Dark Moon

The fire had died down, and Tarantio added logs from a stack in the hearth.

'Age makes fools of all of us,' said Browyn miserably. 'There was a time when I would have fancied my chances of taking all three.'

'Is that true?' Tarantio asked him.

'Of course it isn't true,' said Browyn, with a smile. 'But it is the sort of thing old people are expected to say.

The real truth - if such a spectacular beast exists - is that I was a bridge-builder with no taste for violence whatever. And I have to admit that it is not a skill I ever wished to acquire.' His keen blue eyes stared hard at the younger man. 'I hope you don't consider that an offensive remark.'

'Why would I? I agree with the sentiments. You sit there for a while. I'll clear up the mess.'

Browyn eased his bruised frame back on to the bench seat and stared into the fire. Sleep came easily, and he dreamt of youth and the race he had run against the three great champions. Five long miles. He had finished ninth, but the memory of running alongside such athletes remained with him, like a warming fire in the room of memories.

When he awoke, the shutters of the small windows on either side of the main door were closed. His two lanterns, hanging in their iron brackets on the west wall, were lit, and the cabin was filled with the aroma of cooking meat and spicy herbs. Browyn stretched and sat up, but he groaned as the pain from his bruises flared.

'How are you feeling?' asked the young man. Browyn blinked and looked around. The cabin was now neat and tidy, only the broken shelves giving evidence of the day's savagery. Nervously he opened the path to his talent and sought out the image of the young man's soul. With relief he saw that there was only one. The beating he had taken at the hands of the raiders must have confused him, he thought. Tarantio's soul was bright, and as untainted by evil as any human spirit could be. Which, Browyn realized sadly, merely meant that the darkness was considerably smaller than the light.

'My name is Browyn. And I am feeling a little better. Welcome to my home, Tarantio.'

'It is good to be here,' the young man told him. 'I took the liberty of raiding your food store. I also found some onions growing nearby and I have made a thick soup.'

'Did you see to the horse?'

'I did,' said Tarantio. 'I fed him some oats, and he is tethered close by.'

They ate in silence, then Browyn slept again for an hour. He was embarrassed when he woke. 'Old men do this, you know,' he said. 'We cat-nap.'

'How old are you?'

'Eighty-two. Doesn't seem possible, does it? In a world gone mad, one bridge-builder can reach eighty-two, while young men in the fullness of their strength rush around with sharp swords and cut themselves to pieces. How old are you, Tarantio?'

'Twenty-one. But sometimes I feel eighty-two.'

'You are a strange young man - if you don't mind me pointing it out?' Tarantio smiled and shook his head. 'You killed that swine very expertly, which shows that you are a man accustomed to violence.

And yet you have cleaned my cabin in a manner which would have brought words of praise from my dear wife - a rare thing, I can tell you. And you cook better than she did - which sadly is no rare thing.

Those men were afraid of you. Are you famous?'

'They were the kind of men to be afraid,' Tarantio said softly, 'and reputations have a habit of growing on their own. The deed itself can be an acorn, but once men hear of it the tale soon becomes a mighty oak.'

'Even so, I would like to hear of the acorn.'

'I would like to hear about bridge-building. And since I am the guest, and you the host, my wishes should be paramount.'

'You have been well trained, boy,' said Browyn admiringly. 'I think I like you. And I do know something of the acorn. You were the student of Sigellus the Swordsman. I knew him, you know.'

'No-one knew him,' said Tarantio sadly.

The old man nodded. 'Yes, he was a very enigmatic man. You were friends?'

'I think that we were - for a while. You should rest now, Browyn. Give those bruises a chance to heal.' 'Will you be here when I wake?'

'I will.'

In the darkest hour of the night Tarantio sat on the floor by the fire, his back against the bench seat. It was wonderfully quiet, and so easy to believe that the world he knew, of war and death, was merely the memory of another age. He gazed around the room, lit now only by the flickering flames of the log fire. With Dace asleep there was nothing here that spoke of violence - save for his own swords lying on the carved pine table.

The old man had asked him about the acorn of his legend, but it was not a tale Tarantio relished telling.

Nor, save for the first hours of pleasure with the Lady Miriac, did he like recalling the events of the last day.

'Never give in to hate,' Sigellus had told him. 'Hate blurs the mind. Stay cool in combat, no matter what your opponent does. Understand this, boy, if he seeks to make you angry he does not do it for your benefit.

Are you listening, Dace?'

'He is listening,' Tarantio told him.

'That's good.'

Tarantio remembered the bright sunshine in the open courtyard, the light glinting from the steel practice blades. Pulling clear his face-mask, he asked Sigellus, 'Why is Dace so much stronger and faster than me?

We use the same muscles.'

'I have given much thought to that, Chio. It is a complex matter. Years ago I studied to be a surgeon -

before I realized my skills with the blade were better suited to the work I do now. Muscles are made up of thousands of bands of fibre. The energy they expend is used up in a heartbeat. Therefore they work economically - several hundred, perhaps, at a time.' Sigellus lifted his sword into the air. 'As I do this,' he said, 'the muscles are taking it in turn to expend energy. That is where the economy comes in. Now Dace, perhaps through a greater surge of adrenalin, can make his muscles work harder, more bands operating at a single command. That is why you always feel so weary after Dace fights. Put simply, he expends more energy than you.'

Tarantio smiled as he remembered the grey-garbed swordsman. As the fire slowly died, he recalled their first meeting. After the massacre of his shipmates, Tarantio had made his way along the coast to the Corsair city of Loretheli, hoping to find employment with a merchant ship. There were no berths, and he had worked for a month as a labourer on a farm just outside Loretheli, earning the few coins he now had in his purse. With the harvest over he was back at the docks moving from ship to ship, seeking a crewman's wage.

But the war fleets of the Duchies were now at sea and the port of Loretheli was effectively sealed. No-one was hiring sailors. He was heading towards the last ship berthed at the dock when he saw Sigellus. The man was obviously drunk. He was swaying as if on a ship's deck, and he was using the sabre in his hand as a support, the point against the cobbled stones. Facing him were two corsairs, gaudily dressed in leggings and shirts of bright yellow silk. Both held curved cutlasses. Sigellus was a tall man and slender, clean-shaven and thin-faced. His head was shaved above both ears in sweeping crescents, yet worn long from the crown like the plume of an officer's helm. He was wearing a doublet of grey silk embroidered with silver thread, and leggings of a darker grey that matched his calf-length boots. Tarantio paused and watched the scene.

The corsairs were about to attack, and surely the drunken man would be cut down. Yet there was something about the man that caught Tarantio's attention. The swaying stopped and he stood, statue-still.