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⭑
Now, I swear this on my life, I had not meant to live so and wished only a just trade for myself.
Captain Bernard has had me running errands since Sir Radzig put me in his care. I suppose I can’t complain all that much; I can hold my own now against lots of men, which is a far cry from when I got my arse handed to me by Kunesh over a hammer and some nails… but now Bernard tells me there’s bandits in the woods around Rattay!
Sir Hanush has decreed that anyone who kills a bandit leader and brings back proof will be paid handsomely. The proof, Bernard says, is the leader’s spurs. Which is fine and good to me. But then he adds that, if I want to earn a bit on top, I’ve got to bring back ears.
Ears!
I must have given him a look, because he shrugged a bit and muttered something. Something like, “Worse things to be done in this world, lad.”
So now I’ve got to go rummaging ‘round corpses like a lousy grave-robber and come back with spurs and cut off their ears too. I’ve got to find other things to do, honest to God… I’ve barely had time to scrape the last week off my boots!
⭑
Ah, I must’ve been out of my mind writing that last bit. I’ve got a great need for coin after drinking and gambling it all away. Goes from my purse like water from a cracked bucket, it does…
And anyway, one man has two whole ears, so that should put me in a good spot!
⭑
Was getting some sleep in and had a damned nightmare again. It’s got to be that beer.
Theresa was in it. When Skalitz was sacked, I had my own grief and enough of it to drown in. I thought on my father and mother, on the sword, on the men who’d done it, and I saw very little beyond that. Only later I heard what Theresa had seen and done, and I felt a proper fool: Cumans at the mill, Cumans in the yards—everywhere! And her with no armor, no horse, no training worth speaking of, only her wits, her two hands, and that dog of hers, Tinker. Most men, and me too, talk of courage as if it’s all a game of war. But I’m beginning to think there’s more of it in keeping your feet and going on with the next thing that needs doing.
⭑
Went down to the mill before setting out. I really only came to see her, but I’ve got no proper manners in that regard. I was walking past on my way to get Pebbles saddled, and then I saw Theresa further out in the yard, hanging linen with her sleeves pushed up to the elbow. Mutt was lying in the grass beside her, thumping his tail at nothing.
“There’s bread in the kitchen,” she said then, without looking up. “You’ll want something before you go.”
I was going to say I was fine. Then my stomach said otherwise, and I went in and ate. When I came back out, she was gone somewhere. I stood there for a moment, swiping the crumbs off my tunic like an idiot, and then I got my horse and left.
⭑
The first camp was east of Rattay. The smoke from their fire led me right to them. I crept close enough through the brush to count them by their voices. Five in all, including the leader. Lying on your belly with twigs down your collar, listening to men you mean to murder talk about stew and women—what life! Watching one scratch his arse with the same hand he uses to eat. Aye, what life!
I thought about charging in with my sword drawn, but I haven’t got any good armor on me… Idiot in a kettle hat, with stew for brains. And that’s being real generous.
So, I waited until nightfall. I watched them from the treeline and just noted when they ate and pissed, and finally slept. They doused the fire a bit, which is when I knew.
⭑
Got the sentry first. He’d wandered off to relieve himself by a tree, and I came up behind him with my dagger. I held on when he kicked, and he pissed on me! Dragged him, piss-covered, into the bushes, and went for the next one.
The leader was last. He woke to find himself alone in a camp full of corpses, and when he saw me standing there in the entrance with my sword drawn—by then there was no point in creeping—oh, the look on his face…!
Well, I got him quickly, at least. Then I took his spurs.
The ears were a bit harder. I’m no butcher. I stood over the first body with my dagger poised and thought that I was about to do something just awful barbaric. But then I thought about the coin and told myself many times that these men had probably done worse to innocent travelers…
I brought the proof back to Captain Bernard and collected my reward. He counted the ears and handed me a purse of groschen.
⭑
The second camp was west of Rattay, and five men. I was a dastardly coward and waited for night to only get the leader. I snuck his spurs off his heels as quiet as I could and bolted.
The third was west of Neuhof and had six of these bastards, including two who were clearly better paid mercenaries. That one was tricky. I had to poison their food pot. I brewed that myself so it was a bit shit. Took hours until one of them shot off soiling his pants. The lot of them laughed. And, well, then the others followed sometime soon…
Couldn’t really feel much delight stabbing some idiot with his whole arse out and everything coming out of it too.
