In the Eye of Heaven Part 25

Durand took the spear.

"Point it at their lot," Guthred added, helpfully. "And move this bag of bones." He slapped the cob's rump. "I've got to have a word." He barged his way past Durand and through the close-packed horses toward the front.

There was movement among the heralds.

There were a lot of bare blades in the hands of scared men. Durand swallowed. A night without sleep had skimmed his face over with grease. His mouth was dry right to the back of his throat, and, somewhere along the line, he had missed his last chance for a p.i.s.s.

The cob s.h.i.+fted its weight, side to side."Durand?"

Behind him, red-haired Cerlac rode at the head of a straggling column, looking more like a knight-at-arms now in mail and surcoat.

"Your chance, eh?""I suppose."The man seemed to notice something."h.e.l.ls. Are you riding bare-headed, then?"

"I'm lucky I've still got my hauberk." There were plenty of men on the verge of riding against lances wearing nothing more than quilted canvas.

"I reckon I can manage another lucky stroke for a comrade at arms. Here." The young knight called back down the line behind him, and soon a boy ran up, holding a helmet over his head like a plattered roast at a feast. Cerlac plucked it from the boy's hands.

"It's a bit rough." The thing looked like a hammered iron bowl, but there was a broad nasal bar to blunt any slash across the eyes. "The webbing's still good, and the iron's sound enough."

He held it out, and Durand gladly took the thing. "You're generous."

"Now you've got a fighting chance, eh?"

"I'll do my best to get it back to you in one piece." Durand put the thing on his head, blinking at the sharp smell and the unfamiliar weight.

"I owe you my life after that bucket last night. Good luck."

Durand touched the brow of the helm in salute. He felt free. Cerlac nodded and rode for his place down the line.

Suddenly, Durand was jostled. Coensar was bobbing and twisting in his saddle, looking up and down their line. Durand saw pointing across the lists, then Coensar was shouting back. "All right, you lot Back them out." There were moans of confusion. "Get them out of line!"

On the field, the heralds were already tramping out to get things started. But the conroi wallowed back, tearing itself loose of its astonished battalion.

Coensar stood in his stirrups. "Follow me. We haven't much time!" They rode, swinging round the whole field. In the midst of the enemy line, Ca.s.sonel, in his black and silver gear, stood in his stirrup irons, watching them come, incredulous. In a moment, they would join Ca.s.sonel's battalion, losing Coensar the chance he had bled for.

Only as Coensar led their conroi jostling into the northern company, did Durand see the explanation: The heir of Mornaway had taken up a place in the ranks opposite Lamoric's men. On opposite sides, Moryn would have had his chance at Lamoric. Now, the man was forced to be an ally.

Arranging it had cost Sir Coensar dearly.

They settled into the line, horses twitching. Their erstwhile allies stared back in astonishment.

The Lady's heralds walked out into the lists. One of the men pa.s.sed down the ranks in front of them. It would be any moment now.

There was a heavy ripple running through the opposing line: more jockeying. Men and horses jostled to make way for a new conroi, and a sober Baron Ca.s.sonel emerged in the front rank. The man regarded Coensar steadily. The Baron of Damaryn would give Coensar his chance.

The green-clad heralds took up places at each of the four corners of the field. Across the way, Durand spotted red-haired Cerlac who shrugged back with a smile. Now they would fight against each other. Durand checked to be sure that his sword was free in its scabbard. He touched the pommel of his misericord dagger. He tried to find the balancing point of the lance. Each breath snapped his throat dry as parchment.

Durand could still not see into the reviewing stand, but a shadow had risen against the canvas. The long figure's arm was raised. The heralds noted it as well, each of the four raising a horn to his lips.

Horses stamped. Durand gripped lance and s.h.i.+eld.

There was a wispy something in the Lady's hand, and-as soon as Durand had seen it-it fell.

The line surged into motion with the blare of trumpets.

THE MELEE WAS a wild and furious thing. After the long night under the silver moon, the climbing Eye of Heaven set every streaming color ablaze. a wild and furious thing. After the long night under the silver moon, the climbing Eye of Heaven set every streaming color ablaze.

For hours, Durand fought to stay with Lamoric's conroi and not to get himself cut from the group and taken. There were collisions and screams and pitched battles as conrois clashed. Men fell and ran. In the confusion, blows clattered in from wild angles. Men bobbed in and out. As the bright Eye climbed, Durand took a lance against his s.h.i.+eld and uncounted slapping blows over mailed limbs. As far as he knew, no blow of his own had so much as bruised another man.

In the day's third hour, a lance jabbed big Ouen from his horse, but Lamoric and Berchard together swooped down. In an instant, the giant knight was flying over the field, suspended between two horses with his feet churning the air.

Durand and the whole conroi swept in to cover their retreat from the lists. The big man hit the ground beyond the palings, tumbling from the hands that had hoisted him out of harm's way, and laughing as he rolled to a halt among a crowd of startled s.h.i.+eld-bearers.

