Secret Murder: Who Shall Judge? (11 page)

One of the troopers wrapped his cloak a bit more tightly around himself. “There’ll be a storm before we see tomorrow’s sun. Red sky at morning....”

“There’ll be a storm from the north, if we don’t solve this killing before Ragnar and Otkel go to battle over it,” Gervase noted. “And lightning from the castle. The baron and I watched Thorolf’s pyre from the tower keep. He feels these fairs are our wealth, and he’s going to have
somebody’s
head if this one is spoiled. He’d prefer the killer’s head, but one of ours will do.”

The bailiff drew his troopers closer together. “After the pyre, Otkel and his men were feasting and drinking late. They won’t be up for a while. We can concentrate on Ragnar. You, you, you – watch him, and Olaf, and that cook. Be careful around the cook, I’m told he never sleeps. The rest of us can talk with people, see what we can hear. Yesterday…” Four loud hoofbeats sounded on the bridge.

“Bailiff! Bailiff!” The rider’s left boot was stained with blood from a cut on his leg. Judging by the way he sat his horse, it wasn’t deep. “Highwaymen! Back where the road branches off to the lakes!” Suddenly everybody was running for the horses tethered to the tavern rail.

“Pestilence!” Gervase put his foot into the stirrup. “I would’ve worn mail if I’d been expecting a fight!” He swung his other leg over. The harness creaked. All about him, horses snorted in surprise. They’d just been tethered—they weren’t expecting to be ridden again this soon.

His men were mounted. “Dirk! You stay here to investigate Ragnar! If we’re lucky, these highwaymen will turn out to be Thorolf’s killers. But let’s not bet everything on it, hm?” Gervase swept his arm forward and spurred his horse. He and the troopers thundered across the bridge and out onto the road. The rider who’d brought the news trailed behind, his horse laboring.

Well, well,
Dirk thought as he watched them disappear behind a screen of trees.
Now how did we go about investigating yesterday?
He scratched his stubble as his nose twitched. Tony was heating hard cider at the tavern, the wind carried the smell very clearly. And here came half-a-dozen traders, drawn by the commotion.

Time to grease a few tongues, and do some listening.
Dirk rubbed his hands together. He sat at the largest table. “Cider, Tony!” he cried. “Lots of it, as hard as you have, and keep it coming. And a loaf of bread. Two loaves.” He tossed the tavernkeeper a sixpence. That should last the morning.

He tore off a huge chunk of bread and dipped it in his mug of cider, chewed slowly, washed it down. Tony set down more mugs, steam writhing over the surface of the brown liquid for an instant before the wind snatched it away.

Dirk shoved a mug at the nearest merchant. “It’s a cold morning, men. Warm yourselves.”

He leaned back, lifted his mug expansively. “We may have this Thorolf thing sewed up tight as a miser’s purse. The bailiff is after a pack of highwaymen this very moment.”

A sour little man in eastern silk, skinny hands wrapped around the warm mug, disagreed. “Always highwaymen when merchants gather. Lord knows they do kill.” His gaze swept them from beneath dark brows.

“When’s last time highwayman’s victim found with silver still on him?” He tossed a scrap of bread on the ground. A dog snapped it up, stood grinning for more. “Taking lazy way out, you think highwaymen did it.”

He drank. “I don’t mind. Thorolf’s killer did us favor. Go after highwaymen with my blessing.”

Dirk had been hoping for something a bit more useful in the way of disagreement. He shifted tactics. “You’re right as can be.” He set down his mug and held his right hand up, curled as if around a hilt. “We can do without those highwaymen, and we can probably do pretty well without Thorolf, too.

“Who else might we do without? Who else is unpopular?”

Dirk leaned back against the table-stump, pulled his hood down so his eyes were shaded against the rising sun. He drank, then rested quietly. Drops of cider sparkled in his stubble. The others drank and ate, and the wind carried away any slight sounds they made. The dog waited nearby, tongue lolling out. The canvas fly flapped overhead. They could hear the clopping of hooves and the creaking of wheels as Maude came driving up with the supply wagon.

“It wasn’t Matilda,” a Southerner dressed in wrinkled cottons said. “I watched her get drunk until well after sunset.”

“And my wife helped put her to bed,” the cloth-merchant from the tent by the paddock said. “She was settled in for a long night, and a hard awakening.”

