by David Keck
Agents would be thick on the roads to and from Acconel, for here was the opening of the great and fatal game that would catch at the oaths of ten thousand men and drag them into carnage. A storm was poised to break.
Durand and the rest of Lamoric’s men were like children.
He pushed into the great, dark stables.
“I know you, you know,” said a small voice.
As his eyes began to make sense of the shadows, Durand saw a woman’s shape by one of the stalls: even in the dark, he knew Deorwen. There was a small face at her hip. He remembered that Almora liked horses. Now, she had a bucket of oats in both hands. This little girl had seen her sister drift under the walls outside; the wise women had laid out the only real parents she knew. Deorwen met his eyes.
“While he was getting ready, I thought we should find something to occupy our attention,” said Deorwen. Durand nodded. The girl, at least, would need this.
“You say you know me?” Durand asked the little one.
“You lived in my house. In the castle. You were one of the boys,” said Almora.
Among the stalls, a horse shook its head.
“I was, yes. I remember you too.” He scratched his neck. “I am very sorry about all that has happened.”
The little girl’s mouth was a small, straight line. She wrapped her arms around her bucket. “Yes,” she said. “You are going to fight for my brother?”
Deorwen had her hands on the little girl’s shoulders.
“Your brother is very brave,” said Durand. Lamoric was going to have to fight Radomor alone; Durand could do nothing to stop it. “I’ll do what I can for him.”
In the nearest stall, there was a black monster. The thing was looking down on him from the warm gloom.
“That one is Pale,” Almora offered.
The brute’s big dark eyes glistened somewhere under the rafters.
“Lovely,” said Durand.
“Sir Geridon said it was funny,” Almora offered. “Because he’s black. The stripe on his nose, that’s a ‘pale’—like a fence post. Sir Geridon rides him.” She caught her lip between her teeth. “I’m not allowed. Sir Geridon says if Pale’s tame enough for little girls, he isn’t much of a warhorse, is he?”
The door creaked. Ouen, Berchard, and Badan ducked inside. With a look they plucked tack from the walls and disappeared.
Durand swallowed, and gave her a nod. “You’d better get clear then. I’m going to have to lead him out.”
“He’s Sir Geridon’s,” Almora repeated, and Deorwen led her from the stable.
“I’ll keep him safe,” Durand said.
“I will watch. Father has said. We must all watch. Every year.”
As the little girl ran ahead, Durand looked to Deorwen, and she gave him a small nod. The girl should be nowhere near the lists when her brother rode out.
And they had an instant alone.
She kissed him, deep and breathless with her eyes shut, before tearing away to follow the girl.
He walked out with his heart thundering.
“HA!”—A HARSH voice, mocking.
Durand froze on the threshold of the outer yard. Then he saw. On every side, slate black gallows-birds clotted the battlements, overhanging the courtyard like bloated eaves. Swags of the brutes choked every embrasure above the heads of the uneasy crowd. “Ha!”
Durand led Geridon’s “Pale” out.
Under the feathered spectators, every street of Acconel had been poured into the narrow tiltyard and now they watched, gray-faced and cold on the grass bank under the wall. At one end of the lists, Duke Radomor waited. And at the other, Lamoric stood while Guthred tugged at the straps of his harness.
Everyone but the old shield-bearer had his eyes fixed on Radomor. The Duke of Yrlac hulked like some cultish idol. A shadow clung to his face, but nothing could hide the glint of his dark eyes. From the man’s shoulders, the Rooks watched, smug and grinning. And there was the Champion: the mailed monster as tall as the stone kings in the Mount of Eagles, his helmed head bent over the bowl of his mailed hands.
“Hey.” Berchard handed Durand a scabbed bundle. “Ouen found a hauberk that should fit you and a gambeson with some stuffing left . . . if we get drawn into the mêlée, after.”
“Good,” said Durand. Rust is too much like old blood. But, in hopes that there was a sound ring or two left under the crusts, he set about hauling the stuff over his head.
Above them, Duke Abravanal gazed across the crowd with a stare like cold water. By his side were Deorwen and little Almora, her dark eyes more somber than a little girl’s should be.
