The Crimson Outlaw Read online

  “They are alive?” By his looks, Gavril might have been a skin-changer, caught halfway between man and bear. Or one of the ancient barbarians who’d given the Romans a well-deserved fear of the forest. But still his chin wrinkled like that of a scolded boy trying to hold in tears, his eyes welled, and he had to turn away and bow his head into his hands. “After all this time, they wait for me?”

  Vali cast a slightly helpless look over the other outlaws, expecting one of them to step in and comfort their friend. But no one moved, all of them waiting to see what he would do. At last he came within easy headlock distance and laid a splayed palm on Gavril’s trembling back. “They think you must be dead, just as you thought of them. But they wait for rescue, and I intend to give it to them. Will you help me?”

  “For them.” Gavril brought his voice under control. He scooped the tears out from beneath his eyes and flicked them aside, straightening up. “For them I will knock holes in all the walls of the castle. For them I will knock it all down.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Vali turned the comforting press of his hand into an encouraging pat. “You will have me as a hostage. Force him by threats to me to come out and negotiate—I can spare a finger or two on the left hand to make it convincing.” Vali was now surrounded by lean and hungry men nodding, stroking their moustaches in signs of approval.

  “But then,” he went on to what he was sure would be a less popular part of the plan, “Someone can take him down with a slingshot, so that I can talk to him. When I have persuaded him to abdicate in my favour, the viteji will be mine, the castle mine, and I can pardon and free whomever I choose. There need be no fighting. No more loss of life.”

  The looks the bandits exchanged at the thought of merely knocking Wadim unconscious, persuading him to anything, good or ill, suggested they were humouring Vali’s naïveté. He caught murder in those smiles.

  “I will not be a party to my father’s death,” he insisted. “You must swear to me on your immortal souls that you will capture and not kill him.”

  The man who spoke in return was almost as tall as Mihai, a thin silver blade of a man, his white hair in plaits, his eyes the colour of ice, and his voice just as cold to match. “It’s a good plan, but we don’t need your permission to take you hostage. We draw Wadim out with the boy as bait. We finish him with an arrow.”

  “Hmm.” Mihai stirred finally from his place next to the fire where he had been watching all this, apparently confident that Vali could handle himself. “You don’t need his permission, Tavian, but you do need mine. Unless you want me as an enemy, Vali is in this willingly or not at all.”

  Tavian didn’t look any older than Mihai. There were no extra wrinkles on his face. His white hair seemed a sign that he had lived through horrors rather than a mark of age. And certainly there was a sense about him as of one who had lost an important part of himself and had not yet regrown enough skin to cover the hole.

  “You didn’t used to be so squeamish, Mihai. What is it that stays your hand?”

  He looked carefully at Vali and Mihai, and his eyes widened as if he could see the connection like a golden rope between them. “Oh.” His mouth twisted—sharp, disgusted—and he turned away. “Then may God above split Wadim Florescu open and roast him black with lightning. For your sake, Mihai—the last thing I will do for your sake—I will swear the oath required of me today.”

  “Thank you.” Mihai rose and embraced him like a brother, and Vali bowed.

  It made Tavian sneer again, darkness in his eyes. “Do not look for it to last. This time, I will defer my vengeance. But there will be a next time. My mercy is not so boundless as yours.”

  It seemed an appropriate time to relax and prepare, but Mihai’s tensed frame did not soften. Vali drew closer to his side, waiting for the next opponent, and sure enough, a shorter man stood up beside Tavian, shoulder to shoulder. Mossy green eyes under red-gold hair. A smattering of smallpox scars on his cheeks and a way of carrying himself that said he was every man’s better. Vali knew from his stance he was no peasant, but it was hard to believe he’d ever bent the knee to any lord either. Andrei, Vali guessed—the one who had taken to the wild like a hawk to flight.

  “What if we don’t want a pardon?”

  Nodding in the darker corners of the cavern, from outlaws who looked comfortable in their own skin, unimpressed by talk of oaths and ancient brotherhood.

