of his club on the man’s head, and that was enough. The comedian fell out of his chair onto the floor, and lay there twitching, not really conscious anymore.
“Anyone else?” the lead Blackcoat demanded. But all the humor had gone from the crowd. They sat glaring at the Blackcoat, who seemed perfectly at ease with the hate heading his way.
“That’s what I thought. Reg, you and Surl, check upstairs, and I will see if there’s anyone here I like the look of.”
At the man’s words, Reg and Surl started to head to the stairs.
But I had already decided what to do. With the Blackcoats’ attention elsewhere, I whispered to Elaine, Ember, and Jacob. “I’m going to cause a distraction. Use it to get Rolf out of here.”
I could see questions on all their faces, but I didn’t have time to explain. Instead, I slipped quickly away from them and over to the door.
My movement was enough to draw the lead Blackcoat’s dark eyes in my direction, but I still could have slipped out if that had been my plan. Instead, I stood tall, raised my hand, and lowered my hood.
“I can tell
you where one of your so-called fugitives is right now,” I said, speaking loudly and clearly. “I’m right here. Mordie is my name and bastard I may be, but the reason you are after me is because of whose bastard I am.” Then I gave them a nasty grin. “I would like to see the look on his face when you tell them you couldn’t catch me.”
19
With that, I casually strolled out of the tavern, fervently hoping that the Blackcoats were spread too thin with this task to have someone guarding the door, and rubbing the amulet Meghan had given me for luck.
Luck was with me. There was nobody waiting outside except a steady rain in a cold, darkening evening. I listened as the lead Blackcoat yelled to his men, “That’s him! After him!” But instead of picking a direction to run, I stationed myself next to the door with my back to the wall.
My purpose wasn’t to get away too quickly. If I did that, there was a good chance that the Blackcoats would simply return to their search, and I couldn’t risk that.
I waited, regretting that I’d left my knob-ended club upstairs in my room, and unwilling as yet to draw my sword.
And in just a few seconds, the lead Blackcoat burst from the Goose and Quill Tavern, quickly followed by Reg and Surl.
I waited until all three had come into view, and then until the first walked out, then stuck my foot where it would do the most good. Surl collided into it and went sprawling, and I couldn’t have asked for a better result. He was close enough that he tangled Reg’s legs, and both of them went down in a heap.
As casually as you please, I picked up Surl’s knob-ended club from where he had dropped it.
“Thank you,” I said politely, and cracked him as hard in the head as the lead Blackcoat had done with the comedian inside.
Reg was already climbing back to his feet, and after a moment of confusion, the lead Blackcoat had figured out what had happened.
“Get him!” he growled, still displaying no sense of humor at all, and both of them set themselves as if getting ready for a fight.
With what Lady Emmeline had taught me, I knew I could take them both without even drawing my sword. Their stances were just entirely wrong, not well balanced at all. All I needed to do was lash out with my newly acquired club, tapping Reg on the side of his knee, and he would buckle. Worse, he would get in the lead Blackcoat’s way, which would hamper his own swing. I would easily be able to duck, and nothing in the world would stop me hammering the knob-ended club into his solar plexus.
Instead, I stood as they did, as if preparing to fight, and Sir George played his part to perfection. He stood up on my shoulder and hissed like a snake, unfurling his wings to look far bigger than he was. Perhaps the rat dragon wasn’t enough to really scare an adult man with a club, but the surprise of it, the flash of color in the gloom, was enough to make the Blackcoats both flinch.
I noted that the man – Surl – that I had bashed on the head was groaning and trying to stand. Even his presence wouldn’t have made much of a difference, if I had chosen to stand and fight.
But that wasn’t my intention.
All at once, I favored them with a broad grin and barked a laugh. I wound up as if intending to strike, but instead turned after the weight of the club and charged off down the road, with Sir George flapping his wings to keep balanced.
At the same time, I made sure not to disappear too quickly. I could have turned into an alley within just a few steps, and then another until I was gone. But instead, I ran straight, and a little more slowly than I could have done, listening to the Blackcoats curse as they lumbered into a run behind me.
My only real intent was to draw them away from the Goose and Quill for long enough that the others had time to do what they needed. So I kept checking back to make sure that they were indeed following, and only started to make use of the alleys later.
Just a few short weeks earlier, I had been a shambling mess, barely able to make my way to the outhouse under my own steam. But now, I was much stronger. I had more trouble keeping the Blackcoats on my tail then I would have had if I had been trying to lose them. I was almost having fun as I led them on a merry chase through the inner part of Camelot.
Of course, the Blackcoats were hampered by Surl, the Blackcoat I had hit with his own knob-ended club. The man was obviously still groggy, and had to be helped by Reg.
