Garrett wheeled his wolf around and lifted his visor to see the dun-armored knight weakly lift his right hand to his chest plate and then to fumble at the clasp of his helmet’s visor.
Finish him, boy, the voice in Garrett’s mind whispered.
I don’t think he’s getting back up, Garrett replied inwardly.
You must be certain that he does not, the voice said, He knows your plan and must not be allowed to reveal it to others!
Garrett’s skin crawled with guilt and dread as he slipped from Ghausse’s back and approached the fallen knight with his hand on the hilt of his sword.
Sir Anders’s squire, a portly young man with a shock of blonde hair sticking from beneath his dun-colored skullcap, knelt beside Sir Anders on the ground. He looked up at Garrett’s approach with terror in his eyes. “M’lord! You must defend yourself! M’lord?”
Sir Anders regarded Garrett with a look of pained resignation as he lay prone upon the grass.
Garrett heard the rasp of steel as the sword in his hand began to leave its scabbard, but he quickly forced it back inside again, his arm trembling from the effort required to restrain the Spellbreaker’s will. He gritted his teeth and gave Sir Anders a desperate look.
“I... yield... sir,” Sir Anders gasped, though it looked as if the words cost him greatly.
A murmur of astonishment passed through the Astorran crowd, interspersed with cries of disbelief.
Garrett’s muscles ached as he struggled to control his own arm. Three inches of naked steel shone from the blade’s scabbard as his arm drew it out against his will.
“No!” Garrett hissed under his breath as he shoved the blade back into its sheath again with a dull clunk.
Sir Anders pushed himself up on his elbows, his eyes wide as he watched Garrett’s strange battle with himself.
“Coward!” someone shouted.
“He’s yielded already!” a lady cried.
“Show mercy!” another woman begged.
The seed of Mercy... the voice in his mind growled as the steel of Garrett’s sword shrieked against the brass lip of its scabbard.
“Yeah, I know,” Garrett shouted aloud, slamming the blade home again, “Fruit of defeat!” He spun to face the baffled Astorrans lined up beside the list and raised his voice loud enough to be heard by them all. “Well, you know what? I like fruit. I think I’ll just make some Fruit of defeat jelly and have it on my toast! What do you think of that?”
Garrett felt the Spellbreaker’s will subside as the feeling returned to his tingling arm. He looked at Sir Anders again.
The knight sat, half-supported by his squire, both of them with mouths agape as they stared up at Garrett.
Garrett hissed with rage as he stomped over to the fallen knight and reached down to seize the grip of the man’s sword.
Sir Anders flinched but made no protest as Garrett drew the knight’s sword from its sheath. Garrett turned toward the stunned crowd and lifted the captured blade above his head.
“Is this how you do things here?” Garrett demanded, “I beat you in a fight, and then I take your stuff? Is that how it works?”
The eyes of the crowd lifted to the sword in Garrett’s hand as it crusted over with ice, wreathed in blue flames.
“You call that honor?” Garrett roared, “Whoever is the biggest and the strongest gets to take all the stuff and do whatever they want with it? Is that what you all swear your oaths about? Is that all it is? Because, back where I come from, they just call that stealing!”
“What do you know of honor, you craven dog?” a knight in silvered armor shouted.
“Well, I guess, not much,” Garrett shouted as he bashed Sir Anders’s sword to shards against the rim of his black shield. The Astorrans cried out, falling back a step as flakes of frozen steel and cinders of blue fire showered down around them.
“You see, I always thought honor was about telling the truth and protecting people from bad guys like the Chadiri!” Garrett shouted as he tossed the ice-crusted hilt of Sir Anders’s sword to land in the grass between the man’s knees.
“Then I came to Astorra, and I found out I was wrong about all that,” Garrett growled, “That’s not what honor is at all!”
Garrett reached up and hooked his thumb between his helmet and forehead and pushed it up off his head. The crowd recoiled in horror again at the sight of Garrett’s scarred and hairless head.
“Astorran honor is all about finding something ugly to call your enemy,” Garrett cried, “something different or strange... someone that doesn’t look like you or dress like you or talk the way you do... hopefully it’s somebody smaller than you, so they can’t really do much about it when you kick ‘em around!”