  Mihai’s hand closed on Vali’s elbow. He seemed shaken, wrong-footed. “Why would you not? Why would you not want to go back to a place that offered you honour and a noble purpose, a place where you did not have to steal for a living?”

  “But instead you had to scrape and fawn.” One or two low-voiced expressions of agreement now to accompany the nodding, and Andrei gathered all their glances like arrows to his quiver, aimed them at Vali.

  “What we have here, Mihai, is freedom.” Andrei’s hand covered Mihai’s, pressing on Vali’s arm, an odd restless sensation that turned a comforting touch into a threat. “You may think you want to go back, but you have grown accustomed to acting by your own will and would hate to knuckle down beneath the command of others. There is too much wolf in you now to return to the pen with the dogs.”

  Andrei had a power about him—a conviction and clarity that seemed to push at Vali invisibly, as two same ends of a magnet repelled one another. Vali wrested his arm away and retreated a pace, telling himself he must trust Mihai or what were his words of love worth?

  Mihai looked at him, open-faced, his eyes full of distress, then turned back to his friend. “Would you not even try it for my sake? We have been together so long, Tavian, Doru, you, and I. I would not be the one to put an end to that.”

  “But you are. None of us want this but you.”

  Mihai’s next words were cut off by a sandy-haired young man with a high cheekboned Slavic face and very dark eyes, who had taken the time to wash in the shivering pool and dry his hands before he rose to join in. This, Vali thought, must be Doru, the last of the four.

  “I want it, Andrei. Outlawry was fun for a while, but I want my good name back, and land, and children. I want a future. If the son of our enemy offers me all of that and revenge, then I am with him.”

  He stepped to Mihai’s left shoulder, and Mihai pulled him in for a brief and thankful hug. With Tavian on his right, Doru on his left, it was at once perfectly clear they stood three against one.

  “Please, Andrei. Because you are my brother.”

  Andrei blew out an exasperated laugh and shook his head, his fingertips resting on his pockmarks. “Oh, very well,” he said, cutting his eyes towards the cold, white-haired man. “If Tavian can do you one last favour, I suppose I can too.”

  Mihai and the other viteji washed and dressed themselves as formally as if for a wedding, putting on embroidered shirts and long waistcoats, quilted padding under long jerkins of boiled leather armour hard as tile, dyed in many shades of blue and red and chased with patterns of flowers. Fine clothes transformed them. They looked now what they were—the sworn retainers of a neighbouring lord still waiting for vengeance on his killer.

  It stirred Vali’s heart with a kind of joy that was not unmixed with horror, to think that such implacable hatred existed years and years after the men’s lord was soil in the ground. He felt the glory of honour, of oaths kept, of something straight and reliable in a twisty world, but it was eerie too, to see the past assemble itself out of fragments in chests, like watching a wildfire break out from long underground.

  The other bandits in the cave seemed to share something of his reaction, their faces closing, the feeling of camaraderie—of everyone being equals, on the same side—creaking like thin ice underfoot. Here Andrei proved his worth, taking them aside one by one and speaking with them in tones of reassurance that cleared their faces and put the lightness back in their steps. So when Mihai said, “Enough of being chased, lads. Let’s stake it all on this last throw. One way or another, we will soon be free men again,” they fo
llowed him.

  Sympathisers in Lueta village, below the castle walls, gave them beds for the night, and it shocked Vali that there were so many so close to home. It also reassured him that he was only cutting short a process of revolt that had become inevitable. The thought didn’t help him sleep, and it didn’t seem right to make love on such an occasion, even if there had not been a dozen peasants and bandits sharing all the beds. The dawn came too slowly.

  And then everything moved too fast. Tavian had been given the job of acting as Vali’s captor, and though he bound Vali’s wrists loosely enough for him to slip the cords at will, it was the only concession he made. The grip on Vali’s arms numbed his fingers. Tavian kept him off balance, pushing him, stumbling, ahead of him, no hint of acting in his hoarfrost eyes, his expression that of a man forced to pick up shit.

