“He never saved my life,” Ilya the blacksmith said. “Fact is that one time he almost ended it, when he took off the end of the anvil I was working on with one swipe of that skinny sword of his.”
“Did that really happen? I thought it was only a story,” Tadaos said.
“It happened. But I’ll tell you, Sir Conrad has taught me more about the craft than my father ever did, and my father was a master. I tell you he’s too good a man to let die!”
“He’s not going to die, not while I can draw a longbow. You’ve all seen me shoot. There’s no man better at it in the world than me. It’s a gift, I tell you. A gift from God. And now I know why God gave it to me.”
“I mean to be at the top of that windmill of his on the day of the fight. From there I can hit any man on the tourney field, though none of the Crossmen would believe that an arrow would fly that far, let alone kill a man. ”
“I’ve got arrow heads that can punch through any armor,” Ilya said. “Even that fancy new stuff I made for Sir Conrad. You’re welcome to them.”
“I’ll take them.”
“It won’t work, Tadaos. Too many people have heard of your shooting, besides those who have seen it. You haven’t exactly kept it a secret!” Friar Roman said. “They’d find you and hang you, and it wouldn’t do Sir Conrad a bit of good. Worse, they’d probably call foul on Sir Conrad, and kill him because of your doings.”
“There’s got to be a way.”
The three conspirators were silent for a bit. Then the friar spoke. “If the Crossman was killed by a man, they’d catch him sure. But if it was an Act of God…”
“What do you mean?”
“What if golden arrows were to come down from the sky, killing the evildoers? Isn’t that what this trial is all about? To determine the will of God?”
“But I don’t have any golden arrows,” Tadaos said.
“You will have.” Friar Roman opened his painting kit. “I think I have enough gold leaf left to cover about eight of them.”
I stepped out. of the shadows. “I have heard enough. You varlets are planning a mockery of all that the trial by combat stands for.”
“It stands for grown men fighting because they don’t have brains enough to settle their differences peacefully!” Ilya said and stood. The muscles rippled huge in the blacksmith’s bare arms.
“And it stands for killing the finest man in Christendom because he had balls enough to free those poor children from the Crossmen,” Tadaos added. He joined Ilya.
“You filthy peasants! You would speak like this to a true belted knight?”
The little friar stood up between us three big men. “Brothers! Christians, remember you are all brothers under God!” The little man’s courage impressed us all, and the two big peasants backed off.
“You, too, Sir Vladimir,” he said. “Come, join us. We need your help.”
“I should join with peasants to besmear the knightly order?”
“You, too, are in Sir Conrad’s debt. Word has it that he has arranged for you to marry his adopted daughter, and thus become his heir. Are you the kind of man who would wish a good friend’s death so that you could collect his gold?”
“Of course not, dammit! But-”
“Then sit down and join us. We need your aid, and so does he.”
“Just what do you expect me to do?”
Friar Roman said, “Now, here’s my plan…”
So thus it was that I found myself riding across the tourney field in the cold of a winter’s dawn, waiting to be shot.
The frivolities at Okoitz had lasted well into the night, and the field was completely deserted.
Tadaos had been sure that the weight of the thin gold would throw off his aim, and wanted some practice shots.
Since all was for naught if he missed, Friar Roman had spent the night carefully covering four arrows, and I was up with my shield hung on my lancetip, prancing around on Witchfire to give him a moving target. It is remarkable, the things a true knight finds in the path of duty.
The first arrow fell two yards too low, and I began to wonder if I would die out there. An arrow two yards to the fight would pierce my heart.
I tapped my shield four times to the ground in the signal to tell the bowman how low he had shot. He was so far away that he could not see his arrows.
The second just missed the bottom of the shield. Good. It seems Tadaos’s problems were in range rather than direction. I might survive. I tapped the ground once.
The third struck my shield fair on, and I raised my arm to the bowman. The fourth struck a finger’s width from the third, despite the fact that I had Witchfire at the gallop.
I dismounted to recover the arrows, for we had agreed on at least three practice rounds.
But as I recovered the last, I saw Sir Lestko riding out to me. I could tell it was he by the armorial device on his shield, though I could not have done this with most knights. In the West, it is the custom for a knight to wear his personal device on his shield and elsewhere. In Poland, one wore the device of one’s family, and these must be awarded by the duke, or the king, when there was one. In all of Poland, there were less than a hundred of them. But Sir Lestko’s people were from the Gniezno area, far to the north, and he is the only one of his family in the duchy.
I hid the arrows behind my shield.
“Sir Vladimir! You’re up early! What, has your lovely intended thrown you out into the cold?”
“You might as well know, Sir Lestko. Word of the foolishness will be out soon enough. When she was a peasant girl she was easy, warm, and willing. Now that she is Sir Conrad’s daughter, she is altogether too proper, and won’t even hold my hand until the wedding! And my father has not yet approved our marriage! I tell you there is very little justice in the world.”
Sir Lestko laughed, as I intended him to do. “You poor bastard! Still, what she’s doing is fight, you know. As Sir Conrad’s daughter, she must act with decorum for his honor and yours. And you, my friend, should do what every proper son of the nobility has always done.”
“And what is that?”
“Salve your pains with another wench! Come along! There are skads of them available in Okoitz! Indeed, I have a spare to lend you. When it’s raining soup, the wise man puts out his bowl!”
I promised to join him shortly, and we rode together toward the town. Dozens of people were out by then, and further archery practice was impossible.
It was agreed that Tadaos would shoot only when Sir Conrad was in trouble, likely though that event was. Perhaps there was still some shred of hope.
Chapter Twenty
FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ
I’d withheld the purse from Annastashia mostly as a joke, since I was trying to lighten up the party. The others were treating it like a wake, and my own at that.
Also, whenever I gave one of the girls something, the others always wanted the same thing, and I was not about to have Krystyana, Janina, Natalia, and Yawalda falling into the role of daughters. They were too good as bed partners.
Thank God I’d never had Annastashia. She was already involved with Sir Vladimir before I met her. Otherwise I’d have incest on my conscience along with everything else.
Nonetheless, Annastashia took her role as my daughter seriously, which was probably for the best.-Much of what I was doing in this century was flying in the face of convention, but it would not be wise to affront the institutions of the Church and the family. It made things a little rough on Sir Vladimir’s lovelife, but he could stand it. Too much else was at stake.
Okoitz was more crowded than the streets of New Orleans during Mardi Gras, and much of the same attitude seemed to infect the crowd. I had the feeling that I was the sacrificial lamb that everybody had come to see slaughtered.
Oh, everybody was polite, vastly polite, entirely too polite. Every person in that crowd was convinced that I was going to be dead in a day and a half, and they all tried to make my last few hours as sticky sweet as possible.
It took an hour to get my people settled in with the peasants at Okoitz, even with the advance arrangements I’d made. The best we could get was a roof over everybody’s head and minimal space on a dirt floor. People had to lay spoon fashion, back to belly, to all lie down at the same time. At least nobody was going to freeze. That much body heat could melt a snowdrift.