Squire's Blood

by Peter Telep

  Christopher reared back with the whip.

  Innis held his ground unflinchingly; his conceit was maddening.

  But then Christopher realized violence was what the varlet wanted. Christopher would be disciplined for striking an unarmed man for no apparent reason. Besides that, his action would illustrate that Innis was much more in control of himself than Christopher.

  Logic moved in with a powerful riposte, and Christopher lowered the whip. He needed a cutting retort, but he knew Innis was the better wordsmith. While Christopher had spent the first thirteen years of his life as a saddler’s son, Innis had gone to school at the Queen’s Camel Abbey and had been taught by the brightest monks there. Though his father was only an armorer, Innis had somehow been maneuvered into classes with the scions of noble and wealthy fami­ lies. It was the pattern of Innis’s life: getting things he did not deserve-a noble education; Brenna; revenge on Doyle. At least the varlet had lost Brenna.

  Someone took the whip from Christopher’s hand. Lancelot had come between him and Innis. In the background, Christopher observed with relief that the sergeants were untying Doyle. He stood a moment longer, flashed Innis the blackest look he could muster, then marched off to meet with Doyle.

  Christopher could not hear the conversation that began between Lancelot and Innis, but he was sure that Innis would say something to ignite Lancelot’s anger. Christopher would wager his broadsword on that.

  The sergeants left Doyle weltering in his own blood, not offering to help him back to his tent. Doyle pressed his head onto the courser’s saddle. His whole body was surely wreathed in pain. Christopher sensed that Doyle didn’t want to move, for if he did, it would cause him more agony.

  Christopher moved in next to his friend, slid his head near the archer’s. “Doyle, let me help you. What can I do? Does it hurt if you move? Can I get you back to your tent? How about some hot linens? We can wipe down your back.”

  Doyle was dour. Stiff. A bleeding statue.

  As Christopher turned to fetch the linens, he barely avoided two other archers who, as if having heard him, stepped forward with steaming linens in their hands.

  ‘Tm Phelan,” the tall one with the soot-colored hair said. “And this is Neil.”

  Though he had to be only a year or so older than Christopher, Neil sported a thick, brown beard and a forest of like-colored curls on his head. While Phelan’s appearance had a birdlike quality to it, his large nose, very much like a beak, descending his face, Neil’s looks had Saxon scrawled all over them. Immediately, Christopher dubbed them “the bird and the barbarian.” “It’s good to know I’m not his only friend,”

  Christopher said. “I am-”

  “Christopher of Shores,” Neil answered. “It is an honor to meet you, though our friend’s punishment brings us together.”

  Arthur was wrong. Not every young man in the army was jealous of Christopher. That is, if Neil was being truthful.

  The two archers applied their linens to Doyle’s back. Doyle gasped and winced, and Christopher felt himself doing the same. Once Doyle’s back was rela­tively clean, Phelan and Neil slid their heads under Doyle’s arms and proceeded to carry the archer back · to his tent. Christopher walked behind the group as Lancelot joined him.

  “I’ve been told that he was once the good exam­ple,” Lancelot began.

  “I haven’t been wanting to admit it to myself,” Christopher said softly for Doyle’s sake, “but I believe my friend has a point to prove on this cam­ paign.”

  “And what is that?”

  “That he is a man. He once ran from the battle­ field, and now not only must he stay, but he must be the war’s biggest hero.”

  “If he lets his heart rule his mind, then his anger,his vengeance, will kill him. Heart and mind must be balanced.”

  “Sir Orvin uttered those same words. It seems so long ago.”

  “Your friend is not unlike the king,” Lancelot observed. “When I first met Arthur, he wanted to kill me so much that he lost the power of reason. It is hard, I suspect. I have felt that madness fill my mind. It seems impossible to empty.”

  Inside his tent, Doyle was set down on three layers of woolen blankets. He lay on his stomach, burying his face in his hands. The bird and the barbarian asked him questions about the pain, how they could help, and if there was anything Doyle wanted. The slashed archer made no reply.

  “I’ll fetch Hallam to have a look at him,” Lancelot said, then turned and slipped through the tent flaps.

