Faint Heart, Foul Lady: A Novelette: & Bonus Story: Night Life

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  For the first time, I saw the boy without his helm and such armor as covered his lower half. When he saw me, he sprang to his feet.

  I could not help seeing what I saw.

  A curtain of red-blond braids hung from his head, each long enough to reach his waist.

  Her waist.

  I turned so swiftly my taper blew itself out. I stood with my back to her. The light of her taper threw my shadow on the wall before me. “I beg your pardon a thousand times,” I said.

  “You may not have it,” she said crossly.

  I bit my lip and left the latrine hallway, waited in the great hall until she emerged, wrapped in her straw and surcoat, her hair hidden up under the soup pot again. She waved her taper out and leaned against the wall beside me. For a while we watched the flicker of firelight across the rushes on the floor and listened to the thunderous snores from Sir Wulfric. Need overcame me, and I went into the latrine in the dark, which was not wise, but I remembered the turns in the hall, and only scuffed an elbow; I relieved myself into the chute, and came back out, wondering if she would still be standing there or would have retreated into sleep.

  She waited, brave in this as in all things.

  “I have never heard of a lady knight. I don’t know how you will make a knight,” I whispered.

  “By deeds. As you said.”

  “By deeds and deception?”

  “Sometimes deception is necessary, even to knights. You taught me that.”

  “Why do you want this?”

  She looked away. “I will not be locked in a house. I was born in the wild, and I have the heart of a warrior. I must fight, or I will go mad.”

  I had seen knights who had a like problem, berserker blood that could not be denied. They were those who took affront easily and forced fights on others, taking offense at innocent words turned insult by misapprehension. They were never more alive than when battling anyone or anything. One walked wide around them, unless one were another such hot-blood.

  Yet Nix did not seem wild in that way. She hunched like a falcon, though, who spots prey. It seemed to me that maybe she hosted a different wildness, the wild of the hunt.

  She said, “When we reach the castle where the Knight of the Pearl holds sway, if you are as ill a knight as you profess to be, you must let me face him first, Bran.”

  “No.”

  “But it seems you have no hope of winning against him.”

  “You are a maid, and half a head shorter than I. This is my fight, has been my charge since I was a child. How could I be chivalrous and let you risk yourself?”

  Her eyes seemed lit by yellow fires within. She leapt on me then. There had been no challenge, and I was unarmed and surprised. But still, by my greater size and my small skill in hand-to-hand, I would have thought I could overmaster her.

  It did not thus transpire. Soon she sat atop me, her hands crushing my wrists to the floor despite my struggles. “Yield,” she whispered between clenched teeth.

  I fought to flip us over, and could not. Her muscles had set like iron; she sat unmoving on my stomach, heavier by far than her appearance had suggested, her face a foot above mine, fierce as a falcon’s. “Yield. You cannot overcome me, for my mother was a water maiden, and gifted me with powers of which you wot not.”

  Sweat bloomed on my brow. I brought my knees up against her back and felt as though I had knocked them into a stone wall.

  “Yield, Bran.”

  I thought of the fair Amicia, wondered what she would say if she could see one of her many champions now, helpless beneath a maiden. Once more I threw myself into every effort to escape Nix’s hold. Nothing I tried dislodged her, or even shifted her. I sank back and whispered, “I yield.”

  She was off me and back on her feet in an instant. “I claim first battle rights with that knight,” she said.

  Filled with shame, I knelt before her. I felt faint and confused, but I remembered what chivalry demanded of me. “I swear my homage and fealty to you,” I whispered, staring at the rushes on the floor. “All that I own is at your service.”

  “What nonsense is this? Get up, Bran.” She prodded me with her toe. A moment longer I stared at the floor, as I released all hold I had on dreams and vows and vengeance, and, indeed, on my lady Amicia. I gave myself leave to feel how now I was born yet a fourth time, out of my old self and into this one who owed life and service to Nix.

