He heard the breath hiss within the helm. The man was staring at him as if he had taken a body-blow.
It must be hard to hear, and see, inside a case of iron like that, Ambrose thought. Or to be heard, or seen, for who you are. It was a great, blind barrier between the man and the world: like never using anyone's name.
‘So! It's like that is it? Right to the land, now, is it? If it's like that, then I know a good little game we can play with the law. Durbey, show me that fellow's neck, will you?’
One of his armed followers took the man that Ambrose had just released and forced him to kneel, pushing his head forward so that the back of the neck gleamed pale through the strands of dark hair. There was an angry red mark where it had been chafing against the upper board.
‘Right. Now I put this one and his fellows in stock for a little for Disrespect. That's all. It was just something they needed reminding about. But now I say they were really plotting riot, and this one here's the ringleader. That means I can hang him, if I want to. But since I'm nice, and in a hurry, I'll do it with my sweet sharp sword here. Shouldn't take a moment.’
He flapped his hand. One of his fellows drew a great hand-and-a-half sword from the saddle of a horse and placed it in his leader's grip.
‘Witnesses? Oh dear, there weren't any. All you've got is my word as a knight for it. But if you're very sure I'm wrong, you know what to do, don't you? Toot me a blast, Leo.’
One of the other armed men was fumbling at his saddle again.
‘Toot me a blast, Leo!’
‘Coming,’ said the man. He held a short hunting horn in his gauntleted hands, and blew a quick, harsh note on it.
‘Right. Now by Heaven and by my hold on this land, I say this court is open. Let any who feel the right of this cause stand forth to prove it with his body before three blasts of the trumpet. Toot it, Leo.’
The horn sounded again.
‘Right, I'm up. I say he did it. Leo? Durbey?’ The other two nodded. One raised his hand, in the mockery of an oath. ‘We all say he did it. If no one says he didn't do it, I'll knock his head off at the third blast and make you a present of it. Going to help him out, are you?’
He meant a fight. He wanted Ambrose to choose between fighting the three of them, or watching them kill this man, who would have lived if he had not interfered.
He had fallen into a trap. When he had slid from his mule, he had thought he was undoing the work of the Heron Man. Now there was iron at a man's neck, and a sudden, appalling understanding of things he had not seen, and yet that he had seen before.
(I will give you One, said his memory. There will be a price.)
The Heron Man must be very close.
‘This is an Ordeal, runt. If we say he did it and you say he didn't, we settle it in a fight. Don't worry. We're only allowed to come at you one at a time. That's the Law.’
(Law bends before power, said the ghost of Denke at his elbow.)
‘Toot it, Leo.’
The horn sounded. (My darling … You see how he tricked you.)
He had no idea if he could fight them. He supposed not. They were stronger. They had mail, and big weapons. He was still learning.
The man he had rescued was whimpering now. He thought they meant it. Probably they did.
‘Going to do it? No? Too bad, you could have helped him. Better still, you could have left him alone to get sore knees.’
‘I'll do it,’ said Ambrose.
It was his fault, so he would have to. And he was angry. He hated this lumbering, jeering voice that mocked everything he knew to be right. He stepped back and lifted his sword-point.
‘I'm sorry you said that, boy,’ said the Helm slowly. ‘It's not my fault you did.’
Ambrose sidled onto smoother ground, wondering when the fight would begin. A voice called from behind him. The men straightened and looked up. Still he did not take his eyes off them, because Chawlin had taught him he must not.
Then a hand gripped him by the shoulder.
‘Now that you've got this far,’ said Aun dryly. ‘You'd better let me do the rest.’
He was wearing his helmet. It was laced into his mailshirt. He had dropped his cloak and was carrying his shield. His heavy, mailed gauntlets were on his hands. He must have been preparing for a fight all this time.
‘So the pup's got a dog with him, has he?’ said the Helm. ‘Where did you spring from?’
‘Not a dog,’ said Aun, with a sour grin and a lift of his wolf-shield. ‘Tourney, is it?’
