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He watched for the moment that Brother Geraldus, out of his mind with panic, fear, and frustration, grabbed young Diarmuid by the mantle, fists clenching that roughspun, soaked fabric. He’d practically lifted Diarmuid as if the boy weighed nothing. As if he could simply force him to obey.
The whites of the older monk’s eyes were starting to be bloodshot, and spittle gathered at the edges of his clenched teeth.
The older, wary man by the boat holding a sharpened hatchet bothered him less. That man was only protecting a livelihood from a wet, ragged, frightened group of strangers. Monk or no, costume or no, the man had a right to be cautious of the creature chasing them down. He had advanced on him at first, intending to put himself between the older man and the young monk, but sweet Diarmuid had pacified him with a simple hand to the chest.
What a wonder, this little monk.
Geraldus, however, was a spineless, prideful, disease of a man who happened to wear a habit and pontificate about his dogma. He’d never met a less Godly man in his life.
He’d watched Geraldus snap at being laughed at, at the men who had heard the plea ‘my friend will pay you once we arrive’ too many times in his career for it to be anything but a farce. That man, with his rough-hewn boat and his iron bell, adhered to the old ways. He did not care if a man was dedicated to Christ and the Father. He cared about coin and tradition.
The sudden switch in Geraldus’s demeanor, the shouting, the way he was abruptly pressing his face so close to Diarmuid’s… Even if they had paid, the pair of them would not have taken a madman on their little vessel. They would refuse and not remove their eyes until the four of them passed.
Geraldus was going to get everyone killed.
But his shouting was stirring things in the undergrowth, and while Diarmuid tried to pacify him, this grown man quaking in his skirts, he had to take his eyes away to see what else had taken notice. There was French, far away, but the sound echoed around them. He squinted and peered out at the body of water, hoping for movement. It was difficult, in the fog, but there was a shift that caught his eye.
The man with the hatchet had taken a step back toward his boat.
There was whispering, and then a sharp negative from Diarmuid, and he turned just enough to see the young monk’s chin turn up, his eyes hard, and he shook his head once as Geraldus cast one hand back in his direction. The mute, the man with no voice, could only imagine the harm that Geraldus was suggesting he do. How typical, the man willing to bathe anyone else’s hands in blood.
Diarmuid objected, again, and then Geraldus put his hands on him. Pulled him in close.
Brother Cathal murmured something, put a hand toward his bag, but the mute, the man who had no name, saw red.
Before he could stop himself, before he could think, his body moved on instinct. Muscles that he had been trying to condition to hard, simple work, honest labor, remembered the Crusades. They remembered the battles.
They knew what to do about a threat.
Brother Geraldus issued a short, spiked scream as his hands were parted from his body, the blood spraying Diarmuid across the face. His fingers tightened reflexively, catching in Diarmuid’s rough mantle before slackening and falling to the mud with fleshy thumps. Diarmuid’s mouth was open, lips drawn away from teeth made red with blood, but the mute couldn’t hear anything over his own heartbeat and intense focus. The pommel of the sword caught Geraldus in the nose once, twice, crushing the bone back into the brain, and his noise stopped mid-scream.
He didn’t hear anything but a high pitched whine, staring at the beaten face of the French monk, his ears ringing with something that sounded like an iron bell. He was breathing heavily, unevenly, and he stumbled slightly to the side. The body laid out on the boggy shore, his white cape sogging in the water. He’d soiled himself, and his body shook for half a second, tensing before he released and everything fell, blood pumping lazily from his wrists.
The man and his counterpart had thrown themselves into the boat and were paddling away as fast as they could, neither one looking back.
It had taken seconds.
A decision made in an instant, an old instinct risen up, the unshakable desire to protect…
Brother Cathal was looking at him with wide eyes, a leather bag in his hand. His jaw was working soundlessly, caught in a loop, as he tried to process the brutality he’d just witnessed.
Diarmuid was frozen, staring at him with something like wonder and something like terror in his face. His hair was clinging to his forehead, and his fingertips were touching one cheek, the other clutching the worn leather strap of his bag. He was covered in blood, and his hands were trembling.
They’d been making too much noise. They had to go. The boat was no longer an option, and a cursory glance at the reeds of the shore showed him that there wasn’t another waiting. He adjusted his grip on the sword that was starting to be sticky with drying blood. His feet shifted against the mud, and he took a step toward young Diarmuid.
The young monk flinched and stepped back.
‘He’s afraid of me,’ he thought, a sharp pain piercing his heart, and he looked away.
