The Pact by Tom Durwood

Author:Tom Durwood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Empire Studies Press
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Ugh!” Leo splayed on the ground, his knife clattering.

“Give me that-- ” The first rider snatched Sheyndil’s bag from her arm.

“You can’t-- ” she protested.

“Yes, I can. I might take you as well, Princess-- ”

Gilbert stepped forward, hand on hilt.

“I am of the King’s Dragoons,” said he, inserting a common gerund between the word ‘king’ and the word ‘dragoons’ to indicate that he was there to give battle.

“Ah, yes, the Nursery-School Regiment. I have heard of it,” chuckled the first rider. “You must be out on maneuvers this morning. Great dangers lurk among the fruit stalls. Come a bit closer, Dragoon-- ”

A shadow fell sharply across the lane. The riders looked up, squinting.

“There is easier prey this morning, gentlemen …” said a low, threatening voice.

A tall man had stepped into the alleyway, inserting himself between the riders and the students. His broad sword blade flashed shiny and ready, in the sunlight, held at a most willing angle outside the man’s cloak.

“… Elsewhere than here.”

It was their chaperone, Master Jean Frestel, a man who had fought for the throne at Ramillies and Malplaquet, and in the Wars of Austrian Succession. In his left hand, he held a flintlock pistol, aimed squarely at the lead rider.

The Ovando rider paused.

“You wouldn’t shoot me-- ”

“Let’s find out,” growled Frestel.

He cocked the pistol’s flint, making a heavy click.

Leo snatched Sheyndil’s bag from the second rider’s gloved hand and hissed at the black horse, who started, confused by the sound.

The two riders glared, then thought better of it.

They moved on.

“Look to your school, young ones,” warned the first rider darkly. “You may soon receive visitors.”

Master Frestel guided the group quickly towards their wagon.

“Did you hear that accent?” the schoolmaster asked aloud. “Hungarians.”

“Ho, I look to the day we meet again, thou Hungarians! Thou brigands! Aaagh!” Leo called back to the departing horsemen, although he was now speaking in German.

“Oh JESUS of NAZARETH. Let me go and I will carve them like -- ACHILLES ABSENT is ACHILLES STILL! Do you hear me?”

He continued, inexplicably, in flawed Latin, to the effect that the noble blood in his and his friends’ veins traced back to Caesar, or at least the days of Caesar.

“What’s wrong?” Mahmoud asked Sheyndil, who had gone pale. “What is it?”

“I saw one of Tyomkins’ men,” she answered. “In the crowd.”

“Who is Tyomkin?”

“Catherine’s Minister of Agriculture, and a man who bears me only evil. It cannot be an accident that he is here.”

“Maybe they are just visiting the countryside,” offered Mahmoud, after a while, but no one believed it.

Soon Leo’s well-crafted shouts became lost in the clopping of the horses’ hooves on wood, as the wagon crossed the bridge over the river Allier.

“Any?” Will asked, of Gilbert. “Not any of our servants love us? Are you sure of that, Jeelbare?”

But Gilbert was done speaking for the day, so Mahmoud took up an explanation of the case for equality in the great brotherhood of man as the wagon rolled through the late morning sunlight. His pleasant voice

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