“Easy, girl,” he murmured, as she whinnied and looked about with rolling eyes.
A glance showed Eyand crawling to his feet some ten paces hence.
Willard knocked the rest of the dirt from his visor and searched for his sword. It lay at his feet, bent almost forty degrees.
Holding fast to Idgit’s bridle, he braced the bent sword against the grass and more or less straightened it under his boot.
Eyand walked toward him with a very straight, very sharp-looking sword in hand. The lord raised his visor. A bloody cut gaped across his hatchet nose, but his eyes gleamed in triumph. Without looking away from Willard, he signaled to the red knight still waiting at the head of the meadow. “Field Rules, Sir Yors. You may take him.”
Sir Yors, whom Eyand appeared to have saved for last because he was nearly as huge as Willard, saluted and urged his horse forward.
“Yield, Sir Willard,” said Eyand. “And I’ll call Yors off.”
Willard cursed. Even if he parried Sir Yors’s lance, the charger would flatten him like a battering ram, and Eyand would take him while he was down.
He set his foot in Idgit’s stirrup, but she screamed and pulled away, eyes rolling with some new fear. Gods leave it, Caris’s touch had worn off.
But then he heard it. It was a sound only he would recognize, and it made him laugh.
He discarded the sword and released Idgit’s bridle.
As Idgit bolted, Eyand beamed in triumph. “You yield?”
Willard forced himself to hold Eyand’s gaze without looking to the source of the sound he’d heard. He raised a finger. “You’re about to find Field Rules a most unfortunate choice.”
The lord’s sneer faltered. He turned his head to look up the meadow, but it was too late.
Sir Yors was but two strides away, his gleaming spear tip homing in on Willard, when Willard heard the tiny wheeze again. It was the wheeze of excitement Molly made in the moments before joining battle.
*
Harric flattened himself against the boulder and peeked around it to look for Kogan and his pursuers. Against his chest he clutched his wood axe. He had no idea how to fight with an axe. Aim and swing and hold on? Caris had told him to “Hook a knight’s shoulder and drag him off his horse,” but he had doubts. That could easily turn into “Hook a knight’s shoulder and be dragged across the kingdom.”
“If I don’t hook a knight,” he whispered, as Caris climbed down from her perch on the boulder, “how about I just bash the piss out of his knee?”
She cast a skeptical glance at him. “Just be careful you don’t hit me by accident.”
He nodded and returned to his spot on the down-road end of the boulder, where he could peer up the road without crowding her. Just as he looked around the edge of the boulder, he saw Kogan burst into the trees and pound down the track toward him. The priest’s huge feet slapped the path, and his hair smoked like an old campfire. A group of knights thundered in his wake, led by a bronze knight only five paces behind; his lance snaked toward Kogan’s back.
“Duck!” Harric shouted, but the priest blundered on, staring wide with exhaustion. A split moment later, he would have been skewered if an iron shot hadn’t descended like a meteor onto the crown of the bronze knight’s pot helm. The knight toppled from the saddle and slammed in the dirt before Harric. The shot graced the top of the pot helm like a dirty pearl, but impact against the ground jarred it loose to reveal a dent in the helm like a bowl.
An umber-red knight rode on the heels of the bronze, and as Kogan whirled to face him—long-handled mallet in both hands—he directed his lance tip at his chest. Another iron ball slammed the knight’s armored shoulder and his arm appeared to go limp, dropping the spear. Kogan stepped aside and caught him full in the throat with the head of the mallet as he passed.
The third knight swerved his horse and held his shield above his head as he rode beneath the tree. The iron ball glanced off the shield and he charged by, lance straining forward for the priest’s ample chest.
“Run!” Harric shouted, but Kogan tossed his mallet aside and charged straight at the onrushing stallion.
“No!” Harric grabbed one of the branches he’d piled by the boulder and heaved it into the stallion’s face as it passed. The beast smashed through it and trampled it down without injury, but the sudden appearance of the obstacle startled it enough to throw off the rider’s aim. The lance sped past Kogan’s right ear, and Kogan dove for the charging war-horse like he would tackle a bull calf.
