“I’m ready,” the rogue said, with an oath-and rushed upon the word.
Faraulf caught his breath at the savagery of that onslaught. He’d said it himself: this man had naught to lose. He charged to slay on the instant.
He did not; swords rang so that pain to Faraulf’s ears made his face writhe. Shields clashed together like slammed doors. The two men moved under the vine-trellises, knees bent, eyes fixed, then darting, to return and stare fixedly again; circling each other, the unkempt wheaten head and the exquisitely barbered brown with its sides and Romish bangs arranged to hide the ugliness where an ear had been. Their feet whispered, shifting, shifting.
Sigebert smote at his adversary’s leg. Lynx’s shield flashed down in time to save it. Even while sword was banging off round buckler the highwayman was hewing murderously at the Frank’s neck. He failed to reach it (shriek of blade parrying blade in a blaze of metal in dappled daylight) and slammed his shield-rim into the Frank’s side. Sigebert made a croaking sound of pain. For a few moments he fought a desperate running defense while he regained his breath-and while the thief attacked and attacked, using every trick he knew to slip past Sigebert’s guard. He made attempt to trap Sigebert in a corner darkened by hanging vines. The Frank slipped away, backing from beneath the trellises into the open courtyard. His breathing sounded more natural again.
His brain was working, working, too; the highwayman was meant to rush after him with his face to the sun and receive that white dazzle in his pale eyes. He did not. He laughed shortly even while he moved sideward more swiftly than a scuttling crab-forcing Sigebert to do the same-and maintained a more equal sharing of the light. His eyes stared, and they had become pale blue gemstones in the bright sunlight.
“Frankish pig! I’ll not be caught by a trick as old as that!”
“Manners,” Sigebert said, neither moved nor seemingly disappointed.
While Faraulf and Lynx noted how this excellent Frankish fighter showed nothing, he attacked.
Light on his feet, supple and nimble as a dancer, he made but small use of his buckler. He was content to employ it only to catch the other’s strokes. Yet his sword flickered like a thing alive, a rigid serpent of blue-flashing silver.
It occurred to Faraulf that for all his praise of the point, Sigebert had not used it once in this death-duel. Nor had his chosen opponent. Although an able fighter, the man called Lynx seemed limited to the edge.
Even as this occurred to him, Faraulf saw Sigebert catch a lethal cut on his shield’s edge. Sparks leaped amid the scraping sound as a shrieking swarm of enraged bees. Then Sigebert’s own long sword and arm extended in one driving line, over the rim of the highwayman’s shield. The point slid through the blond man’s throat to grate on spinal bone. That swiftly, that simply. Blood burst forth. In the cloudless daylight it sprayed intolerably red.
Lynx’s eyes bulged. His mouth gaped in an effort to speak, mayhap to pray. No sound emerged save a rattling croak. His knees bent the more. His arm commenced to twitch. His entire long body lost proper articulation and he fell, a graceless crimsoned sprawl in the courtyard.
Blood continued to spurt. It would soon slow. Sigebert stood panting.
Faraulf shook his head. He’d known Sigebert since they were boys. Both had been trained in weapons-play, as befitted Franks of good birth. Yet Sigebert had never cared for it, maintaining that a surer road to power, lay in letters and politics. Faraulf and others had made fun of him for sharpening his speech and his grammar rather than swords and axen. Although a fine athlete and graceful, Sigebert had not seemed to have the makings of a fighter. When news reached Faraulf that the other had become a polished courtier of the Roman king’s court at Soissons, Faraulf had felt more certain than ever. His boyhood acquaintance must be swiftly forgetting all such fighting skill as he possessed!
Not so. Plainly something happened to make him remember. What Faraulf had seen this day seemed implacable obsession-or outright madness. The man of letters and politics and guile was determined to be a weapon-man-and was.
“Take this rubbish and sink it in the river,” Sigebert said, cleaning his blade on the robber’s soiled doeskin tunic. “Let none observe you.”
“Yessir!” one of the soldiers said, as though respectfully replying to a general. He and three others carried away the corpse of Lynx the highwayman. Another fetched a bucket of water to sluice the shed blood from the stones. They’d be darker, now.
Hardly had the four left when a guard entered from the direction of the great house’s gates. Faraulf, about to speak, closed his mouth.
“Sir: there is a fellow at the gates says he must see you. He demands, lord! I’d ha’ sent him off with busted bones, save that you ordered us to watch for such a one-but I swear sir, he’s a base and beggarly scut, for all his fine language.”
“Ah,” Sigebert said, thinking of last night. “Has he given a name?”
“Lucanor Antiochus sir-spoke as he mighta said Emperor!”
“Fetch him hither, and do so gently. I myself, be there need, will convince him that he is not a wearer of purple.”
The soldier departed smiling grimly; Sigebert almost laughed when he returned escorting the stranger. Base and beggarly, by God and the gods, was an understatement! This Lucanor owl-Sender might have been the half-starved shadow of an unsuccessful midden scavenger. His odour wafted ahead of him.
“You?” the Frank said in open unbelief. Lucanor knew what the question implied. His back straightened.
“It was I and no other,” he replied, making his voice ring.
Sigebert looked into the robed man’s strange black eyes, and believed.
“Then wash,” he said. “You are the second guest in as many days has arrived here requiring a bathe and new garments. I’ll not speak with you in a closed room as you are!”
Lucanor pressed his lips tightly together, locking in words. That he resented such high-handed treatment was most obvious. He had not long to wait ere he’d be convinced that, from Sigebert, this was naught to complain of. Less than an hour, in truth.
Shorn and cleanly, he was escorted into the Frank’s presence. Sigebert dismissed the guards with a curt “Let none disturb us” and closed the door. He turned a deadly stare upon the mage.
“And such a thing as you dared address me as ‘foolish man’!” he said. “You could use me, could you? A tool, is it? I am not acceptable as your equal? You’d rend me apart and find another tool if it suited you, would you? You!”
His black fury was not assumed. With a snarl, he gripped the smaller man in a way that made Lucanor cry out in pain. Almost he had raised an ancient god, and subverted a kingdom as he had its queen, and now he was come to th-
Sigebert jarred all such thoughts from his mind by slamming him violently against the wall four times. He hurled him then to his hands and knees and kicked him around the room until the Antichite grovelled for mercy. It became worse for him then, with the Frank’s rage cooled a bit, for now Sigebert placed his kicks more carefully.
At last he desisted and, nostrils flaring, seated himself.
Chillingly self-controlled on the instant, he spoke. “You have escaped lightly, though I daresay you do not appreciate it. I’d have the life, and slowly, of any other who offended as you have done. I may have yours yet. It will depend on how well you serve me… Lucanor.”