It had barely been a minute, and FitzOdo had dispatched two of them. So much for mathematics.
“It occurs to me,” the Earl of Huntingdon’s voice was calm, baiting FitzOdo to turn around before finishing Beneger off, “that you don’t know who I am.”
“You’re a corpse,” the knight said. “You just don’t know it yet.”
“I suppose that’s true for everyone,” the earl laughed. “But in life, we share a given name of Robert, though my title is the Earl of Huntingdon.”
“Huh.” FitzOdo frowned. “Don’t think I’ve ever killed an earl before.”
“So you don’t know who I am.” He reached down and slowly draped his fingers through the ash on the ground, then pulled up a handful that he rubbed into his palms. “It’s no surprise, nobody really does. After I became earl, that was the only title anyone cared about. The same way you probably want people to remember you for whatever it is you did in the Kings’ War, I wish people remembered me for my laurels, too.”
“And what’s that?” FitzOdo smiled. “Longest shit streak?”
“Yes, but let’s not change the subject. No, I’m not my father’s firstborn son. I shouldn’t have inherited the earldom, my older brother should have had it.” He clapped his hands several times, pleased with the puff of grey smoke they made. He flexed his fingers, he stretched his arms. “But I distinguished myself in tournaments for years, so much so that my name became famous. People came from halfway across the country if they heard I was going to be in a tilt, or a melee, simply to watch my fighting style. You don’t know it, sir, but you are squaring off against the Champion of Salisbury, the Champion of Canterbury, and of Kent.”
At this he whipped his rapier out again, deadly level and parallel with the ground, one foot planted firmly forward in a deep thrust.
FitzOdo seemed only barely amused. “Never heard of you.”
“Nor I, you.” He moved again, backward, angling sideways, his boots silently slipping past each other like cat’s paws, his other hand holding the tip of his demicape out gingerly as he danced. “You know, a lot of people who’ve never heard of me make fun of me for this weapon. Say it’s too light, that it’s a dandy’s toy, and not made for proper combat. And it’s true, I think its blade would snap if you so much as touched it with that monstrous thing.”
The wooden pole of the glaive pounded the ground.
“Her name is Tesoro. An epee isn’t much good for cutting, but she’s good for making little, tiny holes. And by the end of this, you’ll be full of them. And if you’d ever seen me fight before, you’d be smart enough to surrender right now.”
Quill wondered if the earl was bluffing. Perhaps trying to give himself, or Ben, some time to recover. But watching the man move now, his muscles expertly trained, the sinews in his arms seemed purpose-made, and Quill believed every word of it. The man was as graceful as water, but he wasted not even a single drop of energy. His thin frame and needle blade made a striking silhouette compared to the ox of FitzOdo and his two-handed glaive, and Quill could not help but marvel.
FitzOdo clearly meant to make short work of the duel. He swung wide and level with his glaive at full extension, then wheeled it around to slice down two times and into a brutal thrust forward, the way he had gored Lord Beneger. But at every swing the earl sidestepped, leaned, hopped nimbly away, and then danced himself in a long sweep to safety.
The knight shuddered to regain his momentum, but when his face reeled back on his opponent it was full of shock. “Fffffucker…”
“Three,” the earl Robert said, nodding his head slightly. “How many would you like?”
Quill hadn’t even realized that the earl had jabbed his rapier’s tip out during each of his evasions, and FitzOdo clasped his hand over his thigh, where a small circle of blood marked an injury. Where the others were, Quill was not sure.
In rage the knight attacked again. This time the earl flipped his cape up off his shoulder and swatted its heavy fabric at the glaive’s blade, more effective than any shield at quelling its bite. He turned under the man’s arm and pricked the inside of FitzOdo’s chest, high up where his plating left him unprotected. The axe came around again and found nothing, again and again, flurries of ash rose to surround them as they spun, the bullfighter and the bull.
