The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle) (54 page)

The archbishop took the chalice, held it aloft, and began to pray loudly.

Most people fell silent—many fell on their knees, and Amicia joined them because it took her out of the sight line of the man in the scarlet hood. In front of her, a Gallish squire brought out de Vrailly’s magnificent war horse. The knight himself checked his girth and stirrups before turning and kneeling before the archbishop.

The Red Knight dismounted and knelt, too, a good sword’s length between himself and the Gallish knight.

The prayer came to an end.

The marshal went to the Red Knight. “Do you swear on your honour, your arms and faith, to fight only in a cause that is just, and to abide by all the law of arms in the list?”

The Red Knight didn’t open his visor, but his voice was loud. “I do,” he said.

The marshal went to de Vrailly. “Do you swear on your honour, your arms and your faith, to fight only in a cause that is just, and to abide by all the law of arms in the list?”

“I do,” de Vrailly said.

Both men rose.

“Stop!” roared the archbishop. He took the chalice. “The Red Knight is a notorious sorcerer. Have you any magical defence about you?” he shouted. “I accuse you! God has shown me!” And he flipped holy water from the chalice at the Red Knight.

It sparkled in the air—a brilliant lightshow of red and green and blue.

Amicia moved from her knees even as the crowd gasped.

The marshal frowned. “It is against the law of arms to bear anything worked with the arts into the lists,” he roared.

The Red Knight started back. He was on his feet—

The marshal struck him lightly with his mace of office. “You are barred from the lists,” he said.

Amicia heard the Red Knight grunt as if in pain, but she was already moving. She took the chalice from the archbishop’s hands as smoothly as
if he was cooperating with her in a dance, and upended the contents over the kneeling Gallish knight even as she placed her own working—a true working—to make the water show anything hermetical. The man in the red hood had merely faked the effect with an illusion.

In front of five thousand people, de Vrailly glowed. If the Red Knight had sparkled with faery light, de Vrailly burned like a torch of hermeticism.

The flame of the holy water hitting de Vrailly was so bright that a hundred paces away, Wat Tyler had to turn his head to keep the dazzle from his eyes. He cursed as he lost his target.

The other Galles were speechless. Amicia stepped back—but the man in red saw her. “She—” he began.

And then he pursed his lips, looked at the archbishop, and said nothing.

The crowd was clamouring.

The marshal had not been bought or paid for—he struck de Vrailly with his mace. “You, too, are barred from the lists,” he said.

De Vrailly’s visor was up—and his face worked like a baby’s. He knelt there as if unable to move.

It was Du Corse who took charge. The crowd—both gentle and common—was restless. Commoners were beginning to challenge the lines of guards on the edge of the lists, and the twenty or so purple-liveried episcopal guards around the Queen were not looking either numerous or dangerous enough. He sent a page for his routiers and made a motion to his own standard bearer.

The archbishop was still stunned by the apparition of de Vrailly, the King’s Champion, suffused with a sticky green fire that could only mean a deep hermetical protection—cast, of all things, by the Wild. Satan’s snare.

In front of them, a line of knights appeared behind the Red Knight. A Green Knight put his hand on the Red Knight’s shoulder, and behind him was a giant of a man in a plain steel harness and a surcoat of tweed, and then another giant, this one blond, bearing the differenced arms of the Earl of Towbray.

The Green Knight stood forth.

“I will stand for the Queen,” he said. His voice carried.

At his back, Tom Lachlan raised his visor. “And I,” he said.

Ser Michael didn’t dismount, but he snapped his great helm off his head and let it hang from the buckle. “And I, your grace. My father is attainted, but I am not. There are many knights here to fight for your wife today, your grace. I am a peer of Alba. I demand justice.”

The Green Knight did not raise his visor. He merely saluted the marshal. “Try your holy water on me,” he said.

The marshal took the empty cup—and held it out to the archbishop.

The man in the red hood made his working—while the archbishop’s own secretary frowned in disgust so plain that Amicia noted it.

Amicia did nothing to prevent his casting. The archbishop’s hands moved with an ill grace.

The man in the red hood choked. The water flew, and did nothing but make the Green Knight’s surcoat wet.