  Christopher sat down next to Doyle. “If you would not take offense, I must speak with him alone,” he told the archers.

  Phelan and Neil understood and quietly left the tent. Christopher could hear them voice their con­ cerns to each other outside as he palmed himself closer to Doyle.

  “I was right, wasn’t I,” Doyle said affirmatively, his voice half-muffled by the blankets in front of his face.

  “Right about what?”

  Doyle lifted his head and turned to face Christopher, grimacing as he did so. “You know.”

  “Are you referring to the Saxon who chased me?” Doyle let out a short, stifled groan, then said,

  “The Celt.”

  “Yes, the Celt. With nearly one thousand men in this army, how am I supposed to remember the face of every wagon driver?”

  “You’re not. And that’s what Innis rolled his dice on.”

  Christopher bent closer to Doyle. “So you think it was Innis who hired the driver?”

  “No, I think that wagon driver simply wanted you dead. Perhaps he did not fancy your surcoat, or was jealous of your handsome face. What do you think? Of course it was Innis. He’s wanted you since the day we teamed up on him. It comes as no surprise. Unfortunately, I made his revenge on me far too easy. I embarrassed myself.” Doyle tossed a longing glance at his flagon, which sat in one corner of the tent near his bow. “Could you get me a drink?”

  Christopher stood and retrieved the flagon, unstop­pered it, and handed it to Doyle; the archer drank the ale in a loud series of gulps, then handed the flagon back to Christopher, who set it down on the blankets behind him.

  Christopher rubbed his hands together, the friction building up a small but comforting amount of warmth. “We need a plan to solve our problem, but before we consider that, I want to talk to you. And I want you to be honest with me.”

  Doyle rested his chin on his arm and stared ahead into nothingness. “Don’t bother asking. You already heard what I told the king.”

  “I’m not going to ask you about anything,” Christopher said. “I already know why you deserted the other archers and went on your own campaign today. And I know you will do it again. You have to kill a lot of them, don’t you?”

  “I thought you weren’t going to ask me anything.” “You have to kill a lot them because you owe it to the others, the others that died the first time we were here and you ran. But killing more now will never bring them back. And what you did back then was not wrong-I told you that. It was smart. In the face of defeat, save your own life. What’s wrong with that?”

  Doyle’s hands tightened into fists, and he remained silent.

  “You might not be answering any of my questions, but that is because you have no answers for yourself. Don’t you understand? The angry heroes will be cre­ mated. The ones with humility, with the common sense you exercised when you ran, those are the sur­vivors. Those are the heroes. There is nothing to prove, Doyle. Nothing.”

  “Let me know when you’re done,” Doyle said, “because when you are, I need another drink.”

  7

  The armies of Arthur, Uryens, Leondegrance, Nolan, and Woodward each struck decisive first vic­tories against the Saxons on the Mendip Hills. The invaders were coerced onto the higher slopes, where the air was thinner and colder, the ground harder and more rocky. Many of the senior and junior squires in Christopher’s company opined that the war was over. The Saxons had fled and the spoils and glory now belonged to the Celts. But Christop
her knew nothing was over until every living Saxon was dead or off the land. Arthur had made that plain to him. And thus they rode higher into the Mendip Hills, stalking the enemy with a vengeance that reminded Christopher of Lord Hasdale’s quest to kill Garrett. And with that last battle, Hasdale had ended or changed the lives of everyone in Shores, finally paying the ultimate price himself. In an icy way, Arthur’s quest, though noble in its intentions, seemed no different.

  As he sat on his chestnut brown courser, feeling the easy rhythms of the horse as it cantered upward, a vision from black sleep stole its way into Christopher’s mind. Arthur told him there was no other way to end the invasion, and then hordes of burning Saxons rose from their pyres and leapt on the king, carving him up with their halberds and dag­ gers and spathas, and scorching him with flames they controlled like whips. Warning horns blared in Christopher. Questions flew like quicklimed spears and bull’s-eyed blazing holes in his confidence.

  Do we ride toward death?

