“She’s Squire Menhir,” Braddoc supplied with a reluctant cough. Jo flashed him a glance, but the dwarf merely nodded her direction.
The procession had slowed, almost halting in the face of the growing mob. A brace of children, running from a crowded corner of the market, came stomping up, their young voices raised in shouts.
“Brisbois the Bungler! Brisbois the Boor!”
Jo laughed aloud and wondered if the children knew how similar their taunts were to those used against Flinn. Over the cries of the children she could hear a flurry of other voices: “Where did you find him?” “How’d he get wounded?” “Who’s the dwarf?” “Tell us what happened.” “Did he put up a fight?”
The knot of folk around her tightened, pressing against her legs and her mount. Noting Carsig’s uneasiness, Jo signaled to the knight ahead of her. He pivoted his steed about with some difficulty in the crowd and shouted, “Back. Let us through to the donjon!”
“Tell us the story!” a few voices demanded of Jo, ignoring the knight’s order. Their calls touched off other shouts from the crowd, which drowned out the knight’s next commands.
Jo bit her lip, watching the young, red-faced knight try hopelessly to move the crowd. When she saw he was getting nowhere, Jo turned sheepishly toward Braddoc. The dwarf merely shrugged and mouthed the words, “You’re the storyteller.”
Jo nodded grimly and scanned the sea of faces. Their voices raised a din that must have reached to the donjon itself. They wanted her to tell them what had happened; they wanted her to tell the story of Brisbois’s capture. But she’d never told a story to so many people before—for that matter, she’d never told a story that wasn’t about Flinn. Her tongue felt like a ball of lead in her mouth, and the events seemed to jumble in her head.
Carsig nickered and took a gentle sidestep, and Jo saw that Braddoc’s pony had nudged the horse. The dwarf’s face was impassive, but he nodded minutely in Jo’s direction. “Go on,” he mouthed.
Jo nodded back, a nervous smile on her lips. She swallowed hard and lifted her hands in a gesture to quiet the crowd. “It’s really not much of a story,” she shouted out as the clamor died down.
“Tell it anyway!” the cobbler cried.
Jo bit her lip; she didn’t know how to begin the telling. “I—ah …” she started, then flushed: she’d forgotten to adopt her storytelling tone. Lowering her voice and taking a deep breath, she said, “Some days ago, the honorable Sir Lile Graybow, castellan of this mighty fortress, learned the whereabouts of the ignoble rapscallion, the defamed Sir Brisbois.” Jo paused, her heart in her throat. The crowd seemed to have appreciated the phrase ignoble rapscallion, responding with a smattering of boos and hisses. And her emphasis on the knight’s undeserved title garnered even more jeers.
It was a good crowd.
Warming to the task, Jo continued. “Sir Brisbois, I tell you—this worm of a knight, this knight of the wyrm Verdilith—” more hisses “—was the man who falsely accused Flinn the Mighty. Sir Brisbois was the man who willingly brought the glory of Flinn and of Flinn’s sword Wyrmblight to an end. And though Flinn forgave the rapacious monster—though he spared the man’s life and made him bondsman—Sir Brisbois repaid this kindness with desertion and treachery.”
In the chorus of disapproval that followed, the townsfolk around Brisbois’s mule began prodding the pathetic figure with their fingers. The knight didn’t respond, except with an angry, bloodshot glare.
“So the noble Sir Graybow decided that Brisbois must be captured and tried. Being the one-time mentor of Flinn the Mighty, Sir Graybow dispatched Flinn’s former squire and his long-time friend to hunt down the vile man, to bring him back to the castle so that all the folk of Penhaligon might have vengeance for their fallen hero.”
“We were supposed to retrieve him for questioning,” Braddoc corrected loudly, breaking into Jo’s account. “That’s the story. Now, in the name of the baroness, let us through.”
“Quiet,” called someone from the crowd. “Let the squire finish!”