As he looked down, there was a faint whistle on the wind. The sound of something slicing through the atmosphere.
He jerked his gaze up, but he was too late.
The arrow hit Brother Cathal, who had closed his mouth but hadn’t looked away from the mute, in the back with enough force to burst through the front of his robes. He dropped the little leather bag in shock and fell to his knees in the mud.
Diarmuid gave a bleat of surprise and stumbled back again.
Again his body moved without his permission, water-logged boots sliding through the earth, and he clenched his teeth as he darted forward, grabbing Diarmuid firmly around the wrist. He jerked the young monk into a run, crashing through the undergrowth. They left the bodies of Cathal and Geraldus behind.
There were the sounds of pursuit, smatterings of French, but he pushed Diarmuid onto the nearest deer-trail he could find, the vegetation parted enough that they could get farther with less noise. Young saplings still whipped them in the face, but the trail was mostly packed earth and smooth pebbles.
As they ran, gasping for breath and Diarmuid stumbling on the edges of his habit, he realized he didn’t know what to do. Where to go. If they returned to the monastery, relic in tow, there would be retaliation. There would be consequences. They may even be turned away.
He had nothing from his old life to support them. Nothing but muscles that were eager to repeat the motions of slash, backstroke, parry, thrust, eager to destroy anyone that would threaten his own. Nothing but the support of men now dead, lost along their terrible, ill-fortuned pilgrimage.
They could not continue to Waterford.
They could not go to Rome.
He pushed himself harder, sword feeling heavier with each stride until Diarmuid tripped on an exposed root and slammed into the trail with so much momentum that he bounced, wheezing as the air was knocked from his lungs. He rolled into a laurel bush, the thick foliage keeping him from going farther. He curled into a ball, clutching his satchel against his stomach, and half-breathed, half-sobbed. He shoved one hand over his own mouth to stifle the sounds.
Looking around, his sword going up defensively, he listened.
Aside from Diarmuid’s wheezing cries, and his own heartbeat filling his ears, there was nothing.
No armored men coming through the brush. No heavy hooves on the ground, no baying of hounds. The air was free of the sound of talking, no hum of an arrow headed straight for his heart.
But he couldn’t relax, and they couldn’t stop. The skirt of his robe pulled up, he saw that Diarmuid had a long, nasty scrape on one knee, and the flexing of the joint would be painful for him. He was a monk, not a soldier. He was not conditioned to continue despite any flesh wounds. He would need rest.
He knelt down, close to Diarmuid, and tried to ignore the way he tensed.
Pulling his filthy hand away from his mouth, he slid one large hand against Diarmuid’s jaw. ‘We must go,’ he wanted to say. ‘I will protect you, I will keep you safe, but we must go.’ But he had taken a vow of silence, so he didn’t say anything at all. Instead, he locked eyes with him and rubbed one hand into his cheek, trying to lift the blood. His eyes must have held something, some emotion that Diarmuid recognized, because he relaxed and nodded, placing his own hand on top of the mute’s. He saw, now, that his palm was also scraped, and Diarmuid may have sprained his wrist in the fall. The joint was red and starting to look slightly swollen.
Breath shaking still, Diarmuid placed that wounded hand on his forearm and the mute tensed it, rising and bringing the little monk with him.
He placed one hand on his shoulder blade, pushing him ahead.
“I can’t run,” Diarmuid whispered, his voice full of pain. Looking down, past the blood that was dribbling down his leg, the mute saw that one of his sandals had ripped in the fall, and he was favoring that foot. If they were lucky, it was merely sore. If they were not, he may have twisted the ankle or broken a toe.
Not a soldier, he reminded himself.
He considered their options. Staying where they were was not one of them. He could not carry Diarmuid and hold the sword, he needed to be able to move to protect them at a moment’s notice. He would have to force the little monk to walk. He could not fully carry him, but he could support his injured side. He’d done it before, a long time ago, with men who were heavier and more cowardly. Diarmuid was looking at him silently, eyes wide with fear and face covered in coagulated blood and dirt.
Without waiting, he ducked, wrapping his right arm around Diarmuid’s ribcage, forcing the younger man’s arm up around his neck. ‘Together,’ he thought, desperately, and started to walk. It took a few steps for them to be in sync, Diarmuid sucking in a deep breath as he learned how to bear weight on his injured leg.
His sword still held aloft, fingertips digging into Diarmuid’s side, he lead them deeper into the forest, deeper into the dark. He would find a cave, find a hollowed tree, find a secure point to allow him to rest. He would protect him.
The ripped sandal stayed behind them, forgotten.