ALTDORF (The Forest Knights: Book 1) (34 page)

“What did you say Gissler?”

“The woman. She’s been quiet, my lord. Perhaps we should check on her condition?”

Leopold grunted. “No need. She lives, for her kind do not leave this world so easily.”

The forest road was narrow, more a path really, that had been carved into the sloped land by centuries of use. As the driver slowed the wagon to navigate a switchback, a crossbow bolt caught him high in the chest, lifting him off the bench seat and depositing him deep into the foliage where he disappeared from view.

When Gissler heard the distinctive twang of a crossbow tickler being released, his instincts forced him low over his mount’s neck at the same instant the guard took the quarrel in the chest. Ignoring the panicked shouts of the other soldier in the wagon, he scanned the woods and whispered to his horse to keep her calm. Thirty yards to his left he saw a man bent over. He stood up stiffly, using his body to pull a heavy crossbow string back with a hook on his belt. The man straightened and Gissler found himself locking eyes with Thomas.

Impossible.

Leopold was shouting something but he did not comprehend the words.
How could Thomas be here?

Thomas slotted a bolt into the crossbow and raised the heavy weapon to his shoulder. He pulled the trigger. The second man on the wagon screamed as the quarrel tore into his abdomen, slamming him back into the seat and careening off the side to land on the hard road. Thomas threw his crossbow into the woods and picked up a sword at his feet.

After a quick glance around, Gissler relaxed slightly and sat up in his saddle. Thomas was alone. Leopold pulled alongside Gissler and grabbed his arm. The Duke’s eyes were wide and wild.

“That man is all that stands between you and a life of nobility. Finish this, here and now and I swear you will be ordained a Knight of Austria on this very day.”

Gissler looked into Leopold’s face, searching for deceit, but saw none. The young Duke gave him a knowing nod and gestured at the wreck of a man running to the back of the prison wagon. He cleaved the lock off the door with a single swing of his blade.

Gissler stared at the man who stood between him and his future. He looked like a survivor of a hellhound savaging. Water and sweat ran off him in torrents. His tunic was in tatters and did little to cover the bruises and cuts on his arms and upper back that he had suffered at the hands of his captors. His left eye was hideously swollen, and a crusted-over cut above it threatened to reopen at any moment. Added to this was the ever-present scar marking the entire side of his face. He appeared more apparition than man.

The soldier with the bolt in his belly lay on his side and groaned. His hands pressed over the entrance hole of the shaft, while the bulk of the wooden missile extruded from his back with only the leather vanes still lodged somewhere within his torso. Every few moments he would let out a gurgling scream of pain.

The noise was beginning to irritate Gissler.

Thomas kept his eyes focused on Gissler and Leopold while he walked over to the pain-ridden soldier. He placed the tip of his sword in the hollow between the moaning man’s collarbone and the left side of his neck. He leaned on the blade, and the woods became silent.

The girl stumbled from the wagon like she was drugged and Thomas went to her. He caught her as she collapsed, and eased her to the ground. He gave the two mounted men a dark stare and took a few steps toward them, moving remarkably well, considering his appearance. Ten paces away he set the point of his sword into the hard-packed earth of the road and rested his hands on the pommel. Leopold’s horse whinnied, and danced to the side a couple steps until the Duke reined her in.

Gissler dismounted and drew his blade.

“What happened to you Thomas? Since when did you become protector to the Devil’s spawn?”

“Say what you will, Gissler. But we both know why you are doing this. And it has nothing to do with the Devil.”

“Spare me your lectures,
Captain.
Is it so wrong to want a better life for yourself? I have served God as well as any man and I will not be judged by the likes of you.”

“You have traded your allegiance to God for that of a man.”

Gissler laughed. “And you think serving the Hospitallers was so much more? We fought and died for French nobles, not God. The knights were all blue-bloods who saw us as little more than dogs.”

“So, you would raise arms against a brother just to be welcomed amongst the ranks of those you despise?”

Gissler raised his sword to a low guard and said, “You consort with witches. And you are not my brother.”

Gissler struck first: a straight thrust followed by attacks to either side of Thomas’s head. Thomas knocked Gissler’s blade aside easily, with quick, deft blocks. Gissler danced back and smiled.

It had been an exploratory attack to get a feel for how comfortable Thomas was with his weapon. To any normal observers Thomas would seem highly skilled, and they would not be wrong. However, in Gissler’s mind, Thomas had taken the second slash too near the tip of his blade, where it had no stopping power.

Thomas had always preferred fighting with mace and dagger, much shorter weapons. He was nowhere near Gissler’s equal when it came to the long blade, and Gissler saw that very thought mirrored in Thomas’s eyes. The man was smart enough to know when he was outclassed.

“I will say this only once. Drop your blade and submit or I
will
kill you. But I believe you know that,” Gissler said.

In response, Thomas yelled and charged at Gissler, swinging left and right with powerful overhand attacks. Gissler backpedaled and brought his sword up in a series of awkward blocks until he managed to sidestep the frontal assault and regain his balance. The quick attack had caught him off guard and he cursed himself for being so lax. Thomas was no ordinary opponent. He would not underestimate him again.

Gissler attacked. Two straight thrusts at Thomas’s abdomen followed by a reverse cut to his head. Thomas parried them, but then Gissler swept his blade down and drew a line of blood across Thomas’s thigh. Thomas grunted and stepped back. He dropped his sword to a low guard and met Gissler’s next attack with a parry and two counter strikes of his own.