Quill was well shy of recovered and he could not yet inhale without agony, but the commotion of the fight was traveling away. He took the chance to half crawl his way over to Lord Beneger. The man was on his back, controlling his breaths into short bursts, his hand clasped at his armpit.
“Let me see,” Quill said, and met Ben’s eyes. There was fear there, maybe the first time he’d seen the man with anything but a stoic certainty.
His clothes were sopped with blood, torn open enough that Quill could see the wound beneath. It was less in the armpit than he thought, and mercifully in the arm itself rather than his chest. Still, a thick flap of muscle was opened wide, and Quill bit down against his nausea as he kneaded the meat back in place and folded the man’s arm against his chest. “Keep pressure here. I think you could be sewn up again,” he said, as if he had any real knowledge on it, “but you’re losing blood. We’ve got to take care of you fast. Let me wrap you, we’ll get out of here.”
“FitzOdo…” Beneger murmured.
“Will wait. This first.” He glanced backward at the two Roberts, continuing as they were before. The earl spent most of his time trip-stepping and baiting the knight, but never attempting any attack. He only reacted and found another place to prick the tip of his rapier, in an arm, a leg, only an inch or so in, but the knight was clearly fatiguing at the accumulation of tiny wounds.
Quill tore his own shirt over his head and then into strips, which wrapped around Lord Beneger’s arm. Before the last loop he found a short but sturdy stick nearby and included it under the wrappings. Once the last tie was done, he gave Beneger a warning before twisting the stick like a lever, tightening the straps clearly past the point of comfort. “Hold this,” he said, putting Beneger’s good hand on the stick. “Keep it there.”
He helped the man up, but frankly had no idea where to go. There were normally physickers in the Parliament Ward, but there was an army between them and there, even if they weren’t in hiding. The castle was burning, and there was no way Ben could survive the tunnels to get back out to the King’s camps. If there were other options, Quill didn’t know them.
FitzOdo yelled, and Quill turned his attention back to the fight. The knight was close to the earl and suddenly threw his glaive with both hands out directly into the earl’s face. Unprepared for such an audacious attack, Robert’s rapier whipped out wildly, but the wooden pole still knocked him back, and a second later FitzOdo’s empty hands reached out—the left grabbed the earl by the throat, and the right smashed into his face.
And again.
It was hard to say this was a punch. If Quill punched someone, the reaction would be a giggle. This was more like a battering ram. The third punch left the Earl of Huntingdon with blood bursting from his nose and lips. His legs were weak, and when FitzOdo let go, the man slumped to the ground like a rag doll.
Goddamn, this Coward Knight was everything Quill hated about the world. Men who thought their strength was the measure of how right they were. Men who defined themselves in terms of how much pain they could inflict on others, or take upon themselves.
Quillen Peveril was no good at hurting other people, and even worse at being hurt, which is why he was so reluctant to impose himself into the troubles of the world. But watching a meat mountain smash the face of a graceful lord made Quill know one thing, with absolutely no doubt. That between himself and Fucking Sir Robert FitzOdo, Quill was the infinitely better man.
The knight tried to bend down to retrieve his weapon, but winced at the attempt. He was spotted all over, like a pox, with little blood roses. The earl had crippled the man, and while Quill was not much of a threat to anything besides ignorance, he was fairly certain he had enou
gh wits about him to take out an unarmed man who was already bleeding out. The earl had done the hard work, Quill just had to finish him off.
And so the youngest son of the great Peveril family, famous only for getting lost in the caves of the Peak, who had since identified himself solely by the quantity of things he did not do, chose to act. He left Lord Beneger leaning against a wall, picked up his sword, and screamed at his opponent. “FitzOdo!”
The beast turned, his mouth gaping, trying to determine who had the temerity to challenge him.
Quill looked forward to telling his children about this someday. When he was Lord of the Peak, head of Peveril Castle. Perhaps with his wife Arable. Their children would know that the scourge of Nottingham was felled by a man a quarter his size, who was very likely pissing himself just to do so.
