Knight's Blood

by Julianne Lee

  “Relative to what?”

  “Edinburgh, what else?”

  Trefor shrugged and glanced about. “The whole country is more tuned to the realms than other places, but relative to Edinburgh, no. Stirling is no closer to the other side than anywhere else in Scotland. Not that I can tell, anyway. Edinburgh is... sort of like an orifice.” He grinned. “Like the asshole of the faerie realms.”

  “Oh.” Alex had to chuckle at that. He climbed some more and took a seat near Trefor’s on the chunk of fallen wall. Below, the closely packed buildings of the town seemed tumbled atop each other and clinging to the granite slope like barnacles. Off in the distance was the wood that covered the rise from which Robert had launched his warriors in the recent battle, the Bannock Burn wending its way around it. Not far, on the other side of the burn, was the field where William Wallace had also clobbered the English a couple of decades ago. Today some people wandered here and there, going about their business in peace. The hilltop was quiet. There was no wind today. Alex sat in silence with his son.

  Then Trefor said, as if continuing a conversation in progress, “They named me Trefor Andrews.”

  “Who did?”

  “The people who found me in the Dumpster.”

  Dumpster? Alex’s face warmed with anger at the people who had left him there, and at himself for failing to prevent it. He looked over at Trefor’s impassive face. More than impassive, it was blank beyond lack of expression. There was a dreaminess about it as he gazed out across the land where less than two years ago his parents had faced the army of King Edward II and his mother had nearly died. “How did you end up in a Dumpster? Those faeries took you, and then just threw you away?”

  Trefor shrugged. “I guess. That’s where the authorities found me. A Dumpster in a place called Carthage, Tennessee. They say I was nearly dead, lying among the garbage for a day or so, dehydrated and all. A couple of weeks old, so the ones who kidnapped me had kept me for a while, I guess. It’s probably why I survived.”

  “Long enough to get you from London to the U.S.”

  “I think that wouldn’t have been much trouble for them. I found out a year ago it was the Bhrochan who did it. They came to me to let me know what they’d done.”

  Alex made a rasping, disgusted noise. “Bragging?”

  Trefor shrugged again. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t think it was the same particular people who came to me. One was an old lady who was part human, and she told me everything.”

  “No, she didn’t. She told you lies.”

  Trefor bristled. “She told it to me as she saw it.” Alex wondered how come Trefor was so touchy on the subject of these Bhrochan. The faeries were crazy; if he had met some of them he should know that. “She knew who my parents were and where to find you.”

  “And you just believed her?”

  Trefor peered at him. “I found you, didn’t I?”

  Alex had to admit he had a point. He asked, “What was her interest in you?”

  Trefor chewed on the inside of his cheek, almost like a cow chewing cud, and for a while it seemed Alex wouldn’t get a reply. But then Trefor said, “Fate, she said. It was. She was my fate. And I think I agree with her.” An odd note had slipped into his voice.

  “Ending up in a Dumpster was your fate?”

  Trefor gave a wry laugh. “Apparently.”

  “So she told you your name was MacNeil and then, poof, sent you to my island?”

  “No. First she told me my destiny was here, and then taught me to speak the language and to be lucky.”

  “And you just bought that and bailed from your life?”

  “What life? I was a cook in a greasy spoon. One of those nasty hole-in-the-wall places that open for the locals for breakfast in the middle of the night and shut down right after lunch. I spent my mostly predawn days frying eggs and hash browns and flipping hamburgers. Restaurants. Always restaurants.”

  “You didn’t think you could do better than being a short-order cook?”

  Trefor shook his head. “I had to fight to get that. On my eighteenth birthday the system turned me loose and that was that. No driver’s license, no high school diploma, no place to live, nothing. Even the army didn’t want me.”

  “You’re a wiz with Farsi and the army didn’t want you?”

  Trefor tensed and gave him a blank look. Alex knew he was sounding critical and knew he should back off. Trefor then said, “No foreign languages for me in high school; I sure wasn’t going to college. Everyone knows as much Farsi as I knew back then. The army was full up with guys more fluent than I was.”

