The Iron Tempest (31 page)

Rashid, who had his back turned to the others, started at the mention of his lover’s name. No one in the Saracen camp knew of his infatuation with the Christian maiden and certainly not that he had given her his promise to be baptized.

“Um. Bradamant, you say?” he said, carefully. “You really think so?”

“Certainly. Her reputation has her as strong as Renaud or any other knight. In fact, from what I’ve experienced today, she surpasses her brother and, I’d wager, she’d even be a match for Roland!”

Rashid wondered, in considerable confusion:
Could it really be Bradamant?
The very thought of her kindled a blaze in his heart that made it flutter in his breast like a piece of sizzling bacon. But at the same time he felt an icy stab of foreboding. If it
was
Bradamant, why was she so anxious to murder him? Whatever had he done to her? What had gnawed away at her love until all that remained was this hateful kernel? He could not decide whether he ought to ride out to meet her or invent some sort of excuse to call off the joust.

If there was anyone in that group who had no doubts about what was to be done, it was the tall, dark woman who stood aloofly apart from the others, her long arms crossed, her proud Egyptian head thrown back disdainfully. She was dark as mahogany, her eyes like spheres of polished teak, like black pearls, her hair as black and glossy as a cascade of crude oil. She was as tall as any of the men and, for all her slenderness, powerfully built. Her armor, which she was never seen without, night or day, was enameled a brilliant blood-red.

While the others argued, she slipped from the armory, mounted her own horse and rode out to meet Bradamant.

Meanwhile, that warrior maiden was nervously awaiting the appearance of her lover, anxious to make him her prisoner, wondering where the point of her lance would do him the least amount of harm. When she heard the galloping of hoofs at the city gate, she looked up, her heart beating in time with the sound. She scowled when she saw an unfamiliar crest on the newcomer’s helmet—the phoenix that Marfisa had chosen to symbolize both her will to live forever and her lofty disdain for most of the human race. She could not believe that Ferrau had lied to her and had sent yet another substitute for Rashid. Yet this one seemed different—there was a quality about this knight that disturbed her. The others had been playing a game, even if a deadly one. This one seemed to radiate death with the single-mindedness of the barracuda. They made a slow, wary circle of one another.

“Who are you?” cried Bradamant.

“My name is Marfisa.”

Marfisa!
Bradamant’s throat seemed to squeeze shut and her heart clenched like an angry fist.
Marfisa!
The very one who had been enjoying Rashid’s love, the one whom she loathed above all others, whom she hated so passionately that she’d rather die than fail to expunge her grief upon the other’s head. With a strangled oath, she dug her spurs into Rabican’s flanks and lowered her lance with every intention not of merely unseating her rival but of running her through like a skewered shrimp.

She did not succeed, but Marfisa, for the first time in her life, felt her back strike the hard earth. She was on her feet in an instant, wild with rage, enraged with humiliation, her scythe-shaped yataghan drawn, its bright point dancing like a scorpion’s stinger. Bradamant, who had swung back to confront her enemy, was shocked. “What are you doing? I’ve thrown you and you’re my prisoner! Surrender yourself at once!”

Speechless with fury, Marfisa’s only answer was an inarticulate howl as she whirled her yataghan like a propellor.

“You’re as evil and insolent as I expected,” said Bradamant. “You don’t deserve the forbearance I’ve shown the others.”

Marfisa rushed at her, swinging her weapon so that it looked like lightning flashing from her fist, but Rabican danced nimbly out of harm’s way as Bradamant hit Marfisa a sidewise blow with the shaft of her lance, sending the Moor tumbling through the dust. Like a spring, Marfisa leaped back to her feet, screeching and spluttering, her eyes sparking like a blacksmith’s forge. Bradamant again knocked her sprawling.

Meanwhile, the tumult the jousts had raised had attracted some of Charlemagne’s knights from the Christian camp. They did not recognize Bradamant, since her white armor was disguised by the surcoat, but lustily cheered what was obviously a Christian champion. This show disturbed Agramant, who did not at all like this gradual approach of even a few enemy knights—to say nothing of seeing his best knights humiliated before the Christians. By nature a suspicious, cautious man, he feared the events of that morning might be nothing but an elaborate ruse toward some evil end. He gave the order to his remaining champions to descend to the tilting field. There was a glad rush to the armory; among these was the tormented Rashid, who had been watching the battle with pale face and palpitating heart, gripping the parapet so grimly that the stone was pulverized beneath his fingers. There remained ten deep pits when he released them. He, better than anyone else, knew that Marfisa’s prowess was almost limitless and when the combat first started he could hardly bring himself to watch, terrified that he’d be forced to witness the destruction of his beloved Bradamant. But then, what if Bradamant won?

