Hard Day's Knight (29 page)

“Crunchies,” Fenice said, Gary flanking one side of her.

“I beg your pardon?” I asked as I settled Moth onto the blanket next to CJ, giving him his favorite catnip toy to keep him occupied. “What’s crunchy?”

“Who, not what. Or should it be whom? It doesn’t matter—the term applies to knights who spend more time on the ground than in the saddle. They crunch when you step on them, do you see?”

“All too well, thank you,” I said, the piece of leftover pizza I’d shared with Moth as breakfast doing a backflip in my stomach. “So when is everyone on?”

CJ shoved a piece of paper into my hands. I glanced at it as the speaker overhead burst into song, a rock anthem used with gleefully anachronistic disregard, the announcer calling for the next two participants to enter the ring. Two men on bays entered, one horse in a fancy yellow-and-black drapery, the other in blue and green. They rode a promenade around the ring, bowing and waving and generally playing it up to the crowd as the announcer related their name, affiliations, and jousting wins. Women and girls (and a couple of enthusiastic guys) leaned over the railing waving the premade cloth favors sold by a couple of vendors, scarves, homemade favors, and even a pair of panties as the jousters rode the ring.

“Good God, they really go whole hog for the competition, don’t they? This is nothing like the qualifying. Is that woman waving what I think she’s waving at that knight?”

“Looks like a G-string to me. Qualifying is for serious jousters—this is for the public,” CJ answered.

“Yeah, but this is the competition.” She shrugged. I leaned forward and touched Fenice on her arm. “Do you guys have the fancy horse blankies like these knights?”

“They’re called caparisons, Pepper,” she answered with a grin. “And yes, we have them, too.”

“Butcher’s is a full caparison of green with silver fleur-de-lis on it. Walker just has red and gold cruppers that can adjust to different-size horses,” CJ said.

“Cruppers as in the straps that hang over the horse’s rump?” I asked absently, reviewing the day’s schedule of jousting. Walker had told me in pillow talk that each morning that names were drawn randomly to pair up jousters, with the list of who was going up against whom posted immediately thereafter.

“Yes, those sorts of cruppers.”

“Ah. So Bliss is first at a little after nine against one of the Norwegians, then Walker and an Aussie at ten thirty, Vandal versus one of the Palm Springs ladies right after that, and Butcher and one of the Whadda Knights at three.”

“Colin. He’ll cream Butcher,” Gary said loudly of his teammate. CJ, never one to take criticism (implied or not) of her gigantic lamb, pulled off her gold velvet muffin hat and smacked the back of Gary’s head with it.

I frowned at the schedule. “What happens if someone draws their own teammate as a competitor?”

“In team competition, the chief marshal would throw the name back and pull another until someone who wasn’t a teammate is pulled. In individual competition, it’s luck of the draw, and quite often you do draw your own teammate,” Gary answered with a shrug.

“I didn’t realize there were team and individual jousts,” I said slowly, flipping over the day’s schedule to look at the overall tournament schedule, only to choke at what I saw. “Good god! The winner gets two hundred thousand dollars?
Two hundred thousand?
No wonder people have come from all over the world to participate!”

Fenice nodded as CJ grinned and said, “That’s just for one event. The winning team of the four jousting events gets two hundred grand to divide. Each winning person in sword and archery also gets one hundred thousand. Then the jouster who wins the individual competition gets another two hundred thou, and finally, the one person who has the highest individual score in jousting and the skill games is the tourney champion, and he or she gets another two hundred thousand.”

“Wow! That’s a whole lot of money—almost a million dollars!”

“It
is
a million—there are lesser amounts of money offered to people in the first four places of each competition. This is the largest purse ever offered to jousters. It’s unprecedented.”

No wonder everyone on Walker’s team was so frantic to have him joust, thereby keeping them in the competition. If they won even one event, they’d stand to walk out of there with a pretty big chunk of change.

“It’s an experiment to see if jousting has the support to become an Olympic event,” Gary added as the crowd applauded the two jousters, now taking their places at either end of the list. “Of course, they have to get past the politics first, which frankly I think is a lost cause.”

“Politics?”

