The French Executioner (16 page)

They rushed forward, careless of noise now. In the dimness before them they could see a large, broken cart in the middle of
the lane, a wheel gone, down on one axle. As they ran towards it, they realised it was the only place that could hide a man.
They were right and they were wrong, for indeed the man they sought appeared from behind it, sword in hand, but six other
men followed him, three armed with halberds – the half pike, cutting and slashing weapon favoured by mercenaries.

A crossbow bolt pinged off the axe Haakon jerked up, another thumping into a doorframe beside them. Beck reached for the slingshot
slung around her shoulders, got it into her hands and loaded in two heartbeats. Forefingers found the loop, left hand placed
the killing stone in the pouch, the right grabbed the knotted end and the left pulled the cords taut. The others ducked as
leather and rope whirled over them, the stone unleashed finding an immediate target in one crossbowman, reeling him backwards
with a cry.

‘It’s a trap!’ yelled Haakon, somewhat obviously, weaving to create a moving target.

Jean grabbed Beck, shoving the youth the way they’d come. He was not going to stand and fight, not against crossbows, not
until he knew more about the odds. They ran.

‘Now!’ called Gregor from behind them, and from the end of the street they’d entered seven more figures emerged from the shadows
to block their path.

Hesitation is death in a street fight. Jean and Haakon were among this new enemy in a moment, following the large vessel of
oil the big man hurled into the foe. Beck stopped, spun, hurled a stone at the eagerest of those behind them. He pitched backwards,
arms flailing into two of the others. Ducking under a whirling sword and axe, she drew her long
dagger. She slipped to the side as a sword thrust at her, dragging the knife in a swift cut across the lunging hand.

Blade rang against blade, axe haft blocked cudgel and bill, momentum going with the charging headsmen. Adopting a low stance,
stepping under an overhead blow from a halberd, Jean swept a cut at knee height, severing the tendon. The man, carried forward
by the momentum of his own weapon, fell over him. A sword cut downwards. Jean blocked with a sloping parry that swept the
man’s blade to the ground, drawing the head level to the hilt of the square-headed sword. Jean smashed it into the face before
him.

Yelling like his berserker ancestors, Haakon’s charge had carried him deep into the enemy, his axe swing scattering men into
a semi-circle before him. Moving lightly for his size, he dodged to his left as blades came snickering in, then planted his
front foot and swung the axe back, catching two of the weapons in a sweep that sent them flying off into the dark.

They held their brief advantage but Jean, with a swift glance back, knew that it could not last. Six wraiths were gliding
up the alley, Heinrich among them.

Ducking under another swinging axe, Jean found his head close to the boyish one of Beck.

‘Get out. Now!’

‘I cannot—’

‘Remember your cause. The Fugger knows ours. And he knows where to meet. If we are not there in a month, then—’ Jean parried
a sword thrust from one of the two men left in front, his weapon forming the upright of a cross with it. Launching himself
off the ground he headbutted the man between the eyes. ‘Then your right arm is all your own again.’

Jean had opened a gap and reluctantly Beck took it, leaping the body on the ground, running ten paces then stopping to glance
back. The other group had hesitated at the decimation of their comrades, but now, urged on from behind by Heinrich and another
man, fat and shouting, they began to advance again. The two disarmed men had regained their
weapons and were circling, keeping out of range of the axe, awaiting the reinforcements. One of them turned towards her. Still
she hesitated, before a crossbow bolt hummed past her ear and another cry from Jean sent her running towards the town.

The renewed enemy closed on them. Haakon, burying his axe head in an enemy’s arm, wasn’t able to remove it in time to parry
the swing of a halberd shaft. Turning his head, a glancing blow caught him and sent him reeling to the side, his weapon left
behind. Jean, who had turned aside two thrusts, spun in a circle, sweeping his blade at head height round and around, causing
all to duck. There was even a moment when a gap opened up for him and he too could have followed Beck’s route away. But then
he saw Haakon go down, their eyes meeting.

‘Go!’ cried the big man.

