Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (read with me TXT) 📕

“The baron of Furze and his son greet the baron of Aurverelle!”

“Compliments to you both!” Christopher shouted above the cries, the clanks, the screams. He stared at Martin. Son?

But Paul and Martin had already turned, spurred their horses, and struck at the heart of a body of brigands who were attempting to mount some kind of concerted defense, Abbot Wenceslas led another party in from the other side, and just then, Abel and perhaps two score Saint Brigid men armed with swords and axes swung down from the village walls on ropes, assembled, and stormed across the intervening ground.

The defense collapsed. Berard's men broke and fled. Even the bravest, who seemed ready to stand their ground, seemed to reconsider when it became obvious that their valor would consist of nothing more than being dismembered.

Flight, however, consisted of little else. This was not battle. This was rout. This was slaughter. This was easy killing, pathetically easy. Berard's men screamed, ran . . . and died. One or two of Christopher's people fell, dragged down by the brigands more for their horses and possible escape than for any hope of combat; but on the whole, the Aurverelle alliance reaped its way across the field, turned, and reaped its way back, unhindered, unopposed.

Within a half an hour, it was over. Silence fell, the clouds of dust dissipated. The knights and men of the alliance dismounted, wiped and sheathed swords, and, almost puzzled by what they had done, stared at the carnage. Christopher, too, slid from his saddle in the eerie stillness, wondering at the dead who lay tumbled like logs left by a flood.

A grinding of metal as a body shifted. Footsteps. A muffled voice. “It's ridiculous,” Jamie was saying to someone, perhaps to no one in particular. “They didn't even put up a fight.”

“I won't complain,” said Christopher. But he had been expecting a fight. His blood had been—was still—pounding. Within his armor he was damp and acrid with nervous sweat. And this . . . simple butchery. He almost felt cheated.

“Master! Master!”

“Over here, Pytor.”

The seneschal, wearing mail covered with dirt and blood, ran to him and, after bowing, began trying to help him out of his armor. “It is hot,” he said, “master will suffer.”

“I'm all right, Pytor. Really.”

Jamie was still perplexed, and he scuffed towards Christopher, his visor up. “But where's the glory in this?”

Angered, Christopher stepped away from Pytor, threw down his sword. It struck the ground point first, quivering. “Dammit, where's the glory in anything? They're dead! They're just dead, that's all! That's what we wanted, wasn't it?”

Chagrined, Jamie groped for words. “I mean . . . I . . .”

Christopher shook his head. Yes, he felt cheated. Something had happened. “I know what you mean.” He prodded a crushed and bloody body with his foot, then looked up suddenly. “Where's Berard? Where is That son of a bitch?”

“We have been looking,” said Pytor. “No one has seen him?”

“Did he escape?”

“<aster knows that it is possible.”

Christopher's anger seethed again, and he grabbed his sword and stomped across the battlefield, turning over bodies, peering into dead and bloody faces. But not until he reached the free company camp did he find what he was looking for. Berard was lying on the ground just outside his tent, face down and unarmored. His side was open, one arm was gone, and the flies were clustering thickly about him.

A few feet away, Jehan delMari also lay dead. A sword was in his hand, but the gilt of the delMari surcoat was tarnished and thick with blood and dust. What had happened was obvious.

“God of my fathers,” said Pytor. “It was Jehan.”

“He did us a great favor,” said Jamie.

Christopher nodded. Jehan had found his own solution to the maze of patterns that had surrounded him. “It's . . . incredible, though,” he said. “No wonder it all went so easily. If there were a more precise way to break the free companies, I can't think of what it would have been.”

With Pytor's help, he unbuckled his helmet and dropped it on the ground. The heat was insufferable, and the weight of metal encasing him seemed suddenly to be more than he could bear. But it was not the heat or his armor that suddenly made him stagger. It was everything else. The siege had been broken. Saint Brigid was safe. His grandfather was, finally, dead.

He looked down at Berard. Incredible. It was all incredible.

“Christopher?”

He recognized the voice . . . or so he thought. Turning, he saw that a slender maiden was stepping towards him. Her hair was dusty, her clothing only of homespun, but she picked her way through the desolation of the battlefield and the overturned camp as though at once utterly untouched by it . . . and yet stricken by its very existence.

He stared. Something about her . . . “Vanessa?”

“I . . . I think so.”

And when she stood before him, he understood the reason for her hesitancy. This was Vanessa, true: the same blond hair, the same brown eyes, the same curiously defiant set to her fine chin. And yet it was as if a veil had been torn from a window so as to let the sun stream through unimpeded. She seemed luminous, light, and there was a radiance in her eyes.

Christopher stared, then, almost afraid, reached out to her, touched her shoulder. Solid flesh and blood, but . . . something else, too.

“I did it, Christopher,” she said, and he heard in her voice another accent than that of Furze Hamlet. “I did it.”

“What . . . what did you do?”

She struggled with words, struggled seemingly with her body. “I changed the patterns,” she managed at last. “I did it like Mirya showed me . . . but this time I changed them for everyone . . . and I . . .”

She was shaking. She lifted her hands, stared at them.

“There were stars out there . . . and I used them . .