  Then I felt cheerful, and got to my feet. Whatever came next lay in a pattern I had not yet foreseen. We went back to our pallets and I thought of men hanging dead in trees, with ravens eating out their eyes, and for the first time since the lord’s tale at supper I did not picture my corpse among theirs.

  #

  In the morning we heard mass and broke our fast with the lord and lady. The lady saw to it that the cook gave Eudo supplies. “Have you all else that you need for your journey?” asked the lord.

  The damsel Tegwen said, “If it chances that you have a palfrey I might ride, I could return this noble destrier to Sir Bran.”

  I said, “If it chances you have mail that would fit Sir Nix — ”

  All turned to stare at me, lord, lady, Eudo, Sir Wulfric, Mistress Tegwen, and Nix. Nix’s eyes were sharp and harsh, her yellow falcon eyes. Eudo and Tegwen looked confused, and Sir Wulfric dubious.

  “The lad needs mail,” I said. “He means to fight, and who can he fight in such garb? Suppose the dragon had set his armor afire. What would have happened then?”

  Sir Wulfric frowned. Tegwen glanced askance at him, and Eudo made a motion to me of his hand cutting his throat. The lord and lady, of course, did not know of what I spoke.

  “I have a hauberk my son outgrew before he went adventuring,” the lady said. “The child is welcome to it; would that it protects him as it did my son, in God’s good name.” She went to fetch it.

  “I cannot offer you a palfrey, but I have a hackney I can spare,” the lord said. He sent a servant to fetch it.

  Presently returned the lady with youth-sized mail, aketon, a shining helm, milk white coif, a round green shield, and a clean, whole surcoat in white and green, which she offered to Nix.

  For a moment Nix just stared. Then she said, “O, thank you. Thank you.” She took the clothes inside the keep.

  I searched my saddlebags for aught I could give in return for the horse and mail. I found no money, but an emerald brooch my mother had given me which I had never gamed away, the only token of hers that I carried with me always. “Please, for your kindness,” I said, and offered it to the lady. She refused it three times, but the fourth time, she accepted.

  Nix emerged, her face at last washed. She was clad in real mail, with the green and white surcoat overtop, and again all her hair tucked up out of sight under the new helm. She looked a faerie knight.

  She was not like any lady I had ever seen or courted. Yet I felt such stirrings in my breast as signaled the start of a fortunate fall. Just so had I felt when first I beheld the queen’s fairest attendant, Catrin, whom all the knights courted. Yet as I studied Nix I felt something more, something strange and new for which I did not yet have words.

  Eudo’s eyes widened. He watched Nix, then glanced at me.

  I stepped forward and held Nix’s stirrup so she could mount. She climbed up onto her pony, then dug her toe into my stomach. “Stop it,” she whispered.

  I smiled and turned away.

  #

  The damsel gave me back my destrier and consented to ride on the lord’s hackney. Thus we proceeded, with other adventures, into the north country whence she had been abducted, until presently we approached her home. We passed through a village she knew. When they heard the sound of our horses’ hooves on the packed earth streets, the dwellers came out of their wattle-and-daub houses. “Where are you going?” some asked.

  “Morcant,” said the damsel.

  “Turn back,” the men told us. “All who travel there die shameful deaths. The air is full of the stench of bodies rotting. Turn back.” />
  “Is that you, Mistress Tegwen?” asked an old woman.

  “It is, and I have brought these champions to face the Knight of the Pearl.”

  “It is a wicked day when a damsel brings men to their doom,” cried the old woman.

  For the first time since I had met her, I saw Tegwen stop and think. She studied each of us in turn. “Truly,” she said, “I may be doing you great ill.”

  “Had I not met you, still, fate would have brought me here,” I said.

  “I am ripe for any challenge,” said Sir Wulfric. “An he had killed a hundred, still would I face him, for he has never yet met me.”

  “I will fight anything that brings shame and dishonor to women or children or knights,” said Nix.

  Everyone looked at Eudo. He shrugged. “I live and learn, and hand them their arms.”