⭑
The fourth camp was on the road to Sasau, and that’s when Captain Bernard told me there’s more work if I wanted it: Captain Robard in Talmberg could use a man like me! Cumans have been raiding the area… I’d have said yes for nothing, and Bernard knew it.
I collected my final payment and considered the offer over some spirits and a fat sausage. Part of me wanted to say no. But I’ve got need for coin, running around like this. I’ve got to feed and shod Pebbles, and to even have a horse of my own is already so grand. Not to mention I’ve got to eat myself, too, and haggle all the time for all the repairs… Christ, my armor’s really shit…
But those Cumans, maybe even the same ones, were there when Skalitz fell. They were the ones who rode through the streets in their demon masks, cutting down everyone.
⭑
I stopped at the mill on my way back from collecting payment. It was late in the afternoon and the light was good.
Theresa was by the millrace, washing something. We sat there by the water for a while, not saying much. I found myself thinking that this was the most peaceful I’d felt in weeks, and then felt a bit guilty about it. I haven’t the right to feel peaceful in these times.
While I was there, Theresa had her hands still in her lap for once, which is unusual for her. I looked at her and thought that she could have had a very easy time of it if the world had let her.
We ate together that night and shot shit with Peshek. I felt, for those two hours, like I had a home to come back to again.
⭑
Before I set out for Talmberg, I asked Theresa if she’d like to go to the Broken Wheel for supper.
Walking up the hill to Rattay she asked me whether I met a lot of girls in bathhouses and taverns, and when I told her I preferred a certain sort, all mouth and green eyes, she did get a bit flustered.
She taught me to dance that night, after supper. God, I was awful. There was a drunk fool who made the mistake of putting his hands on her. He was saying shit like wanting a woman to fight before she fucks her…
Taken I recall running from Skalitz and calling those Cumans off Theresa, and what they would’ve done to her if I hadn’t, I knew what that fear in her eyes was.
We got in a bit of a scrap and I did him in real good.
⭑
Theresa cleaned me up afterwards, and we walked back to the mill. In the yard, I said that spending time with her might be painful, but it was never dull. I’d really meant it more than getting in a scrap with some moron, but I didn’t want to explain myself. I think she understands full well what I mean every time I try to speak.
We stood there for a moment. I was working up to something, I think, but she spared me the courage I was mustering up, kissed me very sweet, and went inside.
I stood on the doorstep in the dark for what felt like a long time.
⭑
Rode to Talmberg and spoke with Robard. Good man, Robard. He’d saved my life when I was wounded and half-dead from the flight from Skalitz. Well, he remembered me, too.
Nobody had survived to collect the bounty on the Cuman camps, he told me.
The Cumans were worse than just those bandits. Better armed, better trained, really, utterly without fear. They knew they were far from home, surrounded by enemies, and held nothing back. They knew they couldn’t repent or beg for ransom or promise to do better. But I couldn’t just sneak up and slit their throats; they posted proper sentries, kept fires burning through the night. They moved in pairs and ate together and slept in shifts. I had to be clever…
The first camp, I managed to pick them off one by one over the course of three nights. They moved camp and I liked seeing their fear and confusion. I’d watch from a distance as they argued with one another about which way the threat was coming from, each of them pointing a different direction. I don't speak a word of their tongue but that much needed no translation. Another one dead… another, dead… no matter where we go! Aaah! Fuck! Fuck! At least that’s what I imagine they were saying.
The second, I poisoned a wineskin. That was easier than the pot. If it’s not in the line of light from the fire, so that’s easy to be swiped.
The third camp, I had no choice but to fight directly… Three of them came at me at once, half-awake and with no helmets on. I very nearly died for it. Took wounds that kept me bedridden for days afterward. But I stripped some of them of their better gear. With a little tinkering, it even fit me alright.
⭑
Always work to be done; Theresa herself all but says as much.
She nursed me back from the dead when Runt’s men were done with me. Weeks of it. I don’t remember much of that time, but she was there when I woke every morning. I thanked her and she told me not to make a fuss of it.
