‘Because I can make out her face now.’ He pulled back harder on the string. ‘And I’ve never seen her before.’
*
None of us knew the woman who was pulling hard on the horse’s reins and very nearly throwing herself to the ground in her rush to kneel in front of us, but we all recognised her coat. The leather was a dark, rich brown, like all those the Tailor had made for the first Greatcoats, but this one was tempered with a hint of green and bore on the right breast the subtle inlay of a long wooden shaft ending in a sharp diamond-head point. The first time I had seen it was the day its owner had received it from King Paelis himself. She’d spoken her oath in a strong, clear voice, despite the tears in her eyes, and her oath had ended with, ‘My name is Talia Venire, and I am the King’s Spear.’
‘Where is Talia?’ Brasti asked, his arrow pointed squarely at the woman’s chest. At this distance Insult would send the maple shaft flying straight through her heart, regardless of the thickness of the coat’s bone plates.
‘Please—!’ she begged, her voice muffled by the long tangles of black hair covering her face, ‘Please! My name is Evi – I’m not a Greatcoat—’
‘We know that,’ I said sternly. ‘Now tell us why you are wearing one.’ None of us had seen Talia for years; even back in the day I’d barely spoken to her. But though we’d shared no more than a few passing conversations, I remembered her eyes: bright, sharp, darting around at everyone in the room as she walked in, quickly followed by a mischievous smile, as if she’d got us all figured out.
‘I . . .’ Evi’s face became pinched and her eyes filled with tears. ‘I stole it.’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry – it was cold and my father had thrown me out of the house and I—’
‘You’re lying,’ Brasti said, his voice tight. ‘Talia would never let her coat out of her sight, and I doubt you’re strong enough or stealthy enough to take it from her.’
‘Terrorising her isn’t going to help,’ Ethalia said. She knelt down and reached out a hand, but the woman bent over her knees and covered her head, repeating, ‘I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry . . .’
‘Sorry for what?’ I asked. ‘You sound unnaturally repentant if all you did was steal a coat when you were in need.’
She moaned, a brief string of incomprehensible words, and Allister, losing patience, grabbed the back of her coat and hauled her to her feet, a little roughly for my taste.
‘Gently,’ I told him. ‘We need answers.’
The woman – more of a girl, really, now that I could better see her face through the mess of hair, pulled away from Allister and grabbed hold of my arm. ‘I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, I swear, but we must get away from here. There are men chasing me.’
‘You stole one of their horses,’ Kest said. It wasn’t a question; none of us had needed more than a glance at the big, well-groomed gelding to recognise that this was not the sort of animal a young woman of obviously meagre means could afford.
‘I . . . I did.’ Evi gripped my arm more tightly. ‘But I swear it was only to escape – they saw me taking the coat and it was clear that they didn’t care about why – they started pushing me, forcing me further down the alley, away from the eyes of others in the village . . . I could see they were getting ready to attack me, all of them.’ She looked back the way she’d come and said urgently, ‘Please, let me go, sirs, lady – they’ll be here soon. They were going to—’
‘Who were these men?’ Kest asked. ‘How many are there?’
The words tumbled out in a hurry as she was pulling on my arm, as if to drag me with her. ‘Four, I think, no, five – there was someone in the store buying supplies. One of the men made a joke and the others laughed and I saw that one of the horses hadn’t been properly tethered so I took my chance – I pushed the one in front of me, really hard, and he stumbled into one of the others, and then I ran as fast as I could and I grabbed the reins and took the horse and rode as fast as I could—’
Kest’s eyes narrowed as they do when he’s working through the odds of a tactical manoeuvre. ‘Your story doesn’t make sense. You wouldn’t have been able to evade them, not unless they were either very fat and slow or . . .’ He stopped and his gaze went to me. ‘Unless they wore armour.’
‘They were Knights,’ Evi said, ‘but not proper Knights, hiding their colours so you couldn’t see what Duke or Lord they served, only the cold, hard steel of their armour.’ She looked up at me, her face a map of all the grief in the wide world. ‘I beg you, sir, help me. I don’t want to die at the hands of those men for taking a coat.’
