Kingdom Of Argylle - A Sorcerer And A Gentleman Part 25

however it end, I would talk more with thee . . ."

Dewar was speechless still. He stared at Prospero, unable to organize his thoughts and emotions into anything coherent.

". . . an thou hast no objection," Prospero concluded low-voiced.

Dewar made a small sound and shook his head.

"Good. Until later, then. Truce 'tween us." He mounted the horse, turned him with his legs as his hands adjusted his cloak, sword, and helm, and trotted away over the crest of the hill and down its back.

Dewar sat suddenly down on a boulder, his face slack with shock. He swallowed and his eyes watched the battle's waves of attacks and his mind stumbled through other matters, while the cold bright sun reached noon.

He rose slowly and broke his Bounds. The tide of the battle had moved away; Prospero's western line had fallen back. Dewar walked down the hill to a temporarily lulled place on the field, took a sword and s.h.i.+eld and helm from an arrow-throated corpse and dragged a s.h.i.+rt of mail from another, and donned them. He was trembling uncontrollably, and he could not understand why nor stop.

Ottaviano was with Golias to the northeast. Dewar went to join them, commandeering a dead man's horse on his way, and became Otto's shadow, protecting and moving with him. Otto shouted something at Dewar when he saw him, but Dewar ignored it and set, cold-faced, to the loathsome butcher's work at hand.

Herne brought Prospero down with a length of chain on a handle which had been a morgenstern, but which had lost its head. He wrapped the thing, flail-like, around his brother's sword arm and dragged him from the saddle.

"Yield thee, pretender!" Herne bellowed.

"Wh.o.r.eson b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Prospero shouted, truthfully, and he and Herne engaged on foot.

Prince Gaston saw. He was not far off; Ottaviano and Golias were pressing a disordered clump of Prospero's spike-helmeted troops down a slope, having cut them off 224 --^.

from retreat to their camp, and they saw it too. Dewar saw, riding behind Otto, and he threw the blood-clotted sword in his hand away.

"Yaaaah!" hooted Ottaviano in pure blood-l.u.s.t.

"Kill him!" screamed Golias.

"Herne, hold!" shouted the Marshal, his voice carrying over the din of battle, and Herne whacked Prospero on his helmed head with the chain he still had in his left hand. Prospero staggered; Herne went over his counterswing easily and hit him again with the fiat of his sword, then whirled the chain again and disarmed him.

Gaston was charging, on his blood-spattered warhorse, over corpses and around knots where combatants were still engaged; the standard-bearer couldn't keep up with him.

"Yield!"

"Herne! Hold!"

Prospero lay on the trampled ground before Gaston, Herne having knocked him to his side with the disarming blow. His left arm had folded beneath him. He was not moving. Herne lifted his sword two-handed to strike again, a sure-fatal stroke, and Gaston's long blade whipped around, singing in the air, to ring against his brother's blade and prevent the blow, knocking Herne's sword to one side and Herne off-balance, so that he stumbled a step away from the fallen Prince. Gaston's sword returned and whizzed toward Herne's neck, too fast for Herne to parry, so that if Gaston had not pulled the blow, half a hands-breadth short of striking, Herne had been a dead man.

The Marshal took a deep breath, commanding himself. "I said, hold, " Gaston said, and his voice was soft. The sword was quite still and quite close to his brother's gorget.

Herne glared up at Gaston through the visor of his helm and then stepped back.

Ottaviano, with Dewar behind him, joined them.

"He's stunned. There's no common bond I'd trust to hold him," Gaston said, jumping down lightly, as if he were not plate-armored from head to heel. "Dewar, do thou confine him with thy sorcery."

Dewar's ears roared. He looked wildly at Gaston and Sorcerer and a Qentteman 225.

then blankly, despairingly, at Prospero, who suddenly shook his head, recovering, and rolled onto his back with an audible pained hiss.

"Confine him!" Gaston repeated, watching and knowing that Prospero was strengthening himself for another fight.

"Wake up, man!" Ottaviano reached over and shook Dewar's elbow.

Herne lifted his sword and held the chain ready.

"Dewar!" Gaston snapped, and glared at the younger man, who was breathing heavily and seemed entranced.

"d.a.m.n you, Dewar! /'// do it," Ottaviano said, stabbing his sword into the ground. He moved his hands, gathering power as he walked around Prospero, addressing the forces of the Well and forging them.

Gaston suppressed his startlement at this. .h.i.therto-undemonstrated ability of the new-made Baron of Ascolet and waited.

Dewar closed his eyes to close out the sight of the world s.h.i.+fting jerkily from side to side before him. He feared he would fall from his saddle. Before Ottaviano finished the invocation of Binding, he spurred and wheeled his horse and raced the tired animal away across the field of carnage, forcing him through the dead and dying men and animals.

