by David Keck
Durand found himself staring up into the grinning face of Leovere’s pet brigand, Morcar the Toad. Worse, someone had dressed the creature in a knight’s surcoat—mustard bright—and combed his lank hair. His mustachioed cur of a comrade stood at his side.
“Sir Durand,” purred Morcar, his face shining with grease. “Is that surprise I see on your face? Is it my costume?”
Durand curled his lip. The linen of Morcar’s surcoat was divided down the middle white and yellow—silver and gold—and charged with the heads of three black dogs.
“I’d only just begun to introduce myself before that unfortunate fit of temper of yours. I’m Morcar of Downcastle; Baron, as was my father before me.”
Downcastle was a substantial holding on the far side of Yrlac, and it seemed that Morcar had stayed clear of Abravanal’s court these last ten years. The thought of Morcar in command of such an honor caused Durand to laugh: a puff through his nostrils.
“And this is my cousin, Sir Baradan of Stonebeck, a kinsman and liegeman both. He fought at the Siege of Acconel, and at Ferangore.”
The soldier with the boar’s-bristle mustache bowed mockingly in the face of Durand’s frown. “Thought we had you lot both times,” the soldier said.
“Seems we let a few too many get away,” Durand answered. Now it was his turn to be clever. “But all of that is long ago. We are liegemen of Duke Abravanal now. A happy family. I am surprised not to have seen a fine pair like you at court in Acconel.”
“It is a great distance, you understand.”
“A mercy,” Durand said.
Morcar smiled. “I look forward to meeting you on the field, Black Durand, but I don’t see what old Ragnal is thinking with all this. How can we cow these Marchers here when we are afraid to fight with bared steel? If you had not lost your pack train in the mountains, I hear we would have been fighting with whalebone and gilt leather. Or battering each other with brooms. These Marchers will quake with laughter, not fear.”
“Blunt will be enough,” said Durand.
Morcar sneered. “I will make do with what I’m given. May Heaven stand by you, Champion of Gireth.”
As Morcar and his henchman strolled off, the great flock of starlings rose among the trees, storming in a vast, sinuous cloud from resting place to resting place.
“Host Below,” muttered Berchard. “I don’t much like the sound of your new friend, I’ll tell you that for nothing.”
“I nearly dropped him from Pennons Gate.”
“Nearly? We all have things we regret,” said Berchard.
Almost before Durand could finish, the tables were gone and the field was ready for the fight.
* * *
THE STARLINGS CHURNED in the canyons of the forest as the combatants broke into two companies on opposite ends of the great clearing below the Lindenhall. Stallions thrashed their heads in the heavy air. Grooms ran with lost gear. And the mossy trees all around the field rose like the walls of some vast arena as heralds, nobles, and five hundred Marcher men and women gathered to witness this demonstration that the King of Errest the Old was king in Gireth too—and in the Marches of Fellwood.
Durand took a place near the north corner of the vast rectangle, ignoring a pair of Rooks clattering among the branches. Ailric eyed the creatures, but he had found a half-dozen good straight lances, each with a blunt little tournament crown where the blade should be, and Durand weighed one in his fist. When he’d ridden from Acconel, tournament fighting had been the last thing on his mind, and so he was glad to have the lances—and lucky indeed that he had carried a coat of mail at all. There had been no sense in bringing the thing—not to race after a runaway girl. He’d likely been thinking of Yrlac and the raiders even then.
One of the Rooks cawed in the trees as the starling multitude swarmed past.
Durand worked his jaw with a crunch of chain links as Berchard tried to chat with Ailric. He had the boy by the wrist, but Durand paid attention only to the opposing camp. Despite a valiant effort on the part of the heralds, all of Leovere’s men would ride together. But it was in the Atthian nature: cousins fought alongside cousins and liegemen under their lords. And so Leovere sat at the head of a small army of mercenaries, exiles, and Yrlaci malcontents, like the brass handle on a boiling kettle’s lid. The two camps faced each other, fingering hardwood blades and blunt lances.
A commotion closer to home drew Durand’s attention. Red-haired Raimer trotted into the lists, facing Durand.
The man straightened. “Sir Durand Col.” And Durand nodded, unsure of the man and this sudden formality as conversation faltered among the knights around him.
