by David Keck
Despite the muck and gore, Durand felt a grim satisfaction as he watched the enemy host withdraw, the men weaving their way back across the rutted, littered mire. A few men were still tussling. The two companies had been like pit-dogs locked at each other's throats. As they disentangled themselves, Durand could almost feel each long fang withdraw, one by one, leaving scattered, bloody knots behind. His eyes hardly registered the dead.
LAMORIC'S RETINUE DREW itself together and led its horses out of the lists. Shield-bearers ran skins of wine to their knights.
Durand felt someone jerk the reins from his hand. It was only as one of Lamoric's shield-bearers led the animal away that he noted the blue and green trapper hanging from it, and remembered that it wasn't really his. He would have to call it a trophy.
The boys had erected a pavilion within the walls, and soon they were through the flap and out of the weather. Guthred's crew of shield-bearers inspected men and gear, and each group ignored the conversations of the other.
A shield-bearer screwed a beaker of claret into Durand's hand.
"That's the worst morning I've had since before my wife died," Berchard rumbled—a joke, but forced. He sat down heavily.
"A bad one," Coensar agreed.
The labored breathing of the knights filled the silence for a time. Around the circle were broken noses, smashed teeth, snapped fingers, and sprung shoulders. Lamoric wasn't the only battered one. Wind over the walls lashed a patter of rain over the tent's roof.
"How many'd we lose, do you think?" Lamoric said.
"It's hard to say. One we had from Garelyn. A handful of the others didn't make it back," Berchard said. Something had him wincing.
'Three," said Coensar.
"I don't suppose there's any chance we could withdraw," Berchard quipped.
A few of the men snorted.
"Ah well," said Berchard. "If we don't fight him now, I suppose we'll only be fighting him later."
"He likely won't forget us," Coensar murmured.
"You're right. We'd best get him now." Berchard flashed a grin. "It's the only safe thing to do."
While the bearded campaigner chuckled, a scowling Guthred probed broken rings over his knee. Berchard winced.
"I'm taking a look," said Guthred, levelly. "Get the legging off."
"Ugh. I'll have to do it all over again!" Berchard griped, and Guthred fished high under the man's hauberk, reaching— Durand guessed—for the cord that knotted chain leggings to his belt. Berchard caught his wrist.
"What do you think you're doing? Get your hand out! If you've got to take the legging off then the whole thing comes off. I'm not going in to fight this bastard all crossed up."
Lamoric smirked through the rusty smears on his face. "You put them on right once today already—"
"And that's why I'm still here to complain."
The whole conroi was fighting with grins.
But Guthred would not be put off, and soon Sir Berchard sat perched on a barrel in nothing but a pair of gray breeches. Everything came off: surcoat, hauberk, gambeson, tunic, cap, and leggings—all to uncover a wound, in the end, that was nothing but a purple smear of bruise. There was nothing Guthred could do. Undeterred, however, he hauled out a bacon-stinking salve and rubbed it deep. Berchard swore that the man was punishing him.
Finally, Berchard stood in the middle of the tent, all pasty skin and plastered rings of hair. "All right," he said. "All of it Right back on."
Lamoric's knights were weeping with laughter.
Berchard ignored the whole lot, gesturing to his woolly-headed shield-bearer. The boy picked up the gambeson.
"No no. The leggings first No, always the left first." As the knight sat, the boy pulled the quilted leggings over Berchard's big white feet "Right, now I'll tie them up. The gambeson's next."
The boy picked up the sodden coat and struggled to get it over the knight's head. Berchard slithered into the heavy thing, bouncing to shake the kinks out.
The dome of his skull gleamed like a fresh bun as it bulged from the collar. Berchard did not smile. "Next it's the hauberk, boy." The shield-bearer bent over the heap of what looked like disarticulated iron links, and pawed with increasing agitation under the scrutiny of the knights until signs of the collar and shoulders allowed him to see which way was up. Soon, though, a smiling Berchard had the hauberk, and was struggling half-in and half-out to reach the sleeves and get the long coat over his shoulders. The shield-bearer's help saved him.
