"I was alone. Lost. I thought it would be wise to learn to protect myself and then there was rumor of war to come.
"The truth is, I had nothing else to do. So, I sought out those who might school me best and I learned all that I could. When that was done, I looked for still others who might train me until, in the end, I could find no one else. There was no one else.
"Then the winds of war stirred and there I went to wield my steel in a good cause. I was naive and thought I would pass unscathed and while no blade harmed me, the war found a way to wound me and I found myself lost once again."
The grey haired man nodded at the explanation, then said, "And when you sought to be schooled in weaponry, who did you find?"
"I chose Pyrene. And while he refused me at first, my persistence won him over in the end."
Modest Klees had been shifting his feet as the scarred man spoke, and at this last phrase his face turned positively scarlet.
“This is preposterous,” Klees interjected, “You cannot mean that you apprenticed under the sword master, Pyrene...not the Pyrene...? Surely, you meant to say that you say that you studied in the school founded by him."
"No...I meant to say exactly what I said. Pyrene, himself. I studied with him for thirty four years before he died. Then I traveled to the east where I had heard of another worthy swordsman and I stayed at his side, until he, too, died."
"The east?" Klees nearly shouted, "But there has never been anyone of renown in the east, unless you speak of Emaleh d’Ghan...but that is not possible. None of it."
"Nevertheless," said the scarred man, "As the years stretched on, I studied with other, lesser men. They were not more skilled than me, but they each knew something different, something unique that I was able to add to my repertoire."
"Wait," said Modest Klees, “That is quite enough. Monsieur, this is nothing less than a pack of lies. Anyone who knows the least thing in the study of swordsmanship can tell you that Pyrene of Taus lived and died two hundred years ago. Or, that Emaleh d’Ghan went to his grave not fifty years after Pyrene.
"My apologies for bringing you this teller of ridiculous tales. His skill with a blade cannot be questioned. As for the rest, he cannot be trusted. Not when lie after lie passes his lips...."
In a streak of blurred, shining steel and dark leather, the scarred man whirled at the same time as he drew his sword.
In a half second more, he held his blade against Modest Klees throat and said, “I do not lie. Rescind your accusations or blood will spill before your next heartbeat.”
“Enough,” said the grey haired man standing with the fireplace at his back.
“Modest, you have insulted our guest. Apologize immediately then get out of my sight.”
His voice was cold despite the great flames crackling and burning so near.
“Of course,” Modest Klees said as his face reddened, “My apologies, sir. I was carried away in my enthusiasm and admiration for your skill. I meant no offense, of course.”
The scarred man lowered his sword and took an unsteady step backward. He seemed to barely glance at the red faced man before him. If he had looked more closely he would have seen that the man’s color did not come only from shaming himself in front of his employer, but rather from anger bordering on raging hatred as he looked back at the drunken man still holding his sword.
Modest Klees bowed quickly at the waist in the general direction of his employer, then with great strides, he swept from the room.
There were only the two of them. Alone...one of them unarmed and defenseless.
“You do not fear that I might harm you now that your guard dog has been dismissed,” said the scarred man.
“Of course I don’t. For that matter, I would wager that you know exactly why that is.”
The scarred man slipped his sword back into its scabbard, then said, “I know that the tapestries lining these walls have sentries posted behind them and that there are drawn crossbows trained on me from holes cut into the walls.
“Yet, I will tell you that they could not stop me if I chose to cut you down, L’Anguille.”
The man picked his goblet up and chuckled.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But one must choose to act in faith when intuition speaks more loudly than logic, sir. Despite the stories you tell, I arrive at the improbable conclusion that you adhere to noble principles and that you would not harm a defenseless man."
"I would not consider you defenseless with the bolts trained on me at this moment. Yet, you have seen truly. I will not attempt your life. For now."
The man chuckle again at the bravado in the drunken man’s voice.
“Trust is all that I have, really, which is ironic when one considers it. Trust among criminals and thieves. It is a principle that must remain inviolate among us, or the organization can not hold.
"For example, the men who look down upon us from their bolt holes...they are deserving of my ultimate trust.
"How might this be, you could wonder? It is because each and every one has had his tongue cut out, and each one to a man is unlettered.
"They hear, but can tell no one. They see, yet can utter no word of dissent or collusion. So, I trust them with my life."
Red eyes flickered over the man named Cuixart Bleu, or L'Anguille by the local folk, "Yet, I note that Klees still has his tongue and is certainly a lettered man."
“Of course,” was the reply, "And you can note as well that he is no longer in this room while I learn more about just who you are.”
The gentleman stepped closer to the fire and held out a hand as if to warm himself upon the flames. He leaned closer to the center of the fire and reached toward the heat as if he wanted to hold it. Then, he hissed and pulled his hand back, flexing his fingers.
