Harun admitted to himself that he had forgotten something. Logic and Maieutics were all very fine, but angelic patience was handy into the bargain. After breakfast next morning, he got rid of Sir Christian who was longing for some inspirations from the letters of St Paul by the excuse of having to cut his fingernails in order to be able to properly follow the line with his fingers and read to his lord.

Luckily, Sir Christian did not know all that much about reading.

Harun, his fingernails being in perfect condition, went instead off to all the different people who could possibly have ordered a sword from Henrik. One of the castle guards? They normally fought with spears or even stranger makeshift weapons Harun did not know the names of. But perhaps one of them had managed to scrape together enough money to buy himself a real, good weapon. After all, as a soldier you were expected to fight to the death, and it would be very nice if, with a really good weapon, you could arrange it to be the enemy’s death instead of your own.

However, the scribe drew a blank there.

Then he went to the cook. Maybe the man had ordered an extra-large piece of cutlery? Apparently not.

Then he went to Father Ignatius. Priests had been known to ride into war and fight in battle, had they not? But when he left there, a little hurriedly, he was absolutely certain that the priest had no sword. He hadn’t stuck one into Harun.

Perhaps it would be best to return to work now. Sir Christian would be getting… no, he would not be getting impatient. Sir Christian was patience personified – after all, it was a Christian virtue. But even he might start to wonder after half a day or so what Harun was doing. Maybe.

When Harun arrived at the Scriptorium however, Sir Christian was no longer there. Strange. Where could he have got to? A noise came from above. From lord’s chambers? Maybe he was up there again, trying to decipher the bible for himself.

Harun was, in a way, a compassionate person. He turned and made his way up the stairs to come to the rescue. Yet this did not appear to be necessary. As he neared the room, the scribe could make out that the noises coming from above certainly did not originate from books. He heard scraping, then a loud clash and a bang.

He stepped onto the landing before the door – which, at this precise moment, flew open.

A giant of a warrior was standing in the doorway, helmeted, clad in armor, a naked, rusty old sword in his hand. The light of the faint, gray autumn sun sparked a deadly glitter on the darkened chain mail. The warrior stepped forward, sword raised.

Harun gave a yelp and stumbled backwards. Only a reflex movement of his long, strong fingers clasping at the last moment unceremoniously at the head of a small statue on the wall prevented him from falling backwards down the stairs and bashing his intellectual head in.

“Please…” he whimpered. “No… I…”

The warrior raised his sword hand a bit further. With it, he opened his visor. “I see you are finished with your preparations, Harun. Did you try to find me downstairs? I hope you have not been waiting for me.”

It was Sir Christian. Harun gaped at him.

“M-milord?”

“I thought I’d come up here and try this on while you were busy. Strange, it fits me as though no time had passed…”

“Milord?”

The lord shook his head sadly. “And I will be needing it soon enough, I am afraid. How sad this is. For years and years I did not have to wear the garments of battle. I had hoped to be able to discard them altogether. It is the duty of a Christian to love one's neighbour, not to slay them. But what shall one do if the neighbor does not love you?”

He sighed heavily, as though this was meant to be a general philosophical statement and not a question.

Harun couldn’t think of an answer anyway.

“Sir Christian…” was all he managed to utter. “Your… your sword…”

“Yes it is a bit rusty, isn’t it?” Again, the lord heaved a heavy sigh, the weight of the unchristian world on his shoulders. “If even you, my good scribe, can see that I am glad to have ordered a new one. With all these raiders scavenging the land, I shall have need of a good blade before long.”

“You…ordered a new sword,” Harun said faintly. “From whom?”

“Why from Henrik, of course. Maybe you do not know him, he is the smith down in the village.... Quite a nice man, and made me a very reasonable price, I must say.”

*~*~*~*~*

Sir Christian.

Harun still felt he should clip himself round the ears. But he didn’t. It was so obvious it had been too obvious. Who would buy a sword if not a knight and lord of a castle? But if you thought of a knight in shining armour, and then thought of Sir Christian of Sevenport in ecstasy of St Augustine, and then tried to combine the two images, you hit on some serious mental trouble. He just wasn't the sort of person you would ever imagine with a sword in his hand.

‘Which goes to show,’ thought Harun, ‘that everyone has more than one side. And that for logic to deliver results, you must have a brain capable of thinking. Even I have more than one side. I am a learned scholar, and an absolutely unredeemed idiot.’

When had he last seen Sir Christian in armor? He realized that he never had. He shivered. Whatever the future held for Henrik or for Harun, the future for Pomerania did not look all that promising. Even an idiot could read the signs.

