Rogue Sword (7 page)

“You’ll come to no harm if you get us ashore,” Lucas promised them. “But they’ll be shooting at us with crossbows and ballistae before we’re out of the fleet. I can swim, but I know how few seamen have mastered that art. So crack your thews, lads!”

The boat sprang forward.

“My lord, what is happening?” choked Djansha.

Lucas managed to grin. How her hair shone in the sunlight! “Certain persons wish to make me a prisoner,” he said. “But, as that would take me away from you, I shall fight them with the strength of a hundred bears.”

Even then, she reddened, and her long lashes fluttered. The galley fell behind. Another loomed close. Its captain leaned over to shout: “What’s the trouble over there? Where are you headed?”

“After help!” Lucas called. “A gang of mutineers are trying to seize our vessel. I think they mean to run it aground for the Catalans to plunder. Go give help, I pray you! “

He left chaos behind, which was carried ahead of him by stentorian lungs. Despite everything, he laughed.

A splash in the water ended his jollity. He looked behind. The nearest of the several ships he had passed was coming about. Up on the forecastle, a team of men rewound a stone-throwing ballista. So . . . the fleet officers had at last gotten the true story. Now they must put on speed, and make pious vows.

“Row, you sons of noseless bitches! Row!”

He heard the snap and clunk of the ballista, and another missile hit the sea, close enough to drench him. “Djansha,” he asked, “can you swim?” She stared mutely. “Can you--oh, curse it--can you keep yourself up in water? Like a fish?”

She shook her head.

Well, thought Lucas, if the boat was hit, that would be the end of her. It was best, he supposed. Better than Gasparo’s patrons, anyhow .... He looked at her again, and she offered him an uncertain smile. By all her heathen gods! He could not swim off while she drowned! It wasn’t possible. She would come back to him in dreams, with weeds growing from her mouth. No, let him try to carry her along, arid if he failed, let them drink the sea together.

What lunacy had ever made him lead her off in the first instance? He groaned.

Another ship lay ahead: a cheland, lighter and swifter than the galleys. Its oarsmen churned the water white and it moved across his bow.

“Starboard! Hard a-starboard!” Lucas shook his pike and threw Arabic obscenities at the other vessel.

An iron point smote the side of his craft. Was he really in crossbow range? The cheland didn’t look near enough . . . Oh, yes, it was monstrously near, almost on top of him. He would crash into those centipede oars in one more minute--A quarrel buzzed before his nose.

He swallowed until enough spittle came back for him to talk. “You see, lads,” he told the sailors, “I was right. This is no healthy spot, so don’t linger. Here, I’ll set the time for you. Thus: aSTERN of us are UGly men. Our LIVES they will not SPARE. Our HANDsomeness has STRICKen them quite GREEN. They KNOW that if we MAKE our port beFORE they’ve blundered THERE, the HARbor girls will SWARM o’er us and TREAT us very FAIR: to wit, igNORE those UGly men and KISS us everyWHERE. But IF you eat a CROSSbow bolt you’ll NEVer hug yon QUEAN!--”

The boat went astern of the cheland, so near that their wakes crossed. For a moment it sleeted quarrels. Several struck deep into planking. The foremost sailor whimpered and lost the stroke, as one shaft buried itself in the thwart inches from his hip. “Row, I told you!” bawled Lucas. “Are you deaf?” The boat surged shoreward again.

And then, as if struggling out of a fever dream, they cleared the convoy. Lucas snatched another glance behind. Ships were strung out far over the blue water. But they were not pursuing him into the shoals. Two boats had been manned and were after him. He saw sunlight wink on a helmet, a quarter-mile off.

The shore ahead rose abruptly from a narrow beach. A row of cottages lay near, but there was no sign of man or livestock, nor any boats drawn up under those poles where fishnets were meant to dry. Orchards and crop fields stretched untended beneath the still, shimmering sky. All the people had fled.

Lucas realized he was atremble with reaction. His own sweat stank in his nostrils. He made himself sit at ease, contemplate serenity, as the Cathayan monks advised; he drew a few long slow breaths in place of gasping. All his strength would soon be needed.

“Djansha,” he said, “spring ashore the moment we ground.”

Her murmur carried to him through the descending quietness: “Oh, my lord, you overcame them all!”