Gissler blocked the attack with ease and stepped around the left side of Thomas. His blade flicked out and he sliced Thomas across the ribs. Thomas leapt back lessening the depth of the cut, but not the pain. He grimaced and backtracked further to gain some room. Thomas was breathing heavily now, and looking into his eyes, Gissler knew the man was finished. But to Thomas’s credit, he did not give in. He launched a flurry of strikes, but Gissler was ready.

He moved in circles and casually met his blade with crisp blocks at the end of each swing’s powerful arc, and when Thomas stepped in too close, Gissler raised his elbow and smashed it across his mouth. Then he stepped away to create distance and slashed Thomas across his sword arm’s shoulder. Thomas screamed and his blade flew through the air, landing on the ground near one of the dead wagon guards.

Breathing heavily, Thomas limped after his weapon, one hand pressed against his shoulder to stem the flow of blood. Gissler watched the pathetic man with a detached calm. So this is how Thomas Schwyzer, Captain of
The Wyvern
, the finest fighting ship in the Levant, was to meet his end. What would Grandmaster de Villaret say now of his favored son?

Gissler allowed him to pick up the sword with his left hand before attacking again. Thomas was on the defensive immediately but he was far too slow and clumsy with his off hand. Gissler slashed his chest and then rode the length of Thomas’s blade with his own all the way to the handle’s crosspiece. With a flick of his wrist he snagged Thomas’s sword and sent it spinning from his grip. He placed the point of his blade against the front of Thomas’s throat and forced him to his knees.

Thomas gulped in air through his bloody open mouth. His dirty tunic was now soaked in red and he had the forlorn eyes of a man who had lost everything. To Gissler, Thomas had already been dead a long time. His life had been spent in blind servitude. He could not bring himself to feel sorry for his old captain because Thomas had accepted his fate with open arms. Never had he fought to better his position or change his lot. He was little more than a slave to be used by those God truly favored. Those who struggled to further their station in life.

Thomas looked up at him and pulled the neck of his tunic to one side exposing the hollow between his collarbone and carotid artery.

“Make it fast,” he said, his stare defiant to the end.

Gissler nodded. “You deserve that much.”

He lowered the point of his sword from the front of Thomas’s neck and stepped to the side to deliver the killing thrust. But his sword would not move.

Thomas had thrown his arm over Gissler’s blade and held it pinned under his armpit against his side, while his hand Gripped Gissler’s wrist. His other hand snaked towards the body of the caravan guard next to him and yanked on the crossbow bolt protruding from the dead man’s back. It came free with a wet pop and before Gissler had time to react, Thomas leaned back reaching far behind his head with his right arm holding the crossbow bolt, its iron point and shaft slick with dark blood.

With a loud cry, Thomas drove the hardened iron point into the base of Gissler’s throat, just above the spot at which his chainmail vest ended. The wind blew out of his lungs and Gissler stumbled back, dropping his sword while his hands wrapped around the base of the thick bolt protruding from his upper chest.

Gissler stared at the shaft with wide eyes and his head shook back and forth in disbelief. Blood poured from the wound and seeped under his chainmail, only to emerge at his waist to turn his white under-tunic a vivid red. He stumbled to his knees and his eyes lost all focus before he fell onto his back. He looked up at nothing, still clutching the crossbow bolt.

***

Gissler’s lips moved, and with his ruined lung, he had hardly any wind left to make words, but Thomas heard them all the same. Though, like most men’s last words, they made little sense.

“No… I must… hire a farrier…” Gissler gave a last shudder and his hand fell away from the crossbow bolt’s shaft.

Thomas pushed himself to his feet and looked down at his boyhood friend. They had traveled to the end of the world together, faced the mightiest Saracen warriors ever assembled, and survived when so many others, most in fact, did not. Only to come back here, where it all began, and kill one another.

Where was God’s Will in all of this?

A horse whinny caught his attention and he looked up. Leopold stared at him, disbelief blanketing his face. Thomas raised a blood-soaked arm and pointed.

“You,” Thomas said. His voice rasped in his throat. “You… are
poison.
”

Leopold looked once again at the fallen bodies on the road, then back to the specter walking towards him. He reined his horse in a tight circle away and kicked his heels into her side.

Long before the sound of galloping hooves had disappeared into the distance, Thomas collapsed face-first onto the hard road, amidst an ever-growing circle of crimson.

Chapter 39

T
HE MOONLESS NIGHT allowed the twenty figures to crawl over the barren landscape of the fortress’s killing fields like darkness overtaking a desert. They flowed through gaps in the half-built walls, shrinking well back of the torchlight from the main gates, and continued inexorably forwards, until they came before the walls of the prison. There, they merged with the night, and waited.

A door opened, and Heller, the jailer stepped out. He glanced about, craning his neck to take in all corners of the courtyard, and then beckoned to the shadows. Noll and his handpicked group of men and women passed by him wordlessly and poured into the depths of the large stone prison. It took only seconds to overcome the three sentries in the guardroom, but a full half hour to unlock the countless cell doors and manacles of the hundred condemned wide-eyed inhabitants.

They armed themselves with chains, flails, torches, pointed staves, forceps, sharp cones of iron, and other tools readily available in a house of torture. When the distant sounds of fighting could be heard at the main gates of the fortress, Noll and Heller opened the doors of the prison and set their army free.