“Let’s make sure that alibi holds.” Nobody could see Dirk’s eyes beneath the hood. “Suppose she was only faking. And suppose Thorolf was riding back after dark, with a torch. Matilda was a good enough archer to settle him, under those conditions. Then she’d just have to get rid of the torch, and everybody would think the murder happened at sundown when dozens of people were watching her at the tavern.”

The clothman laughed. “You’ve missed your calling – you should tell tales in the market for coppers. You’d die rich. But I’m a light sleeper when my goods are in a tent, and I heard her snoring all night long. That funny little chirp? She was making it even before my wife had her bedded in. And I haven’t heard about any torch-marks near Thorolf’s body.”

“Matilda’s innocent,” the Easterner said flatly. “Good thing. Need her horses. Don’t trust Thorolf’s lieutenant, though.”

“Otkel?”

“That his name? Watched the two. Saw him when he thought nobody looking. Seems sort to want it all. Wouldn’t trust him behind back.”

Dirk pushed his hood back, ran his hand through his sandy hair. “Ragnar suggested much the same thing. Otkel’s one of the slipperiest eelpouts I’ve ever known—but wasn’t he with Thorolf’s other men all that evening?”

“Maybe Thorolf riding at midnight with torch?”

“That’s as silly with Otkel as it was with Matilda,” the cloth-merchant sniffed. “Anyway, Otkel has the money to hire an assassin.”

“I can’t see Otkel trusting somebody else to keep his mouth shut.” Dirk curled his lip. “Maybe we should see if any assassins have turned up dead?”

“Most merchants rich enough for assassin,” the Easterner said. “You, me – Ragnar. Alibi useless, investigation dead. Go chase highwaymen.”

“Ragnar wouldn’t hire an assassin. Northmen would rather kill their enemies personally. That’s a difference that would make
any
Northman reluctant to hire the job done. Besides, if Ragnar used an assassin, sure as bears eat berries he’d have an alibi—and he doesn’t.” Dirk leaned back.

Tony was refilling the mugs from a warming-pan of cider. He held the handle wrapped in his apron. “A tavernkeeper hears things, Dirk. You should include me in these little affairs of yours.”

Tony reached for an empty mug, filled it. The merchants made room for him. He sat, sipped. “Otkel doesn’t have an alibi either.”

“There was a Finn here yesterday, talking with a Northman. Complaining, really.” Tony drank again. “Finns are strange. Half of them are enchanters, and the other half
think
they’re enchanters.

“He was saying a Northman had ruined the Skraeling burial-mound. Now sensible people wouldn’t go near the place—haunted, like as not. Remember how careful the abbey drew its borders to keep the mound out? But Finns think those mounds are fine places for enchantments. Nobody but the Skraelings have ever invoked their gods there, and that was long years ago. ‘Makes the spirits grateful for a bit of attention’, they say.

“He was there an hour or so before sunset, day before yesterday. He wanted to do some enchantments for a successful Fair. Somebody got there ahead of him, and the Finn watched him put up a rune-staff on top of the mound and chant verse. Otkel was the one who did it. All the merchants here know what he looks like, so we can trust the identification.

“That mound is in the woods near where Thorolf’s body was found.”

There was a flat
whap!
and Gervase’ horse screamed and stumbled. Gervase managed to kick his feet free of the stirrups, his body free of the falling horse. He hit on his shoulder, rolled, fetched up in a bush by the side of the trail with his feet over his head and a branch poking through the skirt of his tunic.

Crossbow,
he thought as his mind caught up with him.

Most of his men had managed to rein their horses in, but one had tripped. Gervase’ horse was screaming and thrashing wildly on the ground. The other was snorting and getting back to its feet. Its rider was cursing. He’d landed on a rock, cut a gash in his hip.

Gervase heard crashings and shouts, a clank of sword against metal, a
chunk!
, a shriek cut short by another
chunk!

He untangled himself, pulled his tunic loose from the branch. His horse kicked, and died. The bailiff hugged the ground, in case there were more crossbow bolts where the last one came from.

“It’s clear!” a trooper shouted from ahead. “They only left one rear-guard. I killed him!”

Somebody went to help the man who hit the rock. Gervase and the others went to the man who shouted. He stood, breathing hard; there was blood on his shortsword. A body lay nearby.