She did the same for me now. I quite enjoyed that we didn’t have to talk about it.
⭑
The fourth and fifth camps fell eventually, with the same slow prodding about, and I collected my faceplates—the Cumans wear these metal masks into battle, and Robard wanted them as proof. A bit grim for trophies. My saddlebags were getting heavier with the weight of dead men’s possessions, and I tried not to think about what that meant about me.
Something particularly unsettling about those masks, too. The Cumans believe they protect the wearer from evil spirits, or at least that’s what I've been told. When you look at one up close, you can see the craftsmanship. All the brows beaten into a frown. Someone made these with great care, yeah; a blacksmith…
I have five of them now, sitting in a chest at my lodgings on the way back. I might take them out and look at them, try to at least imagine the men who wore them, since I try not to look at their faces much otherwise. A Cuman faceplate makes a man seem inhuman while he’s living, and once he’s dead it’s stranger still, because then you see the face that was underneath it all along, and it’s just some fellow.
⭑
When it was done, Robard clapped me on the shoulder and said I’d done the region a great service. Then he told me there was one more job, if I had the stomach for it. Baron Sebastian vom Berg, the arsehole Custodian of Sasau Monastery, was having trouble with marauders, deserters and renegades.
Christ have mercy on me. When did this become my life?
Going to have a drink, sleep on it, and then set out for Sasau if I still feel up for it in the morning.
⭑
Ah, fuck. I can’t say I was overjoyed to be taking orders from the Custodian. There’s something about the man that makes me want to wipe my boots before speaking to him. But he had coin, and he had marauders needing dealt with, so that was that.
But this one’s worse than the others: one of the camps is southwest of Skalitz…
I want to say I handled the news stoically. I want to write, really, that I nodded grimly and licked my fingers and smacked them over my brow, and said something real brave about duty and vengeance.
But I just stood there for a long moment. Skalitz, where I thought my life would be simple and happy and, with God’s grace, long, too…
Oh, sweet Bianca, laughing with her head turned aside because her father was near and she didn’t want him to see at whom, brushing her sleeve and rolling her eyes at me as if I were the biggest idiot God ever made, and still staying to talk. She’d pull me by two fingers into some little shelter behind the tavern stores, or further out where nobody from the square would come, always somewhere cramped and inconvenient and all the better for it because we’d stolen it and did all in secret. One time we went behind the tavern because it was raining and there was nowhere else, and we both smelt of beer afterwards, so her father nearly guessed.
That sort of thing.
If all had gone as it ought, I suppose I’d have gone on mooning after Bianca and dicing with Matthew and Fritz, and Theresa would have still had the mill, her father, her brothers, Tinker… We might have danced once, said something foolish drunk, and that’d have been the end of it.
But nothing did go as it ought! We met each other properly, I think, only after the world had stripped those easy futures off us both.
⭑
Strange riding through country you once knew as a boy and knowing every bit of it differently now.
It’s not that I can’t do the job. I can do the job. But I know these hills. The Deutsch’s house down there, I could see where it was. I remember the morning we threw dung at it, because the old Deutsch had been praising Sigismund.
And there’s the alehouse. Or there was… I can see the site of it from here.
Bianca gave me a pitcher of ale for my father that last morning. Told me there was a shifty-looking fellow asking after me. And that we’d see each other that evening…
⭑
I went in after dark. Watched their movements, waited for my moment, dealt with the dog before it could rouse the whole camp, and then with the men. Won’t say more than that about the camp itself.
When it was over, I stood there and thought that if Pa could see me now, he’d know me well enough to understand how I’d got here, but not well enough to like it. I took the spurs and I walked out through the same valley I’d watched from all evening. Found Pebbles where I’d left her, gave her an apple out of my pack, and rode for Sasau.
I still need the money. I still mean to find the sword! I still want vengeance on the men who destroyed Skalitz. All that’s true. But there are times now when I think I’ve become altogether too handy at lurking about in the dark.
Worse things to be done in this world, I expect.
⭑
When I finally got back to the mill, Theresa asked if I’d play blind man’s buff with her in the barn. I laughed—because it’s a child’s game!—but she said Peshek was not to know a word of it, and that only made me agree the faster. I wanted to think about something else.