“At one time, he had my implicit trust in all things,” he said as he massaged his hand with the other. A faint smile came and went as he examined himself. Apparently satisfied that he had not been burned he looked back toward his guest.
“But as you have asked him to leave, one can assume this is no longer the case,” said the scarred man.
“Despite your apparent state of inebriation, you see clearly, sir. Yes, something has changed in Modest and just what it is I cannot be more precise. Something in the way he looks at me. As if the eyes looking out of that man’s face are ones I no longer recognize.
“Which is impossible, of course. We have known one another for many a long year.”
“Yet you doubt,” was the reply.
“I do...yes.”
"If I might ask, when did this sentiment of doubt begin, Monsieur?" asked the swordsman.
"I should say approximately two months have gone by since my dear Modest has begun making my skin crawl every time he looks my way.
"But, enough about that and more about you, sir. The war you spoke of...did you mean to imply it was the Goblin War?
"I did," he replied, "Like so many, I battled against their ilk, like none other, I still walk the earth."
"A prodigious feat, if I might say. The Goblin War is a century and a half behind us, yet there you are before me.
"How might that be?"
The scarred man shook his head.
"I cannot say. Nor do I care."
"I see. So who are you exactly, sir? I would address you with a certain measure of respect if I am to take you into my service."
"No one. I am no one."
"Fine," Cuixart Bleu said and did not notice how the drunken man flinched at his next words, as if they hurt him in some way.
"No One, you shall be."
The swordsman then took hold of himself then said, "How are you so sure I will enter your service, as you call it?"
"Well, you have said it yourself, No One. You have nothing better to do.
"Furthermore, If ever I have seen a man more lost than you, I cannot remember it. You will remain here because you have nothing else. That much is quite clear to me."
At that, the scarred man hung his head.
The truth of it hung about him like a curse....
“Oh, and there is one other thing. I need someone to keep an eye on Modest and his doings. Someone I can trust. Strangely enough, I feel that someone is you, No One.
The scarred man nodded without looking up as he considered a single phrase uttered by the chief of local, organized crime.
As if the eyes looking out of that man’s face are ones I no longer recognize.
His jawline bunched at the thought, the line of his vicious scar whitening as he chewed over that phrase like a bit of meat too tough to swallow.
Chapter Two: Melisse
The wind blew hard. It blew with enough force that the rain should have stung her face but Melisse did not notice.
The fire burning within her pushed aside all that the storm threw against her. As if it were more powerful, even, than Nature herself.
But the magic that protected her could do nothing against the memories that stung her like nettles as she trudged along the muddy road.
She was haunted by the sight of him and the haggard look in his eyes. In them, she had seen a defeated man, yet one resigned to his fate with tragic obstinance.
Melisse had gone down the mountain for only a short distance before leaving the trail to find an outcropping of rock from which she might look down upon a foreign land she would never see.
The south had always seemed a place of such promise. A land of new beginnings where she could start over. Where she could become anyone she wanted and live a life that had not already been written the day she had been born to a servant woman in a nobleman’s home.
She waited until the sun fled before deepening shadows that crept up the mountainside. Then, Melisse turned around and began the long trek back the way she had come.
The Marechal was right. To the north lay her destiny. She would return to clear her name. But, she would do it alone for she would risk no hurt to the beautiful, scarred man who had fought to defend her life before an invincible demon.
Even if her refusal of him wounded him through and through like no blade ever could, Melisse did not forget what happened to the men who had come too close to her.
They lay in ashes...all of them.
But, not him. Not again.
Despite herself, on the heels of this thought came the image of a smiling young man during a moonlit night. One who had chuckled in a way that had pulled upon Melisse, deep, deep inside. The sound of his low laughter echoed in her mind as she remembered the raging flames that had burned the barn down around them and him with it.
Not again....
She lowered her head, then forced herself forward although the night lay deep and dark and as unknowable as her future.
Emara took a deep breath then blew as gently as she could upon the smoking leaves before her. Over herself and the fire that refused to start, she held an oiled piece of canvas against the rain pounding down.
She took pride in being able to light a fire when even the men could not manage it. Wind, snow, or rain usually posed no real problem for her when it was time to light the evening’s fire, then warming water for the Doyenne’s tea.
This time, though, the ground was sopping wet and every time she struck sparks from flint and steel, they would shine brightly for only an instant before snuffing out again to send up thin plumes of smoke that stung her eyes.
The Doyenne would not mind if she could not manage it. The old woman had grown ever more fragile as they had voyaged north, far from the warm lands of the south, there where the Gitan people plied their trade as they moved endlessly from one village to another.
The Gitan men would take on work for a short time, doing the things that the men of the villages did not want to do for themselves.
The Gitan women would mend clothing, or sell poultices for the sick...sometimes, when they were lucky, they would serve as midwives, for Gitan women were known the land over as bringers of fortune if present at a birthing.
