Pendragon's Heir (40 page)

Branwen could have no such memory, but Perceval’s voice was portent enough, and perhaps she knew what the blue boar signified. She glanced at Blanchefleur in something approaching panic, and seized her by the elbow. Blanchefleur could not have told why that touch put such heart into her, unless it was the need to show courage enough for two. She hardened her face and rose to her feet, pulling Branwen after.

Sir Odiar was speaking to Perceval. “Sir knight, will you joust?”

“That I will, and gladly.” Perceval drew on his gauntlets. Blanchefleur went forward in silence to lace on his helm.

She finished and stepped back. She could not see Perceval’s face, but when he thanked her there was something abrupt and almost shy in his voice. She stared at the featureless iron and felt more keenly than ever the distance between them. Now. Now was the time to say what might be the last words he would ever hear from her.

“Fight,” she said at last. “Win.”

The words came out harsh with fear. Perceval swung away from her and said to Heilyn, “If I fall, you are the protector of these ladies, just as I am.”

The squire nodded and, wasting no time on words, held out Perceval’s stirrup. Blanchefleur looked from one to the other, worry itching in her throat. They were both so young, so very young. In the kindly world of her upbringing, Heilyn would be a schoolboy, and Perceval at Oxford dreaming up undergraduate rags. Today in Logres, both of them faced wounds and death in earnest.

If only there was a way to repay their sacrifice.

Perceval said: “Mount and be ready to flee if the battle turns against me. And mark well Odiar’s companion, that silent knight with the blank shield. I think it will be good, if we meet him under some fairer guise, to know him again.”

He swung into the saddle and gripped his spear with a shout. “Ho! I know you, Knight of Gore! What of the Witch of Gore, your mistress? Does she still send you to do her cutthroat work, as she did on a day I recall, in the castle of Gornemant?”

“And I know you, Welsh swineherd, well enough to weary of your babble. I have a debt to repay. Come, let me teach you how men speak, with steel, not mockeries.”

“It is a tongue I love!” Perceval said, laughing and laying spear in fewter, and striking spurs into his horse.

The knight of Gore reacted swiftly; his horse gathered into a thunderbolt. Blanchefleur felt her fingernails bite into her palms, and waited with wincing-closed eyes for the crash of meeting. But the thunderstrike shocked them open again: fire flooded her veins and she hissed in one exultant breath.

Perceval’s horse was flung back on its haunches by the shock of meeting: its head and shoulders strained up through air thick with shards of spear. Odiar’s horse staggered back, almost stumbling to the ground, but the knight wrestled it to its feet, casting aside the splintered truncheon of his lance, fumbling for a new weapon. Perceval flashed out his sword, but Odiar caught up the mace at his saddle-bow and spurred his horse forward.

Morgan’s man dealt the first blow, which Perceval fended with his shield and followed with a shrewd thrust. But Sir Odiar evaded the point with a twitch of hand and heel which sent his horse, exquisitely trained, dancing away.

“Lady, lady.” Heilyn tugged at Blanchefleur’s elbow. He had her horse’s reins, and Blanchefleur, tearing her gaze from the combat, saw Branwen already mounted. She climbed to the saddle and turned back to watch the deadly two-rider dance.

Little as she knew of the arts of war, she saw Perceval reel under the hammer-blow of Odiar’s mace when he could not turn his horse aside in time, and knew with a twist of her stomach that he was outmatched. Glaucus, his own horse, was still ahead of them at Astolat, where he had left it in return for a fresh mount on the outward journey. She knew what it looked like when man and horse moved together as one with the lightest shift of balance and weight. She saw Odiar doing it now, while Perceval maneuvered clumsily atop a jaded animal that did not know its master.

“Oh, kill his horse!” she groaned.

“That would be ungenerous.” Heilyn sounded shocked.

“Ungenerous to whom? He’s trying to kill us!”

She never knew if Perceval heard her words or not. But with his next blow a shard of steel from Odiar’s armour spun through the air and chopped into the ground. Blood glistened on his blade. As Sir Odiar flinched back, Perceval dealt another stroke, lightning-fast, with such a minute backswing that only its effect betrayed what immense power went into it. The blade did no harm to Odiar, but split his shield in two and bit deep into the horse’s neck.

“Well hit,” gasped Heilyn, and fell silent.