‘Ordeal,’ said the Helm.
‘Ordeal!’ Aun glanced at the kneeling man. ‘For the life of a townsman?’
‘What's good enough for fine folk is good enough for mine. This is my ground. My law.’
‘Better get into your saddles, then, the three of you,’ said Aun.
‘One at a time!’ said Ambrose, finding his tongue again. ‘He said.’
‘One at a time,’ agreed the Helm. He looked over Aun's shoulder at their horses. ‘On foot.’
Aun shrugged. Ambrose realized how much of an advantage big, war-hardened Stefan would have given him over those three on their poor mounts.
‘But …’
‘It makes no difference,’ Aun said to him, in a voice that was meant to carry.
‘Damn right it won't,’ said the Helm.
Then there was a bad time, which seemed to stretch for hours. Ambrose helped Aun to tighten the laces on his helmet. He knew he had nearly got the townsman killed, and then had nearly got himself killed, and now he was going to have to watch and see whether Aun would be killed instead. He wanted to explain what he had been doing, and why the Helm was so wrong. Aun did not look at him or speak to him. He had been arming while Ambrose was arguing. He must have known all along it would come to a fight. Ambrose felt stupid, and rebuked. On the other side of the road the three knights were getting themselves ready, making good the shortcomings in their gear with what they had between them, looking at Aun and trying to assess him. They were nervous, too.
‘I'll have my sword back,’ said Aun suddenly.
‘I don't like that hand-and-a-half of his.’ The oak-pommel blade could not have half the reach of the big bastard sword the Helm carried; but it must be better than the mace would be. Ambrose put it into Aun's hand. There was no time to unfasten the pocket with the little stone in it. If Aun lost, he was going to lose everything.
When Aun at last stepped forward to take his place, Ambrose hurried to Stefan and took the mace for himself, in case he had to fight after Aun fell. Then he picked up his ragged banner. With a hollow, sick feeling inside himself he stood to wait upon the events that would never have happened if it hadn't been for him.
‘Go to it, Leo,’ said the Helm.
One of the men, armed with a sword and shield, stepped forward to face Aun. He was big, a head taller than Aun with shoulders to match. The two men crouched opposite each other, waiting. There was no signal.
‘Go to it,’ said the Helm again.
The other fighter took a step forward. Aun did not move. The fighter hesitated. He wore an open-face helmet, like Aun's but without a noseguard. Ambrose could see his eyes, fixed on Aun. When they come on at you, Chawlin had said, you go back to keep your distance. Or you attack. That was what the fighter had expected. Aun was doing neither.
The fighter moved forward again, just an inch this time. The point of his sword lifted. Even Ambrose could see the blow was coming.
It came, sweeping up and hard down. The wolf-shield lifted into it. There was a crunch, and Ambrose cried out as he saw the blade split the wooden rim. The fighter was stumbling. Aun punched into the man's face with the pommel of his sword. The fighter dropped like a sack falling to the ground.
The point of Aun's blade hovered over him. The man did not see it. The sword lifted and Aun stepped back. The man lay there, moving one leg feebly.
The fighter's sword was still stuck in the rim of the wolfshield. Ambrose ran forward to help Aun free it.
At first it would not shift, for the wood gripped it fast. Aun must have used it to pull his enemy off balance and into his counterblow. Ambrose had not known you could do that.
The sword wrenched loose and clattered onto the ground.
‘Shall we get down to it now?’ Aun said to the Helm. ‘Or will you send me your other farmer first?’
The Helm grunted. He was not jeering any more. But he lifted his big sword two-handed and swung it whoopwhoop! in a figure-of-eight in front of him. Ambrose felt the air wince with it. He backed to the roadside, hurriedly. Aun circled, well beyond the reach of the sword. On the ground at their feet, the fallen fighter was trying to lift his head. The circling men ignored him.
Whoop-whoop! went the hand-and-a-half. Whoop-whoop!
