Sword of the Bright Lady (2 page)

The old man stood in the doorway, bemused and sad. One wave of the hand, but in a universal language it said,
Come inside, you'll catch your death of cold
. The bitter truth stung at Christopher, blurring his sight. If Maggie had not already found shelter, it was too late. He had almost died in the night; no one would have survived until morning.

He shouted at the doorway, rebuking the gentle concern. “Were there others? Did you find the crash site? Did you check?”

Of course Svengusta could not understand the words. But he understood the message, it seemed. Sadly he shook his head, spread his hands in emptiness and defeat.

Christopher shivered, paralyzed by despair and anger. His heart pounded with the need to run, to search, to find, but his head could not see past failure. The cold would kill him in a few hours, and he did not even know which direction to start in. Fresh snow covered the ground, obscuring everything.

There was only the hope that Maggie had not been with him on the plane. He would have never walked away from her, under any circumstance. Even if he couldn't remember the crash, he knew that.

Not that he remembered being on a plane. And he couldn't imagine walking away from an aviation disaster without a scratch.

What if he had escaped kidnappers and wandered to safety in this obscure town? Maybe he should be lying low, getting a feel for the lay of land. Drugged, kidnapped, escaped. It made more sense than a plane wreck.

None of it made any damn sense at all.

Reluctantly, angrily, he slogged back into the little wooden room and slumped by the fire. Helga gave him another cup of tea, her lips trembling with his contagious grief.

Svengusta did not let him sit for long. Throwing the last log into the fire, the old man pointed at a hallway next to the fireplace.

“Er en god unggutt og henter noen mere for en gammel mann og en pike, vil De?”
he asked with wink.

The universal price of enjoying a fire: fetching more wood. At least it was something useful he could do. The door at the end of the short passageway was not barred, so he shuffled through it, expecting a storage closet. Instead he found a chapel.

Wooden pews were scattered throughout a large stone hall, the walls thinly dressed with tapestries where they were not broken by narrow windows. At the far end were double doors, and at the near end a huge, unused fireplace and a half-cord of stacked wood.

The windows were too narrow for a man to crawl through, with thick but ill-fitting shutters. The double doors were made from solid planks and bound with iron fittings. It was as fine a reconstruction of a medieval church as he had ever seen, until he looked up to see where all the light was coming from.

A plain wooden chandelier held a dozen gas flames sprouting from little stone cups, wholly out of character for a Dark Age atmosphere.

The open gas flames struck him as an incredible fire hazard. The walls were stone, but the roof was timber, and there was raw wood everywhere. The tapestries were gray and dusty, not fresh and restored. The rough-hewn benches looked suitably handmade, mostly stacked against the walls instead of laid out in display. If this was a museum, it was a very badly run one.

Above the mantel of the fireplace was a wooden frieze, a bas-relief carving. A hard-faced man stared back at him from the wood, a handsome woman standing behind him, etched in astounding detail. He tapped the frieze to make sure it was real wood, not a plastic molding.

The wooden man did not respond, of course, facing outward with serene determination. He stood between the woman and any possible danger, any imaginable threat. His features were solidly European, with a trimmed beard and mustache, but his stance was Oriental, with a katana held in a classic two-hand grip.

The sword had the correct curve, the round
suba
hand-guard, the distinctively wrapped hilt. Christopher could even see the
hamon—
the characteristic wavy pattern from the hand-folding process along the blade. But the man was wearing unmistakably Occidental armor: steel plates molded like clothing instead of the knotted cords and bamboo of samurai armor.

On the left, a tapestry displayed four men in a defensive semicircle around the same woman. The costumes and the people were solidly medieval Europe. The woman had a halo and was the center of attention. She looked regal, like a queen, or even revered, like some kind of Catholic Marian icon. She was unarmed, but each of the men around her bore a different weapon. One of them was the katana, wielded by the same man in the wooden carving. The others bore a staff, a sickle and a mace, and wore varying kinds of armor, all variations on Western plate or chain.

