Scarlet From Gold (Book 3) (7 page)

“I thought it was supposed to go on the shoulder,” Marco commented.

“It usually does, but it’s easier to display if you can just pull the neck of your shirt over to the side, I’ve been told,” the woman told him.  “And that’s pretty practical when you’re standing on a door step in the rain, asking for shelter.  And besides, you’ve already got this other flower tattoo here,” she tapped his shoulder.  “It’s a pretty one.”  Marco glanced out of the corner of his eye, not having realized he had such a tattoo on his body.

“That’s fine,” Marco agreed with a shrug, after looking down at where the woman had the skin of his shoulder bunched up to display a large, colorful tattoo, one whose origins he didn’t know.

“Lean back, close your eyes, and relax,” the woman told Marco, and moments later he felt a prick in his skin, followed immediately by another, and then another, as the tattooing process was quickly inflicted upon his skin.

“Here, right over your heart.  Maybe it will protect you from heartache,” the tattooist said several minutes later, as Marco opened his eyes and flinched.  He saw that she was using a sponge to wipe away bloody smears.  “The swelling will go down and the pain will stop in just a couple of days.  It’s a nice flower; this one turned out very well.  I hope you enjoy it.”

Marco carefully pulled his shirt back on, and re-strapped his belongings so as to avoid irritating the new tattoo.  He hoped that Dex and Pivot were right, that it would prove useful in facilitating his journey towards Barcelon.  He nodded to the tattoo artist, and left the shop to return to the main road of the city, the one that ran east and west – the one that would set him on his path towards Barcelon and beyond. He stopped at a secondhand clothing shop, one where his offer to pay with coins instead of bartering with other goods seemed to be a puzzle to the owners, and he acquired a sturdy poncho, one that appropriately had swifts and violets woven into a pattern on its surface.

And then he was off, leaving the great cathedral city behind and headed towards the east.

The sun was not far above the horizon, so that Marco sometimes squinted and sometimes walked with his head lowered as he moved in the opposite direction of the incoming pilgrims who were arriving in the city.  And he continued to walk.

For ten days he traveled along the route, a lonely traveler moving against the steady spring season flow of pilgrims who had started their travels to the shrine as soon as the weather had broken.  The days were growing longer; even since his memories of the days when he had appeared on Station Island – not so long ago – Marco could tell that there was more daylight.

The first few days of the journey were relatively easy, as the pilgrim’s way stayed within river valleys that had relatively easy slopes and only moderate changes in elevation.  Some evenings he stayed where inbound pilgrims stayed, and listened to their stories about harsh weather in the mountains that were behind them, or ahead of him in his case, and how thankful they were to have an easy road for the rest of the way into Compostela.  There were a few stories about robbers in the mountains as well, and Marco clinched his jaw in anger at the thought of pilgrims being preyed on.

After ten days he began to climb higher, as the road left the valleys and started working its way up towards the mountain passes at the higher elevations.  His poncho kept him dry and warm, as random showers at the lower levels occasionally became flurries in the evening at the higher elevations.

Marco was anxious to make progress, driven by the geas, the one that the spirit of Ophiuchus had said had been laid upon him by Lethe, driven to move constantly forward as he had felt driven before Dex and Pivot had persuaded him to slow down and make his early journey a pilgrimage.  He walked after sunset on many days, and sometimes simply bedded down beneath bushes on the ground.

He grew thinner as he traveled without always stopping to eat, and after more than a fortnight, as he reached a high altitude pass at night, he decided he had to splurge and eat a meal at an inn, even though the establishment had no image of a swift above its door.  The proprietor told him there was no lodging, because a large party of nobles were riding on the pilgrimage and had paid handsomely to rent out nearly every room, but for a pence Marco secured a spot in the stable loft.

He dropped his belongings in the spot he selected among the bales of hay stacked above the stables, as he heard several sets of boots trod past the stables and enter the inn.  There was a burst of indistinct shouts, and then silence from the inn as Marco descended down the ladder; he was eager to return to the inn and eat a hot meal.

As he approached the kitchen door, he saw the cook come running out, and the woman ran into Marco as she flung the door open, spilling them both to the ground, as two men came running out the door after the cook.