“Choose your champion!” he called, his voice mocking.

Amicia would have grinned, if she had not been so afraid.

Because, of course, Gabriel was a very creature of magick. And so, he had turned the working himself. His skill towered over Red Hood’s the way an eagle towers over a squirrel.

The archbishop turned on his two secretaries.

Du Corse frowned and looked at de Rohan as the crowd roared its approval of the Green Knight. “Someone must fight him,” he said.

De Rohan rolled his eyes. “Just take the lot,” he hissed. “We have the men. Surround them and take them.”

Du Corse shook his head. “Nay, cousin. Someone must fight.” He looked at the commoners pushing against the guards. “Or we’ll all be dead before nightfall.”

“Very well,” de Rohan said. “You.”

Du Corse smiled a hard smile. “No,” he said.

“L’Isle d’Adam, then.”

Du Corse nodded. “But—” he said. “No. I recommend that you fight your own battle, de Rohan.”

De Rohan’s eyes narrowed.

Behind him, the King moved. Heads turned again.

“Yes,” the King said. “You have been her loudest and most constant accuser, de Rohan. Take up your cousin’s sword.”

A chair had been brought for the King. He was sitting by the lists now—more alert than many of the Gallish knights had ever seen him.

Amicia began to edge away from the royal box.

One of de Rohan’s yellow and black men-at-arms was pointing at her. She saw the man, and she
steadied her working, which had slipped as she had moved in the real.

The man’s gaze slid off her even as she sat suddenly between two Alban families in the lowest bench of the stands. There was no room for her, but men on either hand instinctively made space.

The black and yellow man-at-arms looked her way, and then his attention—and everyone else’s—was on the lists.

Inside the Green Knight’s helmet, Gabriel Muriens tried to distance himself from the heady brew of excitement and pure fear that rose to choke him.

His heart was beating like a hummingbird’s wings, his chest felt tight and his arms weak.

“It is easier to face Thorn in desperate combat than to do this with five thousand people watching and everything on the line,” he thought.

“I volunteered to do this,” he thought.

“I don’t know this knight,” he thought.

All his thought had been bent on de Vrailly. And when he had admitted that Gavin was the better lance, he had freed himself from all of the anxiety of the moment, and settled for the petty stress of command.

And now it was all on him anyway. His mind multiplied his fears.

And he wondered how and why de Vrailly had been disqualified.

I should be relieved
, he thought.

Instead, his lance felt like lead, and the points of his shoulder ached as if he’d jousted all day, and his great helm seemed to suffocate him.

But there was Toby, checking his stirrups, and Gavin, of all people, holding his shield.

“You bastard,” Gavin said. He wasn’t really smiling. He was mad as hell. “You always get your way.”

“This was none of my doing,” Gabriel said.

Gavin pulled the straps of his jousting shield tight over his arm harness with more emphasis than was necessary. “No, of course not,” he said. His tone didn’t give away whether he believed his brother or not.

“Gavin, I would not cede the lists to you and then take them away,” he said.

“Really?” Gavin asked. “Then go with God and win. Even if you did,
brother,
I hope you win.” Gavin slapped him on the shoulder. Gavin—on the ground—looked at Toby. “Who is riding for the King?”

“Marshal called him de Rohan.” Toby shrugged.

“I don’t know any of these Galles,” Gavin admitted.

“Anyway,” Gabriel said, a little pettishly through his great helm, “I’m not fighting de Vrailly.”

Gavin nodded. “That’s why I’m not pulling you off your horse and beating you with the butt of your own lance,” he said. “You as nervous as you sound?”

Gabriel swallowed with some difficulty.

“Give him water,” Gavin said. “Your man’s in the saddle. You have a better horse. He’s taller. He’s got a very long lance. You know the trick we practised in Morea?”

Gabriel drank the water. He didn’t quite feel like a new man, but he felt better. “You think?” he asked.

“His lance is five hand-spans longer than yours, and his arms are longer as well,” Gavin said. “This is not sport—this is war. There are no tricks. If it were me, I’d lace my helm lightly so he could pluck it off without hurting my neck.”

Deep in his helm, Gabriel laughed. “You made me laugh, Gavin. For that alone, I thank you.”