The tapestry on the right had only the swordsman and the lady. They stood in a delicate embrace, but their status as lovers was unequivocal. So much for Catholicism.

Spurred by the cold, he picked out an armload of wood to replenish the stock in the kitchen. Being productive made him feel better, and the firewood was comfortingly familiar. Not very well cut, however. Most of it still needed splitting.

When he got back to the kitchen, he made chopping motions with his hands. Svengusta produced an ax from the closet at the foot of the bed. Suitably armed, Christopher went back into the chapel to earn his keep.

The ax was ancient, the haft hand-carved and untreated. But the edge was sharp, and it occurred to him that it would make a formidable weapon. Not really his style, however. His university had had a PE requirement, and on a whim he had fulfilled it with kendo, the art of the Japanese sword. The whim had grown into a passion, a love of the pure simplicity, the comradeship of men and women who studied a useless art for the effect it had on their own inner selves. The kata were dances, half stylized and half practical, a silk painting of death and destruction.

Swinging the ax at inert logs was not the same, although it was exercise. As warmth and blood flowed through his limbs, he began to come alive again. Wherever he was, he was safe for now. If it was a plane crash, then sooner or later someone would come looking for him. If he'd escaped from kidnappers, then the later they found him, the better, and besides, he had an ax.

His mind drifting, the next swing missed the log and almost took off his leg. Maybe the unwieldy ax wasn't such a good idea.

But then he saw a branch, three feet long and gently curved. Plucking it out of the woodpile, he handled it experimentally. A little trimming, and it would make a fine bokken, which was what he used in most of his training and practice anyway. Besides, hadn't Musashi, the greatest duelist in all history, won half his duels with a wooden sword?

Scraping at the stick with the ax blade, he whittled away the hours until Helga called him in to lunch.

Again the food was plain: more porridge, with a yellowish bread that was spongy and slightly stale. But the ambiance was friendly, the old man keeping up a steady stream of wisecracks that had the girl giggling and blushing. Despite the language barrier, he included Christopher in the conversation, holding up both ends by himself and apparently doing a fine job of it.

After lunch, Svengusta prepared to go out, indicating with large hand motions that Christopher should stay inside. Christopher was happy enough to comply, since he was working on the laying-low theory and his impromptu weapon. The bokken was as polished as he could make it; now it needed practice.

In the empty, cold hall of the chapel, he found it easy to escape into the kata. Doing the traditional forms took his mind to familiar, comfortable places.

Pausing to catch his breath, he was interrupted by the double doors creaking open and two visitors slipping inside. The disarray of the room had led him to believe the chapel was not used, and he was as surprised to see them as they obviously were to see him.

They were both young, perhaps eighteen. The girl was pretty, the boy was handsome, and though their clothes were poor and plain medieval peasant costumes, the outfits gave the distinct impression of being their “Sunday best.”

He belatedly realized they weren't dressed for church, but for each other.

They were polite and respectful, the girl curtsying and the boy bowing his head. Christopher decided he was the interloper here and was about to leave them to their privacy when a third person swaggered through the double doors.

He was not dressed like a peasant. He was richly cloaked in garish colors and fur trim, thirtyish, slightly overweight, and utterly full of himself. Christopher hated him instantly.

The man was as subtle as a foghorn. In one glance he dismissed both Christopher and the boy, and began to address the girl in unctuous tones.

Christopher knew he should walk away, knew he did not understand the subtleties of this affair or even the culture in which it occurred, but the raw emotion of the drama locked him in.

The boy objected; the girl hushed him, and though it was obvious that the girl loathed the richly garbed man, she seemed to be agreeing with him. Maybe he had some authority over her? But from the way he was looking at her, he couldn't possibly be her father. There was too much naked desire for that.

She pleaded with the boy, passion quavering under her hushed tones. Christopher understood that part as plain as day:
If you love me, leave now. Don't make a scene.
The boy's face twisted in anger and pain, while the man smirked.

