He was a strong swordsman and sure of victory. My Frankish upbringing had taught me much, but the Moors were adept at single combat, and soon I was pressing him hard. He thrust at me in a feint, then flicked his sword up at my eyes and nicked my cheekbone, showering me with blood.
Our blades engaged, then disengaged, and I thrust at his throat. My blade laid open his face, and with a quick twist, not bringing the blade back to guard position, I cut across his throat, but only a scratch.
My head was throbbing from the blow I had taken, and my legs, strong as they were, were tiring. He missed a strong blow at me, and I cut back with my Damascus blade, which was steel that was truly steel, and the edge bit through his helmet. He staggered back as a final thrust finished him.
Turning, I saw we were surrounded by our men, and they gave me a round cheer.
My legs were trembling, and Safia came to stanch the blood from my cheek, where ever after I would carry the scar. The blood worried me less than the realization that had he dealt me such a blow with a sword like mine, I would now be lying dead upon the wet grass. I had been careless, dangerously careless.
With the Raubritter dead we attacked the castle, rushing upon it before the drawbridge could be lifted. It was my first opportunity to see how my companions functioned as a fighting unit, for compared to this our other fighting had been mere skirmishes. Sweeping through the castle halls, they put to the sword all who resisted. We found several village women who had been captives there and freed them. We left the pigs and fowls for their enrichment but thoroughly looted what else there was of value. The Raubritter had long terrorized the country around, and the villages greeted us as saviors.
* * *
—
DAY AFTER DAY we moved north. The fair at Montauban lay behind us, and the next was far away. We would cross the Seine, von Gilderstern told us, at Mantes.
It was a place I knew, for William the Conqueror had been killed there when his horse tripped on a burning brand. William had massacred the male population of the town, which he then claimed for his own.
We camped on the Vilaine not far from Rennes on a pleasant night with scattered stars. Looking about me I thought, This is my land; these are my people.
A peasant squatted by our fire and his face had a vaguely familiar look. Finally, it came to me. He was from the holdings of Tournemine. There was a shifty look in his eyes, his hair matted and dirty.
As he had not noticed me, I walked quickly to where the Hansgraf sat over a glass of mulled wine.
“Unless I mistake him, he is a spy. I suggest we have half a dozen of our men appear sick and appear careless. If so, we may draw an attack by Tournemine.”
The Hansgraf considered while he drank, then agreed.
Within minutes twenty of us were rolled in our beds, and we watched the peasant as he nosed about, then saw him slip silently away. Later, we heard a horse galloping into the night, a horse he must have left waiting for him.
My admiration for the Hansgraf was never greater than now, for he moved with swiftness. How far off the enemy awaited we did not know. We laid our bundles of goods out to appear as sleeping men, and the fires were supplied with wood to keep them burning.
Men were sent out to warn of Tournemine’s approach while several of us guarded the women, our goods, and men wounded in the fight with the Raubritter.
They came with a rush.
We heard the thunder of their hooves, coming with a suddenness intended to overwhelm at one stroke. All must have appeared serene and simple to them, for they charged pell-mell, thrusting swords or spears into what they thought were sleeping men. In that moment when all was confusion our men let fly a flight of arrows.
Tournemine, veteran fighter that he was, saw the trap at once, and even as the arrows were loosed he shouted for a withdrawal.
The arrows struck home, and we charged from a copse where we had been hiding. A huge man in armor loomed over me, swinging a battle-ax. His blow, enough to have cut me through side to side, missed. My swift Arab horse darted past him, and I swung a wicked backhand blow with my sword.
It caught him where intended, on the side of the neck where there was no armor. The ax dropped from his dead hand, and his horse galloped away, the man’s head dangling. The shouts of men and the clang of weapon upon weapon were loud in the night.
How long? A minute? Two minutes? In all this time I caught no glimpse of Tournemine.
We gathered together as planned, thirty strong, and pursued, overtaking two stragglers whom we cut down, then fearing another attack, we circled back to our camp.
We lost no men and had but four with minor wounds. The attackers lost four men at camp and two out on the plain. We captured three wounded prisoners, and five horses were taken.
The Hansgraf strode among them. He was a monumental figure of a man, and now he stared at the prisoners, glaring first at one and then another. “Now, thieves,” he said, “I have it in mind to hang you for the ravens. There are strong branches here, and we came provided with rope. It is hanging long delayed.
“Or shall it be fire? What think you, Lucca? Shall it be fire?” He pointed a finger. “The fat one yonder would make a merry blaze. Can you not see him frying in his own grease?”
“You might run a lance through him,” Johannes said seriously, “and turn him over the fire as on a spit. I saw it done in the Holy Land, and you have no idea how long it takes them to die.”
“Perchance they have something to tell,” Guido suggested. “No use to burn them if they talk.”
“Bah!” Lucca said. “They know nothing? Burn them!”
The fat man stared from one to the other, his features twisted by fear and horror. The second kept shifting his eyes, glancing from side to side, licking his dry lips. The third was a sullen rascal who glared his contempt. We would have nothing from him.
