The baby-faced one backed up a step, but the jovial one held his ground. The short one edged forward and glanced at his tall, mouthy friend. “If you’ve gone all shy about cutting his head off, Conor, let me have him.”
Conor waved him back like he was a pushy little brother.
We had collected spectators. Three men wearing yellow sashes had appeared from around one of the dirty, plastered houses across the lane, almost as if they’d been waiting there. A big man and two boys trotted up the lane from the direction of the tavern, one boy pushing a wheelbarrow.
Conor shouted, “Stop slumping on your butt, old man! Give it over, or I’ll carve you right now!” He shook his sword hand, wiped his palm against his trousers, and didn’t touch the sword again. He didn’t want to kill me any more than he wanted to eat glass. His pissant friends were pushing him into it.
I pulled a silver coin from another pouch and tossed it to Conor, who fumbled and dropped it in the mud.
“Go have a little fun,” I said. “If you had all that gold, you’d debauch yourselves until your dicks fell off. I’m offering you a kindness.”
None of them bent for the coin that would have fed a family for a month.
“Go on!” I bellowed.
Conor jumped and staggered back, and his friends flinched. I opened my mouth to yell some abuse at them and shame them into going home, but Conor’s chicken-necked friend drew his sword. “Give us that gold, you old fart!” Then he stood there like he was waiting for inspiration.
I had grown to become a mature gentleman in part because I didn’t allow people to point weapons at me more than once. I assumed that if they threatened my life once, they would be pleased to do it again sometime. I considered this rule to be inviolate, or I did in those days.
I charged the short one, and my blade was in his heart before the others had armed themselves. I withdrew, and he fell straight onto his face. The fellow to his left was drawing his own weapon. He was the happy young man who found himself so funny. I opened his throat with a compact slice, and he staggered sideways, blood spurting.
Conor and his baby-faced friend had drawn their swords by then. They both ran at me as if they were an avalanche that could plow me under. I cut Conor deep across the thigh, and he flopped down while I dodged his friend’s blade. Then I cut the friend so viciously on the shoulder that his arm dropped limp and his sword fell. He staggered back until he hit the bare plum tree.
The young man resembled a scared, bloody boy leaning against the tree trunk. He stared at my face, maybe waiting for whatever I was about to say. He looked shocked when I stabbed him in the heart without saying anything. Maybe he thought I was going to invite him inside so we could reminisce about the time I almost killed him.
Conor was staggering away when I turned to him. He glanced back. “No! You don’t have to! I’m sorry! I really am!” He tripped over a root sticking up by an oak stump, but he rolled faceup as quick as a fish. “No! No!” Conor screamed like a child, and he was still at it when I stabbed him through the right eye. He shuddered and went slack.
I gazed around at the bodies and beyond. Blood had sprayed on me, the daylight was draining away, and I would have murdered a dozen virgins for a drink. Well, I would have called them names until they cried. I scanned the area, past the spectators, in case these four sad thieves had any friends, and I hoped to hell I’d get to kill them too. However, they seemed to have been friendless.
It was unneighborly to leave dead men lying about in front of one’s house, but I didn’t need to worry about that. I sat down on the front step with my sleeve dripping blood onto the sprouting green grass. My hands started shaking so hard I dropped my sword, and I let it lie there. I wanted to damn Harik, God of Death, a being so foul and boring that when he walked past a songbird, it could never sing again. I wanted to, but this slaughter was as much my fault as his.
I sat for a minute with my head down. Manon’s hands had shaken like mine were shaking now. That didn’t mean anything. It just made me think of her.
The big man and his two boys had begun stripping the dead and piling everything valuable onto the wheelbarrow. I watched him cut loose Conor’s purse, empty it into his hand, and chuckle. “You shouldn’t have acted like pricks, fellows.”
The scavenger’s name was Whistler. He sat in the tavern almost every day, drinking ale, scowling at people’s jokes, and mooning over the bar girl, who wouldn’t look at him. She didn’t find his big nose, small chin, and brown teeth beguiling. I had killed two thieves near the stables one day, and Whistler arrived to rob the bodies and carry them away. By the end of the week, he had acquired a helper, and the next week, he started bringing a wheelbarrow.
I rarely spoke to the man. I acknowledged he was doing me a service by tidying up after my murders. He acknowledged that he was the only one making money from this whole tragic business. During the third week, two rough men set themselves up to compete with Whistler, threatening to break his neck if he didn’t give over the monopoly. That afternoon, I saw Whistler trundling their swords and boots along in his wheelbarrow.
Ours was not a morally defensible arrangement, but it worked for us.
The three sour-faced men
