The captain gestured at the harbor, then shook his head. “Be impossible. A thousand miles or more, alone, in the dead of winter…crossing mountains…and rivers…hunted by kings and counts. No man could have made it. And even if one did, he’d be half-dead by now. Cold, hungry, broken, travel-worn.” His gaze slid across Tadhg, his voice slowing down. “On his last legs…in dire straits.” He looked into Tadhg’s eyes and swallowed visibly. “A desperate man.”
He’d nailed Tadhg down like a plank on a floor.
Tadhg slid his gaze back to the harbor. “If a man needed to cross the channel, and cared not for the means or the cost, is there nowhere he could go?”
The captain shrugged again. “St. Malo, maybe. It’s too big to shut down entirely, and there’s always some daring soul willing to run a blockade or do other sorts of devilry, isn’t there?”
He peered closely at Tadhg.
Enough. “My thanks for the information.” Tadhg flipped the man a coin large enough keep his mouth shut and turned away.
“They say there’s a reward,” the captain said to his back. “For the bandit.”
He stopped. “How much?” he asked without turning.
“Oh, a fair bit.”
“There are bits and then there are bits.”
“Fairer than most bits.”
Tadhg looked over his shoulder. “How much?”
“Twenty silver pennies.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “I’d turn in many a man for that amount.”
The gleam of a grin from the captain. “I’d turn in my mother.”
Tadhg grinned back. “I’d turn her in, too.”
The captain guffawed, then glanced over his shoulder at the nearest ship. A pair of soldiers was making their way across its deck in the moonlight, holding a man by the elbows, pushing him roughly before them.
“Ah, see.” Tadhg nodded toward the scene. “It appears they’ve caught their man.”
“Mayhap,” the captain said slowly, then grinned. “Or mayhap not.” His maritime gaze lifted over Tadhg’s shoulder.
Tadhg sighed once before unsheathing his sword and turning in a single move, just in time to catch the first of the three blade-wielding dockhands who’d co
me up behind him under the chin with the edge of his blade.
The miscreant stared in astonishment for half a second, then blood spurted out, and his body tumbled backward in the sea.
Tadhg’s sigh had been not so much preparation as weariness: he was sore weary of killing.
He drove forward at the other two, their smaller blades and goals no match for his warrior skills and utter determination. He backed one man up off the edge of the quay, where he fell with a splash. A wide, arcing swing sliced through the other man’s arm, spurting blood, and that was enough for him. He broke and ran, and Tadhg spun back to the captain, who was staring in slack-jawed in amazement, one hand grasping a knife, the other now raised in a supplicating gesture.
“Well now, sir,” he said in a high, wheedling voice. “I can see we misjudged you.”
“Most do,” Tadhg agreed. He held his sword in a straight line from his shoulder to its steely tip, which quivered an inch from the captain’s chest as he backed him up across the quay.
“Well, I’m always willing to admit my mistakes,” the captain assured him, stumbling as he went.
“That is good to hear. Drop the blade.”
The knife fell with a clatter.
“How can we settle this regrettable misunderstanding, traveler?” the captain wheedled, backing up slowly as Tadhg came forward. “I’ve money, contacts, any number of whores at the ready.”