  Doru on his left, Mihai on his right, and the group of bandits loosely spread around and behind him—Gavril a good three paces ahead of the rest of them, Andrei bringing up the rear—Vali was forced out into the open under the walls of his father’s castle. He struggled so convincingly against Tavian’s hold that the man kicked him in the back of the knees and forced him to kneel. Held him there while Mihai blew a challenge on a shepherd’s horn.

  The sentries in the gateposts leaned out and gaped. “Run and tell your master,” Mihai shouted up to them. “We have something he’s lost, and we would have words with him.”

  An interminable wait. “He’s getting his knights armed,” Tavian commented and drew a long knife from his belt.

  “Of course,” Mihai agreed, and the tone of resignation made Vali’s heart fall. Not even Mihai really believed this was going well. “He’s not a fool, whatever else he is.”

  Tavian grabbed a handful of Vali’s hair and yanked his head up, holding the knife against his throat. No warmth in the gesture, Vali noticed, as there had been when Mihai had done it. Even in that meeting in the forest, it seemed he had known instinctively that Mihai was just playing. Tavian was not. “If Wadim doesn’t get here in the time it takes to say one Hail Mary, he will be burying his heir tonight.”

  “There is no need for that.” Wadim opened a window high above the battlements—too high for an arrow to reach him. Almost too high to tell who it was, but for the gold on his armour and his unmistakeable voice. “What a fine show. How my bandits do give themselves airs. What do you want?”

  “I’m not yelling my terms at you,” Mihai shouted. “Come here and face us like a man, and we will talk about how much your son is worth to you. If you do not come, in front of all who witness this, I name you a coward, an honourless lord, and a loveless father.”

  “The insults of a masterless man are as without substance as his own good name.” Wadim smiled. “But you do have my heir, so I will come and show you exactly who it is you are dealing with.”

  Another wait, shorter this time. Then the drawbridge of the castle swung down with a rumble of chains and hit the ground, its impact echoing hollow from the dark waters of the moat. The clatter of it seemed to go on and on, then burst out from beneath the courtyard archway, revealing itself to be the thunder of horses’ hooves as Wadim came flying out at a gallop at the head of his lancers.

  The knife under Vali’s chin trembled, and for a gut punch of a moment, he knew Tavian was going to slit his throat. But then the frozen man pulled it away and cut the cords on Vali’s wrists instead, thrusting his sword into his hands. “Now’s your chance to prove whose side you’re on.”

  “No!” Mihai was looking not at the horsemen but behind himself. “Andrei!”

  Seeing the charge of mounted killers, the other bandits had taken to their heels. Vali thought it was cowardice at first, until he saw how well they were holding together, like a group infiltrating behind enemy lines. A distant hint of light on red-gold hair was Andrei at their head, leading them away, ushering them all into Lueta’s unfortified village church. Have they gone in there for sanctuary? Vali thought, bemused for a second. But no. With a battle in the offing, the villagers had fled to their houses and locked the doors. The church stood empty, with silver candlesticks on its altar and a monstrance of solid gold in its chancel window.

  Vali remembered Andrei whispering to the other outlaws—their new goodwill afterwards. He’s going to rob the church. Using us as a distraction. Vali could have laughed. It was audacious and a little magnificent. Andrei could not have found a more thorough way to slap Vali and his plans across the face, and Vali would have admired him for that if it had not left Mihai so forsaken.

  Gavril was the only commoner still with them, holding tight to a falx, his heavy face ugly with determination.

  “No,” Mihai breathed again through clenched teeth, his head bending as though pressed down by a giant hand. “Andrei, you . . .!”

  He took a step towards the church, as if to run to Andrei’s side, and a rifle shot interrupted his moment of betrayal, the ball passing so close that it scored a long red line above his ear. He turned back to the immediate threat of Wadim’s men, drew his sword, and formed up with the remaining bandits in a loose circle around Vali.

