Blackguards

by J. M. Martin

  #

  Dawn’s rays stretched across the cobbled square at the heart of the city. Its golden fingers walked across the row of bodies lining the western edge of the courtyard—Akeshians and Company men and locals all laid out together like family.

  A bead of sweat ran down Jirom’s forehead into his right eye, blurring his remaining vision; he couldn’t see out of his left at all. After the explosion, he had awakened in the dark to find himself pinned under a pile of armored bodies. The gate was gone, completely destroyed except for its charred bronze hinges. He had been trying to pull himself free when a party of invaders had found him, bound him, and marched him here where a group of his brothers awaited, similarly tied and kneeling on the cobblestones.

  As morning came, Jirom saw Major Galbrein arrive, escorted by a squad of enemy soldiers. The Company commander had a bloody compress around his head and one arm in a field sling. Every brother straightened up as the major stepped into the square, and Jirom joined them. If he was going to die today, he would die like a soldier.

  The Akeshian command staff arrived with the major. A dozen tall men in shining mail, their scarlet scarves blowing from their necks. Jirom didn’t see anyone who resembled a sorcerer, but then again he’d never known one before Three Moons. And where had Three Moons gone anyway?

  Dead, probably.

  A column of Akeshian crossbowmen entered the square from the north, escorting a big red-and-gold palanquin. An uneasy feeling crept into the pit of Jirom’s stomach when the Amir got out of the litter and greeted the Akeshian commanders with polite enthusiasm.

  Jirom tested the leather restraints binding his wrists. He had a knife hidden in his right boot, but waited as Major Galbrein was taken to meet the big-wigs. Jirom couldn’t hear what was being said, but he saw the controlled rage written across the major’s face. He wasn’t surprised when the Company commander knocked the Amir on his ass in front of the assemblage, nor when the Akeshians dragged the major to a wooden block which had been set in the center of the square.

  While the mercenaries shouted and cursed, they were forced to watch the beheading. The narrow two-handed sword of the Akeshian leader cut through the warm morning air, and the major died with as much dignity as a decapitated man could manage. This had all been for nothing.

  Shouts broke out as a pair of brothers, Quarren and Skawl, broke free of their restraints. While they grappled with their captors, Jirom yanked his arms apart. For one terrifying moment, the cords held fast. Then, with a snap, he was free. He drew his knife and leapt to his feet. Many of his brothers had risen up as well, many fighting with their hands still tied. Jirom shouldered his way through the melee, his gaze locked on his target beside the execution block.

  An Akeshian infantryman stepped in front of him, but Jirom spun around the point of the man’s spear, slid the edge of his knife under the soldier’s coif, and kept moving through the crowd with fresh blood running down his fingers. He drew back his arm as he reached his prey. The man turned, mouth agape, and Jirom drove the knife forward with all his strength. The blade punched through the mail shirt and sank to the hilt.

  The Amir gasped as he glanced down at the handle protruding from his chest. Jirom smiled at him, and then lunged forward. He caught the nobleman’s nose in his jaws and yanked back, tearing the flesh loose. Blood filled his mouth. A moment later, a hard blow landed on the side of his head, and the world tilted.

  Gazing up from flat on his back, Jirom took a deep breath. The sky was a flawless azure blue. He grinned at the brown faces leaning over him. He was ready to die now. After fighting and scrapping for most of his life, a respite would be nice. If the gods were kind, he’d spend eternity under the shade of a nice fruit tree. Maybe he’d see his brothers again. Strong hands lifted him to his knees.

  Blinking back against the pain in his temple, Jirom saw the Akeshian commander approach like a god of war with his beautiful two-handed sword. Jirom spat out the pieces of the Amir’s nose at his feet.

  “I am impressed, outlander,” the Akeshian warlord said in a reasonable semblance of the local mercenary argot. “You fight like a lion. No fear at all. Nothing matters but the kill, eh?”

  He looked at the rest of the Company brothers, once more back in custody, and lifted his sword. “All of you may have death, if you wish it. Or you may take the iron collar and live as a slave.”

