“Finn,” Feronantus called, not taking his eyes off the shantytown. “We are not alone, are we?”
“Aye,” the hunter responded.
Cnán looked around for Finn. He was crouched a ways off, examining the track of the road they were on.
“Horses,” he said, pointing at the dirt. “Shod, like ours. Less than a day ago.”
“The red cross and sword. I thought the Livonians were no more…” was Roger’s response upon recognizing the sigil on the dead knight.
“Hell could not hold them,” Raphael suggested.
“Or simply found their company tedious,” Roger scoffed.
“Whatever their reason for straying into Rus,” Illarion said, “it is gratifying to see that one, at least, found the fate he deserved.”
“Which leads to the question, are there others?” Raphael said. “For this one is comparatively fresh, and the Shield-Maidens—if my guess is correct as to who yonder women are—seem to be expecting more of them.”
The question was an important one and caused all four men to take their eyes from the red cross and sword for the first time since they had seen it. Instinctively they formed up in a loose circle, facing outward, scanning the ruins around them and the jumbled slope below for any signs that they might have been followed. Hands strayed to sword hilts and ax handles. But they saw nothing untoward.
“Brother Raphael speaks correctly,” Percival said, “when he says that we must learn—and soon—whether there are other Livonians nearby. But there are only four pairs of eyes among us. Those eyes are peering through burnt vines and rubble piles over a new and unfamiliar landscape. Behind us, many more eyes, used to this place, scan the city from a better vantage point, and so the quickest way for us to learn the answer is simply to approach the gates, state our business, and ask the Shield-Maidens to share what they know.”
“Good luck with that,” Roger muttered.
“I shall go alone,” said Percival. This was an ultimatum, not a suggestion. Again that light seemed to play about his face. Raphael wished it would stop; it was most unsettling. Perhaps it came from a withdrawal of blood from the knight’s already pale skin.
Percival removed his sword and scabbard and handed them to Roger, then turned about and began walking directly toward the gates that barred their passage through the inmost and highest of all the priory’s walls.
The Shield-Maidens on the battlements above were divided in their response. Nearly all of them were speaking in the local tongue, and so Raphael could not make out what they were saying, but half were merely derisive, while the rest seemed nearly out of their minds with rage. As Percival strode the last hundred paces to the gate, the surrounding rubble heaps suddenly came alive, like a nest of ants disturbed by the blade of a plow, as ordinary persons—mostly wretched sorts, unarmed, not so much clothed as bandaged in improvised swaddlings of gray blankets and rags—scurried out of makeshift shelters that they had erected along the approaches to the priory and abandoned cookfires that they had kindled along the way. Percival turned his head from side to side, observing this curiously, and Raphael sensed from his posture that he was slightly offended by the refugees’ obvious fear of him.
“Are they afraid of Percival?” Roger asked. “Or of what is about to happen to him?”
“Either would suffice to make such people get well clear of the man,” Illarion said.
Percival found himself standing in a clear space before the gates, gazing directly up at the Latin-speaking woman who had addressed him earlier; she was looking down on him through a crenel on the fortification above the portal. Perhaps feeling that it was not the act of a gentleman to go helmed when he addressed a lady whose own helmet was tucked under her arm, he reached up, lifted his own helmet from his head, bent down, and set it on the ground before his feet, then stood up and raised his chin, tossing his hair back away from his face and gazing directly up at his interlocutor.
All of the ladies went silent for a moment.
“Bastard!” Roger muttered.
The Shield-Maidens’ voices were resurgent, not as loud as before, and in a different tone: some of them even more furious, others mock flirting with him, and perhaps a few of them flirting quite sincerely.
Their leader permitted herself a sardonic grin and a little shake of the head. “I am not certain which of your approaches has been more insulting,” she said. “You came to us the first time, brimming over with the most insufferable arrogance. ‘Well done, girls. Thank you for keeping the place tidy for us. Now open the gates that we can make of it a proper fortress. Vacate your barracks and your bedchambers, plump up our pillows, cook up some vittles, and polish our armor that we may tend to important duties.’ When we sent your emissaries away and fought off the inevitable sneak attack that followed, we supposed we’d seen the last of you. But now you are back. And what is your latest stratagem? A handsome face with which to woo the silly girls who hold the keys to the gate. Tell me, are the men skulking behind you as fair to look at?”
“That would be for you and the other Shield-Maidens to decide, my lady,” Percival returned.
“You may address me as Sister Vera,” said the woman. “I am not a lady, and if I were, I would not be yours.”
“Very well, Sister Vera. I am Brother Percival.”
“No brother of ours! We have suffered you to draw this close only to tell you, once again, that you and the other Livonians are not welcome in our city,” said Vera. “If your friends draw near enough for us to form an opinion of their beauty, they will get arrows in the face just like the one you saw.”
“Then it is well that you stayed your hand and held back your flights of arrows until I drew near enough to speak with you and to disabuse you of a grievous but understandable misconception,” Percival said. And he stripped his surcoat off over his head, then shed his coat of mail—not easily done, as it weighed as much as some of the women who were aiming arrows at him from above. This occasioned much more bawdy commentary from the Shield-Maidens, which he pretended not to hear. Having dropped his mail on the ground, he unbuttoned his gambeson and stripped off that thick padded garment to reveal a linen shirt beneath, tired and sweat-stained but, given what they had been through, surprisingly clean.
“If your face did not convince us,” said the lady above, “then, rest assured, neither will your…”
But then she stopped. And over the course of the next few moments, all of the other catcalls died down as well. For Percival had reached across his body with his left hand, grasped the cuff of his right shirtsleeve, and drawn it back to expose the arm as high as the elbow. In the same gesture he extended his right arm up and outward from his body, rotating his palm up to face the sky, and thus exposing to the Shield-Maidens’ view the brawn of his forearm.
Standing behind, Raphael could not see what Percival was showing them, but he hardly needed to, given that the same sigil was marked on his own flesh.
Having seized the Shield-Maidens’ attention and silenced them, Percival now let his left hand drop away. The eyes of the women on the battlements tracked the movement carefully. The left hand was curled into a loose fist. He extended it toward them, then straightened his fingers while turning his hand over to display the palm.
There was nothing remarkable about this. And that, to them, was the remarkable thing. For some moments now he remained posed thus, letting them all inspect the marked forearm and the unmarked palm. A change passed through the women on the walls above, like a gust of wind moving over a sea of grass. No order was issued by Vera. But bows creaked as strings were relaxed. Arrows snicked back into their quivers and swords into their scabbards.