  Doru had barely finished priming the pan of his own rifle. He was raising it to aim, with a look of concentration, when there was a spray of warm liquid against Vali’s face. Doru fell to his hands and knees with white fletchings protruding from his throat. Instinct had him heaving in hacking coughs, trying to dislodge the obstruction from his windpipe, but the arrowhead had not come out of the back of his spine—there was no withdrawing it without the barbs tearing more on the way out.

  After a moment’s glance, dismissing his comrade’s struggle as prelude to an inevitable death, Tavian picked up Doru’s rifle and shot back. He hit Dragomir in the forehead, the ball knocking him backwards off his horse. Dead in an instant.

  Vali had known Dragomir since he could toddle. Not a bad man, not really. And to stop like that, to stop just instantly? Like Vali’s first time making love, his first time in real combat was not turning out how he expected. He knew which he preferred.

  Tavian dropped the rifle with a sneer Vali recognised from his own instructors—“It’s a slow, inelegant, clumsy weapon. Expensive and imprecise. For ease and speed of use, it will never replace the bow”—and seized the reins of Dragomir’s horse as it thundered past. Swinging himself effortlessly into the saddle, he shrugged his bow into his hand and nocked an arrow. But his next shot missed as Dragomir’s horse bucked and fought to get this stranger off its back.

  Mihai moved into Tavian’s place, closing the circle, tightening it down around Vali, his shield raised to protect Vali from stray arrows. It was all he could do against the horsemen, armed only with a sword as he was, unless they were foolish enough to come within his blade’s range.

  Wadim waited aside from the melee, watching it from his saddle with a satisfied smile, apparently confident that it did not yet need his personal intervention.

  One of Wadim’s knights had his lance levelled at Gavril. He came in at a charge, a tonne’s weight of horse and man speeding like an avalanche at the peasant. Gavril threw himself aside, swiping his falx sideways at the same time. The long blade caught the rider in the ribs and hurled him out of his saddle, dashed him to the ground. Vali tried to steal this horse, but it shouldered him out of the way contemptuously and raced past as he reeled.

  Tavian was keeping Wadim’s horsemen occupied, riding around and among them like a whirlwind, not close enough to strike with sabre or lance, not far enough away to risk an arrow that might miss and strike a friend behind him. But already three arrows stood out from the hocks of his horse—the larger and easier target. It was only a matter of time before he was slowed down enough for the archers to target man instead of beast.

  Gavril, armed with his two-handed falx, was taking devastating swipes at those who came close enough, reaping men with the scythe-like blade. But the weapon left him without a shield, and though he turned to keep his blade between the horsemen and himself, he could not str
ike every arrow out of the air.

  The shadow of the castle’s gateway boiled again as more troops rode out, Ionescu’s banner at their head. The rider at the point of the charge, his left sleeve sewn tight at the shoulder, could only be Ionescu himself, Stela’s husband, not yet gone home after his nuptials. Riding out to his father-in-law’s defence like the good son Vali could never be.

  Four men against an army. Something naive and beautiful broke in Vali’s chest—the idea that if his cause was good enough, of course he would always win. He was a stupid child and he had brought Mihai to this only so that he could watch him be killed. Mihai should have gone with Andrei. Better that he should live lawless and wonderful and vibrantly alive than that he should die, even for such a prize as Vali.

  Like the foreknowledge of a nightmare, he had only just had this thought when he saw his father wheel into place for the long charge, sit forward, his lance tucked in close, and aim the horse’s weight and his own like a single massive arrowhead straight at Mihai’s heart.

  Vali couldn’t watch this again. He had been protected the first time by surprise, disbelief. This time he knew exactly the kind of wound the blow would make, knew a man still recovering from the last strike would not survive another. And even that was only if his father missed the heart, and his father never missed.

  “Mihai! Get out of the way!”

  Mihai glanced at Vali, just a graze of those dark blue eyes. I promised you that you should not have to raise a hand to him yourself. He braced his sword arm, hunkered down, just as he had against Dragomir’s charge back in Bucin, preparing to try again whatever move had gone so disastrously wrong for him last time. And why he thought he could do it now, injured, when he could not do it then . . .