The dead ruffian wore a rusty iron cap, with a shiny crease on the left from a sword-blow. His right forearm had a deep wound, and his neck was cut halfway through. A heavy crossbow with a windlass was flung to one side, cocked but without a bolt. A quiver of bolts spilled over, and one lay beside the man’s right hand. The corpse was unshaven, and his clothes were much the worse for wear.

“Damnation!” Gervase swore. “This man’s equipped like a soldier. We’re lucky a military crossbow takes so long to cock, but it means we’re up against well-armed men. I hope we’re dealing with deserters—I don’t want to face somebody’s raiding party.”

Gervase saw something at the man’s shoulder, and turned the corpse over with his foot. The smell of sudden death rose. The corpse had a long sword in a back scabbard.

“Men,” the bailiff said, “we must be living properly. We weren’t ready for a fight like this. Now here’s a bastard sword for me. And Rhys, you’re good with a crossbow. Take this one. I feel better, now that we can shoot back.”

Gervase drew the dead man’s sword and took a stance, feet apart and legs slightly bent. He moved the sword through a horizontal figure eight in front of him, swept the point through circles. His right hand held steady by the crossguard, while his left directed the large motions of the blade with quick economic motions of the pommel. “I
like
the balance!”

He made several swift feints, lopped a young aspen off at waist-height. “It’ll do nicely.” He took the highwayman’s scabbard, buckled it at his shoulder.

Rhys had put a bolt in the crossbow. He fired. The heavy bolt shattered against a tree-trunk. “Shoots a bit to the left,” the Welshman noted.

They went back to the trail. The others had bandaged the injured trooper’s hip, but he was in no shape to fight. His horse seemed none the worse for its fall.

“Watch the body, Thomas,” the bailiff told the trooper, “and try not to let anybody loot my saddle. We’ll be back.” There was a bit of quick horse-swapping, and they started off again down the path the highwaymen had taken.

The path led to a ford through a creek. One of the troopers was a tracker, and had taken the lead. He threw up his arm and pulled his horse to a stop. “They went into the water. They didn’t come out.”

Gervase looked hard at the trail. It was brown, beaten earth, with grass on either side. He couldn’t tell the difference. Well, that was why they had a tracker.

“Do we go upstream, or down?” the bailiff asked. The tracker was off his horse, looking where the trail went into the water.

He pointed. “That hoofprint is smeared to the right. The horse turned upstream. It’s the horseshoe with the mark I’ve been trailing.” They splashed into the water.

The sun was up, and the wind blew through the trees. The day was getting hot, and the air was very damp by the flowing stream. Sunlight slanted through the trees on the east bank, casting moving shadows on the dappled water. Clouds were building up in the west. A deerfly bit Gervase on the back of the neck; he slapped viciously, listened to the departing buzz. They could barely hear the creek chuckling over rocks in a small rapids, with the noise of the wind rattling leaves.

Above the rapids the stream swelled into a pool, with marsh-grass in the shallows. Even Gervase could see the trail of bent and broken stalks where horses had waded in to shore. Half a dozen men were hurriedly breaking camp in a clearing. They were packing things into saddle-bags, and loading up the one pack-horse. Their horses were not very good.

One of the men looked up, pointed at them.

“
Take them
!” Gervase roared. He spurred his horse through the pool of grass, followed by the troopers.

The highwaymen might have once been soldiers, but they weren’t disciplined. Instead of acting together, two of them snatched up weapons and prepared to make a defense. The others leaped on their horses and rode into the woods. One grabbed the halter of the pack-horse, and led it behind him.

Gervase pulled the sword as he rode, holding it one-handed. He charged the nearest brigand, took a vicious swipe at him, but his horse shied away. It had already had one tumble, seen another horse die. It was not about to risk its life for a strange rider.

The bailiff looked at the two highwaymen. Nothing but shortsword and buckler, the both of them. Rhys hit one highwayman’s buckler with a crossbow bolt, and he broke and ran. Three troopers circled him on horses, harried him back into the clearing.

I can take this churl
, Gervase thought. He found himself on the ground running toward the remaining brigand, with no clear memory of getting off his horse.

The highwayman cut downwards at him. Gervase slapped the blade aside with his sword, held the momentum, brought his bastard sword up, over, down at his opponent’s head. The man punched out with his buckler, blocked the blow, snapped his sword out at the Bailiff’s midriff.