“They’re pounding the stakes,” Berchard murmured. “The heralds are at Rado’s end now. I’ve had a word with them.” He pointed down the wall. “The first stake’s elder.” At the foot of the spectator’s bank, a carrot-headed herald peered up at five thousand feathered onlookers before driving the stake that marked the lists’ south corner.
Coensar spoke at Lamoric’s ear; the man was smothered in mail hood, stuffed arming cap, and leather knots. “Take him from horseback, if you get the chance.”
“Excellent idea. How lucky I’ve brought lances,” quipped Lamoric. Guthred threw a shield over his master’s shoulder, checking the length of the straps.
Durand glanced back at Berchard. “This elder. It’s a nice, cheery tree?”
“They call it ‘cursed’ elder more often than ‘cheery,’ as I hear it: there’s a smell, and the heartwood’s soft, soft. But I hear a man can make whistles from the stuff, it’s so easy to hollow. That’s cheery enough.”
The herald drove the elder stake with two quick taps—a sound that spurred some malicious croaking among the black onlookers.
Berchard scratched his beard. “Cursed elder, driven deep.”
“Make the passes pay,” said Coensar. “Hit him square and you and your name may live awhile. Unhorse him, and he might just spring a shoulder or snap a leg, and this mess is done before it’s started.”
Guthred planted a borrowed helm over iron rings and padding, working at the red paint with his thumb. Unhappy, he wrenched the thing off.
Lamoric blinked. “Hells, Guthred. You’ve done all this six times. I’ve got to live at least until they can start the joust.”
Guthred was already rechecking the man’s spurs.
The herald and his helper had reached the eastern corner, right at Radomor’s feet. The two Rooks peered on, preening as always. Radomor smoldered in his bit of clinging shadow. The herald drew another stake.
“That there’s the boneyard tree,” said Berchard. “Yew.”
“Lord of Dooms,” said Durand.
“ ‘Fatal’ yew, they call it.”
The herald gave the thing a good whack with his mallet. It didn’t set. At the second blow, the stake split—the crack shooting across the courtyard—but sunk deep. Horses tossed their heads.
“The death tree driven quick,” said Berchard. “And cracked.”
“What follows from that?” asked Durand.
“I don’t want to think.”
“You’re a lot of old fishwives,” said Lamoric. “How long now?”
Coensar wasn’t listening. “If it does come to the ground, Radomor’s a bigger man than you. He’s got guile and power, a long reach, and there’s no quit in the whoreson.”
“So I should wager on him, then?” asked Lamoric.
Guthred jerked the man off balance with a tug on his harness, grunting, “Your man’s hobbled, Lordship.”
“Aye . . .” Lamoric said, recalling. “His neck. Yes?”
The heralds had crossed the long tiltyard, and were ready at Lamoric’s end. “It’s to be oak in the west,” Berchard said.
“A good strong tree,” said Durand.
“But killed in a tempest, this one.”
“A windfall then?” said Durand, thinking it must mean good fortune.
“That would be a lucky stroke, but this poor devil was blasted by a bolt from the Heavens.�
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That stake sank at the first tap, sticking deep. “Radomor’s lands are west, aren’t they?” said Durand.
“Aye, that they are,” Berchard agreed.
Coensar was speaking. “Rado’s half-crippled from last summer on Hallow Down, and his neck looks no better than at Tern Gyre. From what I hear, Mad Borogyn’s boys broke that neck. Even healed, it’ll give him trouble.”
“What are you saying? He won’t be sleeping nights? He’ll have trouble getting a tunic to fit?”
“Use your legs,” said Coensar. “Make the whoreson turn. Make him stalk you. Keep moving. Swing a blade for it if you get the chance.”
“Hmm. A man’s vulnerable at his neck, you say? What else have you been keeping secret, eh, Coen?”
The redhead herald and his man crouched right at their feet. “Hello, boys,” said Berchard. The pair winced up.
Lamoric put his mailed hands over his face, hardly able to find skin. “How long must I wait? I’ve picked my headsman. He’ll have measured my neck by now. Let’s get it over.”
“Almost finished,” said the herald.
