by Daniel Ford
Allystaire pounced like a bear on a suddenly vulnerable baiter. His left hand went for the right wrist and managed to seize it as he drove the Captain back into the wall, but not before the slaver had managed to drive the point of his sword deep into Allystaire’s left shoulder. Doesn’t matter now, does it? Pain bloomed down his arm.
It would wait.
His left arm was weakened by wounds, and blood trickled along his eyebrows, but Allystaire had the benefits of mass, momentum, and surprise. He drove the Captain back into the wall and was rewarded with the sound of a sword, punched out of a hand by unyielding stone, clattering onto the floor.
“You…Talk…Too…Much.” With each seething word, Allystaire drove his balled up, iron-studded fist straight into the hateful smirk. His first punch wasn’t quite square, but the rest lined up the iron studs perfectly and tore open the man’s skin. Between the shock of the assault and the impact of the first blow, the Captain raised only meager defenses; he couldn’t get his knees beneath him to push Allystaire away, and by the time he was raising his arm the second blow had fallen, stunning him to near insensibility. His arm rising and falling like a man sawing a log, Allystaire threw every ounce of his fury, every moment of suppressed rage of the past few days, into his punches. Each satisfying thud of his gloved fist against flesh was another sight of the charred bones in the village green, was a sword biting into Casamir’s neck, was Mol’s shrill accusation from earlier in the day.
Like a baker punching down an over-proofed dough, Allystaire punched until his arm burned, pressing the Captain’s increasingly limp body against the wall with his knees and his wounded left arm. He stopped only when he realized his fist, spattered with red and gray gore, had just thudded into the stone of the wall.
He let the limp, nearly headless reaver leader drop in a heap, and turned back to survey his grisly handiwork. Blood had seeped into his right eye, half blinding him. Trying to wipe at it with his sleeve did no good, so he simply closed the eye and turned his head to see what he needed to.
A whimper, and not from the wagons, caught his attention. Allystaire turned; the man who still had a knife in his calf was crawling toward the back rooms, and, presumably, a way out.
“Stop,” Allystaire commanded, his voice hoarse and quiet, his left arm hanging limp, his right coated with blood up to the elbow, his face spattered with his blood, and others’.
The slaver stopped. With painful effort, he flopped over onto his side. “You’re a good man, I see that. And ya’ve bested all me mates,” the man blubbered, as Allystaire advanced on him. “I don’t deserve yer mercy but I cry for it anyway. Surely ya won’t strike down an unarmed and wounded man who surrenders, aye? I surrender! I surrender!”
Allystaire nodded slowly, and his voice sounded very far away. “No. No, I will not kill a wounded man who cannot defend himself, pleads for mercy, and surrenders.” He turned and walked back to the corner where he’d just done his grisly work. He picked up the hatchet and the Captain’s sword.
Slowly, painfully, he walked over to the nearest wagon, turned the hatchet around in his hand, struck with it once, twice, a third time. A section of wooden cage, poorly made and bearing a sturdy iron lock set in the middle, cracked sharply. He pulled it away, and the door of the cage swung open. The maids who had not been bound hopped down onto the floor, blinking and crying.
“I will not kill an unarmed man,” Allystaire repeated. With shaking hands, he held out the hatchet and sword to the women he’d freed, who took them uncertainly. He turned back to the wounded slaver. “They might,” he added faintly.
Then Allystaire pitched backward and knew no more.
CHAPTER 9
Not a Lord
Allystaire awoke in a pool of pain, and no small measure of surprise that he was alive to feel it. His body was slick with sweat, and his back glowed with the agony of lying down too long and too limply. He struggled to sit up. When he started to lever himself up on his hands, his left arm immediately gave way, reminding him pointedly of how much steel had passed through it that day. Or was it yesterday. Or…He could not fathom how much time had passed. He fell back to the bed, gathered the blankets with one hand, and tossed them away.
“How in Fortune’s name did I get here? And where is here?” His voice was a dry, painful creak.
“Yer at the Sign of the Stone Wall, m’lord,” a voice offered meekly.
Careful to rise using his right hand now, Allystaire cast his gaze around the suddenly familiar room and located a girl, grown into womanhood but probably not yet twenty, sitting on the stool before the fire. Her hair was honey-brown and appeared recently brushed, and her days of captivity had not entirely robbed her skin of its summer tawniness.
“You got here because the woman Idgen Marte commanded us to carry you on one of the wagons,” she added.
“Why was she there? I hired her to watch Mol, nothing more.” Frowning, Allystaire swung his legs out of the bed and prepared, slowly, to push himself to his feet. The young woman whirled on the stool to face the opposite direction, and it was only then he realized he was stark naked.
“My apologies, lass,” he said, flushing. “Though I daresay I have never encountered a shy farmgirl before.” He couldn’t help but tease her, but all the same he lowered himself, gratefully, back to the bed and pulled a blanket close around his hips. “You may turn around now. Tell me what happened?”
Sitting up on the edge of the bed and aching, Allystaire noted that the wounds on his left arm were bound in clean strips of cloth, and as he felt around them there was little sign of swelling or heat. His fingers moved to probe the wound on his forehead; he was amazed to find it neatly stitched in tiny, tight threads.