Perhaps he’d leave that part out of the story.
“Surrender yourself,” Quill threatened.
“Fuck you,” FitzOdo spat. And despite his injuries, he reached down, grabbed his weapon off the ground, and made a riotous charge at Quill that he had not expected.
Quill tried to strategize but there was no time, he held his sword out in front of him as if the man might simply impale himself, felt his sword batted away and flung from his hands, then the blade swung and there was only a single moment of pain before the dark.
SIXTY-FIVE
ARABLE DE BUREL
MIDDLE BAILEY, NOTTINGHAM CASTLE
THEY WERE ANYTHING BUT alone now in the castle gaols. An hour ago the first voices had come from the ramp downward, prompting them to quickly scramble and hide. But the visitors were seemingly normal citizens—refugees that now filled every hallway and cell. Women and children largely, and some elderly. The catacombs had clearly been identified as the safest place in the castle during the siege, and was now being used to shelter those who were not immediately useful in the castle’s defense. Arable overheard that the lower bailey had been evacuated, which explained all the people. It was now under control of King Richard’s armies, though everyone was still obstinately under the impression that it was the French King Philip in disguise. The bailey and the barbican had apparently been set on fire to delay their advance, and the fighting was likely over for the day. But tomorrow they would no doubt commence on sieging the second bailey.
Despite their best efforts, they’d failed to stop the first day of the war. Arable hoped to never know how many people fought and died today. Particularly in the last hour, while they waited for Charley to return, hoping he’d learned how to get to Prince John.
“I thought Castle Rock was impenetrable,” Nick whispered.
“It is,” she explained. “But the lower bailey isn’t Castle Rock. Its curtain wall is long and not very tall, and I’m not surprised an army of Richard’s size could overwhelm it. But the Rock up to the second bailey is something else. Those walls are three times as high, and there’s significantly less of it to defend. We should be safe up here.”
“Excepting the fact that we’re actually with the invaders, and we’re surrounded by the enemy.”
“Oh yes, of course, except that.”
When Charley Dancer finally returned, he looked very much like the young man Arable had once known. He’d donned a quilted blue tabard of the Nottingham Guard—though it was slightly too large for him—and had even scraped off his beard leaving a semblance of his smoother, more familiar face. Earlier, he’d convinced them he could move around the castle undisturbed. But most of the time he’d been gone, Arable and the Delaney brothers had spent wondering if he’d turned traitor.
Or, as Arable was quick to remind them, turned traitor again.
“They were tricky to get, but I have clothes for you all,” he said, laying a bundle onto the ground. “Yours has a hood, Arable, so nobody will recognize you.”
Her hands instinctively reached up to her cheeks, feeling the scars on either side. If any member of the Nottingham Guard were to see her, she knew exactly how long she would last. The fact that Bolt had considered this was a second surprise.
“I found a couple of Guardsmen I used to know,” he explained, pinching at his borrowed tabard. “I just told them I’d been on a special task in York the last few months, and returned just before all this. With everything going on, they didn’t question it. Glad to see me, actually.”
“What about the prince?” Nick asked, looking doubtfully at the tabard he’d been handed. “And wait, what’s this?”
“Extras.” Bolt gave a sheepish smile. “Keep your heads down, you two can pass as Guardsmen.”
“No no no.” Peetey shoved the bundle back at him. “That’s insane.”
His brother agreed. “That’s a terrible idea. We can go as we are. There are plenty of commonfolk up there.”
“And they’re all being brought down to hide in here,” Bolt countered. “Topside it’s shoulder to shoulder, Guardsmen not just from Nottingham but soldiers from all Prince John’s allies. If you want to blend in, you need to look like you’re ready to defend the castle. Arable’s one thing, but a couple of … healthy men like you…”
Arable hated it. She had hoped they could sneak into the high keep undetected, darting from building to building and using the servants’ hallways. But if there truly were as many men-at-arms as Bolt described, then she admittedly had no better ideas.
