Cearball stands up to a man

Cearball’s first thought was that he could run for it. He had only to bolt straight ahead, and by the time the man turned the corner, he would already be safe in his room.

The thought shamed him, as his thoughts often did, but he was a man who excused himself any inner cowardice so long as he did not shame himself with craven deeds. He stood his ground, and he prayed he did not simply look foolish standing in the middle of a hallway.

Egelric walked to meet him with the slow swagger of a cat, though little of the cat’s grace. Cearball remembered Murchad’s advice about meeting black cats: there was no ill luck in it so long as the cat was the first to turn away its eyes.

Cearball stared.

“Lost?” Egelric asked him. “Your room’s that way. Unless you were looking for mine?”

“I know where I am going,” Cearball replied coldly.

“Ah.” Egelric hitched his thumbs over his belt and nodded. “Then carry on.”

Cearball grit his teeth and behind them desperately sucked his tongue, searching for something cutting to say. When it came to words, he was too stupid, too slow.

After an embarrassingly long silence, Egelric drawled, “Were you wanting to speak with me, then?”

His already imperfect Gaelic was slumping over into something frankly crude. It curled Cearball’s lip like a foul odor.

“Not at the present time,” he replied, clipping every consonant with the precision of shears.

“Ah.” Egelric nodded again. “At a later time, then, I gather. Still, I’m glad to be meeting you here, lad.”

“Are you, then?” Cearball sniffed.

“Aye, if you’re having a moment. There’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

Egelric still smiled, and he still kept his hands tucked harmlessly away in his belt, but Cearball was not fooled. His heart was already pounding, his lungs already drinking deeply of the air. This man was about to ask him whether he had slept with his woman.

“Have you, then?” Cearball hissed. “Then make swith with it.”

Egelric slid his hands down onto his thighs to prop himself up as he leaned his head and shoulders low. The glimpse Cearball had of his slight grin was like the long rows of pointed teeth on a trap that has already slammed shut.

“I’ve always wondered, lad…” Egelric murmured as he swayed near. He lifted his face just below Cearball’s chin and whispered hotly, “How do I taste?”

Cearball had been ready, but he had not been ready for that. He grimaced in disgust and shoved Egelric’s shoulders away with all the virility of an offended girl.

Egelric threw back his head and laughed aloud, and that was when Cearball punched him.

It was still almost a reflexive blow, but the distance from his shoulder to Egelric’s head had been precisely measured out by the gods to maximize the strength of his arm, and the long, laughing face made an easy target.

Cearball had thought he had hit more cheekbone than nose, but when Egelric lowered his hand Cearball saw it was bright with blood. Egelric threw wide his arms and leaned forward, either from dizziness or simply to keep the blood from dripping down the front of his clothes.

“Son of a – ”

Cearball lowered his head and charged between the outspread arms. Even with his shoulders squared and his neck braced, the pain of the impact was like a flaming hammer making an anvil of his skull, and a burst of sparks showering down his spine.

His head reeled when he stood, and if he had wanted to run to his room then, he would not have known down which of the dozens of wavering corridors to flee. Egelric was all he saw clearly: helpless and gasping like a fish. Cearball had made an anvil of the man’s breastbone, and his skull the hammer.

At such times Cearball was not a man to indulge himself in laughter. He had fought bitterly all his life, gritting his teeth to keep his craven heart in his mouth, and he had never found it amusing until after it was over. It was simply something he had to do.

His right hand groped the air until it caught a handful of Egelric’s tunic. One of Egelric’s flailing hands glanced off his nose, but Cearball was not foolish enough to defend himself against a defenseless enemy.

He leaned his weight far back over his hindmost foot, lightly pushed Egelric away with his right hand, and then launched himself at the man’s face, leading with his left fist. It sailed cleanly between the hands Egelric lifted too late, and slammed against the ridge of the cheekbone, followed by the full force of Cearball’s uncoiling arm and the weight of his lean body.

The impact was enough to knock the two of them apart, and Cearball stumbled back a few steps to breathe and collect himself. One of his knuckles had made an ominous pop, and several were already bleeding, but he had done more damage to his own fist than Egelric had yet done to him.

“So, you fight dirty,” Egelric growled as he wiped and patted and tested his wounds.

“Dirty!” Cearball panted. “You dare! I’m standing up to a man who is bigger than I and can hit me back! Striking a woman: that’s what I’m calling fighting dirty!”

Egelric snorted a spray of blood out over his mustache, and his look of outraged anger soured into something malevolent.

“A woman!”

“Aye, a woman! And whatever other ungodly things you were doing to her, you twisted whelp of the devil!”

“A woman!” Egelric growled. “That woman’s bigger than the both of us – don’t you see that, you fool? That woman hits back! She’s hitting me now!”

“What?”

Egelric moved so quickly Cearball only seemed to see a disembodied fist. He squeezed his eyes shut just in time for the side of his face to shatter neatly into all the sorts of pain he knew: a flash of bright blue light in his left eye, a crunching of bone, a crushing of flesh, a shearing of skin.

“And now she’s hitting you!”

Cearball opened his eyes and tried to focus. The left was slow to follow the right, and his body swayed between the two worlds he was seeing. The hands he lifted were meant as much to help him keep his balance as to defend himself.

“Don’t you see what she’s doing to us?” Egelric panted.

“What – ”

Egelric clenched his jaw until the muscles of his neck stood out like ropes, and his rows of jagged teeth seemed sharpened to sever rather than to trap. Cearball braced himself for a blow, but Egelric did not so much as look at him.

“If I see her again, I’ll kill her!” he snarled.

Cearball had heard men threaten murder so often that the words affected him no more than a bracing “Go to Hell.” On this man’s tongue, however, they seemed a premonition and a horror, like a black-​​skinned, horned devil stamping his cloven hoof and pointing at the ground.

Cearball wanted no part of such an affair, and nevertheless, as a gentleman, he could not let such a threat by.

“If you so much as touch her, I shall – ”

Egelric’s fist slammed into the side of his face and stopped him in mid-​​phrase.

He could not go on. His jaw felt as though it had almost been wrenched off, and his mouth was already filling with blood. His cheek was such a burning mass of pain that he could not tell where tongue ended and teeth began, but he feared he had less teeth now than a moment before.

He spat out everything he had in his mouth so that he would at least not swallow them. To his relief, it seemed only blood and the stringy saliva of a man whose mouth is dry from fear.

“Get out of here, you stupid twit!” Egelric panted. “Before she murders somebody!”

The blood that dripped from his mustache and the corners of his beard made him seem a predator surprised in the act of devouring its prey. His wild eyes made him seem a predator looking for another beast to kill.

Cearball tried to swing at him, but he nearly lost his balance merely drawing back his arm. He tried to curse him, but he could scarcely move his jaw in its hinge.

At last he simply tried to glare, but he soon came to the conclusion that Sir Egelric could not be matched when it came to glaring. Had he been a black cat, a man could starve to death on the spot and still the gaze of the narrow-​​slitted eyes would not fall. And as soon as the man did…

Finally Cearball turned unsteadily and staggered down the hall towards his room. He could not have run if he tried.