Perceval backed, his breath loud in the sudden quiet. Sir Odiar raked his horse with the spurs, but the animal fell to its knees with a rush of blood and a crooked, broken neck. Odiar stepped to the ground, hefted his mace, and stalked forward without a backward glance at the thrashing horse.

“Cowardly struck,” he spat.

“Empty words, coming from a murderer of women,” Perceval said with a breathless laugh. And despite the blood trickling down his shield arm, he dismounted with a buoyant step, full of grace.

At last the sun had burned through the morning fog, and the whole forest glittered with water and light. Blanchefleur glanced at Branwen and Heilyn. Branwen had her face hidden, and trembled at every blow. Under level brows, Heilyn’s eyes flicked back and forth between the knight of Gore and his companion, the knight with the blank shield who on the other side of the glade paced his dun horse to and fro like a caged lion.

Odiar was upon Perceval at once and they trod to and fro upon the grass—a step forward, a step back, a circle; again they moved like dancers, but Perceval was dodging the great mace now, sure and nimble on his feet. His sword flickered and bit like a fly, better at a longer range, and Sir Odiar soon bled from a half-dozen wounds. But then Perceval ventured in too close, and the mace crashed home, catching him in the hip. Perceval tumbled across the grass. With the same smooth movement he came back up to his feet, but with a dragging left leg. Then the mace fell again, and his shield shivered to pieces. Blanchefleur drew a breath like a sob.

Before she could blink, it was over. Sir Odiar, bleeding and flagging, recovered his blow more slowly and Perceval gathered his strength and was on him at once. His edged weapon, less potent than the mace against plate and mail, found a chink at the knee and slid in. The leg buckled.

Snatching out his poniard, Sir Perceval strode forward and stamped Odiar to the ground with a foot to his chest. With a flash of the knife he freed the man’s helm and sent it spinning away. In one last titanic effort the Knight of Gore shouldered up, grabbing for the knife, taking an elbow to the face and then crumpling beneath Perceval’s full weight.

Perceval put the poniard to Odiar’s throat.

“Yield and cry mercy, sir, and your life is yours until you come before the King’s seat for justice.”

“I beg you,” the knight of Gore ground out between clenched teeth, “not to mock me.”

“No mockery, but Christian charity,” said Sir Perceval. “Which, as you neither comprehend nor desire—” and skilfully he cut his enemy’s throat.

He had not yet straightened when a rush of hooves brought the Silent Knight and a swinging sword upon him. Perceval, taken by surprise and unguarded on the ground, dove aside to save himself. With a shout Heilyn wrestled his horse in front of the ladies and fumbled for his sword. As his hand scrabbled for the hilt, Blanchefleur dug her heels into her mount and danced aside, baiting the attacker away from the unarmed squire, quickening to a canter. The Silent Knight turned his horse as if on a sestertius, and dashed to cut her off. But his path took him past Perceval again, and this time the Knight of Wales was ready. The great blade swung once more, but Perceval ducked to avoid it, reaching up almost at the same moment; hooked fingers around the knight’s belt, and plucked him from saddle to ground. At the effort, rings strained and snapped on the mail hauberk across his back.

Blanchefleur, looking back, saw it happen and pulled her horse into a circling trot. She reined in, fell rather than stepped down from the saddle, and ran to Perceval as the stranger rose to his feet at swordpoint, though the blade trembled for sheer weariness.

“What is your name, and whom do you serve?” Perceval grated in a voice Blanchefleur barely recognised.

Heilyn slid down from his horse and came running, sword out, to face the stranger at Perceval’s side. The knight went still, as if gathering himself for action. Heilyn tensed. Then the Silent Knight turned and fled, whistling to his horse. At a run, he caught the animal’s neck and vaulted to its back. Heilyn shouted and ran, but the knight vanished from the glade and they heard his horse’s hooves crashing through the undergrowth to the south.

In the sudden stillness Perceval groaned and fell to his knees.

I
T TOOK ANOTHER HOUR TO WASH
, salve, and bind up all his wounds, though Blanchefleur and Branwen worked with hands made skilful by long hours in the Carbonek infirmary. His shield arm had burst open again along the old line, and was horribly bruised with mail links driven through the leather into the flesh. There was a great bruise on his thigh, too, just inches below the hip.

Perceval looked at it and whistled. “Now God be thanked. He was aiming to crush the hip and sever the artery, but glanced off the thigh. Wort and comfrey will mend this.”

