Sir Lowick blocked two more savage thrusts as they came in from his flank. The big Scot had planted his feet as best he could, but the shifting stones and roiling sea betrayed him. His huge, broad shoulders didn't help him. Desperately trying to maintain his balance, the reiver only succeeded in announcing his intentions a moment before he could deliver the blow. The knight read him, turning both strokes aside.
The killing stroke itself seemed almost an after-thought, a left-over from the parry. Sir Lowick rolled his wrist with the momentum of the thrust, letting the raider's own strength lend itself to the blow that killed him. He locked his elbow and bought the broadsword up in a wicked arc that slashed down through the reiver's torso, opening a gaping wound from his throat to his balls before ending in the water in a bloody splash.
The northerner dropped his claymore and clutched at his throat, and the knight turned his back on him; any potential threat he represented was extinguished. In a moment or two he would sink to his knees and go under.
"Do you regret your crimes?" The knight asked the three men in front of him.
"The only thing I regret is setting foot on this damned island. If that is regret enough for you, then aye, I regret."
"And the families you destroyed on your way here? What of them? Do you not regret what you did to those poor people?"
"They were weak! Just like you. You want me to fall on my knees, weep and beg for mercy? Well you can kiss my hairy crack, laddy. Now come down here if yer in such a hurry t'die!"
The reiver stepped back, inviting Sir Lowick to come down onto the shifting pebbles, and brought his claymore up to kiss the flat of the blade.
The two other men fanned out across the stone beach to take up position beside him.
"It matters not to me where you die," Sir Lowick said, stepping onto the stones. "I can kill you just as well here."
"You talk a lot for a dead man."
"It's a curse," the knight said grimly, bringing his own blade to bear. "So, shall we dance, boys?"
They came at him, three at once, bellowing their hideous ululating war cry as they rushed across the unsteady ground at him.
Sir Lowick braced himself, regretting the lack of his shield, which he had left back with the horses in his haste. There was nothing he could do about it now. Gritting his teeth, he met the first blows head on.
The clash of steel was lost beneath the crash of the waves and the roar of the surf.
The knight's sword moved seemingly of its own accord, so perfectly attuned were the man's body and mind that nothing separated thought from action. Every breath he took was in perfect concert with the cut and thrust of the fight. It was a long, brutal, and bloody slaughter, but as he had promised them, the reivers did not leave the beach alive.
Spent, the sweat of survival thick on his skin, Sir Lowick raised his hands and bloody sword to the heavens and cried, "I'm still alive!"
Twenty-Five
Alymere fell in a ball of fire.
The agony was incredible. The right side of his face was burning, but it was nothing compared to the pain that came with hitting the ground. The only thing that saved his life was the monk taking the brunt of the fall, cushioning him from the impact.
He tried desperately to roll away from the dead man, but could not move. His body refused to obey him.
He stared into the monk's crudely stitched eye sockets. He couldn't feel the man's breath on his cheek.
Alymere tried to get his hands underneath himself and ease away from the monk but even that little victory was beyond him. His entire right side was wracked with convulsions. As his vision misted over, he was sure he had killed himself.
He felt someone stand over him, rather than saw them; felt them tear the cloak from his shoulders and slap at his head, dousing the flames. They dragged him off the monk and rolled him onto his back. The sky was fiery red. He tried to focus on the stars; to hold them in his mind, knowing somehow that to lose them, to let go, would be to die.
His skin felt too tight for his body. He tried to open his mouth, to breathe, to speak, but he couldn't work his jaw. The pain was blinding. The entire right side of his face felt like it had been dipped into Hell's pit and pulled out barely a fraction of a second before the flames scorched the meat from the bones of his skull. It went beyond any concept of pain he had ever known, or even imagined, and into a whole new territory of suffering.
"Hush, now," the man said, though his words lacked any real substance. He felt his hands gentle over his wounds, and then, alarmingly, the pain subsided, as his body went into shock. "Rest easy, son. Don't try to move."
He couldn't even if he had wanted to.
Black veins threaded through the sky, thickening as they spread to slowly block out the stars.
He felt his grip on consciousness slipping.
He tried to call her name. For a moment, as all colour fled his world, he thought he felt the press of her lips on his, their souls mingling as she breathed life into him in that shared kiss, making him immortal. And then he tasted the rancid breath in the back of his throat and all fantasies of Blodyweth were banished.
He opened his eyes and saw the crudely stitched eye sockets of a blind monk just inches from his face.
At that moment, it was the most beautiful face he had ever seen.
Twenty-Six
Sir Lowick found the monk hunched over Alymere's body.
Seeing him lying there, lain out on the muddy grass all broken and ravaged by the fire, it seemed impossible that he could still be alive.
All the pride he felt at cheating death swept from his body in a wave of grief; the stupid fool of a boy had gotten himself killed.
He raced across the cloister garden to his side, the sorrow caught in his throat.
The blind man's fingers were in Alymere's mouth.
Was he trying to choke the last bit of life out of him?
The man seemed to be trying to pull the tongue out of his throat with his filthy fingers.
The knight roared, grasping the hilt of his broadsword with two hands and raising it high above his head as he charged across the muddy grass, ready to do murder.
And then he saw his chest heave.
And everything changed. He dropped his sword and sank to his knees beside his nephew. "What have you done to him?"
"The boy lives," the monk said, trying to calm the knight, "but whether it remains that way is in the hands of the Lord, Knight. His wounds are most grievous indeed. His skin was ablaze as he plunged from up there," he pointed up at the shattered window with unerring accuracy. For a moment it was impossible for Sir Lowick to comprehend the fact that the man was truly blind; he spoke with such certainty, yet all of his understanding came from sounds and smells and touch, not from what Lowick thought of as the most basic and trustworthy of all the senses, sight. "And but for my brother's body beneath him, the fall alone would surely have killed him. Yet, for all his fortune, without aid far beyond my limited skill I fear he will not live to see morning. Once, perhaps, we had the medicinal herbs here on Medcaut, and the physician's gift, but now, now our home is burnt barren. Who knows what is left in the herbarium worth scavenging? And I fear that after this night nothing will grow. As much as it saddens me to say so, there can be no healing for Alymere here." The knight could not recall having used the boy's name in front of the monk. That he seemed so familiar with it placed a chill in Lowick's heart. "You need to take him to the mainland."
Tenderly, he rolled his nephew away from the body beneath him and onto his side, seeing the raw pink flesh where the fire had burned away the features down the right side of his face. His cloak had burnt onto his neck. The knight teased the blackened wool away from the sores, whispering wordlessly over and over. He had no unguents or salves and no way of lessening the fire beneath Alymere's skin. All he could do was pray, and pray that words uttered in this holiest of places found their way to the Lord all the more quickly.