The man paced forward slowly into the starlight. His lined face was no longer young, but he was far from middle-aged. A well-sculpted mustache swept across his upper lip and a sinister tuft of beard pointed down from his chin. A long, heavy coat concealed the shape of his body, but Lorenzo guessed from the angles of his face and his movements that the man was rather lean. His eyes stared out in an expression of intense study and yet also mild amusement. He nodded curtly and said, “Salvator Fabris, at your service.”
Lorenzo willed himself to stand very still. A moment ago he had been supremely confident that no matter what was about to happen, he would walk away from the encounter unharmed. Now that confidence was gone. The name alone was enough to cast dark doubts over his own abilities. Fabris’s reputation wasn’t merely one of skill or excellence, but casual ruthlessness and viciousness, and suddenly the long cuts on Enrique’s face seemed a mercy.
The one story that Lorenzo had long associated with this man was of an honor duel. Years ago, some wealthy Roman hired the young Fabris to fend off an angry Sicilian. The Sicilian unleashed a dozen Espani diestros to search the Roman’s home for a certain misplaced daughter, but Fabris had met them on the lawn and defeated all twelve of them in rapid succession. Later that day, the Sicilian had received the bodies of his champions, but not his daughter.
It was the sort of story meant for drunken embellishment. After all, there were no witnesses. There was no reason to believe it was true. Maybe it was only one diestro. Maybe Fabris hadn’t fought alone. Maybe. But for years, Lorenzo had allowed that story to worm its way into the mythology of this man, and now as he stood a dozen paces from Fabris, he couldn’t escape his irrational certainty that the entire story was absolutely true.
Lorenzo cleared his throat. “What do you want with me?”
“What do I want? Oh no, signore, you misunderstand. I want nothing. You, on the other hand, appear to want a great deal. You must have been quite pleased with yourself when that bloated swine Faleiro came to offer you my job.” Fabris rested one hand on the elaborate swept hilt of his rapier.
“I suppose it’s possible that I might have been pleased if he had offered me your job, but he left before we had a chance to speak.” Lorenzo rested his own gloved hand on his espada. He knew the Italian blade was just a little longer and lighter, and that small difference might be all that was needed to defeat him. “I was, however, a bit put out to find that your friend Faleiro helped himself to a little book of mine that I would very much like returned.”
“Ah yes! Funny you should mention that. Faleiro mentioned it, too. Just before I killed him.” Fabris held up the small leather-bound journal. “Fascinating story, this. Your handwriting leaves something to be desired, but your drawing is really quite excellent. I particularly liked your maps.”
Lorenzo blinked. Faleiro’s dead. My book is in this man’s hand. It never reached Magellan. No one knows about the stone after all. It’s over. The skyfire stone is safe! For a moment, all his concerns about Fabris were swept away by a cleansing wave of relief. He smiled and nodded. “Thank you. I was very proud of the maps. May I have it back now?” He held out his empty gloved hand.
“Oh, I think not. You see, I just couldn’t put it down. I read the entire book last night, and I found one part in the middle especially interesting. Your heroic journey through the jungles of the New World. The priests, the soldiers, and the stone. The otherworldly stone. Boiling soldiers alive in their armor. Very interesting reading, indeed.”
Lorenzo frowned. “This stone is a gift, a life-giving gift, an inspiration, a clue to the broader nature of the universe. It is not a weapon.”
“Oh, my dear Lorenzo. Of course it’s a weapon,” Fabris said. “It’s the most powerful weapon I’ve ever heard of. If these stones can boil a river, they’ll make short work of a city harbor. Carthage comes to mind. They have a lovely harbor full of things I wouldn’t mind boiling or burning.”
“Yes, I’m sure Rome would find all sorts of horrible things to do with the stone if they had it, which they don’t, and they won’t.” Lorenzo flexed his hand to work some blood into his fingers. “May I have my book back now, please?”
“No,” Fabris said airily. “Tell me about the Mazighs. Are you working with them to build a weapon around the stone? Or were you just planning to use that little airship of theirs to fly over the mountains to find the stone?”
“The Mazighs?” Lorenzo shrugged. “They’re just old friends from out of town. Visiting. For the holidays.”
