These are no desperados. These aren’t thieves or even murderers. No common criminal could have taken a train engine from Arafez. No, they’re something else. Mercenaries. Assassins. Someone wants us dead. Someone wants Qhora dead.
He sheathed his sword and scrambled up the slope to the gravel road and then dashed behind the rotting remains of the market plaza. Berkan shouted at his men, and through a crack in the wooden wall Lorenzo watched the soldiers crawl forward down the embankment toward the engine and the men in yellow.
“Qhora?” He scanned the dusty yard between the abandoned buildings, but there was no sign of life. Drawing his espada once more, he crossed the square and began skirting each stable and stall, looking for footprints and listening for footfalls.
She has to be here somewhere. Somewhere close. Dear God, let her be alive.
A man shouted off to the right and Lorenzo ran in that direction. It was Xiuhcoatl’s shout, one the hidalgo had heard before in the New World on the killing fields of Cartagena. He rounded the last market stall and saw the old Aztec slashing his obsidian sword at a tall woman in white. The woman danced back and forth, easily slipping beyond the macuahuitl’s reach. She held a stiletto in each hand, one by the handle and the other by the blade.
Beyond the fighters, Lorenzo saw Lady Qhora mounted on Wayra with the revolver in her hand. She was aiming at the woman in white, but every few seconds she would put her hand down and shout at Xiuhcoatl in Quechua, “Move! Get away from her!”
Lorenzo jogged out from the shadows into the bright afternoon sun with his espada at the ready, and he yelled, “My lady! Don’t shoot!”
He saw her frown at him, but to his relief she lowered the gun into her lap.
Then Xiuhcoatl screamed and Lorenzo saw the thin dagger buried in his throat. He dashed forward even faster. No! When did that happen? How is that possible? The old warrior clutched at his neck with one hand as he tried to swing his heavy sword in the other. He staggered off balance, gurgling, blood streaming from his mouth.
“No!” Qhora kicked her mount into a sprint. With an eagle’s piercing scream, Wayra darted toward the woman in white.
“Qhora, no!” Lorenzo raced toward the killer. “You! Don’t you touch her!”
The stranger drew another stiletto from her belt to replace the one in Xiuhcoatl’s neck and she pointed both blades at him. Lorenzo gauged the distance between them, measuring it out in paces and lunges, in circles of attack, and at the last moment he slid into a sideways stance and thrust his espada at the woman in white. He snaked his left hand around his back to grab at his long black coat and pull it up and away from his legs in a flourish of wool and fox fur. The woman whirled back, dropping her hands to her sides as her heavy black braid and long white coat swirled around her slender figure.
A deep snarling and growling almost drew Lorenzo’s attention, but he remained focused on his opponent. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lady Qhora turn and look in the direction of the trains. “Atoq is among them. It will be over in a moment,” she said.
From the same direction, a man cried out, “Shifrah! Shifrah!” And then his words dissolved into screams, which cut off suddenly, leaving them in silence.
The woman in white flinched at the man’s cries. She shook her head and smirked at Lorenzo. “You’re an Espani diestro, aren’t you?”
“Si, senora.” He nodded curtly. She’s from the east and she’s familiar with professional swordplay. She’ll be more dangerous than any Mazigh soldier. “Have you studied destreza?”
“In Rome, I met a man who fights with a small sword. He taught me a few things. In Italia, they call him some sort of genius with a blade,” she said. “And I admit, his small sword was more impressive than his small sword.”
“Did this man have a name?” he asked. Don’t say Capoferro. Please, God, don’t say Ridolfo Capoferro. Any name but his.
“Fabris. Salvator Fabris.”
Oh, dear God. Lorenzo swallowed. Ridolfo would have been a blessing. If she was trained by Salvator Fabris, then I am a dead man.
The woman lunged at him, swiping at his blade with her knives to close the distance and come inside his striking range. The sight of her flashing hands and weapons emptied his mind of everything he had ever learned. All he could think was:
Salvator Fabris trains princes and generals. Salvator Fabris once slaughtered twelve diestros in a quarter of an hour. Salvator Fabris is the Supreme Knight of the Order of the Seven Hearts. I am a dead man.
“Enzo!” Qhora shouted.
He blinked.
But she is not Salvator Fabris.
Lorenzo slashed at the woman’s hands, pricking the soft olive blurs between the bright steel and the white coat. Splashes of red spattered her sleeves and the sun-scorched grass at their feet. His eyes never left her eyes as he pressed his advantage, driving her back, striding forward with the tail of his coat draped over the crook of his left arm and his sword-hand barely moving at all as the blade leapt like a viper at his command. The woman flinched, grunted and winced, and finally turned to dash back. One of her knives thumped in the dust as she clutched her bleeding hands.
“Do you yield?” Lorenzo asked. His sword arm felt light and fluid, as though the blade itself longed to strike her again and again. He dropped the point of his espada to the ground and let his coat tails fall free behind him to cool his blood and clear his mind.
The woman clutched her hands for a moment, her chest heaving as she struggled to catch her breath. She glanced up at the princess on the huge striding bird monster, and then back at the man holding a sword dripping with her blood. She ran.
Lorenzo watched her plunge into the tall grasses and disappear around the far corner of one of the market stalls. A thump drew his gaze back to the right and he saw Qhora kneeling over Xiuhcoatl. The Aztec lay still, his lips bloody and cracked, his eyes glassy and vacant.
The hidalgo pulled a cloth from his pocket to clean his blade before he sheathed it. He walked slowly to Qhora’s side and said, “I’m sorry, my love. He deserved better. I should have been faster.”
“No. He died fighting. It was what he wanted.” She closed his eyes and stood up. “This death will carry him to paradise. His paradise.” Qhora turned and walked away to look out over the trains. “It’s over. Atoq and Berkan have the engine. Burn his body. Now, please.”
Lorenzo stared after her. Is that all? Is that all you have to say over the body of a man who lived and died at your side? A man who followed you half way around the world, who gave up his people, his country, his gods, even his language to stand by you, to put his flesh between you and death countless times?
He swallowed and stared down at the weathered face lying still in the dust. His own reflection stared up from the dark pool of blood under the man’s head. Lorenzo nodded to himself. Then that’s all there is. He gathered dry planks from the marketplace and fistfuls of dead grass and soon had a small pyre built on the bare earth. He dragged the body onto the rough frame, placed the cruel macuahuitl in the older man’s hands, and draped the jaguar cloak over Xiuhcoatl’s head and chest.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the body, clutching the triquetra medallion around his neck. “I’m sorry I was not a better friend to you. Alone and friendless in a foreign land. I should have done more. There was always an excuse not to, some petty selfish reason to be busy, to be elsewhere. You deserved better. You were brave and faithful, and you died alone on the far side of the world with no one to say your own prayers over you. May you find better friends and fairer paths in the next world. Rest in peace. In the name of the Father, the Mother, and the Son. Amen.”
When the grass and wood was burning brightly, Lorenzo stalked warily around the empty stalls and stables in search of the woman in white, but her trail was masked by the waving grasses and there was no sign of her in or around the marketplace. The hidalgo stared out across the plains, knowing full well that the woman was still alive and still nearby. But if she really did study with Fabris, then perhaps she was wise enough to know when to fight and when to run.