  Alex blinked and frowned. “Farsi? Nobody — “

  “Twenty years later, man. It was twenty years after you left.”

  “Oh.” Alex nodded. “Oh, yeah.” Twenty years. He realized he’d been thinking of Trefor as a month-old adult.

  Trefor continued. “It wasn’t until I started working in restaurants a few years ago that I discovered I could learn languages. I thought about trying to be an interpreter, but nobody wants to communicate through a guy who never graduated high school, who wears his hair long to cover his deformed ears, and who smells like a slum apartment. See, the foster folk and social workers taught me nothing and told me nothing. I didn’t even know how much I didn’t know. I didn’t know how to fill out a job application. I didn’t know how to write out a check, which wasn’t an issue for a while because it was years before I had money for a checking account. I’m still not good with them, and I kinda like the barter system they’ve got here.”

  Alex couldn’t imagine not knowing those things and couldn’t remember where he’d learned them. It boggled him that some children weren’t taught.

  Trefor continued. “At first Mike and I bounced around homeless shelters for a while, then I finally snagged a steady job by lying like a rug about just about everything on the application. Got an apartment and a rickety old car.” He shook his head. “That place made your no-plumbing-or-electricity castle look like a... well, a castle.”

  Alex resisted a grin at the joke, but his mouth twitched.

  “You bet your sweet ass I bailed.” Trefor stuck a piece of the grass into his mouth to chew on the end.

  “No, I guess I can’t blame you.”

  “Anyway, that should answer your questions.”

  Alex frowned. “What questions?”

  “The ones you came up here to ask. The ones that have been bugging you ever since I showed up.” Trefor’s face didn’t give away any indication whether he was a reader of minds or just a good guesser.

  Alex looked out over the medieval landscape devoid of roads and strewn with thick forests, and wondered if he’d really wanted to know the things Trefor had just told him.

  ***

  In the week James spent in Stirling he managed to recruit eight more swords. Then the army of raiders headed south for the Borderlands.

  While riding, there was a lot of time for Alex to think about Lindsay and the revelation Trefor had made about her. He tried to figure out all the implications, but whenever he went back over Danu’s involvement, his thoughts all crumbled to nonsense. Why hadn’t Lindsay told him? Why hadn’t Danu told him? How did this news reflect on the question of why the Bhrochan had taken Trefor? Indeed, why had they taken him? Those creatures were all crazy: could it be the more humanlike Danann were just as bonkers, but hid it better? Alex kept looking over at his son, surreptitiously, and wondered if Trefor had inherited the faerie mentality. God forbid. The last thing he wanted was to have a flake like that guarding his back on a battlefield.

  And that thought brought to mind Trefor’s lack of skill with a sword. Probably Mike’s as well, but Alex would just as soon that nitwit die in his first raid so they would all be rid of him. Trefor was another matter entirely. All things considered, he’d rather Trefor would live. As they approached the Marches, Alex went to him one evening and said, “You need to learn how to swing a broadsword.”

  Trefor was sitting at his fire and look
ed up at Alex with an air of offended ego. “I told you, I can handle a sword.” Alex may have been his father, but there was no getting around that he was still only five years older and could not command the authority of an older and wiser parent. All he had on Trefor was the two years he’d spent in this century his son had not. But Alex didn’t want to think of that.

  “Right. Show me.” Alex drew his sword and held it ready at his side.

  Trefor considered the challenge for a moment, then stood and reached for his sword from among the pile of belongings next to his bedroll. As he straightened, Alex hauled back and swung, and Trefor parried like a fencer, misdirecting the force of the assault, and his eyes went wide at the force of Alex’s sword. He stumbled back as Alex swung again. And again Trefor was forced to retreat under the fast blows of his father’s sword.

  The terrible thing, though, was that Alex was not trying for speed. He was telegraphing his moves in order not to damage Trefor unnecessarily. His heart tightened that his son had come to this century as poorly prepared to survive as he’d been in the twenty-first century. This was very bad. Trefor wouldn’t last more than a minute in a real fight.