Fabris nodded and shrugged back. “Perhaps. Although, I must say they didn’t appear to be visiting for the holidays when Admiral Magellan and I were watching them circle above the harbor in Valencia.”
“Magellan?” Lorenzo glanced about at the shadows again, looking for the regiment of soldiers that must surely have accompanied Fabris.
“Yes. Technically, I’m here at the Admiral’s request. He’d like the Mazighs dead and asked me to see to the matter personally. A bit simple for a man of my talents, but far be it from me to refuse an order from the man paying my rather obscene salary.”
“But the Mazighs aren’t soldiers or spies. They’re just travelers. There’s no reason to kill them.”
Fabris nodded. “If you say so. I can always ask them myself after I kill you and your extremely unimpressive students.”
“Honestly?” Lorenzo curled his fingers around his sword hilt. “Why would you kill me? A complete stranger who has never done you any wrong, whom you’ve never even met before? You would murder me and then murder those poor innocent people? That’s what you want to do with your life?”
“Honestly? Yes.” Salvator drew his blade, the steel singing softly as it came free of its sheathe. “Although, I’ll also happily kill you to get my hands on this skyfire stone of yours. Italia has her share of enemies and problems. The Hellans, the Eranians, the Numidians, and oh yes, you Espani. In fact, your dear Admiral Magellan has quite a nice little boat in Valencia that I very much want to destroy. Your stone will be invaluable to my efforts. Your poor España fell in the New World and I intend to see that it remains fallen.”
It’s just talk, he’s all talk. Lorenzo whipped his espada out into the starlight, slicing through the chill air in a sharp and precise movement. “Is this how you earned your reputation? By hiding in the dark and making grandiose threats?”
Fabris chuckled. “Not at all. I earned my reputation by killing men, better men than you. And also by serving my country and my king. I don’t make the mistake of dividing my service between masters. The church can buy its own swords if it needs them. As it often does.”
What now? He isn’t afraid of me, he won’t back down. And I can’t let him leave with my journal either. I have to fight him. And I have to beat him. Lorenzo said, “You’re a small man with small ideals. You kill people for money. Do you understand how pathetic and common that makes you?”
“I am the Supreme Knight of the Order of Seven Hearts.” Salvator strode forward onto the road, the hard mud cracking beneath his boots. “Have you heard of it?”
“I heard my stomach growl just now. I really need to get back for supper, if you don’t mind. So I can stab you a few times before I go, or not. It’s up to you, really. But I do need my journal back now, if you please.”
Fabris glared and quick-stepped into position, his blade raised. Lorenzo presented his sword in a mirror-stance. For a moment, neither man moved. Then Salvator lunged and Lorenzo shuffled back, swatting his blade away. As they studied one another, the hidalgo reached back with his left hand to pull his heavy coattails up and away from his legs, and then he slashed at the Italian’s arm. Salvator parried and stabbed at Lorenzo’s belly, but the hidalgo sidestepped the attack, grabbed the Italian’s sword arm, and drove his fist into the older man’s face.
Salvator stumbled back as a trickle of blood darkened his moustache. “What the hell was that? Are you a diestro or just some street brawler?”
“Who’s to s
ay?” Lorenzo smiled. “I tend to do whatever feels right, in the moment.”
The Italian flash-stepped forward and unleashed a furious rain of slashes and thrusts at Lorenzo’s head, neck, and chest, and for several breathless moments it was all the diestro could do to parry and block them. Each flick of Salvator’s blade was aimed at some vital organ, at something Lorenzo knew he could not live happily without. And as he danced backward up the frozen road, grimly holding his defensive lines and angles, the story of the twelve dead diestros loomed up in his imagination.
Salvator threw a quick thrust at his shoulder and Lorenzo leapt forward to ram his elbow into the Italian’s stomach. He straightened up sharply and clapped the man’s head between his right elbow and his empty left hand. Salvator pulled back, slashing wildly with his right hand while clutching his bleeding ear with his left. His teeth flashed in a terrible snarling rictus. “God damn you, Quesada, fight like a man!”