  Akeshian soldiers armed with swords and collars went down the line of mercenaries, offering each the choice. The sounds of death and hammering iron echoed through the square. Jirom swallowed and wished he had a drink. The day was getting hot already, but with a cold drink in his hand a man could face anything. He started to laugh. It was only a chuckle at first, hardly even a sound, but it grew with each passing moment.

  Then a shadow fell over him as the soldiers came to his turn.

  The Betyár and the Magus

  S. R. Cambridge

  When writing, I often take inspiration from real history, especially the history that often isn’t read about that often. “The Betyár and the Magus” and the characters in it came to be because I started to read a lot about the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, a war for independence by Hungary against the Austrian Empire. Hungary was the victor in a series of early battles, and looked like it was winning, until the Austrian Empire allied with Russia for help. Russia, a formidable power at the time, brought it all to an end in short order. So I began to build a sort of historical-fantasy alternate-universe out of the Revolution, and what happened before and after. “The Betyár and the Magus” takes place six months after the end of the Revolution.

  ~

  betyár (n.): a highwayman in 19th century Hungary

  Outside Gyõr

  Kingdom of Hungary

  1850

  My teacher Jóska Bajusz had died half a year earlier, and there was no fun in robbing the roads without him. You might imagine the life of a betyár to be all guns and riches and soft swooning women, but you wouldn’t imagine the truth of it, the tedium, the long spans of night spent hiding and hoping for an unwary traveller to pass.

  It was January, one of those days where the night steals in early, and unwary travellers had become a rare commodity. All I had to show for hours of waiting was a beard soaked through with snow, a sour mood, and half a forint from a shepherd who had been relieved, not afraid, when he realized it was a mere betyár who leapt in front of him.

  People weren’t frightened of betyárok then, not when there were worse dangers on the roads: Austrian soldiers, Habsburg men, who would name you a rebel and clap irons around your wrists before you could say guten tag. If you were lucky, you were held prisoner and conscripted. If not, you met your maker at the bad end of a firing squad.

  I had been lazy with that shepherd, letting him go without even demanding one of his sheep, even though one of them would have fetched a good price. But it wouldn’t have been worth the trouble, I told myself. Sheep are stubborn.

  When Jóska was alive, before the war, I was never lazy, and never in poor spirits, even on the roughest of nights. With how much Jóska talked, I didn’t have the chance. He was generous with advice, was Jóska, from the day he tried to steal a pig from me and instead decided to take me on as an apprentice betyár, although his habit was to begin with an insult before he got to anything helpful.

  László, Jóska would say, did your mother lay with a goat? It’s the only explanation for that sad little beard of yours. Listen: if you apprehend a true Hungarian, then you take from him ten percent of what he has and let him go. That’s what the churches do, after all. Frenchmen, Englishmen, take more. And if you rob an Austrian, take everything.

  Or, László, you know there is a blind girl in Tata? There might be a wife for you, after all. Listen: you will rob many women. Treat them all with courtesy. The lady in her middle years, the one who was once a beauty, will respond best to romance. Speak kindly, look upon her as though you ache, and let your fingers linger on her throat. She’ll be gladder to give
you her coin if you give her a scandalous tale to tell other women about how she was nearly seduced on the road.

  The Russians killed Jóska during the battle at Segesvár. We’d come up with the brilliant idea to join up and fight for a free Hungary, Jóska and me. We ought to have stayed out of it. None of it had been fair. We had been winning, honestly winning, and then the Habsburgs got scared and said, oh, Russia, please help us crush the Hungarians, and Russia agreed and that was that.

  Jóska had been hit with a spell from a Russian magus, some burst of terrible white-hot light that had ripped him open better and faster than a bayonet ever could. They were organized, those companies of Russian magi in the service of the Habsburgs. Always they attacked in formation. We had magi, too, but none so talented, none so regimented.

  I’d knelt before Jóska as he struggled to speak, gurgling out blood and incoherent sounds in equal measure. His insides had glowed unnaturally and spilled on the earth. Tragic, truly, that a man who talked as endlessly as Jóska Bajusz should be denied the right to spit out a last bit of wisdom.