  An Dubhar laid off and stood down after backing Trefor a few steps. The dread of losing Trefor to an English sword shocked him with its power. As thoroughly annoying as the guy was, he was still somehow more important than anything else in Alex’s life, and the realization of that vulnerability nearly paralyzed him. His response was to fight the emotion, as he fought all emotions that gave him trouble, and voice went to a snarl with it.

  “Had I been a real opponent,” Alex said, “You would be lying on the ground now, bleeding to death. Death. Do you understand what that means? I would have sliced through your mail, hacked you to bits, and you would be helpless and dying with the full knowledge that there is no surgery here, no medical attention that will put you back together once you’ve been laid open sufficiently.” He paused to let that sink in, and his mouth pressed together with the anger that rose from his concern. Trefor was a problem that needed to be solved.

  Trefor gazed at him, his eyes aflame with rage. He was probably about to tell Alex off for attacking him like that, but Alex also saw a little fear in his demeanor. Good. Fear, he’d learned, was an excellent motivator, and even if Trefor would never admit Alex was right in his assessment, then at least the guy might want to learn how to survive. It didn’t matter whether Trefor liked him; it only mattered that he would live.

  Alex sheathed his sword and held out his hand. “Let me see your sword.”

  Trefor hesitated, then handed over his weapon. Alex examined it, a long-bladed cross-hilt with a grip nearly long enough to use as a hand-and-a-half bastard sword. It was genuine, crafted in this time. “You bought it after you arrived in this century.”

  “Of course I did. I’m not stupid.”

  Alex ignored that. “It’s still too heavy. You need a lighter sword. Faster. Shorter, because you’re not tall enough to wield a sword this long. You and I are taller than most around here, but this thing is for someone well over six feet, and it’s too heavy for anyone who wants to last more than a few minutes in a fight.”

  “I want a heavy sword, to cut through chain mail.”

  “You don’t need this much weight for that. If you were bigger, then maybe you could get away with this blade. A smaller sword, wielded correctly, will do what you want. And it’ll do it without wearing you out.”

  “I’ve seen your claymore. It’s a monster.”

  Alex’s eyes narrowed at him. “You’ll never see me swing it while mounted, because I use both hands. I can use it one-handed if I have to, if I hook a finger over a quillon, but I prefer not to. Two hands are better. Lindsay used to carry it on her saddle, to hand to me if I was ever unhorsed.” For a moment he flashed on how he’d used it to defend her at Bannockburn, and his chest tightened. Quickly he took a deep breath and put her out of his mind. He continued. “And it’s lighter than you think it is.” He hefted Trefor’s sword in his hand. “It’s hardly any heavier than this thing. Next chance you get, replace this with a lighter sword. One that really will cut through chain mail.”

  “This’ll be fine.”

  “Do what I say.”

  “No.”

  Alex wanted to smack him for this stubbornness. He wanted to slap him around like the fool he was acting, and make him understand that because Alex had experience he knew best. But he also knew Trefor would never listen on that account. Alex’s authority as laird wasn’t going to cut it because Trefor hadn’t been raised to respect this system. Alex had no hold, no leverage to even make Trefor understand the importance of what he would teach.

  Then Alex realized what he must do. It was a terrible thing, but it was necessary. Trefor would never learn any other way, and it was far better he be taught now, by someone who would not kill him, than by an opponent who would certainly try and probably succeed. Alex tossed Trefor’s weapon back to him and drew his own sword again. “Defend yourself.”

  Trefor readily went en garde like an eighteenth-century dandy, and Alex sighed with deep impatience. Fencing. Perfunctorily, with almost no effort, he feinted to the left and stabbed to the right. Trefor fell for it completely, and the tip of Alex’s blade went easily through Trefor’s hauberk, into his left arm, then through and partway into a back muscle. Trefor gasped and stumbled back. Alex stood down, knowing he’d shocked Trefor enough that there would be no reprisal. Not today, anyway.