Garrett threw his helm down so hard that it flung up a little divot of grass and dirt as it bounced away.
“That way, you don’t ever have to stand up to any real bad guys!” Garrett raged, “That way you don’t ever have to take the chance that maybe you won’t win the fight!”
He spun and advanced on Sir Anders and his squire who now cringed, white-faced at the sight of the black stain spreading across the grass from Garrett’s feet.
“So that’s what you want, is it?” Garrett hissed, “Some kinda storybook villain that you can all line up and come at, one at a time... so you never have to think about what real honor would make you do... Well, fine then! You want a bad guy? Here I am!”
Garrett spat a chunk of ice from his lips as he faced the crowd again with a hateful sneer.
“Who’s next?”
Ghausse fell in beside Garrett with a concerned whine as Garrett angrily stamped his way over to where Haven and Lady Ymowyn stood watching him nearby. When he finally gathered enough composure to look them in the eye, he saw that Lady Ymowyn was crying.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, he voice gone slightly hoarse from all the shouting.
The fox woman gave him a trembling smile as she curtsied low before him. “Nothing at all... my King,” she whispered.
Haven raised her eyebrows and shook her head. “So, what’s the plan now?” she asked.
“They know why we’re here,” Cenick said, wiping the mud from Garrett’s helm as he approached from behind.
“Thanks,” Garrett said, as Cenick helped him slip the helm down around his ears again.
“Should I go get the ghouls and zombies and berserkers now?” Haven asked.
“Too early to say,” Cenick grumbled. Garrett followed the line of his gaze to where Sir Anders, apparently recovered from his injuries, was speaking with a small group of knights.
“I guess we’d better be ready in case they try anything,” Garrett sighed, “But, until then, we’ll just keep playing the game.”
“I didn’ have tha heart to kill tha man just fer guessin’ the truth,” Shortgrass sighed.
“You did the right thing, Shortgrass,” Garrett said, “I didn’t want to kill him either.”
“And yet your blade seemed to thirst for the man’s blood,” Cenick said.
“Yeah,” Garrett sighed, looking toward the patch of stained grass where he had struggled for control of his own body against the spirit of the Spellbreaker within him.
“He’s getting stronger, isn’t he?” Haven asked.
“No,” Garrett said, “I’m just asking too much of him right now. It’s not his fault... He’s just trying to help.”
Haven stepped close, putting her hand on Garrett’s cheek. “Brahnek wasn’t a good man, Garrett,” she whispered, “I saw the kind of cruelty he was capable of... You can’t take the chance of letting him out like that again.”
Garrett wanted to say something to reassure her, but the blaring of trumpets cut him off.
“Your rival awaits,” Cenick said, lifting his arm toward the knight in green armor that sat, hunched in the saddle of his horse at the far end of the list.
“Garrett...” Haven sighed as he pulled away.
“I’ll be all right,” Garrett laughed as he mounted Ghaus
se once again. He followed Cenick back to his starting position beside the pile of stolen lances.
“Finish it quickly,” Cenick said, handing Garrett a fresh lance.
“That won’t be a problem,” Shortgrass whispered with a little laugh, “Tha poor devil looks as green as his armor!”
Garrett squinted as he looked toward the knight known as Sir Braece. The man did indeed look as though he could use a long rest in a soft bed with an empty bucket nearby.
Sir Braece took a deep breath before lowering his visor and taking the lance that his squire offered him.
“Ya don’t want ta drag it out a wee bit?” Shortgrass asked.
“No,” Garrett sighed, “I feel sorry enough for him as it is. Let’s just knock him down and get it over with.”
“Fair enough,” Shortgrass said, “No point in bein’ coy about it now, is there?”
Sir Braece shouted something as he charged, but Garrett could make no sense of the man’s muffled words. The crowd cheered just the same.
They gasped in dismay once again a few moments later as their champion lay, flat on his back in the withered grass where Sir Anders had fallen before.