  My hiding place for the night was one of the best spots Jóska and I had found along the well-worn road from Pest-Buda to Vienna: a hidden cleft of rock obscured by trees, a few paces from a bend in the road. A fine site for an ambush. It was easy for a wagon or a carriage to get bogged down in the deep ruts of the road when it was muddy. Always a fortunate thing, when that happened. You could appear before the poor stranded travellers with a benevolent smile on your face and act the solicitous saviour before you started waving your weapons about.

  That’s what I did with the Countess Almásy, Jóska had told me once. Pretended I planned to help her when one of her horses fell injured on the road. If he wasn’t doling out advice, Jóska was going on about the time he robbed the Countess Almásy. I was fourteen and stupid when I first set out with Jóska, so initially I had believed him, but he told his Countess Almásy story so often and so inconsistently that it did not take me long to privately conclude it was horseshit designed to make me believe that being a betyár was more glamorous than it was.

  Sometimes the countess kissed Jóska, having fallen in love with the handsome betyár, and wept because she would never see him again. (It was my moustache, Jóska had explained, stroking the black bristly mass of it. Women love my moustache.) Depending on how drunk Jóska was when he told the story, sometimes the countess was more lusty than loving. Once Jóska claimed the countess had told him she’d murder her old unkind husband and make Jóska her count if only he would leave his nomad’s life to wed her.

  When Jóska got into his Countess Almásy story, he always began the same way. Once I charged before a carriage, he would say, a beautiful one, all white, and who should be inside but the Countess Almásy…

  Jézus, I thought. László Sovány, you’ve gone sentimental. Foolish, but on this night, quiet and windless with the snow settling about me like ash on embers, I longed to hear Jóska tell lies about the Countess Almásy. A strange listlessness had taken hold of me since Jóska’s death. All I wanted, then, was a bed and supper and enough pálinka to make me forget that I had to think about what I would do next. Half a forint is enough for that.

  Before the war I had been rich, in secret. Jóska and I had hidden the spoils of our robberies in places all along the road, in the houses of friends in Gyõr and Bicske and Komárom, but the Austrians had seen to my newfound poverty. After the war, after the Hungarians surrendered at Világos, Austrian soldiers swept over the country, taking. In the weeks it took me to get home, I went to each spot. In every case the money and valuables Jóska and I had spent years collecting were gone, replaced with abandoned or burnt-out buildings, or upturned earth. The friends were gone, too: dead, fled or captured.

  I climbed down from my hiding place. On the road, I patted my coat and pockets to ensure my few possessions were still on my person: two pistols, a dagger, a paltry excuse for a coin purse. It would be a slow trudge back to Gyõr, where there were places I could lodge for the night. I was unused to life on my feet. I had sold Lánya, my horse, a week earlier, demoting myself from a mounted betyár to a lowly footpad. (Listen, Jóska’s voice echoed in my head, a betyár must always have handsome clothes and a fine fearsome horse, or else he is nothing but a common rogue.) I regretted selling Lánya, having brought her to war with me, but it was time for her to go when I began thinking of her less as my faithful steed and more as tasty horsemeat.

  It was then, starting that dreaded trek back to Gyõr, when I saw it: far off, faint, but unmistakable. The light from a coachman’s lantern, I thought. Then: oh, oh, thank God.

  Grinning, I drew my pistols, unmindful of the cold on my bare hands. I loaded each with powder and ball. I felt as though I had been buried but had clawed my way to fresh air, so great and so sweet was my relief. I had not spotted a proper carriage with a coachman in months. Before it all, before the revolution and the Russians and that horrible spell killing Jóska, the road was lousy with the wealthy, all of them ripe for a robbing. Afterwards, though, the rich seemed to have collectively determined that fashionable jaunts outside the relative safety of Pest-Buda weren’t quite the thing when some cockless wonder of an Austrian could ruin your fun by deciding to detain you.

  I stepped to one side, concealing myself among the trees. The light from the lantern grew closer, a pale beacon bobbing like a fairy-light through the drifting snow. I could hear the hooves of a pair of horses beating in time, squelching on the mud. Jézus, I prayed, let them have gold and jewels and no guns and fearful dispositions.

