Rogue Sword (3 page)

“What have you heard about the trouble at Gallipoli?” he asked.

“Little enough truth,” said Lucas. “I can relay any number of rumors, if you like.”

Arrived here from Trebizond, he had sought passage farther and engaged a place easily enough. The Golden Horn was filled with galleys, westbound after trading in the Black Sea, and more were arriving every week. But that was because war had broken out at the mouth of the Sea of Marmora, between the Byzantines and a rebellious troop of foreign mercenaries. They held the area of Gallipoli, and the Imperial forces were besieging them. While the fighting lasted, no prudent shipmaster would risk passing through the narrows.

“I expect the trouble will soon be over,” said Lucas.

“I am not so sure,” mused Hugh. “Perhaps you haven’t realized how enfeebled the Empire is. Whole provinces torn from her, her master a venal government under a vicious dynasty. . . . Well-a-day, it need concern you little.

Did you say you were bound for Negroponte? You’ll be safely distant from New Rome and her woes.”

Lucas nodded. Negroponte, the Venetian-owned island of Euboea, lay just across a narrow channel from the Duchy of Athens. He dared not go directly to Venice, until he had cleared whatever old charges still stood against him. If the result of discreet inquiries proved discouraging, he could escape to the Greek mainland and take service with one of the Frankish nobles who ruled there. Not that he expected much trouble. After fourteen years, who would care? But those same years had taught him caution.

“I meant to ask you,” said Hugh, “if you ever met a certain countryman of yours, one Marco Polo? He reached the same places in Cathay as you’ve mentioned. I chanced on him in Trebizond some years ago, when I was there on my Order’s business and he on his way home.”

Lucas shook his head. “No. I heard of him at the court of the Kha Khan in Cambaluc, but I came later.”

Briefly, the recollection of graceful red roofs, willows and arched bridges above garden ponds, a philosopher who had been his friend and many gentle beauties who had been his loves, rose up to blot Constantinople from his awareness. And there had been music in violet nights when the cherry trees bloomed, and a certain mountain seen through clouds, and temple bells that rang in his dreams just at sunrise . . . what had driven him back to the filthy West?

They walked on in silence for a while. When they resumed their talk, it was with Hugh describing the state of affairs here in Europe. That was no hopeful subject in these years when one realm after another fell to pieces and anarchy raged through the ruins. But at least, for Lucas, it was impersonal; and that fact reminded him joltingly how rootless he had become. In the end, he had returned to the Occident because (however much he sometimes wished and tried) he could not change himself into an Oriental. So let him now seek out Venice. It might be a shoddy home for him, but a home, anyhow, perhaps.

The sun sank low. A small cold wind seeped down from the hills above Galata and across the Golden Horn, to blow dust through the darkening streets of Constantinople. The two men found themselves passing through a desolated section.

When the Crusaders gutted this city a hundred years before, they left ruins which the weakly restored Orthodox Empire had never repaired. Here the burned-out shell of a tenement stared down on a dirty lane filled with sunset shadows. The rains of a century had not whitened those charred beams; weeds grew thick where the floor had been, and rats scurried from human feet. On the opposite side were inhabited buildings, sleazy flat-roofed structures rising several blank stories. A few ragged people went by: a robber, openly armed in defiance of the law; a sly-eyed old moneylender and his hulking bodyguard; a beggar, loathsomely crippled; a thin-legged child who coughed. At sight of the child, Hugh reached into his mantle for a purse.

“No,” warned Lucas. “Give him a coin and you’ll bring the whole quarter screeching down on us. The end could be a riot. I know these Asiatic towns--and this section is not of Europe any longer.”

Hugh clenched his staff tightly. Lucas recalled that the Knights of St. John had begun as a nursing order and still maintained hospitals. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “I suppose you are right.” They continued.

Just ahead, another street crossed this one, a broader way running toward the Venetian district. A party of four was coming toward them. As if to erase the child from his mind, Hugh stopped to look at them. “Ah, your countrymen, Lucas,” he said. “They do make a brave sight, do they not?”

Lucas paused with him. There were three men in the group, all bearing swords, by special license, no doubt, since they would be abroad after dark. Two were young, their garments a shout of red and blue against the dingy walls. They carried unlighted torches, for use when the last sunset glow had vanished above the roofs. Plainly they were attendants of the third, an older man, heavy of body but firm of gait, clad in rich green fabric. The fourth went wrapped in a hooded cloak, with bent head and dragging feet--a woman.

