by Victor Milán
“How did they get in?” Machtigern asked.
“Who knows? Some say this ruse, some another. My guess is, they claimed to bring a message from the good Count Jaume here.”
Jaume winced.
“Who is responsible?” Manfredo asked. His face was a thunderhead.
“Tavares,” Florian spat. He slammed his sword, which he had half drawn to examine, back into its sheath. His squire, a Spañol war-orphan named Marco he’d picked up somewhere and who always looked and acted famished no matter how much he ate, was busily doing up the latches on his breast-and-back. “Who else?”
“We can’t accuse the Pope’s Legate without evidence,” Manfredo said sternly.
The jinete laughed wildly. “Who else but the holy man?” he said. “I heard the house-soldiers talking on the road as they made their way to the sack. The Bishop fired up the grandes. Told them they should reward themselves and punish the wicked at one and the same time.”
“The wicked?” asked Jacques, his voice quavering with passion. It distressed Jaume to see how grey his friend’s face looked by far flame light. “How would they tell them from the innocent? Surely the ladies and the servants had nothing to do with Leopoldo’s crimes!”
“Ah, but the Lord Bishop had an answer for that too,” the mercenary said. “He’s a man of many answers, that one. He told them, ¡mátenlos todos, porque los Creadores reconocerán a sus propios!”
“Kill ’em all and let the gods sort ’em out,” Wil Oakheart the Anglés echoed in his own rude language. “And don’t the bucketheads half love that shite?”
“Ah, that they duw, mai lord,” the jinete replied in frightfully accented Anglysh. He drank deeply from a wineskin someone had handed him. Wine trickled down a gaunt cheek.
“And Montañazul and Estrella del Hierro?” Florian asked.
“They led the party that talked its way into the castle, of course.”
“What about Don Leopoldo?” asked Jaume.
“They hanged him from the top of his keep. He should be roasted to a turn now.”
“And the Countess?”
“As I heard it, she proved uncooperative at her own rape. So—” He pulled a forefinger across his throat.
“Let’s mount and ride, Captain,” Manfredo said, his eyes bright. Jaume saw the flush in his cheeks as shadow stains. “With the Ordinaries to back us we’ll make short work of these vermin.”
“Thank the Lady, a miracle!” Florian exclaimed. “Mor Stiff-Neck and I agree for once. We can teach our bumptious bucketheads the lesson they love to give their peasants: to fear their betters well.”
“Could be tough,” Machtigern said. “They outnumber us considerably. Even with the Ordinaries.”
“They’re disorganized,” Manfredo said. “And Coronel van Damme will be only too happy to set her Nodosaurs on them.”
“If they haven’t joined in the plundering themselves,” Wil said.
“Last I knew, the scar-faced Colonel still had them in their cantonment,” the jinete said. “Once they’re let loose, the Emperor Pipo himself couldn’t stop them. But while they’re still on the leash, they’ll obey their mistress, no matter how hard they strain.”
“We don’t need them,” Florian said. “The bastards are drunk, or distracted both. It’ll be like slaughtering fatties. If rather more gratifying.”
“You can’t be talking about murdering knights and noblemen!” exclaimed Dieter. “Not from our own side.”
“Not all of them,” Wil said. “Just the ones who resist. The rest we’ll thump soundly and round up. The worst actors we can hang at our leisure tomorrow.”
“With Ironstar and Bluemountain swinging highest of all,” Florian said with a laugh. “Think how that’ll improve army morale, Dieter!”
“Brothers, gentlemen!” Jacques cried. “I beg you, listen to yourselves. You can’t fight disorder with disorder.”
“It’s not disorder,” Manfredo said. “It’s bringing law. It’s what we do.”
“Not law, disaster!” Jacques sounded near to tears. “Attacking some of the most powerful grandes in Spaña, to say nothing of executing them—do you want to start the civil war we’ve all been dreading?”
“If that’s what it takes to end that kind of ugliness,” said Florian, “perhaps we should risk it. I don’t like it either, Jacques, but there it is: soon or late, it’s got to be done. And when did putting off a stable cleaning make it smell better?”
“At your word, Captain,” Manfredo said.
