Ordination

by Daniel Ford

  As he passed by the green and saw the people of Thornhurst start to flow toward him, then behind him, he began to feel their fear—the fear that it was all happening again. He heard the buzz of their talk, heard his name, heard Paladin and Mother whispered in voices that craved, but lacked, certainty.

  He saw Renard—spear in hand, sword on belt, leathern coat sewn with scales—and felt a surge of confidence; he wasn’t alone in facing whoever was heading their way. And Idgen Marte was somewhere nearby readying herself for battle, if it came to that. If he couldn’t see her, he reasoned, so much the better.

  A small, painfully bright spark suddenly blossomed in his chest, in his head, in his skin, in and around him all at once. There is nowhere that you are alone, my Allystaire, murmured that soft and musical voice. This time, though, its warmth felt less like comfortable sunlight and more like roaring, consuming flame.

  He strode up the road with his hands by his sides, arms swinging lightly, eyes peering ahead. Scarcely threescore yards from the green he spotted them; five armored shapes on horseback.

  He stopped, set his feet, and waited for the shields to pick themselves out; the lead rider wore blackened armor, a masked helm. Red goblet upon blue circle on half silver. “Casamir,” he growled, hands itching for his hammer. Flame roared in his ears. Briefly, he remembered their recent meeting in the Sign of the Stone Wall. I should have killed him then, he thought, as he recalled Casamir’s gloating face, his dark, delighted eyes, the way he backed out of the room smirking, hands held wide and away from his weapons.

  His eyes quickly took in the rest; two he did not know, but the fourth and fifth were all too familiar. Skoval, he thought, seeing three yellow diamonds descending a red field. And lastly, his heart sank at a dark, gated tower upon a silver field, though he knew the man from his black-enameled scaled armor. The giant black horse he rode was nearly matched in size to Ardent.

  “Garth,” he murmured, the fire in his head dimming for a moment. He lowered his head and took a deep breath. “I do not want to have to kill you,” he whispered. Please, Mother, he briefly prayed. Please don’t let it come to that.

  The five knights arrayed themselves, poorly, he noted, with Casamir and one of the unknowns, simple blue and yellow checks on his shield, in the front. The lancers were farthest back, at the edges, and Garth anchoring the space between them.

  Casamir removed his helm mostly so that he could smirk, a hateful expression on a hateful man’s face, even with sweat streaming down from the dark widow’s peak on his forehead. “Go on and reach for your hammer, pisspot. Do it and make an end of this.”

  Allystaire saw movement among the line, let his eyes flicker. Garth had likewise removed his helm, letting the braid of his long blond hair free. His skin was paler even than Allystaire’s, and his eyes so light a green as to seem nearly white; his features were surprisingly fine, almost delicate, and his looks belied by the heavy scaled armor he wore, the heavy longaxe resting across his pommel. “We’re ordered to bring you to Wind’s Jaw, Allystaire.”

  “On what charges,” Allystaire’s voice rang out sharply, “and on what authority? We are not in Oyrwyn.”

  “Writs of Exile and Divestiture were pronounced upon you weeks ago,” Garth said. “You’ve no legal standing to contest us; you can only hope for Gilrayan Oyrwyn’s mercy. As to what barony we are in?” Garth shrugged. “I don’t see Lionel Delondeur here to protest.”

  Garth stepped his horse a few paces closer. Even at a distance, Allystaire thought he could read sorrow in the pale man’s features as he added, “And there are six of us, and one of you. Unarmored, these are bad odds. Even for you.”

  “I only see five,” Allystaire replied, with a boldness he did not precisely feel, fire in his limbs or not. “One of you has been afraid of me since he was twelve summers old,” he said, turning his eyes to Casamir and offering a cold smile before looking back to Garth. “And you and Skoval, I taught. Are you quite sure that I taught you everything I knew? Is this how you want to find out?”

