“Ale!” he said, and his voice boomed harshly in the small room.
Then he sat down with his back to the room and extended his big hands to the fire.
I stared at those huge hands. A finger was missing from one, two nails were gone from another. There were scars upon both hands, yet their power was obvious. The soldiers, who had appeared so threatening a few moments before, huddled back from him, eyes averted.
He carried a claymore, which was a huge two-handed sword, and a dagger as well. Seeing some apples on the table, he reached over and took one of them, turning it in his fingers. Then he drew the blade, lay the apple upon the back of his left hand and with a single deft stroke, hacked it in two without scratching his hand. That blade was obviously razor-sharp. But it was not the sharpness that drew my eyes but the serrated back edge of the blade. The blade itself was wide and strong, but that serrated edge made the knife what was known as a sword-breaker, for a blade caught in the notches could with a deft twist of the wrist be broken, snapped right off. I had heard of such knives, but never seen their like. My father had told me of fighting men skilled in their use.
The big man—and he would have made two of Angus—ate his apple, the crunching loud in a room where, but for the fire, a silence had fallen.
The innkeeper came with a great mug of ale, and the big man took it and drank it half-empty at a draught. He glanced around the room then, impaling each of us with a glance that told him all he wished to know. His eyes lingered longest upon me as if for some reason I struck a discordant note. It frightened me, for it was as if he saw all that I was and who I was with that single glance. He said nothing, finishing his ale and calling for food.
He looked around suddenly at the innkeeper. “What distance to Ayr? I have gone that way but it has been long since.”
“By the track … belike thirty mile. I have not gone so far, m’self.”
Angus spoke quietly, almost as if to himself. “It is our road, too.”
The big man stared at him.
“We seek a boat there,” he said, “to the high coast of Scotland, or to the Isle of Lewis.”
“We shall go together, then,” the big man said, and thrust his mug out for more ale. “Before the break of day, if you walk with me.”
Sweet was the walking in the gray time of dawning, sweet the smell of rain-fresh grass and the dark loom of gray granite above the green, with here and there a darker shrub. It was the land I loved where no people were, only us walking and no talk among us for a long time.
The rain had gone but the clouds hung low, heavy with promise and warning. We walked on, matching our strides to his as well as we could, leaving the inn behind us and pleased that it be behind. A dark bird flashed across flying low, and a moor stallion lifted his heavy-maned head and stared at us from a quarter of a mile off, then tossed his head and walked a few steps toward us as if in challenge. I had no trouble for him; he was a noble beast and understood the sweet wine of freedom, which he drank deep on these lonely moors with the Highlands rising up nearby.
When we had walked a good hour into the morning the big man looked over at me and said, “You seek Fergus MacAskill?”
Surprised, I looked at him. “I do.”
“And for what reason?”
“I have trained with the sword. I wish to be the best swordsman in the world, and I once thought I had been well taught by my father and a gypsy named Kory. Then I fought a lad but four years older than myself, and he beat me badly. He bested me at every turn. I would learn more, and they have said that Fergus MacAskill comes of a long line of fighting men, and that he is the greatest of swordsmen.”
“You wish to go back and beat that one who bested you?”
“Yesterday I did. Today it is less important. What I wish is that it not happen again, with another than he, or even with himself, if we should meet again. And I think we shall.”
“He had a name?”
“Leckenbie, Rafe Leckenbie.”
“Ah!”
“You know him?”
“I do not. But Tuesday he killed a man at Kirkcudbright. I saw him there, and he was good, he was very good, and he was fighting a man whom I knew.”
He looked at me. “You are alive; therefore you are no novice.” We walked on. “It was said that he had killed four men before this, one of them a soldier at Carlisle, another a Danish swordsman at Berwick-upon-Tweed.”
We walked along. “You are very young, but you are strong for a lad. I will see what we can do.”
“You will teach me?”
“Is it not what you want? I am Fergus MacAskill.”
14
We set out for Ayr with the sun not yet up, and I doubt not there would have been trouble had it not been for Fergus MacAskill, for there had been those about the inn who liked us not.
Now he strode out upon the path and we walked beside or followed, as the way permitted. The man had massive shoulders, not only broad but thick with muscle, yet I hesitated over his swordsmanship. A claymore is a cut-and-slash blade, and a man with such power in him would be mighty indeed with such a blade. Yet it was the art of fence in which I was interested, as it was taught in the Italian towns or France, and somewhat in Spain. Could such a man have the delicacy to handle a rapier or a thrusting sword?
Ayr was a bustling place when we arrived, and it was nightfall when we came into the streets. Sore tired we were, and hungered, too, for it had been little enough we’d had in the dawning and naught throughout the day.
Angus Fair was a careful man, and in this town I saw him more so. He came to a halt inside the town. “Best I leave you here,” he said. “There may be those about who seek me, and I would not involve you in my troubles.”
“Aye,” MacAskill agreed. “I would not have the lad embroiled in troubles not of his seeking, and I think he does not need questions now. The inn to which we go will ask no questions, but do you come along, after we enter. Do you speak quietly to Murray, who is host there. Speak for the room at the back. He will know at once what you wish, and it will cost you a bit more. But if those come who seek you there is a window over the back and an easy way down. Beyond that there is a narrow place between the stable and the brewing room and you may go through into a lane. Hold to it. Below lies the Doon, and not far off, is the Brig o’ Doon, but if you wish there are boats. Take one, but do you leave it at Dunure. Yon’s a fishing village, a small place with the harbor silting now. There’ll be an old place by the waterside with two lanterns, one high, one low. Do you tie the boat below the high lantern and go your way.”
“It seems,” I said, “you have been this way before.”
“Aye, lad, and not even a mouse trusts himself to one hole only. The inn is a safe place, with a half-dozen ways for a man to escape without being seen. There are smugglers an’ such come there, and many who would not be seen too well, and I among them.”
“But you are a man who could not be unseen!” I protested. “There are not two like you in the world!”
” ‘Tis a broad place, the world. I doubt not there’s a double for every man, somewhere about. But ’tis true. Not many have my size, and I am a known man. All I can do is keep myself from sight, for there be those who hunt me down.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “We’ve enemies, you and me, and not a few that seek us. I’ve a place yon on Lews … the Isle of Lewis some do call it, but Lews to me. I’ve a place there, and we will go there and listen to the gulls of a morning, and perhaps a lark in the afternoon, and we’ll work a bit wi’ the blades, you an’ me.”