The Doomfarers of Coramonde (5 page)

He giggled
again, a thing seldom heard from grim Eliatim. “But I keep digressing. Let us
tally what you’ve learned from my lessons, for in one wise I’ve been honorable;
I was engaged to teach you the arts of war and I have done it as best I could.
Mayhap if you’ve paid sufficient attention you’ll yet keep your life.”

And he
advanced, all jocularity gone in the application of his trade. The Prince
circled warily, knowing that at his best he was not likely to match the other,
who was himself something of a magician in matters of bared blades.

Then, unlooked
for, came a violent gust of wind, so strong and cold that it might have come
from the straining lungs of an intervening deity, to blow out the little
lantern and hurl a leafy branch into the face of shocked Eliatim. He gave a
startled curse and brought his free hand up involuntarily. Springbuck knew that
his chance had miraculously come. He had only to mount Fireheel and wheel into
the nearby wood to escape under mantle of night and storm. He’d already
gathered the gray’s reins in hand when he stopped, for he was no longer alone
with his foe in the darkness. Rather, he saw those of whom the blademaster had
spoken, his mother—or, more accurately, as he had no recollection of her, the
pale death mask on her coffin—Micko and Duskwind. And over all was the death of
Hightower, merciless officiation of Archog.

And all at once
he felt the desire to sneak away, to escape like some hunted animal and leave
more unavenged deaths behind him, driven out before another emotion, as one
incoming wave is broken and scattered by the next. Shame drained his fright;
fury made him contemptuous of his own helplessness.

Springbuck
stood like a stone statue while the other struck flint to rekindle the lantern.
When it was done, Eliatim was astounded to see the son of Surehand waiting, an
unfamiliar light in his eye, but the martial instructor quit his mocking,
relieved laughter only when the Prince brought Bar slowly to guard.

As he was
accustomed, Eliatim took the fencing distance that gave him maximum advantage:
close enough for him to hit, far enough to render many of the shorter
Springbuck’s moves overextensions. The Prince felt a despair coming over him,
born of countless humbling experiences at Eliatim’s hands. Tension began to rob
him of his natural fluidity.

Swords crossed
tentatively in the wavering light, the master-of-arms waiting his pupil out. At
length, Springbuck began an attack-in-advance, feinting a disengage and hoping
to turn a final disengage into a lunge, but harbored little confidence of
success; sure enough, Eliatim’s blade was elusive lightning. Another thrust
from the Prince was met with a quick croise, and the son of Surehand was lucky
to escape with a slash along his upper arm which would have been serious, had
he not been wearing leathers. Springbuck changed lines of engagement several
times, and Eliatim, all cool control, followed suit almost indifferently.

Springbuck made
a feint and was met with a flickering extension, but this was no news;
Eliatim’s defense was as strong as his offense, and the stop-thrust was his
heart’s delight. The Prince felt that Eliatim indeed foresaw his every thought,
and decided that a second-intent attack launched from a false one would be
foolish.

Springbuck’s
heart was pounding, sweat slick on his face. He could think of no feasible
maneuver of the blade that he had not tried on Eliatim a hundred times in vain.
But this time, he thought as Eliatim gave his blade a ringing beat, a faulty
try would be met with deadliest rebuke.

Eliatim
deceived the parry with which Springbuck replied to his beat, dropping his
point just low enough for the nervous parry to pass over it in derobement, then
deliberately forfeited his chance to attack in return, laughing at the Prince’s
hasty retreat.

Now Eliatim
brought forth his virtuosity. His casual changes of tempo had Springbuck
flinching in anticipation. The threat of his bind and the menace of his false
attacks made the younger man feel humiliatingly inadequate. But the new
determination flared in Springbuck again; how he wanted to see laughing Eliatim
die!

He thought of
the parrying dagger in his left boot top, and it occurred to him that if he
could bring it into play unexpectedly, the main-gauche might give him an
advantage for one critical exchange; but again, possibly not, since Eliatim
fought in the new profiled style, forcing Springbuck to do the same.