Jaume felt his Brothers’ eyes on his skin like insect stings. He drew a deep breath. Willing down the fury that boiled his own belly, he shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Stand down, my friends.”
His Companions stared at him with something like horror. “It’s too late to stop this evil,” he said. “And Jacques is right: punishing it could bring an evil ten times worse.”
“They’ve defied your lawful commands!” Manfredo said.
“What about your honor, lord?” asked Pedro the Greater, as usual speaking little and to the point.
Jaume laughed, bitterly and briefly.
“There’s been enough bloodshed,” he said, and the effort of keeping his voice level matched his hardest exertion in battle. “I won’t spill more, much less risk breaking the Empire apart, over so trivial a thing as my honor.”
Chapter 40
Spada, sword—The most common swords in Nuevaropa are two-edged and used for cutting and thrusting: spadacorta, short sword, to 60 centimeters long, half a kilogram, used one-handed; spada or arming-sword, 100 centimeters, 1 kilogram, one-handed; spadón, longsword, to 150 centimeters and 1.5 kilograms, used with one or both hands; Spadataliana, rapier, 120 centimeters, 1 kilogram, one-handed and used mostly for thrusting; Dosmanos, greatsword, 180 centimeters, 2.5 kilograms, used with both hands.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
With a groan and a crackle of branches breaking, the tall red-boled conifer fell across the trail.
From a knob overlooking the trail, just beyond the tree that blocked the raiders’ forward progress, Rob Korrigan sat astride Little Nell and watched in excited satisfaction. Sweat streaming down his forehead from beneath the padding of his steel cap stung his eyes. The solidity of his axe haft in hand bolstered his morale. A round shield hung from his saddle.
Nell wagged her head and rolled her eyes. Her nervousness wasn’t down to anticipation, but rather fear of the wicked creature beside her. Karyl was mounted on an Arabaya mare named Asal, whose first act on arriving at Séverin farm had been to bite a chunk out of the hook-horn’s inoffensive ass. The name meant “honey” in Parso, which Rob took for typical heathen cheek: her temperament was corrosive as quicklime.
A beautiful young strawberry roan, scarcely more than a pony at a finger under fifteen hands, Asal had come as a gift from Gaétan’s father, along with the fine Ovdan hornbow Karyl now held ready, and certain other tokens. Karyl and Master Évrard had made some deal Rob wasn’t privy to; he reckoned it involved a hefty chunk of silver from the former Count’s coffers, to make the merchant so expansive.
Around them waited half a dozen militiamen on foot, including Lucas, who wouldn’t be separated from Karyl. A thornbush thicket screened them all from the marauders’ view.
Around the residual rumbling and crackling as the tree bounced on its springy, sap-rich limbs, silence swelled to fill the narrow valley. The sounds that gave this forest its name, the Whispering Woods—the soft sighing of breeze in boughs and drowsy insect hum—seemed to stop. As did the intruding noises: the rough too-loud banter of men bent on joyous hatefulness, the thud of footfalls on dirt, the jingle of metal links against each other.
The leading Crève Coeur spear-and-shield man stood gaping at the tree’s still-shaking boughs, stunned by the disaster that had missed him by centimeters. Belatedly apprehending the danger, he turned to flee. It saved his life, however momentarily: the green-fletched arrow aimed
for his eye stuck in his temple instead. Howling and trying to yank it, out he ran stumbling back along the strung-out raiding party.
Another serial crashing announced another big tree falling behind the column. Horses reared, neighing in alarm. Men shouted. Bearded faces snapped to and fro in confusion already shading into panic.
The raid consisted of ten mailed men-at-arms on horseback and twenty or so foot soldiers, led by a dinosaur knight on an orange-and-green bull sackbut. The fallen trees had trapped them on a path scarcely two meters wide. Above them rose a steep slope. Below them it dropped twenty meters to a rocky stream.
Screams began to peal from the column’s tail. Emeric had split the woods-runners he’d managed to talk into joining the militia into two groups of six, one led by him and the other by his sister Stéphanie. They raked the column with arrows from cover at either end. A hail of rocks and javelins fell on the Brokenhearts from the scrub above.