But Jean hesitated – and that is death in a street fight. The butt of a halberd caught him hard in the stomach, and then they
were on to him. But the enthusiasm of the kill made them get in each other’s way. Buffeted, knocked to the ground, he took
a slash to the shoulder, another to the thigh.

‘Enough!’ shouted Maltese Gregor, and his own men, used to the repercussions when he was not instantly obeyed, stepped backwards.
One of the hired men, swept up in the bloodlust, aimed a killing blow at the felled Haakon and received a pike butt in the
face from Gregor himself, who yelled, ‘I said enough! What sport is there in spearing hogs? Besides’ – and here he turned
to the tall man beside him – ‘we have our client’s wishes to consider.’

Heinrich von Solingen had taken no part in the fighting, though he’d stood there with sword in hand. His head still throbbed
as if a thousand anvils were being beaten inside it, and his vision added a shadow figure to any real one before him. He felt
like he was going to vomit, as he had been doing intermittently all day. He couldn’t remember when he had last eaten and wondered
if he ever would again. So when they
all turned expectantly to him, looking to him to provide the death strokes, he looked back at the two dozen faces swimming
before him, down at the writhing snake bodies on the ground, and couldn’t even find the strength to lift his sword. He closed
his eyes to steady himself and staggered. Somewhere within he thought he heard a bell strike four times, then some distant
cheering.

‘What hour?’ A swollen tongue made speech hard.

‘Four bells,’ someone said. ‘The fleets make ready to sail with the tide.’

The fleet. The Archbishop’s boat. Heinrich knew he had to be on it. He took one step towards the harbour and stopped. Someone
had asked him a question. Two jowly, greased faces swam into view.

‘How would you like them to meet their end?’ Maltese Gregor smiled at him. ‘It’s your choice.’

Of course, the enemy. He had succeeded once again in ending a threat to his master. This dog had been hung in a gibbet but
had lived to plague them. It was an outrage, to escape his just punishment in this way. He should be put into the embrace
of the iron cage again, as an example to all.

But there was no time. Four bells. Noise from the harbour growing. The fleet departing.

‘Hang them,’ he muttered, then the words came more clearly. ‘Hang them high like the dogs they are.’

He watched as the two semi-conscious men were pulled into position under a beam, hands bound, nooses placed around their necks.
Four men gathered at the end of the bigger man’s rope, three for the Frenchman. Both men were hauled upright until only the
tips of their toes remained on the ground. At a signal from Gregor, the rope men heaved again. Jean and Haakon were hoisted
off the ground.

The wriggling and writhing turned Heinrich’s stomach again. He retched, and sour bile filled his mouth. He knew he could only
stay upright a short while longer.

Four bells. The harbour. He turned and headed away.

Gregor watched him go, calling, ‘Farewell, Heine, old comrade. You are welcome. See you again …’ and turning to his men adding,
‘… in hell.’

Dancing in the air, unbelievable pain filling his body, wide awake now and dying, Jean watched his enemy walk away, so slowly,
raising and lowering his feet as if it took minutes to complete each action. His head was being wrenched from his shoulders.
He thought of his neck lengthening, expanding, growing into the perfect target for a sword cut. His insides churned and voided,
he had no control, nothing left to call his own, his whole frame emptying and pouring his life out into this alley. Suddenly,
somewhere in a distant world the other side of agony, two eyes appeared, huge black pools, and he started to swim towards
them. Someone opened a door behind them, flooding them with light, an infinite brightness that yet contained some tiny darkness,
shapes growing from wriggling circles of form into bodies, into a woman and a child, into Lysette and Ariel. They were smiling
and waving to him, beckoning him on to a world where all this terrible pain would disappear. It was already receding when
the man whose identity he no longer remembered placed a foot around the corner and began to move beyond it, and it seemed
like Jean himself built up speed at that moment, rushing now to flow into the light.

Only one thing disturbed him: behind his wife and child a hand was growing, overshadowing them, reaching up to tower over
them. It had six fingers, and when the man finally turned the corner and disappeared, the sixth one, the little crooked finger,
bent in to fold his loved ones in a crushing embrace.

And then he was tumbling down, falling from his great height back to agony. In the moment before oblivion, he heard a harsh
voice bellow, ‘Easy, you scabs. We don’t want to damage the merchandise.’