“It saved the old man, pushing through the pass. And there’s more than one of us would have dangled Morcar by his ankles.” At Leovere’s end of the clearing, Durand could see the toad, Morcar, laughing among his men even then.
“I had this among my packs,” said Raimer. He produced a good steel helm: more the sort of thing used in war than in a pageant like this. Raimer turned the thing in his hands, looking into the empty face of it. “It belonged to a kinsman of mine. I had few things of his when we set out from Wrothsilver. We think he fell. In any case, you must have it.”
With a lifted chin, the man tossed the helm across. Durand caught the thing at the last instant and gave Raimer a startled, solemn bow. There was a strong stirring of mutters as Raimer answered and returned to his men. Perhaps, he was not the fool Durand had thought him.
A fanfare rang out from the reviewing stand that stood where the two companies must soon collide. Durand peered down the rectangle of turf between him and the dignitaries, and saw Sir Coensar in his azure surcoat of terns.
“His Grace has asked if I’ll lead you all in an oath of fellowship, and I am honored,” he said. The duke raised his chin with a fierce expression. “But,” Coensar continued, “I would pass this honor to another who will fight in these lists today.” His eye flashed like a spear point and he turned to the Yrlaci side.
“Sir Leovere. Please.”
A murmur circled the clearing. The duke’s mouth opened in outrage, and Leovere’s men looked from one to another. Durand had to clap his own mouth shut. But Leovere made no show of surprise. The Horn of Uluric glinted at his hip, and a breath of wind played among the high branches around as he reined in his charger.
“Well enough. Ladies. Gentlemen,” he said. “It is rare that so many peers of our kingdom stand together in such a place.” He waved at the gaping colonnades of shadowy giants all around. “This forest. The trees. We must pray that this day’s sport may forge a bond of fellowship and goodwill between we who have gathered here, wherever we were born. We are knights. We are peers of Errest the Old, the kingdom of the Cradle’s Landing. May honor be shown to all and by all whatever the place of their birth! May the green shoot of a new peace be planted here in the midst of this great forest.
“And now, we will speak the oath under Heaven.”
The crowd of gawkers climbed to their feet as Leovere drew his sword, followed by scores of others at both ends of the lists. The Eye of Heaven kindled the blades. “By the Host of Heaven and my sword, I swear to abide by the peace of this meeting and to bring honor to this gathering.” No blades. No points. Peace, not war. “Before you all, these things, I swear!”
And the ranks thundered back, “As do we all!”
And there was Leovere, unflappable, the hero. Blades flashed on both sides of the clearing.
“Ah,” said Berchard. “Here come heralds to mark out the lists.”
“It is Kandemar himself,” said Ailric.
“Aye, it is. More doom for Heremund Skald.”
Kandemar the Herald strode into the clearing with a gaggle of local heralds trailing behind. They carried a bundle of stakes to mark the bounds of the lists, beyond which no combatant would fight. Without even a glance, the gaunt Herald snatched a stake.
“That stake will be aspen,” said Berchard.
Durand glanced at Berchard. He could not tell one green
stick from another.
“I spoke to the local men,” Berchard explained. “I am not fighting, but the business of the markers … I could not let it pass.”
With the local heralds crouched like acolytes about an altar to steady the stake, Kandemar held out his hand for a long-hafted maul and hammered the thing home. As the maul struck, every one of the ancient trees shivered. The Herald struck again—a thousand trees. And again—ten thousand. It was a great, rising whisper that seemed to take the air out of Creation. And with the fourth blow, the whole of the Fellwood quaked as though the trees were hissing a warning one to another.
“Aspen, for remorse,” breathed Berchard. The long-legged Herald was already on the move, walking across the face of Leovere’s company toward the distant southern corner of the field. “Struck four times in the west.”
“Now, the south,” said Berchard, and the Herald drew a knobbed stake, taking an extra flash of his knife to satisfy himself of the point. While the startled band of heralds crouched around the thing, the Herald of Errest raised the maul once more.
“Blackthorn for doom,” said Berchard.
And the maul struck.
Now, the Fellwood roared. The stake struck deep, but the whisper of shaking leaves that had arisen with the aspen stake now roared with the blackthorn. A wind had taken hold of the trees, and now it battered men and horses in the field.
