Behold the Dawn, Page 2

  Annan unclenched his teeth. “I’ve seen him already.”

  “What?” Marek stopped short and water sloshed against his chest. “Already?”

  “He was on the field, watching.”

  “So he does like tourneys, then.” Marek shoved the bucket beneath the destrier’s outstretched muzzle. “Can’t tell me this isn’t a ruddy sad world, when even monks are chasin’ after the tournaments.”

  “It isn’t the tournaments.” Realization razored across Annan’s mind. “It’s me.” Without looking down, he buckled his sword back on. This monk knew him. When they had stared at one another across the tourney field only an hour before, the intensity beneath the man’s cowl hadn’t been mere curiosity. Somewhere in the shadows of the past, the Baptist had known him.

  Annan caught his saddle up from the ground and lugged it to where Marek’s palfrey stood stomping at flies.

  “Hey. Where is it you’re off to?” Marek craned a look over his shoulder.

  “To find out what he’s after.”

  “How about me? Don’t you think I want to see the count throw him out on his ear?”

  “You’ll wait here.” He tightened the girth and drilled Marek a look. “And when I say wait here, I mean wait.”

  “You always say that. But what if there’s extenuatin’ circumstances you’re not foreseeing?”

  “Your extenuating circumstances always end up sounding like excuses.” He took the reins and swung aboard. “Just stay here. I’ll be back before night falls.”

  Marek huffed. “Well, when Heladio does decide to throw Master Gethin the Baptist out of town, please don’t go trying to rescue him and get us all into trouble.”

  Annan’s heavy hand on the reins choked the palfrey back to a halt. In his veins, his blood grew thick. “Gethin?”

  “Gethin the Baptist. That’s what they’re calling him back in the town.” Marek shrugged. “You weren’t thinking his name was John, now were you?”

  Annan let his breath out. “Stay here,” he said and spurred the palfrey.

  The name rang in his ears. Wasn’t it one he had once known as well as his own? For sixteen years, it was a name he had believed belonged to a dead man. Had Marek told him John the Baptist had indeed walked across the centuries to resume preaching, the numbness in Annan’s soul could have left him no colder.

  * * *

  At the city gates, Annan found him. The tourney crowd swarmed around and beneath the gate arch, laughing and yelling. Filmy twilight was falling over the city, and the gay festival colors had reverted to everyday grays and browns. A few men, already deep in their cups, staggered and swore, looking for one more fight before the day ended.

  Just outside the gate, his back against the sand-colored bricks of the wall, the dark-robed monk stood atop the overturned half of a barrel. The shadow of his cowl hid his face, and his hands buried themselves in his opposing sleeves. At his feet, a score of people had gathered, faces upturned to hear him speak. His voice, deep almost to the point of hoarseness, rumbled across the distance, audible in tone, if not in word. He stood as if cast in stone; he did not move, did not gesture. Only the rise and fall of his voice held in check the throng that surrounded him.

  Annan reined the palfrey to a halt just beyond the crowd. As the monk had watched him at work on the tourney field, he now watched the monk. His heart thudded against his breastbone, swelling until his chest seemed to hold nothing but its beat.

  This monk, this Gethin the Baptist, could not be the man he had known. The Gethin he had once loved as a brother had died. He had been killed, murdered, cast out to feed the ravens and the dogs. For sixteen years, Annan had known this as certainly as he had known the weight of his sword in his hand. It could not be him.

  He dismounted and led the palfrey to the edge of the crowd. He towered over the townspeople, the line of vision between himself and the Baptist unimpaired as the Baptist’s growl floated through the crowd to reach him.

  “Thus saith the Patriarch, ‘By thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck.’” A white scar slashed the Baptist’s dark lips, twisting them into perpetual mockery. “And thus saith the Prophet—” The shadow of his hood tilted across his face, flashing a glimpse of shriveled, waxen horror. “‘Hear ye this, O house of Jacob, which swear by the name of the Lord and make mention of the God of Israel, but not in righteousness, not in truth.’”

