Devil at Midnight (34 page)

“Very well,” the grave-faced Florentine said at last. “We will observe a short interval. I recollect the melee is next.”

 

 

L
avaux is mine,” Matthaus snarled as they huddled together to strategize. “No one else may touch him.”

“We will try to leave him to you,” Christian corrected, “but we cannot afford to pass up an opening if one comes. My father’s men have proven they will kill today, and that means any of us might die.”

His men exchanged glances at him putting into words what must have occurred to all of them.

“Heed me well,” Christian said as Matthaus tried to speak again. “All of you. Lavaux always feints right when he charges. That will not change because he is stronger. Oswald has a blind spot because of his missing eye. Come at him from that side, and you may take him by surprise. Timkin is quick, but he is smaller than most of us, and he loves those daggers. If you keep him at a distance, the advantage of reach is yours. Mace is large and the best all-around fighter. If possible, he should be left to William or myself.”

Michael opened his mouth.

“I know,” Christian said. “You are as fell in battle as William or I am. I want you to fight with Charles as a team. Separate Jürgen and Graff from the pack. They have the worst technique of any of my father’s men, though I realize that is relative. Together, your skill should trump their new strength, which is likely to have made them overconfident. If we can take those two out early in the melee, our task will be easier.”

“If we have a chance, should we try to disable them?” William’s tone conveyed a calm that Christian appreciated. William was not prejudging his answer. He simply wanted their mission clear.

“Every strike should aim for a kill,” Christian said firmly. “Mind you, I am not certain we can kill them. Not easily. The vampire may have given them more resilience than normal mean.”

“Does your rule apply to Oswald and Mace?” This question came from Charles. Unlike William, his eyes held doubt. Though Charles had not managed to recruit them, he and the pair had grown friendly.

“They stood by,” Matthaus interrupted in a low, dark voice. “They watched Lavaux slay Philippe in cold blood, and they strolled off with him afterward.”

Charles’s gaze cut to Matthaus before returning to Christian. His expression said he was willing to let Christian make the choice. Knowing that, in this type of sitµation, indecision was more often fatal than being wrong, Christian curled his gauntlet into a fist and lightly tapped Charles’s chest with it.

“Your life is worth more to me than theirs. I expect you to defend it, no matter who that requires you to kill.”

Apparently, Christian had chosen the words Charles needed to hear. He nodded, his freckled jaw firm again. He looked ten years older than he had a minute ago.

“I understand,” he said.

 

 

C
hristian had done his best to prepare himself for his opponents’ strength. The melee had not been under way for the time it took to say an ave before he realized their increased speed was more dangerous. For one thing, it meant the battle would move too quickly for the Italian officials to keep it within bounds, which—given that his father might have bribed them—they might only want to do for appearance sake. Worse, Christian could not follow the action peripherally, as he preferred to do. Though they were only eleven altogether, defending himself from moment to moment required all his faculties.

He knew Michael and Charles were not engaging Jürgen as he had requested, because Jürgen had closed with him. Christian found himself struggling against a man who, on an average day, was a far inferior swordsman. His arms were aching as he met each of the man’s crashing strikes, as if a building were falling on him repeatedly. The only reason Jurgen had not killed him already was that he was swinging his two-handed sword with one, saving the other hand to bludgeon him with a club. His aim with both was thus compromised, though possibly not enough.

We are doomed, Christian thought, genuinely startled by the idea. All of us are going to die today.

And then the opening came. Jurgen dropped his arms a little to fill his lungs with air. Christian flipped his long sword around without so much as a pause to think, slapping his left hand around the ricasso where the base of the blade was blunt. The change in fulcrum turned a slashing weapon into a stabbing one. Jurgen had his knees bent in a slight crouch, putting him lower. Christian pushed off the ground as hard as he could, intending the weight of his body to compensate for the flagging strength of his arms. As he descended-falling from the sky, as it were-Jargen’s head jerked up. The tip of Christian’s sword thanked straight through his visor slit.