Emeric’s forest phantoms and a handful of daring lads and lasses on horseback who’d joined them scouting for Rob had spotted the raiders just before they made camp last sunset. Consulting local peasants who had turned out to fight the invaders, Karyl judged the band was making for a village two kilometers west of the ambush site.
A few kilometers north lay a small yet rich silver mine. But the miners had fortified its entrance with the same skills they used to delve the meat and bones of Paradise, and defended themselves ferociously when attacked. The village, on the other hand, prospered mightily from selling the miners its produce, and was a much easier target.
An admirable sort of trap, thought Rob, where the bait’s been waiting years, and your quarry’s already on its way to take it.
A crossbow twanged metal music. A horse shrieked and fell as the bolt pierced its neck. Its rider jumped clear but rolled down the hill into the stream. Smelling horse blood, Asal tossed her head in agitation. But the Ovdan nomads had trained her well for war. She made no sound.
The Crève Coeur knight’s longsword flashed high in sunlight filtered through clouds and branches as he reared his dinosaur and shouted to rally his men from their midst. They were blundering into each other, jostling, shouting, and waving their arms ineffectually as missiles pelted them.
Most of the missiles were no more effective than the Brokenhearts’ flailing. But not all. The woods-runners shot to deadly effect, and at a range close enough that even their shortbows had a chance of punching an arrow through mail. Rob saw figures on the ground, writhing or still, with arrows jutting from armored bodies or unprotected faces.
And now some of the militiamen, emboldened by the fact that the knight had arrogantly brought no archers of his own, emerged from the brush above the column. Rob winced as he saw a cantaloupe-sized stone strike a house-shield’s helmeted forehead full on. The steel cap caved in. Whether the crack Rob heard a beat later was the soldier’s skull breaking or his neck, the boneless way he slumped to the ground showed he was dead on the instant.
“Poor sods,” Rob said, bending down to scratch Nell reassuringly on the neck behind her frill. “I pity ’em. Almost.”
“How much mercy would they show you if the situation was reversed?” Karyl asked.
He wore a steel cap with a camail hanging to protect his nape, a simple nosehorn leather jerkin over an unbleached linen shirt, and jackboots to midthigh over brown linen trousers. He carried no shield. His arming-sword had been Étienne’s own, a splendid weapon forged from star-metal by Aphrodite Terra’s most cunning smiths, the wandering gitanos—Rob’s continental kinfolk.
Karyl preferred to leave his staff sword in camp wrapped in his bedroll, like a Hanged Man card up his sleeve. That blade seemed to Rob to possess some dark charisma. But then, he was a susceptible lad.
“Roast me on slow fire, and the Old Hell take the Creators and their Law!” Rob cawed a corpse-tearer laugh. “So I’ll waste no sympathy on the likes of them.”
A man-at-arms with more presence of mind than his fellows set his horse laboring up the slope at these peasants who had the temerity to throw things at their betters. Like the others, he couched a spear in lieu of a longer, less wieldy lance. The militia scattered. A middle-aged man in a loincloth, already hobbled by some old wound, tripped and fell. He threw a futile hand in front of his face as the spearhead darted toward him.
From nearby Rob heard a thump and a rustling hum. The rider straightened in his saddle. The spear dropped from his hand. He looked down in amazement at what Rob could see from sixty meters off was an arrow sprouting dead center from the broken-heart emblem on his surcoat.
Startled, Rob glanced right to see Karyl pull another arrow from the quiver by his saddlebow and nock it.
“Lively now,” Karyl said. “Company comes.”
Four Crève Coeur riders scrambled their horses up the slope to get clear of the obstruction. Turning their frightened mounts to follow the road brought them straight at Karyl and his small group stationed to prevent just that.
Rob took up his shield as Karyl shot another raider from his saddle. Then a man-at-arms was riding straight for Rob, thrusting a spear at him underhand.
Rob turned Nell to meet the horseman and booted her into a forward spring. Her absurdly short, thick horn wasn’t as lethal as a nosehorn’s eponymous armament, and nothing Rob knew matched Triceratops’ terrible brow-horns. But in a pinch its forward-curving tip could dig in and gut a man or beast with a downward stroke. She used it mostly as a kind of battering ram. And fair effective it was at that.
