In the Eye of Heaven

by David Keck

  Baffled, Durand | fought on as the Eye of Heaven rose, straining to stay alert, while the knights around him kept up their jeers and laughter as though this was nothing more dire than a country dance. Knights trotted off the field when their crests came loose. One man surrendered rather than fighting on when his shield straps tore. There were village ball games bloodier.

  He felt like the only sane man in Creation. Most of the riders on the field had no idea that, behind the day's sport, a narrow vote and the ancient crown of Errest hung in the scales.

  Radomor would make his move.

  As NOONTIDE EMPTIED the lists, Durand followed Lamoric from the field—close enough to hear the scornful chuckles of the other knights. He scowled.

  Lamoric's men formed a grim pocket in the Northern Company. As the young lord climbed down among his retainers, Durand finally saw what the crowd must have seen: There hadn't been time to send for Lamoric's proper gear; he had no coin for new. And so Lamoric of Gireth rode that day in the panoply of the Red Knight. His red shield bore no Acconel Bull; his trapper, surcoat, and pennons flapped in empty crimson. Plain for all to see was the game that Lamoric had played, that he'd lost, and that he'd slunk back with his father's name to protect him.

  He was a laughingstock.

  Even as Durand dropped from the saddle, Badan was on him, sneering and jabbing with two fingers.

  "All right then, Durand. If this fight's so bloody desperate, why're we the only ones who know it? These greenies? They don't even want to play. I don't think they've hauled one man down yet. Where's your bloody war gone?"

  Badan eyed a snickering passerby.

  "I cannot say," Durand confessed. With all the signs he'd followed, he could not believe he'd made a mistake.

  "We'll be famous for this trick," Badan spat. "Here we've got the prince and the herald and the king himself looking on. All the best men of the kingdom snickering in their fists, with their tongues wagging over everything we do."

  He made to swing for Durand's jaw, but a couple of the others caught him. Durand was conscious of the crowd around, watching them. Outsiders laughed; those nearby were sullen.

  Badan shrugged his warders off, tugging his surcoat down over iron links. "The Red Knight'll be red all right," he muttered. "They'll be singing this one till next Traveler's Night."

  "All right, Badan," Coensar growled.

  Every knight felt the needle glint of the captain's eyes. Any who looked saw that he had yet to put old Keening away. The mob around was still watching, and Badan shut his mouth.

  "Well," said Berchard with a conversational air, "anyone get close enough to hear these greenies? I reckon Radomor's gone and bought himself a lot of Southerners."

  Ouen nodded. "I rode near enough to hear one swearing. Sounded like a Mankyrian, I thought. You know, like a dog barking? They're all wearing Northern gear though."

  "Wherever he's got them," grumbled Badan, "they've got no ballocks if they go about in his colors. You wouldn't catch me letting my lord throw his colors over my back like I was his damned horse. The lot of them should be whipped bloody."

  Ouen shook his head. "I'd have wagered heavy that Yrlac wasn't sticking his neck on the block just for a bit of fun."

  For a moment, none of them spoke. Durand felt blood burning in his face but paid it no heed.

  Sullen Badan twitched a sneer. "Maybe he's heard these same wild tales our Durand has, and he's thumbing his nose at the lot of us just to teach folk not to wag their tongues. Maybe it's a game to him."

  Agryn shook his head. "If it is a game at all, it is another sort."

  "You see shadows everywhere, monk. If fight bothered him, he'd be winning it" The wolf turned on Durand. 'This boy's led us back here for nothing, and now here we are: a pack of fools."

  It was Coensar who answered. "Radomor is here. He's taken his father's titles. Maybe killed him. I don't call that joking." The captain looked across the field where Radomor sat among his men like a wild leopard among the pigeons. "Look at him. Think on where he is now, and what he's likely done. His father dead. His wife. This man must make his move in earnest, or the king will throw him down."

  DURAND HAD NEARLY gone the whole day without taking a serious injury, when a sudden shadow flickered up and he was blind. It was all he could do to ride from the lists.

  "Lance shaft," Guthred said, as Durand slid down from his saddle, blinking and gulping for air. From the pain he'd have expected to find a bolt between his eyes, but he knew a broken nose for what it was.

  His eyes were full of water.

