Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

“You could bury them. You could wrap them in a cloth, bury them and leave a shovel. That way it would take me a long time to get to them. You’d have a head start. Or, if you wanted time, you could break the…”

Thomas got up.

“I’m sorry. I’m nervous. You know I talk when I’m nervous. I’ll be quiet now.”

“It’s too late.”

He went over to Jacquot and punched him with his mailed fist until the man lost consciousness and loosed his bowels.

The smell offended Thomas, so he walked over to the barn door and breathed in the morning air, which was cool and good. A very few stars were twinkling in a clear sky just beginning to lighten in the east. It was too light to see the comet, and he was glad for that. He didn’t want anything else to worry about just now.

The girl was making noise in her sleep, just sounds at first, but then she said, “Papa…Papa…They see you through the painting. The little boys…are devils. Get away from it.” Thomas woke her then, his huge hand swallowing her shoulder as he shook her.

She looked warily up at him at first, and then she remembered him as the man who had protected her. Then she remembered more and looked like she might cry.

“No tears,” he said. “And no talk of devils.”

“I’ll try not to cry,” she said. “But I’m not sure I can stop.”

“Just try.”

She stood up now, brushing straw from her tangled hair.

“And who spoke of devils?”

“You did, in your sleep.”

“I know I was having a bad dream, but I don’t remember devils.”

“Stop saying it. You call their attention when you speak of them.”

“Yes,” she said. “I think that’s true.”

Thomas walked over to where the fat man’s severed hand still clutched the war hammer. He tried to unwrap the stiff fingers, then gave up and grabbed the hammer above them, bringing it over to where Jacquot’s crossbow lay. The girl thought he would smash the bow, but instead he smashed the crank lying next to it, beating it into junk.

“Why not the bow?” said the girl. He looked at her standing with her delicate arms and legs and thought how odd it was that children were small, and that they found this normal. He could not remember being small. What must he look like to her, standing so far above her, holding that murderous hammer? What did it feel like to know you lived or died at the whim of the giants around you?

“Why not the bow?” she said again, a little louder.

“It’s too beautiful. Italians made it and it can punch a bolt through chain mail as if through eggshells.”

It was indeed a beautiful thing, its polished cherrywood handle paneled with carved ivory depicting the Last Supper.

“He’ll kill you with it.”

“Then that’s my problem.”

“Mine, too.”

“How do you figure?”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Horseshit.”

“I am.”

“We’ll talk about that in a minute. But he can’t load the crossbow until he finds another manivel. He’s not strong enough. I’m not strong enough. Hell, Samson’s not strong enough.”

She walked closer to him.

“Don’t swear.”

“Balls to that. I’ll swear as I please.”

“It’s…”

“What?”

“Ignoble.”

“Well there’s a big word. You can read, can’t you?”

“Yes. French and Latin. Not Greek.”

“Anyway, what’s this about you coming with me?”

“Why don’t you take the bow?”

The bow would have been useful for hunting if Thomas had any skill with it; he did not. He missed almost every deer, quail, and rabbit he ever shot at with bow or crossbow, and he didn’t like spearing frightened deer that the hounds had cornered. The only thing he liked to hunt was boar, because a boar would turn and fight you until you drove the spear in deep enough. That was something Thomas had a gift for.

“It’s ignoble to kill from far away.”

“Our Lord said not to kill at all. What’s the difference?”

“Our Lord also said to render unto Caesar what was Caesar’s. My sword belongs to my seigneur. Or did, until the English feathered him at Crécy. Feathered me, too, but I lived. God, in His wisdom, made me a fighting man.”

“Yet you ride with a man who kills from far away. So what were you doing on the road with these men?”

“Well. That’s another matter.”

“I’m asking.”

“You were asking about the bow, and I was trying to tell you.”

“You could sell it.”

“It’s his,” Thomas said, indicating Jacquot. “He needs it. He’s not strong.”

“Neither are you if you ride with him.”

“What a pain in the ass you are! Anyway, I don’t ride with him. Not anymore. You settled that.”

She looked down at her feet, using her toe to move a straw around in the dirt.

“What were you doing coming up to us? That was stupid.”

“I needed…”

“I know. Your dead father. But girls shouldn’t come up to soldiers. You know that now. Right?”

“I know that now.”

“Good.”

She used her big toe and the next one to lift the straw until she lost her balance, then picked up another straw and started the game again.

“But if I hadn’t come up to you, I would be alone.”

“You are alone.”

“No. I’m coming with you.”

“What a pain in the ass! Three pains in the ass!”

“Don’t swear.”

“Christ’s holes, little girl. Christ’s bleeding, whoring holes!”

“Bury my father.”

“No.”

“He called me his little moon.”

“What?”

“His little moon. That’s what he called me.”

“I’ll catch it!”

“I didn’t. You won’t.”

“I will.”

She looked at him now.

“Then maybe you’ll go to Heaven if you catch it doing something good.”

Thomas went to speak but didn’t.

He hung his head and nodded.

The work was going to be awful. So he made the man with the drooping eye do it. Thomas stood outside the house with his sword over his shoulder, looking in, while Jacquot broke the legs off the family table and then, using the sheet beneath the dead man, pulled him onto it. He was half hysterical with fear; he had wrapped the tail of his hood around his face and wedged a pomander of lilac and lavender in next to his nose to keep the evil air out.

“A lot of good the pomander did them,” Jacquot said, heaving the corpse onto the board. He was barely audible through the cloth and over the flies. “I mean, by Saint Louis and his whoring oak tree. If this goddamned thing worked, he’d be out here dancing a jig with us. Instead he’s reeking to God’s feet, and ready to split for the worms in him, and I’m next. You’ve murdered me, making me do this.”

“Shut up.”

Jacquot grunted as he pulled his burden over the threshold of the house.

“So we waste half a day burying a stranger and leave our friends like animals?”

“Our friends were animals. We’re doing this for the girl. Now shut up.”

“What are you going to do? Punch me out again? Then who’ll roll this geezer into his hole? You will, that’s who.”

“You’re giving me a headache.”

“Who’s got a headache? You weren’t beaten half to death last night. You didn’t shit yourself and then dig a grave and then…”

He stopped talking when the little girl approached him. He had the corpse ready to dump into the shallow hole, but she came up to it and put a small blackthorn wood cross in its hand.

“It fell out,” she explained simply.

Then she amazed and horrified both men by kissing the bloated figure on the cheek.

“Good-bye, Papa,” she said. “Now Mother will look out for you and this knight will look out for me.”