She took a strip of cloth and tied it over her eyes. That did something odd to me, seeing her stand there with the blindfold on, hands held out a little… I don’t mean anything wicked by that! Only that she looked younger for a moment.
I moved about the barn slowly, trying not to make too much noise, though I’m no cat at the best of times in truth. She’d turn toward the sound of my boots in the straw, hands out before her, and I’d step away again at the last moment.
I might have kept away longer if I’d wanted. But after a while it seemed mean to make too much of beating her at the game she wanted to play. And more than that, I found I didn’t much want to keep away. I dodged once or twice more, because I was enjoying myself too; but then I let her have it.
“Ha!” she said. “Caught you!”
I said a man ought to enjoy his victories where he finds them.
She said that in that case, I must not have very many.
That was about when the storm began.
We ran out into the yard just as the rain came down in earnest. The linen was already snapping and twisting in the wind while the heavens opened over us. Theresa went for one line and I the other. We gathered up whatever we could get our hands on. It was hopeless trying to keep any of it dry by then. My sleeves were soaked through in a blink, and Theresa’s hair was plastered to her neck and temples.
We got everything in at last, and hurried back into the barn dripping like rats. Theresa was wringing water out of a shirt with both hands, muttering under her breath about all the washing having to be done over again, when there came a crack of thunder so loud it split the air.
She started at it and stepped closer without seeming to mean to.
I don’t know what possessed me then… Maybe there are some people you can’t bear to see frightened if there’s anything at all you can do about it.
So I put my arms around her, and I kissed her. And after that I wasn’t thinking of anything sensible at all. Only that her hands were cold from the rain when she laid them upon me, and that the world outside could rage and flash as it liked for all I cared…
She was bolder than me by a distance. I was, I think, grateful and altogether outclassed.
⭑
Ah, fuck. I must’ve dozed off. When I woke, I was alone in the hay. The storm had passed. The barn smelt of wet linen and summer rain and her. I lay there for a while like a fool, grinning at the rafters, hearing the birds outside…
Well—a man can’t very well live on one good night, however much he might like to.
Dressed properly, I headed back to the mill. Theresa was at the fire with her hair braided back, stirring something. She looked up when I came in and smiled. It was better than if she’d thrown her arms round me and made a whole play of it.
I don’t know what comes of such things. I don’t know what right I have to any of it, but I do want it.
I looked at the back of her head and thought that this woman is a miracle, and I am going to do something stupid as always, like love her so much.
⭑
Rain sets her a little on edge these days.
I remember how she looked at the mill sometimes after I was up and about again. If she wasn’t sewing, she was carrying something. If she wasn’t carrying something, she was washing or seeing to the place, or helping Peshek. Better to move than sit… I know something of that myself by now.
She’s not all sorrow either. She can still laugh and look at me as if I’m an idiot, which, God knows, I often am. She’ll mend my things, stand by the river and talk to me, and all at once you remember there’s a whole mind in her, not just her misfortunes. I like that about her a great deal. More than the pretty face; though she has that!
Set beside what Theresa endured, my own complaints can sound damnably childish in my ears. Not that what happened to my family is to be compared. But there are times when I think of how I just go on and on about my father’s sword and how I’ve been wronged here and there, and then I think of Theresa picking her way through the same day, thinking on Samuel, not even knowing if there was still a life left for her afterwards, and I feel a bit as if I ought to shut my mouth for a while.
She saved me, well, twice, in a manner of speaking. First in Skalitz, when she called for help and would not leave me there for dead. Then afterwards, when she helped drag me back into the world.
When I sit with her by the water, or watch her about the yard, or hear her laugh, I don’t think she’s become some sop made out of sorrow. I think rather that what was always in her has been driven harder to the surface, the good and the stern both. She’ll still make room for a bit of pleasure when it comes, or else what would all the labor be for?
And I’ll say this too: if ever I do right by Theresa, it had better not be because she’s pretty, nor because I owe her my life. She’s got too much wit and spirit in her to be tucked away and told that a washtub and a cradle are a world enough.
And as for me, I’m no settled husband out of a village tale. She’s right about that. Maybe that’s why we suit just now, and why it hurts a bit too.
I’d never want to make her smaller just so I could keep her.
⭑