It was while Ouen tumbled that things went wrong. Coensar was howling an order. 'To me, to me! Reform! Reform!" From the churning, wheeling chaos of the melee, another conroi had broken loose. In racing for the edge of the lists, Lamoric's men were strung out across two-dozen paces with the slowest horses and poorest riders straggling and exposed. Enemies leapt to seize the advantage.

Durand, on his stolid cob, barely had time to spin as men and horses sleeted through the fragmented lines all around him. One grinning villain picked him out, rus.h.i.+ng forward behind the long blade of a lance. The attacking point howled up Durand's s.h.i.+eld, as his own lance shot the gap between his attacker's horse and bridle, wrenching ten feet of spinning lance from Durand's fist Lamoric's conroi flexed, twisting like a pit bear-blades, armor, and lances las.h.i.+ng to drive off any new attacker.

Suddenly safe, Durand shook a stung hand. His lance was a sharp angle in the mud, ashwood snapped like a reed. He felt blood slick in his ear. With the rest of the conroi bristling, there was room for Durand to slip out, pull himself together, and collect another weapon.

The quickest route took him past the reviewing stand, but, as he slipped into its shadow, a knight in red dragons spotted him. The man's gilded helm and its tall dragon crest twitched Durand's way. Though the wh.o.r.eson must have seen that Durand was unarmed, the Dragon jammed his spurs home, his warhorse's trapper rising in a red storm. The pennon of the Dragon's lance lashed like flame. "h.e.l.ls," snarled Durand.

In the instant that Durand understood that he must run, voices gasped behind him. Several of the young women were standing now, many with their hands at their faces. He saw wide eyes and excited grins. If she was here, his Stream Maid was among them. He could not run.

He spurred the cob down the Dragon's throat. There was no time. He got one gulp of air, then Dragon struck, lance glancing from Durand's s.h.i.+eld-slamming Durand over the back of his saddle. But Durand swung: the slapping overhand blow caught the Dragon's helm-staving it in with the force of charging horses alone. The dragon crest flew on, spinning.

There was a shriek among the women as the leather crest flopped down among them.

The Dragon himself crashed from his saddle. As the downed man's mount flounced to a halt, Durand hauled himself back into his seat and turned to the stand. The maids were smiling and standing and staring. His Stream Maid was there, in shadow. The Lady of the Bower flashed her teeth. The Dragon struggled on the ground, like an insect, half-crushed. Durand felt he should do something. He should get help. Or he should take the b.a.s.t.a.r.d prisoner.

The heralds winded their arcane horns: a long hollow note that skirled above the field.

Durand twisted. The din of blades ebbed away.

The Lady stood as placidly as she had been when she started the whole event. In the lists behind Durand, only a few straggling clatters continued to ensure him that it was not sorcery that had stilled them all.

Every streaked and muddy soldier on the field looked to the Lady of the Bower and her handmaids. Durand felt a fool, caught by mistake on the same stage before all the others. With a nod to the Lady, he gave ground, bullying his carthorse backward, as the gray-bearded herald strode out in front of the stand.

The man bowed stiffly to the crowd."You have each acquitted yourself well this morning, and my Lady thanks you for your spirited partic.i.p.ation. The Eye of Heaven has reached its zenith. The general melee is at an end. When every man has sung Noontide Lauds, the tournament will continue; this time to be fought by chosen men alone. The Lady's selections will be delivered to each war band. Let each righting man be ready for the call." The man paused. "When next the horns sound, it will be the seventh hour."

As the old herald departed with his mistress for the castle, Durand closed his eyes and breathed deep, careful breaths. It was over.

For a time only men-at-arms and villagers remained.

After a few awkward heartbeats, the fighting men turned from the lists, moving without orders toward the pavilions. Someone collected the battered Dragon.

One-eyed Berchard swung in beside Durand's cob.

"Durand! Bravely done." He smiled. "And you've found hidden virtues in that old cob horse." He extended a wineskin to Durand. "May you both sire great lines!"

Durand took it, surprised that any of Lamoric's men would speak with him. "I thought the thing would be scared out of its wits."

'Too daft to notice, more like. And I'm not sure he isn't blind," Berchard said. He took back the skin. "You did well. Taught a couple of them, I reckon. That last one anyway." He grimaced. "He'll think twice next time he sees a rough country lout on a plow horse." Then he offered the skin once more.

Durand took another swig from the bottle and a good breath of air.

"He deserved worse," said Berchard.

Glancing around, the old campaigner leaned close. "And, as for me, I talk to whomever I like." The man leaned back and nodded. "For what it's worth.

"Here's your mate," he added, with a glance toward the edge of the field.

Heremund took the reins of the plow horse as Durand climbed down, his legs like sacks of sand.

"You're alive," the skald laughed. "What a brawl that was. Like no melee these eyes have seen. Half these fools are lucky they didn't kill themselves, let alone anyone else. There were horses bounding off like hares, every which way. Men on backward. Upside down. Boys on pigs have more grace."

They trudged toward Lamoric's tents, Durand eyeing his future. It was Blood Moon in the wide world beyond Hesperand, and winter was in the wind. He would be making his own way once more.

