The Crimson Outlaw

by Alex Beecroft

  That didn’t mean he was going to let his father get away with treating him like this. He was not going to go crawling back to apologise. His father had always wanted him to be proud—well then, let Wadim see that Vali would not be the first to give in. Let Wadim see he had gone too far this time, underestimated his son. Let him come to Vali, beg him for forgiveness. Then they might talk.

  “Did you say the grate was rusted?” he asked instead, rising to tip his necessary bucket upside down and drag it beneath the skylight.

  “The last man in there spent hours every day weakening it,” she offered with dark amusement—the only sort available in this place. “He said ‘another day and I’ll do it’ just as they took him out to hang him.”

  “Is that right?” Vali took a long diamond-tipped hatpin from his hat and, getting up on the bucket, poked at the junction of stone and iron. The bars rattled in their sockets. Flakes of red rust and watery stone fell along with the rain. The pin’s diamond setting pushed through the disintegrating pulp like an arrow through a tree—not easily, but effectively.

  By the time night fell, he quietly set the second bar down on his meagre straw, sure he could fit his shoulders through the gap now. He looked with crawling guilt and gratitude on his neighbour, whom he would have to leave behind. Cutting the stitching of his left cuff with the point of the pin, he handed her half a dozen sapphires before he hauled himself up through the hole and wormed out into the night.

  He looked back to see her weeping over the jewels.

  “Good luck,” she whispered, not looking at him.

  “I won’t forget you,” he promised. “I’ll get you out.”

  But she only laughed in disbelief and walked away, into the farthest corner of her cell, out of his sight.

  The grating opened just by the wall of the fountain court, behind the pedestal of a statue that depicted a Dacian warrior in unlikely single combat with a crested Roman soldier. The rain had eased a little since this morning, now coming down in such fine droplets that they fell with the drift of snow, weightless, cheerless, and drenching.

  Vali remembered the cries he had heard, walking to Stela’s wedding, and it lifted the hair on his head to realise he must have been hearing Doina even then, striding over her torment without even knowing she was there. Yesterday it had not occurred to him to find out what the noise was. Today he hoped he was a better person, that he would not overlook it again.

  Moral advantage was all he had left to cling to, so he intended to make the most of it.

  The wet had at least kept everyone indoors. The baroque fountain in the centre of the court did not trickle faster than the gutters, the church door was closed, and the lights of the Great Hall and the long gallery were nipped behind shutters. The family chambers were dark, the guest rooms illuminated. They must have cleared and shut up Stela’s chamber today, moved her things in amongst her husband’s. The thought gave him a stab of unutterable loneliness. She had moved on and left him behind.

  Well then, why not slightly alter the plan and take it for his own? He could be the one who got out—the one who ran away and left it all behind him. He could ride to Hungary, put himself at the disposal of Queen Maria Theresa, or to Wallachia, to whoever was voivode this week. Kings and princes would give him welcome; he had only to get out. Then perhaps one day—when he was battle-hardened and fully grown, trailing well-won glory of his own—he would come back and take his inheritance by force as so many of his forebears had had to do.

  It pleased him to think of himself as an intrepid young man out to seek his fortune, rather than a boy running away from his punishment. It added a fairy-tale spice to the way he slunk through the deepest shadows, tiptoed down to the great court without making a sound, and flitted into the stables like a snow-elf.

  By that time, the rain had thinned to the point that it could almost have been said to have stopped. Though the grooms were up in the hay loft, toasting one another and laughing, snug in their refuge under the roof, he couldn’t bank on them staying there.

  Quietly as he could, he walked down the line of stables, hissing reassurances at the horses through his teeth. “Shhh, it’s only me. You know me.” They snorted comfortably in agreement, stretching out to lip at his hands for apples, and he reached Boris, his gelding, with no more outcry than a little stamping.

  Tack was a different matter—that too was up in the warmth with the grooms, being oiled and worked on. But in the damp they had left Boris’s saddle blanket on, and that would do.