"Well done, boy." Briskly, Berchard tied a red coat-of-plates around his trunk. It looked, except for long rows of rivet-heads, like a regular surcoat right down to his blazon: three yellow songbirds. "Saved my life a hundred times," he said, rapping himself on the chest. Finally, he plucked up his white linen arming cap, and tied it under his beard. The shield-bearer handed him his chain hood. "Well guessed," the knight said, dropping the thing over his cap. "Leave the gauntlets. I won't put them on till I'm ready to leave.
"Gods, though," Berchard said, pressing the palm of his hand to his side. His good eye blinked. "Do you think I've got time for the privy?"
They nearly threw the tent down on him.
When he finally shook off the last laughing attacker, Berchard brushed off his surcoat.
"Oh." He looked up at the shield-bearer. "I've lost my helm." He turned to Coensar. "I threw it off during the fighting, but it looks as though the chain snapped." There was a roundel on his coat of plates from which a finger's length of chain dangled. "I shouldn't be surprised." He looked to the boy. "Do you think you can find the thing? It's got my birds here on the crest. Or it did have. I suppose we'll see."
Durand watched the young man duck through the tent flap, excited by the attention and responsibility. Then Durand remembered just where the boy was running and the blood and dead men who had been trampled into the mud by two hundred horses. He had never seen anything like that at the boy's age. Some pale corner of his mind realized that he'd never seen anything like that himself until that day. He stared into the swirls of the carpet, forgetting the wine in his hand.
Before an hour had passed, a herald's boy ran past the tents announcing that the last melee was about to resume.
THERE WERE CARRION birds over the field. No one had had the wits to shoo them away. The men shuffled to a halt The creatures hopped among the bodies, plucking and tearing with the black daggers of their beaks.
"Never seen anything like it" Berchard said.
"Nowhere but a battlefield," Coensar said.
As they spoke, Berchard's young shield-bearer reappeared. He had the helm clutched to his chest. A syrupy filigree of blood, muck, and rain streaked it Its crest was mangled.
At a glance, Berchard stopped—the boy's eyes stared from gray-bruise circles. Berchard took the helm gingerly. "Good boy."
THE GREAT MEN of the kingdom slid their way back onto the long benches of the reviewing stand. Durand read the gray pages of their faces. He saw Lady Maud with her chin high, moving like Heremund's ship in bunting. He saw an active-looking lord with an iron beard and sycophants trailing from his sleeves: Beoran. He saw Prince Biedin set his black-gloved hand on his brother's arm. He saw the king, loaded down with gems, but grim and watchful as a lion in a snare. Rain poured down. Coensar was speaking.
"I'll say it once more. We're to fight as a conroi. No one wanders off. No one lets another man get separated. We'll shove ourselves into Radomor's face and stay there till he can't stand the stink of us. We'll do all that 'cause breaking up nearly cost us this morning."
He looked to Durand, then back to his men.
"And before we go, I'll tell you where I screwed up," the captain said. "I reckoned they'd all go for Moryn. I reckoned they'd come for him and knock down whatever got in their way. It never struck me how many would see our Lamoric and still be looking out for their own purses. This, now, is Rado's last chance. You know what that means by now."
Then they waited in the saddle. Men sucked last shaking pulls from skins
of blood-colored wine. Warhorses stamped and tossed their heads.
The trumpets brayed, and they drowned the sound with howling as they exploded across the field. Lance-points stormed past Durand like iron birds. The two hosts hurtled into each other, and then caught, locking in a long, knotted convulsion.
Durand spotted gaps, setting his bay leaping and spinning through the crowd, hunting for every twitch in the throng. A hundred blows battered him, but he saw: after the first pell-mell collision, some part of the enemy had sagged away. Spinning in his seat, he fixed on the reason: There was no Yr-lac green. Radomor's uniformed foreigners had gone, leaving their allies to fight a mismatch.
There was nothing to do. Durand fought on and on while bands of agony clamped his ribs and shoulders. If he lowered his guard for the briefest instant, a sword or mace would whistle over. The thousand agonies of each moment drove every thought from his skull; he forgot the missing soldiers in green.
Then the captain shouted a warning, and Durand flinched from a flash of motion and a sheet of mud and iron. Green horsemen crashed through the line. The soldier beside Durand jolted into flight, batted from his seat like a doll. Horses tore through on all sides.