Heremund produced a loaf of bread. "Don't worry. I stole it from Guthred," he explained. "Nothing baked or grown in Hesperand."

There were bruised men sprawled everywhere, most too tired or battered to even think about speaking. Heremund winced at the worst of them. "Looks like a wagon wreck on market day."

They found a dry spot in the gra.s.s and sat down. The earth felt like earth. The Eye of Heaven was as warm as always. Slipping his arm from the straps of his s.h.i.+eld, Durand tore a chunk from the loaf with his teeth-a few loose. His right hand was stiff and swollen.

Heremund smiled around a long sip of claret. "I might have missed your ugly face, you know."

"You saw that sc.r.a.pe with the Dragon, then?" Durand said.

Heremund handed him the wineskin. "He should never have come for you with that lance."

Durand didn't argue.

"Dragon's a baron," said Heremund, "I think. I can't remember which. Hardly fair, and what's he gain besting a foe like you?"

Durand smiled. "Thank you, I'm sure."

"Your gear is nothing he'd want as a prize, and you weren't fairly armed. He made a fool of himself losing. No money. No honor. Little risk, no reward. I wonder what the rules would be if you'd have caught him? He'd have to yield to a knight."

"I thought I was going to end up skewered."

Heremund laughed. "Aye. Whack! A bolt through a pigeon, right in front of our lovely hostess. I'm beginning to think I should train you for a skald like me. I don't even lance boils."

Durand raked his helmet off with the bad hand, the leather webbing peeling away from a paste of brown blood.

Heremund winced, but, looking up, spotted something over Durand's shoulder. Durand turned to find eyes on him. Toward Lamoric's pavilion, dour Guthred was staring. Lamoric's helm faced their way as well. Heremund touched his shoulder.

"I suppose though," he said, "you "you really really ought ought to seek out the uneven battle." to seek out the uneven battle."

"You want me skewered?" Durand said.

Heremund's eyes narrowed, considering the proposition. "No, I imagine you'd be a bit tough for my teeth. Though I suppose with the kind of malleting you took today, you're likely halfway tender by now."

Durand allowed himself a smile. There were a hundred bruises waiting for him, he was sure.

Heremund jabbed a stubby finger toward Durand. "Everyone likes the das.h.i.+ng hero who wins despite overwhelming opposition. Yes, overwhelming opposition's the only way. You'll have to keep an eye out."

"I'll need a better helm," Durand said."Skill."

"Aye, and a coat of plates, while I'm at it." Durand laughed, swallowing another tart mouthful of wine.

Someone whooped toward Lamoric's camp."What's this now?" said Heremund.

Durand thought he heard his name, and stood to find Berchard marching toward him.

"Here! Durand! The Green Lady. She sent this along for you." He slapped a hard yellow lump into Durand's torn right hand. He caught a whiff of lye. Durand didn't understand.

"What is it?"

"They've announced the chosen men, and, G.o.d save us, you're one. We'll have to clean you up a bit."

In different ways, every man in the conroi looked as astounded as Durand-all but Sir Coensar, who wore an expression that might have been amus.e.m.e.nt. The captain had a scroll of cream vellum in his hand.

Coensar lifted the scroll and quietly read: "From the company of the Knight in Red are selected the Knight in Red himself, Sir Coensar his captain, and Durand of the Col."

Berchard grinned. "Well done, lad," he said, taking the soap back and giving the hand a good pump. "My horse is yours, if you need it."

15. On the Field of Bower Mead

By Agryn's dial, the seventh hour was almost upon them. The strap on Durand's helmet was tight enough to crack his teeth. He swallowed against the knot. The green and yellow s.h.i.+eld of his family was torn in a dozen places. Berchard's horse, a sooty brown, tossed its head fit to break its neck. Durand snugged his grip on the reins.

There were thirty chosen men. All the fighting men north and south had been reduced to two tight conrois. Peasants had uprooted the palings and driven them into the turf much closer to the reviewing stand, staking out an area fifty paces on a side. There would be no room to breathe out there.

Durand waited in a line with the north fifteen. He was the only man on either side whose horse wore no trapper-and the only man whose face was bare.

"When it starts, stick close," hissed Coensar. Lamoric, as Knight in Red, sat beyond the captain.

Durand nodded once, sharply. With Lamoric at risk, the captain wasn't pleased that a novice had stolen an experienced man's place.

Opposite their conroi were fifteen visored knights; helms, and s.h.i.+elds, and trappers all matched. "I'm the saltire cross. Take the green." There was, indeed, a man in gold and green opposite him. Durand slipped his lance higher in his hand, accidentally provoking the blue knight to do the same, raising his lance in a mocking salute. He could feel the garter below his knee binding.

The Lady of the Bower stood. In one delicate hand, she held a bit of green silk. Durand glanced for the champing conroi opposite. He saw Coensar's "saltire"-a white cross on sable: Ca.s.sonel of Damaryn. His black helm turned to the stands.

The Lady raised her arm. Durand locked his teeth and tore his eyes away as the green fabric fell.