  “Enough prattling,” Casamir sulked. “We are six…and what d’ya know…” At that moment, a sixth horse trotted out of the treeline bearing two riders. One was another armored form, the other smaller and struggling, with a mailed arm around its neck. As they drew closer, Allystaire saw that the smaller person was Gram. “No need t’risk anythin’. Hold your hands up. Jarmir, the fetters. Garth, take his arms. I’ll want to put that stupid laborer’s tool on my wall.”

  The sixth mounted, armored man, another Allystaire did not know, drew close enough for Allystaire to see the fear in Gram’s eyes as he struggled against the iron-clad arm that held him in place. Allystaire’s lips pulled back in a growl as he saw steel bared—a dagger drawn by the knight and held against the boy’s stomach.

  Allystaire turned to Garth, who had dismounted, and shook his head, his voice low and rough and promising violence. “This is not what I taught you, Lord of Highgate. This is not knightly.” The other knight—yellow and blue checks—had also dismounted and held a pair of bar-and-cuff fetters, open, dangling from a hand.

  Garth flushed, but retorted sharply, “Neither was leaving your sister to face the baron’s rage.”

  Allystaire’s anger leapt within him, but he turned to face Casamir as the knights came within lunging distance of him. “Let the boy go. Let him go and I will come, peacefully.”

  From behind him, Allystaire heard the sharp intake of breath. He hadn’t realized that a crowd had formed not twenty paces away, and he could only hear them now, couldn’t spare the time to turn around, could only hear the choked sob at his words, the murmur of growing fear.

  Casamir nodded magnanimously to the other warrior, who shoved Gram casually off his saddle. The boy landed hard on his side, yelping in pain, but hopped back up and began to edge away.

  Allystaire held his hands up, palms out, arms straight up from his shoulders. He felt Garth approach him from the side, felt steel-gloved hands tug at the buckle of his sword, felt its weight come free from his shoulders. He didn’t look at the pale, sharp-cheeked man; he kept his eyes focused on Casamir.

  Jarmir seized his left hand and snapped the cuff around, slid the bar home, then reached for his other hand. Allystaire, rage and fury going cold within him, let him seize it and begin to snap a bar closed around it. Some brief instinct in him made him join his hands closer together, made him wrap the fingers of his right hand around the fetter on his left wrist. With the heightened senses that came over a man as battle was joined, he felt every grain of the rough iron. When his hammer came free and the second cuff closed, he saw Casamir gesture casually to one of the lancers and say, “Ride the brat down.”

  The knight hesitated, looking to Casamir, lance tip wavering in the air.

  At the very moment Casamir uttered those words, Allystaire felt a surge of strength and purpose within him unlike any he had ever known.

  His right fist tightened around the cuff on his arm, and he pulled. The iron—stout, thick, well-made—parted like wet paper, and a chain with a heavy weight at the end now dangled from his right wrist. He snapped his leg out in a kick at Garth’s knee, even as he drew the fetters back in a swing. The blonde knight collapsed in a heap, his leg suddenly buckling beneath him. Allystaire had no time to worry at the condition of his erstwhile friend and student, nor even to marvel at the song of strength that suffused his limbs.

  The heavy chain felt like the kind of long grass he might have, as a child, picked up and whipped in the air in the summer, to hear the sound it made.

  The chain in his hand whistled as he swung.

  It met the helm Jarmir wore, bronze fittings on steel, and tore through it, taking off the top layer of the knight’s skull as it clove straight through him. He collapsed in a heap of clattering metal suddenly dark with gore.

  Time seemed slow around Allystaire; his heart thudded in his chest, and he heard th
e Goddess’s words in his ear again: Terrible to behold.

  Allystaire bent and scooped up the hammer that had fallen from Garth’s stunned fingers, the chain still dangling from his right wrist. He fixed his eyes on Casamir, whose wide-eyed face had suddenly gone white, and whose hands were scrabbling to fill themselves with sword and shield. Allystaire ran straight for him, the song of the Goddess’s voice filling his mind, Her bright fury filling his limbs.