The two met with a breath-stealing thud. Kogan’s bare legs flailed as he flew backward, while his bare arms grappled the horse’s neck. The horse snarled, and Harric could see it biting the priest’s head, tearing at his hair. As the horse slowed, the knight discarded his lance and struggled to stay in the saddle. Stubborn as a tick, the giant priest bore the stallion’s head to the ground with the full weight of his body, and as it staggered to a stop, he twisted.
The stallion screamed as the priest forced it to its knees, and the knight dove from his saddle before his horse could roll on him. One foot, however, got trapped beneath the horse as it fell, and when he cried out in pain, Kogan released the animal and literally fell upon the knight. The knight drew a dirk and stabbed it into the smothercoat, but Kogan seized his hand and enveloped him in an upside-down bear hug that pinned both arms to his side.
“Fight like a man!” the knight screamed, his voice muffled in Kogan’s smothercoat.
Kogan stood and hoisted the man upside down. The knight struggled to kick him in the face, but that ended when Kogan drove the knight headfirst into the unyielding road and put all his weight behind it. Once. Twice. On the third time, the man went limp, and Kogan let him crash in a heap at his feet.
“That all of ’em?” The priest belched and blood spurted from his nose like a faucet. He dropped to one knee, then to all fours. “Wup. Head’s spinning.”
“Get out of the road!” Harric said.
A spitfire popped up the road and Harric heard a resin wad scream into the branches above. Flames splashed through the branches where Brolli had been. He caught a glimpse of Brolli leaping from branch to branch and shouting in Kwendi. Two knights—an amber and a red—had reined in at the entrance to the wood, and now sat with smoking spitfires in their arms, peering up into the branches. The red knight shouted and pointed, and the amber lifted his spitfire and touched it off with a burning punk.
“Watch out!” Harric shouted.
Another hissing wad streaked into the branches, hit a limb, and sprayed fire through the leaves and twigs. Somewhere above, Brolli shouted.
“This is it,” Caris said. Harric backed up to see her leaving the cover of the boulder and circling around the knights while their attention was on the Kwendi. Her path would take her into thin cover of scraggly brush, however, and if they looked away from Brolli for an instant, she’d be vulnerable. Harric chewed his lip. He knew he’d be no help at her side…but he could help with the diversion.
After dashing around his side of the boulder, he stopped in the middle of the road and brandished his axe in the air. “You dimwits! You’ll set the whole fire-cone range on fire!”
The amber pranced his charger backward and pointed at Harric. The red produced a second spitfire, and set the thing off with some kind of flint wheel almost as soon as he’d taken aim. Harric yelped and dove back toward the boulder, leaving his axe in the trail. A searing missile screamed past him, spattering his pant leg with flaming resin.
“Shit!” he squeaked. Heat bloomed on his thigh. He tore at his belt and pulled down his pants before the resin burned through and stuck to his skin. He’d just forced his pants down to his boots where he could stamp the fire out, when a horse loomed above him and he heard the sound of drawn steel.
Harric heard the whistle of a blade and felt a tug at his left shoulder blade. The flesh there bloomed with stinging pain. “Cob!” Without looking behind him, he dove backward and managed to crash into the patch of scr
awny alders. The red knight’s blade whistled again and rang among the branches, and his stallion shoved between the trees, froth flinging from its lips.
“Cob!” Harric crab-walked backward into the alder, pants still around his ankles, while the horse chested between scrawny saplings, only a stride behind.
From the top of the pursuing horse, a helm shaped like a wolf head glared down. “Sit still, ye bastard idiot.”
No! I can’t die with my pants at my ankles!
Harric tried to dive backward again, but the pants dragging between his feet had caught on a branch and held him fast.
*
From the corner of his eye, Willard saw the red knight struggling to keep his charger on target, as the beast had clearly sensed Molly and begun to panic. In the last moment, it locked its front legs and ducked her head, sending the red Sir Yors flying. A split moment later, Molly bowled into the charger’s left flank.
