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  The third man emerged from the cabin. “There’s nothing there, Brys,” he said. “He’s almost out of food. Maybe he’s telling the truth.”

  “We’ll find out,” said Brys, drawing a dagger and pricking it under the skin of Browyn’s eye. The point was needle-sharp and the old man felt a trickle of blood on his cheek. “Which eye would you like to lose first, scum-bucket?” he hissed.

  “Brys!” the third man called out. “There’s someone coming!”

  The mercenary let go of Browyn’s throat and the old man fell gratefully from his grasp. Blinking, he strained to focus on the newcomer. He was a slim young man, with dark, close-cropped hair; over his shoulder he carried a heavy woollen coat of storm-cloud grey, and around his waist was a sword-belt from which hung two short swords. Browyn could also see the hilt of a throwing-knife in the man’s knee-length boot. As the warrior came closer Browyn rubbed sweat from his eyes . . . the blows he had taken must have blurred his senses. The newcomer had not one soul—but two. The first was almost a mirror image of the man himself, darkly handsome, but golden light radiated from the face. But the second . . . Browyn’s heart sank. The second had a face of corpse-grey, and a shock of white hair like a lion’s mane. The eyes were yellow, and slitted like those of a hunting cat.

  “Good morning,” said the newcomer, laying his coat over a tree-stump. Moving past the three mercenaries, he helped Browyn to his feet. “Is this your cabin, sir?” Browyn nodded dumbly. “Would you object to me resting here for a while? It is a long walk from the lowlands, and I would be grateful for your hospitality.”

  “Who do you think you are?” shouted Brys, storming forward. The newcomer leaned to the left, his right foot slamming into the mercenary’s stomach, hurling him from his feet. Brys slumped to the ground, howling in pain. Dropping his dagger, he gasped for breath and continued to groan.

  “You two will need to carry your friend back to his horse,” said the young man amiably.

  “Kill him!” grunted Brys. “Kill the bastard.” The other two men did not move or speak.

  The newcomer knelt beside Brys. “I think your friends are brighter than you,” he said, picking up the man’s dagger and slipping it back into the mercenary’s sheath. Rising, he turned back to the old man. “Do you have any salt?” he asked.

  Browyn nodded and the newcomer smiled. “You have no idea what a relief that is.”

  “What the hell’s the matter with you two?” shouted Brys, struggling to his knees.

  “He’s Tarantio,” replied one of them. “I saw him fight that duel in Corduin. I’m right, aren’t I?” he said, looking at the newcomer.

  “Indeed you are.”

  “There’s no gold here,” said the mercenary. “We would have found it.”

  Tarantio shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

  “Are you going to kill us?”

  “No. I am not in a killing mood.”

  “Well, I am, you scum-sucking bastard!” shouted Brys, drawing his sword.

  “Brys! Don’t!” shouted his comrades. But he ignored them.

  “You’d better let me take him,” said Dace.

  “No,” answered Tarantio. “Sigellus trained us both, and I am not afraid.”

  “Don’t try to disarm him,” warned Dace. “Just kill the whoreson.”

  The mercenary attacked, his sword slashing towards Tarantio’s head. The two short swords flashed up to block the stroke, but Brys was ready for the move and spun to his left, his elbow slamming against Tarantio’s cheek. Tarantio staggered back, vision blurring. Brys aimed a wild cut at Tarantio’s head. The blade slashed high, as Tarantio dropped to one knee and then surged upright, the left-hand blade snaking out. Brys made a desperate block, but the weapon pricked his shoulder, tearing the skin of his chest. Brys fell back. He grinned. “You’re good, Tarantio,” he said. “But you are not that good. I am better.”

  “He is right, you know,” said Dace. “He’ll wear you down and kill you. Let me have him.”

  Brys launched a sudden attack, sword raised high. As Tarantio made to block, the voice of Dace hissed at him: “He’s got a knife in his left hand!” Tarantio leapt back—then launched himself forward. The move caught Brys by surprise and before he could react Tarantio’s right-hand sword had slashed down on his hand. Three fingers were chopped away, the dagger falling clear.