“Marshal’s telling us to lace up.”

“Tell him I’ve been laced up an hour.” Gabriel made his horse rear slightly, and the crowd shouted.

“Get him,” Gavin said.

Bad Tom leaned in. “Just fewkin’ kill him,” he said. He smiled. “Be a right bastard and put your fewkin’ iron in any way you can and don’t show off or fewk around or act like yersel.” He grinned.

Gabriel looked at the marshal. He had his baton over his head, and was looking at the King.

“The moment I have him,” Gabriel said, “go for the Queen.”

“Even if he has you, boyo,” Bad Tom said. “I can see Ranald fra’ here.”

The Green Knight flicked his lance at all of his friends.

He half reared—exactly as the baton dropped his horse’s front hooves were touching the ground. Ataelus exploded forward.

Gabriel had the sensation that time, rather than stopping, was
sliding.
As his adversary accelerated, Gabriel lowered his lance point too far, seated the butt of his lance in his lance rest, and let his point drop below the level of his own waist like an utterly inept jouster.

Any strike at the opposing horse was a foul.

Everything was moving so fast, yet in the hoof beats before the crossing of the spears, Gabriel felt the
entanglement.
The world about him was like a lattice of ice crystals—an infinite connection, man to man, thought to thought, earth to horse to lance to plot to consequence.

He was in it.

De Rohan’s lance was firm and solid, the steel tip all but invisible as they closed.

In practice, Gabriel had made this work once in three tries.

In the half a heartbeat that the spearheads passed one another, Gabriel used the cut-out corner of his shield as a fulcrum to lever his spear point
up
. His rising spear shaft crossed the oncoming might of the longer shaft, and struck it—hard.

His motion had been a trifle late, and the Gallish lance caught the bottom left of his great helm, slamming sideways into his head—he relaxed as much as his inner tension would allow, tried to be the jouster that his dead master-at-arms had wanted and that Ser Henri had derided, flowed with his adversary’s blow and in the second half heartbeat his own point caught his adversary in the shield, just over his bridle hand—

His solid ash lance exploded in his hand—and he was past, the royal box a blur on his left as Ataelus hurtled down the lists. He was the best fighting horse Gabriel had ever had—he slowed without a touch of the rein.

There were no barriers down the middle, because this was a war joust.

And his adversary was already coming at him.

Of course—his lance had not broken. He was choosing to fight continuously, instead of allowing his opponent to re-arm.

Gabriel dropped the butt of his lance as Ataelus reared and pivoted on his rear legs, front legs kicking. Ataelus let out an equine battle cry, a great scream that filled the air, and then they were straight to a gallop.

Gabriel drew his long war-sword across his body. He still had his shield. There was something amiss about his adversary—but the man had his spear in its rest, and the point was coming, held across the charging horse’s crupper in the proper way for fighting in the lists—

Five strides from contact, Gabriel gave Ataelus the slightest right knee and spur, and the horse turned—more of a gliding sidestep—

—and then another.

The lance tip now had to track a crossing target—

Gabriel caught the oncoming lance—off angle, if only slightly—on the forte of his long sword and flipped it aside with an enormous advantage in leverage and Ataelus took one more stride,
just
threading diagonally past the onrushing white charger so that the two knights passed, not left to left as de Rohan intended, but right to right.

De Rohan tried to raise the butt of his lance—

The Green Knight’s pommel smashed into his visor. It did no damage beyond a spectacular flash of sparks—but the pommel slid to the shield side, crossing de Rohan’s neck even as Ataelus turned on his
front
feet so that the two knights were crushed together for an instant.

The Green Knight’s arm locked on de Rohan’s head and he crashed to the dust as the Green Knight’s sword arm swept him from his saddle like the closing of an iron gate, wrenching him over the seat of his high saddle and staggering his horse, too, so that it tottered and fell a few steps on.

Ataelus, fully in hand, finished his turn.

The Green Knight let Ataelus come to a halt. Twenty feet away, de Rohan clawed his jousting helm off his head and drew his sword. It was clear that his left hand was injured, and blood dripped from his gauntlet and arm.

De Rohan’s sword went back. He spat. “Fuck it, then,” he said.