Vol.6, Ch.4, P.3
Through the air angled Björn’s new blade before finding a foe’s throat to thrash. Blood flew and mace fell; and moaning most unnaturally, the cloven Quire-lacquey buckled limply to his knees.
Down the wind wuthered another mace, livid as it sailed aloft—only to fail when Björn turned about and tackled its wielder’s wide-open torso. There they would’ve vied, but for the quick collapse of the Quireman as Björn drew a bloody dagger out of his bosom.
“…Egh!?” angrily gasped the remaining enemies, stopping in their tracks; Björn’s deadly daggerwork had got them wholly distracted. Seizing the moment, therefore, I lunged full and unleashed the sword of soot. My mark, heedless of my haste, was spared not a second to answer.
Blackness flashed thence—wooshakh!—and flashed again—shhkrakh!—its heavy hewing daunting the air and slashing dead three men in all.
Not a moment since the first clash, and now five of six were slain. In his prudence, the last of the Quiremen stood apart from the rest. Yet he would profit from it little; realising himself a beast backed against a cliff, the Quireman surrendered himself not to our custody… but to complete abandon.
Raising his mace without a word, he pounced hither, but pitched and fell flat to the ground as Björn sliced his throat without ceremony. And more asudden than how it began, the dance was done. Six lay lifeless. The earlier three would have something frightful to wake up to, for certain.
After gathering ourselves for a moment, Björn looked at the dagger in his hand. His moustache moved. “…A ladle bent handles better,” he mumbled.
And perhaps tickled by that blatant discourtesy of his, “You’re very welcome,” I jibed lightly back. Not that I was expecting any sort of “thanks” from the gaffer, mind.
But then the Praetorian captain gave me a direct look. Something else seemed on his mind. “I see thou ill-betrayest thy name, traitor,” he growled, “if baiting foes with another’s body be thy way of battle.”
Well, I couldn’t fault him for feeling like a morsel in a snare, now could I? For in the spur of the moment, I really had made a bait out of Björn. Also, that with but one glance could he glean my stratagem well-confirmed that he was nary a quack of a captain. No; he was as capable as they come.
“Apologies, then,” I said sincerely this time.
But Björn, being none too amused, blasted from his bushy awnings: “Empty words, withersake!”
Fastidious he was, as well, this old badger of a soldier, the sort one finds by the dozens in a Londosian barrack. Though I suppose bodyguarding, too, does that to a man, moulding him into a humourless and testy bloke. And I imagine waxing in age had done little to amend this jaggedness of his.
But with a hoarse sigh and a gentler register, Björn next said, “This… gift absolves you not,” and then bent down to wipe the bloody dagger against the garbs of the fallen. “Howbeit I shall wield it as I must.”
I could fetch you a ladle, if you’d like, I dared not say. Indeed, I wasn’t about to waste all that work getting that weapon into his hands. Björn needed the dagger, just as the princess needed him.
“Do with it as you would,” I said. “It was never mine, at any rate.”
“Despoiled it, did you?” he said, before inspecting the weapon. “A trinket of the Church. Hmph… it much looks the part.”
A sensible swordsman would wield whatever he chances upon, you know, I dared now to say. But as the words teetered over the tip of my tongue, I thought better, and thus swallowed them. My eardrums were nary in the mood for another scolding.
So instead, I turned my attention to Björn’s tone: namely, his distaste for the dagger. Passing curious, I have to say, given that though it be gaudy and more fit for show than showdown, the weapon was yet an implement of the Church. Nay, this was not Björn losing his religion. He was a choirboy at heart, through and through, if his hatred for me hadn’t made that clear enough. Rather, it was that the conspirators themselves have fully earned his spite. Such was his fealty to the princess, one could wager: come rascal or cleric, he would not hesitate to fend her from any harm.
“…”
Then, without a word, Björn stood, thrust the dagger into his belt, and started off. As I wiped my own weapon clean, I did not think to call after him. Instead, I soon went my own way north-westwards—the very same as Björn’s, as the fates would have it.
“Bah! Avaunt, you,” he snapped upon glimpsing me striding from behind.
“I would,” said I, “were those men not so loose with their hints.”
Björn narrowed his eyes before scoffing, “Hmph…” and turned them back ahead.
“No further for you”—such had these Quiremen screamed at us at the start of their assault. That meant but one thing: that they couldn’t suffer us to go any further this way; that something rather precious to them must be lying at the north end of Merkulov.
“Dare not mistake me, sicarius,” Björn began again. “’Tis nary because this blade is borrowed that I’ve yet to bury it in your bosom. Her Highness wishes still for words with you, and I shan’t bar her way.”
And so was explained Björn’s stayed blade: for more so than a scorner of this sicarius was he a loyal subject of the princess. Albeit put another way, were it war that his charge desired instead, then would he stop at nothing to see me dead.
Fair enough, I suppose. He’s a bodyguard, after all, a shield to which loyalty lent all its thickness. And in that lies some beauty, it is held, and I saw no reason to ill-regard it. Albeit all too little separates a loyalist from a blind fanatic; and to which Björn belonged was yet beyond me to guess.
“But bar you mine, and I may not remain so considerate,” he warned as he walked, without so much as a look given my way.
“Pray mistake me neither, Björn,” I replied. “As I’ve said, the princess’s preservation is of no less import to me than to you.” The captain gave no answer. “Indeed,” I said on, “if only for the time being, our interests are aligned.”
“Faugh!” barked Björn. “I shall not be aligned with some backstabbing blasphemer!”
Now was he turned to me, and quite angrily, at that. But in the next instant, he stopped. The once-glowering eyes now gazed further aback behind me, and the look in them was slightly, though uncannily, stiff. Had he spotted some threat on our tail? Alarmed, I stopped also and looked behind—
“…”
—only to find nary a foe. All that was to be seen was the aftermath of our battle: a small courtyard stained red; maces strewn about; and bodies lying either cold or unconscious.
I turned back to Björn. “It’ll pass,” I said.
“What will?” he asked in a tone I could not tell. His eyes, however, subtly quivered as they stared on at the bloody scene.
“The doubt,” I answered.
“…Hmph.”
With that scoff, Björn broke his gaze away from the breathless bodies at last, and turning his back to me once more, went on his way again. I followed presently. But ever as I did, Hensen burnt dark and bright in my mind. There had I dithered, as well, when the fólkheimr was aflame—when kinsblood ran fresh on my blade for the very first time. It was only a mountain of resolve that’d allowed me to wield it onwards.
To fight, to kill… to slaughter—nay, it is not so simple a matter, war. And never is it aught to anyone.
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