The Dread Wyrm

by Miles Cameron

  He had been used. Betrayed.

  I only wish to die well, he thought. Not a thought to share.

  The herald rode down, aiming for de Vrailly’s banner. At this distance, it was plain that the man behind him was Du Corse, on a good riding horse, wearing his arming coat and hose and boots.

  L’Isle d’Adam and d’Aubrichecourt came forward and joined de Vrailly.

  Du Corse looked grim.

  “Welcome back,” de Vrailly said. “Is it too much to hope that you have escaped?”

  Du Corse shook his head. “I come on oath—on my word. In exchange for Corcy’s sons.”

  De Vrailly smiled a grim smile. “I have them to hand.” He turned to his squire. “Fetch them immediately. I will not be outdone in courtesy by this sell-sword.”

  “Hardly a sell-sword,” Du Corse said. “He’s the Queen’s captain-general and the Duke of Thrake. I spoke to him this morning.”

  Du Corse pointed across the fields at the approaching army—a small army. In fact, only slightly smaller than de Vrailly’s own.

  The herald opened his mouth, but Du Corse silenced him with a glance.

  “Ser Gabriel wishes us to know that our King has been badly defeated in Arelat. He offers three choices. If we take ship immediately, he will let us go. If not, he will meet you in single combat, immediately. Or, if neither of these will suffice, he says he will come to you with fire and sword. But he says to us all that in the last case only the true enemy will triumph.”

  The enemy were not halting to dress their lines. On the far left, a solid mass of red and steel rode forward. In the centre, another—all in scarlet, with the Royal Standard flying. On the right, a little farther away, a solid body in the red and blue of Harndon, and the checked blue and gold of Occitan.

  De Vrailly watched them for as long as his heart could beat ten times.

  “This Red Knight is nobly born, then?” de Vrailly asked.

  L’Isle d’Adam frowned. “There’s a rumour he’s the old King’s by-blow. But that’s probably someone’s petty hate. He’s the Earl of Westwall’s son.”

  Du Corse said, “The Earl of Westwall is dead. The Wild has breached the whole of the north and west. He told me so himself, and I believe him.”

  De Vrailly shook his head. “The archbishop would have us believe that it is our duty to cut our way through to Ser Hartmut, and that the Wild is in this case our ally.”

  The enemy were not halting yet. They were very quick.

  The herald—boldly—spoke up. “I’m to tell you that you have only until he’s in bowshot to decide,” he said.

  D’Aubrichecourt spat. “The archbishop would have us believe that the Wild is a fable while also using them as allies,” he said. “Even as they defeat our King in Arelat.” He shook his head in disgust.

  De Vrailly paused when his squire brought up the Corcy boys—two young blond squires, Alban through and through.

  “Young gentlemen, your father has ransomed you,” he said.

  The older, Robert, bent his knee.

  The younger, Hamish, stuck his hands in his belt. “You had no right taking us in the first place,” he said.

  “Be quiet, little brother.” Robert put out a hand but his small brother, twelve years old, wriggled away.

  “It’s dishonourable,” Hamish said quietly.

  Out in the field, Long Paw roared an order and the whole line halted. Pages came forward and began to collect horses.

  Jean de Vrailly dismounted, too.

  “He doesn’t know what he’s saying,” l’Isle d’Adam said.

  De Vrailly walked to the boy who stood without flinching.

  He knelt. His voice was not steady. He said, “Sometimes, men make mistakes, child. Terrible, terrible mistakes. All they can do is atone as best they can. I offer you my apologies as a knight and as a man.”

  Hamish Corcy bowed low. “Apologies accepted, ser knight! You do me too much honour.”

  De Vrailly nodded. Then he went to his horse, and mounted. “Tell the Red Knight I will meet him man to man and horse to horse,” he said.

  The herald turned his horse and rode for the enemy.

  De Vrailly turned his own horse so that it faced his people. His squire was mounting the two boys on a rouncy.

  “Gentlemen,” de Vrailly said, and all badinage stopped. “Whether I win or lose, I propose that we leave the Albans to their own ways and troubles and go to Galle to save the King. And I suggest that you take Du Corse as your commander.”