‘I’m hearing riders in the distance, Falcio.’ Brasti said, his arrow still aimed at Evi, even as she held onto me for dear life. ‘They’re not moving as fast as she was but they’ll be here in a minute.’
She pulled at me again. ‘Please, we must go. They’ll run us down if we stand here.’ She pointed up the road. ‘I know this road – there’s a bend, just about fifty yards ahead. We can find cover and—’
‘Stay calm,’ Ethalia said, again reaching out to the girl, but she clung to me.
Allister, Kest and I exchanged glances. ‘We can outride them if we leave now,’ Allister said. ‘Bring the girl with us and leave her in safer hands, in the next village, perhaps?’
Brasti bristled at that. ‘I’m not Gods-damned running if these bastards have—’
I thought about it. ‘No, they’ve seen a woman in a greatcoat and they know she stole one of their horses. I doubt they’ll leave it alone. Besides,’ I said, pushing Evi off me as gently as I could, ‘I imagine Talia will want her coat back.’
Kest and Allister started leading our horses up the road, but Brasti wasn’t done. ‘Speak,’ he snarled at her, the arrow still aimed at her heart. ‘Your story has a hole in it bigger than the one I’m going to put in you if I don’t get a truthful answer. Where is the woman who wore that coat?’
Evi’s crying turned to wails. ‘Dead,’ she moaned, ‘she was dead when I took the coat from her body. That’s why those men are after me. I saw them kill her.’
The clack-clack of the horses’ hooves against the hard ground was getting closer and closer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Woman in the Coat
The sharp bend in the road that Evi had mentioned was indeed a more defensible position: the path narrowed here, and the ground became uneven. The forest on either side would provide a quick way of evading the Knights’ charge if it came to fighting. Horses wouldn’t be able to manoeuvre in the dense brush and fallen trees, and plate-armour would make them clumsy over such troubled ground.
‘This is an excellent position from which to launch an ambush,’ Kest said approvingly.
Allister loosely tethered our own horses to a branch of one of the trees. ‘Perhaps we should give up on all this rubbish about enforcing the laws and take up new careers as bandits.’
‘Finally the man with the stick has a useful suggestion,’ Brasti said.
Swordsmen who’ve spent most of their adult lives contending with just about every form of conflict, from individuals in one-on-one duels to facing off against massive armies, tend to like to show each other how calm and reasonable they are in those moments just before the next bloody onslaught threatens to crash over them like a wave. Even Ethalia, who had always abhorred violence even before she became a Saint knew such talk for what it was: a way to dissipate the tension and fear that might otherwise get us killed once the fighting actually began. Of course, no one had bothered to communicate this to the rather frantic woman in the stolen greatcoat, who cried, ‘Why are you all acting like this?’ She started pulling at my coat-sleeve again. ‘Come on – we need to get into the forest! Those Knights will run us down—!’
‘Not with Brasti firing two-foot-long ironwood arrows into their throats,’ I said soothingly, gesturing to where he stood a few yards behind us. She ran to him and took up position behind him, and Brasti grinned at me as if this was final confirmation of the bow’s superiority
over the sword.
‘What should I do?’ Ethalia asked.
‘Can you do that thing you do where everybody we don’t like falls to the ground?’ Brasti suggested.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then swayed and had to steady herself against one of the trees lining the road. ‘No . . . no, I’m sorry. I’m weaker now than I was at the martyrium.’
‘In that case just stay out of the way of my arrows.’
The sound of the horses’ hooves against the hard ground became loud and crisp. It wouldn’t be long now.
Kest joined me in the centre of the road. ‘Are you planning on delivering a speech to the Knights prior to the fight? And if so, could you give me some sense of how long you’re going to—’
‘Shut up, Kest.’ Saints! Everyone’s on my back these days. ‘Let’s just see what these men are really after to start with. There might still be a chance to avoid bloodshed.’
The clack of the horses told me they’d slowed to a walk. They turned the bend and came into view.