The men grabbed her by the arms and roughly lifted her off of Marco.

"Not so fast, my pretty," one of the men said to the cook, then slapped her viciously, making her wail with profound fear.

"Hey!" Marco exclaimed in shock and dismay.

"You don't look like you're worth anything," the other man said as he looked at Marco.  And then, to Marco's horror, the man raised his sword and stabbed it down at Marco's chest.

The tip of the sword plunged down at his heart, and as it pierced his poncho and clothing, it struck squarely upon the violet tattoo on his chest.  There was a bright flash of light, and the sword momentarily glowed as a charge of energy ran up the blade from Marco to the attacker, killing the man in an instant.

The cook and the man holding her looked at Marco and the dead man's body, then the man let loose of the cook and looked at Marco in fear.

"What did you do?" he asked plaintively, as he backed towards the kitchen door, fearfully hoping to escape from the frightening turn of circumstances unfolding in the stableyard.

"Stop!" Marco commanded, but the man gained the doorway and fled inside.

"What's happening?" Marco asked the cook as he scrambled to his feet.

"My lord, there's a whole gang of robbers who just took over the inn," the cook answered.  "How did you kill him?" she asked as she pointed at the dead man.

"I'm not sure," Marco answered.

He drew his sword as there was a sound at the door again.

"What idiocy are you babbling?" a man asked the robber who had fled, as a trio of criminals returned to the scene.

"Well, what have we here?" the new man asked as he spotted Marco in the dim light in the yard.

"He's the one, Maurin!" the returnee exclaimed as he pointed at Marco.

"So, is he a sorcerer?" Maurin asked as the trio spread around Marco, while the cook fled to the stables.

"Are you a sorcerer?" the man asked Marco directly, as a way to distract him, for one of the men around Marco thrust his sword forward in an attack at that moment.

Marco’s extraordinary sword responded to the attack with a riposte that let the blade easily strike and wound the attacker faster than the eyes of the others could follow in the darkness.  The sword then instantly twirled Marco’s body around to fight the other man as well, catching him in astonished disbelief as Marco’s sword sliced across his neck.

Without hesitating, Marco faced the man who had spoken, and who was waving his sword wildly in a desperate attempt to protect himself from the flurry of violence that had erupted inexplicably.

Marco easily swatted the man's sword to the side as he wounded him too, and left him in a bleeding heap on the frozen ground.

"Oh my lord!" the cook cried from the stable door.  "You did it!  Can you save us from all of them?"

"How many are there?” Marco asked as he stood in the yard.  “Come with me into the kitchen,” he told the girl.

“There were a dozen or more,” she told him as she timidly walked up to him.  She followed him into the kitchen, and they knelt there by the stove, staying low and out of immediate sight of anyone who might happen to look into the room.

“Well, there are four fewer of them now,” Marco told the girl.  There were voices speaking in the nearby dining room, and a woman suddenly screamed.

“Go to the doorway of the dining room and tell the robbers that Maurin wants two of them to help him, then come back in here and hide,” Marco told the cook.  The girl, one who looked naturally timid, looked at Marco fearfully, but seemed to take courage from his presence, for she stood up and walked away.  Marco let out a deep sigh himself, not sure how it was possible he had fallen into such a dangerous and unexpected battle.

“Maurin said to get in here right now!” he heard the cook shout in a surprisingly authoritative voice, and then he found her running towards him, and crouching down next to him.  “There are ten of them in there, and they are separating the men from the women.  Some of the men have been injured by the robbers,” she warned Marco.

“Thank you,” he whispered as he heard the door open.  He stood up, and saw three men come into the kitchen, leaving seven out among the hostages, he counted.

“Who are you?” one man asked.

“Where’s Maurin?” another asked.

“I’m here because of Maurin,” Marco told them as he walked towards them, then as he got closer, and the men looked about in confusion, but without concern, Marco suddenly ran at them and let his sword take over the battle, slaying one man immediately, wounding another, and tangling Marco in a battle with the third man that carried the two of them back through the door into the dining room, where the women shrieked at the new eruption of violence, as Marco landed on top of his opponent and used the hilt of the sword to punch the man unconscious.