  "It's a mess," said Guthred. "The boys're bringing yarrow, a hammer, and a pair of pliers. Everybody's in playing with tack and gear and—"

  "Thumbs'll do a broken nose," Durand protested.

  "Sit down. You bent your bloody helmet. I'll have to twist the nasal back if you're going to get it on. Ah, hold still." He was getting up. "I've got Berchard and Badan to deal with as well."

  Durand groped for the battered helmet, and found the thing swinging at the nape of his neck, tangled by its straps. The blow had knocked it clean off his head.

  In the hours since noon, the melee had loosened up as tired men lingered beyond the lists, taking longer and longer to find their way back to the hard work on the inside. At the far camp, even Radomor loitered on the sidelines, out of reach. Moryn led his scattered company from the front.

  Durand only needed to stop the bleeding and stuff his helmet back on. If he could breathe, he could fight. He tried to untangle the helmet, thinking he could likely stamp it straight with his heel.

  Armor jingled behind him—someone dropping from a horse. Durand blinked his eyes clear enough to recognize the captain's sweating face.

  "Where's Guthred?" the man demanded.

  "Badan and Berchard came off again with—"

  The captain grabbed a fistful Durand's surcoat. "Get them back on the field."

  "What do you want me to—"

  Coensar pointed. Across the lists, green knights were cinching up their mail coats and snugging their battle helms.

  'Tell them Radomor's been pacing those bastards of his."

  Releasing his grip, Coensar swung back into the saddle. "Get them out there! He's going for Moryn now."

  Durand lurched to his feet.

  It was true. Before Durand could turn a single man round, Yrlac's conroi rumbled into the field—an iron wedge with Radomor at its head. The melee had dissolved into individual contests with Moryn's company caught up in scattered private duels.

  All alone, the lean heir of Mornaway wheeled his warhorse on open ground.

  Coensar pelted across the field for him—too far—but Agryn was there, turning just as Moryn did. There were only a few knights in Coensar's command. Durand pitched himself against his bay, heaving himself up. Hopeless, Coensar galloped to intercept the Yrlac scythe. But Agryn was already there.

  "To Moryn!" Durand roared. Berchard and Ouen scrambled after him. They could see it happening.

  Understanding in an instant, Agryn stabbed his warhorse into motion, gold and silver panoply leaping like fire. He was like a bolt from a great crossbow. His warhorse took three pounding leaps toward Radomor and the center of the iron wedge. Agryn's lance-head dropped, and, with one blow at the perfect place and the perfect time, the conroi exploded.

  To save Radomor, one knight—his Champion—had swerved. The desperate move threw all three men and their horses into a headlong collision. Green and gold tumbled. The rest sheered off, some stumbling.

  And every rider on the field was in motion then, tearing circles across the churned ground. Coensar's command swung tight around Sir Moryn. Lamoric and some of the others rode down any fool still dueling. They had no time for honor.

  As the chaos unraveled, Radomor's champion rose from the earth, swelled lungs great as foundry bellows, and lifted the new Duke of Yrlac from the wreckage.

  DURAND WAS FIRST to the tangle of horses, with Guthred and others pelting after. The three m
aimed and shrieking animals lashed at the ground. For a time, no one could see Agryn at all, then Durand spotted a shimmer of gray mail in the broad sheets of his horse's trapper. But the animal kicked and screamed, its heaving flank thrashing over Agryn's hips and legs. It did not matter. Anyone could see. Agryn lay face down, the iron bucket of his helm mashed into the turf.

  Half the men of Mornaway's North Company had gathered. Guthred turned to the skittish lads in his charge. "We need a bow!" And when they didn't move. "Now!"

  When a crossbow, massive as an anchor, was slapped into Guthred's hands, he flipped the thing right over and thwocked a bolt into the horse's skull. Three times, moving with no more emotion than the cogwheels of a mill, he set the stirrup of the heavy bow on the turf and wrenched the string back.

  Bolts jutted from the horse's temple like an eruption of brown, bloody teeth.

  Durand walked forward then, as bolts thudded into the second animal—in Yrlac green.

  Hooves swished past him as he stepped among gold sheets and silver, yellow and white. The pinned knight was still. The skirts of the man's surcoat were flipped over his back, dropping into impossible voids. Durand remembered Agryn's strange gratitude in the moments before the first charge. This faceless shape in the muck was not him.