Determined not
to be drawn out, but rather to wait out his chance, the Prince tried to put
aside his preoccupations and fence from the subcortical. In that combat, as in
lovemaking and music, immediate past, present and immediate future took on a
peculiar fusion. Neither man made much use of his edge, and their weapons
joined in whirling motion, springing apart again to punctuation of steel
vibrating, chiming in notes almost too high to be heard.

In his
surrender to reflexes, coming as it did in close pursuit of his decision to
fight it out with Eliatim, Springbuck found that a new and radical thought had
blossomed in his mind: all his life, Eliatim had been coaching him to lose this
particular match.

The Prince had
been taught patience, counseled prudence—and infused with hesitation. Certainly
he’d become a superior swordsman, but he’d been ingrained with responses that
made him prey to Eliatim.

And on the
heels of this thought—his mind insulated now from the exertions of hand and eye
to keep him alive—came insight. He must depart utterly from his conservative
style of swordplay, or die.

He could think
of only one tactic to meet the need, though he considered and discarded a
desperate flèche. He’d seen it only once, brought back from southern parts by
Lord Roguespur and called—what was it?—the “ballestra.”

Inspiration
became motion. He poised his body and released it like a gyrfalcon from the
gauntlet. With barely adequate stance, he pushed off with his left foot, right
preceding him in search of purchase.

He skimmed
forward, fleet and lethal as the Angel of Death, the untried move coming to him
with surreal ease, into an immediate lunge. The actions came as one, executed
virtually as the idea occurred to him.

Eliatim’s
defense was there, but calculated to stop another feint or convictionless attack.
Bar slid by and found his throat, and the blademaster’s point shot past the
Prince’s ear. Abruptly, Springbuck stood very close indeed to the great Eliatim
as crimson gushed into Bar’s blood channels and across its basket hilt. He
barely retained the presence of mind to pull his sword free, and gaped in
wide-eyed amazement. His adversary sank to the unheeding surface of the Western
Tangent, corpse-face covered with steaming blood and disbelief.

The Prince
slowly wiped Bar clean on Eliatim’s sleeve and returned it to its scabbard.

“I shall go
Doomfaring now, in earnest,” he whispered through persistent rain, “and what
final lessons you have taught me tonight, I shall never forget!”

And his sudden
laughter rang above the wind.

I galloped
out of Earthfast, with running in my head,

And
putting leagues behind before the Queen’s guard knew I’d fled

I killed a
man in darkness, to live until the day,

And
whether that were wrong or not, I can’t, unbiased, say.

But he was
dead and I alive, and you may take from me

That as I
fought, I knew that’s how I wanted things to be.

From
The Antechamber Ballads,

personal compositions attributed
to

Springbuck

So many
gay swordes, so many altered wordes, and so few covered boardes,

saw I never

So many
empty purses, so few good horses, and so many curses,

saw I never.

JOHN SKELTON,

“The Manner of the World
Nowadays”

HE cast Eliatim’s body back into
the trees from which it had emerged. The horses presented a knottier problem.

Determined to
take his own gray favorite now that fate had given him the chance, he took the
heavy, overgilt saddle from Fireheel and hid it, too, among the pines. He gave
brief thought to taking along Eliatim’s bow and quiver, but since his poor
vision rendered him an inferior archer, he decided to forego the trouble.

He then
transferred the reconnaissance saddle to the powerful, long-legged Fireheel,
blew out the little lantern and hurled it in the general direction of its
owner. Picking up his dampened cloak and resuming it with a slight shiver, he
mounted and took the reins of the riderless horse in his right hand. His way
lit by occasional bolts from above, he trotted off eastward.

Thoughts buzzed
around each other, vying for his attention. He knew that he’d been lucky in his
duel with his late instructor. Still, he perceived that there was more
substance to the encounter than that. He’d thought for himself, taken a gamble
when the situation demanded, won on the resources of eye and hand and brain
alone. It was possible, he thought, that he’d been undersold to himself all
along.