It was an instantaneous killing blow. Christian crashed to the ground on top of his dead victim. He felt a rush of triumph, battle lust at its purest.

He used the moments it took to struggle upward to glance around. The crowd of watchers was spreading out, splitting up to follow the separate battles, which was adding to the confusion. In a distant corner of his mind, he hoped the Florentines had the sense to keep out of the soldiers’ way. He did not see William, Oswald, or Mace. Mace was still alive, though, because Christian heard his new ball and flail whistling. This meant he was probably fighting William. As the beast that was the crowd shifted, he caught a glimpse of Charles and Michael circling Timkin together. Both his men had lost their swords, and Charles had blood running down one gauntlet, but they appeared to be holding their own against Timkin and his daggers. Not doing as well, Matthaus was rolling on the ground away from Lavaux, who was stabbing at him with an axe-headed pike.

Lavaux was toying with Matthaus. His speed seemed up to skewering him any time. Behind his breastplate, Matthaus’s chest was heaving with exhaustion. Lavaux’s prey was almost too winded to evade the jabs.

Christian’s shoulders jerked at a flash of motion to his right. Some distance away, Gregori’s last man, Graff, spotted Christian moving to help Matthaus at almost the moment he decided to. Graff began to run toward him to head him off.

A strange burning tingle suddenly engulfed Christian’s back.

“Let me help.” Grace’s voice was a shock coming to him in the midst of a fight, the sound of it even odder because she was not visible to him. “Let me join my energy with yours and see if it strengthens you.”

The tingle pushed at him urgently.

“Let me in,” she insisted. “This is too much for you alone.”

He no more knew how to stop her than he did to accept. Despite his befuddlement, she was inside him a moment later, the flood of her heat and vitality astounding. He did abruptly feel steadier, maybe even recovered from his fatigue-as if he had woken from a good night’s sleep.

Happy to test the theory, he grabbed Jargen’s fallen cudgel, his sword still being stuck between Jargen’s eyes. Retrieving the simple weapon put him low to the ground. He twisted both his arm and torso back for momentum. When he unsprung the coil of his muscles, the club took Graff behind the knees. Swept neatly off his feet, Graff pin-wheeled backward, the weight of his armor crashing him to the bridge. The impact stunned him long enough for Christian to clamber on him and swing the cudgel down on his head. His arms
had
recuperated. Graff’s steel visor dented with the might of the blow.

Again,
Grace said.
He’s blinking!

Again he swung, and again. Male voices cried out nearby, but Christian had to ignore them. Before he could help the others, he had to negate this threat. He could not know how long Grace’s aid would last. Any other man would have been dead twice over, but each time Christian thought Graff was done for, the man renewed his struggles. Finally, blood began to leak from the breathing perforations in the snout of his helm. Graff’s body twitched one last time.

Matthaus
! Grace gasped.

It was like having two sets of eyes in one body. Christian sprang back onto his feet to find that Lavaux had finished playing cat and mouse with Matthaus. For one terrible heartbeat, Christian could only gape. He knew Lavaux was stronger than before, but he had spitted the other man with his pike, actually pinning Matthaus through both sides of his armor. Even more amazing, Matthaus was still squirming.

“I shall come after you from hell,” he gurgled through his heart’s blood to his killer.

Lavaux laughed at him.

“Lavaux!” Christian barked.

It was a challenge, and Lavaux knew it. Clearly, he did not care because his laughter rang out again, this time over Matthaus’s death rattle. At first, Christian thought the burn expanding in his breast was his own rage. When light began to shimmer through his armor, he knew it was Grace’s. Christian yanked his sword free of Jargen’s skull and strode unhesitatingly toward Lavaux.

He saw Lavaux’s gaze take in the two slain men, his heart exulting in his breast as Lavaux’s laugh faltered. Gore dripped down Christian’s upraised sword.

“No,” Lavaux said, starting to edge away. “This is not possible. You are supposed to be weaker.”

