Behold the Dawn (3 page)

Gethin stepped nearer, and his voice dropped to a croak, his words meant only for Annan. “If you know who I am, then you also know that what happened at St. Dunstan’s Abbey has not found its end. Father Roderic has yet to pay for his sins.”

Annan’s skin tingled. His backbone hardened into a spear
haft
. “I have left what happened at St. Dunstan’s in the past.”

Gethin scoffed. “You think you can bury St. Dunstan’s in the gore and glory of the tourney field, but you are mistaken. Bishop Roderic must die for his sins. Sixteen years ago one man attempted to exact the price in blood from Roderic. It is he who must end this now. A man named Matthias of Claidmore. You do remember him?” His eyes flashed with an anger that was only a blink away from hatred.

Annan stared at him. His hand fell to the hilt of his sword, his knuckles turning cold. He had not wanted this. He would much rather have grieved for Gethin the rest of his days than see him resurrected in such a form. He had spent the last sixteen years forgetting. To ask him to remember now was asking far too much.

Gethin dragged himself back a step. He looked behind Annan, beyond him, and the specter of a smile crossed his lips. Running footsteps slapped the ground, scarcely discernible above the hoofbeats that thundered yet nearer.

“Master Annan!”

Annan broke his gaze from Gethin’s and turned to see Marek running madly, arms and legs pumping, barely keeping ahead of the troop of knights galloping behind.

Marek veered off the road, and the Baptist’s crowd scattered before him. “It’s Heladio! He’s coming for you!”

At the head of the troop rode a swarthy man clad in a purple
tabard
. Annan stiffened, realizing a second too late that Heladio’s surcoat was the same as that of the dead young knight with the war hammer.

Marek scrambled to a stop. “In the name of St. Jude, why didn’t you tell me you’d killed the bloody nephew!”

Heladio flung one hand into the air, signaling his men.
“Nessuno se ne vada! Sto cercando l’uomo chiamato Annan!”

Annan faced the count, squaring his shoulders, making himself relax. Beside him, Marek straightened up and forced an innocent smile. He was either unable to control or just entirely unaware of the fidget in his leg.

The crowd fled despite Heladio’s warning. From beneath his cowl, Gethin watched Annan, the scarred twist of his lips almost contemptuous.

Heladio dragged his horse to a stop. His small nostrils flared with every breath. “I seek a man called Annan. You are Annan?” His guttural accent all but buried the words.

“Aye.”

“And you are a competitor at our esteemed tournament?”

“Aye.”

“I am astounded the renowned Marcus Annan deigns to compete at such a humble tourney.” He unsheathed his sword and jerked his head at one of his men-at-arms. “Renowned or not, this is the last tourney in which you will ever fight.”

The
man-at-arms
, joined by one of his comrades, kneed his horse forward and advanced on Annan.

Annan held his ground. “Why?”

Behind him, Marek uttered a pained noise and crossed himself.

“You dare to ask? My nephew Giulio is dead! I have a witness who swears you committed the murder. For the honor of my family, you must be punished for this!”

“He attacked me with an illegal weapon, a war hammer. Apparently, your nephew didn’t take your family’s honor as seriously as yourself.”

“He was a boy fighting against the great Marcus Annan! You expected him to give you the benefit of the battle?”

“I expect an honest fight from every man. The world is not the worse for one less knave.”

“You dare insult me? You, the most infamous of tourneyers? You are covered in blood!” His gaze darted past Annan to where Gethin stood in silence. “And you consort with heretics!”

At the edge of the road, the men-at-arms dismounted and propped their
lances
beneath their arms. One after the other, they drew their swords. Annan opened his fingers, and the palfrey’s reins fell to the ground behind him. His right hand reached across his body to pull his sword free of its scabbard, and he clasped the hilt with both hands. The two young knights wavered, no doubt measuring their combined strength against his.

With Marek at his back, he could dispatch the two unmounted men-at-arms with little enough trouble. It was Heladio and the remaining men on horseback who would present a problem. Already, they were closing in to surround him, to cut off his escape should he fight his way past the first attack. A man on the ground was
nigh
defenseless against a mounted knight.

With Gethin depending on his sword for protection, Annan would have no chance of retreating on foot fast enough or far enough to escape a charge. He must work quickly, and then regain his saddle.

Heladio’s eyes bored into Annan’s face. “Even the saints cry out for justice,
Signore
.”

