“Then blood it is!”
Suddenly both men were moving. Fast.
Before Block’s hamstringing dagger was out from under his cloak the knight lunged forward like a bounding charger, one high knee slamming into Block’s head and spinning the dwarf to the ground. Dugan grabbed Tilda’s arm behind her back through her cloak, kicked out one of her feet and shoved her hard to the side. She blundered two hopping steps and failed to fully brace herself with one arm against the back of the cottage. Her forehead hit the wall with a fat, wooden smack.
Tilda’s knees wobbled and she slid to them, then rolled to a crouch and whipped free her throwing dagger as she turned around. She was just in time to see the beginning and end of Dugan and Procost’s very short duel.
The men barreled at each other with their swords held high, both shouting in the manner all Codian soldiers are taught. The cooling campfire was closer to Dugan as they began their charges and at the last moment the renegade veered toward it. He kicked the coffeepot off its braces and sent the carafe bouncing into the running knight’s path.
The top popped as the pot hit the ground and the last hot dregs splashed up onto Procost’s boots. It was hardly enough to slow the big man but the surprise of it made him pull up short. Dugan darted forward and ducked inside the long reach of the great broadsword. That was enough.
The knight was trained to fight mainly on horseback, fully armored and swinging heavy weapons in wide, devastating arcs. Legionnaires fought in a clinch, only their eyes peeking over the rims of tower shields while their fat, ugly swords poked hungrily around the sides, feeling for anything soft and yielding.
The point of Dugan’s sword sparked against Procost’s breastplate. Dugan raised one hand to catch the knight’s arms over his head, then he reversed his own grip with a twist of wrist. The two men strained and the short sword slid down plate mail until it bit. Dugan leaned in with all his weight on his blade, driving it deep into the knight’s thigh through his groin.
Tilda did not bother to throw her dagger, and neither did Block who was back on his feet with a blade of his own in his hand. Procost screamed and fell to the ground, broadsword falling uselessly into the grass at his side, clutching himself. Dugan fell on top of him but quickly pushed off and wrenched his sword free, eliciting more screams. He backed away a step with his blade, hands, trousers, everything now a charnel swath of wetly-shining gore. All around men stood slack-jawed and staring. Banner Trellane lost his legs and fell to all fours. The young nobleman regurgitated coffee and eggs while still unable to take his eyes of the man, a man he knew, lying butchered like a hog.
Dugan knelt and said, “Knight,” until Procost’s wild eyes focused on him.
“You are ruined,” Dugan said quietly. “It is a mortal wound.”
Breaths ending in sobbing gasps issued from the huge, helpless man.
“End it,” he said through clenched teeth.
Dugan stood, cast away his filthy short sword, and took up the knight’s. Procost squirmed uncontrollably and Dugan had to put a foot on his breast plate to pin him still. Dugan raised the blade, Procost shouted that it was the sword of his father, and Dugan brought it down on his head.
Most of the others closed their eyes or looked away, but not Tilda. She sat with her back to the cottage and crossed her arms over her knees, one hand still holding her unused dagger. Dugan left the knight’s sword where it was and slowly bent to pick up his own. All eyes followed him as he walked back to where he had dropped his blanket. He reached for it, and only then seemed to notice his red hands. The only sound was the dying fire, and the dry wheezing of Banner Trellane.
Dugan looked up at Tilda. Sir Procost’s blood was spattered across his face.
“That,” he said, “is the sort of kind man that I am.”
Chapter Eight
Banner de Trellane was too shaken to even try and stop the Miilarkians from leaving. He made some feeble protests that his Uncle the Baron should be informed immediately of Sir Procost’s end, but Captain Block was adamant. Without direct orders to the contrary the gnome Fitzyear could only shrug. His men helped Tilda with the baggage as Dugan was too covered in gore to carry anything without soiling it, and the gnome led the way into the woods and the hills leaving the sorry scene at the cottage behind.
Within half an hour they reached a stream where they paused while Dugan did a more thorough job of washing up. He had to strip off his tunic, soak and wring it, and as he did so Tilda was reminded of cleaning out the stirge remains from her own cloak some days before. She shuddered. She could have gotten Dugan a brick of soap, but it was in a pack now carried by one of Fitz’s men and she did not want to go through the rigmarole of fetching it. Not with a headache already throbbing between her ears from her skull-bounce off the cottage.
Tilda and the others saw the renegade legionnaire’s incriminating tattoo as he worked, a “34 ^ ” done in square black lettering on his upper back between left shoulder and neck, whirled around by Tullish-looking designs of the type prominent on the margins of Imperial coins. Something to remember his time in the Legion by, though the man would never see it without a mirror. Dugan wrapped his blanket around his shoulders and carried the tunic on a stick until it dried. The cold seemed not to trouble him.
The garment had time to dry out for the way was long. For the rest of the morning hours the gnome led the line of marchers on a winding route through the maze of culverts and gullies snaking among the mountain foothills, passing through shaggy copses of pine trees with prickly boughs that made the humans duck while the gnome and dwarf strode on undisturbed. No one spoke a word. Tilda’s headache finally faded but she was footsore and her legs ached by the time a campsite was reached, a semicircle of five small cabins with log walls and roofs of tented canvas. Another half-dozen fellows of Sergeant Fitzyear’s command were there, just beginning to clean some species of wild hill hog for a spit above a kindling fire.
Though Tilda could dress an animal if she had to, at the moment she could not stand to look at the work being done with heavy knives. The group did not stay in any case.
Fitzyear was curt and brief, seemingly to his men’s surprise. Speaking mostly in what Tilda now recognized to be Daulic the gnome directed the men from the cottage to stand down and change places with the six at the cabins. While those who had accompanied the band thus far had been lightly armed with short swords and dirks at their belts, the fellows readying themselves now also brought bows or short spears. One hoisted a great maul across his back, and a pair had fearsome picks. Tilda was not sure if the picks were weapons or tools, but supposed they would do in either case.
There had been familiar calls of greeting among the soldiers but Fitz kept barking unnecessary orders to interrupt conversations between those moving on and those staying here. It was obvious that the gnome intended for the group to leave before the new men were fully informed about the morning’s events, but there were too many of them in pairs, cinching thick leather armor and exchanging baggage, to keep them all from talking. Captain Block had another idea.
“Dugan, you take that pack and the long case. Matilda, biyn jo waha.”
Tilda frowned for a moment but then dropped the baggage she was carrying, which was mostly her personal equipment. She slipped her half cloak off over her head, and as ordered, outfitted herself for war in the manner of a Guilder. The men around stopped talking and watched, first with curiosity, then amusement, and finally with vaguely concerned frowns.
Off came Tilda’s cloth tunic and wool sweater, both rolled up and stuffed into a pack after she first removed a web of leather belting and straps. Over her cloth undershirt remained a leather vest of a shade of brown so dark it looked nearly black. The front of the vest and the lower back were pleated with long, thin, triple-stitched pockets that became armor when specially fashioned lengths of steel were inserted, though Tilda did not have any of those as their great weight had been judged not worth the effort when she and the Captain left Miilark. But the front pockets had another use. From a second pack Tilda produced six sheathed throwing knives, a matched set with the one she always wore at the small of her back. Each had a short handle accommodating only a finger and thumb, with flat, narrow blades honed keen and counterbalanced with a round wooden knob. Three each went into the pockets to the right and left side of the vest’s eye-and-hook clasps, each hanging upside-down and held in
