The Red Cross of Gold I:. The Knight of Death (63 page)

He found the garden path with little trouble
and skirted Merry’s backyard, moving west and came at the house
from the side nearest the stables. He checked the stables, but
found only the horses, still standing as he and Merry had abandoned
them. He resisted the urge to fall into the sweet-smelling hay and
go to sleep. The only blessing he could count at the moment was
that the terrible hunger pangs had not returned. The words of von
Hetz rang in his ears. “You hunger for the truth.” The truth had
certainly set him free from the hunger in his stomach, but it had
done little to relieve his other troubles.

He slipped into the darkness again and made
his way back to the house. As he approached the side door leading
into the laundry area, the lights flickered twice and came on. He
mounted the steps carefully and pushed open the door. A single
florescent light glowed in the laundry room. Smears of blood and
small puddles of water indicated that he had made the right
decision. Beaujold had returned to the cover of the mansion to see
to his wounds. Mark entered the kitchen with extreme caution,
pausing to listen carefully for signs of life. Nothing. He crept
down the carpeted hallway, past the library and parlor toward the
foyer and the grand staircase. Maxie’s blood was still visible on
the tile at the foot of the stairs, but now there were newer,
fresher splotches mixed in with the rain water puddles on the tiles
from Beaujold’s passing. The trail led up the risers.

Mark went up the stairs quickly and quietly,
taking two steps at a time, following the stains on the carpet.
There were also smeared prints on the handrail. He had injured him
quite well. The blood led to the right toward the smaller
staircase, leading to the third floor.

At the top of the stairs, he found his
adversary. Beaujold stood on the third floor landing, looking down
at him. He had shed the military-style jacket and wore only a white
tee-shirt with a long bloody rip in the right side. The silver
broadsword was clasped in his left hand and a curved dagger gleamed
in his right.

Mark stood looking up at him without
speaking, trying to judge his condition.

“Brother,” Beaujold lowered his head and
looked at him with an almost insane gleam in his weak blue eyes.
His thin blond hair was plastered to his head, while bloody water
dripped from his right hand.

“Give it up, Sir, and go home while you can,”
Mark challenged him and then backed into the wall on the landing as
the Knight of the Sword came slowly, deliberately down the stairs.
“This is not necessary. You are still my Brother. We can come to an
understanding.”

Beaujold did not answer him. He was beyond
reasoning. When he reached the landing, he attacked with a vicious
series of thrusts, the force and fury of which surprised the Scot.
Mark stepped aside and struck down each thrust with a forceful
parry, each blow meant to break the Knight’s sword. Beaujold was
too seasoned a fighter to allow success. Mark parried the last
thrust and locked blades with the injured man, pinning him briefly
against the wall before clipping his chin with the pommel of the
golden sword, sending him sideways toward the stairs. The Knight
turned swiftly, leaned against the handrail briefly and then
launched himself off again, swinging the sword in a powerful arch
that would have taken the Knight of Death’s head had he not dropped
to one knee. The blade whizzed over his head actually brushing his
hair. The man was seriously demented.

Mark recovered his stance quickly and feinted
right before moving to the left as the Knight’s sword struck the
carpet where he had been only an instant before. Beaujold shrieked
in rage and charged forward with another thrust aimed at the center
of Mark’s chest. Mark volted left and began to back down the stairs
parrying blow after blow. There was no rage in his heart or his
mind. He felt a strange mixture of regret and sadness at the
situation. Never in his long life had he ever fought one of his own
Brothers in real combat. He had killed a number of them, but never
had he faced one as an enemy. An overwhelming sense of pity for the
Knight that attacked him so relentlessly, made him careless and he
tripped over a small table on the second floor landing. He fell
onto his back and then rolled twice, sending the table and its
contents crashing down the steps. He avoided another of Beaujold’s
heavy-handed blows, which would have removed at least part of his
head as he regained his feet. Beaujold made a fleche with the
dagger and grazed his hip as he turned a complete three-sixty
bringing up the silver blade again. A burning sensation coursed up
Mark’s side from the contact with the lethal blade, but he retained
his balance and brought up the golden blade in front of him,
unwilling, even so to attack his Brother forcefully.