Hugh peered into the deepening shadows. The wind flapped the hem of his mantle. “Where are they going at this hour?” he wondered.

Lucas spat. “Can’t you see? Look how the girl walks. She’s a slave, and they’re delivering her to some purchaser--a brothel keeper, or maybe someone, giving a feast--who wants her this very evening. I’ve seen that sight before.”

“I have . . . paid less attention.” There was a thinness in Hugh’s tone that brought Lucas’ gaze back to him. The knight stood rigid, pale about the nostrils. “In my weakness,” he said, “I averted my eyes from an abomination I could not fight.”

“Do you feel thus about slavery?” asked Lucas. “Well, then you can understand why I’d rather not dwell under a tyrant.”

He, himself, had witnessed so much cruelty that this delivering of a maiden like an animal looked mild enough. Since Brother Hugh stood unstirring, he held his ground, too. The little band came up to them and the leader stopped.

“Fellow Catholics!” he exclaimed. “God’s providence! You know not how glad I am to meet you!”

There was something familiar about him. Lucas stepped closer. The man spoke Venetian in a harsh basso. His clothes and full purse showed him to be wealthy. He was of medium height, his black eyes about level with Lucas’ hazel ones; his frame was stocky and muscular, turning fat in his middle age. But as yet only a large belly impaired him. His hair was black, thinning atop the massive head; his shaven jowls were blue, his nose lumpy, with small broken veins. But he was not altogether ugly. There was a bear-like impressiveness about him.

“We’re seeking the house of the nobleman Georgios Dalassenos,” he explained. “Near the forum of Amastrianon. D’you know the way? We seem to have lost ours. Not much. We can find the place, even if you can’t help. But I hate to ask one of those oily Greeks. Can’t trust ’em. Good to see real Christians.” He offered a furry hand. “I am Messer Gasparo Reni of Venice, with offices at Azov and Cyprus, and I’d like to invite--”

He broke off. His mouth fell open. He took a step backward. Even in the dull yellow light from the sunset clouds, Lucas could see how the blood mounted in his face.
“Lucco,”
he choked. “By all the devils in Hell--!”

Then, with a roar, he drew his sword and plunged to attack.

The training given by many desperate encounters saved Lucas. Before the other man’s blade was clear, he sprang aside. The thrust went past his ribs.

Off balance, Gasparo lurched forward. Lucas put out a foot. The ponderous body crashed to the cobblestones. Lucas snatched forth the Persian dagger from under his tunic.

“What’s the meaning of this?” cried Brother Hugh in outrage.

Gasparo struggled to all fours, bloody-nosed, and reached for his fallen sword. Lucas grinned. Suddenly the murk was gone from his head. He felt young and full of swagger. He kicked the blade away. “Naughty!” he said.

“Kill that gallows’ bait!” bawled Gasparo.

Lucas turned a little, crouching, the knife poised in his ' hand. He saw the Venetian guardsmen hesitate, one sword half out, the other drawn but lowered, uncertainty on both countenances. “Don’t listen to this hideous man,” he advised.

“God’s mercy, has a demon seized the fellow?” said Hugh.

Gasparo got to his knees. His head swung from Lucas to his companions, like a bull facing dogs. It rattled out of his throat: “Kill him, I tell you! A hundred ducats for his life . . . and my protection. Are you men or puling Greeks?”

The slave girl moved back until a wall stopped her. One hand lifted to her mouth, stifling a scream.

Gasparo threw himself forward. His arms closed about Lucas’ knees. Lucas felt himself toppling. There was no time to think. The Ch’an Buddhist monk who had taught him a little of the way to use the body as a philosophical tool had also shown him how to fall. With every muscle loose, he hit the street and was unhurt. Gasparo scrabbled across him and regained his sword. Lucas glimpsed a triumphant baring of teeth as the merchant rolled clear with weapon in hand. He pounced. His dagger struck into the man’s upper arm, and downward.

Gasparo howled, “Two hundred ducats!”

Lucas saw the attack from the corner' of an eye. As one of the guardsmen’s swords whipped toward his neck, he made a frog-leap from his crouched position. The blade pierced his cloak and rang on a stone. Lucas heard the cloth rip as he pulled free. He waited, knife in hand, ready to jump either way. Both men were stalking him, from right and left. In the thickening gloom, their faces were blurs. But their swords flashed bright. Lucas backed up and was brought to a halt. A solid wall lay behind him.