Her people traveled, in perpetual motion, but then found themselves at a loss for the direction that their cherished Doyenne had declared for them.
Some whispered that her many years had finally begun to weigh too heavily on her mind. There were low voiced discussions that grew louder and louder as they traveled as straight as an arrow to the north these past few weeks.
They did so because they deferred in all things to the Doyenne’s wishes. The woman was the oldest person any of them had ever seen. One hundred and thirteen years ran in deep lines down her face.
It was said that she was descended from a brood of northern witches and for this alone the Gitan would have respected her.
But, there was more to that old woman than just bloodlines that ran into the world of shadows and spells.
If they followed her every desire as she traced out their paths on worn maps drawn upon old parchment, it was because she read the future and her readings were ever true.
Some Gitan women would pretend to have the gift. There were other caravans that criss-crossed the southern lands and bad reputation followed in their wake. For they lacked the touch of shadow upon their souls and their only motivation was to part naive villagers from their few coins as the Gitan women moaned over steaming cauldrons that the drought would end, that a child’s fever would end, or that famine would soon come to an end.
The only talent those women possessed was the ability to foretell what those poor people wished to hear.
Unlike the Doyenne who, when the time came for it, would command Emara to fetch her divination cauldron. It was carefully stored in a battered, old leather case, its color a vague blue. And just beside it, was a second case just like the first, only that one was covered in bright, red leather with odd tool marks that covered it over in intricate patterns. Compared to the blue case, the red was as if it had been made just the day before, for how little use it had seen.
The fact being that the Doyenne had never asked Emara for the red. Always the blue, and just what the red case might be for, Emara had no idea.
She only knew that when she looked at those strange patterns for more than a moment or two, it made her feel queasy and ill. If she had to say why, she would have said that it was because those patterns seemed to move. As if they were trying to tell her something.
But from within the usual, worn blue case, the Doyenne would unwrap a small black cauldron swaddled in wool cloth and several vials of various colored powders and philters.
Emara had seen with her own eyes as the dark waters of the cauldron would seethe with no fire beneath it necessary to make it churn.
The old woman would simply tap the tiniest fraction of one powder or another into the water of cauldron, or sometimes a blend of several. As to why she chose one way or another, Emara could find no rhyme or reason, but what resulted each time was what really mattered.
The Doyenne would whisper in strange tones then gaze deeply for a time as peculiar colors appeared in queer whirls, only to disappear again as others came to take their place. In them, the old woman would see patterns that dictated what would happen and how it would happen and when it would happen.
From her pronouncements, their caravan of Gitan wagons erred from one town to another, one village to the next, and it was always to the ones who prospered just a bit better than the others around them that the Doyenne would send them.
Their wagons were more richly decorated than those of their cousins. Their clothing more extravagant and colorful.
The Doyenne had always seen to it that their own clan had remained prosperous even during the worst years of hardship.
She had never led them wrong.
Until now. Or, so said the whispers late in the evening that had grown to open dissent the further north they had come.
Along the path the Doyenne showed them, there had been no rich villages, no fat merchants and their wives from whom the Gitans might earn some coin.
Instead, there had only been an endless road that had led in a direct line away from all they had ever
known.
All this because they had always trusted the old woman.
Until now.
Emara thought that this added to the apparent strain then written in the old woman’s wrinkles. Never had she seen the elderly women look so old and exhausted.
There were times when the Doyenne had been obliged to work tirelessly, reading portents of things to come, and what she had told Emara was the worst of it was choosing the balance of information that should be divulged and what part should be kept hidden.
For with each good thing the Doyenne saw, she said it carried its own reflection of sad tidings, or evil deeds that she could not tell.
But whatever it was that now weighed so heavily upon her, Emara would have liked to see her eat just a little of something warm. There was a part of yesterday’s meal that she had set aside for the old woman, just in case she would find her appetite again.
Emara had taken care to simmer the stew gently, cooking the potatoes and carrots until they were very soft. She had minced a bit of pheasant into tiny bits that would pass easily between the toothless gums of the old woman.
She only wanted to see her regain a little strength.
Instead, it had been several days since the Doyenne had eaten, refusing all that Emara brought her, except for water and tea.
The grumbling among the Gitan had grown worse as a storm blew in to further drench their spirits.
That was when the Doyenne spoke and it was in a trembling, yet clear, voice that she had ordered all the caravan to ride ahead several leagues.
She had told them that fate rode the storm clouds and it would not be safe for all of them to remain together. She had told them it would only last the night and that with the dawn, clear skies and lightened spirits would follow.
Emara had expected some argument from them. Instead, the men simply shrugged and flicked the reins of their horses without looking back. The women who had left with them remained hidden inside the covered wagons and if it was only the rain from which they sought shelter and not the apparent decline of the wise old woman, Emara would have been surprised.
The Marechal Chronicles: Volume IV, The Chase: A Dark Fantasy Tale Page 4