“After I cut off your traitorous head, I’m
going to find the woman,” Beaujold regained some of his lost
composure and began to speak. Now would come a series of insults
intended to unbalance the opponent. Mark knew this ploy very well.
He had suffered many such forms of ridicule over the years, but had
managed to retain his cursed head upon his neck. Normally, such
things would have no effect on his conscious mind at all, but he
knew that this was different. This man meant what he said and the
woman this time meant something to Mark. He inhaled a sharp breath
and moved quickly, warding off another blow. The clang of the
swords echoed down the stairs into the foyer below.

“She is a whore lower than an Infidel’s
bitch,” Beaujold continued his verbal attack.

Mark felt the blood rise to his cheeks, but
made no reply.

“I will set your worthless head on the steps
and let you watch while I slowly cut her to pieces.”

The Knight attacked again and Mark
counterattacked with more force, backing him down the stairs with a
serious round of thrusts, followed by two more very close
encounters with the curved dagger. Beaujold stumbled and caught
himself on the banister halfway down. Mark followed him down the
stairs, knocking him back again and again, striking the banister
with enough force to send chunks of wood flying.

“This is useless, Brother,” Mark told him
when he stepped off the bottom riser onto the marble tiles. “I can
take your head at any time. You are injured. Give it up, man!”

“Come for it, Brother. You hide your own
wounds well, but you forget who inflicted them. It has not been
three days.” Beaujold reprised his attack with renewed fury that
surprised Mark Andrew and forced him to retreat up the steps. The
blond drew back his sword and dropped the dagger, taking the hilt
of the heavy sword in both hands. He made a wide swing intended to
literally cut Ramsay’s feet from under him.

Mark leaped from the steps, over the blade
and landed on the tiles behind the Knight of the Sword. His landing
sent terrible pain up side from his injured hip and caused the
older wound in his stomach to add to his problems. He straightened
more slowly than he expected and the Chevalier d’Epee turned more
quickly than he had thought possible, but not quickly enough.
Ramsay raised the naked point of the Flaming Sword making contact
with the soft flesh just below his jaw and stopped. Beaujold’s
sword was still down. His dagger lay on the floor. They locked
eyes.

“Yield or die!” Mark told him. “It’s that
simple.”

Beaujold’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Yield or die!” Valentino’s voice cut through
the ensuing silence. “I like that. Yield or die, Mark Ramsay!
Simple.”

Ramsay felt the prod of something hard
against the small of his back. He kept the sword at Beaujold’s
throat. Even if she shot him, he could not let the Knight go or he
would most certainly be dead. The Knight in front of him would not
stop. He tensed in anticipation of the shot. He’d been shot before.
It wasn’t the most pleasant experience in the world, but it was
better than losing one’s head.

Beaujold smiled at him and raised his sword
without taking his eyes off him. He took a short step backwards and
wheeled around, bringing up the silver sword in another of his wild
swings aimed at Ramsay’s throat. But the Knight was wounded, tired
and out of his mind with rage and pain. Mark waited and then
dropped suddenly to one knee. The same move he had made before.
Beaujold continued his swing and Valentino made a strangled
screaming sound. At the very last moment, the Knight of the Sword
flicked his wrist slightly and turned the blade perpendicular to
the floor. The flat side of the blade smacked against Valentino’s
temple and the pistol went off in her hand. She toppled forward
onto Mark’s head and the bullet went wild, striking the banister
behind the Knight of the Sword. He stared into the twin barrels of
Maxie’s shotgun. The hulking man stood a few feet away swaying
slightly, a broad bandage over his broken nose.

“Drop it, dipshit!” the man ordered him
gruffly with a decidedly nasal twang.

Mark struggled to dislodge the unconscious
woman from atop him and stood up, holding her limp form in front of
himself as a shield. He wrapped his sword arm under her breast and
pressed Dambretti’s dagger against her neck.