  “Hey,” he crooned encouragingly, holding out one hand to stroke Boris’s nostrils while with the other he opened the gate, coaxing him out. “Come on, quietly now.”

  Polishing rags lay amidst leading ropes against the walls. He wrapped fabric around Boris’s feet, slipped a rope halter over his head, and led him out into the night. Quietly then across the courtyard and down the narrowing passage that led to the south gate. He lifted the bar off the postern door and threaded the horse through the narrow entrance. It gave him a qualm to leave it open, but someone would spot it before the end of the night—by tomorrow at least—and as far as he knew there were no armies in the area at the moment.

  Briefly, he turned to sigh at the battlements, at the warm lights within, and at the wicked, witch’s-hat roofs of the turrets. Banners dangled drenched from the upper windows. Only recently, the stonework of the walls had been plastered and the plaster painted in spiralling patterns of black and white diamonds. In the day, this schema made it look eerily lopsided—an ogre’s castle. In the night, when only the lime-white plaster reflected the light, it seemed riddled with holes, scarcely there at all.

  Vali sighed again, too heavy-feeling for adventure, leapt up onto his horse’s back, and set off downhill towards the village and the wider world beyond.

  The clouds began to break above him as the path led him through houses tucked up tight, pigs in their gardens grunting in their sleep. Buffalo raised mild, inquiring looks at him as he forded the stream and trotted past fields of seedlings that would, God willing, be wheat in the summer. The little plants stood no higher than the knuckle of his finger as yet, and crocuses grew amongst them like fallen stars.

  Beyond the village and the wheat fields, the closer pasturage held incurious cows—perhaps they would have looked at him, had not their black horns weighed them down so.

  He was not disappointed that no one had come to find him. He was not upset to discover that he could disappear from his family with such ease that no one even noticed he was gone. These were good things.

  Further from home, closer to the forest, the meadow swept up into scrubby, heathy land where sheep grazed. He thought one stood on its hind legs and turned to watch him as he passed. But leaning forwards and peering showed him it was a man with a curled hat and the massive, yellow, shaggy sheepskin jacket—turned fur-side out—of his profession.

  This apparition leaned on his crook and nodded to Vali as he passed, but when Vali was safely out of arm’s reach, he took a bucium from his belt and blew it. Far away, over the other side of the valley, came a blast that was answer rather than echo. As though the shepherd, unsettled by a bloodstained youth on a silent horse, had asked his peers, “Is anyone there?” and been reassured he was not alone. The two notes echoed hollow in the dark, and Vali wished he could do the same—could reach out and have someone answer him. Someone who would understand.

  But Stela had turned away from him, and he was on his own now. So he looked back one more time and then urged his nervous horse into the wolf-infested darkness under the wood.

  When the boughs of the trees closed over his head, stoppering the end of the path so he could no longer see the castle, his mood lifted. The night air smelled of fungus and sap. On either side of him things rustled in the undergrowth, foxes most likely, but maybe bears and dragons, malignant spirits, witches and wolves. The path was wide enough to cut a swathe through the trees and allow the sky to glimmer on him, silky grey. Boris could just make out wher
e to tread next.

  All of this should perhaps have appalled him, but instead it recalled old Nicu, the travelling storyteller, who came every Easter to the castle and sat in the main court with his pipe alight in his fist, his long grey hair standing out beneath his hat like the lower seeds of a dandelion when the top has been blown off. He spoke of princes and warriors and daring maidens venturing out to fight the Turks, or marry the sun, or fight off the Lord of Storms in his fortress.

  Now Vali was entering a tale of his own, and it seemed to him that he was owed a good one—was he not, after all, young and handsome, of noble blood and a suffering past? He was due fairy intervention, or to stumble on a trove of treasure in an abandoned house, or to rescue a king’s daughter and thus be rewarded. He made up his mind to be very polite to any traveller he might meet, and—if he had any food—to share it with any old crone who might ask.

  After a little while of riding sedately, his eyes adapted to the dark enough for him to risk a canter. He urged Boris on, laughing as the speed whipped small branches into his face, delighted at the sense of freedom, the certainty of adventure. It was a flight in all ways, full of exultation, and he laughed again as he shifted his seat and nudged his horse into a gallop.

