The Long Sword(139)

            He fell without a cry.

            The Hungarian stepped away from the body.

            Gap-tooth’s hand twitched and I put my point through his neck into the ground, knelt, and retrieved the Emperor’s sword from his not-quite-dead hand.

            At my back, Nerio, Juan, Marc-Antonio, Davide, Miles and Fiore all stood with their blades in their hands. Despite the blood and the flies that began to gather immediately, it is one of my favourite memories: I knew we could not be beaten, not all together.

            And I knew I had never been so good.

            And I admit, a little revenge can be like a drug.

            I pointed the Emperor’s sword at the Hungarian. ‘Monsieur has my dagger,’ I said. ‘I am Sir William Gold, and I can prove my ownership if required.’

            My Hungarian untied the dagger from his belt without outward fear or flourish. He bowed and handed it to me. ‘I believe I have just had all the proof any gentleman requires,’ he said in good French. ‘A pity. A fine weapon. I wondered why I had it so cheap.’

            I offered to cover his purchase, and he grinned and shouted something in Hungarian, and twenty longhairs faded back into the camp.

            ‘Perhaps we can discuss a price if we meet again,’ he said.

            He walked away, unruffled.

            I bent and began to retrieve the scabbard from the dead man’s belt. I know he’d ruined it, but it had a bye knife and a pricker in the scabbard and pretty furniture, and I was sure that Bernard and I could run up a new scabbard on the old wooden core.

            So naturally, I was kneeling in the spring mud robbing a corpse when I saw d’Herblay.

            Well – the Bourc thought he’d killed me, and now d’Herblay had the same experience.

            He recovered well. ‘Satan had given you more lives than a cat,’ he said. He had a dozen of his blue and white men-at-arms with him, and I knew one of them immediately. He was a Gascon and I knew him from my days as a routier, but his name wouldn’t come.

            I had the belt undone. The dead man had tied it in a lose knot rather than take the time to buckle it. I rose to my feet.

            ‘You would know Satan better than I,’ I said. I had the sword in my hand again. And Father Pierre was a long way away.

            I’m only human.

            The man-at-arms was one of the de Badefols. That’s how I knew him. He took his master’s shoulder.

            At my back, I had six of the best swords in the world. And our weapons were all drawn.

            D’Herblay’s men closed around him.

            ‘Now who will be the first to reach Hell, Monsieur le Comte?’ I asked. I began to walk towards them, and all my friends and our squires walked forward with the nonchalance of bloody-minded young men.

            The count’s Savoyards and Gascons were not wilting flowers. They were knights. They drew – half a dozen of them – while the others pulled at their master.

            He turned and allowed himself to be led away, even as the camp’s marshal appeared.

            ‘Sheath!’ he roared. ‘Sheath or I’ll fine the lot of you.’

            That’s how you control routiers. With fines and money.

            Nerio ripped his purse off the hooks on his belt and tossed it at the marshal’s feet.

            ‘That will cover our fines,’ he said.

            It was a fine flourish, but none of us needed to kill Savoyards or Gascons. I wanted d’Herblay, and he was already a bowshot away.