  The Baptist looked up, his eyes blazing with all the furor of a hunting falcon’s, and Annan’s blood stopped pumping. He knew these eyes. He knew this man.

  The scar across the Baptist’s lips twisted harder, carving a serpentine into the albescent flesh. He stretched out his hands, and two young men lifted him to the ground. The crowd parted before him, scrambling out of his way, opening a path down their midst.

  At the end of the path Annan waited. He had come to this country with the hope that his old wounds might find relief. Now, the oldest of his wounds ripped open before his eyes.

  The Baptist limped toward him, every step contorting his body, his left hip collapsing beneath him, his toes dragging, then lifting, then dragging again.

  “Gethin,” Annan whispered.

  He knew now why, back on the tourney field, he had felt the urge to flee. Standing before him was the greatest enemy he had ever faced.

  His past.

  Chapter II

  “SO YOU KNOW me after all.” Gethin the Baptist’s smile leered from the lower half of his face, somehow detached from the intensity of his eyes. “For more than a year, I’ve followed you, and yet you have never sought me out. Surely you heard my name.”

  “I thought you dead.” Annan’s tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. Phantom images of long ago flitted through his memory:

  Himself—as a young penitent in the Abbey of St. Dunstan’s, bowed down beneath the grief of his sins, face against the cold stone floor.

  Gethin—kneeling beside him before the altar, praying the words Annan could not say for himself.

  And then followed the images he had never seen with his own eyes, but which had, at one time, burned deeper within his brain than all the rest:

  Gethin—the skin flogged from his body, his bones broken into pieces, cast out as dead, because he had dared to believe in a cause.

  “The years have changed you.” Gethin laughed, a single grating note. “But the strength of your arm and temper remain the same. Indeed, I am not surprised to find you chasing battles. Why have you avoided me all these years? Have you been running from me?”

  “They told me you died at St. Dunstan’s.”

  Gethin came nearer, and his twisted face glared up into Annan’s. “St. Dunstan’s. Now there is a name I am happy you remember. Tell me, do you recall any more names?”

  Annan raised the fist that held the palfrey’s reins and clasped it in his other hand. The bruise in his palm throbbed. “You are much altered. Have you abandoned the quiet piety of a monastery to monger glory for yourself?”

  “And you haven’t, Marcus Annan?” He spoke the name as if it were a curse. “Do you know why I have sought you out through all the kingdoms of Christendom? Why I have delayed my journey to Jerusalem, despite the desperate need of my presence to combat the enemies who gather there even now? Do you know why I sought you out first that I might warn you of what will soon come to pass?”

  “I know not.”

  Gethin snorted. “Indeed, you do not. There was a time, long ago, when you would have already snatched up the arms of truth and joined my battle against the hypocrisy of the Church. But no longer.”

  The crowd shifted, their murmurs whispering at the edge of Annan’s hearing. Far away, down the road, hoofbeats rumbled. The palfrey nudged his arm with its muzzle, then shook its head, and the reins clanked against the bit. Annan stared at the Baptist, the evening’s warm breeze turning chill against his face.

  Gethin stepped
nearer, and his voice dropped to a croak, his words meant only for Annan. “If you know who I am, then you also know that what happened at St. Dunstan’s Abbey has not found its end. Father Roderic has yet to pay for his sins.”

  Annan’s skin tingled. His backbone hardened into a spear haft. “I have left what happened at St. Dunstan’s in the past.”

  Gethin scoffed. “You think you can bury St. Dunstan’s in the gore and glory of the tourney field, but you are mistaken. Bishop Roderic must die for his sins. Sixteen years ago one man attempted to exact the price in blood from Roderic. It is he who must end this now. A man named Matthias of Claidmore. You do remember him?” His eyes flashed with an anger that was only a blink away from hatred.

  Annan stared at him. His hand fell to the hilt of his sword, his knuckles turning cold. He had not wanted this. He would much rather have grieved for Gethin the rest of his days than see him resurrected in such a form. He had spent the last sixteen years forgetting. To ask him to remember now was asking far too much.