  “You bastard!” screamed Brys, charging forward. Terrible pain exploded in the mercenary’s body . . . his sword fell from his hand and he stared down at the blade embedded in his belly. An agonized groan burst from his lips as acid fire filled him. His knees buckled, but the jutting sword held him upright, the blade driving deeper.

  “Let me feel the joy!” shouted Dace.

  “There is no joy,” said Tarantio, dragging the sword clear. Brys toppled to his right. “Take the body with you,” ordered Tarantio, turning to the other mercenaries. “And leave his horse behind.”

  “We don’t want to die,” said the first man.

  “No-one wants to die,” Tarantio told him.

  Together the man and his companion lifted the dead man, and heaved him over the saddle of a brown mare. Then they mounted.

  As they rode away, Tarantio swung to the old man. “How badly are you hurt?” he asked him.

  “Not half as badly as I would have been. I am grateful to you. What they said is true. There is no gold.”

  “No. But there is salt,” said Tarantio wearily.

  “You were lucky,” whispered Dace. “Where would you have been had I not seen the knife?”

  “Dead,” answered Tarantio, moving across the open ground to the dead man’s horse. Just over sixteen hands tall, the gelding stood quietly as Tarantio ran his hand over the beast’s flanks. The coat was flat with a healthy sheen, and the skin below was supple and strong. Its front conformation was good, the point of the shoulders in line with knee and hoof. At the rear it tended towards a slight cow-hocked stance, which in humans was called knock-kneed. This was probably why a mercenary could afford such a potentially expensive mount. Cow-hocked horses often strain ligaments on the inside of the limb. Speaking to it gently Tarantio moved around the horse, stroking its long nose and looking into its bright, brown eyes. Lastly he checked the legs. They were powerful, with no sign of heat or swelling, and the gelding had been recently reshod. Moving to the rear of the horse, Tarantio watched the swelling of its rib-cage; its breathing was even and slow. “Well, well,” said Tarantio softly, patting the gelding’s flank, “he may have been a vile man, but he certainly looked after you. I’ll try to do the same.”

  Browyn moved alongside him, checking the gelding’s nose and mouth. “I’d say around nine years old,” said the old man, “with plenty of speed and strength.”

  Tarantio stood back from the gelding, casting his eye along the line of its back, the length of the neck and the shape of the head. “Without the cow-hocked stance, he would bring around four hundred in silver. As he is, he would fetch less than fifty.”

  “There’s no sense in it,” agreed Browyn. “He is a fine animal.”

  Browyn relaxed. In that moment a great weariness descended upon him. The aftershock of the attack caused him to tremble and Tarantio took his arm. “You need to sit down,” said the warrior. “Come, I’ll help you inside.”

  The cabin was a mess, papers strewn about the floor among shards of smashed pottery and two broken shelves. There was a beautifully carved bench seat by a large open hearth and Tarantio half carried the old man to it. Browyn sank down gratefully, and Tarantio fetched him a cup of water. Browyn began to shiver. The fire had died down, and Tarantio added logs from a stack in the hearth.

  “Age makes fools of all of us,” said Browyn miserably. “There was a time when I would have fancied my chances of taking all three.”

  “Is that true?” Tarantio asked him.

  “Of course it isn’t true,” said Browyn, with a smile. “But it is the sort of thing old people are expected to say. The real truth—if such a s
pectacular beast exists—is that I was a bridge-builder with no taste for violence whatever. And I have to admit that it is not a skill I ever wished to acquire.” His keen blue eyes stared hard at the younger man. “I hope you don’t consider that an offensive remark.”

  “Why would I? I agree with the sentiments. You sit there for a while. I’ll clear up the mess.”

  Browyn eased his bruised frame back on to the bench seat and stared into the fire. Sleep came easily, and he dreamt of youth and the race he had run against the three great champions. Five long miles. He had finished ninth, but the memory of running alongside such athletes remained with him, like a warming fire in the room of memories.

  When he awoke, the shutters of the small windows on either side of the main door were closed. His two lanterns, hanging in their iron brackets on the west wall, were lit, and the cabin was filled with the aroma of cooking meat and spicy herbs. Browyn stretched and sat up, but he groaned as the pain from his bruises flared.