“What could they tell? Tournemine’s castle is impregnable.”
“Hang them, or burn them and be done with it,” I said, “Tournemine’s castle is too far from here to be worth the riding. Open their bellies and leave them. They will die slow enough then.”
Our talk was having the effect we wished. Two of them were thoroughly frightened. The fat man kept swallowing as if he felt the noose tightening.
“There would be nothing at the castle worth the riding,” Lucca said, “and we haven’t time for a siege.”
“There’s loot!” the fat man said suddenly. “There’s the goods of two caravans taken last week and of a household raided. I tell you there is plenty!”
“Shut up, you fool!” The sullen one spoke in a fury. “I’ll smash your skull for this!”
“You will smash no skulls,” the Hansgraf said. “If you live out the hour, it will be because of my whim, and I am not given to whims.” He thrust a finger at the fat man.
“Hang him!” he ordered.
“Please!” The fat man screamed, wetting himself in his terror. “I told you! And there’s the postern—”
The sullen one sprang at him, but the Hansgraf, with amazing speed, grasped him by the hair and flung him back into place. “If you move or speak, I shall run you through myself.” He drew his sword. “Now then”—he spoke to the fat man—“you mentioned the postern gate?” There was a postern gate needing repair. It could not be closed properly, and it was on a dark side of the castle near the woods.
The fat man talked freely, as did the other. When they were through we had a clear picture of what lay before us.
“How many are in the castle,” I said, “who plundered the manor of Kerbouchard?”
There was instant stillness, the eyes of all three were upon me. If frightened before, they were doubly so now.
“Kerbouchard is dead,” the fat man said.
“He lives,” I replied, “and soon he returns. Now an answer to my question.”
The surly one was staring at me, his eyes alive with alarm for the first time.
The second prisoner pointed at him. “He was there. Ask him.”
“You were not?”
“I was left behind at the castle.”
The sullen one was staring at the ground now, but sweat stood out on his neck and brow. “Kerbouchard is dead,” he muttered.
“He lives,” I said, “and I am his son.”
“Hah! The cub! The old wolf’s cub!”
“He was there when they murdered your mother,” the Hansgraf said. “Lucca, Guido, hang him!”
* * *
—
WE LEFT TWENTY men with the goods and the women. The rest of us, strong men all, mounted to ride. We rode swiftly through the night, striking a route I well knew that would take us through the dark forest of Huelgoat, a much faster way than that taken by Tournemine.
Forty men, we rode through the night, pausing for a quick meal and a nap in the dawn light. Our mounts, toughened by long marches, carried us swiftly. Each had brought an extra horse, and we changed mounts repeatedly.
Our two prisoners rode with us.
Johannes had been riding behind, and on the third morning he caught up to us. “We are followed,” he warned. “Perhaps thirty riders.”
“Tournemine?”
“I think not. It looks like Peter.”
We turned off the road to wait, weapons ready. Suddenly, the Hansgraf uttered a sharp exclamation and rode out of the trees.
The short, square man riding at the head of the column thrust out his hand. “Rupert! By all that is holy!”
They clasped hands, and Peter said, “We met one of your men, and he guided us to the caravan. We left half our force there and have ridden to overtake you. If my brother wishes to take a castle, then I wish to take a castle.”
I was amazed. “They are brothers?” I asked Johannes.
“Rupert would make three of him, would he not? But Peter is a first-class fighting man and a good trader. He learned from Rupert.”
We rode on, nearly seventy strong, and as evening came, we halted on the crest of a hill, looking across a brown-green valley at the Castle of Tournemine.
The site was a pleasant one, a low knoll in the midst of a valley protected from the sea winds and the chill of the high plains. It was an ancient site, rebuilt and occupied by the Tournemines.
Dismounting at the edge of the wood, we waited for the sun to go down. Around the castle there was no movement nor any sign that we had been discovered.
“If that postern gate can be opened,” Johannes said, “we shall be soon inside.”
“No matter,” I said, “I know the way. I can take us into the fortress tonight.”
27
THE CASTLE OF Tournemine was little more than a camp walled in stone. More often such places were built on natural or artificial hills surrounded by a deep ditch and were usually built of heavy timber.
The site in this case was of an old Roman station, and some initial stonework had been done. Tournemine had come to the spot with a following of landless adventurers, built the wall into an ovoid shell some thirty feet high, and inside the shell erected a round tower approximately one hundred feet in height.
Only once had I been inside that castle wall, and once inside the keep. I had gone with my father to issue a warning to the baron, accompanied by only a dozen horsemen. No more were necessary. The name of Jean Kerbouchard was a known one, and six of his galleys with upwards of five hundred fighting men lay alongshore.
Tournemine, but lately arrived, had been raiding about the country, and we came to issue a warning.
Tournemine was a black-browed man and his features darkened with a fury he dared not express as we strode into the keep. All about were the men of Tournemine, yet he knew if one arrow were loosed, the men of Kerbouchard would see his fortress razed to the ground.
