by Murdac and told that I was to accompany the silver wagon train from Tickhill back to Nottingham. Hanno and I arrived there, walking normally along the stone corridors and pretending to converse with each other in low tones, like any two men-at-arms on a midnight errand from their captain, or just stretching their legs after a long stint of sentry duty.
We stopped just short of the chamber, hearing the sound of pacing feet, and after a cautious peep around the bend, Hanno whispered in my ear that there was only one man doing duty before the door. My German friend reached down and pulled the misericorde from my boot: ‘Do it quick and quiet,’ he said into my ear, putting the weapon in my hand. ‘No noise, no fussing.’ I nodded, my heart hammering. It was time once again for cold-blooded murder. I peeked round the corner, too, and took a look at my victim. Like the sentry outside Kirkton Castle a year and a half ago, the man-at-arms outside Murdac’s door was young. But this time, when I looked into my soul, I found I had no qualms about taking his life — it was necessary, I said to myself, and that was all that really mattered.
My heart quietened, I took a deep breath and moved fast, without hesitation. Two quick and silent steps, as he was turned away from me, and I grabbed his nose and mouth with my left hand and slotted the misericorde hard and neatly into the back of his brain with my right. It was as easy as sliding a well-greased bolt on a cellar door. The blade glided home, the man kicked once and collapsed into my arms, a dead weight. That was it; there was nothing more to it.
Silently, Hanno was by my side. ‘Perfect,’ he said. And I was very pleased.
I passed the sagging corpse into Hanno’s arms, cleaned my misericorde on the dead man’s surcoat, slid the weapon back into my boot, drew my sword, took a deep breath and burst through the door of Murdac’s chamber, with Hanno hard on my heels, dragging the limp body of the sentry behind me.
After the gloom of the corridor, Murdac’s room was shockingly bright, lit as it was by two large candle trees. It was a comfortable chamber, spacious and warm, with costly furs scattered over the polished wooden floor, and a fire burning merrily in a large fireplace built into the outside wall. In the centre of the room was a large table, and seated at the table, his glorious long sword drawn on the surface before him, was Rix.
The tall man picked up the sword, and I could not help admiring its blue pommel jewel glinting at me in the candlelight, and the elegance of the long slim lines of the blade. I was entranced by the weapon, and my eye caressed it, even as Rix pushed back his chair, stood to his full height and said in French: ‘Ah, you are here at last. Sir Ralph has been half-expecting an assassin. And how fortunate that it should be you! We have some unfinished business between us, I believe.’
I nodded but said nothing to the tall man. Instead my eyes roamed the room, seeking out the target of our deadly intentions, the Constable.
A sumptuous four-poster bed stood against the far wall of the chamber with the thick curtains drawn. And, as I looked at it, a dark and tousled head poked out from between the drapes, blinking wildly, like a mouse coming out of its hole. It was Ralph Murdac, and his expression when he saw me was one of equally mingled fear and surprise.
‘You!’ he said incredulously. ‘You, of all people! Alan Dale — the traitor, the thief, the gutter-born rat who wants to be a knight. That it should be you who has come for me, sword in hand, in the dead of night — I can scarce believe it. Kill him, Rix; kill him now! Slice the nasty jumped-up little peasant into pieces.’
Rix stepped away from the table and, at Murdac’s command, he saluted me with his beautiful sword, holding the hilt to his brow for a moment, before sweeping it into the first position of the serious swordsman: en garde!
‘Get over to Murdac,’ I muttered over my shoulder to Hanno, without taking my eyes off Rix. ‘Grab him; hold him fast; keep him out of the fight. I’ll handle this one alone — I made a vow to St Michael to cut down this long streak of shit, and I mean to honour it.’
I felt Hanno move away from me in the direction of the big bed and I took a step towards Rix. With no preliminaries at all, I swung my blade as hard and as fast as I could at his head. His sword leapt upwards and he parried my blow with a clang of steel. But I was already swiping low, aiming to sink my sword into his calf muscle. Miraculously, his long blade was there before mine, once again blocking my strike with ease. I lunged with all my speed at his chest; he nonchalantly flicked my blade out of the target area and it slid past his left arm into space.