Eyand staggered back to avoid the flurry of hooves and screaming horseflesh.
Sir Yors slammed into the turf in front of Willard, red pauldron scoring the earth like a fancy plow blade.
Molly knocked the charger from its feet, then turned on Eyand with terrible fury. The lord didn’t even have time to scream. Blood sprayed. Molly had him by the neck and shook her green-armored toy from side to side.
The charger rolled to its feet and fled.
Molly dropped the limp Eyand and pounded him with her fore-hooves while she bit and tore at one arm.
“To me!” Willard bellowed. “To me!”
Molly whirled, violet eyes flashing. With a pale hand dripping in her mouth, she trotted to Willard and dropped the gory prize at his feet.
“Charming as ever.” Willard grinned. “Moons, it’s good to see you.”
Molly had been saddled, though badly, with the girths so loose it had slipped almost half to one side. But considering the feeble Mudruffle must have done it, it was a wonder it didn’t hang full under her belly. Tied to the saddle was Belle in her scabbard.
“Gods leave you,” Willard muttered to the absent golem. “I could kiss your knobby hand.” He laid his head beside Molly’s neck, and the Blood rose and thrummed in his veins. Power thrilled through his limbs. Moons, it felt good. He was whole again. Hale again. Free of pain.
Free of pain, old fool? He snorted as he heaved and shoved the saddle to Molly’s back. You’ve traded one pain for another—sacrificed your heart again for your queen—and the vultures of regret already fatten on it.
An image flashed before him of Caris’s face that morning when she learned of his broken oath. Damn her judging eyes. Another image followed of Anna growing old without him, and—damn it all, he’d done what he had to. Was he not sworn to the Queen as well as Anna? Did Caris think he broke his oath lightly?
The red knight stirred at his feet. “My apologies, Sir…Yors, was it? But your leader declared Field Rules.” Letting the Blood fill him with wrath, he set Belle’s point in the mail between back plate and helm and slammed it.
Molly let out a snarl of approval. After wrenching the blade free, he mounted and turned her toward the forest. In four strides, she was in a gallop. He let the glory of their partnership flow through him—the ancient, wordless kinship and understanding, the power. Behind him lay four knights, choked in their own blood.
But from the wood came shouts and screams and the clash of arms and fire.
*
For the second time in his life, Harric saw Brolli fall upon an enemy from above him. The first time, the Kwendi had been lurking in the rafters of the inn at Gallows Ferry. This time, he dove from the burning branches and landed behind the knight on the rump of his horse. The horse reared, and Brolli held on to the rider’s cape. When the animal set its hooves back on the ground, he flung the cape over the knight’s head and vaulted over him to land beside Harric.
“Run!” Brolli yelled.
By then, Harric had kicked off his boots—leaving his pants with them—and the two of them bolted along the edge of the boulder for the thicker brush behind it. Branches whipped Harric’s legs, and when something sharp stabbed the bottom of his foot, he stumbled to his knees with a cry.
Brolli seized his shirt to haul him to his feet as the stallion bounded around the boulder and the knight’s sword flashed high for a strike. A squealing, metallic crack echoed through the trees, and the sword spun to the ground.
A wood axe lodged in the crown of the wolf-faced helm. Caris stood behind the knight, atop the boulder, her chest heaving.
The knight fell, leaving one foot in a stirrup as the stallion stopped a step away from Harric.
“Help him,” Caris said, pointing. “The foot!”
After a moment’s confusion, in which Harric wondered why a dead man’s foot needed help, he realized she meant the horse, and unhitched the foot from its stirrup.
“The other knight?” Brolli said, looking up at Caris. “The spitfire?”
She dismissed the question with a wave back to the other side of the boulder. Blood flecked her face. Her lip curled as she looked Harric up and down.
“I’m okay,” he said, unnecessarily.
Caris shook her head. “What is it with you and losing your pants?”