"What the f.u.c.k!" Herne cried. "Treachery-"

"Let be!" Gaston shouted him down angrily.

Prospero, as the sinews of Ottaviano's spell constricted around him, had shaken his head again and sat up, pus.h.i.+ng up his visor in time to see Dewar turning and fleeing. There was blood on his face, but no obvious wound.

"Aha," he said, in a strained voice, looking at Ottaviano. "Neyphile's boy."

Otto blinked, reddened. "I know you not, sir."

"Of course not," Prospero said, with the ghost of a chuckle, and leaned on his opalescent black-bladed sword to rise, holding his left arm close against him.

He and Gaston regarded one another for a minute, a minute and a half.

"So, Gaston."

"Prospero."

226.

'ECiz.aBetfi "Avril hath not the stomach to fight his own fight, and you champion him."

"I fight for Landuc."

"So did Panurgus."

Gaston reddened. "I will not argue this with you."

"Nay. Your best argument is there in your hand, Marshal."

Another tense half-minute of silence pa.s.sed.

"I am your prisoner," Prospero said quietly, in a stronger voice, and after perhaps three heartbeats, he unfastened his helm and dropped it on the ground. It bounced at Gaston's feet and bounced back to Prospero's. "If yon journeyman will be so good as to break these Bounds, I'll yield my sword." He wiped the blade on his cloak.

"Do it," Gaston said without looking at Ottaviano.

"Sir-" Otto started.

"Gaston-" Herne said, and stopped at a glare from the Fireduke.

Ottaviano murmured and gestured concisely. Prospero chuckled drily again and nodded. "Very good." Ottaviano flushed and scowled at him.

Prospero offered his sword unceremoniously, hilt-first, to Gaston.

Gaston accepted it, his hand closing around Prospero's on the hilt for a moment. Prospero unbuckled the scabbard and handed that to Gaston as well, and their eyes never left each the other's.

Prince Gaston gently slid the black blade, stained forever with King Panurgus's blood, into its scabbard. "Let us go see to things," he said softly then, and, taking the reins of his horse, gestured back to the encampment with his chin.

Prospero whistled one note to Hurricane, who stood some distance away watching, calling the horse to him. Hurricane came slowly to them and Prospero mounted, not using his left arm, which he tucked into his belt. Escorted by Ottaviano, they left the battlefield, and Prince Herne, cold-faced, mounted his own horse and rode off to organize the imprisonment of Prospero's men.

Sorcerer and a (jentteman 227.

Prince Prospero dismounted and stood leaning against Hurricane a moment longer. He stroked the horse's neck, grateful, and breathed in a long ear, "Go, friend. Find Dewar. Serve him as me."

The Fireduke approached. "Are you injured? Let me-"

Prospero slapped his horse mightily on the rump and Hurricane reared, whinnied, and raced away as if his tail were afire, leaping over wagons and dodging narrowly around a knot of soldiers arriving to guard Prospero, knocking two down, galloping back toward the battlefield.

"Too fine a horse to fetter here," Prospero said.

Gaston looked at him a long, weighing moment, and then nodded. "Come into my tent. We've much to discuss."

20.THE SORCERER SAT ON THE ROUNDED, grey-Hchened stone where he had sat before. He watched the dark birds arriving to inspect the battlefield below him.

The sun was setting. Clear, cold night was coming; the sky was uncluttered with clouds and the fire-colors progressed seamlessly from the round horizon, broken by higher hills leading to the faraway mountains at his back, to the unfathomable zenith. Dewar watched as lights appeared here and there in the north where Gaston was encamped. He had discarded his battered mail s.h.i.+rt when he had gotten clumsily off his horse. The horse was presently tearing at the winter-dried gra.s.s down the hill.

Dewar's cloak had a deep hood. He had pulled it over his head and m.u.f.fled himself up so well that in the waning light he appeared to be nothing more than a taller rock among the many which littered the hillside. His eyes were open; he had watched the sun set indifferent to the beauty of its going and now watched the coming of night with the same blank-ness. His thoughts were all within himself. There he revolved slowly in a circle of anger, disappointment, fear, self-hatred, disgust, and grief, going from link to link in the 228.

'Etizað Sorcerer and a (jentfeman 229.

chain until he had returned to the beginning again.

He wanted to leave this place, and he knew he could not without dishonoring himself so thoroughly that his next goal would have to be self-destruction. Yet his allies, sometime friends to him-and his father, his unexpected father, finer than any sire Dewar had never expected to find, who had refused to use sorcery today and been defeated without it-he could not leave them without a word of explanation or excuse, and there was none. His place was somewhere below, there among the wispy lights and sparks of the armies.