  Glorious—for a moment—all cold air and water scent and streaks of stars. The glow of moonrise greeted by a wolf’s call, the pack answering. He felt he could ride forever, bestride the world, see everything that ever was to be seen.

  And then Boris gave a shrill cry, his foreleg folding under him as if he had stepped in a hole. He hurtled forwards and down, his neck lashing back in a flinch. Vali’s seat and support flew out from under him. He tipped over the horse’s right shoulder, and long practice at falling had him go with the motion—no stirrups or saddle to free himself from. He tucked in, allowed himself to somersault as he fell, head down, heels in the air, until he righted and landed undamaged on both feet.

  Boris thrashed on the ground before him, shrieking, his hooves flailing as he struggled to rise and something prevented him. Shaken, breathing fast, Vali tried to get close enough to make a grab for the horse’s head—to hold him still and calm him.

  His foot came down sideways on something hard that tipped beneath him, making him stumble. An outthrown hand grazed the side of something sharp; he turned onto hands and knees and picked it up. Two nails, sharpened to spikes at both ends, twisted together so that one spike always faced up no matter how casually they were scattered over the road. Caltrops! There were caltrops all over the path, and that meant . . .

  His hand went to his sword just as a man’s long arm snaked out of the darkness behind him, pinned his forearm in place and drew him back against a hard, unyielding chest. The man’s other hand gently touched the long glint of a hunting knife against his throat. And though it pressed in hardly at all, the edge was so sharp a warm trickle made its way down Vali’s neck and pooled in his collar. He froze.

  He couldn’t see his attacker, but he could feel the man was much bigger, much stronger than him. Broad chest, big arms, the smell of woodsmoke and sheepskin. If he struggled, he might open his own throat on that razor of a weapon. And what a stupid way to die, at the hands of some common bandit not ten miles away from home.

  “That’s it.” The deep voice, more than a handspan above his head, coaxed him as gently as he would have coaxed his horse. “Don’t you struggle or start, and this will go easier for you. I’ve no mind to kill you, unless you make it needful for me.”

  “I have no money.” Vali’s chest was heaving, his body still readying itself to fight, his mind trying to clear away the haze of shock and panic, looking out for its opportunity. He allowed himself to be dragged backwards, away from the path, into the utter dark of the moonless wood.

  A chuckle, hoarse but good-humoured. “Well, so they often say.” The voice sounded conversational. The body belied it, moving in a rush like the charge of a bear, seizing him by the belt, spinning them both and slamming Vali’s back into the trunk of a tree. “I’m sure you won’t mind if I check for myself.”

  The bandit was now directly in front of Vali, flush with Vali from knees to chest, holding him in place with the weight of his great body. The knife remained at Vali’s throat. The man’s coat swung forwards and enfolded Vali on both sides as the bandit’s free hand moved methodically over him, cataloguing what he found.

  “Silk waistcoat lined with fur. Stiff embroidery—must be silver or gold thread—and little stones in it. Metal plaques on your belt and, oh, there’s a nice sword. Get your hand off that, there’s my good boy.”

  The voice had slipped into a kind of bedroom murmur—pleased, confidential, intimate—and the experience of being groped all over should not perhaps have been so . . . But it was. The knife at his throat and the pressure from balls to lungs of a powerful, demanding warm body thoroughly dominating him stirred something deep in his bowels. Lust added itself to terror in his panting breaths, and he despised himself and the bandit indiscriminately.

  But he still didn’t dare buck up against that blade.

  “You’re a little lordling of some kind, but where’s your retinue, eh?” Wind moved the branches, and for a moment, a shaft of light reflected gold from the backs of the eyes that looked down on him. All he could see—two round spots of gold in a dark mass that smelled of hot, vivid, animal sweat. “Run off to find your fortune? Daddy won’t increase your allowance? Nobody loves you enough?

