by Paula Guran
“Did they see?” he murmured, almost under his breath.
Alaric gave a careful nod. “So it would appear, Sire. I suggest you go to them immediately and reassure them. Otherwise, the more timid among them are apt to bolt and run.”
“From me, their king?”
“You are more than just a man now, Sire,” Alaric returned uncomfortably. “They have seen that with their own eyes. Go to them, and quickly.”
With a sigh, Brion tugged his tunic into place and strode across the clearing toward the men, automatically pulling his gauntlets from his belt and beginning to draw them on. The men watched his movements furtively as he came to a halt perhaps a half-dozen steps from the nearest of them. Noting their scrutiny, Brion froze in the act of pulling on the right glove; then, with a smile, he removed it and held his hand toward them, the palm exposed. There was no mark upon the lightly calloused skin.
“You are entitled to an explanation,” he said simply, as all eyes fastened on the hand. “As you can see, I am unharmed. I am sorry if my actions caused you some concern. Please rise.”
The men got to their feet, only the chinking of their harness breaking the sudden stillness which had befallen the glade. Behind the king, Nigel and Alaric moved to back him, Nigel bearing the royal sword and Alaric the crimson cloak with its lion brooch. The men were silent, a few shifting uneasily, until one of the bolder ones cleared his throat and took a half-step nearer.
“Sire.”
“Lord Raison?”
“Sire,” the man shifted from one foot to the other and glanced at his comrades. “Sire, it appears to us that there was magic afoot,” he said carefully. “We question the wisdom of allowing a Deryni to influence you so. When we saw—”
“What did you see, Gerard?” Brion asked softly.
Gerard Raison cleared his throat. “Well, I—we—when we arrived. Sire, you were holding that brooch in your hand,” he gestured toward the lion brooch which Alaric held, “and then we saw you prick your thumb with it.” He paused. “You looked—not yourself. Sire, as though—something else was commanding you.” He glanced at Alaric meaningfully, and several other of the men moved a little closer behind him, hands creeping to rest on the hilts of their weapons.
“I see,” Brion said. “And you think that it was Alaric who commanded me, don’t you?”
“It appeared so to us, Majesty,” another man rumbled, his beard jutting defiantly.
Brion nodded. “And then you watched me hold my hands above the stone, and Alaric hold his above my own. And then you saw me engulfed in flame, and that frightened you most of all.”
The speaker nodded tentatively, and his movement was echoed by nearly every head there. Brion sighed and glanced at the ground, looked up at them again.
“My lords, I will not lie to you. You were witness to very powerful magic. And I will not deny, nor will Alaric, that his assistance was used in what you saw. And Alaric is, most definitely, Deryni.”
The men said nothing, though glances were exchanged.
“But there is more that I would have you know,” Brion continued, fixing them all with his Haldane stare. “Each of you has heard the legends of my House—how we returned to the throne of Gwynedd when the Deryni Imre was deposed. But if you consider, you will realize that the Haldanes could not have ousted Deryni lords without some power of their own.”
“Are you Deryni, then, Sire?” asked one bold soul from the rear ranks.
Brion smiled and shook his head. “No—or at least, I don’t believe I am. But the Haldanes have very special gifts and abilities, nonetheless, handed down from father to son—or sometimes from brother to brother.” He glanced at Nigel before continuing. “You know that we can Truth-Read, that we have great physical stamina. But we also have other powers, when they are needed, which enable us to function almost as though we were, ourselves, Deryni. My father, King Maine, entrusted a few of these abilities to me before his death, but there were others whose very existence he kept secret, for which he left certain instructions with Alaric Morgan unknown even to him—and which were triggered by the threat of Hogan Gwernach’s challenge which we received last night. Alaric was a child of four when he was instructed by my father—so that even he would not remember his instructions until it was necessary—and apparently I was also instructed.
“The result, in part, was what you saw. If there was a commanding force, another influence present within the fiery circle, it was my father’s. The rite is now fulfilled, and I am my father’s successor in every way, with all his powers and abilities.”