“That’s a pleasant way to phrase it.” He nodded at the sailors. “I thank you, my lads. When the boat goes ashore, push the oars out, hard. You’ll understand I don’t want you clubbing me. But still I thank you for your trouble, and if ever we meet again, I’m not the one who won’t stand you a flask of good wine.”

One man gave him a dull glare, but the other laughed.

The bottom grated. Djansha waded up onto the grass. The sailors thrust their oars from them. “Farewell,” said Lucas, and followed his girl. The two men slumped an instant, then splashed after the oars. They were much too tired to attempt his capture.

Others would do that. Lucas trotted inland with Djansha. “Quickly,” he warned. “We must be out of bowshot before those two boats arrive. I doubt the men will chase us far, though. This is too hazardous a place.”

“For us also?” she panted. Her slippers were hardly suitable cross-country footgear. But hurry she must!

“Less so than what we’ve escaped.” He gave himself to his jog-pace. Thought continued: I may well be a liar. What do I know of the company ravaging this land? Or we may meet an Imperial army. . . . Even if we elude all those perils, where can we go?

Where would I even desire to go? he asked himself wearily.

They hastened by the smokeless huts and onto a rutted dirt road, which wound upward as the land rolled higher. Lucas cut directly across the bends, over fence and hedge and field. Before long Djansha was exhausted, her gown torn, her ankles scratched and muddy. He gave her an arm, choking down anger. She could not fairly be blamed for lacking a man’s strength, yet she dragged on him and slowed him. When he looked behind, he glimpsed four or five tiny figures in pursuit.

But they were gone from view once he had topped a ridge. In a way that was comforting. Yet it would have been still better to know with certainty that they had given up. Well--

A broad olive orchard came into sight. Lucas led Djansha over the fence rails. “Carefully, now,” he said. “Leave no traces of our passage. . . . Good enough, if the saints are kind. I invoke especially St. Ananias. Come!”

The air was cool under the trees. The land brooded silent, except for the birds who were happy to be no longer molested. Nonetheless, when she emerged from the other side, Djansha was lurching on her feet.

“I think we can rest awhile,” said Lucas.

She lay down on the grass and shuddered.

He sat chewing a straw. The sunlight beat on his shoulders. God’s wounds, but he was hungry! Only now did he notice. But his stomach was one cavern of hunger. Across the fields he saw a poplar-shaded house with its outbuildings, doubtless the center of this plantation--but empty as the fisher cabins. He wondered if he dared stop long enough to break in, on the chance of finding some bread or a cheese overlooked in the flight. Or even silver; he would need means of purchase. He shook the girl. “Up,” he said. She raised eyes gone pale. “I cannot.”

“Up, I say!” His temper snapped. “Or I leave you here! Haven’t you been enough of a burden?”

She buried her face in the grass and lay unmoving. He started off. After a few yards, he looked around. “Well, are you coming?” he said.

She climbed to all fours and then, slowly, to her feet. He went on ahead, fuming.

The clatter of hoofs burst through his preoccupation. Too late! He stood slack-jawed, near the door of the house, as a dozen horsemen galloped around a bend in the road and up toward him.

For one instant he thought of escape. Then Djansha came out onto the path. An exultant yell reached his ears. He shook his fist at the saints, hefted his pike, and went to stand beside her.

The horsemen reined in with a clang. There were six Turcopols, armored in light mail over flowing shirts and trousers, with spiked helmets on shaven half-Asiatic heads. They rode their ponies high-stirruped in the nomadic fashion; their weapons were saber, ax, and a powerful double-curved bow. Five other men were also light cavalry, but in Western gear: breastplate, flat helmet, sword, dagger, and lance. Boots were drawn over trunk hose and round leather shields banged their horses’ cruppers. Their features were equally European, tanned, bearded, and hard.

The leader was Occidental too, a full-armed knight. Cuirass, brassards, elbowpieces, tasses, and greaves were added to the hauberk that protected his neck and arms, the ringmail on his thighs. A red cloak fluttered at his shoulders and a plume on his conical, visored helmet. There was a coat of arms on his oblong shield and a pennant on the mastlike lance he gripped in one gauntleted hand.

Teeth flashed white through his beard. He said in Catalonian: “Keep away from that pike of his. Put an arrow in him, Arslan. Be ready to catch the girl if she runs, Ferrando. We’ll take her into the house.”