  “How are you feeling?” asked the young man. Browyn blinked and looked around. The cabin was now neat and tidy, only the broken shelves giving evidence of the day’s savagery. Nervously he opened the path to his talent and sought out the image of the young man’s soul. With relief he saw that there was only one. The beating he had taken at the hands of the raiders must have confused him, he thought. Tarantio’s soul was bright, and as untainted by evil as any human spirit could be. Which, Browyn realized sadly, merely meant that the darkness was considerably smaller than the light.

  “My name is Browyn. And I am feeling a little better. Welcome to my home, Tarantio.”

  “It is good to be here,” the young man told him. “I took the liberty of raiding your food store. I also found some onions growing nearby and I have made a thick soup.”

  “Did you see to the horse?”

  “I did,” said Tarantio. “I fed him some oats, and he is tethered close by.”

  They ate in silence, then Browyn slept again for an hour. He was embarrassed when he woke. “Old men do this, you know,” he said. “We cat-nap.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Eighty-two. Doesn’t seem possible, does it? In a world gone mad, one bridge-builder can reach eighty-two, while young men in the fullness of their strength rush around with sharp swords and cut themselves to pieces. How old are you, Tarantio?”

  “Twenty-one. But sometimes I feel eighty-two.”

  “You are a strange young man—if you don’t mind me pointing it out?” Tarantio smiled and shook his head. “You killed that swine very expertly, which shows that you are a man accustomed to violence. And yet you have cleaned my cabin in a manner which would have brought words of praise from my dear wife—a rare thing, I can tell you. And you cook better than she did—which sadly is no rare thing. Those men were afraid of you. Are you famous?”

  “They were the kind of men to be afraid,” Tarantio said softly, “and reputations have a habit of growing on their own. The deed itself can be an acorn, but once men hear of it the tale soon becomes a mighty oak.”

  “Even so, I would like to hear of the acorn.”

  “I would like to hear about bridge-building. And since I am the guest, and you the host, my wishes should be paramount.”

  “You have been well trained, boy,” said Browyn admiringly. “I think I like you. And I do know something of the acorn. You were the student of Sigellus the Swordsman. I knew him, you know.”

  “No-one knew him,” said Tarantio sadly.

  The old man nodded. “Yes, he was a very enigmatic man. You were friends?”

  “I think that we were—for a while. You should rest now, Browyn. Give those bruises a chance to heal.”

  “Will you be here when I wake?”

  “I will.”

  In the darkest hour of the night Tarantio sat on the floor by the fire, his back against the bench seat. It was wonderfully quiet, and so easy to believe that the world he knew, of war and death, was merely the memory of another age. He gazed around the room, lit now only by the flickering flames of the log fire. With Dace asleep there was nothing here that spoke of violence—save for his own swords lying on the carved pine table.

  The old man had asked him about the acorn of his legend, but it was not a tale Tarantio relished telling. Nor, save for the first hours of pleasure with the Lady Miriac, did he like recalling the events of the last day.

  “Never give in to hate,” Sigellus had told him. “Hate blurs the mind. Stay cool in combat, no matter what your opponent does. Understand this, boy, if he seeks to make you angry he does not do it for your benefit. Are you listening, Dace?”

  “He is listening,” Tarantio told him.

  “That’s good.”

  Tarantio remembered the bright sunshine in the open courtyard, the light glinting from the steel practice blades. Pulling clear his face-mask, he asked Sigellus, “Why is Dace so much stronger and faster than me? We use the same muscles.”

  “I have given much thought to that, Chio. It is a complex matter. Years ago I studied to be a surgeon—before I realized my skills with the blade were better suited to the work I do now. Muscles are made up of thousands of bands of fibre. The energy they expend is used up in a heartbeat. Therefore they work economically—several hundred, perhaps, at a time.” Sigellus lifted his sword into the air. “As I do this,” he said, “the muscles are taking it in turn to expend energy. That is where the economy comes in. Now Dace, perhaps through a greater surge of adrenaline, can make his muscles work harder, more bands operating at a single command. That is why you always feel so weary after Dace fights. Put simply, he expends more energy than you.”

