Reuben awoke when someone emptied a bucket of ice-cold water in his face. He could remember pleasanter ways of waking up. There had been that one time with that serving-wench in Verona...

Ah well, that wasn't important right now. Not as important as the fact that his hands were tied behind his back, and there was a knife at his throat. The sharp end.

"Lando is very capable with a knife," he heard a cool voice out of the kaleidoscope of blinking lights that was his field of vision. "If you make any sudden movements, he will use it, have no doubt."

"While I'm tied up?" Reuben chuckled. "You must be scared enough of me to piss yourself."

"Well, let's just say that after seeing your performance in the camp, and after hearing wahat you did to my men on the river bank last night, I'm taking a few additional precautions."

Reuben heard steps approaching, and a face appeared out of the slowly fading lights as his eyes adjusted. He tried hard to make it out, but it was gloomy in this place, wherever it was. He tried even harder to remember where and especially when this place was. But everything remained a little fuzzy.

Was this the dungeon? After Palermo? The tournament... No. That had been years ago. And anyway, the walls of this place were made from cloth, not blocks of stone.

A tent?

The face drew nearer. Reuben could make out dark hair, and a neatly trimmed back beard that covered the lower half of the man's slim features. The beard was growing gray at the edges, and in the center of the face...

"Satan's hairy ass!" he whistled. "You've got a beastly beak!"

The man's eyebrow's lifted, one higher than the other. He didn't show any emotion, but Reuben's finely-tuned social skills told him that the fellow wasn't very pleased.

"A what, pray?"

"A beak. A conk. A big, fat turnip of a crooked nose. How did you get that? Lost a fight, did you?"

From somewhere else in the tent, Reuben heard a choked noise, like from someone trying very hard to suppress laughter. The face in front of him still didn't show any emotion. But there was a certain flicker in the eyes—a bit like the flicker in the eyes of demon of wrath—that made Reuben think he had hit the spot.

He grinned. "I thought as much."

Narrowing his eyes infinitesimally, the bearded man leaned even closer. "Maybe you should be a bit more careful with your words, considering the situation your find ourself in."

Reuben was just about to ask what situation exactly that might be when his eyes slid from the man's face and fell onto his surcoat: midnight black, with a cross and a silver falcon.

It all came rushing back: The robbery, the siege, Ayla... Satan's hairy ass, Ayla! Of course! He had been fighting to destroy the trebuchet. And if he had been captured, he knew who this man had to be.

Raising his gaze again, Reuben met the steady blue-grey gaze of his enemy. The Margrave stared back at him, appearing to want to pierce him with his gaze.

"The red knight..." he murmured. "So you're the man who killed a hundred of my best soldiers all by himself."

Reuben's grin widened. "Happy to have been of service, your Excremency."

And he spat the man in the face.

*~*~**~*~*

Hartung saw what would happen a fraction of a second before it did. He opened his mouth to shout a warning, but the Margrave had already gotten a load of spittle in his face. Slowly, he rose. Taking a napkin from a nearby table, he carefully wiped the liquid from his face. His eyes, blazing with fury, found Hartung.

"I thought," the Margrave von Falkenstein said, his voice dangerously calm, "that this creature is supposed to be a knight. I thought he is supposed to be the commander of the attack force that destroyed my trebuchet last night. What low-minded villain or cutthroat have you brought me instead?"

Hartung swallowed hard.

"Your Excellency, I swear that is the man you want. I saw him fight myself, on the bank of the Lunt River. He unhorsed Sir Ortwin in one go, and killed Sir Wracwulf and sir Wintar before we even got there. The only other person there was a green lad that couldn't possibly have planned all this. This man did. Whether he is a knight or not I cannot tell you."

The field marshall had to endure the Margrave's scrutiny for a few seconds longer, than his liege lord turned his hard eyes back on the tied-up stranger.

"Are you a knight? A man of rank and honor?" he demanded, sharply.

Hartung had expected the stranger to lower his gaze, or apologize for his impudence. Instead, he grinned even more widely.

"Go fornicate with yourself, you stinking pile of shit," he told the Margrave, cheerily. Hartung needed a moment to process the words and realize that he had truly heard them.

He coughed. "Um... well, I suppose that answers that question."

A muscle in the Margrave's cheek twitched. Hartung took a precautionary step backwards, as did the servants in the tent. Only Lando, who was holding his knife to the stranger's throat, didn't move an inch.

"I'm not so sure." Shaking his head, the Margrave went to one knee, to be able to look the kneeling, tied-up man directly in the face. "He has the manors of a flee-bitten pig, but that is not all that makes a knight. You said he fought the other knights?"

"Yes, your Excellency."

"With a lance?"

Hartung's mouth opened a fraction. "Y-yes, your Excellency."

"The weapon of a knight. And he handled it well?"

"Yes, your Excellency," Hartung repeated, keeping his private opinion, that it had been more than just 'well', to himself.

"I see."

Suddenly, the Margrave's hands shot forward and clamped around the stranger's throat, pushing the knife out of the way.

"Who are you?" he demanded, his voice colder and harder than the steel of the blade.

"You worst nightmare," the stranger rasped. "Straight from hell."

"Your name!"

"Go fornicate with yourself!"

"Oh no." Leaning forward, the Margrave lowered his voice, until it was nothing more than a soft whisper. "I think I prefer to storm the castle, and fornicate with a certain Lady."

The stranger didn't scream, didn't try to free himself, as Hartung had expected. Instead, he went deadly still, and his smile returned, with an edge of danger, as sharp as Excalibur.

"I will kill you first."

It wasn't a threat. Not even a prediction. It was a statement of fact.

Hartung felt something he hadn't felt in years: a cold shiver running down his back. What was the matter with him? He was standing here, a sword at his belt, and the stranger was kneeling, tightly bound and helpless. And yet, it was he who felt afraid?