But the Herald paid no heed to the commotion. He turned toward the eastern corner and the men of Gireth, though the wind tore at his long cloak. The bravest of the lesser heralds chased him with a third stake, which had Berchard raising the fist and fingers sign of Heaven’s Eye. “Elder! Grown in blood. The battlefield root. The poison tree. The stinking leaf. The hollow limb. Dead and living. Living and dead.”
Durand looked at the old knight, but Berchard could not turn from the Herald.
Kandemar waited as his men crouched around the elder stake. The wind threw the towering Herald’s mantle over his face, but the man only batted the thing away and hoisted the maul yet again, swinging against the gale with all the force of his long limbs.
And, this time, the stake burst like a rotten log. For an instant, the wave of alarm down the face of the Gireth line obscured what had happened. But when Durand could see again, he found that not only had the hollow wood snapped, but it seemed to have overflowed: a fountain of writhing complexity boiled from the broken shaft. “Spiders,” said Ailric. “Thousands. More than thousands.” It was as though the Herald had tapped some vast cavern of the things beneath the forest. The heralds tumbled back, swarming with the things. Choking. One man collapsed, caught in clouds of pale web, drowning on the field as the rest rolled and pounded at their tunics. Not a knight alive would enter the lists to help now.
Leaving all of this in his wake, the Herald continued his march around the bounds of the lists, this time empty-handed and alone. He walked down the line of Girethi horses, stalking toward Durand and the final corner of the lists. Berchard’s eye was wide as the Herald drew closer. Durand had ridden with the Herald for so many days, he had all but forgotten that this pale man had lived many lifetimes and walked the Halls of Heaven. Now, gaunt as something from the tomb, the Herald stood at Shriker’s muzzle and reached out.
As the wind roared, the Herald snatched the lance from Durand’s hand. Was this to be the final stake? What could such a thing mean? But the Herald would not answer—could not answer since the day when he had passed the Gates of Heaven. He raised the thing in his two fists and drove it down, crown-head-first into the sod, almost at Shriker’s feet. The shaft broke with a crack like thunder and the lance burst into splinters that struck blood from the Herald’s fists. The man turned toward Durand, his hands open and full of blood. A ragged gash on his forehead bled from temple to temple like a crown of garnets.
“Your lance. Ash,” said Berchard. The Herald looked on. “The spear, the axe, the warrior.”
“Broken in blood,” supplied Ailric, and Berchard peered up at Durand with horror. “A crown of blood.”
“Aye,” said Berchard, “all of that, as well.”
And the wind roared on, storming over the trees, as the Herald turned once more. Upon the dais where Coensar, Abravanal, Almora, and Deorwen sat, the Battle Horn of Errest gleamed. The Herald stalked from Durand, finally taking up his horn, and waiting.
Somewhere among the trees, Durand heard the Rooks crying, “Haw! Haw! Haw!”
Durand took a moment to unbuckle the sword he carried. “Berchard, here. Hold this for me.”
Berchard fumbled at the big sword. It had belonged to a friend of theirs once. The thing was tangled up in memories.
“Is this Ouen’s sword that Coen gave you?”
“Hold it. They’ll have my head if I forget.”
There wasn’t a lot of motion on that tiltyard. In the face of so many prodigies, every man felt as though he had been served up on some vast altar. But, finally, the facing companies awoke. They scrambled to dress their lines with every trapper and surcoat flapping like a living thing. A lance appeared in Durand’s fist. He seated his borrowed helm and groped to find the balance of this new lance while the Herald looked out over them all and raised the horn.
Durand felt his heart hammering like the Herald’s maul. Leather creaked in his fists, here where Godelind of the Lost Princes lay down to die among the lindens.
It should only have been another tournament, but the Herald sounded the horn, and its silver note leapt up to pierce the wind and thunder, so high and so sharp that every man of Atthian blood set his spurs—all shock and astonishment banished in an instant.
They thundered out, warhorses jostling at the gallop like hogs down a chute. Durand was one of few who rode without a pack of close friends all around him. But when he and Shriker struck the enemy lines, Durand’s lance punched a blue-clad Yrlaci from his saddle as neatly as the hand of the Creator.