Eliatim’s other
words came back to him, particularly those that made reference to his mother.
Had Bey, as Eliatim had implied, caused the death of that Lady, to clear the
path for Fania?

The Tangent,
raised above the surrounding ground and gently pitched to either side, drained
itself of water quickly as the rain abated. Some traffic moved there already:
farmers on foot or with carts bringing goods to market, a troop of traveling
players bearing torches, forming a swirl of color and motion and song, an
officious dispatch rider hastening past them all, various merchants.

Springbuck,
relieved at the lack of troops on the Tangent, was the only one bound eastward
and so, the way being wide, went quickly. The solution to the problem of his
extra horse came to him at dawn, when he encountered a band of tinkers camped
at the roadside.

Rather than
being bound toward Kee-Amaine, they were about to swing southward. There was
brief haggling, and the Prince rode on with a considerable sum of money and
some provisions, comfortably sure that the roncin’s brands and cropping would
be promptly obliterated.

He loosened his
cloak as the sun warmed him. Elation over his victory against Eliatim swept
into him again. He reappraised himself in light of his own simple and profound
decision to stand and fight. He was exhilarated but steady, confident but
unimpulsive.

Fireheel
happily increased their distance eastward, and a new Springbuck rode into the
day, of a far different mettle than he with whom Fania’s forces had been so
sure they could cope.

It was two days
later, and well along in the afternoon, when he reined in magnificent Fireheel
on the summit of a low hill to gaze upon Erub.

His hunger had
been growing for hours, his provisions gone since breakfast. He would have
preferred to spend his nights in some inn or tavern on the way, if only to
sleep on a bench by the hearth, but had avoided the Tangent since that first
dawn for fear of apprehension, skirting the odd farm or crofter’s hut he’d
spied.

Seeing the end
of the narrow, rutted road was good compensation for this, though. The little
town was in a valley spread below, and on a rise beyond stood an undersized
castle of antiquated design. He knew from his own research at Earthfast that
the castle was untenanted.

A silence hung
over Erub as he rode past the crude daub-and-wattle hut that was its outermost
limit. He saw no one living, but came upon the dead and all-but-dead in
numbers. There were villagers scattered here and there, war arrows in them or
the bitter, evident tales of sword and lance wounds.

He rode with
hand close to hilt and, coming closer to the square at the center of town,
encountered a remarkable thing: soldiers of Coramonde, light cavalrymen, lay
slain near an improvised barricade. Of these, many bore injuries from scythe or
pitchfork or were pierced with hunting shafts. Many others, though, had odd
wounds through their vests of ring mail, small, rounded holes; one had such an
opening fairly between his eyes and a huge and hideous gap torn in the back
side of his skull. An eldritch smell, unlike anything the Prince had ever
scented before, hung in the air.

He decided to
continue on to the castle, wondering if the lancers had been sent to find him
or to interfere with the school that Andre deCourteney had set up. He knew that
word of his escape could have outraced him via dispatch riders on the Tangent,
if those in Earthfast knew where to look.

He passed
through the town without seeing anyone who might have given him information,
but on the track leading up to the little castle he came up to an elderly
couple urging a recalcitrant donkey to pull a cart loaded with their personal
possessions, bedding and household goods of questionable value. The donkey
remained stubbornly seated.

The old man,
seeing him, snatched a short bow from the cart and fumbled for an arrow.
Springbuck laid a hand to Bar and said, “I carry no quarrel to you, yet do not
nock that shaft or you force me to show you my sword. What’s come to pass in
Erub?”

The old man was
a shrunken specimen without an excess ounce of flesh on life-weary bones. He
laid aside his bow after a moment and removed his shapeless hat from years of
habit in talking to a mounted warrior, but there was a spirited glint in his
eye.

He swallowed
once, and admitted, “This noon a detachment of lancers came to make arrest of
our teachers, Andre deCourteney and Van Duyn. We didn’t want their new teaching
to end, and so there was fighting. But now more soldiers are coming and we must
go. The only safety lies in the keep with Van Duyn and deCourteney.”