Free The Harp and the Blade by John Myers Myers Page B

laughing at it, and Chilbert will hear about it.
    “Of course,” he added solemnly. “He’ll have the last laugh if Conan dies, though we’ve given out word that his wounds don’t amount to much.”
    The stew he heated for me was tasty and contained plenty of good venison such as I needed to replenish my drained blood supply. By the following morning I was able to hobble outdoors to lie with comatose gratitude in the warm summer shade. It did not seem possible to me that I had ever been or would ever again be capable of violence or swift movement. Not that I wanted to be, then. It was the ultimate luxury to lie still so that my wounds wouldn’t hurt and sense the richness July has to offer in blossom-flecked grass under a tree. Every time I thought of anything, which wasn’t often, I fell asleep.
    It is strange what things can satisfy a man when his cosmos is thus reduced, with emotion and action all but deducted from life. The small dramas of birds and insects could suffice to absorb and amuse me while I soaked up strength from earth, sun, and air, waiting for the rents in me to mend. At night the woodsman was adequate for my curtailed conversational needs. He seldom offered anything, but he could answer intelligently if I asked him a question.
    His name was Thomas, he had lived thereabouts always, and, unlike many another, he knew his country. From him I learned that I had strayed west and south again toward the Loire after having got lost, that Thomas’ house stood not a hundred yards from a stream that ran into the Loire, and that it was possible to follow the creek all the way down to the river in a small boat. I heard that possibly useful information without comment.
    Thomas may have had arduous duties at other times of the year, but just then his labors consisted of hunting and fishing, and I seldom saw him during the day. When I was capable of a little more exercise, however, he took the trouble to show me an old stone bridge where I had the choice of lounging or spearing fish. In view of my condition I was not quick enough to stab anything, but clear, shadowed water is soothing to watch.
    The old bridge had in fact been nothing but a couple of stone pillars for a long time, maybe since Rome. There was a ford near it where a horse could wade across, though, and a small barge which could be yanked to either shore by leather ropes for the convenience of walkers or horsemen who didn’t want to be splashed. Sometimes I’d sit in the barge and try to spear the fish that would pause to mark time in its shade.
    I was so engaged in the afternoon of the second day’s fishing when I heard horses chop-chopping along toward the opposite bank. As there was still a truce between me and Conan’s men I was not alarmed. Nevertheless, they might want to use the barge, so I got out and sat on the bank to wait till they’d passed.
    First two men came, then a girl; and behind her four other men. In spite of the fact that she looked hot and tired she was lovely. In addition she was the first woman I had seen since the fight, and I looked at her with that intense appreciation of the world’s beauties that is the property of one who has come very near losing sight of them forever. She dismounted, stepped to the fore, and then looked across to where I sat.
    No doubt my comfortable coolness annoyed her as much as my staring. At any rate she snapped an order at me with obvious assurance that I would obey and like it. “Hurry up and bring the boat over.”
    I picked out a tasty-looking bit of grass and stuck it in one corner of my mouth, “If one were observant,” I said out of the other, “one would see that it could be pulled across by a rope, wouldn’t one?”
    She looked startled at my snub but didn’t apologize for the manner that called it forth. She turned away from me to watch one of her followers haul the barge into position, but she hadn’t forgotten me. Just as she was preparing to step in she threw me a queenly