But she had no real difficulty suppressing the giggle. The situation was now on the brink of utter carnage, almost a dozen knights ready to hack each other into pieces—with herself right in the middle of them.
The young knight named Manfred whipped out his own great sword and brandished it. “Dia a coir!” he shouted. Then, took two steps toward the abbot and commanded him: “Unhand the child, Sachs!”
The abbot, through all this, had been paralyzed. Kat realized, now, that he was a man whose authority had always come from his position—not respect gained from his subordinates in action. It was obvious that Sachs had absolutely no idea what to do, now that he was faced with open rebellion.
Neither did any of the other knights, for that matter. But it was also obvious, even to Kat, that they were about to react the way fighting men will when faced with such a naked challenge. These men were cut from the same cloth as the bravos of any great house of Venice—but were far better trained, and more deadly. In open combat, at least, if not in the subtler skill of the assassin.
The hands on swords were clenched now, not loose. And two or three of those swords were beginning to come out of their scabbards. Frightened they might be, at Erik’s savagery and Manfred’s incredible strength—but they were not going to crumple under it. Not men like these.
Suddenly, one of the other knights thrust out his hands, his arms spread wide in a gesture commanding peace. A somewhat older knight, this one. Most of them were men in their early twenties. His face, though not creased with middle age, was that of a man in his thirties. A man accustomed to command.
“Enough!” he shouted. “Enough! No weapons!”
His voice seemed to calm the situation instantly. Kat thought he must be the knight in command of the party. The hands on sword hilts loosened; some were removed entirely. Even Erik and Manfred seemed to settle back a little.
“Erik is right,” the older knight said forcefully. “Quite right! And every true Knight here knows it!”
He turned to Sachs and glared at him. “You have completely exceeded your authority here, Abbot. Abused it grossly, in fact.”
The abbot gaped at him. “But—Von Gherens . . .”
“Shut up,” growled the older knight. “You disgust me, Sachs.” Seeing the abbot’s hand still on the child’s shoulder, the knight reached out his own hand and flicked it off as he might flick off an insect.
“My family has held the frontier in Livonia for six generations. Unlike you, Sachs, I have faced real demons—not figments of your fevered imagination.”
Stolidly, the knight examined the still-trembling boy. “Had you ever seen a child’s body on a pagan altar, Abbot”—the term was a pure sneer—”you would understand the difference.”
Von Gherens. Erik. Manfred. As always, Kat found northern names harsh and peculiar. But for the first time in her life, she began to understand them better also. Harsh, yes; rigid and intolerant, yes. Yet . . . sometimes, at least, names which rang clear. Clearer, perhaps, than any of the soft names in fog-shrouded Venice.
Oddly, for a moment her mind flitted to old lessons of her tutor Marina. Lessons in theology she had not understood at the time. There was a reason, child, that Hypatia compromised with Augustine, if not Theophilus. And treasured Chrysostom, for all his rigidity and intolerance. There is such a thing as evil in the world, which cannot be persuaded, but only defeated. And for that—harshness is needed in the ranks of Christ also. Neither Shaitan nor his monsters will listen to mere words. She remembered his lips crinkling. Even a Strega, you know, does not doubt the existence of either Christ or the Dark One.
The gray-cassocked abbot looked as if he was about to have a stroke—or faint. Even in the candlelight Kat could see his face was suffused, simultaneously, with rage and—fear. His lips trembled as he groped for words; words which, apparently, he was unable to find.
Yet another knight had no such difficulty. With a slight clashing noise, he thrust his sword firmly back in the scabbard and removed his hand from the weapon.