  Tarantio smiled as he remembered the grey-garbed swordsman. As the fire slowly died, he recalled their first meeting. After the massacre of his shipmates, Tarantio had made his way along the coast to the Corsair city of Loretheli, hoping to find employment with a merchant ship. There were no berths, and he had worked for a month as a labourer on a farm just outside Loretheli, earning the few coins he now had in his purse. With the harvest over he was back at the docks moving from ship to ship, seeking a crewman’s wage. But the war fleets of the Duchies were now at sea and the port of Loretheli was effectively sealed. No-one was hiring sailors. He was heading towards the last ship berthed at the dock when he saw Sigellus. The man was obviously drunk. He was swaying as if on a ship’s deck, and he was using the sabre in his hand as a support, the point against the cobbled stones. Facing him were two corsairs, gaudily dressed in leggings and shirts of bright yellow silk. Both held curved cutlasses. Sigellus was a tall man and slender, clean-shaven and thin-faced. His head was shaved above both ears in sweeping crescents, yet worn long from the crown like the plume of an officer’s helm. He was wearing a doublet of grey silk embroidered with silver thread, and leggings of a darker grey that matched his calf-length boots. Tarantio paused and watched the scene. The corsairs were about to attack, and surely the drunken man would be cut down. Yet there was something about the man that caught Tarantio’s attention. The swaying stopped and he stood, statue-still.

  “This is not wise,” he told the corsairs, his voice slurred.

  The first of his attackers leapt forward, the cutlass slashing from right to left, aiming for the swordsman’s neck. As Sigellus dropped to one knee, the corsair’s blade sliced air above him and his own sabre licked out to nick the man’s bicep. A flash of crimson bloomed on the yellow silk shirt. Off balance, the corsair stumbled and fell. Sigellus rose smoothly as the second man lunged. He parried the thrust, spun on his heel and hammered his elbow against the man’s ear. The corsair tumbled to the cobbled stone.

  Both men rose and advanced again. “You have already shown a lack of wisdom, lads,” said Sigellus, his voice now cold and steady. “There is no need for you to die.”

  “We don’t intend to die, you old whoreson,” said the first man, blood dripping from the wound in his upper arm.

  As Tarantio watched he saw a movement behind the swordsman. Another cors
air stepped silently from the shadows, a curved dagger in his hand.

  “Behind you!” yelled Tarantio and Sigellus spun instantly, the sabre hissing out, the blade slicing through the corsair’s throat, half decapitating him. Blood sprayed out as the man fell. The other two attackers rushed in. Tarantio watched them both die. The speed of the swordsman’s movements was dazzling. Wiping his blade on the shirt of one of the corpses, Sigellus stepped across to where Tarantio stood open-mouthed.

  “My thanks to you, friend,” he said, returning the sabre to its scabbard. “Come, I will repay your kindness with a meal and a jug of wine. You look as if you could use one.”

  A jug of wine was always close to Sigellus, recalled Tarantio with a touch of sadness. It was wine which killed him, for he had been the worse for drink when he had fought the Marches Champion, Carlyn. He had been humiliated, and cut several times, before the death stroke was administered. Dace had instantly challenged Carlyn, and they had fought in the High Hall of Corduin palace the following night. As Carlyn fell dead not one cheer was raised, for Dace had cruelly and mercilessly toyed with the swordsman, cutting off both his ears and slicing open his nose during the duel . . .

  A log fell from the hearth and rolled on to the rug at his feet, jerking Tarantio from his memories. Using a set of iron tongs, he lifted it back to the fire and then stretched out on the floor. “When you draw your sword, Chio,” Sigellus had warned him, “always fight to kill. There is no other way. A wounded man can still deal a death stroke.”

  “You didn’t fight to kill against those corsairs. Not at first.”

  “Ah, that’s true. But then I’m special. I am—and I say this humbly, dear boy—the best there ever was. And, drunk or sober, the best there ever will be.”

  He was wrong. For now there was Dace.