“We are going to get killed,” Peetey said slowly, pulling the tabard over his head.
“It might work.” Nick tried to sound hopeful. “This is how Will got in last year, isn’t it? He always said that they dressed up as gords and nobody looked at them twice.”
“That was when nobody had a reason to doubt them,” Arable warned. “We’ll be doing it while everyone’s on their highest alert.”
“Not to mention that they already fell for that trick once. Only an absolute idiot would think it would work a second time.”
“It’s all I have.” Bolt put his hands out wide. “I’m not saying it’s a good plan, but I don’t see anyone with a better one.”
Arable ground her knuckles together, wiping her fingertips hard until the dirt came out in dark little rolls. Her elbows and forearms were red and raw from their crawl through the tunnels. But she wasn’t dying, and there were a lot of people outside that were. All in all, the next part should be the easy one. All they had to do was get from the gaol tunnels to the ramp up to the highest bailey without anyone looking at them too closely.
“It’s just a matter of moving confidently, like we have a purpose.”
She had spent two years as a servant in this castle, and the only time anyone had ever thought to question her was when she’d been idling about with nothing to do.
“Best do it now, then,” Peetey said with a swallow.
“Anybody need a moment to make their peace?” she asked.
They chuckled at this.
“I’m serious,” she followed. “This could very likely go the wrong way. If you need a moment, if you need to pray, or just … get yourself in the right place for this, then take it now.” They stared at her for a moment, unsure what to make of her suggestion. But rather than joke, they each nodded gravely and closed their eyes.
Arable was not taking her own advice on this.
She wasn’t going to die.
She was resolute against it, and this moment of silence she took—with her eyes closed, penitent—was to make certain the world understood that it could not claim her today. She thought back with shame on the sense of hopelessness she’d succumbed to upon first seeing Lord Beneger at Huntingdon Castle, when she had fled. When she’d thought of throwing herself from the top of the Heart Tower. In the heat of that moment, she’d somehow thought that death was the best choice for her and her unborn daughter. More than a few times since then, that raw, icy memory had brought her to tears. No, she would live for her daughter, live no matter the cost. She had to remember that—to keep herself from giving in to such dark temptations again. Her daughter deserved a life. She deserved a name
.
Admittedly, Arable had refrained from thinking of one yet, specifically so that she would never have to mourn it.
She didn’t know if Nick or Peetey Delaney had anything similar to keep them motivated, but she hoped for their sakes they did.
The walk from the gaols to the stairs up to the keep—if they could accomplish it unmolested—should take no more than a minute or two. After that, there was still the tricky thing of finding Prince John and convincing him of the impossible, but for now there were just two simple minutes they had to get past. “Let’s go,” she said, as casually as if they were taking a stroll down to the river, and slipped her hood up and over her face.
They moved quickly, kept their heads down. She poured her concentration into making her posture seem confident. As they emerged from the tunnels she had to squint to keep the brightness of the sky from blinding her, and even still she was almost unable to stifle a gasp at the sight that greeted them. There were black snakes winding through the air, converging into great clouds above as the fires over the battlement’s edge raged on. But more shocking than that was the crowd here—to say it was shoulder to shoulder was only barely an exaggeration. Camps filled every open space, soldiers in a wide array of uniforms were tending to their weapons, cooking meals out of their helmets, dressing wounds, nursing their feet, waxing their bowcords, or any of a hundred other tasks. The idea that Arable could quickly barrel through to the barracks kitchen as she’d planned was an absolute impossibility. She darted her eyes for another option—rounding to the south larder, perhaps, but then she’d have to risk the main commons of—
“Arable?”
Directly in front of her, literally seconds after emerging from secrecy, she’d already run into someone who recognized her. Kyle Morgan, affectionately known as Morg, had once been the kind of lovable mountain that was as terrifying to his enemies as he was comforting to his friends. The wary tilt of his head told him which of the two he now considered her.
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