The men of Yrlac could have been the leopards of their blazons as they clawed their way into Moryn's men, slashing with the energy of fresh arms and clear heads.
Coensar screamed Lamoric's conroi close, 'To Mornaway!" And, catching each other by arm and bridle, they bulled their way toward the diamonds of Lord Moryn's sur-coat, hoping only to outride the green men who rode the same course.
Flashes burst in Durand's skull as they finally battered their way through, then, with disorienting speed, the green horsemen tore free of the battle. Durand's bay actually stumbled as the shoring weight of the green horsemen whirled off into the rain.
Though he was exhausted, Durand and a half dozen threw themselves after the retreating knights, jouncing to a halt in the open yard only when Coensar shouted them down.
Curtains of rain swung shut behind the retreating horsemen. The free men of Radomor's company looked baffled as any of Moryn's knights, as the whole Yrlac conroi fled.
Someone whooped in victory.
Coensar raised a cautioning hand to his own men. "They're coming back. Wait for them." He stood in his stirrup irons, scanning the rain for shadows.
A few knights began to shout to one another. Somewhere, a duel clattered back to life.
When even Durand doubted that Radomor would ever return, hoofbeats shuddered in the air: very close. His eyes swept the gray void. For one breath, he would have swom that Radomor was already through—invisible. The ground throbbed in a hundred directions. He gaped, and then heard the screams explode behind him.
They had circled.
Blades sleeted through men and horses.
Only a few paces from Durand, Radomor's Champion tore through the crowd, batting men down like scarecrows, nearer and nearer. With mace and fists and fingers ripping through armored knights, the Champion looked like a beast scaled in iron. As the brute took the last man in his fist and threw him from his seat, Durand found himself caught between the Champion and the son of Mornaway.
Durand clenched his teeth. "Hells!"
The Champion loomed high, whipping his thorny mace down for Durand's head. Three spikes jutted from the inner face of Durand's shield. The Champion reared back, wrenching his mace free with a force that nearly tore the shield away. There could have been a bear in the man's hauberk. The mace whistled down, a single spine flickering through Durand's gauntlet and knuckles as he threw a parry high.
Durand jabbed his spurs home, the bay leaping clear as iron thorns swept past yet again. But, setting his teeth against terror, he knew mat he must not run. He turned back against the monster. The thing must not get by.
The Champion had already made to move on when Durand pitched back into its path. He was like a dog at a bull's ankles. Durand barged into the Champion; a disembodied throb roared from the man. He vibrated like his skin had been packed with bees. An obscene reek and a gray beard gushed from under the monster's helm.
Durand swung, but his hesitation cost him. The Champion's mace struck first: a claw of spikes tearing Durand's shield. The big man muscled the mace into a swing Durand could do nothing about. Hardwood thundered over his shoulder. Iron tines darted between the bones of his back.
For an instant, Durand was nowhere.
Lolling.
He was drowning, gulping for air, doubling over against his will. He heard a whining, high, and the beehive roar. Some quarter of his mind waited like a falling man waits for the earth. Another part knew that a killing blow would fall in an instant, and he would be driven from Creation.
But he lived: long enough to wrench a glimpse from the chaos. A wedge of Radomor's men had driven through to Moryn. Knights of all sides surrounded the lean son of Mornaway. And Durand could see, in that instant, that the two sides were balanced. Radomor's Champion had turned his head. All at once, Durand saw that the man would hurl himself against this stalemate like a thunderbolt.
It would all be over.
Durand lashed out. The wild blow scrabbled from the Champion's shoulder. The monster twisted, unable to reach back, as Durand's second swing clipped his helm, catching and wrenching it round. The Champion flailed. Now, Durand reeled free. He swung again and again with blacksmith blows.
The thing would never reach Moryn.
A last strike clanged, and Durand rose in the stirrups, reversing his blade and, with the force of both fists, drove the point down into the brute's chest.
He meant to throw his weight behind the driving point, but the blade slipped deeper than he could understand, plunging like a fork into straw. A torrent of flies battered Durand's lips and eyelids. No blood erupted.