“Your late father provided for all of this?” one of the men whispered.
Brion nodded. “There is no evil in it, Alwyne. You knew my father well. You know he would not draw down evil.”
“Aye, he would not,” the man replied, glancing at Alaric almost involuntarily. “But what of the Deryni lad?”
“Our fathers made a pact, that Alaric Morgan should come to Court to serve me when he reached the proper age. That bargain has been kept. Alaric Morgan serves me and the realm of Gwynedd.”
“But, he is Deryni, Sire! What if he is in league with—”
“He is in league with me!” Brion snapped. “He is my liege man, just as all of you, sworn to my service since the age of nine. In that time, he has scarcely left my side. Given the compulsions which my father placed upon him, do you really believe that he could betray me?”
Raison cleared his throat, stepping forward and making a bow before the king could continue.
“Sire, it is best we do not discuss the boy. None of us here, Your Majesty included, can truly know what is in his heart. You are the issue now. If you were to reassure us, in some way, that you harbor no ill intent, that you have not allied yourself with the Dark Powers—”
“You wish my oath to that effect?” Brion asked. The stillness of his response was, itself, suddenly threatening. “You would be that bold?”
Raison nodded carefully, not daring to respond by words, and his movement was again echoed by the men standing at his back. After a frozen moment, Brion made a curt gesture for his brother to kneel with the royal sword. As Nigel held up the cross hilt, Brion laid his bare right hand upon it and faced his waiting knights.
“Before all of you and before God, and upon this holy sword, I swear that I am innocent of your suspicions, that I have made no dark pact with any evil power, that the rite which you observed was benevolent and legitimate. I further swear that I have never been, nor am I now, commanded by Alaric Morgan or any other man, human or Deryni; that he is as innocent as I of any evil intent toward the people and crown of Gwynedd. This is the word of Brion Haldane. If I be forsworn, may this sword break in my hour of need, may all succor desert me, and may the name of Haldane vanish from the earth.”
With that, he crossed himself slowly, deliberately—a motion which was echoed by Alaric, Nigel, and then the rest of the men who had witnessed the oath. Preparations to leave for Rustan were made in total silence.
They met the Marluk while still an hour’s ride from Rustan and rendezvous with the rest of Nigel’s vanguard. All morning, they had been following the rugged Llegoddin Canyon Trace—a winding trail treacherous with stream-slicked stones which rolled and shifted beneath their horses’ hooves. The stream responsible for their footing ran shallow along their right, had crossed their path several times in slimy, fast-flowing fords that made the horses lace back their ears. Even the canyon walls had closed in along the last mile, until the riders were forced to go two abreast. It was a perfect place for an ambush; but Alaric’s usually reliable knack for sensing danger gave them almost no warning.
It was cool in the little canyon, the shade deep and refreshing after the heat of the noonday sun, and the echo of steel-shod hooves announced their progress long before they actually reached the end of the narrows. There the track made a sharp turn through the stream again, before widening out to an area of several acres. In the center waited a line of armed horsemen, nearly tw
ice the number of Brion’s forces.
They were mailed and helmed with steel, these fighting men of Tolan, and their lances and war axes gleamed in the silent sunlight. Their white-clad leader sat a heavy sorrel destrier before them, lance in hand and banner bright at his back. The blazon left little doubt as to his identity—Hogan Gwernach, called the Marluk. He had quartered his arms with those of Royal Gwynedd.
But there was no time for more than first impressions. Even as Alaric’s lips moved in warning, and before more than a handful of Bunn’s men could clear the stream and canyon narrows, the Marluk lowered his lance and signaled the attack. As the great-horses thundered toward the stunned royal party, picking up momentum as they came, Brion couched his own lance and set spurs to his horse’s sides. His men, overcoming their initial dismay with commendable speed, galloped after him in near-order, readying shields and weapons even as they rode.
