XIII

 

 

“THROW IT DOWN there,” barked Pig-Grease. “Then all the rest.”

Gisburne made no movement. He could just throw down the box, he supposed. Let it bite again. But giving anything up to a thief – being dictated to by one – stuck in his craw. “A good fighter denies his enemy everything,” Gilbert used to say. “When he’s ready to fight, frustrate him. When he is unprepared, attack him.” Gisburne had lived by this advice. He had also seen men die for ignoring it. And he had not yet got the measure of this enemy.

Impatient, Pig-Grease crept forward, his feet crunching on the icy snow. Nyght stamped and snorted, making him jump back. Rat-Face turned his bow on Gisburne again.

“My horse doesn’t like you,” said Gisburne.

The man’s eyes blazed. “I don’t give a shit what your stinking mare thinks!”

Nyght tossed his head, reared up and brought both front hooves down with a thud. Clearly he did not appreciate being mistaken for a mare.

There had been hundreds of mercenaries let loose over the years – soldiers taken on for a campaign, then set adrift when no longer needed. If these bandits were such men, they were dangerous indeed; if they had killed mercenaries to acquire their weapons, perhaps even more so. But Gisburne had seen many of those forbidding soldiers – had been one – and he did not see such men before him now.

“Jus’ give it!” bellowed Pig-Grease, jabbing his sword at Gisburne. But even as he spoke, his eyes were taking in the quality of the horse, processing the possible reasons for it, and shadows of doubt were already beginning to cloud his face.

The sword clearly deserved – and had once had – a scabbard. But there was no scabbard to be seen – nothing but a wide, crude belt from which hung all manner of things: a broken-tipped knife, a small war hammer showing a bloom of rust and encrusted with filth, the wrapping around its grip half gone, and what looked to be a brace of whole rabbit skins. A killer would have taken the the scabbard as well. A scavenger, then. Or a thief.

“I give you nothing,” said Gisburne. “If you want it, you’ll have to take it.”

“Then one of you dies.” Pig-Grease swung his sword point towards Galfrid. “Him...” Rat-Face immediately turned the bow on the little man.

Clever, thought Gisburne. Out of his depth he might be, but he was quick thinking; resourceful. Pig-Grease knew now Gisburne didn’t fear him. Perhaps had him pegged as a knight. So now he was exploiting his sense of chivalry instead – his supposed duty to protect the weak.

Gisburne’s eyes flicked to Rat-Face. Even from where he was, he could see the bow was poorly looked after. Its shaft was darkened and battered, the bowstring likely worn of wax, and damp right through. The wood too. Assuming Rat-Face’s arm didn’t give out, or the bow snap in half from being drawn so long – or rather half-drawn, as it now was – its power would be diminished. It would still kill one of them at this range, of course, if the aim was good, but he now knew three things.

These men didn’t know what they were doing, which meant their skills were poor. They preyed on those they believed weaker than themselves, which meant they feared a fight. And they had no idea what was about to happen to them.

“Kill him, then,” said Gisburne, with a shrug.

“What?” The exclamation came simultaneously from Pig-Grease and Galfrid.

“Kill him,” repeated Gisburne, more forcefully this time. “Then I can kill you.” He pointed at Pig-Grease, then turned to Rat-Face. “And then him.” Rat-Face’s left eye twitched. There was little doubt that Gisburne could move faster than he could loose a second arrow – if he even had a second arrow.

It was Gisburne’s turn to take a step forward now, his pilgrim staff clutched in his right fist. Pig-Grease flinched, sword still extended. Rat-Face switched his aim back to the knight, the arrow rattling against the yew of the over-tensioned bow. Gisburne thought he heard him whimper.

“Let’s get this over with,” said Gisburne, and took two sudden, decisive steps. Pig-Grease lunged at him with a roar. Gisburne sided-stepped and whipped the staff through the air in a broad arc.

The staff did not parry the sword blade. Nor did it hit the attacker’s body – but struck where the sword’s curved blade and cross-guard met. There was a sharp crack of impact. The sword went singing sideways through the air and sank into snow, its blank outline printed on the surface. Its owner staggered, seemed ready to rally, then stopped and stared stupidly at a second, tiny dint in the snow a couple of yards from him – its edges red-stained, a fine, dotted trail of crimson linking him to it. It took a moment – and the sight of the fresh red blood melting into the white immediately before him – to comprehend what he was looking at. At the bottom of the bloody hole was his freshly severed forefinger.

By the time he knew it, the air was split again, and the iron head of Gisburne’s staff cracked across his temple. At the same moment, Galfrid spurred his horse with such violence that, even carrying all that weight, it reared high in the air, then thundered forward straight into the bushes where the cowering Rat-Face was watching his comrade fall. He yelped, panicked, tried to scramble backwards and fell, his arrow flying uselessly, pitifully into the air. Galfrid dismounted with surprising agility, kicked a rusty carving knife out of the whimpering clod’s hand and snatched up the bow. It was still oddly bent about the grip. Had it been kept under tension any longer, it would have snapped in two. Galfrid broke it across his knee and flung it aside. “If you’d had a father, he might have taught you something about bowmanship!” he spat, then backhanded the man across the chops with such force that it flipped the thin man over onto his face. He lay that way, face down in the snow, sobbing, while Galfrid divested him of his remaining weapons, a look of distaste on his face.