  “What the fuck did you do that for?” Trefor let his sword drop to the ground, and he held his bleeding shoulder.

  “Probably just extended your life expectancy. There’s always the possibility of infection, but you probably won’t get one.”

  “You stabbed me!”

  “I could have killed you!” Alex wiped Trefor’s blood from his sword onto his trews and scabbarded the weapon, then stepped in to impress his words upon his son. “When you are fighting for real, you are defending your life. There are no rules. There is no such thing as honor or chivalry when you are fighting someone who wants to kill you. There is only making certain you are not the one to die that day.”

  Trefor’s eyes took on the sullen look again that enraged Alex so terribly, and it was no longer such a puzzle why he hadn’t learned anything in high school. Alex gritted his teeth and held back his hand from slapping that look from Trefor’s face.

  He continued. “When I tell you that you need a smaller sword, it isn’t because I like hearing myself talk. Nor is it because I’m a control freak who wants everyone around me to be like me. When I say you need another sword, it’s because you need it to stay alive. This one will get you killed, because it’s too damn big, too heavy, and you don’t know how to use a sword that has an edge and weighs more than a pound and a half. I don’t care where you bought it, or how much it cost, or how big my own standby sword is. Yours is too... bloody... big.” He glared at Trefor and let that sink in. The sullenness did not abate, but after a few seconds Alex said, “Here. Feel this.” He handed over his own sword.

  For a second it looked like Trefor wasn’t going to comply, but then he took his hand from his wound, wiped the blood onto the thigh of his trews, and took the offered sword. It was also a cross-hilt, with a gilded pommel. Quite fancy compared to others wielded by knights of his station, and the tip of the blade was tapered to a point where Trefor’s was not.

  Trefor admitted with obvious reluctance, “This went through the mail like it wasn’t there.”

  “You’ve got to be faster. You’ve handicapped yourself by buying a sword that’s too long for you. Too heavy. You think that because it’s a broadsword it’s supposed to he slow, but you’re wrong. The guys you’ll be fighting are a lot faster than you think. They’re faster than I just was, and they’ll be out to kill you. Also, they’re not likely to ever feel it necessary to tell you to defend yourself. They’ll just come after you, and they won’t apologize afterward for being so rude.”

  Even Trefor
had to give a wry smile at that.

  “Do what I say, man. Get yourself a new sword.” Alex took back his weapon, then gestured to Trefor’s on the ground. “Pick that up, and we’ll go on.”

  Trefor grimaced and flexed his left shoulder a little to indicate his pain. “How about we let his heal first?”

  Alex snorted. “That’s nothing, and if you can’t handle a little pain during practice you’ll be worthless on the field and I won’t have you in my outfit. Pick up your sword, and we’ll continue. It’ll be good experience to learn to ignore a little cut like that.”

  “I’m still bleeding.”

  “It’s almost stopped. Pick up your sword.”

  “If I faint, will you kill me?”

  “Piss me off, and we’ll see. Pick up the bloody sword.”

  Trefor finally complied, and went back to en garde but this time with his left arm held to his side.

  “Where’s your shield?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Why not?”

  “I prefer not to use one.”

  “Get one. In fact, go get that one over there.” He pointed with his chin to his own kite-shaped red, gold, and black shield leaning against a tree outside his tent. Then he whistled to Gregor and told him to bring Henry Ellot’s shield, which stood outside the next tent.

  Trefor said, “I don’t need a shield. I have a dagger to use in that hand.”

  “Get. The shield.” Alex was losing patience and would have liked to stab Trefor again just for being such a pain.

  Trefor glared at him, and Alex returned it until Trefor complied. Once he’d taken the shield, he went back to his fencing stance. Alex accepted Ellot’s shield from little Gregor.

  “Forget en garde,” he told Trefor.

  Trefor stood down. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “You’re not playing a game, that’s what’s wrong with it. This isn’t sport — it isn’t even a duel — -and you’re wielding a blade that cuts better than it stabs, and en garde isn’t appropriate.”