Lamoric laughed.
Now, Ouen leaned in, asking the herald, “What’s that you’ve got now, eh?”
The stake in the man’s hand was a long thing, gray as a taper. “Willow.” Tree of grief, of loves lost. He swung the hammer. There was dry chuckling among the birds; some crossed from perch to perch. He swung again. It looked like the rooks had gathered to stare down over their necks. The herald’s man reset the stake. He swung again, and again.
Guthred had stopped pulling. Lamoric looked. Every man stopped to watch.
No one counted the blows.
Radomor still sat in his shadows.
Abravanal, Almora, and Deorwen looked on. Durand and she shared a sober glance.
“Host of Heaven,” Berchard muttered. Closer to home, something like tears were running down the gray willow stake: water squeezing out of damp wood. There wasn’t a sound among the thousand under the wall.
“We do not want for omens, do we lads?” Lamoric took a shaky breath. “Is it too late for me to reconsider? Would everyone be very much disappointed?” The next instant, trumpets rang under the Heavens.
“There’s my answer,” Lamoric said and heaved himself into the saddle of his brother’s bone gray.
A WIND STIRRED under the clouds, jostling the carrion birds and lifting the tails of Lamoric’s borrowed panoply as he rode out alone.
Radomor climbed into the saddle of his big black. The animal shied as creaking leathers took the weight of the duke and his mail, and it jittered against the pain of the bit and spurs that forced its obedience.
Above the scene, Abravanal stared out from the ducal box. Trumpets flashed, poised for his command, but the old man hardly seemed to see what was happening before him. In a moment, his only son would ride against a man who had single-handedly turned battles for the king. The duke trembled, but, at a quiet touch from Sir Kieren, he climbed to his feet.
Deorwen led Almora from the box.
The ancient Sword of Judgment rattled from its scabbard, the blade of Abravanal’s long lineage shimmering under the clouds. Dead Landast’s gray stamped; Lamoric’s lance bobbed in his fist. Radomor’s head turned within its shadowed helm.
And Abravanal let the broad blade fall.
A lance is a terrible weapon. Its blade splits helms and shields. Its impact alone can heave a man yards and leave him forever broken. Throw the force of two charging horses behind the blow, and there is nothing to match it. Stout hardwood splinters. The skin of the lancer tears at the sudden wrench of his own weapon under his arm.
Under the eyes of his city and his father, Lamoric charged away from his comrades. As the distance closed, he swung the lance point down, clamping the ash beam in a vise of armored ribs and mailed arm. Durand felt every step as Radomor loomed beyond the sights of the man’s helm.
They struck with a thunderclap of splintered lances that stung rooks into the air. And Lamoric’s warhorse recoiled onto his haunches. While Lamoric and his brother’s gray seemed to cower, Radomor’s cloak filled, billowing above his foe—whose horse staggered and lolloped to its feet like a crippled thing. Both men had hit squarely, but both held their seats. And Radomor might have been a dragon with vast wings spread.
The men on the sidelines hissed while a hundred rooks pinwheeled back down into the yard, their black claws catching lines and poles.
“The bugger’s a stone tower,” whispered Coensar. Lamoric had hit the man square on the shield with all the force of arm and galloping horse—and the duke simply stormed away, back into his own company.
“Lamoric hung on,” countered Guthred.
Now they were shouting encouragement; Lamoric rode back for a new lance. They could see him working his hand.
He made no jokes. Guthred passed a second lance up. They would have three passes with this and then fall to blade work.
Again, the eyes of the crowd turned to Abravanal. He tottered above them, then the ancient sword fell, and the trumpets rang.
Once more, Lamoric allowed his brother’s warhorse to gather speed, opening into a rolling gallop. This time the tall gray shied before the duke’s onslaught, veering toward the crowd. Still, Lamoric brought the point to bear, and struck.
Once again, Lamoric’s aim was good. The point shrieked a flash from the duke’s helm: a prize hit. But even as Duke Radomor rocked, his own point struck. The steel bit through shield to jut three feet beyond. Again, Lamoric’s horse recoiled, his haunch knocking one spectator into his fellows. A thousand rooks lifted their wings.