He was quick. Ambrose was looking for the moment when Aun would try to duck inside the blow. Each time his mind thought Go! and his legs tensed, the sword was already whistling in on the back-stroke to cut off the head of a lunging enemy. Aun did not try it. He circled easily, at a long distance, sword dangling, shield half raised.
Whoop-whoop!
It was meant to keep Aun off. That was why he was swinging his sword like that – to keep Aun away. The Helm was afraid: afraid of the little man with the little sword, who circled him like a wolf. And Aun knew it. He knew who was going to win.
‘Don't kill him, Aun,’ said Ambrose suddenly.
The Helm grunted, furious. Aun did not answer. Now Aun came, bounding like a wolf ! The big sword swung to meet him. The shield was up – metal crashed and wood splintered. Ambrose saw Aun's counter-blow, delivered at the run, but it swished uselessly in the air. The Helm had jumped to his right – beyond Aun's reach – even as his own blow fell.
Aun spun to face him, panting. One corner of his shield was gone – clean gone with the blow from the big sword. Aun was moving his shoulder as if it hurt him. He began to circle again.
‘I'll have your arm next time, old man,’ the Helm shouted. ‘Maybe your head, too.’
He was sounding more confident now. Aun did not answer. He went pace, pace pace, feinted a movement back and then pace, pace on in a quarter-circle around the man with the whooping sword.
Now he came again, shield to his head as before. The sword swung – low! Low for the knees; but Aun leaped it like a girl over a rope. The Helm was jumping away – already out of reach. And his foot caught in the feet of his fallen companion, and he stumbled, and crashed over backwards to the ground.
Aun was on him, dropping sideways onto his enemy's body with the short sword held high in his right hand. His shield clumped and dangled from one strap on his arm. His left hand caught the blade of his sword and brought the point down over his enemy's helmet. The Helm's hand flailed at Aun's upper arm but could not hold it. The point was poised.
‘Don't kill him!’ shouted Ambrose, running in.
‘Don't kill him!’
Aun did not seem to hear. The Helm was swearing, struggling to knock the point aside. Aun was lying across him, half-pinning one arm with his body and hunching his shoulder against the blows of the other while he guided his blade down into the eyeslit. The man was bucking as he lay, straining to put off the stroke.
‘Don't kill him!’
A horrible, ululating howl broke from inside the helmet as the point forced its way into the slit. Now Aun's left hand caught the blade higher up, and he lifted himself, putting all his weight behind the downward thrust. Blood spurted from inside the slit and ran over the metal cheek. The legs kicked. The free hand clutched at air. Then all the man's body was still.
Aun got up, slowly, and looked around. He stooped to pick up the hand-and-a-half sword.
‘He could swing it well enough,’ he said, panting. ‘But he jumped the same way twice, and I knew he would. All I had to do was send him into his fellow's legs.’
The oak-pommel blade still dangled from his right hand, all bloody at the point. He lifted the hand-and-ahalf sword in his left and looked at it.
‘Pretty thing. Would have done for me if he had thought about his feet.’
(Pretty shot, though. Smack, into the heart. I could do the same for you.)
Ambrose looked around.
A ring of people surrounded them, townsfolk with women and children among them. They were all still, staring at the fallen man as if something terrible had happened. The fighter Aun had felled earlier was on his hands and knees, still with his head hanging as if he could not clear it from the blow. The other man was kneeling beside his fallen leader, uselessly unlacing the bloody helm. Ambrose looked away. He did not want to see the face of the dead knight.
At the roadside was the row of empty stocks, and in the last two the men that Ambrose had been trying to free when the Helm appeared. They stood with their backs bent and their heads and hands pinned by the boards as if nothing had happened on the road before them that morning.
He looked hard among the horrified faces of the crowd. He looked among the trees. He was looking for the Heron Man. He did not consider the small, triangle-sailed boat that was nosing into the bay.
‘Stupid to end your life,’ said Wastelands, ‘on a mistake like that.’