  Du Corse bowed in the saddle. The archbishop made to protest and was silenced by a glance from Du Corse.

  De Vrailly pointed to his squire, and armed himself with his favourite lance—a very heavy shaft. But when his squire made to mount with two spares, de Vrailly shook his head.

  “No, no. We will run one course, and then—” He shrugged. “Someone will die. Please—stay here with these good gentlemen. In fact, young Jehan—I bid you kneel.” De Vrailly dismounted himself once again.

  “With this buffet, I make you a knight. Never accept another from any but the King. Know the law of war. Love your friends and be harsh to your enemies.” He leaned down and kissed the young man on both cheeks.

  Jehan—Ser Jehan—was stunned. He began to weep.

  De Vrailly vaulted onto his horse.

  The Galles gave a thunderous cheer.

  Ser Gabriel sat silently watching the Galles. They had a few Alban banners among them, mostly Towbray’s, and Towbray himself was on the far left—the Galles plainly didn’t trust him. Perhaps the feeling was mutual.

  He flicked a glance at his Occitan allies. It was not that he distrusted them, as that he feared their anger and the prince’s rash judgment.

  Behind him, Ser Michael spat. “I wouldn’t have believed that my own father would come to this.”

  “You could be King,” Gabriel said.

  “That’s not even funny,” Michael commented.

  “You know what’s worst about civil war?” Gabriel asked. The Galles were talking about something, and someone was kneeling.

  The company was already dismounting. Cuddy groused, loudly, “I want to see ’em fight. Better them than me. I don’t get to be fuckin’ King.”

  Gabriel laughed and gestured at Cuddy. “That’s about it. In a civil war, everyone realizes that it’s all a dream and anyone can be King. And then we’re just animals fighting over the grain supply.”

  The herald, his pennon flapping bravely, was riding towards them.

  “Aha,” Gabriel said. “Here we go.”

  His heart began to beat very hard.

  Ser Michael turned. “We can take them, Gabriel,” he said.

  Gabriel nodded. “We can, but some of us will die and some of them will die, and my adversary will win with every corpse. Let’s make this as cheap as we can.”

  “If you lose?” Michael asked bluntly.

  “Then I get to relax, and stop plotting. It’s all on you and my brother and Tom and Sauce. And Mr. Smythe and Harmodius and the Queen. And Amicia, and the rest of the people. The biggest revelation of the last few weeks has been that it’s not all about me, Michael. Muddle through.” He laughed.

  “What do I do about the Galles?” Michael said, ignoring the rest.

  “Offer them ships home. If they refuse, crush them here, take the losses, and offer no quarter. Towbray will desert them the moment he knows it’s you.” The Red Knight shrugged. “Make yourself King for all I care. I’ll be dead.”

  “I doubt it,” Michael said. “Here, let me squire you one last time. Damn, that was ill-said.”

  Gabriel laughed.

  While Michael dealt with the way his arms tied on and where they sat, the herald approached.

  “Ser Jean de Vrailly will meet you man to man in single combat,” he said.

  The Red Knight took a lance from Toby. He thought of leaving a parting message for Amicia, or for Blanche, even.

  That seemed like something Mater would have done.

/>   “If I win,” he said, “I want you ready to march north immediately.”

  He wanted to grin or smile, but his heart was pounding, and his cheeks didn’t work.

  So instead, he turned his horse, and began to ride easily over the hayfield towards the distant shining figure of Jean de Vrailly.

  Inside de Vrailly’s visor, the angelic face frowned as he rode across the sunlit summer field.

  Usually he went to fight without a thought—beyond, perhaps, a prayer.

  No prayer came to his lips.

  Instead, unbidden, a host of images rose like midges and mosquitoes. Simultaneously, he considered how the Red Knight had dispatched de Rohan, who, for all his faults, he had trained with his own hands, and he considered the sparkling fall of holy water that had declared him forfeit—a flow of holy water that said that his person, or his harness, was ensorcelled. He thought of the black fire clawing at the angel’s armour in his tent, and he thought—most of all—of how his angel—

  I think your angel is a daemon, said the ghost of D’Eu in his ear.