Adrift above the crowd, Lamoric canted in the saddle.
Every man around Durand clenched his fists, every eye pinned on the filed blade. Had it gone under the arm? Had it gone through their man?
Radomor’s cloak billowed with the black wings all around as he too watched—the snapped haft of his lance still in his fist.
But Lamoric did not bleed; he did not open like a barrel of claret. Hands from among the citizens of Acconel reached for him as he lolled over their heads. Men and women lent their strength to his, righting their young lord.
And Lamoric managed to face the duke, who cast the broken fragment of his lance into the crowd and made ready for another pass.
Lamoric reached his comrades. They could hear his breath whistling through the mask of his helm.
“Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to spend a year over in Yrlac, eh?” said big Ouen.
“Am I dead?” asked Lamoric. He held his arms as though both were broken. Durand could see nothing of his face through the helm, but the left side of his surcoat was a ruin. Fragments of his shield hung from an arm still tangled with his enemy’s spear.
“When did I ever tell you to hunt a man’s head in a pass like this?” asked Coensar. A shield was the larger target.
“I was trying . . . trying for smack in the middle . . . middle of the whoreson’s shield. I don’t know,” gasped Lamoric. “Not used . . . to this horse.” His hands shook.
Guthred was tearing and digging at Lamoric’s side; the knight hadn’t left his saddle. “Looks like it cracked the shield, shot over wrist bone, smacked up against that coat-of-plates you’re always carping about, and then out.”
“Feels like it’s in my ribs.”
Guthred scowled. “We’ll need a hammer if these plates’re to lie right. Never touched you.”
“Is this the last pass? Then it’s blades?” asked Lamoric.
“Aye,” said Coensar.
There was a rush from the sky. The Heavens had filled with rooks, and the men winced at the snap of their feathers and the wheeling shadows of their wings.
“All right,” said Lamoric. “Last lance.” The rooks swooped low, cawing their derision. Lamoric still had to gasp. “They still up there? Cursed helm. You’d think . . . You’d think these bloody birds could wait for a man to fall down.”
Guthred set the final lance into his master
’s groping hand.
Durand watched as his borrowed helm turned toward the duke’s box. His father already stood, the ducal crown on a tangle of floating gray hair. Lamoric’s wife was nowhere to be seen; Almora could not be abandoned.
Across the lists were grinning Rooks, green knights, sneers, and carrion birds. On this final pass, Duke Radomor and Lord Lamoric would ride out and fight as long as their wounds allowed.
Abravanal raised the Isle Kingdom sword, then the trumpets rang.
As Lamoric spurred his gray on, Radomor erupted into motion, his cloak another part of the feathered storm above the fortress. Durand wondered how many eyes were on them now. How many spies sat among the burghers on the benches.
Again, the gray shied off. Horse and rider skimmed the reviewing stand, with Radomor roaring over the turf to swing down upon them.
At the last, with all of Radomor’s terrible strength wrapped around his lance, the duke spurred his warhorse to leap. For an instant, beast and knight struck as one, jamming the spear’s point home.
Lamoric exploded from his seat. Breast band and doubled girths sprang apart. Lamoric crashed into the screams of the crowd with his boots still in the stirrup irons.
Above him, Radomor let his wild-eyed mount kick the air. Lamoric’s blade—all that was left of his shivered lance—stood in the duke’s green shield. Radomor batted the thing aside and swung right down into the mob to finish things.
People sprawled to get away. Durand couldn’t see; none of the men could. He thought Lamoric must be dragging himself.
Radomor hauled out a war sword, stalking him. “Lamoric of Gireth, do you yield?” His voice boomed like the kettle-drums of an army.
Durand thought he heard something snarled back at the duke, then the hollow clang of a helm thrown to the sod.
“He’s alive,” said Ouen.
“God help him,” said Berchard.
Radomor too threw off his helm, his eyes and snarl now visible in the mouth of his chain hood. “If you will not yield, then on your feet.” They lost sight of him, then he reappeared, dragging Lamoric upright by his surcoat. The duke’s war sword gleamed in his free hand.