  Gethin dragged himself back a step. He looked behind Annan, beyond him, and the specter of a smile crossed his lips. Running footsteps slapped the ground, scarcely discernible above the hoofbeats that thundered yet nearer.

  “Master Annan!”

  Annan broke his gaze from Gethin’s and turned to see Marek running madly, arms and legs pumping, barely keeping ahead of the troop of knights galloping behind.

  Marek veered off the road, and the Baptist’s crowd scattered before him. “It’s Heladio! He’s coming for you!”

  At the head of the troop rode a swarthy man clad in a purple tabard. Annan stiffened, realizing a second too late that Heladio’s surcoat was the same as that of the dead young knight with the war hammer.

  Marek scrambled to a stop. “In the name of St. Jude, why didn’t you tell me you’d killed the bloody nephew!”

  Heladio flung one hand into the air, signaling his men. “Nessuno se ne vada! Sto cercando l’uomo chiamato Annan!”

  Annan faced the count, squaring his shoulders, making himself relax. Beside him, Marek straightened up and forced an innocent smile. He was either unable to control or just entirely unaware of the fidget in his leg.

  The crowd fled despite Heladio’s warning. From beneath his cowl, Gethin watched Annan, the scarred twist of his lips almost contemptuous.

  Heladio dragged his horse to a stop. His small nostrils flared with every breath. “I seek a man called Annan. You are Annan?” His guttural accent all but buried the words.

  “Aye.”

  “And you are a competitor at our esteemed tournament?”

  “Aye.”

  “I am astounded the renowned Marcus Annan deigns to compete at such a humble tourney.” He unsheathed his sword and jerked his head at one of his men-at-arms. “Renowned or not, this is the last tourney in which you will ever fight.”

  The man-at-arms, joined by one of his comrades, kneed his horse forward and advanced on Annan.

  Annan held his ground. “Why?”

  Behind him, Marek uttered a pained noise and crossed himself.

  “You dare to ask? My nephew Giulio is dead! I have a witness who swears you committed the murder. For the honor of my family, you must be punished for this!”

  “He attacked me with an illegal weapon, a war hammer. Apparently, your nephew didn’t take your family’s honor as seriously as yourself.”

  “He was a boy fighting against the great Marcus Annan! You expected him to give you the benefit of the battle?”

  “I expect an honest fight from every man. The world is not the worse for one less knave.”

  “You dare insult me? You, the most infamous of tourneyers? You are covered in blood!” His gaze darted past Annan to where Gethin stood in silence. “And you consort with heretics!”

  At the edge of the road, the men-at-arms dismounted and propped their lances beneath their arms. One after the other, they drew their swords. Annan opened his fingers, and the palfrey’s reins fell to the ground behind him. His right hand reached across his body to pull his sword free of its scabbard, and he clasped the hilt with both hands. The two young knights wavered, no doubt measuring their combined strength against his.

  With Marek at his back, he could dispatch the two unmounted men-at-arms with little enough trouble. It was Heladio and the remaining men on horseback who would present a problem. Already, they were closing in to surround him, to cut off his escape should he fight his way past the first attack. A man on the ground was nigh defenseless against a mounted knight.

  With Gethin depending on his sword for protection, Annan would have no chance of retreating on foot fast enough or far enough to escape a charge. He must work quickly, and then regain his saddle.

  Heladio’s eyes bored into Annan’s face. “Even the saints cry out for justice, Signore.”

  Annan widened his stance and raised his sword. “Let them cry.”

  The knight on Annan’s left struck first, using both hands to swing his blade at Annan’s upper body. Annan met the stroke before it had gone two feet and hammered his own sword into the other’s. The knight reeled, flailing. Behind him, the two riderless horses spooked and ran, dodging onlookers and charging through the gates. Without altering his stance, Annan swung again and caught the second knight full across his mail-clad chest.

  Heladio charged. Men and women shrieked and scattered, and the handful of louts and drunken knights who had been lounging about snatched up their swords. Who or why they fought probably wasn’t something their ale-fogged brains paused to ponder. Annan didn’t care. The bigger the distraction, the longer he and Marek had to get free.