  De Rohan had accused the Queen of sorcery and infidelity. And died.

  Why does my angel never name the Red Knight?

  Why has he ceased to speak of God?

  Why did he not give me any answers?

  But the utmost thought in de Vrailly’s mind was one of mingled shame and apprehension, two thoughts which he seldom entertained. Because he had willingly donned the armour that had been tainted with sorcery, this day. He had other choices.

  His lance went down into the rest with the ease of ten thousand repetitions.

  He saw his opponent’s arms—the six-pointed stars on the brilliant scarlet ground.

  I have other choices. I hate. I doubt.

  Everything.

  And then his lance was just there.

  Gabriel sweated behind his visor. He watched de Vrailly with most of his attention. He tried to focus on the man’s movements, on his horse.

  De Vrailly had a superb horse.

  But behind the simplicity of preparation for combat was fear—the fear of death over all, and under that a layer of other fears like folded steel, each fear interwrapped with minute flaws and other hesitations like the dragon’s breath of a blade folded over and over again in the forge to try and hide the imperfections in the iron and the steel.

  Fear for the Queen, and fear for Michael confronting his father, and fear for the world that he loved and fear that he had behaved badly, that he would die badly, that he would fail.

  Gabriel Muriens usually entered combat, which he feared more than anything else in his life, borne along on the heady river of command. With no time to examine the reality of what he faced, he entered into combat like a black mirror—empty and yet full. His imagination rarely had time to inflate the bladder of his cowardice.

  But today he had a long bowshot to cross on a horse he could not afford to tire early—a near eternity in which to think. To imagine. To wonder.

  Gavin was the better jouster. But de Vrailly was now the commander of the army, and would not have accepted a lesser man or rank. And Gavin’s already gone west. In a day or two, he’ll find Mountjoy. I hope.

  In his vivid and coloured fantasy, Gabriel saw himself unhorsed, saw de Vrailly’s lance smash through his breastplate to rip his intestines from his back—saw his helmet shred under a blow, saw Ataelus stumble and fall in the grass, saw Ataelus crash to earth under the hammer of de Vrailly’s deadly lance, saw the minute twist of his deadly hands as de Vrailly slapped his own lance to the ground and unhorsed him with delicate ease, saw the crashing mace blow that ended his life, saw de Vrailly chivalrously dismount to pound him to the earth with his sword—

  Saw every man who’d ever unhorsed him. Relived every painful fall, every bruise, every humiliation as the quintain slapped him, as his lance missed its mark, as he caught a foot in the stirrup going down—a long, long, silly fall, and all his brothers laughing, his master-at-arms laughing, even Pru, her apron covering her face.

  Ah, yes, he thought. They were not doubts, but the sordid realities of a hundred failures—some real, some fancied. As a magister, he knew that the line between them was very thin indeed.

  Mater is dead. Odd—a piercing sorrow he never expected, and a vast tide of shameful relief. Whatever happened in the next ten heartbeats, neither the Earl of Westwall nor the duchess would ever mention it, being dead.

  He dropped his lance from erect to the lance rest under his right arm without any sense of volition.

  He refused to enter his palace. In the strange labyrinth that was his idea of chivalry, to calm himself artificially in his palace in this one fight would be to cheat.

  And because all the flaws in the dragon’s breath, when forged by a master, make a stronger blade. All the flaws.

  I will go down clean. This is who I am.

  Eye.

  Lance point.

  Target.

  Michael was a bowshot away. He could not breathe.

  Neither adversary saluted. There was no flourish. They went at each other with a simple intensity of purpose.

  To a veteran jouster, the open field, lack of barriers, and slight unevenness of the ground offered an endless subject for doubt.

  Both horses went straight forward, perfectly in hand, perfectly balanced, their riders like statues in their saddles, tall and strong.

  As the two came together, it seemed to Michael, watching, that both horses stepped offline. His pulse pounded in his throat, his dry mouth—he was clutching his saddle—

  The sound carried after the impact was visible.