The crowds crashed and wheeled. Durand rode Shriker pell-mell, bolting among the brawling knights, forgetting himself in the fury of the thing. Men and horses pounded between the trees. Claw-headed lances tore men from saddles. But, after a second and third roaring onslaught, two hundred small battles tangled the two companies beyond unraveling. Lances snapped underfoot and the hardwood blades began their brutal work.
Blunt weapons loosened teeth and sent stars spinning through the heads of many men. Durand roved the lists, striking at anyone from Yrlac. But, far too soon, he found groups banding together to face him. A bar of blunt steel rang from his helm. Then a hardwood blade cracked over his elbow—and Durand saw Morcar the baron pointing at him across the press, face bare and sneering a wry “hello.” It was a trap. The men around him were Morcar’s raiders. The devils had him alone, and surrounded.
Blows hailed down, stamping him this way and that as he roared. But, though he struck back, he could not bull his way out. Lights flashed, he tasted blood, and he would have fallen but, suddenly, a sound like an avalanche of iron crashed into the men around him and Durand tumbled free. A squad of friendly horsemen had charged into Morcar’s little scrum and, as the Yrlacies scattered, Durand found himself face-to-face with Raimer. The man laughed, though there was blood on his lip when he tipped back his helm. “The fight follows you, Sir Durand. Do you mind if my Swanskin lads ride with you a while?”
“You are welcome,” said Durand, and he heartily meant it.
It was as handsome a rescue as a man could wish, and so Durand fought alongside Raimer’s squad, battering the enemy, and forgetting all omens until Morcar took his second crack at revenge—this time with greater subtlety and force.
In the spinning fight, Durand found himself at the rear of Raimer’s squad when a pack of Morcar’s raiders launched itself at Raimer. Later, Durand would see that this was only the first of Morcar’s moves. As the men of Raimer’s squadron leapt to defend their lord—Durand included—Morcar sprang a simple trap: a second gang of raiders plowed into Raimer’s squad, driving a neat wedge of men and iro
n between Durand and the rest of Raimer’s men.
Durand was alone and surrounded before he realized. In a real battle, he would have been butchered. Shriker lunged left and right, but could not break free. Durand found himself driven far from the castle and any onlookers, back against the forest edge where stakes of fresh-cut bush jutted by their hundreds. Shriker reared. Blows stamped down, flashing in Durand’s skull, thrashing him like a straw doll. Finally, he pitched out of his saddle, landing explosively on one shoulder.
Hooves stabbed all round him with Shriker plunging in terror and half a dozen knights right on top of him. Something pinned his gauntlet to the earth for an instant, then set him free. Durand crashed into the face of the hedge. White tines of thorn and hardwood dug at his face and arms. A blow against the top of his helm half choked him. There was laughing and whooping everywhere.
Durand tumbled into an open space and, wild with pain, turned on his attackers. Knights were barging through the brush on every side. Some had their helms back, exposing laughing faces. Then there was Boar’s Bristles—the name was lost—beaming down, a lance held overhand, ready to spear Durand like a beast.
But, against one of the trees, the foresters had left their tools: billhooks, one with a three-foot haft and a hooked cleaver-blade a foot long. Bright edges curled round the blade’s brown face.
As Boar’s Bristles reared back, Durand caught hold of the bill and, in one wheeling arc, whipped the thing high. The blade—suited to hacking the limbs from trees—caught its victim below the ear, half-beheading the man.
As Durand’s victim toppled, the man’s stunned friends gaped at Durand, certain murder in their eyes. And so Durand leapt for the dead man’s horse. The frantic beast tore through the wall of branches, Durand ducking low as they exploded back into the lists.
He rode for his own people, or what he could see of them. In an instant, the tournament would change, for Leovere’s men would want blood, and the Herald’s cursed markers wouldn’t hold them. Men would die. And they would not stop with Durand.
He angled for the reviewing stands, hoping to get Deorwen, Almora, and the duke into the Lindenhall. The place was likely built to withstand a few raiders. And, all the way, he roared, “To the castle! To the castle!” even as a matching cry of “Murderer! Murderer!” rose up from Morcar’s thugs, and a wide crescent of Leovere’s knights tore itself free of the fight to pursue Durand.