“I—” He closed his mouth. He gave her a calm smile. “It was a diversion.”
She surprised him by nodding. “Oh, thanks. It worked.”
He nodded toward the knight at his feet. “Nice heroics.”
A rare, shy smile flashed across her lips, and Harric’s heart flopped like a yielding puppy.
The red knight’s horse, freed of the foot in its stirrup, worked free of the alders and now trotted down the trail, away from the fire. A sizable blaze crackled in the branches above, a midair bonfire four fathoms above the trail.
“Must stop the fire before it spreads,” Brolli said.
From the pasture came the rumble of approaching hooves. Twenty strides down the trail, Kogan clambered to his knees in the bushes. His brow furrowed as he listened. “That ain’t a pony.” He cursed, struggling to his feet, and cursed again when his leg buckled and he landed on all fours. “That ain’t a pony!”
“It’s a Phyros,” said Caris. “Molly.”
Willard and Molly emerged in the gap in the trees, and reined in well short of the fire above. Scanning the battle scene, Willard appeared to take note of the injured survivors. “Boy’s naked and bloody. Kogan looks like a corpse. Girl?” High on the boulder, Caris faced her mentor, hands on her hips, chest still heaving from exertion. She looked like a statue from a famous battle.
“Good fight, Will.” Kogan waved from his knees a few paces down the road, face bloodied and grinning. “That girl damned well took out the last two by her own self. But it warn’t heroic, Will—like you said, no heroics—so she did it regular. Just what she had to.”
Willard’s eyes narrowed, and a wide smile sent wrinkles fanning from the corners of his eyes. “The last two herself, you say. And no heroics. Quite an accomplishment.”
Caris flushed and gave a curt nod.
“Oh, and I distracted them for her.” As Harric limped back into the alder to fetch his pants and boots, he began to giggle uncontrollably. He had no idea where the laughter came from, and he tried to bite it back, but it was no use. Knights were squirting brains from their noses and he was running around in his undershorts. He ducked behind the boulder until he could control himself and pulled up his pants, only to have his foot snag in a burn hole big enough to fit his head through and tear the rest of the pant leg away. His left leg was now bare from mid-thigh.
The giggles threatened to return, but a sobering crack exploded in the fire above and showered him with burning embers. Cinching his bastard belt, he looked up to see the fire had spread to the size of three bonfires in the branches.
“This fire is being the danger now!” Brolli barked. “We control it, or it climbs to fire-cones and Abellia!”
In the time of King Farnor, our Queen’s royal father, Sir
Willard offered a fortune to any smith who could craft a sword that was both strong enough for a Phyros-rider, and pure enough to chime a perfect#sharp. After many blades and smiths, an apprentice horn maker named Geromey Till presented him with a blade of star-iron and steel that a man could tune a lute by. Willard named Geromey Swordsmith to the Blue Order, and named the sword Belle.
—From Court Fools and Heroes, by Timus of Warbeton
23
Smoke & Sacrifice
Heat from the blaze overhead warmed Harric’s scalp and forehead as he pulled on his left boot and grabbed for the right. Spots of ash drifted like snowflakes among the smaller trees of the grove and dusted the trail beneath the spoke-limb. He coughed as a whiff of wood and resin smoke filled his throat.
“Hurry, Harric,” said Brolli, peering at the flames only four fathoms above. It had spread to more branches and part of the trunk, doubling its size.
As Harric pushed his foot into his right boot, he felt a stab of pain in his left shoulder blade, reminding him that the red knight’s sword had left a nasty gash there. In all the excitement, he’d been able to forget it, but now that it had his attention, it throbbed and he could feel his shirt sticking to it.
Another horn sounded from the ridge as he shoved his heel into place.
The sound sent Molly into fits. She’d been restive before the horn, pawing the earth and snorting and wheeling so Willard had to keep a tight rein; now she reared and lunged at the air, eyes fixed on invisible foes.
Harric lurched to his feet and hurried away from her.
The Jack of Ruin Page 19