“You there, Sir Knight! These children are pleading. They want to see a strong man throw!”
Trey paid the stranger no attention. Then more voices cried out—those of young boys.
“Please Sir! You have to. He said us city folk could never do it!”
“He says people from Pareo are too weak”
“That we don’t got strong backs!”
Street rats, the captain thought, grinning as he swung from atop his saddle and walked his horse to the stranger’s stall. He was mountain man for certain, blonde and balding yet not quite old, dressed from head to toe in snow fox pelts. With all the children about him, he seemed half a giant—until Gildmane drew closer. The stranger stood only as high as the paladin’s breastplate, wincing from the glare of his pale armour.
“That’s the spirit! Let’s give them a show! A strong man with strong arms—arms strong for throwing axes.”
Trey glanced down field where posts had been arranged. Each bore a gourd on top, and they were set at different distances. “What are the rules?”
The stranger grinned and his white face wrinkled. “Simple! We make a wager. Five axes and five gourds.” He showed the captain a bucket of hatchets, then pointed to an enormous chest mounted on the back of a wagon. “If you knock them all down, you pick a prize. But if you don’t…”
“If I don’t?”
His wrinkles ran deeper. “That’s quite a nice horse you have. We don’t have such big animals back home.”
“Easy enough,” Trey pronounced. He could feel the children watching him, hear the stories they would tell if he succeeded—and if he failed. The risk had his heart racing, beating stronger than the pressure of his order’s reputation. Then he laughed—that a children’s game could quicken him more than storming Babylon during the Second Purge—he nearly keeled over from the absurdity. And from the northern stranger’s wary look, Trey figured he must seem just as absurd.
He took a breath to compose himself, then took the bucket from the stranger, flipped a hatchet in his hand. It was light, unbalanced, and blunt as Sir Gardner—likely forged from pig iron, soft, but hard enough to bite a fresh gourd. With a practiced hand, Gildmane hurled the first hatchet, and the closest gourd exploded from its post. Then the second, the third, the fourth. Every bursting of fruit sent the children roaring, and the stranger too. What are you smiling at? thought the captain about the stranger who was about to lose his bet. He smelled a rat, he was certain, and it wasn’t the children. He asked the northerner, “All’s fair so long as I throw an axe from here and hit the mark?”
“Yes, Sir Knight, those are the rules. And remember our wager.”
“I remember,” Trey said, dropping his last hatchet in the bucket and drawing the axe at his hip. The children fell silent. The stranger went pale—began to sputter too late as Gildmane cocked his arm and hurled his double-bitted battle axe at the last standing gourd. Two turns in the air and the steel gouged the fruit wide open. Bits of seeds and yellow flesh erupted to the heavy clink of metal on metal. The upper half of the gourd was in ruin, yet the bottom refused to abandon its post thanks to a hidden lead weight—now exposed by the bite of Trey’s steel axe.
The stranger looked as though he’d seen a ghost, or as though he might give one up, his wrinkled face as faint and fragile as worn out parchment.
“My prize?” asked the captain.
The northern stuttered, “Mercy, Sir. Take anything you like.”
“Mercy?” Gildmane chuckled. He couldn’t help himself now. “That wasn’t part of our wager, friend. Though perhaps…if I got something extra in return, I might decide not to take your head.”
The rank of piss wafted from the stranger’s trousers. “Anything, Sir!”
Trey beckoned the children closer and watched their lips turn up as he said, “How about each of them gets a pick from the treasure for keeping quiet about our little game?”
“Each?” the man muttered, counting them. There were five.
“And myself, of course. Tell me, friend, what do you think is worth your life?”
The stranger did not answer but went immediately to digging through his chest, his whole arm submerged, groping, till after several seconds, he found it—an ivory case. “This,” he started, “contains a true relic. The Shroud of Solum, of the Iisah prophet killed and reborn from the silt and the earth. I won it in a game from a Mephistine trader. It’s yours.” He opened the case and showed the folded, yellowed linen within.
“Good effort, swindler, but it’s just a stained rag.”
“I thought the same, Sir. Look closer. It will show you.”
God save you, thought Gildmane as he unfolded the length of aged cloth. He hadn’t expected to have to make an example of anyone, nor had he foresaw the images which appeared in the red-umber splotches. There was a bronze man pierced through the heart, withered and weary, then thick and strong leaning on a long spear—then the image was gone, replaced by the face and mane of a lion. “I am Messiah,” it seemed to say, though no voice could be heard, no roar emanating from the bright light assailing the captain’s eyes. He winced, blinked until the world came back and it was the stranger and children and fairground revelry. At once, he asked, “Who knows about this?”
“No one,” the northerner answered.
“Good. Now fetch me my axe.”
†
Where are you, Ba’al?