The earth shook with the force of the charge, echoed with the jingle of harness and mail, the creak of leather, the snorting and labored breathing of the heavy war-horses. Just before the two forces met, one of Brion’s men shouted, “A Haldane!”—a cry which was picked up and echoed instantly by most of his comrades in arms. Then all were swept into the melee, and men were falling and horses screaming riderless and wounded as lances splintered on shield and mail and bone.
Steel clanged on steel as the fighting closed hand-to-hand, cries of the wounded and dying punctuating the butcher sounds of sword and ax on flesh. Alaric, emerging unscathed from the initial encounter, found himself locked shield to shield with a man twice his age and size, the man pressing him hard and trying to crush his helm with a mace. Alaric countered by ducking under his shield and wheeling to the right, hoping to come at his opponent from the other side, but the man was already anticipating his move and swinging in counterattack. At the last possible moment, Alaric deflected the blow with his shield, reeling in the saddle as he tried to recover his balance and strike at the same time. But his aim had been shaken, and instead of coming in from behind on the man’s temporarily open right side, he only embedded his sword in the other’s high cantle.
He recovered before the blade could be wrenched from his grasp, gripping hard with his knees as his charger lashed out and caught the man in the leg with a driving foreleg. Then, parrying a blow from a second attacker, he managed to cut the other’s girth and wound his mount, off-handedly kicking out at yet a third man who was approaching from his shield side. The first knight hit the ground with a yelp as his horse went down, narrowly missing death by trampling as one of his own men thundered past in pursuit of one of Brion’s wounded.
Another strike, low and deadly, and Alaric’s would-be slayer was, himself, the slain. Drawing ragged breath, Alaric wheeled to scan the battle for Brion, and to defend himself from renewed attack by the two men on foot.
The king himself was in little better circumstances. Though still mounted and holding his own, Brion had been swept away from his mortal enemy in the initial clash, and had not yet been able to win free to engage with him. Nigel was fighting at his brother’s side, the royal banner in his shield hand, but the banner only served to hamper Nigel and to tell the enemy where Gwynedd’s monarch was. Just now, both royal brothers were sore beset, half a dozen of the Marluk’s knights belaboring them from every side but skyward. The Marluk, meantime, was busily slaying a hundred yards away—content, thus far, to spend his time slaughtering some of Brion’s lesser warriors, and shunning Brion’s reputed superior skill. As Brion and Nigel beat back their attackers, the king glanced across the battlefield and saw his enemy, dispatched one of his harriers with a brutal thrust, raised his sword and shouted the enemy’s name:
“Gwernach!”
The enemy turned in his direction and jerked his horse to a rear, circled his sword above his head. His helmet was gone, and pale hair blew wild from beneath his mail coif.
“The Haldane is mine!” the Marluk shouted, spurring toward Brion and cutting down another man in passing. “Stand and fight, usurper! Gwynedd is mine by right!”
The Marluk’s men fell back from Brion as their master pounded across the field, and with a savage gesture, Brion waved his own men away and urged his horse toward the enemy. Now was the time both had been waiting for—the direct, personal combat of the two rival kings. Steel shivered against steel as the two men met and clashed in I lie center of the field, and the warriors of both sides drew back to watch, their own hostilities temporarily suspended.
For a time, the two seemed evenly matched. The Marluk took a chunk out of the top of Brion’s shield, but Brion divested the Marluk of a stirrup, and nearly a foot. So they continued, neither man able to score a decisive blow, until finally Brion’s sword found the throat of the Marluk’s mount. The dying animal collapsed with a liquid scream, dumping its rider in a heap. Brion, pursuing his advantage, tried to ride down his enemy then and there.
But the Marluk rolled beneath his shield on the first pass and nearly tripped up Brion’s horse, scrambling to his feet and bracing as Brion wheeled viciously to come at him again. The second pass cost Brion his mount, its belly ripped out by the Marluk’s sword. As the horse went down, Brion leaped clear and whirled to face his opponent.