The only part I didn’t like was the rain, which was a bit heavier than I could easily ignore, and the squelching of the mud beneath my feet.
I was feeling pleased with myself, and had almost decided it was time to give them the slip and head back to make sure that Elaine, Ember, and Jacob had managed their task when I took a wrong turn and found myself looking at a much larger squad of Blackcoats than the small group that had been following me.
There must have been more than a dozen of them, with horses. They stood in the rain, some of them carrying lanterns, and all of them looking fairly miserable and wet.
Even as I slid to a halt and flattened myself against a wall, I recognized one of the Blackcoats as Lancelot, Arthur’s righthand man, and the man Galahad had somehow told of my existence.
He was a big, dangerous man, with his thinning grey hair plastered to his scalp by the rain. The last time I had seen him, he had worn an expression like he had a perpetual toothache, and this had not changed.
I had no idea what this many men were doing there – perhaps Lancelot was orchestrating this door to door search – but I knew that I didn’t want to find out.
With my heart suddenly pounding, and this chase no longer a game, I turned back to see that my pursuers had just come into view. I couldn’t go forward, couldn’t go back that way, and for a moment, I had no idea what to do.
As if sensing my distress, Sir George chose that moment to take to the air, launching himself from my shoulder and flying to the top of the building I had pressed myself against.
As he did, I found myself grinning once more. The Blackcoats chasing me would see me within the next couple of seconds if I didn’t act quickly. Fortunately, I had seen my way out of the mess.
The building was made of stone, with much of the mortar having been worn away. With luck, even in the wet, I could climb it, and then I could join Sir George at the top.
I wasted no time putting thought into action, throwing myself up the wall as quickly as I could, threatening myself and the roof.
I could have kept going, and left the Blackcoats to themselves, but just like Sir George, chose to watch what might happen.
20
The lucky charm had tipped the balance. My pursuers failed to see me, and continued to flounder along, bursting out of the narrow alley they were in directly toward Lancelot and his men.
Just as I had done, they skidded to a halt. But where I had done so early enough to avoid being seen, they found themselves the center of attention.
Sir Lancelot rounded on them, his gaze harsh and unforgiving even in the gloom. “Well?” he said. “Norman, isn’t it? Are you done with your part of the city already?”
The man’s voice was gravelly and dangerous, and something about it suggested malicious as well. I couldn’t help but think that this was the man Rolf could have become if I hadn’t put an end to his career. To me, they were two of a kind. Brutal, dangerous men who carried significant power around with them wherever they went. The only real difference was that Sir Lancelot had put on a few pounds, and had maybe lost a measure of his individual power and speed. But if he had done so, he had made up for it in authority instead.
If Rolf hadn’t become greedy enough to try to steal the King’s own property, in twenty or thirty years, he would have been just the same as the man I was watching.
“Sir – Sir Lancelot,” Norman blurted. With an effort, he straightened himself and stood at attention, with his subordinates half a step slower. Even Surl, who still hadn’t recovered from the knock on his head, tried to straighten, and if anything, this was a testament to that very authority. “Sir, no Sir,” Norman added as he strove to catch
his breath. “We found one of the fugitives,” he said.
At this, Sir Lancelot’s interest grew sharper. “Which one? Where are they?” he demanded, looking around as if he expected that fugitive to magically appear.
“It was Mordred,” Norman said. “Mordie. He was in a tavern.” But instead of telling the rest, Norman looked at the ground.
Sir Lancelot seemed to understand the news that was coming. “And?” he asked, his voice low and dangerous.
“He ran,” Norman admitted, his subordinates shifting their feet as they remained mute beside him. “We gave chase, but we lost him.”
There was no transition. In one moment, Lancelot stood in the rain, glaring at his men, waiting to hear what they said. In the next, it was like he was a completely different person. If I thought Sir Lancelot might have lost a step or two in speed or strength, then I had to re-evaluate. Before me stood a giant. A man of legendary strength, who had fought by King Arthur’s side for decades.
With the speed of a snake, he stepped forward, gripped Norman by the throat, and hoisted him into the air with one hand.
Norman wasn’t a small man. He wasn’t built on the same scale as Rolf or Lancelot, and far less so than Jacob. But he was a match for me, at least, and I was no lightweight.
That Sir Lancelot could hold him in the air with one hand so that his feet kicked above the road was beyond impressive. That the knight could hold him in place with no strain on his face in the least was intimidating.
That he had lashed out with such speed in the first place, showing no hesitation at all, was frightening.
Sir Lancelot was not what Rolf would become after thirty years had taken much of his speed and strength. Lancelot was what Rolf was now, with thirty years of experience and power behind him.
My heart was in the back of my throat as I watched the impossibly formidable form of Sir Lancelot shake poor Norman as if he weighed next to nothing.