As he checked his wounds, the woman spoke cautiously and carefully, still looking at him only sideways. “Well, after you opened our…our wagon, m’lord, and thank you…after that, you fell to the ground and we thought y’might bleed to death. Was only us and the children in there and we tried to do what we could. But then the woman Idgen Marte strolled in, and, casually as you please, like a man squashing bugs with ‘is thumb, she put her sword through the neck of e’ry man lyin’ there. Or nearly. I think you’d done for most of ‘em, true, but…”
Allystaire withered in the face of her talking. But just then, the door opened and in strode Idgen Marte herself, carrying a steaming tray. Allystaire’s stomach leapt and growled audibly, and she set the tray down with a laugh.
“You can leave, Leah. I’ll explain.” With a simple nod of her head, Leah stood flush-faced and hurried out, closing the door behind her.
“Woman acted as though I was like to bite her.”
Idgen Marte pulled the table to the bedside so that Allystaire could reach to the tray and eat. He seized a cup that steamed and smelled of beef; it proved to be strong, thick beef tea, which he drank down in sizzling gulps.
“Bear in mind that the first time she saw you, she thought you were haggling to buy her. The second time, she watched and listened from a cage as you maimed and killed a roomful of armed slavers. She’s wise to be afraid.”
Allystaire shrugged, then flinched when the motion tugged at his left arm. “I suppose so. Still, I mean her no harm.”
Idgen Marte sat and stared at him for a moment as he reached for more food, seizing bread and cheese in his right hand. He winced again as pain, this time from swollen and possibly broken knuckles, coursed through him.
“You can be a terrifying man, Allystaire. And you don’t even know it, do you?”
He paused with a great hunk of cheese halfway in his mouth, bit down, chewed slowly, and then said, “Terrifying?”
“Did you forget that you punched a man to death with those awful iron gloves of yours? Or the other nine or ten you killed before? And you did it so badly, with such poor planning, I don’t know how you aren’t dead.”
Allystaire lifted one finger of his left
hand and said, “First, I survived, which means I did not do it badly. Second, I told you I was not a subtle man.” He stuffed more cheese into his mouth, ate it quickly, then looked around the room, puzzled. “Where’s Mol?”
“With her kinfolk.” Idgen Marte quickly pointed to his bandages. “Hurt? Itch? Swelling, burning?”
“None of those.” Allystaire lifted his arm, bending it at the elbow. He turned his head to sniff at the dressings. “No rank smell, either. What did you clean it with?”
“Boiled wine. Had the maggots ready. Didn’t need them, as it happens.” She leaned forward and, with a light touch, felt at the stitches on his forehead, her fingers cool and practiced.
Allystaire started to nod, but she tightened her fingers and stopped him. “Stay still.” He stuffed a piece of bread into his mouth and chewed slowly and carefully.
“Killed them all, then? The whole crew?”
Idgen Marte stood and walked to the fireplace and grabbed the stool, then dragged it to join the table at the bedside. She looked at him for a moment, frowning slightly, then turning her eyes to the window, said, “All but one.”
“What? The one their Captain wounded? I thought they would take care of that.”
Idgen Marte shook her head. “No. They aren’t killers, and handing them an axe and telling them to take revenge won’t change that. Nor would it do them any good. I wouldn’t let them.”
Allystaire grimaced, eyed the swordswoman carefully. “Why not? And what were you doing there, anyway?”
“If you won’t kill an unarmed man who’s begging for mercy, what makes you think those farmgirls would?” Idgen Marte smacked her open hand on the table, and the crockery jumped. “I was there because Mol persuaded me.”
Allystaire nodded, closing his eyes a moment and murmuring, “You are right.” Then he laughed, albeit gently, to avoid pain. “Persuaded you? How did a child of ten summers persuade you to do anything?”
Idgen Marte frowned and looked back toward the window, covered now in oiled paper. “Lass was more convincing than she had any right to be. And I think I’m not the only one she’s persuaded to do something, eh?”
Allystaire chortled again, nodding and wiping at his sweaty forehead. “True enough, true enough. Where is she? I should like to talk to her. And her folk.”
I don’t know whether…” Idgen Marte pressed her lips into a thin line and sighed. “That child has seen a lot of things these past days. Lot of worry for a child to take on, aye? I do not know…”
Allystaire started to rise, though he kept the blanket wrapped around his hips. “What is wrong with Mol?”
Idgen Marte stood up and shoved him back onto the bed with the heel of one hand, then sat down. “The girl is fine. Her health. But her mind? I don’t know. She hasn’t spoken since her kinfolk returned. She’s mostly slept. They’re too happy to see her alive to be worried. But I think something in the girl snapped like bad cordage.” She held up a hand before Allystaire could interrupt. “That’s a bad figure for it; likely ‘tis only frayed. She’ll come to in time. She eats, she grasps onto her uncle and cries, but…” Idgen Marte paused a moment in thought. “Let her rest for now, mind and body. See that you do the same.”