  Durand didn't hear a last bolt thud into the jaw of the horse in green.

  Agryn was dead, but it seemed important to free him. Durand set his hands against the man's horse, and shoved, nearly horizontal above the mud. He pushed, feeling the warm bulk yield under his hands.

  Soon the others joined him, and Agryn was free.

  REPORTS FROM THE Yrlac camp said Radomor lived.

  As the Eye of Heaven bled into the sea, Lamoric's men said muddled prayers for Agryn and one other man dead on that day. They were standing on the bare headland, far from sacred ground. There were no wise women to cleanse and dress the dead, though Deorwen anointed their foreheads. There were no priests. Guthred stitched the long shapes of both men into their own bright trappers, and the conroi made sure that both fallen comrades had the spurs and belt and sword of a knight-at-arms so they might be known at the Gates of Heaven. Durand didn't know the second knight at all, and he found himself wondering how well he knew Agryn. As they stood over Agryn and the other man, he studied the ground between his boots, keeping his swollen eyes from the living and the dead.

  Another day of fighting loomed before them. When the sun rose, Radomor of Yrlac would ride out. Unless Agryn had smashed every bone in the man's body, Durand knew that Radomor would come. The whole thing no longer seemed like some grand task, but a simple act of endurance.

  A shadow fell over his boots. "Can you write?" asked Berchard.

  "What?"

  "Can you write?" Berchard repeated. "No."

  "Ah. blast. I just thought. We hadn't asked. Curse it all," Berchard muttered, absently clawing at his beard.

  After a moment, Berchard punched Durand's shoulder in absentminded reassurance. Walking away, he stopped at Guthred's shoulder and whispered something in the man's ear that made Guthred wince.

  The man turned.

  "All right," said Guthred. "You and I'll fill the graves."

  "Here?" Durand asked.

  "Aye."

  Guthred passed Durand an iron-shod shovel, and Durand stabbed the blade into the heap of loose earth. Abruptly, he realized there wasn't enough of the stuff, and, for the first time, looked down into the grave. Agryn's yellow shroud was hardly a foot below the turf.

  "Guthred?"

  The man looked, his expression heavy with a dull sorrow that stopped Durand's tongue. "All right," was all Durand said.

  HE AWOKE TO torchlight and the sound of shovels.

  In an instant, he was on his feet and stealing closer, with a vision of the Rooks in his mind's eye. All he found, at first, was a torch struggling in the night wind over the graves. Then he made out hunched figures, working low. He jerked his blade free of its scabbard.

  And he stopped, astonished at what he saw.

  In a momentary bloom of the guttering torch flame, Badan the wolf appeared, working low over one grave, stabbing the earth with a shovel. His red hair hung in tendrils. Then everything vanished as a stubborn gust fought with the torch.

  Durand blinked into the sudden blackness for a moment. He heard the shovel bite. The next lull in the wind freed the torch fire to splash over the face of Coensar. He was standing back. The man whose fist held the torch high was one-eyed Berchard.

  "What in the name of Heaven's Host..." Durand spoke before he could stop himself.

  Berchard glanced up, his face touched with regret Coensar simply looked.

  "We're doing what must be done," Coensar said.

  "Agryn was the one who wrote," Berchard added, as though this was excuse enough.

  Durand blinked. They were mad.

  "No one's died, have they?" Coensar murmured, half-wondering. "Since you've come. We haven't lost anyone. Not in the tourneys."

  Abruptly, Durand understood. "There's only been one real tourney. The Glass was something else."

  "We're unclean," Coensar said.

  Durand saw them hovering over the open grave. He remembered Agryn, fighting for his king. He felt the weight of his sword in his fist. "You bloody well are! What in the name of—"

  "Killing a man's plain murder," Berchard said. "Ransom's theft. Honor's pride, or vanity." He rubbed the socket of his living eye where fatigue or pitch-smoke needled.

  "The wise women hate us, and the Patriarchs won't have us in holy ground," Coensar continued. He sounded tired. "The graybeards put a ban on the tournaments and see no reason to help the fools who die fighting them. Sometimes we find a wandering friar who knows the rites."

  "We are unrepentant and likely to draw the attention of Them Below," Berchard said.