Louis St Mark de la Vallerie, captain of His Majesty’s ship the
Perseus,
clutched a scented handkerchief to his extraordinarily large and very sensitive nose in a feeble attempt to dissolve the
smells engulfing him. It was always the same when he rejoined the galley. It took him days, sometimes weeks to get used again
to the sickening stench of shit, urine and sweat floating up from the rowers’ benches below. A few warm days had doubled the
foulness, and he knew it would only grow worse. He was just relieved it was a relatively short run to start with, thanks to
a last-minute order diverting his ship to Valletta where he was to subvert certain Knights of St John with the considerable
amount of gold he had on board, to lure them away from their allegiance to the Emperor. He did not question the order – he
was His Majesty’s servant after all. In truth, he relished the little break before the true fighting season began, when he’d
again be shepherding convoys around the Mediterranean, spending weeks out of any port or civilisation. In a fleet the stench
was always worse. Your own ship’s foulness you gradually got used to.

The reek was not his only source of irritation. Four bells had just sounded, and he would be under way before the fifth without
the full complement of gutter filth needed to man his oars. The magistrates in the town had been too generous of late, or
had dropped their usual requirement on bribes, because far too few men had been sentenced to the fleet, and those who had
were of a poor quality. And even these he’d been forced to pay a high price for in order to snatch them away from his rival
captains.

In the end he had to turn, yet again, to Maltese Gregor. He hated dealing with the man, mainly because he knew him to be a
German peasant through and through, yet one that could buy and sell the captain a dozen times. More. It was an unfair God
that allowed such men to thrive, forcing men of the class of de la Vallerie to seek their favour. The man was obsequiously
polite, of course. Too polite, for there was always a glint of humour in his eyes that showed he knew too well who had the
upper hand in the relationship.

Pacing irritably, he was about to give up on the scum when he noticed a dog cart being wheeled down the dock and recognised
the man walking behind it as the one he had lately been cursing. The cart stopped at the gangway and Gregor, catching de la
Vallerie’s eye, took off his hat and made an elaborate formal bow.

‘Greetings, my Captain. I trust the morning finds you well.’

‘You’re late, Gregor. I was about to start beating the drum.’

‘Ah, and when have I ever let you down, my Captain? Well, just that once, but that wasn’t my fault, as you know. But here,
I more than make amends. See what I have brought you.’

He drew a cloak back from the cart and there, sprawled and tangled in a heap, lay two men, one large, one smaller.

The captain came down the gangplank.

‘They look dead, Gregor.’ He prodded the bodies with his stick, then stepped back, raising his handkerchief. ‘And they reek.
From what gallows did you pluck this scum?’

‘Your Excellency’s nose is as sharp as his sword, as usual.’ Gregor’s eyes twinkled at him. ‘How fortunate France is to have
such men to defend her. Alas, the town used up all its noble volunteers when the army came through last week. But look at
the muscles on these two, eh? Your ship will out-row any corsair with men such as these on your benches.’

‘And these? What are these weapons they are lying on?’

Gregor spat. ‘They tried to ambush us with them. I was going to take the dogs to the magistrates to be hung, when I remembered
your need. Yes, it’s unusual, the sword, is it not? An executioner’s.’

De la Vallerie had picked it up, weighing its balance with a few strokes in the air. He was proud of the collection of weapons
he kept in his cabin. Some day they would line the walls of his great hall – once he’d won enough booty in war to buy one.

‘How much for the sword?’

Gregor smiled. ‘Oh, it is a valuable piece, my Captain, but not as valuable as you are as a customer. Take it for three ducats,
and I’ll throw in this assassin’s axe as well.’

The captain grunted acceptance. He didn’t have time to haggle with the rogue. A man stood close by, naked to the waist where
a whip hung. He was heavily muscled and on his distended belly danced a tattooed snake. His thick black hair and beard almost
met, obscuring a face where one eye glittered and the other was covered with a leather patch.

‘Corbeau, take them below. Chain them up. When they wake, shave them.’

‘Yes, my Captain.’ The brute half turned, then turned back. ‘Slave or criminal?’