The clanking from inside Sir Christian’s rooms stopped. The lord stepped outside, dressed in his usual simple clothes. “Enough of this. Let us leave behind the cares of the world, and gain insight into the ways of the saints.”

“Yes,” Harun replied automatically. “Let’s.”

He followed Sir Christian downstairs and paid no attentions to his lord’s rambling about Saints and Martyrs. The only man he was thinking of at the moment would certainly fit neither description. So it was true. Henrik had been in the process of making a sword, when Lukas… well, when he did whatever he did to get himself murdered. And with a weapon ready to had and an unsuspicious way to get rid of it, the temptation had just been too great. Thus the villainous smith had stooped to murder.

What now?

Harun had to put aside this question while he was reading to Sir Christian. But there really was only one answer, he knew that well enough. Now that he knew for certain the murder weapon was there, he had to gain entrance into the smithy and search for the sword. With luck, there would still be some blood on it.

Harun shuddered. For once, he was glad of the reading he had to do. A reading in which many things – sacrifices, faith, boredom – played a role. But never scribes coming to sudden and violent death.

*~*~*~*~*

Harun waited until the guards which were to be posted at the edges of the village had left the castle. Then he ventured down to the gates himself. Wenzel was on guard. When he saw Harun, his face fell.

“Oh, it’s you.”

“My apologies,” said Harun. “If my presence is this detestable to you, I will take myself off.”

“Oh no, I didn’t mean that. I only…I only meant…”

“…that you were expecting somebody else?”

Wenzel’s face acquired a deep reddish glow that was not entirely due to the red flicker of the torches around them.

“Dunno what you mean.”

“I am sure I do not either. If you would take a piece of advice, next time pick a more romantic spot for a tryst. There is a small, secluded place with beautiful flowers just east of the castle, overlooking the river which I could recommend. I sometimes sit there, thinking. But only in daytime. I am an early-to-bed, and you will have plenty of time to yourselves.”

“I.. you got me wrong, I…”

“It is not really that important.” Harun smiled. “I had come because of something else, anyhow. Will you let me out, min fadlak?”

He had prepared the ground well, but not well enough. Wenzel’s eyes flickered. All of a sudden, the atmosphere was changed.

“Why?” The question came quietly, solemnly.

There was nothing for it but the truth now.

“I have some errand at the smithy.”

“No. Not that again.”

“Yes, that again Wenzel. Again and again, until this business is ended.”

“Until Henrik’s dead, you wanted to say.”

“If he should prove to be the one, that is only…”

“I tell you Henrik had nothing to do with it.”

“And I tell you he is the only one who could possibly have had something to do with it. Logic dictates it. Now will you let me pass?”

Wenzel did not reply at first. For a moment, Harun thought he was not going to reply at all. But then the guard took a deep breath.

“Yes, I’ll let you pass. But not because I believe you. I’ll let you pass because you’re my friend, and I’m in debt to you for more than one thing. But listen to me, Harun: whatever your logic says, Henrik is a good man. A drunkard, and a bit of a pompous ass, but a good man, not a killer. Now go off and do whatever you have to do. I’ll wait for you and let you in again.”

The side gate creaked open, and Harun stepped outside into the darkness, heading towards the village for what he hoped would not only be the third, but final time.

*~*~*~*~*

The Smithy was dark and silent. Was there nobody in or were they all asleep? Harun would have wagered that if Henrik already were asleep at this time, it would be with his head on a tavern table, not on a cushion. But there were others in the house acting not quite so obliging, were there not?

The apprentice, the boy, and, if one was not to extrapolate from Henrik’s vinous exploits onto his entire moral standards, a wife which at the same time was the mother of said boy. What Harun needed to do was the following: to break into the house and rummage through a heap of metal goods without making a sound, find the sword he was looking for and examine it in a pitch-dark room for signs of blood, and, if he found any, take it with him as proof without the smith noticing.

The scribe prided himself on his ability to solve all problems through logical thinking. This one, however, seemed to require something more than that.

Well, it could not hurt to take a look.

Harun ventured forward. In the faint moonlight, the door was just visible. It had no handle and no lock. He pressed his hands against the wood, but it did not move. Ah. The first part of the problem.

The scribe bent down and squinted through the narrow gap between door and frame. Nothing was really visible, he just thought he could make out a strip of black even blacker than its surroundings. A bolt, maybe?

Carefully, Harun stretched his little finger into the gap, feeling for the bolt. The door moved and the gap grew slightly, but crucially thinner, squeezing down painfully on Harun's poor finger. Harun clapped his free hand over his mouth to stop himself from screaming. He had come to pinch something – his finger was not exactly what he had had in mind, however.

When he felt it safe to free his hand because the pain in his finger had subsided from the unbearable to being only terrible, he gripped the door with his free hand and tried to make the gap wide enough to remove his trapped finger.