  He would die for king and country-his duty. One could say one died while fighting gloriously with King Arthur against the invaders. One would be revered and remembered. Or one could say one died for vengeance, for selfishness, for greed. But the whole point was moot. One wouldn’t be saying any­ thing after the fact.

  He had to stop worrying about the greater prob­ lem of the Saxons and more about his smaller, more easily solvable problems. He forced away the vision of Arthur’s demise, then turned his thoughts to Doyle.

  Christopher longed to walk with his injured friend, instead of riding in the Main Battle. He had not reached Doyle last night, but would die before he stopped trying. Doyle’s group of archers led the Vaward Battle; they would be the very first ones to encounter the enemy. Doyle had been thrilled when he had learned of his placement in Arthur’s army. Christopher remembered that the night before they had left Uryens’s castle he and Doyle drank-what the next day seemed like a firkin of ale-to celebrate the news. And to drown their anxieties.

  But as he looked back on it, Christopher saw they had nothing to be afraid of. The campaign had begun far more routinely than expected.

  The first group of Saxons they had encountered had been small, tenscore of men. Doyle’s group had knocked out more than half of them before the Main Battle even got near the action. But Doyle had not been able to down a single Saxon; his shots had fallen short or had hit invaders who were already dead. Christopher remembered how much this had trou­bled his friend. Doyle’s solo, hit-and-run mission the previous day was his reply to the chiding of his fellow archers. Christopher wished Doyle’s wounds would have convinced him it wasn’t worth it, but Doyle shared at least one trait with Orvin’s old mule, Cara.

  Yes, he had to stop Doyle from throwing his life away senselessly. He loved his friend and needed him more than ever. Christopher knew that when it came to laying traps, Doyle·was the expert. It was a talent he shared with his late brother, Baines. Christopher’s memories of Baines were barely hued, mostly gray, but every time he saw Doyle flash his sly smile, Christopher saw Baines. It was good to have the broadsword Baines had given him at his side, for Christopher knew if his capacity to see Baines in his mind’s eye faded com­pletely, the hard metal and bejeweled hilt of the sword never would. If only a little more of Baines’s expertise had infected him in his youth, he might have been able to devise something on his own.

  Laying a trap. There was another man Christopher had served, though unwillingly, who had also been an adept hunter of animal and man. He had been a true devil in the flesh, a rogue Celt who would have known how to handle Innis. Sir Mallory-the “Sir” only a title, Mallory had been no gentleman-had known how to deal with his enemies.

  Then again, Mallory would have confronted and killed Innis, disregarding repercussions, witnesses, and the king. Mallory would have cut out Innis’s heart and fed it to the varlet in his last seconds before death. Or something equally heinous.

  The plan had to fall somewhere in the middle; not be too extreme, but clever enough to convict Innis. Christopher would be the bait, no matter what the plan, and that didn’t make him feel any better. He’d much rather be facing only the Saxons. At least with them, it was only about war.

  Innis’s first attempt on Christopher’s life had nearly been successful, and Christopher suspected the varlet would get even better at it. Innis would not stop until Christopher was dead. In a sense, Innis was like Arthur chasing the Saxons. In both cases, obses­sion blinded the men.

  And a blind man is vulnerable.

  Leslie’s constant sniffling irritated Christopher. He lost his thoughts to the sound and turned to the mounted squire next to him. “Blow your nose and be done with it!”

  Arthur spied the rear from his place ahead of them, then returned his gaze to the hillocks ahead.

  Leslie leaned over his mount, pressed his finger to one nostril, then cleared the other onto the ground. He repeated the process as Christopher eyed the big­ eared squire with disdain.

  “Oh, that is better,” Leslie said, trying out his newly cleared nose. “I can almost smell the sun.”

  “My liege,” Christopher shouted to the king. “I think we have a troubadour in our midst-a man who claims he can smell the sun.”

  “Ask him, my senior squire, what does it smell like?” Christopher enjoyed the good-natured banter. His weary emotions and fatigue-riddled mind needed a repose. He regarded Leslie. “So then, our sovereign asks … “

  “It is hard to put into words,” Leslie said in a singsong way, “but it is as a thousandscore of bloom­ ing irises all bowing in the wind. And I smell now a beautiful lady coming out of the sun and drifting down to bless us all, and to love us all. Maybe she is the Lady of the Lake’s sister?”