Marco looked up quickly, just in time to see two of the robbers come running at him with long knives in their hands.  He used his sword to slice the arm of one of the men and make him drop his weapon, but the other one stabbed his knife into Marco’s right shoulder, making his gasp in pain as he loosened his grip on his sword and toppled to the side of the struggle.

He heard general mayhem break out elsewhere in the room, while he focused on fighting the man with the knife who was swinging his weapon at Marco again.  Marco saw the timid cook emerge from the kitchen door with a large wooden rolling pin, which she swung mightily at the man who was threatening him with a knife, knocking the man unconscious.

“Thank you!” Marco gasped with a grin as he picked up his sword and turned towards the rest of the room, where the men who were being held captive had staged an unarmed attack against their captors, as Marco had drained away numbers of the men who had seized control of the inn.  Marco saw one of the captives struck down by a vicious sword blow, and he responded by picking up a plate off a nearby table and hurling it at the man with the sword, striking him in the back of the head, buying time as Marco staggered around tables and benches that were in his way.  He arrived within seconds where the fighting was fierce and began using his sword to quickly strike down the last of the robbers.

He had just finished stabbing his sword into another fighter, when the last one of the assailants who was still armed and unharmed launched himself from a tabletop where he stood.  The man dove at Marco.  “You’ll go down with me for your interference!” the man shouted angrily at Marco.  He launched his attack without hope of survival, seeking only to get revenge against the intruder who had upset the well-laid plan to rob an entire party of wealthy pilgrims in one easy event.  His sword struck Marco in the chest, and struck the violet tattoo, just as an earlier attacker had.

There was a small explosion of power as Marco was knocked backwards and unconscious, while the robber fell to the floor dead from the shock.

Chapter 4 – The Journey Resumed

Marco awoke late the next morning, feeling someone wiping a wet, warm cloth across his chest.  He opened his eyes and saw a young man, dressed in fine clothes, gently swabbing the shoulder that had been stabbed.  The arm was held in a sling that was tied tightly to limit the mobility of his injured limb.

“So you’re awake now, my lord?” the man asked Marco.  “I’m sure you feel some discomfort, but the innkeeper has said that you may remain here to heal as long as you need.

“You’re the hero once again, and may I say thank you?” the man continued.  “Though we haven’t met, that’s probably the second time you’ve saved my life, you know.”

“How?  What do you mean?” Marco asked, unable to comprehend what the man was referring to.

“In Barcelon, when you provided the cure for the plague.  Five people in my household already had the disease when you made the cure available, and they all survived.  Without it, they all would have died, and probably the rest of us would have caught the disease too,” the man told Marco matter-of-factly.

“So I see you’ve been on the pilgrimage.  Is that where you’ve been all these months?” the man asked as he tapped the violet tattoo, which sat upon a large, deep purple bruise.

“You know me?” Marco asked in astonishment, as he realized what the man was saying.  Marco’s hand grabbed the wet cloth and pressed it back into the small bucket of warm water as he sat up.

“Not directly, my lord, but all of us know of you.  Several of the others recognized you immediately last night during the battle,” the man answered.

“Who am I?” Marco asked, his voice filled with an intensity that made his caretaker nervous.

“You joke, don’t you, my lord?” the man asked.

“I’ve lost much of my memory, and I’m under a geas that is driving me towards Barcelon, and then beyond,” Marco answered.  “I know my name is Marco, but I know virtually nothing else about myself.”

“This is remarkable!  You are the Marquis of Sant Jeroni, the man who saved Barcelon from plague and Corsairs and sorcery last year, then disappeared when you went to the Isle of Ophiuchus for treatment months ago,” the man told Marco.

“And who are you?” Marco asked.

“I am the Baronet Gustaf, a minor member of the nobility, my lord,” the man said with a smile and a bob of his head.  “The others in our party include the Viscount and Viscountess Tarragona, the Earl and Countess Alella, and Duke Priorato, plus a few others,” Gustaf explained.  “They are all most anxious to know about your condition.”