The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle) (69 page)

Ah, yes,
he thought. They were not doubts, but the sordid realities of a hundred failures—some real, some fancied. As a magister, he knew that the line between them was very thin indeed.

Mater is dead.
Odd—a piercing sorrow he never expected, and a vast tide of shameful relief. Whatever happened in the next ten heartbeats, neither the Earl of Westwall nor the duchess would ever mention it, being dead.

He dropped his lance from erect to the lance rest under his right arm without any sense of volition.

He refused to enter his palace. In the strange labyrinth that was his idea of chivalry, to calm himself artificially in his palace in this one fight would be to cheat.

And because all the flaws in the dragon’s breath, when forged by a master, make a stronger blade. All the flaws.

I will go down clean. This is who I am.

Eye.

Lance point.

Target.

Michael was a bowshot away. He could not breathe.

Neither adversary saluted. There was no flourish. They went at each other with a simple intensity of purpose.

To a veteran jouster, the open field, lack of barriers, and slight unevenness of the ground offered an endless subject for doubt.

Both horses went straight forward, perfectly in hand, perfectly balanced, their riders like statues in their saddles, tall and strong.

As the two came together, it seemed to Michael, watching, that both horses stepped offline. His pulse pounded in his throat, his dry mouth—he was clutching his saddle—

The sound carried after the impact was visible.

Both lances shattered, and both men rocked back. De Vrailly’s head seemed to snap back, and Gabriel’s body twisted badly, the shards of their lances falling like red and blue hail. But both horses had done what they’d been trained to—an oblique step at the moment of contact—and because there was no barrier, the two great chargers collided, breast to breast.

They rose, front hooves flailing, rearing as if neither monster had two hundred pounds and more of steel-clad man on their backs. They rose like fighting cocks, and iron-shod hooves flew like arrows on a stricken field—so fast, so many blows struck, that no watcher could even follow the course of the horse-fight.

De Vrailly’s horse came down first, and in that beat of a heart, Ataelus landed two great blows—left, right.

The sound of them carried across the field. One struck the armoured plate on the front of de Vrailly’s destrier, and the other did not, and sounded like a butcher’s hammer on raw meat. But de Vrailly’s destrier—slightly larger—sank his teeth into Ataelus below the neck armour—both animals writhed like fighting wyverns—

And both riders were thrown. Neither had ever recollected his balance from the breaking of the spears, and the sudden rear, the curvet and the roll finished both.

The two armies were almost completely silent. Many men were not breathing.

The earth had had three days of sun. Even in a hayfield, there was dust, and now the fight was obscured by the rising of the Cloud of Mars.

Armour glinted in the dust and both armies roared.

De Vrailly’s sword came to his hand like a falcon to its master and he was on one knee. The dust was all around him.

Something was wrong. Some part of his great helmet was loose—the helmet moved on his head as he swung, and his left thigh was a dull ache that could turn to real pain, but he couldn’t see what was hurt and had no real picture of anything after the moment of impact.

The dust was choking. His horse, Tristan, was fighting the Red Knight’s horse with all the savagery of two wild lions, and they raised dust.

He saw the glint of armour and stepped towards it and felt the pain in his left thigh again. He raised his left hand to his helmet and it moved—

Gabriel struck the ground hard, on his left side, his shield trapped under his body. He rolled off the shield and began to get to his feet just as the two fighting horses passed over him. He got a blow in his back plate that pitched him forward on his feet again, and the pain was intense.

Something was gone in his left arm. Or hand.

He saw de Vrailly, and the bastard was standing, almost relaxed, with his left hand on the visor of his great helm.

His own left hand was broken—possibly the wrist.

He stepped forward, his legs good, just as de Vrailly closed. He had to draw straight into a parry as de Vrailly’s huge blow crashed down, but he made the cover one-handed, took a little of it on the shield on his left arm, and the pain—

De Vrailly saw immediately that his opponent was covering his left—he threw a second blow and a third, aware that his own balance was precarious because of whatever had happened in his left thigh. Despite which, he pressed. His adversary parried and parried.

His third blow struck home.

Gabriel took the blow over his sinking left arm and shield, which he could no longer keep up. It smashed down from a high guard and struck just where the left pauldron met the maille of the shoulder under the aventail, which by bad fortune was caught on a buckle.

The blow knocked him to one knee, and for a long, sickening moment the pain stunned him.

A second blow slammed into his helmet.

And then the two horses crashed through the knights—so rapt in their own rage that each horse injured its own master, Gabriel knocked flat by Ataelus and losing his sword and de Vrailly caught by one of Tristan’s hooves in the back of a greave and also knocked to his knees—close enough to Gabriel that he could see the Gallish knight’s halting efforts to rise on his left leg, and the split where his lance had apparently opened a gap between the great helm’s visor and the frame—and deformed the whole outer helm. Like many knights, de Vrailly wore an outer helm and an inner, called a cervelleur.

So close.
Gabriel could see that his lance tip must have come a finger’s breadth from ending the fight at the first pass.

In his bascinet, Ser Gabriel smiled.
Not bad
, he thought.
I did that well enough.

And with that, he shook the shattered shield off his broken hand and arm, rolled to his right to rise with his empty right hand, and beat de Vrailly to his feet.

De Vrailly was slower rising.