Sophia thought she would have made a good spy. She did not ask questions as she strolled among the huts of Aclete looking for someone to sell her a few supplies. She took her time, and accepted water or ale at this door or that, teased the younger children who came to look at the strange woman from over the water, and let people talk to her about what was on their minds. They wanted to talk – mostly about the fight that had taken place that morning outside the gate, when they had lost their lord. Now the town was leaderless. No one knew whether the armed men he had gathered about him would stay or go. No one knew if the men who had killed him would make themselves lords in his place. Someone said they were in league with a band of brigands who lived deeper in the March, who would surely come the moment they heard the news. Half the men in the town had gone off to a meeting with the new lords at the top of the big hill.
She made her way back to the bay, swinging her little sack of purchases as she went. There were not too many, for Chawlin's purse was getting slim. They needed more coin. She did not know how far it was to Hayley, and whether they would do better to sell the boat now, so that they could buy more provisions for their journey, or whether they should keep the boat so that they could travel faster up the lake. She plotted in her mind a conversation with some of the fishermen that could lead to her selling the boat for something approaching the price Chawlin had paid for it. The important thing, she knew as surely as if her mother had told her, was that she should not seem too interested in a sale. Someone else was going to have to ask about the boat first. Of course, no one who was interested in buying would make it so easy for her. So, said the ghost of her mother in her mind, she needed someone who was not buying themselves, but who knew someone who might, and would suggest it to both sides. The Widow had been good at these things – whether on the grand scale of politics or the smaller one of running the household. Sophia could see that now.
She was humming a tune as she walked. It was the slow, sad hill-song that Chawlin had taught her. She knew it was a lament, but she wanted to sing, and she wanted to sing this song because it was his.
It was good to be on land. She had not always felt safe in the small boat, caught in a big wind on the waters, and she had quickly grown tired of its cramped boards and the long, long waiting while it ploughed away at the waves. At least the two days spent sailing up past the changing hillsides of the March had been better than the first, endless reach over empty waters. Even so, time had gone very slowly until at last one in the line of hills above the shore had swelled into the shape of the great flat-topped knoll above the town, to guide Chawlin to the harbour that he had remembered. And now they were landed and there were still hours left of the day.
She found Chawlin sitting with his back against the seaward wall of the big wooden house, screened from sight from the rest of the to
wn. He had the cup on his knees and did not look up as she approached. She knew that he did not mean to let it seem that he had no time for her, but she wished that he would at least smile. And it wasn't doing him any good, that cup. His face was drawn.
‘I've news,’ she said.
‘That's more than I have.’
‘Is it safe to do that here?’
He looked around him.
‘The building is empty,’ he said. ‘It used to be the chief house in this place. A woman lived in it. She was clever. She fooled me badly, once. But she's gone now: fled when the troubles came. Now they are using it as a storehouse. The guard is off somewhere today.’
‘Up the hill,’ she said. ‘Most of the men have gone up the hill. There's a council going on there.’
‘Ah. Is that what I've been seeing? It's been difficult. It's like trying to look at something that's always in the blind spot of your eye. And Luke must be in the middle of it.’
‘Ambrose. They say he is.’
Chawlin drew breath.
‘Close, then. Now I need to think,’ he said.
‘Why?’
I need to think. He said that a lot. Sophia did not see what there was to think about. They should climb the hill and wait for a chance to speak to Ambrose. It would not be easy, what she had to say. But that was her problem, and not his. And after that they could be on their way. Chawlin was talking as though this was something huge and impossible – or something that he really, really did not want to do. Why … ?
There! He was off again, looking into that damned cup.
‘It's changed,’ he said.
She wanted him to talk with her. She wanted to tell him how clever she had been among the huts (after all, she had found out things that the cup could not show him!). She wanted to talk about Ambrose. She wanted to talk about selling the boat. But she forced herself to be interested.
‘What can you see?’
‘It's a room. A big one. It's in a castle or a rich house. There are candles lit, so it must be night. There's a bed with a man in it. What … ?’
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