Free Swords From the Sea by Harold Lamb Page A

passed.
    "Hold, young sir. Thy name?"
    Except for the light sword at his hip and the old-style leathern buckler strapped over his back, the squire was unarmed. On one wrist was a hawking gantlet; his favorite gerfalcon perched on it, and a velvet wallet bearing food for the bird was slung over the other shoulder.
    "Stand back, knave," he made prompt answer in Spanish. "Loose my rein and curb your tongue to respect. Whose men are you?"
    The one who had spoken did as he was bidden, though sullenly. Thorne wondered how Spaniards came to be posted as a guard.
    "Signior, I kiss your hands," grinned the leader, "and would have of you your name. We are ordered to deliver a letter to a certain caballero who will pass through here."
    "I am Ralph Thorne. Is your missive for me?"
    The halberdier looked at his mates and then at the pavilions. "Ride on, signior," he responded. "Nay, go free, for all of us."
    Thorne, without a backward glance, struck into the highway and left the last of the hedge taverns of Greenwich behind. The mist pressed about the fields on either hand, shrouding the oaks that lined the road, and to rid himself of the morning chill he put his horse into a brisk trot. After a little he looked up from adjusting the hood tighter about the hawk, and listened.
    Then he reined to one side and half turned his beast so that he could see the road behind him, winding at the same time his cloak over his left arm. Another horse was coming up swiftly through the mist, and he had no wish to be stripped and perhaps knocked on the head by thieves.
    Seeing that the newcomer was a Spanish gentleman, mounted on a fine Arab, he was about to take up his reins again, when the stranger spurred his beast so close that Thorne's horse tossed its head and edged back, while the other shied.
    "Now out upon thee for a mannerless lout! " D'Alaber exclaimed. "To block the road against thy betters!"
    Thorne glanced at him swiftly, seeing under a plumed velvet hat a face small and white with intent eyes.
    "Nay, Sir Stranger," he laughed, "the shoe is upon the other foot. For a man who cannot manage such a mettled beast as that of yours is mannerless, indeed."
    The other smiled indifferently.
    "A pox on thy clownish merriment. Here's to requite thee for thy wit, my witless jester!"
    So saying he drew the long rapier at his hip and, bending forward suddenly, ran the blade through the falcon that, blinded by its hood, perched on the young squire's wrist. The hawk screamed and fell the length of its chain, its wings threshing. Thorne stared down at his stricken pet, and the blood drained from his face.
    "If you were Renard himself," he cried, "you should suffer for this."
    Whipping out his rapier, he shortened his rein and kneed his horse toward the other, who awaited his coming with the same indifferent smile.
    This smile stirred Thorne to recklessness; sheer anger made the tears come into his eyes and he attacked incautiously. A thrust of the long rapier through the cloak on his left arm brought him to his senses in time to parry the point that might otherwise have passed into his side.
    D'Alaber was a man of moods. His retainers at the highway gate could have disposed of the troublesome armiger without risk to himself, but he wished it otherwise. He might have shot Thorne with one of the pistols at his belt, yet he chose to rouse the boy and then to spit him with a certain trick of the sword that he fancied.
    The mist hid them from observers, and he could not dally because other riders might come up.
    So he engaged Thorne's blade, parried a hinge at his throat and whirled his point. But when his arm went out, the armiger had caught his blade and turned it aside.
    "A pretty conceit," muttered the squire, "clumsily executed."
    He warded a second riposte, and reined his horse nearer. "You should blindfold me, as well as the hawk."
    Now D'Alaber prided himself on his swordsmanship, which was more than good, and the gibe rankled. It was Thorne's trick to