Sir Braece clutched at his stomach with an anguished groan as he struggled to rise from the blackened grass, but Garrett didn’t even bother to dismount. Ghausse, sensing his master’s intent, hopped the rope partition between the jousting lanes and ran directly toward the injured knight.
Still clutching the blasted stump of his stolen lance, Garrett rode the green knight down, clubbing him across the back of the helmet with the splintered shaft of the broken weapon.
Sir Braece went down again in a groaning heap and did not make much effort to rise again.
“Next!” Garrett shouted over the boos of the crowd as he snatched another lance from Cenick’s hand.
“Today is the day you will answer for your crimes, blackguard!” shouted a knight in cream-white armor astride an enormous white horse. His white shield bore the golden image of a ram’s head, and two curving gilded horns adorned the crest of his white-plumed helm.
Garrett snorted with derision as Ghausse trotted back to their starting position.
“I will cleanse your stain from the green bosom of our beloved homeland when I strike the malformed head from your twisted body, and you will die, knowing that I, Sir Gillian of Caulshire have bested you!” the white knight shouted.
“Well I don’t like you either,” Garrett muttered as he kneed Ghausse into a dead run toward the Astorran knight, his lance already level with the man’s broad chest.
“Lance!” the white-armored Astorran called out, snapping his visor down quickly as he abandoned his carefully rehearsed speech. His squire hefted the gold-tipped lance into his master’s hand and then leapt back as the knight spurred his horse forward to meet Garrett’s charge.
Once again, Garrett heard the frantic prayer of fairy magic in his left ear as Shortgrass worked his charms of protection. Garrett focused all of his will on the tip of his lance which now glowed with a nimbus of blue flame as he aimed it at the crux of the glimmering gold filigree on the knight’s breastplate. Too late did he notice a cloaked man in the crowd drop to his knee and raise something wooden in his hands.
The crossbow bolt made a thrumming sound in the split second before it thudded into Ghausse’s flank.
The big wolf yelped like a kicked puppy as he tumbled, nose-first into the grass. Garrett’s startled cry caught in his throat as Sir Gillian’s lance slammed hard into his shield, spinning Garrett’s body around as he flew from Ghausse’s back.
He heard Shortgrass curse as he was flung clear of Garrett’s pauldron, and then Garrett hit the ground, bouncing and rolling across the grass.
He thrust out his right arm to stop himself, and a blast of white-hot pain shot through his forearm as his wrist snapped upon impact with the ground.
Garrett skidded to a halt, screaming in pain. His poorly fitted helmet had twisted around, leaving him unable to see through his visor anymore. He rolled into a ball, tucking his broken arm against his chest as he pulled his shield up over his body.
“Garrett, get up!” Cenick shouted.
Someone kicked Garrett hard in the back of the head, and his ears rang with the impact of sabaton on helm. He tucked his head beneath his shield and felt the impact of a sword blow upon its rim a moment later.
“Get up you dog!” Sir Gillian laughed, “I want to see you weep when I take your head!”
Garrett tried to squirm into a kneeling position, but another savage kick sent him to the ground once again. He tasted blood in his mouth.
Ghausse growled from somewhere nearby and then whined in pain as Garrett heard the sound of a sword blow landing true.
“No!” Garrett shouted. He lost all feeling in his right arm as he felt a mass of solid ice form around his broken wrist, and he shoved himself to his feet, using the icy club of his forearm.
He shook his helm back into place just in time to see the golden pommel of Sir Gillian’s sword slam into his visor.
“Garrett!” Haven screamed.
Garrett’s vision exploded with motes of light as his head snapped back, and he staggered away, barely keeping his feet beneath him. When his vision cleared a moment later, he realized that his visor had sprung open. Ghausse lay in a heap on the bloodstained grass, and Sir Gillian now thrust his sword directly at Garrett’s face.
The tip of Gillian’s sword skipped off of Garrett’s hastily-raised shield, but Garrett had time only to gasp a single breath before the white knight was upon him again, pouring a hailstorm of rapid blows upon Garrett’s shield and armor.
Garrett staggered backward, giving ground before the knight’s relentless assault, trying to make sense of the situation as his shock-addled brain reeled with every blow.