Annan widened his stance and raised his sword. “Let them cry.”

The knight on Annan’s left struck first, using both hands to swing his blade at Annan’s upper body. Annan met the stroke before it had gone two feet and hammered his own sword into the other’s. The knight reeled, flailing. Behind him, the two riderless horses spooked and ran, dodging onlookers and charging through the gates. Without altering his stance, Annan swung again and caught the second knight full across his mail-clad chest.

Heladio charged. Men and women shrieked and scattered, and the handful of louts and drunken knights who had been lounging about snatched up their swords. Who or why they fought probably wasn’t something their ale-fogged brains paused to ponder. Annan didn’t care. The bigger the distraction, the longer he and Marek had to get free.

Heladio pounded the distance that separated them into a hundred dusty fragments. Annan flung aside an incapacitated knight and spun around to snatch the palfrey’s reins from Marek’s hand.

“Take the Baptist and leave! Get into the city before they shut the gates!”

Marek ducked a flying three-legged stool and staggered back to his feet, his short sword clenched in his hand. “What about you?”

“I’ll find you later!” He leapt onto the palfrey.

“Why do you always have to say that?”

Heladio’s thunder grew in Annan’s ears. “Because you haven’t yet learned the art of watching your own back during a retreat!”

Marek gave no argument. Someone threw a dirt clod that smacked him in the back of the thigh. He uttered a yelp and scrambled away. A few paces back, the Baptist stood amidst the chaos, so motionless he could almost have been praying. Only the glitter of his eyes, as he stared at something beyond Annan’s shoulder, betrayed him.

Annan spun the palfrey around, sword before his face, barely in time to catch Heladio’s ringing blow. He shoved the man away and almost toppled him from the saddle.

The palfrey jibbed sideways, head high. Annan dragged the horse’s muzzle almost to its chest. “You’ve struck your blow for honor, Count. Best call an end while you still can.”

“Honor me by your death, tourneyer!” Heladio drove his spurs into his horse’s sides and charged once more.

Annan reined aside, and the count’s blow sliced past his face. “If I kill you today, who will mourn your nephew tomorrow?” He dared a glance at the gates, where Marek had tangled with a drunken squire. Gethin was nowhere to be seen.

Beneath the purple surcoat, Heladio’s chest heaved. “I find your courage overestimated,
Signore Cavaliere
. Do you run from the blade of a man with gray hairs?”

Annan’s muscles stilled. Fire crackled beneath his skin, and the world faded to gray around Heladio. “I do not run, Count. I simply wait.” He lowered his sword, exposing his chest in invitation.

Heladio dragged his horse around for another pass.
“Sputerò sulla tua tomba!”

Annan waited as time stretched into forever and disappeared into nothing. Heladio dropped his reins to his horse’s neck and twisted both arms behind his head, every sinew strained with the effort of the stroke. His lips parted in a scream, but the sound of it disappeared in the rush of Annan’s blood.

Annan whipped his sword up to meet Heladio’s. Iron crashed against iron. Heladio’s dark eyes widened as Annan’s blade tore his sword from his grip and smashed into his mail-clad arm. The bone buckled and broke. Heladio plunged to the ground, and his horse galloped over the top of him.

Pivoting the palfrey to face his fallen foe, Annan choked back the heat of his blood. “Mourn your nephew, old man, and host no more tourneys.”

Moaning like a woman in childbirth, Heladio pushed to his knees.
“Isidorio! Fermatelo! Fermatelo, lui e il monaco!”

Across the street, the men-at-arms shoved through the flailing crowd at a redoubled pace, trampling underfoot those who did not clear the way. One of the men pointed and snapped commands.

Annan spun the palfrey toward the gates. If these men craved a meeting with Death, they would have to find the point of someone else’s blade on which to throw away their lives. He had given Heladio and his honor fair enough play for one night.

To his left, just outside the long shadow of the wall, the tottering figure of a monk broke the plane of his vision. Gethin the Baptist held someone’s forgotten
quarterstaff
in his hand. He leaned against it like a shepherd who had dried up his life beneath the Mediterranean sun. But even at a score of paces distant, Annan could see the tension in his body: every muscle stretched, every ligament a bowstring drawn to breaking, ready, waiting, begging to be released.

Behind Annan, Heladio shrieked, “If I cannot have the tourneyer, I shall have the heretic!”