Then he attacked: a feint at my body, then another, followed by a lightning strike at my throat. By God, he was fast; much faster than me. By sheer luck I managed to avoid being spitted on his sword, sweeping my own blade up just in time. I deflected his lunge into the air above my left shoulder and counterattacked, against his right, hoping for a score on his sword-arm that would slow his terrifying speed. But, once again, he swept my blow away almost contemptuously.
I could hear muffled thumps and yelps coming from the four-poster bed, but I dared not look away from Rix, even for a moment. I thrust again at his chest, and he swatted me away. I hacked low; he merely stepped back. Then he attacked once more, striking left and right, high and low, his weapon a lethal silver blur, and it was all I could do to keep his sword point out of my flesh. It occurred to me then, in a blinding moment of clarity, that I was going to lose this fight. He was the better swordsman; there was absolutely no doubt about it. I was giving ground slowly, making nothing of the fight; merely blocking, parrying, dodging and ducking. I was outclassed, overmatched — I was going to be cut to pieces.
We fought on almost in silence, the only sound the clang and clash of our blades, and the panting of my breath. As Rix stepped away momentarily and began to circle round to my right, I caught a glimpse of the four- poster. And saw my German friend, calmly sitting on the edge of the bed, the curtains drawn back, his arm curled around Ralph Murdac’s tousled little head, as one might carry a ball, his long knife at the Constable’s throat. Murdac was very pale, his crisp blue eyes under Hanno’s muscular arm were enlarged with fear, and a trickle of blood was leaking from his mouth. Hanno was frowning at me; he looked almost comically disappointed. But holding Murdac as he was, he could not easily release him and come to my aid against Rix. I could expect no help from that quarter.
I jerked my attention back to the fight just in time: Rix’s sword came lancing towards my eye and I parried and slashed at him wildly. He blocked and riposted, and I hacked again at his head with all the savagery in my soul. He merely ducked the blow. He was perfectly balanced, and as cool as a river trout. I, meanwhile, was red-faced and panting with exertion. I aimed another tremendous hack at his shoulder, which he blocked. His counter-stroke, a lunge at my heart, nearly skewered me, but I jumped backwards in the nick of time. My left foot landed on a fine bearskin rug, the rug skidded on the polished floor, and before I knew it I had landed painfully on my arse, and my sword was skittering and bouncing away across the shiny wooden floor to my right.
Rix stood over me. He smiled coldly, saluted me once again, and lifted his sword over his head. I was scrambling on my knees before him, staring up in shock and fear as his beautiful sword rose in the air, my hand reaching desperately for the bottom of my left leg…
My fumbling hand found the misericorde. The triangular blade slipped loose from its boot-sheath and I brought it up and struck like an angry viper, slamming it down in a hammer blow straight through Rix’s soft kidskin shoe, nailing his left foot securely to the wooden floor.
He screamed — he screamed one word, loud enough to wake the dead: ‘Miloooooooo!’
But I did not listen; I was scuttling away after my sword. I collected the weapon, regained my feet and, while Rix tried to turn right towards me, his long limbs tangled because of his pinioned foot, I stepped in to him, swung back and chopped the blade down hard into the angle between his neck and his left shoulder, giving it all my strength, and cutting a foot deep into his chest cavity. For a shaved moment, I caught a glimpse of grey flabby lungs deep in his gasping purple torso before the blood welled and filled his chest.
And he was down.
I tugged my sword loose from the shattered bones and meat of his thorax, and only just in time. There was movement from the far side of the room, a curtain was torn back — it was the heavy curtain that covered the entrance to Murdac’s privy — and out of that dank passageway stumped the ogre, Perkin’s killer, Adam’s assassin, walking on one good leg and one wooden one. The half-man whom I had believed I had stamped to death in the list in the outer bailey five months ago was resurrected. Milo was doing up his broad belt, and staring about him with bovine stupidity.
Time is a strange beast: some moments seem to last for ever, yet others go by in a flash. I felt as if I had been fighting Rix for hours, but I realized later that it can have been no longer than a hundred heartbeats or so, just