“Garrett! Behind you!” Cenick cried.
Garrett glanced back to see the rope partition that marked the spine of the list, but he could not avoid it as Sir Gillian shield rushed him into it. Garrett felt the rope pull taut across his armored back and then slip down to his waist, catching on his sword belt as Sir Gillian shoved him over. Garrett’s legs flew above his head as he went over backwards, landing hard on his neck. He tried to rise, but the rope had tangled on the crossguard of his sword, suspending his hips above his head as the weight of his armor bore down on Garrett’s neck with unbearable pain.
He gasped in terror a moment later when he felt the tip of Sir Gillian’s sword slip through the gap beneath the armored tassets guarding his hips and jab into the flesh of his lower back.
“I remember finding a turtle on his back once when I was a boy,” Sir Gillian whispered as his blade slowly pierced the thin gambeson that Garrett wore beneath his armor, “I made great sport of the poor beast.”
I’ve had just about enough of this braggart, the voice of Brahnek Spellbreaker growled in Garrett’s mind.
“Me too!” Garrett hissed through clenched teeth as he felt Gillian’s sword slowly sinking into his flesh.
A shockwave of blue light sent ice-bound fragments of rope flying in all directions as Garrett crashed to the ground, free of his entanglement. Sir Gillian’s sword gave a warbling whistle as it spun through the air, landing nearby with a sullen thud. Garrett heard Sir Gillian’s armored body crash to the field a moment later.
Garrett rolled over and pushed himself to his feet again, staggering toward his injured wolf.
“Kill him!” a man shouted, and a crossbow bolt punched through Garrett’s breastplate, just below his heart.
“Gah!” Garrett grunted, as a searing pain lanced through his ribs.
“Treachery!” Cenick shouted.
Garrett twisted around, spotting the cloaked archer as the crowd of gaily dressed ladies and stunned knights fell back. The man frantically worked the hand winch of his weapon, drawing it back to load another shot.
Garrett hissed a cloud of icy mist through his teeth as he raised his frozen right arm toward the man who had shot h
is wolf.
A whirring sound split the air as Cenick’s thrown knife thudded into the man’s shoulder. He went over backwards with a startled cry, dropping his crossbow as he fell.
Garrett’s ears rang with the impact of steel on steel as a sword strike to his back sent him reeling. He spun to see two more cloaked men in light armor with swords drawn.
Garrett raised his right arm to block the downward strike of a sword, and its edge bit deep into the ice encasing his arm and the vambrace beneath. The cloaked man tried to wrench the blade free with both hands, but Garrett only snarled back at him as blue flames engulfed the man’s sword. The assailant cried out in panic as he tried to release the blade, only to find it frozen to his palms. He began to shriek in terror as fiery frost slowly began to spread, covering his forearms as he struggled to break free.
“Die you devil!” the second man shouted as he struck a glancing blow to Garrett’s pauldron.
“Get off him!” Haven shouted as she sprang upon him like a panther, seizing the man’s cloak from behind and spinning him around.
Garrett glanced back to see her pounding the man into insensibility with her fist as he struggled to rise from the grass. She gave Garrett a little smile, and he smiled back as he continued to wrestle with the other assassin whose blade and hands were now firmly frozen to Garrett’s arm.
“For the gods’ sake, someone kill him!” shouted the cloaked man as he watched the rime of burning frost creeping over his shoulders.
A trio of Astorran knights drew their swords and advanced, their awe-stricken faces pale with the blue glow of the Songreaver’s power.
“Hold!” Sir Anders shouted, stepping forward with his hands spread wide.
The trio of knights looked to the older man, hesitating in their advance.
“This is not honor!” Sir Anders cried, his burning eyes locked on Garrett, “We will not break the code of the tourney for the sake of a few cowards!”
“To hell with honor!” the cloaked man cried, “Kill this monster before he kills me!”
“A monster is he?” whispered Lady Ymowyn as she stepped up behind the half-frozen man, “No, my dear, you haven’t seen the real monsters yet.”
Trials of the Twiceborn (The Songreaver's Tale Book 6) Page 5