  The carriage drew nearer. White, it was. Just like the Countess Almásy’s, I thought, smiling. The coachman was a fat lump in a long winter coat, with a pouf of a fur hat and a wound-up scarf concealing his face. The horses were a matched pair of handsome chestnut Percherons, worth a fair bit more than poor battle-scarred Lánya.

  It was time. I charged in front of the carriage, shouting, “Halt!”

  The carriage stilled. (Part of me did notice, then, that the horses went utterly quiet, with nary a snort or a whinny from either to complain of such an unceremonious stop. However, this half-made observation did not pierce through the fog of my excitement.) “Good evening, sir,” I called, feigning cheer.

  The coachman lifted the lantern, casting a yellow glow on me.

  “Don’t move,” I said. “I am armed, and I’m aiming at you, but I have no desire to harm you unless you give me cause.” I raised one pistol into the light so the coachman would see the gleam of the barrel. “I shall not leave you stranded. I’ll have one horse, not both, and I will speak to your master or mistress inside regarding what else you might have for me.”

  The coachman did not speak, but he (if he is the right word; I’m not sure it is) dropped the lantern. It shattered on the carriage perch, leaving the road dark again, with only the snow-beaten light of the moon. The coachmen climbed to the ground, desultory, as though he were simply stopping to stretch his legs and not faced with a loaded pistol.

  “Tread no further, sir,” I warned.

  The coachman did not listen, or perhaps he could not listen. I still couldn’t see his face, just the hat and the scarf. Slowly, he went past the horses; his movements were more like floating than walking. By then a nervous knot had formed in my stomach, but I pressed on. “Stop now, or I will fire.”

  He stopped. His head tilted. Then he lunged at me, alarmingly fast, and I stumbled back and shot at him. The ball caught him in the thigh.

  I could have shot him in the chest instead, if I had wanted. I was a good shot. Even Jóska couldn’t make light of my skill with guns, so formidable it was. It even netted me something of a reputation during the war. Travellers weren’t enemy soldiers, though, and I was no murderer. (We are gentlemen, Jóska would remind me, not criminals.) Rarely had Jóska and I encountered a target foolish enough to attempt to fight us, and on those occasions a careful shot to somewhere non-fatal would always quell the heroics.

  The coachman’s
head fell back when he was hit, sharp and soundless, like a puppet with its strings cut. None of the usual: no screaming, no doubling over, no cursing at me, no drip of blood from a wound.

  I’ve killed him, I thought wildly. “Ah—” I said, stepping forward, but before I could say more, the coachman’s coat spun, as though he and he alone had been caught in a brutal wind. His fur hat fell. Where a head should have been there was a black cloud of nothing. The scarf unwound and cascaded, in a spiral around him, to the ground.

  A second later, there was nothing left of the coachman but a pile of clothes. The horses watched, still as statues and uncaring, and I knew.

  There was only one piece of advice Jóska Bajusz had never delivered with humour.

  László. Listen. Never, ever, ever try to rob a magus.

  “Oh, shit,” I spat.

  In the next moment, I was frozen, and bathed in a dark blue mist. I tried to turn, to run, but my legs were rooted in the road. My hands were heavy like anchors; my pistols fell from my clumsy fingers. My tongue was a hot leaden weight in my mouth. Before, I had only known magic from the periphery of it: the graze of a spell during a battle, the lightning-storm smell that permeated the air when magi fought. The pure violence of this magic stunned me. My innards felt like they had together decided to all at once age and fail and die. My throat constricted; I could breathe only in thin streams. I couldn’t blink. Was this what Jóska felt?

  The carriage doors creaked open. First, I glimpsed old scratched boots, and the bottom of a ratty rough-spun cloak. Then the magus himself. His hood was down. His hair was long, tangled, and not the color you would expect on a magus: not white-blond, not blood-red, but an unremarkable peasant-brown.

  He walked with a pronounced limp as he approached me, but he did not carry a staff like most of the magi I had seen in the war. When he stood before my trapped self, I could see that he was young. Eighteen or nineteen, at most. His face was ruddy. A few pimples dotted his chin. My sort of luck lately, I thought. Dying at the hands of a crippled magus who’s just out of short pants.