“Shhh!” CJ ordered, the crowd roaring as the two knights spurred their horses forward.

I gave the two men in the ring the briefest glance, more interested in what Gary had said. I leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder until he turned to look at me, saying softly, “What sort of politics?”

“There are four different jousting organizations, each supposedly better than the others, but really they’re almost the same, with a few key differences. There’s the American Jousting Association—your friend Farrell is the head of that—and the International Tournament Organization, who are mostly the Aussies and Kiwis; then there’s the World Jousting and Combat Association, which is predominant here in Canada and Europe, and finally there’s a new group called the Federation of Armed Combatants set up by people who didn’t like the restrictions in the other three—they’re the bad boys of the jousting world.”

“Ah. So each organization does what—holds its own jousts?”

He nodded, glancing toward the ring for a moment as the jousters threw down their broken lances and rode back to their starting points. “They hold their own tourneys, award their own titles, keep different scoring systems, and have different rules for jousters. Each one names their best jouster as the world champion, so it can get confusing when you have four world champs at one time. The real reason that jousting isn’t in the Olympics has nothing to do with the question of public support, as the tourney organizers claim—it’s because there is no one international organization. Until there is, jousting won’t be anything but an amateur sport, even at this level of competition.”

“Hmm,” I said, sitting back, my attention suddenly caught by the sight of a familiar figure standing just outside the arena. Walker and Butcher were dressed in identical red tunics and black leggings, the three golden dogs on their tunics blazoning the team’s emblem. Walker held an armload of red-and-white-striped lances, while Butcher carried a couple of painted shields, both evidently waiting to squire Bliss at her turn. “What a poop.” I sighed, my eyes on the dark-haired man of my dreams.

“Trouble in paradise?” CJ leaned over Moth to whisper. “Walker doesn’t look very happy.”

I raised both eyebrows and tried to look haughty. “I gave the man a full-body massage last night and fulfilled his every wanton desire, and let me tell you, he has quite a few. That doesn’t sound like trouble to me.”

“No, but the way he was muttering and snorting your name when he came around the camp this morning did. I’d say I told you so, but I’m not the sort of person who gloats over another’s troubles.” I gave her a narrowed-eyed look. She grinned. “Oh, what the hell—I
told
you so!”

“Shut. Up.”

“Oooh, touchy!”

I ignored her and her smugness for the next half hour, thinking all sorts of confusing thoughts of a dichotomeus nature, one moment doing an inner swoon at the sight of Walker handing Bliss a lance, the next recalling how annoyingly perceptive he could be, and what I could do to distract him from probing any further at something I didn’t want to talk about. The heinous plot against his team would do, to start.

“The best defense is an offense,” I muttered to myself as the crowd rose to their feet, screaming as Bliss and the Aussie ran the last of their three jousts. I began to plot accordingly.

 

Fifteen minutes after Bliss’s jousting run (for which she scored a perfect fifteen, having struck what amounted to a bull’s-eye on the outside upper quarter of the shield) she was at the bottom of the bleachers waving me down.

“Go on; she probably wants to do some training with you. I’ll watch Moth until you get back,” CJ offered.

I sighed as I handed over his leash and dug his can of kitty snacks from the leather pouch that hung from my belt. “I don’t know why she thinks anyone cares whether or not I prove myself to Farrell. . . .”

“Stop complaining and go.” CJ shoved me.

Bliss had already started toward the stable as I hurried after her. She was still clad in breeches and tunic beneath a thigh-long chain-mail hauberk that she wore for jousting, but despite her being so burdened, I had to run to catch up with her.

“Don’t have much time before I have to squire Walker. I want to work you on the shock quintain this morning. We’ll work on your accuracy skills; then this afternoon before Vandal’s match Butcher will take you through your paces.”

“I hate to take you away from watching the joust—” I started to say, but clamped my teeth closed at the look she shot me. Nothing but outright refusal was going to get her to budge from her plan to train me, drat the woman. I sighed and gave in as gracefully as I could, even allowing her to arm me.

“What’s this?” I asked as she handed me a navy-blue quilted vestlike object that laced on the side. At her request I’d gone back to my tent first and gotten into a pair of jeans and one of the short shirt-length chemises that CJ had brought for me.

