Chapter 27      Night Raid

 

 

 

Stewart paused over his washing.  The blood had soaked from the linen about as well as it was going to.  He began wringing out the cloth rolls and hanging them from the spit traversing the warm coals of the fire pit.

The events of the previous night, their second in Bridris, still jangled in his mind, a profusion of sounds and images such as a boy sees when running through the square on market day.  He shook his head.  Not quite, he said to himself.  In a market square, one rarely sees the arm of a man lopped off before your eyes or see the hard metal of a sword emerge from another's back as if it were the growth of some obscene appendage.  Nor would the market echo with sounds of quiet scrambling, shouts and fury, or the oily ring of steel sliding against steel.  Nor would the sounds of market day contain the disturbing slither of steel slicing through flesh.

The day had ended much as had the previous day, and the night had begun as had the previous night.  The snow had melted considerably, leaving behind a dark field of sticky mud and matted grass.  Edward, alone, had visited the bear pit and had returned after a time, his face immobile, his eyes smoldering.  He said nothing as he entered the barn, but sought out a dark corner and went to sleep, his thoughts uncommunicated.

Aubrey and Burke had returned from the forest with arms full of firewood, grinning and in good humor.  Later, Alexander and Aubrey had paired off for some training with stick swords, for which both wore heavy gauntlets.  James Beaumont had walked about the barn like a caged animal, then unrequited, had made several circuits of the village before returning with his energy expended and his countenance relaxed.  He had even offered help with the fire, an incongruous act from a man who most certainly had, intentionally or not, betrayed Cadmon to the assassins.

Of Cadmon, in the afternoon, he had exhausted himself with a number of strenuous exercises up in the loft, then had departed, his hair still darkened with sweat, disappearing into one of the buildings across the way.

After a few minutes, Cadmon returned from his foray with a ham.  He handed it to Stewart with a smile and said, "Your cooking is quite good, Stewart.  Show us what you can do with pork and carrots."

Stewart took the ham graciously and muttered thanks.  Cadmon clapped a hand on his shoulder, much as Thomas would have done in the same circumstances, then passed into the interior.

After supper, Cadmon reminded them of the importance of keeping careful watch, assigned watch duties, himself taking the last span before dawn, then climbed the loft to his blankets.

Activity fell off dramatically after Cadmon's exit.  James prepared to take first watch as Stewart finished washing his utensils and banked his fire for the morning.  All lamps were extinguished, except James' night lantern.  Everyone climbed beneath their blankets, shifted the straw to comfortable contours, and lay awake, listening, thinking, evaluating their lives and their friends, until sleep fogged their brains and swept them along its way.

Stewart could tell when they fell asleep, the ones who slept below at least.  Breathing became regular and the shifting about for comfort ceased.  But he could not fall asleep so readily.  He lay in the darkness, thinking.  From time to time, he looked at James, who leaned against the door, now closed and barred.

James Beaumont.  The lamp light contained him.  It walled him away from the night, away from his sleeping companions.  Cadmon placed such extreme trust in him.  What was the motive?  For himself, he bore the young knight no trust, but likewise, no rancor.  In a sense, James was pitiable.  He was the boy who was always caught stealing apples while his friends made clean getaways.  He attracted trouble, and he wore its consequences with arrogant pride.  His personality snowballed ill will.

Stewart thought a while more of the young knight and how he had comported himself the last few days.  In retrospect, James did seemed to rise slightly to Cadmon's good will.  Perhaps he would redeem himself, in time.  Perhaps that was Cadmon's plan.  He prayed James would steer away from the path of Judas before Cadmon had cause to regret his generosity. 

Sleep would not come!  He would feel the thickness approach, then there would be some sound, and the thickness would subside, leaving him listening again.  It was the courtyard feeling all over again.

He listened.  The night had a subtle life of its own.  A fox barked in the distance.  Lovel stirred with a whimper, then quieted when Edward, near whom he lay, grumbled.  Quiet again.  No, not quite.  There were secret scurryings above.  Mice.  Rats.  Quiet again.  A timber groaned.  Outside, bare branches rattled against one another.  Everything sounded old, lonely and cold.  His friends lay about him, yet how separate they were!  His blanket was not thick enough.

He shook his head wearily and wished he had not embarked on so lonely a thought.  Not at night.  But then, when but at night could the tumult of life slow down enough to examine it?  Perhaps that was the reason God made the night.  It bred pause for men to weigh themselves.  Without it, without the time for quiet thought, perhaps the world would fly apart, and men would no more honor one another than did the berserkers from the North.