For a quarter hour the two battled with broadsword and shield, the Marluk with the advantage of weight and height, but Brion with youth and greater agility in his favor. Finally, when both men could barely lift their weapons for fatigue, they drew apart and leaned on heavy swords, breath coming in short, ragged gasps. After a moment, golden eyes met steely gray ones. The Marluk flashed a brief, sardonic grin at his opponent.
“You fight well, for a Haldane,” the Marluk conceded, still breathing heavily. He gestured with his sword toward the waiting men. “We are well matched, at least in steel, and even were we to cast our men into the fray again, it would still come down to the same—you against me.”
“Or my power against yours,” Brion amended softly. “That is your eventual intention, is it not?”
The Marluk started to shrug, but Brion interrupted.
“No, you would have slain me by steel if you could,” he said. “To win by magic exacts greater payment, and might not give you the sort of victory you seek if you would rule my human kingdom and not fear for your throne. The folk of Gwynedd would not take kindly to a Deryni king after your bloody ancestors.”
The Marluk smiled. “By force, physical or arcane—it matters little in the long reckoning. It is the victory itself which will command the people after today. But you, Haldane, your position is far more precarious than mine, dynastically speaking. Do you see yon riders, and the slight one dressed in blue?”
He gestured with his sword toward the other opening of the clearing from which he and his men had come, where half a score of riders surrounded a pale, slight figure on a mouse-gray palfrey.
“Yonder is my daughter and heir, Haldane,” the Marluk said smugly. “Regardless of the outcome here today, she rides free—you cannot stop her—to keep my name and memory until another time. But you—your brother and heir stands near, his life a certain forfeit if I win.” He gestured toward Nigel, then rested the tip of his sword before him once more. “And the next and final Haldane is your Uncle Richard, a childless bachelor of fifty. After him, there are no others.”
Brion’s grip tightened on the hilt of his sword, and he glared across at his enemy with something approaching grudging respect. All that the Marluk had said was true. There were no other male Haldanes beyond his brother and his uncle, at least for now. Nor was there any way that he or his men could prevent the escape of the Marluk’s heir. Even if he won today, the Marluk’s daughter would remain a future menace. The centuries-long struggle for supremacy in Gwynedd would not end here—unless, of course, Brion lost.
The thought sobered him, cooled the hot blood racing through his veins and slowed his pounding heart. He must answer this usurper’s challenge, and now, and with the only card he had left. They had fought with force of
steel before, and all for naught. Now they must face one another with other weapons.
Displaying far more confidence than he felt, for he would never play for higher stakes than life and crown, Brion let fall his shield and helm and strode slowly across half the distance separating him from his mortal enemy. Carefully, decisively, he traced an equal-armed cross in the dust with the tip of his sword, the first arm pointing toward the Marluk.
“I, Brion, Anointed of the Lord, King of Gwynedd, and Lord of the Purple March, call thee forth to combat mortal, Hogan Gwernach, for that thou hast raised hostile hand against me and, through me, against my people of Gwynedd. This I will defend upon my body and my soul, to the death, so help me, God.”
The Marluk’s face had not changed expression during Brion’s challenge, and now he, too, strode to the figure scratched in the dust and laid his sword tip along the same lines, retracing the cross.
“And I, Hogan Gwernach, descendant of the lawful kings of Gwynedd in antiquity, do return thy challenge, Brion Haldane, and charge that thou art base pretender to the throne and crown thou holdest. And this I will defend upon my body and my soul, to the death, so help me, God.”
With the last words, he began drawing another symbol in the earth beside the cross—a detailed, winding interlace which caught and held Brion’s concentration with increasing power. Only just in lime, Brion recognized the spell for what it was and, with an oath, dashed aside the Marluk’s sword with his own, erasing the symbol with his boot. He glared at the enemy standing but a sword’s length away, keeping his anger in check only with the greatest exertion of will.