I stopped, staring at the helmet and remembering the sight of Harga’s helmet hanging from his saddle in the same way. Had he been wearing the thing, the arrow that pierced his skull would probably have been deflected and he might never have had to fling up his arm the way he had, exposing his vulnerable armpit to the second arrow that struck him. I suddenly felt the welcome weight of my own full-body armor: a complete front and back cuirass of hammered bronze, with matching kirtle of armored straps and, strapped to my riding boots, long, heavy leg greaves that came up above my knees. A long-bladed spatha hung by my left side from a sword belt that crossed my chest, and a matching dagger hung in a sheath from my right hip.
I should not have been wearing armor that day at all, as a member of a hunting party, but Harga had been in a vengeful frame of mind that morning and had ordered both of us, Lorco and me, to wear full armor as a punishment for being what he called “insolent smart-arses.” He had discovered, the previous afternoon, that the wagon we were using to transport the deer we killed also contained the four chests belonging to Lorco and me containing our clothing and our armor. They had been loaded in Auxerre when we joined the Lorco expedition to ride south with them. Harga had thought it highly amusing to make us undo the bindings and unpack our chests and to display all our goods and possessions to the others in the hunting party. He took a malicious pleasure in trying to humiliate us that way, but we, having spent the previous five years living in communal quarters with close to a hundred other boys, saw nothing belittling in what he made us do, because in fact the complete display of everything brought from home into the Bishop’s School was a ritual event, undergone by every new boy who joined the scholastic ranks, and in those instances much, including anything edible, was confiscated by the older boys. Of course, we said nothing about that to Harga.
And so this day we had worn armor in the blazing sun. But we had been on our best behavior for most of the day and even Harga had not objected—in fact he had pretended not to see—when we took off our helmets. A new wave of grief swept over me as I realized belatedly that Lorco, too, might still be alive had he been wearing his helmet. My eyes awash again with sudden tears I would have sworn a moment earlier could not be in me, I gulped and swallowed and bent forward to take the heavy bronze helmet from its hook and slide it over my head. The sudden hollow hush that surrounded me as the leather-lined cask sank over my ears was unexpectedly peaceful, and the restriction of vision caused by the broad, hinged cheek protectors forced me to sit straighter and turn my head when I wanted to look at anything that did not lie directly ahead of me. I unsheathed my spatha and held it up to where I could see the blade, unbloodied, unsullied, unused. I sheathed it again and kicked my horse forward in a walk.
As soon as the animal began to move, my body adjusted to its motion and my thoughts became cogent and cohesive. I glanced up at the sky and saw the sun low in the west, its glare trapped behind all but the edges of a swollen cloud. The attack, I knew, had occurred before noon, so I must have been lying by the stream in the woods for several hours. By this time, I knew, the enemy, whoever they had been, must have collected their booty and moved on long since. But what they might have done with the bodies of my companions was an unknown that I had to address. Bad enough that I had run away from the killing field in the first place, but if I were to return to the Duke as the sole survivor of this debacle, I would have to bring information on the aftermath of the slaughter, verifying and reporting the names of the others dead … besides his son. My jaws began to ache with the strain of gritting my teeth together as I made my way back to the scene by the riverside, following the deeply gouged tracks of my earlier, headlong flight without difficulty and growing increasingly aware that if anyone had chosen to follow me they would have had no trouble finding me and killing me.
I saw the wagon first, standing abandoned near the river, among grass that grew as high as its axles. The horses were gone, as were the butchered deer carcasses; clearly our attackers had had no wish to encumber themselves with a wheeled vehicle. As I approached, I thought at first that I could see a body hunched on the ground beside one of the rear wheels, but on closer inspection it proved to be the broken, boxy shape of one of the chests that had been on the wagon. There were articles of clothing all over the surrounding ground, scattered to the winds as though they had been pulled from their chests and flung straight up into the air, but whether they had been mine or Lorco’s I had no idea and less concern. They were garments, clothing, things of less than no value. I moved on.
The first body I found was that of Borg, the cheerful young man who had driven the wagon and had been the friendliest of the group toward me and Lorco. His throat had been slashed open, almost severing his head, and he had been stripped naked. My stomach heaved as I looked down for the first few moments at what remained of him, but then I swallowed hard and tugged on my reins, turning my mount, and my eyes, away in search of others.
I could see most of the others now, their lifeless bodies strewn haphazardly over a surprisingly wide expanse of ground, and I guessed that some of them must have fought hard and long before being cut down so far from the path, irrespective of whether their horses had carried them there alive or dead. There were no dead horses, however, although it did not occur to me to look for any at first. Only when I saw the distance at which some of the bodies lay from the river path did I think to look about me for dead animals, and at that point another element of the enigma of what had happened clicked into place. I remembered waiting for the thump of an arrow hammering into my mount’s side as I hid behind its bulk from the aiming bowman, and I recalled being surprised that the killing shot had not come. Now, however, that was no longer so surprising. These men, whoever they had been, had attacked us for our horses and perhaps our weapons, no more than that. They had not been interested in simple plunder.
As soon as I saw the truth of that I tried to recall the attackers. Hazy, confused images came to me at first, of open, screaming mouths and wild, staring eyes; of madly running men brandishing fearsome weapons and intent upon my death; of flashing, naked, dirty limbs, long, bony legs and knobby knees and, in some instances, bare, muddy feet. And then my mind fastened upon an image of one particular man, the man who had flanked the bowman whom I dodged by hiding behind my horse’s barrel. He had been facing me, too, crouched and tense, ready to kill should I approach him closely enough, but the fearsome weapon he had clutched in one hand, upraised and ready to strike, had been misshapen and clumsy looking, a club of some kind—a plain, heavy-looking wooden cudgel that looked nowhere near as menacing as the ash wood practice swords I had been using for years at the Bishop’s School. This killer had not even had a blade to brandish. From that recollection sprang others, and I rapidly began to revise my opinion of our opponents.