Andrew Offutt - When Death Birds Fly

Faraulf was wisely mute, and the customs assessor turned to one of his soldiers.

“Have the highwayman fetched hither.” For a moment Sigebert watched the fellow make obeisance and leave, louting. Then he said, to faraulf, “Fear not to question me! By death, man, you bore me welcome news! You may speak if you wish!”

“What highwayman be this, sir?”

Sigebert shrugged. “Some fellow who was taken drunk at an inn, with his band of throat-cutting robbers far distant. Betrayed by his trollop, I believe. I cannot recall his name. However, he is well-born, and by reputation he handles a sword well, which is all that matters.”

Faraulf did not ask how a captured highwayman came to be a captive of the customs assessor, and in his own manse. An Sigebert had a use for him, he’d have found it simple to contrive the robber’s “escape.”

Two Frankish soldiers returned with a tall, yellow-haired man in a doeskin tunic and short leather boots. Filthy from travel and prison grime, he yet stood insolently straight and stared from eyes the colour of granite. Faraulf had thought to see remnants of breeding in that lean face, and sought them. The signs of reckless violence and wasted power were far plainer. The miscreant’s arms were bound to a wooden pole laid across his shoulders.

“Well,” he said coarsely, staring. “Seek you dogs to affright me with this scarface? Who be ye, the local frightener of children?”

Sigebert smiled with unfeigned pleasure. He’d been told this animal had spirit. A movement of his hand stayed the soldier who had been about to strike his prisoner with a spear-butt.

“My name has no importance,” he said, “to you. I am the man who will do death on you, here and now-unless you can slay me! ”

The highwayman received the news stoically, and did not lose his sarcasm. “Then I reckon I’ll be the loser,” he grunted, “since my hands be bound up. There’s been no blood going through these arms in hours.”

“It shall return. Your wrists shall be freed,” Sigebert promised, and watched the fellow blink. “I would have your name.”

“You know my name. And jape me not about untying me.”

“No japery, fellow. And no, all I know of a name for you is what they call you in that area where you plied your trade. I’d have your name-ere one of us stretch the other cold and bloody.”

“What they call me’s good enough, and I don’t give a tinker’s pot about your name.”

“Very well then, Lynx. Time shall be yours to exercise, to work out the stiffness in those bound limbs, and you may choose a sword from yonder rack. You yourself may say when you wish to begin. Then-we fight to the death, you and I!”

Lynx’s bloodshot eyes widened. “Ye say? Supposing I have your life, man?”

“Then you may have a fast horse and an escort from the city as well. Freedom! These men have been given their orders, and bound by oaths. They will not harm you an it prove that I cannot.”

“Such as you harm me? 0-ho-ho! Plainly ye be mad, and certainty’s with me that ye lie-but Satan’s eyes, what odds? Unbind my arms and place a pretty blade in m’grasp, and I’ll accept my chances!”

“Sir, this is folly!” Faraulf protested. “Single combat with a felon who’s naught to lose? As well face a wolf!”

Sigebert looked at him. “I intend to, a wolf named Cormac. For now-only a lynx, methinks. It is my whim. I require a man who will fight. I trust you have no thought of interfering? Nay? Then stand you back.”

A dagger’s blade caught the sun, sawed briefly. The highwayman stood unfettered. He rubbed his big-boned wrists with white hands. The hands darkened as blood returned. He flexed his shoulder muscles and flung his arms about to set the blood moving. Ignoring the ready soldiers, he went to the rack and handled each sword there, trying them for balance and weight in the manner of an experienced fighter. His eyes narrowed, then widened to stare and narrowed again, as he studied the blades for flaws. At last he chose one. He made it keen through the air. He surprised them all, then, by chopping into the rack.

“Easy lads,” he said with a flash of smile. “I’d not meet your master with a weakened blade, now would I? I like this one well enough, Scarface.”

The anxious gaze of every eye went to Sigebert, but he only smiled his thin smile. Incredible. The mere mention of his face would gain another a flogging, or worse.

“Give me a shield.”

A soldier tossed a shield to the man called Lynx. He caught sixteen or more pounds of iron-bossed, iron-banded wood handily, with his left. He slipped it up that arm, flexing his forearm against the strap. His knees bent and he practiced a few simple strokes and guards. There was no showing off. Faraulf took this to mean that the thief had skill and did not wish to betray it in advance. Lynx, eh? Were he unsure of himself, he’d have attempted to look better than he was. A lynx. Rufous-furred, sharp-eyed little bastards, eating anything they could overpower. Ferocious when threatened or cornered. A lynx. The big wheaten-haired man might be well named at that. Faraulf pondered Sigebert’s sanity.

“I’m ready,” the rogue said, with an oath-and rushed upon the word.

Faraulf caught his breath at the savagery of that onslaught. He’d said it himself: this man had naught to lose. He charged to slay on the instant.

He did not; swords rang so that pain to Faraulf’s ears made his face writhe. Shields clashed together like slammed doors. The two men moved under the vine-trellises, knees bent, eyes fixed, then darting, to return and stare fixedly again; circling each other, the unkempt wheaten head and the exquisitely barbered brown with its sides and Romish bangs arranged to hide the ugliness where an ear had been. Their feet whispered, shifting, shifting.

Sigebert smote at his adversary’s leg. Lynx’s shield flashed down in time to save it. Even while sword was banging off round buckler the highwayman was hewing murderously at the Frank’s neck. He failed to reach it (shriek of blade parrying blade in a blaze of metal in dappled daylight) and slammed his shield-rim into the Frank’s side. Sigebert made a croaking sound of pain. For a few moments he fought a desperate running defense while he regained his breath-and while the thief attacked and attacked, using every trick he knew to slip past Sigebert’s guard. He made attempt to trap Sigebert in a corner darkened by hanging vines. The Frank slipped away, backing from beneath the trellises into the open courtyard. His breathing sounded more natural again.

His brain was working, working, too; the highwayman was meant to rush after him with his face to the sun and receive that white dazzle in his pale eyes. He did not. He laughed shortly even while he moved sideward more swiftly than a scuttling crab-forcing Sigebert to do the same-and maintained a more equal sharing of the light. His eyes stared, and they had become pale blue gemstones in the bright sunlight.

“Frankish pig! I’ll not be caught by a trick as old as that!”

“Manners,” Sigebert said, neither moved nor seemingly disappointed.

While Faraulf and Lynx noted how this excellent Frankish fighter showed nothing, he attacked.

Light on his feet, supple and nimble as a dancer, he made but small use of his buckler. He was content to employ it only to catch the other’s strokes. Yet his sword flickered like a thing alive, a rigid serpent of blue-flashing silver.

It occurred to Faraulf that for all his praise of the point, Sigebert had not used it once in this death-duel. Nor had his chosen opponent. Although an able fighter, the man called Lynx seemed limited to the edge.

Even as this occurred to him, Faraulf saw Sigebert catch a lethal cut on his shield’s edge. Sparks leaped amid the scraping sound as a shrieking swarm of enraged bees. Then Sigebert’s own long sword and arm extended in one driving line, over the rim of the highwayman’s shield. The point slid through the blond man’s throat to grate on spinal bone. That swiftly, that simply. Blood burst forth. In the cloudless daylight it sprayed intolerably red.