Blanchefleur felt sick as she realised how close she had come to losing him. It must have showed on her face, for with an effort at levity he said, “ ’Tis nothing; you should have seen the wound I took in my side two years ago at Carlisle.”

She cleared her throat. “I’m content looking at this one.” She ducked her head and looked for salve in his saddle-bags. Perceval said:

“Heilyn, take Odiar’s arms. As soon as I’m bound up, we will ride.”

“Already?” Blanchefleur protested. “But look at you!”

“I’ll travel easiest while my wounds are green.”

She ducked her head again and went back to looking for the salve, but her sight had blurred over. She realised that she was crying even as the first hot tear splashed onto her arm.

Perceval said: “Come now! The last maiden I defended did not weep about it.”

Blanchefleur froze. “What?”

“No, she combed her hair and then told me her father was very rich, and she hinted at a comfortable life as his son-at-law.”

He laughed, but Blanchefleur’s stomach turned over. “What did you say?”

“I told her I would seriously consider it.”

“Did you?”

“Yes, I told her that. Then I gave her into Sir Kay’s keeping and I rode for my life.”

He laughed again and Blanchefleur was relieved enough to laugh with him. But when she found the salve, she handed it to Branwen and went away to pack the saddlebags, scrubbing at the tears in her eyes.

T
HEY SAW NO MORE RAVENS
. B
EFORE
nightfall they reached Astolat, and were met in the courtyard by a young knight with a bow in his hand and a horn at his hip.

“Sir Perceval.” He caught the knight’s bridle. “Grace of heaven, man, who did you offend?”

“The Blue Boar.” Perceval kicked his right leg over the horse’s withers and winced to the ground. He glanced up and down the young knight and said in a voice that raised the hairs on the back of Blanchefleur’s neck, “Were you out riding, Sir Bernard?”

The knight bowed his dark head. “I went hunting to the south.”

“I recall seeing a fine rouncey in your stables. A dun. A good horse to hunt with, I thought.”

Sir Bernard shook his head and reached out to rap on the stable door with his bow. “No. I took your Glaucus, thinking he needed the use.” When the door opened, he said, “Bring out the horse, there,” and immediately the grey charger, a little foamed with sweat, was led out ready-saddled. When he saw Perceval, the great horse dropped its head and butted against him with a nicker of greeting.

Perceval staggered back a few steps, laughing through a gasp of pain. When he spoke again to Bernard, his voice rang warm as ever. “And my father’s messenger?”

Bernard shook his head. “Not yet.”

Perceval glanced up at the westering sun, and then turned to Blanchefleur. “If we press on, we may meet the rider on the road.”

“Press on?” Bernard glanced from Blanchefleur to Perceval. “You can hardly stand.”

Blanchefleur questioned the Knight of Wales with a raised eyebrow.

Perceval set his jaw. “I can sit a horse.”

“It’s grown late,” she offered, trying to conceal the blind fretful haste driving all her thoughts on, down the road, to Camelot.

“Yes. And my father’s man should have come by now.”

She gave a tight nod and shifted her aching bones in the saddle. “I have to know.”

Bernard of Astolat looked up at her. Sudden recognition dawned across his face and he snatched off his cap and bowed like a lance coming to rest. “Lady of the Grail. Astolat is yours to command.”

“Sir, my thanks. We will ride on this night.”

Perceval was already unbuckling the saddle-bags from his borrowed horse. “Will you have my squire’s horse saddled? We ride in haste.”

T
HE SUN WAS STILL BURNING LOW
in the West and they were scarcely a league from Astolat when Perceval, who had been riding in apparent weariness with his head sunk low, suddenly pulled Glaucus into a circle and then halted athwart the road, looking into the forest.

“What is it?” Blanchefleur asked him.

“The road is telling me a tale.” At her look of concern a smile cracked his face. “I saw the scuff of horse-hooves on the road. Someone was riding to Astolat when he turned and galloped back the way he had come. Now he has turned aside into the wood. And a horseman rides after him.”

Blanchefleur could only blink wearily. “Perceval, please. It’s already so late.”

But he spurred into the branches before she had finished speaking. Blanchefleur cast a despairing look at Heilyn and Branwen and plunged after him. “What if we miss the messenger?” she called.

Perceval was nowhere to be seen. Blanchefleur reined in, suddenly disoriented. Then she heard his voice.