Enough, said Stewart to his recondite contemplations.  Enough.

The last thing he saw before dropping off to sleep was James abstractedly contemplating the lantern, and he vaguely wondered what thoughts of reproach or cunning the young knight entertained.

The sound that awakened him stopped before he could identify it.  He simply retained the memory of an odd sound.  Something out of place, something needing a second hearing.  He pulled himself to one elbow.  It was quiet within the barn.  And without.  Far away, the lamp burned, now placed on the corbel of a post.  The flame swam steadily from the wick.  Who was at watch now?  He could see no one, only the lamp.  He pulled himself to a sitting position, careful to make no sound.  From his vantage in one of the stalls, he could see no one.  No, there was no one visible.  Who was on after James?  Burke?  Yes.  Then Cadmon.  What time was it?  He strained to see the sky through the cracks of the barn.  It was late, but probably not yet Burke's watch.  So, where was James?  It suddenly occurred to him, occurred as subtly as the darkness that clung to rafters, that the darkness could, at that moment, conceal anything, even a man.  A thrill of alarm shot through him and he felt his body warm, as if washed by a wave.  Recognition struck him.  He had the same feeling he had experienced the night he crossed the courtyard of Norbury!  Now, he trusted his instincts as he had never done before.

Something was gravely amiss.  He was sure of it.

This time, no Cadmon appeared at his elbow to soften the night.  He lay alone.  What should he do?  Call out, summon the others?  Wait?  The dilemma straddled him exactly as it had done at Norbury, though now it was not the fear of being called a fool which held him back, but caution.  He drew a long breath and let it out slowly, trying to command his heart and lungs to cease their clamor.  Where was Lovel?  Surely he would sound an alarm if anything was amiss.  Yet no being was infallible.

Well, he would have to do something.  Cadmon, Alexander, Thomas, and Burke slept in the loft.  Edward lay somewhere in the darkness across from him, occupying another stall with a soft rippling snore.  The sound comforted him.  A horse stirred in the stall next to Edward, quietly, so gently as to not even provoke the other horses into motion.  Silence again, deeper.  Edward had ceased his snore.  A night breeze sighed through the high timbers and silence lay heavy.  Aubrey occupied a stall on the other side of the horses, in the stall next to the lamp, actually.  Did he not hear anything?  Where was James?

The darkness would not separate and it seemed to consume all sound.  He had a bad feeling about James.  He was a rotten apple, rotten to the core.  Why did Cadmon ever place him in trust?

Stewart swore a mild injunction under his breath and immediately felt guilty and ashamed.  He should not use such language, even in thought.

James still had not appeared.  It looked altogether as if he had abandoned his post.  Even a break to tend nature would not take so long.

A flicker of light!  Just an instant.  He was sure he had seen it, in the second horse stall, the one from which he had heard the horse stir.  Was it a shuttered lamp?  Who would have a shuttered lantern in there?

He waited but an instant longer.  His body screamed inside.  Sound the alarm!

"Awake!  Awake!" he heard himself shouting.  The sound surprised and invigorated him.  He shouted again, "Alarm!  Down here!"  He clung to the wall of the stall.  Whatever was afoot, he had not the skill to bank it, but he had presence to know it.  This was knight's work, and he hoped they responded.

A heartbeat after he shouted, two lamps had their shutters flung wide, one on the loft ladder, illuminating a bundled form, the other in the horse stall, flashing a vision of backlit horse legs.

"Stay put, Stewart," came a command from above.  "Quiet!"  It was Cadmon's voice, fully awake.  God be thanked!

Loud voices answered Cadmon's call, and a mad scramble ensued.  More shouts, some were voices he did not recognize.  The barn was full of villains!

Across from him, Stewart heard steel being drawn from a scabbard.  From the loft above, more steel.  Long sounds.  Swords.  Higher pitched sound.  Daggers.  But whose?

Suddenly, he saw the lamp fall from the top of the loft, with a slow revolving descent.  Only an instant before the lamp crashed to the floor did he catch sight, in silhouette, of the bodiless arm still clutching the bail.  Dreamlike movement.  Then the lamp hit, shattering its leaded seams and spilling a pool of oil across the floor.  With a whoosh, the barn suddenly exploded with stark light, and he saw fighting going on about him.