“Meaning what, exactly? You’d prefer that I fence with open trousers?”
Salvator raced forward, slicing at Lorenzo’s legs with his blade flashing in the starlight. The hidalgo quick-stepped back, slapping away the few slashes that actually came near his feet, but he felt the slope of the road behind him steepening and when his retreating heel fell into a frozen wheel rut in the mud, he looked down to check his footing.
The rapier sliced through his right sleeve and seared the flesh of his sword arm even as he tried to parry. Lorenzo fell over the frozen wheel rut as he clamped his left hand over the cut. Fabris struck again and the hidalgo watched his espada fly across the road and clatter against the frozen face of a snow drift. The cold of the road beneath him stabbed up through his heavy coat to sting his legs and back as the Italian stood over him, his rapier hanging at his side.
Fabris exhaled, his breath dancing and swirling in the cold night air. “And where is your God now, Don Lorenzo?”
Lorenzo shrugged. “Everywhere, nowhere. Same as always. He hasn’t written lately. Some people are beginning to worry, actually.”
Salvator snorted as he pointed his sword at the hidalgo’s throat. “And what does a man of God think at a moment like this? Do you curse your lord and savior for abandoning you, for spurning your devotion? Or do you cling to your sad faith right to the last moment, praying for the heavens to open and a host of angels to save your worthless skin?”
Lorenzo shook his head slowly. God was the last thing on his mind. He kept picturing Qhora sitting by the fire, waiting for him to come home alive. And his students waiting for him to come striding through the door to tell them all was well. And poor Enrique with his cheeks weeping dark blood. And even the foreigners who had trusted him to lead them all to safety.
But mostly Qhora. Tiny, beautiful Qhora. As powerful and fearless as she was fragile and lonely. And with him dead, she would be utterly alone.
If only. Lorenzo winced. If only we had had a child, this might not be so horrible. At least I would have fulfilled the Mother’s commandment, and left someone behind with Qhora.
He said, “No, not at all. I just—” A movement in the shadows off to the right behind the Italian caught Lorenzo’s eye. “—I just find myself feeling very grateful. Grateful for all I’ve been given. For my life, my health, my friends. And for cats.”
“Cats?” Salvator frowned.
“Yes.” Lorenzo smiled faintly. “I’m feeling profoundly grateful for cats right now.”
Behind the Italian, Atoq padded softly across the covered bridge, his massive body weighing heavily on the old, frozen planks. The wood creaked and groaned with his every step. Salvator stepped back from the hidalgo to look over his shoulder at the enormous beast walking toward him. Atoq’s claws clicked on the ice and his long white fangs shone in the starlight as he emerged from the bridge and proceeded up the road.
“What the hell is that?” Salvator pointed his rapier at the saber-toothed monster.
Lorenzo stood up slowly, still clutching his right arm. “Call it fate. Call it luck. Call it a heavenly host. My wife calls him Atoq.”
Eight hundred pounds of carnivorous flesh and fang thumped up the road toward the two men. Atoq’s eyes flashed in the starlight, two bright silver coins in the dark. The cat ran a long black tongue around his mouth as he came alongside Lorenzo and butted his huge head against the hidalgo’s leg. He swung his head up on his massive, powerful neck to stare at the Italian, and then he sneezed.
“You fight with your fists and with animals. So much for Espani chivalry.” Salvator lowered his weapon and hid it behind the bulk of his coats, his eyes never leaving the cat.
“I’d rather never fight at all,” Lorenzo said as he retrieved his espada from the ground, wiped the snow and ice from the blade, and slipped it away inside his coat. “Killing you won’t make my life any better. And sending you away alive and angry will probably make my life slightly worse, sooner or later. Is there anything I could say or do that would settle this matter between us?”
“I’d be happy to leave your worthless students and your ugly wife in peace,” Salvator said. “Simply give me the skyfire stone and your Mazigh friends.”
“No.” Lorenzo shook his head. “A bit of advice, then. Atoq here will be in the village with us, and on the road with us, and everywhere we go. He knows your scent now. If you should ever meet him alone, he will kill you. And it won’t be a quick death.”
Salvator nodded. “I believe you.”