  Heladio pounded the distance that separated them into a hundred dusty fragments. Annan flung aside an incapacitated knight and spun around to snatch the palfrey’s reins from Marek’s hand.

  “Take the Baptist and leave! Get into the city before they shut the gates!”

  Marek ducked a flying three-legged stool and staggered back to his feet, his short sword clenched in his hand. “What about you?”

  “I’ll find you later!” He leapt onto the palfrey.

  “Why do you always have to say that?”

  Heladio’s thunder grew in Annan’s ears. “Because you haven’t yet learned the art of watching your own back during a retreat!”

  Marek gave no argument. Someone threw a dirt clod that smacked him in the back of the thigh. He uttered a yelp and scrambled away. A few paces back, the Baptist stood amidst the chaos, so motionless he could almost have been praying. Only the glitter of his eyes, as he stared at something beyond Annan’s shoulder, betrayed him.

  Annan spun the palfrey around, sword before his face, barely in time to catch Heladio’s ringing blow. He shoved the man away and almost toppled him from the saddle.

  The palfrey jibbed sideways, head high. Annan dragged the horse’s muzzle almost to its chest. “You’ve struck your blow for honor, Count. Best call an end while you still can.”

  “Honor me by your death, tourneyer!” Heladio drove his spurs into his horse’s sides and charged once more.

  Annan reined aside, and the count’s blow sliced past his face. “If I kill you today, who will mourn your nephew tomorrow?” He dared a glance at the gates, where Marek had tangled with a drunken squire. Gethin was nowhere to be seen.

  Beneath the purple surcoat, Heladio’s chest heaved. “I find your courage overestimated, Signore Cavaliere. Do you run from the blade of a man with gray hairs?”

  Annan’s muscles stilled. Fire crackled beneath his skin, and the world faded to gray around Heladio. “I do not run, Count. I simply wait.” He lowered his sword, exposing his chest in invitation.

  Heladio dragged his horse around for another pass. “Sputerò sulla tua tomba!”

  Annan waited as time stretched into forever and disappeared into nothing. Heladio dropped his reins to his horse’s neck and twisted both arms behind his head, every sinew strained with the effort of the stroke. His lips parted in a scream, but the sou
nd of it disappeared in the rush of Annan’s blood.

  Annan whipped his sword up to meet Heladio’s. Iron crashed against iron. Heladio’s dark eyes widened as Annan’s blade tore his sword from his grip and smashed into his mail-clad arm. The bone buckled and broke. Heladio plunged to the ground, and his horse galloped over the top of him.

  Pivoting the palfrey to face his fallen foe, Annan choked back the heat of his blood. “Mourn your nephew, old man, and host no more tourneys.”

  Moaning like a woman in childbirth, Heladio pushed to his knees. “Isidorio! Fermatelo! Fermatelo, lui e il monaco!”

  Across the street, the men-at-arms shoved through the flailing crowd at a redoubled pace, trampling underfoot those who did not clear the way. One of the men pointed and snapped commands.

  Annan spun the palfrey toward the gates. If these men craved a meeting with Death, they would have to find the point of someone else’s blade on which to throw away their lives. He had given Heladio and his honor fair enough play for one night.

  To his left, just outside the long shadow of the wall, the tottering figure of a monk broke the plane of his vision. Gethin the Baptist held someone’s forgotten quarterstaff in his hand. He leaned against it like a shepherd who had dried up his life beneath the Mediterranean sun. But even at a score of paces distant, Annan could see the tension in his body: every muscle stretched, every ligament a bowstring drawn to breaking, ready, waiting, begging to be released.

  Behind Annan, Heladio shrieked, “If I cannot have the tourneyer, I shall have the heretic!”

  Annan stabbed his spurs to the palfrey’s sides, and the horse leapt forward. Gethin leaned upon the staff ‘til Annan was almost upon him. Then, with a flash of energy that nearly eliminated the crippled stride, he sprang forward. Annan caught his outstretched hand and swung him up behind the saddle. The palfrey staggered a moment under the new weight, then leapt forward as Annan laid the flat of his blade to the animal’s haunch.