Andrew Davidson - The Gargoyle

When it was his turn to speak, Brandeis told about how things had changed in the condotta. How they had become worse. Herwald had been mortally injured in battle and it was Kuonrat who brought down the final sword on the old man’s neck. This was no act of mercy; Kuonrat was staking his claim. When he challenged anyone who would dare oppose him for leadership, no one stepped forward.

Kuonrat took to admitting only the most bloodthirsty recruits. Their fighting instincts were sound, but the new soldiers were stupid and dishonorable. It was true that they killed more, but also they were killed more. They attacked with passion, not with intelligence, and Kuonrat goaded them like a master with a pack of wild dogs. Should they die, the countryside was ripe with an endless supply of boys looking to prove their manhood. It was a waste of Kuonrat’s time to worry about protecting a renewable resource. And besides, he knew from personal experience that those who remained in the troop for years sometimes developed a greed for power.

Despite his methods, there could be no arguing with Kuonrat’s results. The condotta had become known for its peculiar ruthlessness and its ability to defeat even much larger forces by sheer brutality. Success emboldened him and he’d started to question the entire practice of hiring out the troop. Why, he asked himself, should the nobility be in possession of the land if his condotta was the means by which the land was defended? Money was no longer enough. Kuonrat wanted more power. He was preparing to start taking territories for himself.

The years under Kuonrat had strengthened Brandeis’ desire to leave the condotta, but escaping had become even less conceivable. The rule remained that once you were in the troop, you were in for life, but now there was something more. Kuonrat had never forgotten how Brandeis had stood up to him when you were injured on the battlefield; he was always looking for an excuse to exact retribution. If Brandeis were ever to bolt, Kuonrat would send the most talented trackers after him, men whose determination was matched only by their viciousness.

For all his despicable traits, Kuonrat was not stupid. He knew that he could not attack Brandeis without provocation, as the troop still included a number of old soldiers who respected Brandeis both as an archer and a man. And so, for the most part, Brandeis was left alone. But the unspoken threat was always there.

It was so strange to see you in the company of an old friend, one with whom you’d faced death on the battlefield many times. Brandeis had shared a part of your life that I could never understand. There was a strange closeness in the way you both tried to play at toughness but could not quite suppress the tenderness in your voices. I could tell that you missed the old days-not the battles but the camaraderie. It’s funny, the things one remembers; from that night, a single moment stands out in my memory. During the meal, Brandeis raised his hand in an almost imperceptible gesture, but you knew to pass him the water. It was an action that you must have repeated over a thousand campfire meals and it had not been forgotten in the years that you had been apart. Neither of you even seemed to notice.

At the end of the evening, a heavy silence fell. The two of you just stared at each other, maybe a full minute, until Brandeis said it aloud. “I cannot continue to live as I am living.”

“I will help in any way I can,” you said.

But no escape could occur that night. If Brandeis disappeared, the mercenaries would know to track down the “prostitute” with whom he’d last been seen. It was agreed that he would return to the condotta and play it out as if he’d had his pleasures with me. The troop would spend a few more days in the city and then head off for its next assignment. After a month had passed and the days in Mainz were a distant memory, only then would he make his escape.

If all went well, no one would be the wiser. Brandeis had no family in Mainz, no ties to the city whatsoever. Who would even remember his afternoon of sex a month previous? The plan was set.

At our door, the two of you stood in manly poses with your chests thrown out. He slapped your shoulder and you punched his arm. I hugged him and promised to pray for his safety. Brandeis said this was a good idea, and congratulated me once more on my pregnancy. When he took my hands in his, I could feel the scar tissue on his palms, and only then did I remember that he’d been burned while pulling the flaming arrow from your chest. As he headed out into the night, I was intensely aware of exactly how much we owed him.

The next month crawled by. We talked about Brandeis but never more than a few words at a time, almost as we had previously avoided speaking about our desire for a child, as if we were afraid to curse it. Five weeks. “Do you think…?” I asked. “He’ll get here when he gets here,” you answered.

Six weeks, no Brandeis. I couldn’t help but worry, and I was vomiting in the mornings because of my pregnancy. “He’ll get here when he gets here,” you kept saying. I went through wild swings of worrying about his safety-and ours, as well, after he arrived. You kept assuring me that everything would be fine, and I tried hard to believe you.

Seven weeks. I was at home working on a manuscript, sitting near the window, when a heavily cloaked figure came shuffling sideways through the street. I recognized the stiffness of the leg and immediately knew it was Brandeis even though his face was hidden. His robe was covered in the snow that’d been falling since early morning, and it was a good day to be entirely bundled up. No one would think twice about a man simply trying to remain warm. I let him in when no one was passing on the street.

He gulped down hot soup and explained how he’d been traveling for eight days, backtracking and circling, avoiding cities. Rather than buy food, he’d killed small animals so that there’d be no merchants to remember him. He was certain that he hadn’t been followed. Still, we didn’t send word to your worksite but let you come home at the regular time. It was important to make everything look as normal as possible.

The first few days would be the most dangerous. Kuonrat would have dispatched a group of his best trackers as soon as Brandeis was found to be missing. The two of you always kept an eye out the window, a crossbow never out of reach. Brandeis had brought two with him, his own and another that he’d stolen for you.

You took turns not sleeping, and Brandeis didn’t dare even to unpack his bag. You packed one for yourself and instructed me to do the same. All this was very upsetting, of course, more than I could have imagined. Should something go wrong-not that it would, of course-I was responsible not only for myself but for our unborn child. I said that I didn’t understand how it was possible that Brandeis might have been successfully tracked in so large a country. When I voiced this opinion, the two of you looked at each other and said nothing. Which said everything.

But nothing happened. Weeks passed, and no one came looking. You both started sleeping through the nights, though only after you strung a line of bells across the top of the door. Eventually you decided that it might be safe for Brandeis to venture outside the house. With his hood still pulled over his head, of course.

No lurking figures pounced out of the shadows, so after another week Brandeis began to accompany you to construction sites. Your recommendation was enough to find him some manual labor. He worked hard and took his lunches with you but otherwise kept to himself. Nobody asked too many questions; to your colleagues he was just another unskilled worker. Before long, we decided that he should get a room of his own because I was waking in the night with leg cramps. A little privacy would be good for everyone.