Worlds That Weren't

“I am abbot here. Prior Athanagild speaks for us all, I am afraid. We will bury no heathen whores pretending to be soldiers.”

“Ah, you’re the abbot. Tessier! I ordered you to find this man for me before now.”

“Sir.” The knight who was the officer of Guillaume’s lance glared at Corporal Marches.

Before there could be recriminations, which was entirely possible with Tessier-the Burgundian knight was not a man to keep his mouth shut when it was necessary-Spessart turned back to the plump abbot.

“You, what’s your name?”

“Muthari,” the monk supplied. Guillaume saw a flash of annoyance from the man’s eyes. “Abbot Lord-Father Muthari, if we are being formal, Captain.”

“Formal be fucked.” Spessart took one step forward, reversing the grip he had on his war hammer. He slammed the end of the shaft into the abbot’s body between ribs and belly.

The monk sighed out a breathless exclamation, robbed of air by sheer pain, and dropped down on his knees.

“How many messengers have you sent out?” Spessart said. He stared down, evidently judging distance, drew back his boot, and kicked the gasping man. It would have been in the gut, but the abbot reared back and the boot caught him under his upper lip. Guillaume bit his own lip again to keep from laughing as the captain nearly overbalanced.

“How many of your rats have you sent off to Carthage?”

Blood leaked out of the abbot’s mouth. “I-None!”

“Lying shitbag,” Spessart announced reflectively. He shifted his grip expertly on the war hammer, grasping the leather binding at the end of the wooden shaft, and lightly stroked the kneeling man’s scalp with the beaked iron head. A streak of blood ran down from Muthari’s tonsure.

“None, none, I haven’t sent anybody!”

“All right.” Guillaume saw the captain sigh. “When you’re dead, we’ll see if your prior’s any more cooperative.”

Spessart spoke in a businesslike tone. Guillaume tried to judge if that made it more frightening for the abbot, or if the chubby man was decoyed into thinking the captain didn’t mean what he said. Guillaume’s pulse beat harder. Every sense keyed up, he gripped the wooden shaft of the bill he carried, ready to swing it down into guard position. Constantly scanning the monks, the hall, his own men…

“Tessier.” Spessart spoke without looking over his shoulder at the down-at-heels knight. “Make my point for me. Kill one of these priests.”

Guillaume’s gut cramped. Tessier already had his left hand bracing his scabbard, his thumb breaking the friction seal between that and the blade within. His other hand went across to the hilt of the bastard sword. He drew it in one smooth movement, whipping it over and down, aiming at a tall skinny novice at the front of the group.

The skinny novice, not over twenty and with a badly cropped tonsure, froze.

A tall monk with wreathes of gray white curls flowing down to his shoulders and the face of an ex- nazir, a Visigoth corporal, straight-armed the skinny guy out of the way.

The novice stumbled back from the outstretched arm Tessier’s blade hit with a chopping, butcher’s counter sound. Guillaume winced. The nazir ’s arm fell to the floor. Cut off just below the elbow. Arterial blood sprayed the six or seven men closest. They jolted back, exclaiming in disgust and fear.

The ex- nazir monk grunted, his mouth half open, appalled.

“He Dieux!” Tessier swore in irritation. He ignored the white-haired man, stepped forward, and slammed the yard-long steel blade toward the side of the skinny novice’s head.

Guillaume saw the boy try to back up, and not make it.

The sword’s edge bit. He dropped too fast and too heavily, like a falling chunk of masonry, smacking facedown into the flagstones. A swath of red and gray shot up the whitewashed wall, then dripped untidily down. The young man sprawled on the stone floor under it, in widening rivulets of blood.

There is no mistaking that smell.

Tessier, who had brought two hands to the hilt on his stroke, bent and picked up a fold of the dead man’s robe to clean his sword. He took no notice of the staring eyes a few inches away from his hand, or of the shouting, screaming crowd of monks.

Two of them had the white-haired man supported, one whipping his belt around the stump, the other talking in a high-pitched voice over the screaming; both of them all but dragging the man out-toward the infirmary, Guillaume guessed.

In the silence, one man retched, then vomited. Another made a tight, stifled sound. Guillaume heard a spatter of liquid on the flagstones. Someone involuntarily pissing from under their robes.

The tall, ancient prior whispered, his voice anguished and cracking. “Huneric! Syros…”

It looked as if he could not take his eyes off the young novice’s sliced, bashed skull and the tanned, freckled forearm and hand of the older man.

The limb lay with the body on the stone floor, in wet blood, no one willing to touch it. Guillaume stifled a nauseous desire to laugh.