“It’s a gambeson. An arming tunic. It protects you from the chain mail.”

I gnawed on my lower lip for a few seconds. “Bliss, I don’t have any chain mail, and although I know there’s a guy on the vendors’ row who’ll make it for you, it’s pricey.”

“Very pricey,” she agreed, and held out the gambeson.

“Then why am I putting this on?”

“You’re going to wear Bos’s armor.”

I straightened my shoulders and prepared to level a glare at her. “I might be sturdy, but I am not as big as him!”

“Just his mail, not the plate armor,” she agreed. “That would take some padding, but you might be able to wear it if you had to. Put this on, and then I’ll show you the easiest way to get into a mail hauberk. Did you bring your gloves? Good.”

I slid into the padded gambeson, tying the sides as she held out two more blue quilted pieces. “These are the padded cuisses. They go on your legs and tie onto your belt.”

“Oh. Sorry, I left that behind.”

She frowned at my waist for a second, then shrugged. “Just tie them to the belt loops on your jeans. Do you have a pair of sturdy hose? If not, you’ll need to get a pair. It’s all right for you to wear jeans today, but the sooner you’re properly kitted out, the quicker you’ll accustom yourself to the feel of the equipment.”

I pulled the cuisses on and tied them to my jeans. “Do I really need this?” I held up my hand quickly, forestalling the lecture about my honor and the dignity of women jousters the world over. “Not do I need to learn how to joust; I’m becoming resigned to that. I mean the leg thingies. I’m not really going to be using my legs, am I?”

She just smiled. “Tell me after today’s session whether or not you need them.”

Oy
. That sounded ominous. I took the thin scarf she handed me, wrapping it around my head as instructed.

“That’s to protect your hair while you’re getting into the mail. The men don’t do it, but with your long hair, you’ll not want it snagged on the mail. On your knees, arms straight up, please.”

I knelt before her as she held the long mail garment above my head, slipping into it as she lowered it down onto my arms. As the weight of it settled on my shoulders, I was thankful for the gambeson, since it helped distribute the weight of the thirty pounds or so of chain mail.

“I hope to heaven this is it,” I said, getting awkwardly to my feet. “Because if there’s anything else I have to wear, I doubt if I’ll be able to hold the lance at all. Man, I thought Farrell’s mail was heavy—this stuff is wicked.”

“This is all you’ll need today. If you were jousting in competition or performance, you’d have a surcoat or jupon with your coat of arms on it, but it’s not necessary for training. You’ll need a helm eventually, though. We’ll have to see how mine fits you, but for now you can make do with just the mail.”

I gave her back the scarf, then grabbed the shield she indicated and followed her out to the stable, feeling like a slow, cumbersome sloth as I struggled to keep up, sweating heavily under the bright August sun. “Is your mail lighter than mine? How on earth can you walk so fast in it?”

She didn’t even slow down, blast the woman. “Practice. You should wear that mail as long as you can each day. Your muscles will build up in response and soon you won’t even notice that you have it on.”

“Ha!” I laughed, walking around to the field behind the barn. Vandal was there with my archenemy Cassie, flirting with twins dressed in identical low-cut bodices and flowery layered skirts. At the far end of the field a white quintain had been set up, although it wasn’t the same one I’d gone up against (and defeated, go me!) earlier in the week.

“Mount up. That’s a shock quintain,” Bliss said abruptly, frowning at the twins until they murmured excuses and fluttered off with many a backward glance at Vandal. “I don’t think we’ll even bother trying you at a walk and a trot; let’s see you hit it at a canter.”

Bliss turned to where a stack of lances lay alongside a small ditch. Vandal held Cassie for me as I got my foot into the stirrup. I gave him a pathetic smile. “You look smashing, Pepper. Mail becomes you. Eh . . . do you need a push up?”

“Oh, I don’t know; I kind of like bouncing up and down on one leg like this,” I said breathlessly, trying to hoist myself up and onto Cassie’s back. “Hey!”

He grinned as I settled into the saddle, the feel of his hands on my butt still fresh. “Just giving you a helping hand.”