  The hammer was a feather in his hands. He raised it; Casamir finally tore forth his sword and dug spur into the flanks of his horse, which came charging toward Allystaire. Allystaire smiled, stopped, waited, waited…then stepped to his right and swung his free left hand, grabbing a goodly handful of Casamir’s belt and yanking him from the saddle. The man hit the ground with a resounding clang, and Allystaire was already swinging his hammer down into the middle of Casamir’s blackened cuirass. Whipped with the heightened power that flowed through Allystaire’s arms, the hammer caved in the armor and the chest of the man wearing it. Another blow, then a third, then Casamir struggling and screaming an awful, wet sound that soon quavered and died.

  When Allystaire heard the sickening metal ‘ting’ of the breast and backplates meeting in the middle, he straightened up from Casamir’s ruined body. A thing out of legend. The Goddess’s whisper shivered down his bones.

  Allystaire looked up in time to see the lancer who’d been ordered to ride Gram down lower his lance, then give his charger the heel. The lancer bore a foot of razor steel and was unarmored.

  In the face of the shining fury that sang in Allystaire’s limbs, this seemed a small matter. He pulled the hammer back over his head in a two-handed grip and hurled it forward. Till now, throwing his hammer had always been a desperate move. He dimly recalled throwing it at a crossbowman a month and a lifetime ago. Then, the hammer was heavier and thrown more slowly. Now, it did not roll end over end—it flew straight through the air like an arrow fired from some mad giant’s bow.

  When the hammer hit the mounted man head-on, it knocked him backwards from the saddle. Shield and lance fell from nerveless fingers as the man collapsed almost bonelessly from the back of his saddle. The horse reared up a few feet in front of Allystaire, but he ignored it, already turning to the rest of the battlefield.

  The horse upon which Gram had been held was upended, trapping its rider beneath it and thrashing in pain. Fletchings sprouted from several spots along its flank. Suddenly Idgen Marte dashed from the trees, bow in hand, hair streaming behind her. In a flash her sword was out and the horse’s throat cut; its thrashing quickly ceased.

  The rider, though, had sprung clear and rolled to his feet. Nimble, even in armor, he came up with his knife in one hand and his sword in the other.

  Idgen Marte stood between him and the fleeing Gram, her long curved blade and her bow—useless with an enemy so close—filling her hands. The armored man, feeling he was at an advantage against an unarmored woman, stepped forward almost contemptuously, brandishing his sword in an overhand arc.

  Allystaire had thought Idgen Marte was fast when he had sparred with her.

  He saw now that she had been holding back.

  Almost from the moment the armored man raised his arm, she had pivoted on one heel, stepped behind him, and slashed across the back of his knee with his sword. Mail links and leather straps flew free. Even as she slashed downwards with her blade, she slipped her curved bowstave between his legs and twisted, sending him toppling to the ground, face first.

  Before Allystaire had taken even half a dozen steps, the fight ended with her planting a foot on the knight’s back and laying the tip of her blade to the back of his neck. He left his blades on the grass and lifted his empty hands, yelling that he yielded. Allystaire quickly turned back to his own part of the field.

  Garth still lay prone upon the grass, clutching at the knee Allystaire had kicked. A crowd of villagers still lingered some yards back along the road. Skoval had thrown down his shield and lance, and sat atop his horse with his hands up. “Down off the horse, Skoval. On your knees.” He didn’t turn back to see if Skoval had obeyed, because he saw Renard, spear in hand, parting the crowd and coming onto the scene. Allystaire walked to the inert body of the lancer, his chest caved in with the impact of the top of the hammer, and found that he had to set his foot against the plate armor he wore to tug the hammer free. It finally popped loose with a wrenching sound, leaving a horrible rent in the steel beneath it.

  Idgen Marte had kicked the sword and knife away from the man she’d unhorsed and defeated, slipped her bow onto her back, and kicked the man back to his feet. He limped, but he moved, her unwavering sword at the back of his neck apparently providing a powerful inducement.

  Allystaire turned toward Garth, his hammer dangling from his hand. The pale blonde man struggled to back away, scrabbling on his hands and one foot, keeping the other, oddly bent leg—the one Allystaire had kicked—as motionless as he could. “Stay put or I will break the other one,” Allystaire warned. Garth stopped, panting harshly.