“Let her go!” Maxie backed up.

“Out of my way,” Mark told him quietly as he
dragged the woman toward the front door. Maxie looked from one of
them to the other and decided that the Knight of the Sword bore the
most watching, since he still clung to the silver sword.

“Drop it, I said!” The man swung the shotgun
to bear on Beaujold’s head. The shotgun carried much more weight
than the pistol.

Mark heard the Knight’s sword clang to the
floor. He pulled open the front door and stepped outside into the
rain and thrust the body of Valentino back inside the door. He
heard Maxie shout once before he sprinted across the porch and
leapt down to the sidewalk beside the house. The bone jarring
movements caused a number of new pains. He pressed his hand against
the new wound on his hip and made for the rear of the house and the
garden.

((((((((((((()))))))))))))

Dambretti awoke with a start when someone
kicked him lightly in the side. He looked up, blinking and
squinting in the dim light to see Mark Andrew standing over him.
His first thought was that he had missed morning muster and he
scrambled up to attention and snapped a salute to the Chevalier du
Morte.

“Saints preserve us,” Mark muttered and then
held one finger to his lips when Lucio discovered his error and
started to speak.

The rain had stopped and the gray light of
dawn was visible through the glass roof above them. Merry lay
curled on her side against the base of the big telescope standing
in the center of the room. Mark took the Knight’s arm and escorted
him to the hatch leading down and out of the observatory, leaving
her sleeping as they climbed down the ladder and took the narrow
stairs as quiet as two ghosts in the gray gloom. When they stepped
outside, the sun was rising above the eastern hill, a flaming ball
of red and purple between pink and blue clouds.

“Where have you been, Brother?” Lucio asked
him, eyeing the new rip in his clothing and the darker material
where the blood had soaked through his trousers.

“I met up with an old friend,” Mark told him
sourly. “I had to rest before I could come back. There was nothing
I could do in the rain and the dark. What of Simon and von
Hetz?”

“It is not Simon and the Ritter than concerns
me,” Lucio told him as they stumbled along the muddy trail.
“Christopher Stewart is with them.”

“Christopher?” Mark turned on him and took
him by the collar. “Christopher was with them?”

“Hold, Brother,” Lucio took hold of his wrist
and frowned at him. “I did not bring him here. He came on his own
and if he is not drowned already, the Master will kill him when he
gets him back to Italy.”

Mark nodded and let go of him. The situation
was becoming sorrier and sorrier. He cursed his luck again and
again as they continued down the hill. He had forgotten about his
apprentice. Fatigue and the events of the past several days
threatened to overwhelm him and he rubbed his temples as he walked
along, trying to keep his sanity and his consciousness. The boy had
probably drowned and ultimately, he would be blamed for the boy’s
death.

When they reached the cavern, they found it
still full of water and whatever hope he may have had of rescuing
Christopher vanished, only to be replaced by a smoldering rage. He
was angry first and foremost with himself for allowing this to
happen in the first place. After that, there was a long list of
people he wished to get even with even though he knew that
vengeance belonged to God and that God would take care of it for
him… eventually.

“Come on.” Mark picked up the chain and waded
into the water.

“I can’t!” Lucio backed away, staring at the
dark water in terror.

“Yes, you can,” Mark told him lightly when he
looked back at him.

“No!” Dambretti’s eyes went wide and his face
drained of color.

“Just relax and breathe the water. Surely
you've had this pleasant experience before? What is your fucking
problem?” Mark grumbled and waded back after him.

The Knight of the Golden Eagle turned to run
and Mark tackled him in the mud. They rolled in the slick white
mud, banging against rocks and small bushes as they slid partway
down the hill together. When they got up again, facing each other,
they looked like clay figures instead of flesh and blood. Mark
wiped at the gunk on his face and spat blood on the ground
angrily.

“By God, I have lost enough blood already! Do
not cause me to spill yours as well. Now come on!” he said, picked
up the chain and started to turn, but Lucio turned the other
way.

They went down again in a tangle of arms,
legs, chains and weapons.