But with which army? Free or captive?

His friends, his chosen companions ... his father, his blood-kin, his own kind.

Dewar moaned softly and put his head on his knees, presenting a lower profile to the night wind.

It was thus that Ottaviano found him after the gibbous moon had risen above the eastern mountains and made Dewar's and the thorn-tree's shadows hard and bright.

Otto stopped a little distance away and looked at him for a time, noting his hunched posture, and then dismounted, threw a blanket over his horse's back, and let him go at the gra.s.s with Dewar's. Otto walked slowly to Dewar's side and squatted on his heels, looking over the night-flooded landscape.

"I'm sorry," Otto said softly.

Dewar did not acknowledge him.

Prospero had been quiet and dignified giving orders to his captains to surrender. He had unknotted a slew of sorceries, with Gaston only to witness, and loosed his bindings of the weather. Otto had felt the world twisting around him, half a mile away, and before his eyes a flat, throbbing dark bar, one of those that tumbled and swept, had dissolved. Prospero was a fool, thought Otto, or playing a deeper game than just this war. With such power, why surrender?

Golias and Herne had called Dewar a traitor that night at the staff meeting. Gaston had said only, "There was no treachery here today," and ordered them to be silent. Herne desired ardently to kill Prospero, and he was p.i.s.sing angry at Gaston for interfering. Golias . . . well, Golias would have been as happy to see Gaston dead as Prospero; Otto couldn't fool himself about that. Or Otto himself, maybe. Golias hated Landuc more acidly than ever.

Golias said he would find Dewar and haul him back here for an explanation, and Ottaviano had jumped in and said he'd find him. Gaston nodded at Otto and said, "Go, then," and had Golias begin organizing patrols to hunt down the loose tags of Prospero's forces.

So Ottaviano had gotten a fresh horse and ridden up this hill.

"Mighty strange war," Otto said after Dewar had remained silent a long time, "when the best sorcerer in Phe-yarcet swears off sorcery and loses."

Dewar said nothing.

"He's a good strategist," Otto went on, "but the Marshal's that much better, and Prince Josquin turned up where he wasn't expected, just like the Marshal planned." He paused. "Prince Josquin's not the twit I thought he'd be. And the Marshal is a lot smarter. I guess living as long as he has you learn to look beyond your nose or the end of next year. Maybe Prospero would've lost even if you hadn't been here. Maybe not. We'll never know." He was nattering. He stopped himself.

Otto waited, but Dewar was stone-silent.

"I was thinking," Otto said, "if you're not busy, you might want to come to Landuc with me, seeing as Lunete and I have to go take oaths and stuff. Might as well spend the winter there, getting cultured. It's a lively town. I know people you ought to meet: there was this surgeon's daughter, Zebaldina, that ran a bath-house, and she used to- anyway, think about it."

Dewar hadn't moved, hadn't indicated he was alive.

"It's been a long year," Otto said. "More'n a year of killing people. I kind of think that's enough." He paused and said, "Well, come by my tent. I've got a bottle of Ascolet mountaintop suns.h.i.+ne I forgot about and it's not safe to drink that stuff standing up or alone. All right?"

230.

"Elizabeth cWHUy Sorcerer and a Qentteman 231.

Dewar was still motionless and wordless. Otto nodded and stood, satisfied, and mounted his horse and rode away.

Dewar had heard him, he was sure. Otto had used the meeting to a.s.sure himself that Dewar wasn't now under a geas or spell. There was nothing detectable. Earlier, probably; it seemed the most likely explanation, that Prospero had hit him directly and hard and Dewar was ashamed and embarra.s.sed at being invisibly but painfully defeated. Or perhaps, Otto thought, the geas Dewar had spoken of had been more limiting, more stringent, than Dewar had known. But he'd come around. Otto was sure of it.

When Otto had gone, Dewar continued to sit. The moon rose at his back. He watched the shadows move.

A scrabbling sound and a stone bouncing down the hill past him next interrupted his musings. Had Dewar lifted his head and looked, he would have seen a cloaked and hel-meted squire or messenger on a wheezing horse. The newcomer gasped, "Oh!"

Dewar stared ahead, his chin on his hands still.

"I thought you to be a rock, sir."

He said nothing.

"I pray you tell me, sir," the squire continued, coming closer, "if that be Prince Gaston's army 1 see encamped there ..."

There was no answer, and the squire, frowning, dismounted and stood beside Dewar, bending, thinking perhaps he was some deaf, flockless shepherd who sat here out of habit or madness.

"Sir-" and stopped. This statuelike man wept; the starlight glistened on dampness on his face and beard. "Sir," said the squire, more gently, "I beg your pardon for hectoring you, but I must know if that is the Fireduke's force below."