My father was not one for diplomacy. He walked to the table where Tournemine sat and drew a rough outline of Brittany with a piece of charcoal from the fireplace. He marked upon it the position of Tournemine’s camp. It was near the village of Plancoet, not far from the sea at St. Malo.
Taking the charcoal, he drew a line north to south across Brittany and through the camp of Tournemine. “If you dare to raid west of that line I shall come back here and hang you from your own battlements.”
Tournemine’s face was rigid with mingled anger and fear, but my father was a man to make men tremble.
My father picked up the table, and with his own hands he broke off the legs and tossed them aside. Picking up the table with its rude sketch, he placed it on the mantle above the fireplace.
“Leave it there,” my father said. “If I ever hear it has been taken down, I shall come back to see you. Do you understand?”
Tournemine, his jaw stiff, struggled for the words. “I understand,” he muttered.
From that day forward, each time he returned from a voyage my father inquired about the table, and each time it was reported to be in position. Tournemine, day after day, had to face that table and stare at that which remained a mute indication of his limits, his smallness. Only when my father was reported lost at sea had he taken it down; only then dared he raid to the westward.
“If we cannot enter through the postern,” I said to the Hansgraf, “there is another way. I have seen Johannes throw a spear. If he could throw one over the wall with a line attached to the middle of the spear, one of the lighter men could go up the wall carrying a heavier line.”
“Exactly,” Peter agreed. “If the falling spear did not alarm them and if it caught across an embrasure.”
“It is worth a try,” von Gilderstern agreed.
Slowly, shadows gathered. Darkness surrounded the trees under which we stood, and pressed in against the walls of the fortress. Fog drifted in from the sea, covering the lower valley.
How many men would be inside? Not many, for Tournemine had little to fear in this corner of Brittany. It was doubtful if he had even been threatened since my father went off to sea.
Ours was an old, old land and had known many changes, its people evading trouble when possible, prepared to fight when it was not. The Celts had come six hundred years before Christ, it was said, to mingle with people already present.
The great stone monuments, the megaliths, and dolmens were already in place and had been so for centuries. There were tombs here that were more than a thousand years old before the first pyramid was built in Egypt. When the Romans invaded they defeated the native peoples one by one, the Namnetti, the Redones, and the Veneti. Finally, in 407 B.C. the Romans left, and raiding by pirates began. In 460, the Celts, who centuries before had gone to England, returned to give the land its name of Brittany. They had returned from Great Britain to Little Britain where many of the King Arthur legends took place.
Through all changes the people tilled their fields, fished the wider fields of the sea, and fought when the need arose. It was a harsh land and bred the kind of men to whom the wastes of the sea were an invitation rather than a threat.
When fear chained the mariners of Florence and Genoa to their narrow seas, the Veneti and their kindred had long sailed the dark waters of the Atlantic. The Irish monks whom the Norsemen found waiting for them on IceLand were only a few of those who ventured upon the far waters. Many of the Bretons had become corsairs, as it was a richer living than tilling thin soil or fishing.
Rain began to fall and I donned my helmet. Peter was standing beside his horse, and Johannes came to take the bridle of his.
The Hansgraf said, “Bring the prisoners to me.”
When they stood before him, features faintly visible in the darkness, he addressed them. “You have said the postern is easily entered? Your lives may depend
on what happens in the next few minutes.”
“I am sure of it!” the fat man protested. “If I could speak to the guard—but there is not always a guard.”
“Lucca, take ten men. Scratch on the postern, and if there is a reply, let this man identify himself. If he does more, kill him.
“Peter, take Johannes and ten men who are agile and go over the wall. Whoever is first inside, swing wide the gates.”
We moved into the darkness, muffling the sound of our going. It was a somber, frightening time as seventy armed men moved down a grassy slope and across the valley, our armor glistening from the rain. The fortress walls loomed dark and ominous. We saw no lights, hidden by the walls. How many awaited us? Ten? Thirty? A hundred?
My face felt the rain upon it. For the last time? I breathed deep of the damp, cool air, felt the firmness of my seat in the saddle, the good feeling of the sword hilt in my hand. There were no stars, only the glint of rain-wet metal.
How still the night! Where now was Aziza? Where Sharasa? And Valaba?
Did my mother lie warm in the earth? Did she know I rode to avenge her? Did she realize how often in the still hours of the night I thought of her? How I wished I might have been there to defend her, saved her perhaps, or died beside her?
Did she know I loved her still? If the dead live only in the memories of those they leave behind, then she would never die while I lived. I had not seen her die and for that I was grateful. To me she yet lived, only apart.
We rode to war. What matter if only a small war. Is the blade less sharp? The arrow less deadly? My blade this night would avenge not only my mother but my Arab teacher and all the others Tournemine had slain.
I am not a noble man. I am not really a brave man. I fight because the blade is my business and I have no other. Perhaps I fight because of the fury that comes over me when I am attacked. My motives are often less than they should be. I fear I am sometimes a trickster and a conniver, but, I told myself, tonight my blade would draw blood in a good cause.
The Walking Drum (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 21