  “Let’s see. I could strip these clothes off you and take your horse and leave you wandering these haunted woods alone. Something’d eat you, cover your tracks, no one’d ever know where you’d gone.” That exploratory hand returned, less brusque and businesslike than before. It pushed up the long skirts of Vali’s waistcoat and stroked possessively up his inner thigh. “But what a waste.”

  “Ah!” said Vali, gritting his teeth. It didn’t sound as much like a protest as he wanted it to. The mockery stung. He barely stopped himself from writhing—away, towards, he wasn’t sure—and slicing his own neck on the still steady knife. That deadly edge filled his thoughts, commanded his movements. Not entirely unpleasantly, for all he wanted to shove the man’s words down his throat and make him choke on them.

  The bandit laughed again and drew a length of cord from the inner pocket of his coat. Vali felt the end of it slither over his fingers. “So let’s suit both of our needs and test how much your family values you, shall we? You’ll make a lovely hostage.”

  He got one hand—rough as dry leather—around Vali’s two wrists but could not tie the cord around them firmly enough without the aid of the other. Another flash of those two golden spots said a meaningful look was being directed at Vali’s face, and Vali felt the moment shift with him in the centre of it. He had been taught to read an opponent’s movements, to wait until they opened themselves to his strike, and now he felt a change, an opportunity approaching like a bright light. He steadied his breathing, relaxed into readiness, hoping to fool his captor into believing that the release was surrender.

  “You try anything and I’ll make you sorry you ever lived.”

  The tickle of the knife blade left Vali’s throat as the bandit tucked the hilt between his teeth—a sickle of white, like a moon behind clouds. He bent his head to bring his other hand to bear on the knot that would hold Vali’s wrists together. And Vali slammed his knee into the man’s balls, and—when he doubled over—brought it up further, jamming it into the angle beneath his jaw, ramming his teeth together around the unyielding metal bit of his knife, wishing fervently he’d been the kind to hold the blade, not the tang, in his mouth.

  Bringing his foot down again, Vali ground the hardened heel of his riding boot into the top of the bandit’s foot. At some point during this barrage of attacks, the man’s grip on Vali’s hands had weakened. Now Vali wrenched them out and immediately followed up with a two-handed punch to the throat. He felt the Adam’s apple crunch under his left palm, and the bandit cried out. His mouth opened. The knife fell some
where at their feet.

  Slowly at first, then gathering speed, the man fell, curling over the vulnerable spots of balls and belly and throat, gargling for breath like a stuck pig. Vali kicked him hard in the head and, when he slumped, put a foot on the back of his neck and vaulted over him. Tugging and twisting his hands until the cord came free, he dashed for the path.

  Boris was a motionless mass of blackness against the grey of the packed earth. Vali reached out, touched the horse’s muzzle. “Shhh shhh shhh. I hadn’t left you. Just wait a moment.”

  He crawled around the horse’s body. Sensibly—Boris had been a sensible colt, and now that he was gelded and aged there was not a more rock-like beast in the land—the horse had realised that flailing only made the sharp things pierce him worse and had stopped before he did himself any further damage. Vali found the caltrop in his front hoof which had started this disaster, and wrenched it out. Then he grabbed a fallen branch in the leaf litter beside the path and brushed the rest of the infernal little things away.

  Movement in the undergrowth could have been badgers or a boar, but there was no guessing how long the bandit would stay down, and the sounds could just as well have been made by an angry man. Vali hauled Boris to his feet with the leading rope and swung himself up onto the horse’s back, urging him forward.

  Boris lurched as he walked, the gait telling of pain and injury, and though Vali could feel the horse’s dogged determination between his gripping thighs, his own heart plummeted. It was fifteen miles along this path to the nearest town, and though there were settlements aplenty in the forest—little villages of a dozen or so farmsteads clustered around a church—he would never find one in the dark.

  But they couldn’t stay here for the bandit to recapture. He slid back off the horse and led him into the trees, choosing the left-hand side of the path where the ground sloped downwards. If anything, there should be a stream at the lowest point, and there he could leave Boris behind to heal in his own time, surrounded by water and good riverside grass.