The horse veered to avoid collision, spoiling its master’s attack by putting its body between spear and target. A mature hornface weighed more than all but the hugest draft horses; Little Nell, who truth to tell was on the chubby side, weighed two tonnes, and could simply bull down a courser like this one.
Ditching the spear to draw his sword as he passed, the rider aimed a desperate cross-body cut at Rob. Rob took it on his shield, then returned a whistling overhand stroke with his axe. The other arm’s shield protected torso and head. Rob wasn’t aiming for them. The bearded axe-head hit the horseman’s thigh instead, sheering through mail legging, linen trousers, and flesh to jar against bone.
The man bellowed in pain as Rob wrenched the axe free. Rob thanked Maris, Lady of Chance and the Sea, it hadn’t bit into the femur. He’d have been lucky not to be dragged from the saddle himself.
The Brokenheart fell off his horse. His left boot caught in the stirrup. The courser, now thoroughly terrified, put its head down, crashed back down onto the road, then set out at a wheezing, clattering, foam-blowing run, dragging its erstwhile rider bellowing behind.
Axe high, Rob looked for other threats. No enemies were near him. Karyl went sword to sword with a man on a chestnut. A second man-at-arms rode in from Karyl’s blind side, swinging a spiked-ball flail over his head.
Rob shouted warning. As he did, Lucas rose up from the scrub right next to the flail-man. Holding his longsword hilt in both hands and yelling like a madman with pale hair flying, the painting prodigy rammed the tip into the man’s side under the short ribs. Welded links popped. The horseman groaned, blood flooding down his chin. Lucas, blue eyes rolling in red face, rammed the blade all the way through him until mail hauberk and surcoat tented on the other side.
The Brokenheart fell that way. There was no way Lucas could keep hold of the blood-slick cross guard. He had to let go of the longsword.
He didn’t seem to mind. Instead his success so astonished and exalted him that he whooped, threw his hands in the air, and began to dance around in triumph.
“Behind you!” Karyl yelled at him. He had finished off his first opponent and twisted in his saddle to deal with the second, only to find that Lucas had killed him. And to see another Crève Coeur rider looming behind the youth, eyes glaring wildly past the nasal of his peaked cap and spear cocked to impale him. Agile and quick as Asal was, she had no chance of carrying Karyl close enough in time to intervene.
“Fuck,” Rob said. He headed
Nell that way, though she was farther than the mare, and slower. He doubted Karyl would leave much avenging of the painter for Rob to do, but the Brokenheart might be bringing friends to the party.
He heard a clink and a crunch. Just before he drove his spear home in Lucas’s oblivious back, the Brokenheart stiffened and grabbed for his throat.
A chisel-tipped arrowhead stuck out of the horseman’s gullet, painted bright red in the morning sun.
As the rider collapsed, Rob looked up and beyond him. At the far end of the trapped raiding party, Gaétan stood on a rocky jut above where the second tree had fallen. He was still holding his hornbow in perfect follow-through.
A good hundred meters, thought Rob. Lad’s a fair shot, for true.
Karyl swept his sword up in a salute. Gaétan grinned and bobbed his head in acknowledgment. He was busy nocking another arrow and looking around. He didn’t intend to get caught celebrating by a sudden enemy.
Then again, he’d likely done this before. Rob was certain Lucas hadn’t. As was brought home when the boy looked from the man who’d almost spitted him, to the man he’d spitted himself to such lethal effect, and puked his guts into a berry-bush.
Rob risked a look toward the road. As a child he’d been particularly struck on a walk when he’d seen perhaps a dozen centimeter-long black and red ants near the entry to a hill of much tinier black ants. Whether the big ants had tried a raid, or merely tried the lesser ants’ patience, the defenders, each perhaps a tenth the size of a single intruder, had swarmed them by the hundreds, immobilizing and slowly destroying them without regard to their own losses.
That was about the sight that greeted his eyes now. The Providentials had thrown themselves on the marauders, overmatching superior arms and training with numbers and fury. They flailed their enemies with farm implements, pounded them with rocks, and pummeled them with fists. In the midst of the mayhem, the dinosaur knight surged his long-crested mount this way and that with its tail knocking combatants of both sides sprawling, and swinging his longsword with little more discrimination.