“My book. Now.”
Salvator tossed the leather-bound journal to him, and then the Italian melted back into the shadows and only the soft crunching of his footfalls on the crumbling ice betrayed his crossing back over the bridge to the far side of the creek.
Lorenzo knelt down beside his furred savior and looked into his bright eyes. “Atoq, give us a roar. A big one. Roar? Rawwww?” He pointed across the creek.
The great cat swung his head toward the bridge and roared a deep, throaty roar that sounded like thunder and fire crashing down a mountain side. And from across the creek, Lorenzo heard a man stumble in the snow, and swear.
The hidalgo smiled and began trudging up the road with huge cat padding softly at his side. His injured arm burned and stung, but the cold was already working its numbing magic on the pain. He wrapped his fingers around the familiar leather cover of his little journal, and he reached the inn with a bright smile on his face.
I won. I beat him.
Sort of.
Day Five
Chapter 12. Qhora
The ride out from Algora was quiet and grim. Qhora sat astride Wayra, for once taking no pleasure in the sensation of traveling the world as a proper lady, free and proud, striking fear and awe in the eyes of all who saw her. Now all she could think of was the poor boy back at the inn in Algora with his cheeks sown shut with only an innkeeper’s wife to care for him. And after she brushed away a few tears of rage over young Enrique, she twisted the reins in her fist at the thought of the stitches in her Enzo’s arm. She’d done them herself and knew he’d be fine in a few weeks, but a few weeks was a long time, especially as he was riding up into the north and not back to their home.
“Faleiro’s dead and you have your journal. The stone is safe. Can’t we go home now?” she asked. “We should be taking Enrique home where you both can rest.”
“I wish we could, but Magellan’s probably going to be looking for our Mazigh friends for quite a while and home may not be safe. Besides, we now have the illustrious Salvator Fabris who wants the stone for the Italians, so the sooner we have it locked away someplace safe, the better,” Lorenzo said.
“You should let me take care of it,” she said. “Let me take care of him.”
Lorenzo smiled atop his horse beside her. “As much as I would love to see you again in all your Incan finery, tearing across the snowfields with Atoq roaring at your side, I’d rather have you here with me. After all, I need a bodyguard now.” He touched his arm.
She gazed at him a moment. He was taller than her,
but Wayra’s shoulder was higher than his saddle, which put her at eye level with him. She glanced back at the others, all riding and walking more than a few dozen yards behind, and she said, “Was he really better than you?”
“Sword to sword, I would probably have to say he’s the better man. He certainly has the better weapon. But he’s not terribly creative. I put my fist in his eye and my elbow in his jaw. He may be the greatest fencer who ever lived, but he’s only a fencer. Last night all it took were a few dirty tricks I learned in the army to bloody his face and shake his confidence.”
“He cut you.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. He didn’t mean to cut my arm, I’m sure. It was an accident.”
“Oh really?”
“Absolutely. I’m quite sure he was aiming for my throat.”
“Don’t joke, Enzo.”
“It wasn’t a joke, love. Just proof that he isn’t quite as good as he’d like me to believe.”
As they plodded down the muddy lane beneath a gray sky, Qhora continued to glance back from the top of every rise and hill to scan the miles behind them for a lone man on foot or a rider quietly pursuing them with a rapier on his hip. But she saw only a handful of mule-drawn carts and children running along the tops of the garden walls throwing fistfuls of snow at each other and laughing.
Fabris might not be behind us at all. He might have gone on ahead in the night. He might have allies somewhere. He might be planning an ambush.
“I’m going on ahead,” she announced. “Wayra needs to run and I think Atoq is ahead of us, rather than behind. What’s the name of the village we’ll be staying in tonight?”
“Ariza.”
“Then I’ll see you at the inn in Ariza this evening.” And before he could object, she nudged the great eagle into a sprint and let the morning chill tear at her exposed face for a few minutes. They ran and ran, dashing down the wide muddy road and drawing the occasional stare from the startled people working near the road’s edge. They ran until she came to be alone in the middle of a wide white plain with more than a mile between her and next nearest soul.
Halcyon (The Complete Trilogy) Page 48