Allystaire sat silently for a long moment, long enough for the sounds of the wooden floor creaking in the heat and the distant rattle of voices and movement down the stairs to reach their ears in soft, slow waves.
“I have seen that happen once, to a man. His mind did not come back.”
“The young heal faster than we do, no?”
“In mind as well as body?” Allystaire shook his head and sighed again. Most of the burst of strength he’d felt when he stood had deserted. He lowered his head, took another deep breath. “What of the living reaver? What do we do with him?”
Idgen Marte frowned again. “That, too, is out of our hands. The rabble of a guard have him. We were hauling away when they came upon us—he wanted to make a complaint.”
“A complaint?” Allystaire felt a spark of strength return, fueled by a sudden anger. “A complaint? He was part of a gods-damned reaver crew, a slaver, and he wants to make a complaint? He is an outlaw!”
“Aye, in an outlaw city, where his crew had paid the right people the right prices.” Idgen Marte wet her lips a moment before continuing. “And there’s worse.”
“Of course there is.” Allystaire lifted his swollen right hand and gestured toward himself with it. “Out with it. All at once now.”
“When the guards asked around, probably backed by reaver gold, they found a couple of sots from one of the taverns across the Street of Sashes who’ll say they saw you murder the door guard, spring from ambush and crush his skull.”
“Say to whom? I doubt any magistrates answer to this false baron, and I doubt Delondeur has any justiciars riding a circuit here.”
“No,” Idgen Marte allowed, “no justiciars, no magistrates. But there is a man who calls himself the Baron of Bend, and he seems to think he can bring you before an assize. Making threats about blood gold and damages and so on. He’s got the folk from Thornhurst cowed, and no mistake.”
“An assize? Some up-jumped river pirate thinks he can put me to his law when he allows slavery?” Allystaire’s hands curled into fists, despite the swelling in the right.
“He has the numbers in this fight.”
“So did the freezing reavers,” Allystaire reminded her, his voice searing his throat.
“He’d have the numbers even if it were you, me, and every man from Thornhurst holding a spear and knowing which end to stick with, which they wouldn’t. You probably can’t bludgeon your way past this.” She paused, shifted on the stool, and said, “I could sneak you out.”
“But not the Thornhurst folk. And if they do not get home with time to salvage before the season starts to turn I will have done them no good.”
Idgen Marte sighed and stood. “I was afraid you’d say that. I’ve kept them at bay since yesterday by saying you were gravely wounded, but they’ll want to see you soon enough. You may have to appear before this so-called Baron of Bend and do what you can to appease him.”
“Oh I will appease him till he is a foot Cold-damned shorter, and I am not feeling particular about which end to pare from.”
“Go back to sleep, Allystaire. I’ll send another lass to watch you.” She made a show of leaning forward as if to peek past the blanket, and lifted an eyebrow. “Mayhap I’ll send one who doesn’t blush so easily.”
Allystaire grimaced, and with his chest bare, couldn’t hide the flush her jibe had raised. He harrumphed to clear his throat, then lifted his bruised and swollen hand. “Anything we can do for this? Is there a cold house in Bend anywhere? Maybe some fish oil? Willowbark?”
Idgen Marte shook her head as she opened the door. “Could be. But I’m letting that one sit. I want you to remember it.”
It wasn’t long before Allystaire allowed himself to fall back on to the mattress, but he did pause to finish wolfing down every bite Idgen Marte had brought up. He tossed aside all of the covers but the lightest one and let his head fall back to the pillows. He ached with fatigue, but glowed with relief. He had held to his word, and for once in his life, the blackguards had suffered and the weak had prospered.
You’re much the poorer for it. You can’t swing your sword for two days at least and these peasants are still in danger. You’re a freezing hero all right.
“Bloody cheerful one, I am,” Allystaire said aloud. “I did the hard part,” he offered in counter.
Killing’s always the easy part and you know it. Always has been.
He found no answer for that, so he let his eyes close and soon drifted into a deeper sleep than he was accustomed to.
* * *
When he awoke, it was with a start, his right hand snapping up to grasp the wrist of a hand that lingered just above his bare, sweat-s
licked chest. His fingers closed around the arm and held fast as he sat up, opening his eyes to find varying degrees of shadow in the room, with the only light a tiny fire of tinder. The arm his fingers closed hard around was slender, and its owner let out a startled cry and tried to fling herself away, but he held tight, until his eyes adjusted. When he recognized the same nervous creature who had sat at his bedside that afternoon, he let go.
She drew back her hand and started rubbing her wrist with the other one, swallowing a sound too close to a sob for his comfort.
“I apologize, lass…Leah, is it? You startled me. I did not mean to hurt you.”
“You didn’t…not…’t won’t last.” She paused and straightened up. “I’ve had worse. These past days.” She rubbed at her wrist again, adding, “You’re awful strong, m’lord, for a wounded man who was just asleep.”
“I am a light sleeper,” Allystaire replied, though he knew, in this instance, it hadn’t been true. “And I wake quickly. My apologies.” He sat up, propping his back against the backboard, careful to keep the coverlet drawn to his navel. “What turn is it?”