  The banner bearer, quiet as a mute and twice Christopher’s age, turned to him and winked. Christopher raised his eyebrows in agreement. They all could use a blessing and some love. Christopher wondered how Leslie was able to smell the fact that the lady would love and bless them. He allowed him­ self a grin, but it did not last long.

  After a long day on the heels of the retreating Saxons, the horn to stop resounded, and the tents were pitched. Cookfires sparked to life under a ragged blanket of clouds. What shards of sunlight remained soon shied away beneath the western slopes.

  Christopher, Leslie, and Teague cleaned Arthur’s weapons and armor. They wiped down their own gear, and then Christopher inspected the job the groom had done cleaning and feeding the horses. With that done, he and the others were relieved for the evening.

  While Arthur prepared for a meeting with his battle lords, Christopher donned a comfortable pair of breeches and soft linen shirt. He slid off his heavy riding boots and exchanged them for a pair of sandals. Though it was too cold for the open shoes, his toes were sore from a day in the boots. With the king’s permission, he borrowed one of Arthur’s heavy woolen tabards and wrapped the cloak around himself. He ventured outside, taking a path that would lead him to Doyle’s shelter.

  Ahead, Lancelot hurried toward Arthur’s tent, clutching his own tabard as the wind whipped the garment off his back. “Going to see your friend?” Lancelot asked Christopher as they passed.

  “Yes.” Then Christopher stopped and turned around. “Lancelot?”

  Arthur’s champion paused, craned his head, then lifted his brow.

  “He did not break formation today, I pray?” Christopher asked.

  Lancelot shook his head no, then waved good-bye, obviously too frozen to continue the conversation.

  Christopher weaved his way through the tents, noting that most cookfires were unattended. The men who had built the hearths had stayed outside only long enough to cook their meat. He saw one group of infantrymen who had started a fire inside their tent and had cut a smoke hole in the ceiling of the shelter. They would be hating that hole on the next rainy day, for a patch would surely leak; but for the moment, they were the warmest soldiers on the slope.

  Once locating the red banner inscribed with
a white courser that flew from Lancelot’s tent top, it was easy to find Doyle’s quarters, which were pitched beside the champion’s shelter. Christopher parted the tent flaps and stepped inside.

  Phelan and Neil sat on a woolskin blanket and were inspecting arrows from a small stack that lay between them. A pair of sheep-tallow candles set in the ground at the right and left rear of the tent threw up dim, eerie light. Behind the archers, Doyle lay on his side across his own blanket, staring blankly at one of the candles. He held his flagon in one hand, resting it against his bare chest. He smiled at the sight of Christopher.

  “Aren’t you cold?” Christopher asked.

  “And a good evening to you, squire of the body.” His words were meant to be distinct, separate, but Doyle had managed to tum them into a serpent of syllables. He had a blanket of ale keeping him warm; that was apparent. He sat up, his face creasing with pain as his wounded back stretched. The ale hadn’t numbed everything yet.

  Christopher shuffled past the archers and found a spot on Doyle’s blanket. He sloughed off his tabard and cringed as he took in the view of Doyle’s back. He had never seen anyone whipped so badly. Christopher couldn’t be sure, but if this had happened to him, he too might drink nightly, for the discomfort and dishonor would imprison the act of sleep. He couldn’t hold Doyle’s affection for the flagon against him. His friend suffered in body and spirit. But Christopher was present to discuss a plan, and unfor­tunately Doyle was in no condition to do so.

  That fact was, however, contrary to Doyle’s belief. “I have put the first steps of our plan into action,” the archer said.

  “We’ll talk when you feel better, and we’re alone,”

  Christopher said softly.

  “We can go,” the bird said.

  “Yes, we’re almost done here,” the barbarian added. “No, no. You stay. Besides, this is not a night to

  travel. Even between tents.”

  “There’s a dice match in Sawyer’s tent. A challenge as it were. And my humble companion and I are going to return with our pouches full of deniers!” explained the jaunty bird.