I Know Not (The Story of Fox Crow) (11 page)

      In many a bard’s raving tale, told with cut–outs silhouetted against a lit screen, now would be the part where I explain everything and he joins my quest. Or else perhaps I might challenge him. Or he would call me a liar and attack. None of these happened, because he was already trying to kill me. Apparently he knew that trick, too.

      He swung his five-waterweight hammer single handed, gravity lending strength where muscle could not. Do not sneer, five waterweights was enough to reduce bones to pudding when swung by a skilled man, and he was indeed skilled. At this point his unwieldy two–handed weapon would nearly reach the ground, smashing everything standing alongside his horse. With death approaching like a rockslide, I suppose I could have growled something witty and heroic between clenched teeth, but there simply wasn’t time.

      Allow me to pause here, a last coherent thought as the Animal inside burst forth from the Fog. On the field of battle, a charging horse will mow down the opposition with ease, but not in a static duel. A horse like this one costs a lot of money, and is a fine weapon in mobile warfare, but right now it was little more than an ungainly and expensive high–chair. So, if you are ever so lucky to be able to hand over the obscenely large amount of gold it takes to buy and train and ride one of these mountains of frothing muscle and iron shod hooves, do not (for the love of all that is pure and holy) ever take one into static close combat. If you do, someone like me will do something like this:

      With wild abandon, I dove under the animal’s belly between the horses front and rear legs, removing myself from the Hammer plus Crow equals Corpse formula. I heard the maul displace air behind me and knew he was less than a second from either bringing it down on his left side to smash me, or perhaps rearing his destrier to trample me, or worse galloping off to turn this into some kind of mobile confrontation I was sure to lose. Instead, I pretended I was a good man and had to quell any qualms about spinning on my heel, Phantom gripped with both hands.

      I felt every ounce of muscle from my legs to wrists threaten to tear from their moorings in protest as the blade arced through the air like a siren. I was not aiming at the knight’s noble head, for that was too far above. I was not aiming at his well–deserving thigh, because it was plated in steel. Have I mentioned that you should never bring a horse into a static duel?

      Packed for a long journey the war horse was still traveling light, without the weight of armor. The Angel moved as a black flash and rang like a bell as it severed the war–horses front left foreleg. The mount reared in shock and rage, thick streams of crimson ribbon spurting from a clean stump before it tumbled over backwards, and so did the Knight. So did I, truth be told, unbalanced from the effort of the stroke. In my favor, however, was the fact that I wasn’t being laid on by most of a ton of horse.

      “Get them back!” The passion of the words burned my throat as the order surged forth like a hungry wolf.

      I spared only a moment to make sure the boys were retreating the horses from the melee. I know, you ask why I was crying out when I should have fallen on the armored bastard and finished him as he lay like a tortoise? Fortune has not smiled on me much as of late, and apparently she was still flirting with some noble bastard who was right now discovering a crown shaped birthmark on his buttocks and claiming a kingdom.

      For one thing, he was not lying on his back, helpless. Armor’s weight is displaced across the whole body. Yes, it is heavy, and impedes split second timing, however it does not make a man as ungainly as some would have you believe. My enemy may have been a zealot, but he was a skilled zealot. Knights are not just men with long spears in tin cans. They train long and they train hard. Eventually they can leap onto the back of a horse in full armor. Getting up off the ground is no problem. Even worse they practice so they can ditch a falling horse without having their legs, spine, or head crushed. Which he had just done.

     
Damn it
.

      I focused on my opposite as he circled the thrashing body of his dying mount, an inhuman growl forcing from deep in his chest. I unleashed the Beast within and leapt. My blade took a chunk out of the bronze halo of flame on his helm. His black and silver hammer slammed into the frozen field where my foot hand just been, sending sharp shards of white rocketing into the air. I rolled away, bounced to my feet and raised the blade like a sharp wall between us.

      This was no bandit. This was no foot soldier. This was a professional warrior, a product of a venerable and refined tradition of mortal combat, and he demanded my respect and caution. A whisper from the Fog echoed down my arm. Left Hand quickly snatched my dagger from my boot and showed to him.

      The trap was set, the spring taut.

      He came in slowly, wisely, aware of my two–weapon stance. He knew, however, if he stayed distant, he would be safe from the dagger. His grip was spread on the war hammer, able to separate further to get speed or close in together for powerful strikes. I waited for him to come, and being no coward he did not disappoint. His strikes were varied and expert, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, high and low at seeming random. I was having trouble keeping all my precious bits out of the way.

      He struck for my center of balance, my torso, knowing any strike with a maul would liquefy anything beneath the hard uncaring end, killing or crippling me instantly. He came in with a flurry of blows that I alternatively met with the Angel or avoided outright. His mattock whooshed in the chill air and the ragged sounds of our breathing were swallowed by the wail of the mutilated horse. Without parade or show, I reversed the grip on my dagger and laid it flush with my forearm, hiding it from view.

      The trap was now baited.

      He swung again and I let my blade meet it but be turned aside, giving him the feeling of contact and whetting his appetite for victory. His blows came faster and faster, thirst for blood clouding his judgment. This is a fatal flaw in a soldier. He stepped in, and the trap he had set closed on me.