  Both lances shattered, and both men rocked back. De Vrailly’s head seemed to snap back, and Gabriel’s body twisted badly, the shards of their lances falling like red and blue hail. But both horses had done what they’d been trained to—an oblique step at the moment of contact—and because there was no barrier, the two great chargers collided, breast to breast.

  They rose, front hooves flailing, rearing as if neither monster had two hundred pounds and more of steel-clad man on their backs. They rose like fighting cocks, and iron-shod hooves flew like arrows on a stricken field—so fast, so many blows struck, that no watcher could even follow the course of the horse-fight.

  De Vrailly’s horse came down first, and in that beat of a heart, Ataelus landed two great blows—left, right.

  The sound of them carried across the field. One struck the armoured plate on the front of de Vrailly’s destrier, and the other did not, and sounded like a butcher’s hammer on raw meat. But de Vrailly’s destrier—slightly larger—sank his teeth into Ataelus below the neck armour—both animals writhed like fighting wyverns—

  And both riders were thrown. Neither had ever recollected his balance from the breaking of the spears, and the sudden rear, the curvet and the roll finished both.

  The two armies were almost completely silent. Many men were not breathing.

  The earth had had three days of sun. Even in a hayfield, there was dust, and now the fight was obscured by the rising of the Cloud of Mars.

  Armour glinted in the dust and both armies roared.

  De Vrailly’s sword came to his hand like a falcon to its master and he was on one knee. The dust was all around him.

  Something was wrong. Some part of his great helmet was loose—the helmet moved on his head as he swung, and his left thigh was a dull ache that could turn to real pain, but he couldn’t see what was hurt and had no real picture of anything after the moment of impact.

  The dust was choking. His horse, Tristan, was fighting the Red Knight’s horse with all the savagery of two wild lions, and they raised dust.

  He saw the glint of armour and stepped towards it and felt the pain in his left thigh again. He raised his left hand to his helmet and it moved—

  Gabriel struck the ground hard, on his left side, his shield trapped under his body. He rolled off the shield and began to get to his feet just as the two fighting horses passed over him. He got a b
low in his back plate that pitched him forward on his feet again, and the pain was intense.

  Something was gone in his left arm. Or hand.

  He saw de Vrailly, and the bastard was standing, almost relaxed, with his left hand on the visor of his great helm.

  His own left hand was broken—possibly the wrist.

  He stepped forward, his legs good, just as de Vrailly closed. He had to draw straight into a parry as de Vrailly’s huge blow crashed down, but he made the cover one-handed, took a little of it on the shield on his left arm, and the pain—

  De Vrailly saw immediately that his opponent was covering his left—he threw a second blow and a third, aware that his own balance was precarious because of whatever had happened in his left thigh. Despite which, he pressed. His adversary parried and parried.

  His third blow struck home.

  Gabriel took the blow over his sinking left arm and shield, which he could no longer keep up. It smashed down from a high guard and struck just where the left pauldron met the maille of the shoulder under the aventail, which by bad fortune was caught on a buckle.

  The blow knocked him to one knee, and for a long, sickening moment the pain stunned him.

  A second blow slammed into his helmet.

  And then the two horses crashed through the knights—so rapt in their own rage that each horse injured its own master, Gabriel knocked flat by Ataelus and losing his sword and de Vrailly caught by one of Tristan’s hooves in the back of a greave and also knocked to his knees—close enough to Gabriel that he could see the Gallish knight’s halting efforts to rise on his left leg, and the split where his lance had apparently opened a gap between the great helm’s visor and the frame—and deformed the whole outer helm. Like many knights, de Vrailly wore an outer helm and an inner, called a cervelleur.

  So close. Gabriel could see that his lance tip must have come a finger’s breadth from ending the fight at the first pass.

  In his bascinet, Ser Gabriel smiled. Not bad, he thought. I did that well enough.

  And with that, he shook the shattered shield off his broken hand and arm, rolled to his right to rise with his empty right hand, and beat de Vrailly to his feet.