  “Still, I release you all from any pledge you may have made to uphold me,” Tegwen said. “From here on, accompany me by choice or turn back. I must go on. When last I was home, my sister and her family and vassals and servants and soldiers were close to the edge of starvation with this siege. I must do what I can to aid her.”

  “Let us go,” said Nix.

  We rode on through the village. The villagers did not seem to know whether to cheer for us or mourn. Some few trailed a ways with us, but then we went through a slender pass in the hills, and lost our followers.

  On the crest of the last hill, we looked to the land below, a dark-treed wood, a few buildings beyond, huddled at the base of the curtain wall of a castle built of pale green stone on a spit of land. And beyond the castle —

  For the first time in my life I beheld the sea.

  It transfixed me. Something strange and light rose in my chest. How could such a great gray-and-green expanse stretch out into eternity before one and not rouse a spirit of wonder?

  “Bran,” Nix murmured. She touched my sleeve.

  I blinked and looked at the company. I realized that I held one of my willow whistles. That I had been playing it, all unknowing. Tegwen and Eudo stared at me with wonder in their faces.

  Sir Wulfric’s face was purple with impatience. “Let us not tarry for such silly tootling,” he said. “If fear has seized you, turn back.”

  “Fear,” I murmured. Strange, but I had forgot my fear. I put my whistle away and we rode on down the track to the wood.

  “That deaf fool,” Nix muttered. “’Twas eternity and ocean you played. Who could hear and not understand?”

  I took her hand and kissed the back. She jerked away from me, spurred her horse, and caught up with Eudo.

  Now, I thought, I have dishonored my master. I will have to make it up to her somehow. Still, I smiled.

  My smile vanished when the road took us into the trees. Just as the lord had said, as the villagers had said. The stench of death was so thick it made us choke and cough. Knights, dead knights, in various states of decay, hung by the neck from low branches all through that horrid wood, their cloven shields and broken swords hung up beside them in a dreadful display of evil and dishonor. Clouds of flies attended them; crows pecked at them. At the Last Judgment, how should they rise up from such a place?

  Even Sir Wulfric was quiet as we traversed that wood.

  Beyond it we came to an open field that might once have been a fair jousting ground. In the meadow was pitched a magnificent pavilion, and beside it lay a black dog large as a pony. As soon as the dog spied us, it rose to its feet and howled, and out from the pavilion strode a knight, attended by a host of servants. At the same time, on the wall walk of the castle came many people.

  “Sister!” cried a beautiful golden-haired lady from above.

  “Sister!” cried Tegwen. “How fare you?”

  “The better for sight of you!” she cried. But all on the wall walk looked gaunt and weary.

  I stared at the knight, the man who had killed my father and whom I had never before seen. All I could discern was that he was a large man and wore black mail beneath a black surcoat, and in the center of the surcoat’s chest there was a circle of pale pearls.

  “Have you come to challenge me?” he called. His voice was smooth, and sweet as hot cider.

  “We have,” said Sir Wulfric.

  I kneed my horse to the fore. “I am Sir Bran of Elstan. You slew my father and dishonored my family, and I must face you.”

  “What a barking pup to put out of its misery,” he said. “This should take but a moment of my time.”

  Nix rode in front of me. “Now, Bran. I accept your fealty and homage, and press you into my service,” she said. “Give me your favor. I will be your champion.”

  I had forgotten everything at the sight of this man but the ancient goal carved into my soul. I blinked three times, for a moment mazed in mind by what Nix said. My stomach jumped as I fought to change course. Then I remembered my fourth self, which I had pledged to her. I took three breaths and glanced down at what I wore, then tore the hem off my blue surcoat and held it out.

  She presented her right arm, and I tied my favor about it. I still felt as though sword-smote.

  “What are you playing at?” asked Sir Wulfric.

  “Nix will be a knight,” I said, “and is already my master.”

  “I claim first battle right,” Nix said. She rode to the pack mule and took the heaviest lance we had. “Knight! For all the evil you have done, repent you, and prepare to die!”

  “I do not fight children.”

  “Call me a dwarf then, and have at you!”

  The Knight of the Pearl laughed.