  “What are you, Allystaire?” His chest heaved, his eyes blinked in fear. “What have you done? What devil’s bargain have you made?”

  “I will show you precisely what bargain I have made, Garth.” He slipped the hammer back onto his belt and knelt next to the knight’s broken leg. Roughly, he seized hold of Garth’s head with a sweaty hand, seeking to weave a rope of connection as he had done with Norbert.

  “If that boy had been murdered,” Allystaire asked, through gritted teeth, eyes shut, “cut down by a man you were riding with, what would you have done?” He tightened his grip, both on Garth’s forehead and the grip of his senses on the other man’s mind.

  In rapid, heavy words, Garth spat out an answer. “He would’ve died on the way back to Wind’s Jaw. He would have died, or I would have.”

  “And what of Casamir? What of me?”

  “I…agh! I don’t know. I don’t know,” Garth screamed, writhing under the paladin’s dual grip. Allystaire released him, and Garth fell back to the ground, panting and sweating harder than before.

  “You get to live.” Allystaire reached down to Garth’s knee, roughly seizing his broken leg, wrapping his right hand around the joint. When he pushed his senses, he could feel the shape of the joint, feel the way the long bone of the shin was snapped; he concentrated intently, pulled again from that deep well he found within himself, drew up sorrow from memories of past friendship, and poured it into the man’s broken bone. It snapped suddenly together, whole, and Allystaire immediately withdrew his hand.

  He stood, offered his hand down to the fair-haired and fairer-skinned knight, and pulled him, shocked, to his feet. “You will limp a while, yet you can walk now.” He paused, waited for the blonde knight to set his weight disbelievingly upon his leg, all the while boring his blue eyes into Garth’s pale green. “That is the bargain I made. It was with no devil.” Then, letting go scornfully, he warned, “Stay put. I am not done with you.”

  Allystaire turned on somewhat weakening feet toward Skoval, who knelt with Renard’s spearpoint held mere inches from his throat. “And you.” Contempt and anger warred for control of Allystaire’s voice as he stalked forward, his hammer still gripped in his right hand, growing steadily heavier. “Take off your helm.”

  Skoval did as he was told. Beneath it he was brown-haired, with rounded cheeks and a hairline well up his forehead. His large, morose brown eyes were ringed by heavy circles, and the large mustache and whiskers he wore gave his entire face a hangdog look.

  “I’m sorry, m’lord Allystaire,” he rumbled, slowly, his voice a rock rolling slowly against other rocks. “We were only doin’ what we were ord—”

  His voice cut off quickly as Allystaire leant over him, clamping his hand hard around the man’s jaw. “You were going to say that you were doing what you were ordered, yes? That you are a loyal Oyrwyn man and the Baron of Oyrwyn se
nt you here for me. I. Do. Not. Care.” With each word Allystaire’s fingers gripped tighter, till Skoval let out a sharp gasp of pain and tried to pull back.

  “M’lord!” Renard hissed. “He’s yielded!” Allystaire turned his glare on Renard, but the bearded soldier, spear held scant inches from Skoval’s throat, met him stare for stare. “He’s yielded. Think on your own words t’them. This is not knightly.”

  Allystaire’s fingers unclamped, and he stepped back, flexing his hand into a fist and then straightening it, then back into a fist, several times, breathing deeply. He stalked away, eventually lowering his hand to his side and slipping the hammer back onto his belt; suddenly, Allystaire realized he was working very hard to keep his hands from trembling, and his legs upright. “Round up their horses,” he called out. “Disarm them, strip them, bind them, gag them, and toss them onto the green. We will deal with them on the morrow.” He bent down to retrieve his sword, then as soon as he picked it up, leaned on it for support.

  Allystaire walked off clutching his sheathed sword in nearly nerveless hands. He had almost made it past the crowd of villagers, when, with a sudden exhalation, he fell to the dirt in a boneless heap. The village folk were too cowed or too slow to react quickly enough to catch him.

  CHAPTER 19

  The Cost