They made for an odd quartet. Usually Knights all belong to a single Lord or Marquis or Duke, so their armour and weapons all come from the same craftsmen. The four men in front of us wore a mishmash of plate and chain, and each helm was a different shape. They looked rather shabby to my eyes.
They halted and I waited silently for the usual grave pronouncement or poorly veiled threat, only to find the moments ticking by as they just sat there on their horses, staring at us from behind their metal masks.
‘Can we help you?’ I asked at last.
Still no one spoke for another long while, then one of the Knights at the back finally asked, ‘What could we possibly want from Trattari?’ He wore a helm that covered his entire face, with the front extending out to a point – the sort I’ve heard Knights call a ‘pigface bascinet’ (which doesn’t sound very Knightly to me).
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Brasti replied. ‘Directions? Recommendations for a good tavern? Fashion advice?’
‘Heretic,’ he growled, and drew his sword.
‘Bide, Sir Uden,’ the Knight in front said. His helmet bore steel horns like those of a bull. I took him for the leader even though neither he nor his three companions wore the usual tabards over their armour that would have signified their position and Ducal affiliation. Evidently Knights without Lords didn’t have the same fascination for displaying their rank and privilege that so characterises their more servile brethren.
‘They’re Trattari, Sir Belastrian. The Gods want their blood. They demand—’ Pigface started, but Bullhead held up a gauntleted hand to stop him.
‘I said bide, Sir Uden. The moment will come soon enough.’
So, no little stars on your tabards but still a chain of command.
‘If you’re waiting for us to offer up the woman then you’ll be sitting there a good long time, Sir Knight,’ I said.
‘These roads and all who travel them belong to the Church of Duestre,’ Sir Belastrian said. ‘And we, his Knights, will administer his justice.’
‘Which one’s Duestre again?’ I asked.
‘God of Craft,’ Allister replied from his side of the road, his staff in hand. ‘That’s what they call him in Hervor, anyway. Didn’t know they called him that in Luth now.’
‘Such earthly distinctions are meaningless to us,’ Sir Belastrian pronounced grandly.
Pigface had a more pragmatic view of the world. ‘Stop wasting words on these Trattari, Belastrian. I’m tired of waiting.’
I had a bit of a diatribe prepared for a moment such as this: a nice, long speech about how those who once droned on about honour and loyalty to their Lords could so quickly and easily become pious martyrs for a religious doctrine I doubted even one of these men understood. I had a funny bit at the end, about swallows trying to fly in two directions at once and ending up crashing into trees, and I was looking forward to trying it out, but Kest interrupted me before I’d even had a chance to begin. I suspect that was intentional.
‘This is going to be tricky,’ he said,
I turned to glance at him. ‘Is it your hand?’ I whispered. Since I’d taken off his right hand, Kest had been suffering from phantom pains that were as crippling as any blow. This really wouldn’t be an opportune time for such a reoccurrence.
‘No,’ Kest replied, ‘it’s just that I’m not used to fighting so few opponents. I’ll have to work against my own reflexes to avoid killing more than my share.’
‘Well, you’re not killing mine,’ Brasti said, sighting along his arrow at the man in charge. ‘Allister, you’re new to our little family. You don’t mind if Kest takes your man, do you? He’s got rather sloppy since losing his Sainthood and we’re trying to boost his confidence.’
Allister kept very still, his hands unmoving on his heavy staff. ‘Saint Ebron-who-steals-breath! I’d forgotten how much you three jabber when you should be fighting.’
‘I’ve made the same observation to Falcio,’ Kest said. ‘He never seems to—’
‘You’re doing it too.’
‘Ah. Right.’
‘You would sully these roads with blood?’ Sir Belastrian’s voice was full of pious outrage.
For some reason I found that funny. Who ever heard of a Knight who wasn’t looking for an excuse to kill a Greatcoat? Maybe they finally got tired of having us beat them senseless from one end of the country to the other; perhaps they had finally developed some sense of self-preservation while discovering piety.
Something struck me as implausible about that thought, and not just because most of my encounters with the truly religious usually involved murderous violence. Despite not being able to see the men’s faces very well through their mismatched helmets, I could tell they were itching for a fight, and yet we’d been goading them plenty already and still they just sat there on their horses. Were they really waiting for us to attack?
