You don’t know dark till you’ve seen dark in the 13th century. Really dark. Scary dark. Can’t see the path, dark. It was fall, so it was considerably colder now than it had been during the day. Not freezing or anything, but enough to make me pull the coat I was wearing a little closer. The alcohol I’d drunk didn’t help anything.
I pulled a piece of protein out of the bag and ate it on the fly. No sense in letting hunger slow me down later. That’s when I stepped in it. A big warm pile of horse poo. I thanked every deity that ever existed I was wearing boots. The whole place sort of smelled like poo, so it wasn’t entirely inconceivable that I didn’t smell this particular heap of dung. But now that I’d stepped in it, I wasn’t about to walk around with it on my boots.
I sat down (carefully) and popped the rest of the protein in my mouth. I yanked the boot off and pulled up some grass and started cleaning. Ew doesn’t cover it.
I guess I was too preoccupied with my aromatic dilemma to hear them. They must have come from the woods behind me and been going at a pretty good speed because I didn’t realize the three of them were there till they were almost on me. Thank heaven they were running in single file because they probably would have had me right away if they’d all reached me at once. As it was, I swung the shit covered boot, a very handy tool indeed, at the first one’s head. It made contact, but because the boot was made of soft suede, not hard leather, it didn’t have much of an impact. It did, however, serve to stop his forward progress and cause the second guy to run right into him, knocking them both off balance and giving me the second I needed to get to my feet.
The third guy came around the other two and reached for me. I grabbed his arm and trapped it under my own armpit, twirled into him and smashed his face with an elbow. Glass jaw. He went down hard.
The other two had had time to recover and flanked me.
“What’re you doing here, lad. You can’t be up to any good traveling on this road at this time of night by yourself.”
Pot…kettle…I didn’t even bother to answer.
Because they had me on both sides, I needed one of them to make the first move. And, like the best of the old Keystone Cops silent vids, they did. With a completely indiscreet nod to each other, they closed in. Awww, come on, guys. Too easy.
The guy I shall refer to as Shitface, for obvious reasons, took hold of my right arm. And I let him. Matter of fact, I turned a bit and let him take hold of the other arm at a completely awkward angle for him, but which offered me a delightful amount of leverage to lift one leg and deliver a nasty kick to the stomach to, for lack of a better name, Not Shitface. Two down.
All I had to do now was lift my torso up and, because of the angle, yank Shitface off balance, pulling him in to me, where I had the fun job of smashing his nose with a head butt.
I knew I hadn’t knocked any of them out, so I needed to get away quick. Running down the road would be stupid. I was fast, but I didn’t know how fast any of these guys were and for all I knew they might have horses hidden. That pile I stepped in hadn’t made itself, after all. So I high tailed it into the woods.
I ran for about a hundred yards in a diagonal direction from where they were. Running straight seemed stupid, although thinking back, since I had no idea where they came from, I had no idea if I was running right into their camp. See what I mean about not being all that bright?
I found a very large tree and scrambled up it as quick as I could manage. Then froze. And listened. It’s not only dark in the 13th century, it’s very, very quiet. I could have heard them coming from a mile away. Then, it occurred to me, they weren’t trying to be quiet. One of the three yelled. Loud. I couldn’t make out the words, but I had a sinking feeling it was something along the lines of “Hey, other bad guys, single boy lose in the woods. Come and get it.”
From the opposite direction that the Three Stooges were coming from, I saw torchlight approaching. Fuck. This just wasn’t my night. Ok, stay still and quiet and they’ll pass. Yeah, nice thought. Except for the dogs.
Didn’t take those little bastards more than a minute to find me. The men took a couple of minutes more, but there ended up being six of them. Not terribly big guys, but six on one isn’t my favorite set of odds. I’m not Superman.
“Come on down, lad.”
“Not likely, big guy.” Well, the equivalent of that in Gaelic. “Why don’t you come up?”
“If I have to come up there, you’re going to regret it.”
Suddenly my head was filled with memories of my mother threatening my brothers and I when our play got a bit rambunctious. The woman was a saint.
“I’ll take my chances.”
If I could lure them up here one or two at a time, I might be able to knock a few out, leaving only three or four on the ground. A little more agreeable.
But, alas, that wasn’t how it was going to go down. One of them had a bow and arrow. It wasn’t a big tree, he didn’t have to try real hard. It hit me in the right thigh. Nothing more than a flesh wound, but hurt like hell, nonetheless. I let lose with a very bad word and grabbed my leg, leaving me only one hand and one leg to balance on. One nasty jab with a spear later and I fell the 15 feet to the ground. Didn’t do much more than knock the wind out of me, but four pairs of hands grabbed me before I had the chance to catch my breath. That’s when I figured it out. These weren’t bandits, they were soldiers. Well armed soldiers guarding the road.
They dragged me back to my feet. “I’m on your side. I’m trying to kill San Martin.”
They all stopped on that one. Then they all roared with laughter. Oh, yeah, I was on a comedic roll tonight.
“One boy, out to do what a prince and his army couldn’t do? And exactly how were you going to manage the feat, my good man?”
“I took you three out without a problem.” I couldn’t tell exactly who was who in the dark, but they knew who they were. One of the bigger guys in the group barked a laugh.
“Running from three men isn’t the same as taking out armed guards.”
“I didn’t run from them, I kicked their asses.” In the torchlight, I could see Shitface, blood still dripping out of his nose. “Tell them.”
“Don’t know what he’s talking about. Little bugger just got away from us.”
I moved suddenly enough that the guys holding me temporarily lost their grip. I grabbed Shitface’s coat and pulled him close to me. “Want me to show them how I did it?”
But instead of Shitface being scared, he looked surprised. “You’re a fucking girl!” Aw shit.
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