Catalan traders were nearly as ubiquitous as Venetian or Genoese. Lucas had gained fluency in their tongue while he was working out of Sinope. “Wait!” he cried. “In God’s name, Micer, what is it you do?”

The knight reined back his big gray stallion. “I thought you a Greek,” he said. His tone was rough and unschooled. “Well, then, what are you?”

Lucas hesitated. How had the story gone--? Oh, yes, the Genoese had seized the ships of the Catalan Company. “Venetian.”

“All alone here?” The leader raised shaggy brows. He was a hulking figure of a man, with a heavy and deeply-pocked face. His nose had been broken in the past, a few teeth were missing, a scar zigzagged past one brown eye. “How does that happen?”

“A petty misunderstanding. If Micer Knight will let me explain at length--”

“If you’re an outlaw, you’ve no value. Be off!” Death-white, Djansha looked from one rider to the next. A Turcopol leered at her. “Leave the woman, Venice dweller,” he said in bad Catalonian.

“On second thought,” said the knight, “he could make trouble later. Kill him, Arslan.”

It leaped forlornly to Lucas’ tongue: “Wait, I say! I have a message for En Jaime!”

“Who?” The leader gaped. The archer lowered his bow.

“The rich hom En Jaime de Caza, of course.” Lucas stamped the butt of his pike on the ground. “I suppose you can take me to him. Do so!”

“Hold!” rapped the knight to his followers. “Hold off, you whoresons! Back, there. . . . Uh. Your pardon, Micer de Venezia. I didn’t know. As soon as we’ve stripped yonder house, I’ll be glad to bring you and your lady before my lord.”

The house in Gallipoli had belonged to a noble of Byzantium. Now En Jaime and his staff occupied it. By day, boots racketed across mosaic floors, weapons clattered and horses tramped in the formal garden, a cowed servant corps waited on unwashed men-at-arms with a kick and a curse to speed them.

This evening, however, the knight baron used a dining room whose riches of carpet and tapestry had escaped such treatment. Between slender columns, candles in silver brackets lit the stiff depictions of East Romans many centuries dead. A glazed window overlooked a steep downhill view. Here and there a light glimmered from some other house, or the bobbing torches of a sentry squad. There was more illumination beyond the city walls, at the waterfront: not only the moon but a pharos, high on one of the cliffs, revealed a few ships tied at otherwise empty docks.

En Jaime nodded toward the harbor. “Those vessels brought men to enlist with us,” he said. “Certain Turks--and Greeks, who hate their degenerate overlords so much they’ll shave their heads and join us as Turcopols. They have come, and we’ve sent envoys whom we expect will recruit many more such allies.”

The years had changed him little in outward appearance. His hair was slightly gray at the temples, and the narrow hook-nosed face bore deeper lines. But his bearing was as soldierly as Lucas remembered, his elegance of white linen and black velvet as unpretentious. He turned about, hands behind his back, to give Lucas the old thin smile. “Enough of the future,” he declared. “We have many yesterdays to learn about. It seems to be my destiny to pull you from one fire of your own lighting after another. But good to see you again, you scapegrace!”

Lucas lounged back in a carven chair. Good to be here, he thought, with a well-cooked meal inside him, wine goblet in hand and luxurious plum-colored garments (looted from the Genoese factory) on his skin. Djansha lay between silken sheets in the room given them, and he preferred to let her sleep and talk to his friend, instead.

Or his lord? That was no easy question. Even in those few months of his service, before En Jaime went back from Constantinople and left him, the fugitive boy and the proven man had been something more than master and servants. Lucas owed much of his skill in swordplay to En Jaime’s teaching. For his part, he had instructed the knight in Greek and shown him how to write his name. Lucas had been impudent as a sparrow--but the Catalan had allowed it, without loss to his austere dignity.

When they parted, Lucas had wept a little.

Now, he thought, matters were not quite the same as before. The knight who found him, Asberto Cornel, had lent spare horses and accompanied him here. That had been a wild ride, bursting doors and seizing what they would, sleeping one night in a Byzantine villa and the next night on the ground! Arriving late today, Lucas had been well received by En Jaime; but the
rich hom
was preoccupied with the Company’s affairs, as it finished plundering the camp of its recent besiegers. This evening had been their first opportunity to speak at length, in private. They were still feeling their way with each other, the awkwardness of long-interrupted acquaintance upon them.

“You mentioned having traveled as far as Cathay,” said En Jaime.