  Nix sat her pony, with her lance couched, and waited.

  Sir Wulfric turned three shades of purple. Eudo spoke softly to him and they both rode to the side of the ground. Tegwen stared long at me, then bit her lip and looked away. I watched Nix.

  When the Knight finished laughing, he said, “So be it,” and told his servants to set his spurs on his heels and bring him his black horse and black spear, and then he mounted and withdrew to the far end of the jousting ground.

  I could not let Nix do this.

  I must abide by my word to do her bidding.

  I must protect her, protect what was beautiful, fierce, wild, and precious. Suddenly it was more important than even my honor. I would willingly die for her if need be.

  How could I protect her when I couldn’t protect myself?

  She had the strength of her mother’s people. She could overmaster me in a trice. I couldn’t protect her. I must trust she could protect herself.

  Sickness roiled in my stomach.

  The Knight shouted, and they set off toward each other, gaining speed as they grew closer. Each smote the other in the midst of their shields with such force that both fell from their mounts and lay stunned upon the ground, the reins still in their hands.

  Did they live? Did Nix live?

  The people on the castle’s wall walk raised a cheer. “No one has ever unhorsed him before,” Mistress Tegwen murmured.

  Nix and the Knight sat up slowly.

  I pressed my palm to my chest.

  When each saw the other awake, both jumped to their feet. Nix struck her pony’s flank. He trotted straight to me. I took his reins.

  The combatants retrieved their shields and drew their swords, and then they fought, raining strike after strike on each other’s shields and helms, the Knight big and powerful, Nix small and agile, dancing away from blows, dancing inside his reach to strike at him with her green-bladed sword, harrying him like a hound a boar.

  The sun moved across the sky and still they fought, evenly matched despite the disparity of their sizes. They bled from a dozen small wounds.

  “Fall, dwarf,” the Knight cried.

  “Die, breaker of women’s and son’s hearts,” cried Nix, and then she drove a blow of her short sword straight through his mail and into his shoulder. When she drew the sword out, he dropped his sword, his arm dead from the shoulder, blood streaming down over his surcoat. Anon he buckled to his knees before
her.

  She set the tip of her blade beneath his chin. “Will you yield?” she asked.

  “I do. I yield me to thy mercy.”

  “I shall have just as much mercy as you had when you slew Bran’s father,” she cried.

  “Nix!” I dropped the reins of her pony and cantered toward her. “Stop!”

  She glared up at me, her eyes full of golden fire, her body braced to give the killing blow.

  “If you strike now, you will be a false knight or no knight at all. Stop.”

  The fire left her eyes. She jerked her blade back, and the Knight of the Pearl collapsed. She stepped away from him and cleaned her blade on the grass, then wiped it with the hem of her surcoat and sheathed it.

  He struggled to sit up again, though weak from loss of blood.

  “Through the mercy of my sworn man, you yet live,” Nix said. “So now, do whatever he asks of you.”

  The Knight looked up at me.

  “Swear homage and fealty to Nix. Make over all your lands and possessions to Nix for the purpose of making reparations to those you have harmed. Spend the rest of your life making amends to all those you have trespassed against,” I said. “Swear by everything you hold dear that you will abandon all evil and work to right the wrongs you have wreaked.”

  He bowed his head. “I swear.”

  My heart was sore. “Why did you do all these evil deeds?” Why had my father died such a senseless death?

  “She whom I loved above all others charged me with this mission. I had given my word to do her bidding,” he said. “A knight who laughed dishonored her. She made me swear to avenge her, to kill all knights who laughed. First I sought out all knights who laughed and killed them. Then she said perhaps I had not killed the one who defiled her, and told me to kill all knights from the court of your king. So I set myself that task.” He wiped a hand over his bloody face. “At last she died of her derangement, but she never released me from my vow. I thank you, Sir Dwarf, for honorably defeating me. I have longed for nothing more these past many years.”

  #

  Later, our company and all those who had been besieged sat down to a feast prepared by the Knight of the Pearl’s servants.

  “Do you write lyrics?” Nix asked me.