Christian did not know if he was as strong as Lavaux, but it scarcely paid to argue. Grace agreed, evidently, because she was tossing coals on the fire she lit, so much so that he had to squint through the spectral glare he was throwing off. Seeing it, the whites of his enemy’s eyes went round.

“Tell me, Lavaux,” Christian said pleasantly, “did you really imagine only my father brought allies to this fight?”

The suggestion that the odds might be evening was too much for Lavaux. Like most bullies, in his core he was cowardly. He let out a sound very like a squeak and took off running.

Every fiber in Christian’s being wanted to give chase, but he knew that was not strategic. Immediate threats were what he needed to counter, not threats that ran away.

Grace shrieked between his ears an instant before a flying weight struck him. Christian’s next heartbeat jolted his whole body. The weight was a severed head. It bounced off his stomach and then landed at his feet. Charles’s wide green eyes stared up at him through the decapitated helmet’s slit, their irises glazing over even as Christian gawked.

“Christ,” he said, momentarily frozen by horror. “Mary and the saints.”

Sheer reflex snapped his sword up as a large armored man ran toward him. The eyepatch behind the black visor identified him as Oswald.

“Forgive me,” he gasped. “I did not mean to kill Charles. I liked that idiot coxcomb. I am too strong now. I could not control the swing of my sword.”

Christian’s hands shook as they tightened on the hilt of his
zweihander.
Oswald was not the only one who feared he had lost control. Everything was moving too quickly. Christian had not known Charles was no longer fighting beside Michael. His voice pushed harshly from his dry throat. “You knew what sort of man you were fighting for. You chose to stay with my father.”

“Please, Christian.” Oswald dropped to his knees before him, his bloodied sword falling to the bridge with a loud clatter. “Philippe and Matthaus were sinners. Only they were supposed to die.”

Christian wanted to scream at him. Did the cook not know Gregori was a liar? Could he not have shown Philippe and Matthaus the very mercy he now pled for?

“Christian,” Oswald begged. “I am sworn to your father. I have my honor, too.”

Christian drew back his sword for its longest swing.

Don’t
! Grace cried.
He’s unarmed. Just tell him to stop righting.

Christian did not want to listen. He wanted to cut Oswald’s head off just as the man had Charles’s. Obviously at war with this inclination, Grace’s energy felt like it was knotting inside of him. Had she not given him the strength it would take to enact revenge, he doubted he would have stopped. As it was, he was sorry his conscience would not allow him to make her his co-executioner.

“You surrender,” he said to Oswald, the demand grating from him in frustration. “You leave the field this instant, and I shall let you live.”

Oswald hesitated.

“
Now
!” Christian roared, his arm muscles readying.

Whatever reason he had for it, Oswald thought better of his reluctance, jerking back onto his feet and stumbling away.

Christ’s blood
, Christian thought, knowing he could not rest now.

“
Capitano
,” piped a boy, nearly losing his hand in return for tugging at Christian’s sleeve. Fortunately for both of them, he scampered back in time. “Scusi, I think one of your friends needs you.”

Fearless now, even excited, the boy led him like an eel through the milling spectators. Hands patted Christian’s back, congratulating him on his bravery. Each time they touched him, Christian’s battle instincts urged him to lash out. Only Grace’s murmurs that they were not threats kept him from doing it.

“There,” said the boy, pointing.

William’s fight with Mace had formed a clearing. Christian saw the epic struggle had battered both, William’s battle-axe having done nearly as much damage as Mace’s spiked ball and chain. Their armor was misshapen from the violent exchange of blows, but only William’s bore spots of blood.

Bloodied or not, Christian could have wept at seeing William alive.

Stop
, he wanted to say.
Pray you, everyone stop now
.

“I am all right,” William called, seeming unaware that so many of their side had fallen. “Help Michael with Timkin.”

Christian hesitated. He had his rule for battle: to deal with the threat right in front of him. On an ordinary day, Mace was formidable. Today he did not seem to be trying to kill William, but what if his control was as faulty as Oswald’s?

“Go,” William said, grunting as he blocked a swing. “Timkin has been cutting him.”

I see them
! Grace said.