He moved and turned it in every direction, but it just would not get free. Then he felt something cold against the tip of his finger. Was it already squashed and he was losing his feeling? An unspeakable thought! What good was a scribe without his fingers? He gripped his trapped hand with the other one and wrenched it out of the door with all his might. The cold feeling disappeared immediately – and a soft clinking could be heard from the other side of the door.

Harun did not pay attention to it. He was busy sucking at his mangled finger, and praying to Allah that it would work better than it felt at the moment.

A light breeze swept through the half-timbered houses. Under Harun’s amazed gaze, the door before him was swept open.

Inside, a metal bolt was lying on the floor.

*~*~*~*~*

One of the positive aspects of being a secret nightly intruder is that no one would ever find out how one had managed the intrusion. Nobody, for instance, would ever laugh himself silly at the fact that Harun had opened the door accidentally while squashing his finger. This was such a big comfort to Harun’s self-esteem that it almost made up for the stabbing pains in his little finger.

The scribe stood in front of the silent house, wavering and wondering. Should he enter?

Of course he should, that was what he had come for, was it not?

Yet, illogical though it undoubtedly was, there seemed to exist a difference between recognizing the necessity to do something dangerous and actually doing it.

A ray of moonlight fell between the clouds and through the open door. Something glinted in the room beyond. Something made of metal.

Harun pulled himself together. Now was the time to do what he had came for. The only time, the only chance. So why hesitate, even if he was horribly terrified?

He entered, and the clouds above chose just this moment to move before the moon again and block out its light. Harun was left in darkness. Since he was a sensible man, he did not start to panic. It would not have been very reasonable to start something you had already been doing for the last ten minutes or so all over again, now, would it?

He stretched out his hands, carefully, touched something hot, and yelped. Quickly he stuck his hand into his mouth. It would be a miracle if nobody had heard him. He listened intently. No sound came. Nevertheless, he wasn't doing very good so far. Two fingers injured in five minutes. If he kept on like this he would have to excuse himself from work the next day. One squashed, the other… burned? What was there to burn one's finger on in a house at night, when everyone was asleep?

Carefully, he wrapped his hand in the long sleeve of his robe, and stretched it out again. Even through the wool he could feel the warmth, and the roughness of the metal. Of course! The door to the… what was it called? Forging oven? The thing smiths melted metal in, anyway.

Harun had an idea.

With even greater care, he drew back the bolts that were holding the door in place, and opened it. The heat that erupted from inside singed his curly hair, and hastily, he took a step backwards. But his hopes were not disappointed: the hot charcoal within still gave off a faint red glow, illuminating the room.

So his logic thinking was good for something, after all.

After the darkness that had filled the room before, the red glow was almost too much for Harun’s eyes. He blinked and looked around him – and saw, on the wall, lying on a shelf, a long, glinting, steel sword.

He had not really expected his task to be that easy. In fact, in spite of all the thinking put into the matter, he now realized he had not expected to find a sword at all. He had hoped, that Wenzel might be right, that this man with his little morale faults, his little son and big, boyish apprentice was as innocent as the day was long.

But the day was long over, it was night now.

Slowly, the scribe stepped nearer, eying the blade with the air of a musician inspecting an angle iron – something he knew nothing about, and he might have great reason to fear, if it fell into the wrong hands. Harun reached up, wanting to touch the blade with his fingers. His hand stopped in mid-air. No. To damaged fingers were enough for one night. The blade looked very sharp. Sharp enough for murder.

Could it have been this sword that had stabbed Lukas to death?

Harun admitted to himself that he could not really tell. After all, he had not been in the mood to take measurements of the wound that night in the chapel when he had examined Lukas' corpse. But he felt all too sure that it could very well have been.

Though there was one point in Henrik’s favor: there were no bloodstains on the sword.

Harun shook his head, appalled by his own lack of earnestness. Naturally it would have been no problem for Henrik to clean the blade after the deed, standing next to a well with bucket and rope at the ready. It could hardly have been his intention to deliver the blade to Sir Christian with dried blood on it, as proof of quality. Honestly!

He breathed in deeply. No, there was no escaping it. Henrik the smith was a murderer, and he would have to be brought to justice whatever the cost would be.

Harun securely shut the oven door before he left, making sure no coals fell out that could set the house on fire. After all, of all the people in the house, he planned for harm to come to only one.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Harun is taking some action! What do you think? Is Henrik the murderer? ;)

Since we are slowly approaching the end of this story, I'd like to hear your opinion on what I should do next. Should I do another historical fiction, or wouldn't you, my readers, like that?? :)

Feedback would be very appreciated!

Cheers

Robert