  Badan grunted agreement.

  Yellow cloth flashed in the shovel wounds. He wondered why he should be surprised that the Host of Hell had its eye on them.

  "So what is this?" he asked, finally.

  "He's not in hallowed ground," Berchard said, and, glancing around the bare headland, made the Eye of Heaven. "Don't think we do this lightly. A man buried in the open is free for anything that might pass. Bad business. And worse, sudden death! It's like sounding a hunting horn to the Banished, the Lost, and their kin. Creation's full of things that won't let a corpse lie. And what if the man's soul wants vengeance? You've seen the gibbets at the crossroads."

  Durand did not deny it

  "You don't want the whoresons finding their way back to the ones who strung them up.. .or dragging themselves^ home, pining for their kin." Durand gave in.

  In solemn silence, then, Badan slit the yellow shroud, baring a flash of bloodless skin.

  "Hands and feet, Badan," Berchard said, stiffly. "We'll dig some proper graves."

  Badan had a hatchet. He lifted the thing as the others flinched away.

  Durand took up a shovel.

  They worked deep into the night, digging black graves. Durand worked under the earth, quietly certain that they were all mad, but that every bit of madness was real. Finally, hands drew him from the darkness, and he helped take up the shrouded bundles, passing the bodies down. Each was rigid under its parti-colored shroud as though some dark terror gripped a body robbed of its soul.

  Badan swarmed down each hole, looking every bit a werewolf ghoul. They passed him down a mallet and long iron nails.

  Tock. Tock Tock The mallet fell.

  Durand, Berchard, and Coensar hunkered down by the heaped soil, the sea wind playing. Berchard took a quick pull from a wineskin. There was black sea on either side. "You'll find a lot of burials that start shallow, then get dug deeper overnight. Murders, suicides. Some do it with childbirth mums. And the little ones, too, if they pass before their naming day. The Lost look through those like ragpickers through old clothes."

  Badan worked, and, as he moved in the narrow grave, his weight, for a moment, must have rested on Ag
ryn's chest. The corpse moaned.

  Durand's throat locked.

  "Host of Heaven" he hissed.

  "It's lungs. Like bellows," Berchard said, but he repeated the Creator's sign, and downed another swig of wine. "Just lungs. I heard one naming the Powers that way."

  "Hells."

  Berchard handed Durand the skin. The wine tasted of hickory and acorn. He passed it on to Coensar.

  Badan kept working, either fearless or soulless.

  When he finished, and the graves were mounded with earth, all four men stumbled away and collapsed.

  Berchard pawed muddy sweat from his high forehead, sighing, "It's a shame you never learned to write, lad. It's a far cleaner way than this," Berchard answered. "We scratch a few lines from the Book of Moons. Our old friend—"

  "—Agryn?"

  "No names at the graveside. Our friend there, trained to join the Holy Ghosts way back. He'd have been the one." "Aye."

  Berchard nodded. "Was up at House Loegem or Pennons Gate—don't remember which—for years ready to serve the king. There was a girl or something."

  "That's why he could quote so well," said Berchard. "The Book of Moons and all that. No matter what else they get up to behind their walls, those Holy Ghosts teach their lads properly. A few lines on a bit of copper—or lead if there's no copper at hand—and past the dead man's teeth. Best chance; the Banished can't get past it. Worst, they can't get out.

  "Good thing we had Badan around. Bloody awful work. A soldier I knew in Aubairn once, he confessed it to a priest. Priest made the poor bastard march to the Shrine of the Cradle's Landing in Wave's Ending. And the priest was right." He shook his head. "You can't do a thing like that without it marking you."

  The one-eyed campaigner almost grinned. "But Badan's a whoreson bastard."

  28. Upon the Rock of Tern Gyre

  In the profound sleep that followed, Durand dreamed of movement through the darkness. A thousand thousand shapes flitted like the shadows of every bird that flew under Heaven. Sketchily visible, one detached itself. Like a creature of deep seas, the thing rippled between the tents: a shape of claws and smooth muscle, flat skull, and eyes like blue coals. It had nothing to do with Radomor or Lamoric or Ragnal or even Durand. The wild thing slithered with the haste of an eddying wind between the canvas walls of the encampment. Durand felt himself tugged along behind, floating and watching.