No, I realised, they’re not waiting for us at all.
‘Into the forest!’ I shouted.
‘Wait, what?’ Brasti asked.
‘It’s a trap – they’ve just been stalling u—’
But I was too late; the sounds of thick ropes being severed preceded several heavy logs slamming down from the forest like trees felled by thunder, crashing onto the road behind us. Their massive trunks had foot-long iron spikes sticking out of them that would surely stick any man trying to get over them quickly. The road north was barred to us.
One of the Knights pulled a loaded crossbow from behind his saddle and raised it, his finger on the iron lever that served as its trigger.
‘Brasti!’ I called out.
‘I wouldn’t try it,’ Brasti said, aiming his arrow at the man with the crossbow. ‘At best you’ll get one shot away, and while you’re fumbling with your next bolt I’ll have had time to shoot you, your fellow Knights and both your grandparents on your mother’s side.’
‘Well,’ Sir Belastrian said, looking past me, ‘we can’t have that, can we?’
And all at once I realised several things, the first being that these men hadn’t been chasing the girl in the stolen greatcoat – they were working with her.
‘Brasti, look out!’ I shouted, but I was too late; she’d thrown herself against him, jarring his right arm and sending his arrow into the ground.
I raced for the crossbowman, trying to draw his fire to me, but I was too slow. He shot, and I turned just in time to see his bolt hit Brasti in the leg.
He stumbled, struggling to keep his balance while drawing another arrow from his quiver, but behind him, the woman in the stolen greatcoat was smiling as she drew a long dagger from inside her sleeve. Its blade was so thin I could barely see it, even from this distance.
‘Brasti, the girl!’ I yelled, and he spun awkwardly, throwing up his left arm to protect himself, bow still in hand, as Evi jabbed the blade down with furious speed. I expected to see it blocked by the bone plates but its point must have been wickedly sharp, for it pierced straight through and Brasti screamed,
dropping his bow to the ground.
‘I am the God’s Needle!’ Evi cried with ecstatic fervour, raising the knife for another strike, but before she could stab again, Ethalia had grabbed her arm and was holding it back. Brasti struck out at her, trying to jab the arrow in his hand into her shoulder, but it failed to get through her coat.
I was moving towards them to help Brasti when I felt something heavy strike me in the side: one of the Knights – the pig-faced one – had swung a broadsword at me; luckily for me, the plates in my coat had successfully blocked the blow. Hurt like the hells, though, but I resisted the urge to fall back and instead stepped in close, cutting off the distance he needed to bring his sword back for another swing. He tried to push me away with his other hand but I deflected it even as I jammed the pommel of my left-hand rapier hard against the rectangular slit in his helmet that allowed him to see. The steel around it bent inwards – not quite enough to cut off his vision but more than sufficient to give him a good scare. He stumbled backwards and I helped him to the ground with a hefty kick to his groin.
Normally there’s nothing quite as entertaining as watching a Knight on his back trying to get back up, but I was too worried about Ethalia and Brasti to properly enjoy it. Instead, I sought them out again, in time to see both of them struggling to keep out of the way of Evi’s lethal dagger. Brasti was still standing, but he was horribly unsteady on his feet and using Ethalia to steady himself.
‘With this act my Sainthood is assured!’ the woman screamed, now sounding completely crazed as she raised her blade again, but at the last instant, just as she was about to lash out, Brasti jammed his arrow into the only part of her that was exposed: the side of her skull. Even over the din I could hear the sickening sound of the iron head punching through bone.
Brasti looked pale, and not just because of his wounds. In less gruesome circumstances I might have made a joke about archers not being used to getting their hands dirty, but I was feeling rather nauseous myself—
‘Falcio, focus!’ Kest said, his warsword coming within a hair’s breath of my head as he blocked a blow that had definitely been intended for me. His voice was so full of pain I thought he must have been hit, but I saw no sign of any injury. The loss of his hand was once again causing him some kind of agony I couldn’t understand.
Saint's Blood: The Greatcoats Book 3 Page 14