Horses screamed in their stalls.  The lamp behind the horses vanished.  Behind the light, Edward slashed at a heavy man with a long sword as the man swung a startling fast sweep across the smith's middle with an axe.  In horror, Stewart saw the smith step back and the axe slice empty air.  Edward's sword blow fell similarly short and neither man was hurt.  The exchange began again.  Above, in the loft, the darkness seemed intensified by the light below.  He could see nothing, but sounds of fighting played against the planking.  Below, Aubrey had engaged two adversaries, and was gaining on them both.

Almost simultaneously, Edward hit the axeman and Aubrey struck one his two assailants.  These villains were not good fighters, Stewart found himself assessing.  They certainly were not professional assassins, so they must be villagers, Morkin's people.  And he immediately wondered at the calmness of his analysis.

The fight had turned from a sneak attack into a frontal assault, and the villains were trying to disengage and run.  One jumped clear from the loft, landed on his feet, and was off in an instant through the barn door, pausing only an instant to throw the bar.  The man fighting Edward threw the axe at him and made good his escape in the wake of his companion.  The two Aubrey fought tried to run, but only one made it out the door.  The other could scarcely move, having a sustained a large cut in his chest from which blood spilled ominously.

"Get blankets on that fire!" shouted Cadmon from the darkness.  "Blankets and dung, not water!"

There were not many blankets, but the barn rested on a good footing of dry, powdery dung.  Grabbing a two-tined pitch fork, Stewart immediately began shoveling dung into the pool of fire.  The severed arm holding the lamp looked grotesque.  He flung dung on it as much as the flame surrounding it.  It must have been Cadmon's work, Cadmon who had, as on the night in Norbury, been awake to the threat before it struck.

The fighting had ceased.  Only activity remained.  Edward threw a couple of blankets on the fire and immediately started pitching dung also.  His massive arms nearly broke his fork in half.

As suddenly as it had flared, the fire subsided.  Lamps were lit.  Two bodies lay in bloody heaps.  Aubrey had a wound of unknown severity in his abdomen.  Thomas helped him to an empty stall, where he collapsed, visibly weakened.  Upon a lamp reaching the stall a few seconds later, they found James Beaumont sprawled there already.  At first glance, he appeared dead, but proved only unconscious with a bloody lump on the side of his head.  Beside James lay Lovel, his throat cut and a chunk of dirty meat beside him.  Poor Lovel.  He was a table dog, not a dog of war.  He had stood no chance against such treachery.

With but a few whispered instructions, Cadmon had them place James on a bed of blankets alongside Aubrey.  Briefly, Cadmon lifted James' lids and peered at each eye by lamplight.  "Keep him still," he said, "even if he should awaken and demand to rise."  Burke volunteered for the task.

Aubrey made little of his wound, but looked ashen and unsteady.  He gingerly lifted the cloth of his tunic aside as his friends looked on, then in the middle of an exclamation that his wound could not be very serious, he fainted.  Alexander caught him and carefully lowered him to the blanket.

"Bring that other lamp," ordered Edward.

Cadmon, by that time, had removed the tunic and examined the wound by the dim light of the lamp he carried.  The wound gaped and steamed, but little blood flowed.

Aubrey struggled to breathe.  They propped him up with piles of fodder.  Cadmon instructed many strips of linen to be cut in long lengths.  Stewart immediately gathered a tablecloth he had in the wagon -- one never knew when a banquet might be called for -- and began slicing it with a carving knife, while Thomas held the cloth in tension so the blade would do its work quickly.

Aubrey's wound was a full three fingers in width.  A nasty wound, noted Edward.  Cadmon pronounced that the wound itself was not fatal, the knife having slid along the ribs and not entered the chest, but they must tend him quickly, lest fever set in.  He pressed a folded pad of linen on both sides of the wound, then with Alexander's and Thomas's help, wrapped layer after layer of linen around his middle.  Immediately, the linen darkened.

Cadmon instructed that neither Aubrey nor James were to receive water and under no circumstances were they to move.  Come morning, they must find fresh milk or egg whites to soak the bandages to keep the wound from growing red and angry.  A foray into the village at night would be foolhardy.

As night wore towards dawn, and attention over the two fallen men turned from death watch to sick watch, Edward climbed the loft and kicked three more bodies to the ground.  One had only a single arm.  None was Morkin.  Edward and Thomas dragged them out of the barn.

No lights burned in the village.  Doubtless, all of the inhabitants had fled after their craven ambush failed.