He heard the slave girl moan. Through all the pounding of his pulse, it seemed to him, dimly, that her voice held more sorrow than fear. His eyes flicked from his inadequate knife to the two broadswords. Their points were now a yard away. He remembered the chivalric romances he had once loved, a single knight against a thousand paynim. However--

“The name is Lucas, not Lancelot,” he said, and threw the knife.

One Venetian yelled. His blade clattered to the ground and he fumbled at the steel in his shoulder. Then Brother Hugh came from behind, to snatch the other man and whirl him about. “In the name of God,” commanded the Englander, “desist!”

Two hundred ducats raised the Venetian sword and thrust it against his chest. “Stand back.” The guard had understood Hugh’s Genoese well enough. “Back, friar, or I’ll spit you, also.”

Hugh skipped from the point, raised his staff, and struck at the other man’s head. The fellow brought his glaive up barely in time to ward off the skull-cracking blow. Then they were at it, wood banging on steel, up and down the dusky street.

The wounded Venetian slumped with a groan. Lucas went after his fallen sword. When he had it, he saw Gasparo Reni stumble toward him, blood running from the slashed arm but weapon gripped in the left hand. Behind the merchant, a crowd had formed, boiling from tenements to watch and yell and strip the fallen.

“What are you doing?” protested Lucas. “Who do you think I am?”

“Lucco, the Cretan bastard.” It was a hoarse and horrible wheezing from that half-seen bulk. “I’m going to kill you.”

Lucas raised sword, wondering frantically what to do about a disabled man who wouldn’t stop.

Brother Hugh smacked his opponent’s blade with a twist that sent it spinning from the hand. “Now,” said the knight with renewed cheerfulness, “for the good of your soul and the purging of noxious humors, here is medicine.” A few brisk whacks landed on head and shoulders. The Venetian wailed and ran. Hugh approached Gasparo and disarmed him with one deft blow of the staff.

The crowd moved closer, jabbering. Lucas saw them as a single mass in the chill, quickly falling twilight. Here and there a tattered individual stood out at the forefront. Then somewhere behind, loud, imperious, a voice shouted, “Make way!” and there came the iron tramp of fighting men.

Gasparo sat down and covered his eyes.

Hugh glanced at Lucas. “The Varangians,” he said. “My mission would suffer if they arrested me.”

“I wouldn’t find it very useful, either.” Lucas leaned on his newly acquired sword and panted.

Hugh clasped his shoulder. It was hard to see, night was so near between these high walls, though the sky was still pale above; but Lucas thought the Englishman’s look was searching. “We must talk further about this,” said Hugh. “Best we separate now, I think. Do you remember where my lodgings are? Come there tomorrow after the hour of nones. Until then,
Dominus vobiscum
”

His staff thumped loudly on the stones as he limped off, melting at once into the crowd.

Lucas swirled his cloak around so it hung from the left shoulder and concealed the sword he bore in that hand. Sidestepping Gasparo Reni, who sat shuddering with unpracticed sobs, he moved down a street opposite to the approaching watchmen. Bodies fetid with sweat and garlic resisted him, as if he breasted a river. Finally he broke free, turned a corner, and stopped to catch his breath.

A slender form in a hooded cloak paused beside him. He realized with astonishment and some dismay that the slave girl had followed. And then . . . why not, he thought, the headiness of victory still upon him. He took her hand. It felt soft, trembling a little but closing fingers tightly around his own. “Come,” he muttered. “This way. I don’t know these alleys, but I’d hazard this is our general direction.”

They groped through lanes which became pitchy as night approached. Finally they stumbled into a courtyard with enough starlight to show heaped trash and low buildings. By standing precariously on two barrels, Lucas was able to chin himself onto a roof. There he, looked across a city turning from black to gray and white, as the moon rose out of Asia. From the North Star and the gleam of water, he got his bearings. As he sprang down again, the girl huddled close to him.
“Rhomaizeis?”
he asked. When there was no response, he inquired if she spoke Venetian, then Genoese.

“A little, Messer,” she said to that. Her voice was low and pleasant to hear.

Lucas was relieved. The two patois were not so different that he could not be fluent in both, even after a lapse of years. He continued merrily, humming a bawdy French chanson. With a sword in his hand and a woman at his side, he felt able to deal with any number of robbers whom the noise might attract.