Annan stabbed his spurs to the palfrey’s sides, and the horse leapt forward. Gethin leaned upon the staff ‘til Annan was almost upon him. Then, with a flash of energy that nearly eliminated the crippled stride, he sprang forward. Annan caught his outstretched hand and swung him up behind the saddle. The palfrey staggered a moment under the new weight, then leapt forward as Annan laid the flat of his blade to the animal’s haunch.

One of the few unhorsed men-at-arms scrambled to close the gates, and the palfrey clipped him with its chest and sent him sprawling. Annan galloped through the gate arch, scattering brawlers like seed for the sowing. Shouts echoed behind them. Hoofbeats pounded.

He gouged the horse again, demanding speed the animal could scarcely muster. Ahead, in the distance, a slender lad of some score years tore through the crowded street, headed back toward the gate, sword flashing in one hand.
Marek.

The youth looked up, stopped short at the sight of his master’s flight, then spun back around and ducked into a side road. Annan took the hint and angled the palfrey for the opening. The crowd parted before him, people alternately screaming and cheering.

The narrow side street—little more than an alley between buildings—provided a path free of people, save for Marek who raced ahead, light on his feet as any fallow deer. They ran, switchbacking thrice, before Marek finally stopped at the back of a tavern and wrenched open a door. Annan flung himself to the ground, pulling Gethin off beside him. Marek wrapped his
jerkin
hood round the palfrey’s head, and together he and Annan pulled the lathered horse into the dark emptiness of the tavern’s backroom.

Gethin hobbled in behind and shut the door. “Heladio will have plenty of townsmen to point out the direction we have gone.”

“St. Jude,” Marek said, “Why couldn’t I have been indentured to a cloth merchant, tell me that?”

Annan tossed him the reins. “When I told you to leave, I rather assumed you’d have wits enough to drag the defenseless monk along with you!”

“I thought he was behind me. I’m hardly responsible if he prefers to gawk at the fighting!”

Annan turned, fingers still clenched around his sword hilt, and peered through the shadows. Silhouetted against the streaks of light that outlined a shuttered window in the back of the room, Gethin folded his arms into his sleeves. “Now what?”

“I’ve no intention of staying in Bari. Heladio seeks a fight he cannot finish.”

The shadows began to fade, and Annan’s eyes found tints of gray in the darkness. A mocking smile lit Gethin’s lips. “Yes, go, Marcus Annan. Run away once again. You’ve been running ever since the day St. Dunstan’s fell, have you not?”

“All men put their backs to the past, Baptist. We cannot turn about and live it again.”

“Leave the responsibilities of yesterday unfulfilled, and the future will tumble into the past’s abyss.”

“Tell me, then. What was it we left unfulfilled?” He gripped the palfrey’s saddlebow, and the dry wood prickled against his palm. “Is there any part of St. Dunstan’s that is not better fading into dust?”

“Can you say this? You who know the truth of all that happened there? You knew of Roderic’s sins, his
hypocrisies
.” Gethin stepped forward, his left foot dragging in the straw. Again, the flash of energy possessed him, tightened his limbs, gave him a strength that all but eradicated his deformities. “You saw with your own eyes the bastard children he hid from the world even as he kissed the Holy Crucifix. You knew of his ambition. Ambition that killed a wife to gain a bishopric. You knew his contempt of us and of true holiness.”

“What did we know of holiness?” Ice filled the emptiness in his stomach. It was an emptiness that had been his companion for longer than he wanted to remember. “What did any of us know?”

“Some of us knew. Some of us still know.
Matthias of Claidmore
would know.”

The cold spread. His sweat froze upon his skin. “Enough. Tell me what you’d have me know, and tell me now.”

“It is time we find Matthias.”

Annan shook his head. “What he did that day at St. Dunstan’s was a mistake.”

“Nay, it was a battle. And I its first casualty.” Beneath the rim of his cowl, his eyes glared, the pale orange-brown of the iris visible even in the shadows. “It was I who discovered Roderic’s great sin, I who discovered the blood of his young wife still scarlet upon his hands twenty years after the deed. It was I who took the evidence to Matthias, because I knew him to be a man of vision and a man of action.” Another uneven step propelled him forward. “When Matthias escaped the Abbey to inform the Earl of Keaton of Roderic’s sins, do you know what Roderic did to me?”