We waited, holding our breaths, but there was no sound. Johannes took up the line and pulled on it until it was taut. The spear had fallen inside and was now caught across the embrasure, a lucky stroke, as it might have come through the embrasure point first.
Peter tied the heavier line to his waist; then taking the line in his hands, he began to walk up the wall. There was still no sound from within. Were they waiting for us with drawn blades?
Peter disappeared into the darkness above, and suddenly his line slackened and the heavier line shook with his signal. Instantly, I grasped the line and went up, hand over hand. My acrobatic training proved its value, and I climbed swiftly.
Almost at the embrasure I heard a gasp, then a body fell past me.
Swinging through the embrasure, I glimpsed Peter down on his face, whether dead or wounded I could not guess, and then a half-dozen men ran along the wall walk toward me.
There was no use being quiet now. I let out a savage yell: “A Kerbouchard!” And sprang at them. My shout startled them, that unexpected but feared cry stopped them where they stood. The shock of that cry saved my life. I was closer behind Peter than expected, and that cry, so unexpected after all this time, brought Tournemine’s men a shock. My blade leaped at them, and a sword came to meet it. I was in a desperate fight with the three closest men, but the walk was narrow, and all could not reach me at once.
Behind them and from the postern, which opened on the castle yard, there was a shout and a clash of blades. Again the men facing me faltered, and my thrust went by the blade of the nearest man, taking him in the throat, above his breastplate.
He went to his knees, interfering with those behind him. Again I shouted, “A Kerbouchard!” The old war cry of my father’s men. It seemed to strike fear into those opposing me. I pushed forward, thrusting and slashing, and then Johannes was beside me.
He swung a great loop over the men before me and jerked it tight. One fell, another, his arm pinioned, could not lift a blade to stop mine.
Now our men were swarming over the wall, and from the yard I heard the great gates creak open. A fire sprang up, and someone tossed brush on the flames. Beyond them, firelight dancing on his scarred face, was my enemy.
Tournemine stood in the doorway of the keep, staring at the fight in the castle yard as if he could not believe what was happening. A glass was in one hand, a bottle in the other.
“A Kerbouchard!”
Down a ladder I went, and Tournemine sprang back and tried to close the door, but my shoulder struck it, and he fell back. I followed him through and faced him, at last.
“You are not he,” he said; “you are not Kerbouchard.”
“I am Kerbouchard, and you carry my mark on your face.”
His fingers went to the scar, then dropped to his sword. “So I shall kill you at last!”
“No, Tournemine, I shall kill you. You have taken down the table.”
He went white to the lips. How that insult must have rankled! How many nights he must have stared in hatred at the table he dared not move, that evidence of his submission, of his weakness.
Yet now he was confident. I was only the boy he had seen escape across the moors. He came at me, a smile of contempt on his lips, and I began with care, for he had the reputation of being a swordsman.
He turned my blade and lunged, but I parried his blow, and for an instant he was out of position. I could have killed him then, but his quick death would not satisfy me. So I struck him on the side of the face with the flat of my blade, a ringing blow that staggered him.
My taunt was deliberate, and in a burst of fury he came at me, and I was fighting for my life. Desperately, at times almost wildly, I fought off his rush. He nicked my wrist, narrowly missed my throat, and moved in steadily. Suddenly, I shifted my feet, feinting as I had been taught in Córdoba. He reacted instantly, according to pattern, and my point touched him over the eye. I felt the point touch bone, and blood showered over him. He drew back and I moved in, trying for his throat.
There was bleeding from my wrist, and I was afraid the blood would make my grasp of the hilt slippery. Outside, there were sounds of fighting, and we might yet be defeated, for the men of Tournemine must now outnumber our own small force.
How long did we fight? Who had the better blade? Up and down the room we fought, but then my constant training began to tell, the hours of training, the tumbling and acrobatics as well as my time at the oar. Also I saw that my Moorish tricks bothered Tournemine, for he knew them not. To simply kill him was not enough. He must taste defeat, savor it like bitter ashes in his mouth. I wanted it there in his teeth. I wanted him to know, this man who murdered my mother, killed our family servants, and destroyed our home. I wanted him to taste defeat.
So I pressed Tournemine harder, relying upon the Moorish style of swordplay. My point touched his throat, drawing blood; then slashing down swiftly, I nicked his thigh. His steel mail prevented me from running him through the body, narrowing my target.
Coolly, deliberately, I began to teach him what he did not know. Sweat beaded his brow, mingling with the blood that trickled into one eye and down his cheek. “You should keep to killing women, as you murdered my mother. You will die soon, Tournemine, and when you do I shall sink your body in the Youdig quagmire of the Yeun Elez.”
He had lived in Brittany and knew the Youdig was believed to be the entrance to Purgatory and that the bodies of traitors and evil beings were cast into its bottomless sinks.
His face paled, but his eyes flashed with hatred. He lunged at me, but I turned his blade and laid open his cheek.
The doors opened, and Johannes entered with Guido. Their blades were sheathed. So, we had won. Have done then I decided. I feinted, but Tournemine’s wrist had tired, and his point came up too slow to parry. I ran him through the throat and let my mother’s murderer slide off my blade to the floor.
The Hansgraf entered. “Was that the man?”
“Yes, that was the man.”
Remembering, I asked, “Peter? How is Peter?”
“Sore wounded and like to die. That is why I have come for you. If there is help that will save him, do what you can.”
“Johannes? I want the body of Tournemine. I want nothing else from this place. Only that body.” So I turned from the dealing of death to the saving of life, anguished at the little I knew of healing.
Tournemine was dead; Peter must live.
28
My way led westward and south to complete my vow, so I drew off from the column and watched them pass, the body of Tournemine across the saddle of my spare horse. Peter von Gilderstern lay in a litter between two horses, his wounds bandaged. He had lost blood, but I had given him salt water to drink, which was good for shock, we believed, and helped to replace lost blood.
They would return to their caravans and then proceed to the fairs. When I disposed of the body of Tournemine, I would hope to join them.
“Allow me to ride with you,” Johannes suggested. “I would share your trouble.”
“No, this task is my own. I ride alone.” So I watched them go, driving the cattle, the sheep, and horses packed with the loot from the baron’s fortress. When they were but a thread of darkness on the road, I took my way.
It was long since I had seen those rugged Arre and the Huelgoat forest, but with the light rain falling it was a fit time for such a ride to such a place. In summer the moor was overgrown with purple heather, but now the heather was dark with rain, the earth soft beneath my horses’ hooves.
Days later, under somber skies, I rode into the barren solitudes of the Arre. It was a brooding land, a dark land, an ancient land of haunted hills, mysterious fens, of dark morass. Here the Druids held their weird rites under the oak trees, of which a few remained mingled with beech, fir, and pine. Here they had cut the sacred mistletoe from the limbs with a golden sickle, catching it in a white robe as it fell.