Although he was amazed and momentarily relieved that the fight had not ended with the first encounter, as the others had done, his anxiety only increased as the combat continued with unabated fury. He could not bear to see either woman injured or killed, yet he could see no other possible outcome. He loved one of them with a fiery passion. He joined the rush from the parapet with every intention of parting the combatants, however dishonorable this act might be—but he had hesitated too long. By the time he had found Frontino and rode through the gate his comrades in arms had gained the field ahead of him. Seeing that the Christian knight was clearly the stronger of the two, the Saracens rushed into the fray with the intention of preventing her victory. Infuriated by this unchivalrous interference, Charlemagne’s knights rushed forward, drawing their own weapons.

From somewhere sounded a trumpeting call to arms, echoed by another and another, until the air shrilled with the sound. Drums and bells and tamborines rattled, rang and trilled. The air vibrated with the tension, like the highly-electrified atmosphere preceeding a powerful storm. Jolted into action like frogs attached to a Voltaic cell, horsemen leaped for their mounts and every unarmed man scrambled for a weapon. In the brief time it took for Rashid to rush from the wall a full-scale melée was in progress—as violent and bloody a conflict as Rashid had ever seen, exacerbated by the fact that it was unplanned and uncontrolled. In the midst of the milling fray, he could see Bradamant, still on Rabican, her sword rising and falling as rhythmically as a flail. The intelligent animal, having no more love for the Moors than any other servant of the Christian emperor, bit furiously at its enemies, neatly lopping off fingers, hands, ears and noses.

Bradamant, for her part, was furious with the frustration and disappointment of having been separated from Marfisa. Her only desire, the focus of all her rancor, had been the death of that hated woman. Tears of anger poured down her face as she made the unfortunate soldiers around her bear the bloody brunt of her wrath. She resembled one of those armed spirits who accompany the archangel Michael and not a few of her enemies indeed thought themselves victims of a supernatural avenger.

Not being able to find her immediate enemy in the crowd, she searched for Rashid and immediately recognized his silver eagle as he emerged from the gate. For the briefest moment she stayed her hand, as blood poured down her blade and drooled from her elbow. She saw nothing else but that tall, powerful figure, the broad, strong shoulders, the deep chest, the leonine hair and beard, the bearing as graceful and restrained as a tiger’s—and then remembered that another woman had been enjoying those manly attributes—and perhaps others. At that last thought her fury broke like a flood bursting a levee. “
No!
” she screamed, and a poor foot soldier lost his head. “No other woman but me can kiss those lips!” And another head shot into the air like a football. “If you’re not to be mine, neither will you be anyone else’s!” A head split like a melon. “Rather than see you die of passion in another’s arms I’ll see you die in remorse at my hands!” Two more heads went flying. “Then at least we’ll be joined in hell!” Heads leaped around her like popcorn. “You’ve killed me as surely as if you’d plunged a sword into my heart! And a murderer must forfeit his own life—that is the law!” A dozen clutching hands tried to pull her from her saddle and she lopped them off as easily as she’d brush away flies. “But your death won’t have paid for mine! My murder was wrong while your death will be right! I’ll’ve only killed someone who wanted me dead. But you, you, faithless Rashid, you murdered one who loved and worshiped you! How can your one poor death equal the thousand deaths you’ve made
me
suffer?” With every word another Saracen was mutilated, decapitated or disemboweled to emphasize their meaning.

Her monologue was interrupted when a Moor, further shortening Sir Lambert the Short with a dexterous back stroke, sent the unlucky man’s head spinning full into her face. Stunned, she nearly missed parrying the furious blow that followed. Lunging forward, Bradamant pinned the man to his horse’s crupper like a butterfly to a cork.