Jo, glaring hotly at her companion, shouted out, “We journeyed across the rugged Southern Wulfholdes unto Castle Kelvin, a pig sty of a place beside the gleaming towers of Penhaligon.” The crowd responded with cheers and whistles. “There, we found the man fully entrenched in his element—floundering about in the mud of a gutter, beside a vat of rotting animal parts, and surrounded by a trio of grimy thugs.”
“Did the thugs give you trouble, squire?” called out the cobbler excitedly.
“Not with that sword of hers,” the washerwoman interjected, playfully flipping her rag in the cobbler’s face.
“In fact, the thugs were no problem at all,” Jo answered, almost laughing. “They were doing our work for us. They’d been beating up the infamous Sir Brisbois for some moments before we arrived.”
The crowd let out a whoop of surprise, and some of the listeners began to clap.
“You didn’t get to lay a hand on him?”
“Of course I did,” Jo responded with mock indignation. She raised her hands before her and made a separate sweeping motion with each. “I slapped him first with the right, and then with the left!”
Amid the gales of laughter, a blacksmith bellowed out, “What then?”
“Then my level-headed companion—” Jo shot Braddoc a surly glare “—advised me against any further retribution against the filthy cur.” She consciously deepened her voice again and said, “Though Squire Menhir’s fists had not yet wrought their full vengeance upon the evil knight, though she was driven in that moment to unmake Sir Brisbois with the very blade he had darkened by his evil—” Jo dramatically seized the hilt of Wyrmblight and pulled it with a crackling pop from the shoulder harness. She held it up, cold and brilliant in the silver sky “—Wyrmblight, sword of Flinn the Mighty, nemesis of Verdilith the Great Green—though the very Immortals seemed to be crying out to the squire to wipe this wretched filth from the face of the world, the dwarf stayed her hand. Yes, he stayed her hand, though every impulse told her to slay him!”
A rumbling commotion had begun behind Jo, and as she looked over to see its cause, the crowd shifted, and a stream of villagers pressed toward her. Shouts broke out in the crowd, redoubling into a roaring tumult. Jo’s eyes went wide as she saw that Brisbois was held in the hands of the throng. They had dragged him from the mule, kicking and bellowing—dragged him through the churning crowd. Only as they reached the side of Jo’s horse could she discern what they were shouting.
“Kill him now!” they cried. “Kill him now!” Wyrmblight, still raised in the raking wind, seemed to tremble with anticipation in Jo’s hands as the people lifted Brisbois up toward her. The gem in her belt-pouch was hot, as though aflame, and a small voice in the back of her skull seemed to say Kill the traitor, Jo. Kill him as you have wanted to these many months. It was not the sword speaking, she knew, but the vengeance sounded sweet indeed.
“Kill him now! Kill him now.”
Jo’s grip on the sword faltered, and the blade fell toward the shackled form. A hand, strong as iron, clamped onto her fist and raised the sword before it struck home. Wideeyed, Jo blanched as she saw Sir Graybow’s granite features next to hers. He sat on horseback beside her, having pushed his way to her through the mob. His very presence quieted the crowd.
“That, my dear,” he said, his voice devoid of warmth, “is enough of that.”
Johauna, Braddoc, and Graybow hurried down the long halls of the Castle of the Three Suns, escorting Brisbois among them. The two guards who had met the trio at the gate followed them, making sure Brisbois would have no opportunity to escape. Graybow had not said another word to Jo from the time they had cleared the mob, and Jo felt chagrined by his silence. She wasn’t going to kill Brisbois, she told herself, it was just a story that had gotten out of hand. Jo winced as a slight misstep jarred her bruised rib, despite the tight wrap Braddoc had applied to it. And her injuries were nothing next to Brisbois’s. The day in the saddle had obviously aggravated the knight’s wounds. His face was a mixture of purple bruises and pale fatigue, and he clenched his teeth against the pain. Brisbois glanced back balefully at Jo, then fixed his eyes once more on the hallway.