Suddenly the boy broke and ran, the double doors banging behind him, a swirl of cold snow whisking in his wake. The man laughed and took the girl by the arm. When she shuddered, Christopher snapped.

“No.” Though he spoke English, the intent could not fail to be understood.

The man looked at him, his face aflame, and snarled. Christopher shook his head in denial and pointed to the double doors.

The interloper huffed, but he started to go. He stepped toward the doors, pulling the girl with him. She resisted passively, unwilling to fight but unable to surrender.

“No,” Christopher said again.

Immediately the man spun and advanced on him in a fury, barking like a savage dog. The girl stood rooted, visibly terrified, and Christopher felt a cold queasiness growing in his belly.

The man was wearing a sword, a long, straight piece of metal that was both elegant and utterly practical. This was no hippie commune, no museum reenactment. The anger that poured out was not an act.

Christopher was trapped. Behind him was a rustic cottage and a serving girl. Behind that the quiet village, snowy miles from any kind of authority or civilization or reasonableness.

Or hospital.

Christopher did not want to provoke violence. He wanted to flee. But he had nowhere to go, so he stood, paralyzed by impossibility.

The man took his silence as opposition. His barking reached a crescendo, filling the stone chapel with sound and fury. Christopher tried not to be threatening, but the pressure of the man's advance made him shift his stance and his hold on the bokken.

Sudden silence, as the man stopped talking and glared with mortal offense. Christopher was under no illusions. Twenty years of smacking people with bamboo sticks, of katas and cutting bundles of paper, did not make him a real swordsman. He had never killed anyone. He had never even tried to hurt someone. This man walked like a professional, the sword hanging from his hip as naturally as the cloak on his back. One mistake, and Christopher would not be allowed to restart the fight, recover from his error, learn from the experience. If the man went for his sword, Christopher would have to—

The man went for his sword.

He was impressively smooth, if not particularly fast. He had the blade almost out of the sheath before Christopher's bokken cracked down on his skull. Christopher knew he had held back some; still, it was a solid blow, and the man should have gone down, cried out, or at least been stunned. Instead, he snarled and stabbed at Christopher with his sword.

Christopher's training saved him and he instinctively parried. After all, hitting people in the head in bamboo-armed sparring matches had never stopped them from attacking him before, why should he expect it to now? His body carried on, even while his mind grappled with the stunning ineffectiveness of his first strike.

He snapped his bokken up into the man's face, smashing the nose. A blow that should have blinded, staggered, distracted, at least gushed blood, only elicited a growl. The man lunged, stabbed again as Christopher stepped back but not far enough. The thick steel blade caressed his left side, opening a six-inch-long gash that spat a fan of red into the air.

But Christopher's bokken was already in motion, wheeling around his head in a great arc, smashing down on the right side of the man's jaw. He did not hold back this time—there was nothing left to hold him, as he passed completely into the moment of the fight, surrendering to the reflex of training. He distinctly heard bone snap and the pitter-patter of drops of blood on the hardwood floor.

The man fell like a stone, Christopher crumpling after him. The double doors creaked, the chapel empty now save for the two bodies.

He came back to real time, and ordinary mind. He held his bleeding flesh together and tried not to panic. The brutal pain helped; the mere thought of moving was petrifying. He tried to cry out, but he could not draw the breath for it. A stomach wound, the worst kind. If he survived the hemorrhage, infection would almost certainly get him. Hopefully the girl had gone for help, although he wasn't sure what kind of help these people could offer. He needed doctors and emergency surgery, not hippies and herbal tea. He needed an American Embassy. He needed his wife.

He did not want to die among strangers.

Time passed, immeasurably. His mind could not focus on anything but the steady pump of blood. One fact finally penetrated: his opponent was still breathing. He was not dead. Christopher idly wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

The doors burst open, and Svengusta and Helga rushed into the room. The old man knelt to Christopher, examined the wound with professional authority. He reached out to trace the bloody gash with one gentle finger while chanting.