      I swung Phantom with all the power in my right arm to meet his weapon but the weight of his mattock, powered by a surprisingly mighty blow, cast it aside like a flower caught in an avalanche. The barest echo of the strike slammed into my right collar. Nothing broke, but the shoulder blazed and threatened to seize up. If that happened I was dead. I sunk to one knee, not entirely by design, as the throbbing spread to my lungs and neck. The Holy Knight cocked the hammer behind his head to spatter the thinking part of me across the road—

      Not today
.

      My body was failing; It was only my will that drove me on as I sprung forth and trapped the butt of his cocked hammer with the Phantom. He cursed and tried to back up, but I followed him doggedly, keeping his blow blocked as the blade caught between his gauntleted wrists and the butt of the hammer.

      Regaled in his armor he must have felt near invulnerable, his whole front presenting a beautifully terrifying façade to the world. I know better, however. Even in the heaviest armor, joints still need to bend, arms need to move, and the armpit is an area near naked for lack of space to place plates or chain.

      When he could see it, my dagger had been a cause of caution for him, I had hidden it for mere moments and he had forgotten about it in the rush of the here and now that takes over men in battle. The blade spun from along my arm into an eager and furious fist. Into that chink between the heavy steel is where I inserted the killing edge.

      The trap snapped shut.

      The studiously honed blade sliced through a thin layer of leather and into the vital artery that lay there. I twisted it, feeling it grind against bone and opening the seeping wound into a torrent that bathed my arm in reeking blood. His strength left at once and he collapsed away, his heart pumping carefully measured amounts at frantic intervals upon the frozen winter sheath. The ice pockmarked as if he leaked acid, or perhaps concentrated hate.

      I took a moment to dispatch the screaming horse before coming back and watching the knight, from a safe distance, the lights in his shielded eyes slowly go out.

      “To all things come the fire eventually. And in the flames there will be an accounting.“ were his last, angry words, quoting his angrier God.

      I waited a few more moments, then I stepped in quickly and put a foot on the haft of his hammer. I still lifted the Angel and slid it into the small gap between the bottom of the helmet and the breastplate. I shoved until I hit frozen earth, pulled it part way free, then shoved again hard.

      He had been my enemy, and I bestowed upon him the greatest respect by showing him the proper amount of caution even in death. Only then did I stiffly retrieve my dagger and wipe it clean on his cloak.

      My shoulder started to pulse and quiver angrily as the heat of battle cooled in the nippy breeze. I looked up to the people of this unnamed collection of hovels, and saw only shock there. One may have thought I had just turned aside a vicious storm with harsh language. Well, there was one, teary old woman who glanced at the burnt stake and then nodded to me a grim thanks.

      “Clean water.” I said softly, and three boys ran off. As long as they came back with water, I didn’t much care where they went. I turned back to the carriage party that stared in something of shocked amazement. The women had departed the carriage –
against my orders, damn it
– and Gelia made a holy sign before her. Maybe it was vanity, but I thought it was against me.

      Like a tongue probing a tooth for pain, my mind gingerly explored the inside of my skull, and found the panting, bloody Beast was still at the helm of my battered body. I wrestled it into the Fog, and it responded by removing the bulwarks against the stomach churning waves of agony. I felt the blood drain from my face, and cold needles danced along my skin. The Fog leapt upon my weakness and covered me for a moment, blocking out the world with claws made of spiraling, liquid light.

      A wise man, I just can’t remember his name just now, said: If you faint standing up, you will always, always, always, smack your face on a rock. Just because I didn’t, that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

      My eyes snapped open, and hovering above me was Gelia’s lined face.

      I’m dying.

      I swear, that was my first thought, because the look of utter pity and loss on Gelia’s face could not otherwise be directed at me. The tenderness, the determination, was not – had never been – for me. I tried to shift, but instead of slapping me down, or growling at me, old, powerful hands gripped me gently and held me still. The words being spoken on all sides made little sense, but her posture, her every glance, told me I was a human being, and I was in trouble.

      My inner cynic chuckled and whispered snidely,
That’s how clerics are supposed to act
!

      She gave me something bitter to drink and I felt wakefulness slipping away. I snatched it back to me, desperate to escape the cloudy hell of dreaming sleep. My hand spazmed, and she took it in her own. Her skin was warm and soft like perfectly clean velvet. She began murmuring prayers, holy words that slipped through the haze of pain and disorientation like moonlight through tight branches. She continued to push and prod, to feed and poultice. She even cut open the skin over my shoulder with a small silver knife, and then used the blade to hold open the wound as she leaked a thick sludge into the skin.

      To her credit, she stayed with me every second of the night. To my own, I did not surrender to sleep. I clung to consciousness as a holy writ. Hour after hour passed, but only the most feeble of dawns came upon the sleepy forest village. Gelia cleaned her bloody hands in a bowl of water and then leaned back against a rain barrel. She shut her eyes. The entire village was asleep around me, so I waited until her breath became slow, long, and regular, then I counted to three hundred. Only then did I slowly gather myself and attempt to move.

      Miraculously, everything responded. Silk thread held closed the cut in my shoulder, but underneath the slicing pain of a fresh cut the joint was hale and whole. I got to my feet, feeling the icy air slam gloriously into every inch of my naked skin. I stretched silently. Even the black blanket of the forest above could not extinguish the simple wonderment of my body.

      Behind me, Gelia’s voiced walked quietly and respectfully into my moment alone, “What are you, Crow?”