Seeing an opening before her, Bradamant jerked her sword free and spurred Rabican. The horse leaped toward Rashid, crushing half a dozen Moorish heads and rib cages in the process as though it were charging through a patch of pumpkins. Rashid saw her and was confused and shocked by her appearance. She looked like a demon, covered with blood from head to foot, her eyes blazing through the gore—as though a blacksmith had dropped two white-hot rivets into a bucket of blood—her lips drawn back from white teeth that gleamed like bare bones amidst the crimson. She was brandishing her sword over her head like the flaming tail of the portentous comet.

“Beware, Rashid!” she screamed. “You’ll not wear
my
heart as a trophy!”

Rashid, while perhaps naïve, was not stupid. He still did not understand what Bradamant was doing here, or why she was charging toward him like a berserk dervish, but evidently she thought that he had been false with her, though he could not imagine why she would think this. After all, nothing had happened with Angelica.

He waved his arms in an effort to stop her—he was certain that if he could only speak to her for a moment or two he’d be able to cure whatever delusion was infecting her. Instead of slowing her rush, she sheathed her sword and raised her golden lance. Rashid braced himself and raised his own weapon. As he spurred Frontino, he tried to aim for a spot that would do his lover the least injury, though he could see the point of her own lance unwaveringly aimed directly for his heart.

Bradamant saw that Rashid had deflected his weapon, which ought to have told her something, but her heart had been hardened and she did not allow her lance to vary from its target by as much as an inch. The thundering of Rabican’s great hooves, each as massive as an anvil, synchronized with her pounding heart, a heart that threatened to burst from her chest like a fist through wet paper. At the last second, as Rashid’s anguished face filled her vision like a swelling balloon, when her lance was not two yards from his heart, she swerved its point.

The steel-tipped lances glanced from their targets with showers of sparks and a banshee shriek. Rashid’s burst into splinters with a sound like a thundercrack and both riders were nearly thrown from their saddles by the tremendous impact. Bradamant’s breath was knocked from her and for a brief ecstatic moment she thought that Rashid had killed her. But when she pulled Rabican to a halt and turned to see Rashid still on his horse, her fury and shame again erupted in a blinding agony. Anger that he was still alive, remorse that she had tried to murder him—incompatible emotions indeed—exploded into an unquenchable flame like a pellet of sodium metal dropped into a bowl of cold water. But she could not bring herself to attack him a second time.

She turned away from Rashid as her eyes filled with the flaming red blindness of her rage. With an inarticulate scream she charged into the battle with unprecedented ferocity. It was as though a tiger had suddenly appeared in the midst of a dogfight. Within a quarter of an hour more than three hundred Saracens fell before her golden lance or succumbed to her sword. Heads burst in gay splatters like exploding piñatas, severed limbs flew around her like branches in a storm until at last she found herself all but alone on the reeking battlefield, Rabican buried to his gaskins in mutilated corpses.

Rashid, horrified at this terrible transformation in his lover, circled her warily. “Bradamant!” he cried. “Talk to me! I’ll die if you don’t!”

The bloody maiden did not reply, but instead remained motionless, like a gory war memorial in the midst of the butchery heaped around her in steaming piles.

“What is it you think I’ve done?” he said. “Listen to me, for the love of God!”

Bradamant heard his words and absently wiped thickening blood from her face with her gloved hand. She barely understood the sense of what Rashid was saying, but the sound of his voice seemed to sweep through her, melting her anger like the first warm winds of spring reducing ice and snow to limpid streams and life-teeming ponds. She felt her heart, which during the melée had been as incandescent as molten iron and had since threatened to congeal into a lump of cold metal, soften and begin throbbing like a living thing again. It began to pump more than blood through her veins; she felt compassion flowing like a heady elixir. But she was not yet ready to admit either compassion or clemency.

Digging her spurs into Rabican, she galloped away from Rashid, away from both the Saracen and Christian camps, into the low hills that rose beyond the sea. Behind her she could hear pursuing hoofbeats that she recognized as Frontino’s. Not until she reached a small cypress-lined valley did she rein poor Rabican—who was panting like a bellows and slathered with sweat mixed with blood. Nearby, surrounded by a neat half circle of the tall, dark trees, was a small marble pavilion, a monument of some kind, part of her mind assumed, or perhaps a temple to some pagan deity.