They were falling.
Durand landed hard in a belch of corruption: a tanner's midden, a putrid grave. Flies stormed around him, curling in his eyes, clotting his mouth and nostrils. Under his hands, the man was like rotten branches. Impossible. Durand scrambled, remembering only at the last instant to snatch his sword free. The blade came away dry.
Now, Durand was crawling at the bottom of a maelstrom of horses and flying muck. No one had time to look down, but Durand hardly noticed. He scrambled.
Then a great shape whirled high above him. Durand heard a roar, and a hail of iron-shod hooves stabbed down. He had to forget horror. He had to roll. He caught glimpses of green as hooves hammered from warding arms. Above it all, the red leopard of his attacker's crest seemed ready to leap over its master's shoulders. This was the duke himself.
The hideous will of the man bore down on Durand alone.
Suddenly, the hunchbacked duke was gone—a mighty storm sucked back into the clear blue Heaven. But the duke was only gathering himself. When his horse was clear, Radomor spun, a razor-edged axe flashing in his hand, and charged. Durand couldn't move for mud. The duke rode a hail of flying muck, and his axe flashed high.
Then a spray from another horse slashed across the duke's path. Hooves stamped down. Coensar's blue and white flashed. Durand tumbled and tore himself to his feet. There were limbs and men in that mud. He could be crushed as easily by friends as foes.
The duke and captain turned round each other, Radomor suddenly without a helm. The duke's beard jutted from a tight chain hood, his eyes flashing like spear-points. Coensar had cornered the hunter. Durand staggered from the tight gyre of the circling horses. If Coensar struck swiftly, the day was over.
Duke and captain circled shield to shield. Blows flickered through the rain with the snap and flash of lightning.
They swung apart, forcing Durand to pitch himself another few paces off just to keep clear. Their circle trampled the carcass of Radomor's champion. Durand saw what looked to be masses of crawling, muddy rags as a hoof shlupped from the corpse.
It was no even battle. Radomor needed only to delay his attacker. Any moment, some green bastard would spring from the crowd and
spot his paymaster in trouble. But the duke was not waiting. His shining blade flashed out, biting deep into Coensar's shield. It could have had his arm. But, just for an instant, the face of the axe was trapped in the wood. Durand had a sudden flash of Cerlac's blade caught just the same in Hesperand.
Coensar seized his chance, ripping at the breaking shield, pitching the duke into Keening's arc: a flash with the bite of a siege engine. The blade skipped from ear to bad shoulder.
Even Durand stumbled with it.
In the instant that followed, Radomor managed to jam his spurs home, and his warhorse lurched out of the tight circle of the warriors' dance. Radomor's leopard shield tumbled from his fingers. He lolled; any other man would have fallen.
Silence and rain flooded into the churned space between them.
Men looked to Coensar as though asking permission, but he only huddled over his saddlebow, watching.
Radomor turned from the lists. He should have been in the mud. Keening had struck like a thunderclap. The blow would have split an oak tree. Durand could hardly believe the duke was alive, but here he was—awake. He had lost, that much was certain, but he should have fallen.
There were scattered cheers.
As the duke rode, Durand saw his face: stiff with fury enough to keep his seat if every limb had been torn from him. He would never fall. And the Rooks were flapping into motion among the man's tents.
On the field, Yrlac's shocked host sagged away from the fight, and Moryn's men bounded close to Coensar, tipping their helms back and clapping his shoulders. Moryn himself, a few yards away, looked around like a man doubting his deliverance. Horses reared and knights, thrust their lances in the air. Only a neat step kept Durand from being trampled under by heedless comrades.
Durand glanced back through the rain toward the rebel duke. The Rooks had reached up to their master's hands, and a faint, clotted blackness poured from their lips. As Durand stared, he felt their strange sorcery tugging at the breath in his lungs.
Durand looked on, alone in horror. While the others slapped Coensar's shoulders, shadows came alive over the Duke of Yrlac, brimming—as he turned back toward the celebrating fools in the lists—in the sockets of his eyes. A snarl of bare teeth glinted in his beard. As Durand howled a warning, Radomor pitched his wild-eyed mount into a turf-shredding rush straight for Coensar.