God's teeth! He was a warrior, not a sniveling coward!

Then, Hartung caught a glimpse of the Margrave's face. It was just as calm as ever. Yet for a moment, just one moment, he thought he saw a flicker of uncertainty.

With a disgusted noise, the Margrave thrust back the stranger's head and rose.

"Excuse me, Milord?"

Hartung's eyes swept up to Lando. "Yes?"

"I believe I can tell you what you want to know. I heard the man shout his name to the other knights," the soldier told him. "down at the river bank, before he fell on them and started chopping off body parts. Rupert or Roric, or something like that..."

"God's hand!"

Hartung's breath caught. His mind flashed back to that day at the river, when the bridge had come crashing down. He had seen the knight in red armor that day, a color you almost never saw in the crests of the Holy Roman Empire. But he had been too slow and stupid to understand, to remember the rumors, just frightened whispers really, that he had heard on his travels and campaigns.

He took a step forward.

"Reuben?" His voice was low and hard, as if tensed for a battle. "Sir Reuben, the red robber knight?"

Sir Reuben grinned up at him, and there was not a trace of humor in his smile. His gray eyes glinted like steel in the dim light.

"Heard of me, have you?"

"You're the one they call 'the devil'!"

The prisoner raised an eyebrow. "Do they? I hadn't heard. Who gave me that charming nickname?"

"About half the people I've heard your name from."

"My reputation precedes me. How delightful."

"You know of this man, Hartung?" the Margrave cut in, looking between Sir Reuben and Hartung. The field marshal nodded, regarding his enemy with an entire new level of respect and trepidation.

"Yes, Milord. He's a notorious robber, killer and mercenary. The worst of the worst. You hear his name from time to time, when the men are in a festive mood and start to tell tall tales of witches and demons around the campfire."

"Witches and demons? The man is as human as you or I!"

Hartung snorted. "Not according to what I've heard some soldiers say. The way they tell it, he's a flash-eating giant, or one of the undead, possessed by a demon from the darkest pits of hell. One man who had too much ale in him actually swore to me he stuck a dagger in the fellow's sword arm, and he went on fighting, as if nothing had happened."

From the direction of the Margrave, there came a dry sound. It took Hartung a moment to realize that it was a soft chuckle. The Margrave, laughing?

The nobleman went to his knees in front of the prisoner again, and resumed studying him, his eyes now full of contempt.

"So... You're a demon. I have never met a real life devil before. Tell me, what is it like in hell?"

"The view over purgatory is beautiful. Of course it is sometimes rather hot in summer, what with the burning pits of torture and all, but all in all, it's quite nice, your Excremency."

The left corner of the Margrave's mouth lifted slightly. Then, his right hand shot out so fast you could hardly see it. It slammed into the Sir Reuben's head with enough force to knock it against the breastplate of the guard behind him.

Hartung had to hand it to him: the red knight didn't show the slightest sign of pain, or even surprise. He even managed to keep is insolent smile on his face. Yet Hartung was certain that this had only been a tiny taste of what was to come. If Hartung knew the Margrave, the red knight would stop smiling soon enough, and start screaming instead.

"I'm so glad to hear you enjoy hell," the Falkenstein whispered. "Because you'll be going back there very soon. Say good bye to the world of the living, demon."

The prisoner's smile, to Hartung's disbelief, widened. Was the man mad? "You don't believe that I'm a demon, do you. You're not afraid of me."

"No."

Leaning forward as far as his bonds allowed, the prisoner said in a soft voice: "You should be."

The Margrave, too, leaned forward, until their faces was almost touched, their eyes burning into each other. Hartung knew that right now, he would not have wanted to be in between those two. He had never aspired to being incinerated.

"No." The Margrave's voice was just as soft. "You should be. Do you know what you have done, Sir Reuben?"

"Something very bad, I presume. I always do."

"You have destroyed my trebuchet, the pride of my arsenal. You have laid waste to a large part of my camp and counting both the soldiers you yourself slaughtered, and the ones who died in the fire, you have killed over three hundred of my men."

The prisoner's gray eyes gleamed.

"Hm... The night has been quite a success."

"Not really. Not from your perspective."

"And how is that?"

The Margrave lowered his voice even further, until it was nothing more than the hiss of a snake. "Because, Sir Reuben, you are now in my hands. And I am very displeased with you."

"I wager you are. I assume you have some amusing plan in regard to me?"

"Amusing for me, yes."

"Please, do share."

"If I were you, I would not be so flippant."

"But you're not me, you foul-mouthed bastard son of a bitch. Now spit it out!"

So the Margrave told him. As he did, Hartung felt the color drain from his face. He knew the Margrave, and had expected a terrible death for the prisoner. But this... This went beyond the punishment of an enemy. To be used in death as an instrument for... No! He couldn't even think about it.

"So, my friend," the Margrave concluded, gently stroking the cheek of the stranger he had struck not five minutes ago. "You see, your life will find an intriguing conclusion. I promise you that before you die, I shall make you feel pain the like of which you have never felt before in your life."

Hartung gazed at the stranger, wondering how he would react. Tears? Pleas for mercy? Rage, even?

But the stranger just sat there for a moment, his head resting on his chest. Then Hartung heard a noise he would never have expected to hear in this moment: laughter. Throwing his head back, the prisoner roared, his whole body shaking with mirth as if he had heard the funniest joke of his life.

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Greetings, Milords and Ladies!

I think the Margrave is in for a surprise, don't you? i'm alread rubbing my hands in anticipation of that scene!

Farewell

Sir Rob

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GLOSSARY:

Excalibur: The legendary blade of King Arthur of Britain. Considering it could be stuck into and pulled out of stones, it had to be really sharp.