Gabriel had a moment when he might have gotten on de Vrailly before the other knight could get to his feet. It passed. Gabriel couldn’t have said whether he was chivalrous or merely tired and wounded, but the moment passed.

He had a dagger, facing the best knight in the world with four feet of steel.

He began to bounce up and down on his toes.

De Vrailly had a moment of real fear when the horses hit, and then he was down, on his face in all the choking dust, and then back up—up with a missed attempt as his left leg almost refused its function. The second try he made it.

The Red Knight was already on his feet. He had a long baselard in his right hand, the tip of it held with his left, and he was bouncing on his toes like a boxer.

De Vrailly flicked a cut and the Red Knight parried on his heavy dagger blade.

De Vrailly stepped forward and threw two cuts—a rising cut at the Red Knight’s dagger hand from the guard of the Boar and the consequent falling blow, but the latter was out of distance as the Red Knight skipped back.

De Vrailly’s left leg failed, like a dull student. He didn’t fall, but suddenly the Red Knight was on him, covering into a close play. De Vrailly raised his hands—

Gabriel bided his time, managed the distance between them, and made his covers—and when the Gallish knight moved, he faltered in his forward motion and his sword moved into empty air.

Gabriel closed, powering into the bigger man with an effort of will that emerged as a shout. He got his left hand on de Vrailly’s hands—missed his pommel, and his left hand screamed at him.

But he had all the time in the world to slam the baselard overhand into de Vrailly’s neck where the aventail met the shoulder.

Except that the blow bounced, skidding off the mail as if off plate armour.

Quick as a cat, Gabriel struck again and again, as even de Vrailly’s strength was not enough to push down the desperation of his arm. Three times his point struck home and failed to bite. No link broke. No penetration.

The armour was
protected.

Gabriel was losing his fight with pain and with de Vrailly’s strength, and he slipped free and spun so that de Vrailly’s counter blow merely clipped the point of his own bascinet.

Despite the hermetical working on the maille, a trickle of blood flowed down off de Vrailly’s shoulder onto his surcoat. The needle point of the baselard didn’t have to break a link to go a finger joint’s length into a man’s flesh.

De Vrailly felt the fight-ending blows.

And he
knew.

Inside the helmet, he sobbed once.

But training powered his arms. His left shoulder had three shallow penetrations and the pain was immense but the muscle steady.

He stepped back, rolled his great sword through a deceptive flourish—cut down from a high left side guard, his blow falling onto the Red Knight’s crossed hands, and then down and down, past the long tail with the weapon put behind him like a dragon’s tail and then rolling his hands precisely, his point coming in line—

Gabriel saw the feint, covered the rising cut—and knew the sequence with the same imagination that could see a thousand dusty deaths and could read the angle of his opponent’s hands.

Thrust with deception from the low line
, said some distant part of his head to his strong right arm without communicating to any part of his brain that registered thoughts. His last cover had put him right leg forward, his dagger well back on the left side, point down.

All. Or nothing.

He rotated on his hips, the true
volte stabile
, and he caught the tip of his dagger between the index finger and thumb of his left hand. He didn’t think about it, and they worked well enough.

Neither man was thinking. All that was fighting was training and will, muscle and steel. The men were lost in the fight. The fight was, in every way, the men.

The thrust came forward. It was almost perfect, but again, at the moment of timing required, de Vrailly’s left leg was slow.

For all that, the tip struck—not in the Red Knight’s exposed armpit, as intended, but on the very front of his breastplate of Morean steel. Then—an aching heartbeat late—the Red Knight’s dagger caught it near the middle third of the end and pushed it aside, so that the blade engraved a furrow up the Red Knight’s breastplate to the top ridge, hesitated—and passed off into empty air.

Gabriel knew he’d been hit—but he pushed the blade away, his point in line, guided by the minimal pressure of his maimed left hand. The target drifted across his sight and he turned his high cover into a thrust. He used his left hand to guide the thrust, and when de Vrailly’s desperately rising hands slammed into his left arm, in front at the moment of contact, he had a galvanic shock like a hermetical attack, and his own dagger sliced effortlessly through the chamois glove inside the palm of his steel gauntlet and cut deeply into his left palm even as his point went forward between his fingers—

It caught on the bent metal of the damaged edge of de Vrailly’s helmet. The outer helmet was not hardened steel, or had been softened by repeated blows, and the point caught—harmlessly.

Without any intention beyond desperation, the Red Knight slammed his right foot down on de Vrailly’s left.

De Vrailly’s left leg crumpled. Neither man could keep his balance, and they fell together.

Michael had long since begun to ride forward. The two horses had separated—de Vrailly’s charger was hurt, but still snorted with fury. Gabriel’s Ataelus reared once more—and de Vrailly’s horse shied away.

The dust was so thick around the horses and men that Michael could no longer see even the glint of swords or armour. He opened his helmet and raised a hand—a sign of peace—and rode forward, even as Du Corse and another knight came forward with the herald.

Behind him, Ser Michael roared, “Stand your ground, or by God,” and there were murmurs.

In the Gallish ranks, men pushed forward. The centre of their line seemed to swell—as if about to give birth to a battle.

Archers in the company began to nock shafts.

Du Corse raised a hand. As he wore only an arming coat and had no weapon, his gesture carried.

Michael tugged his sword from its scabbard and dropped it on the ground.

The herald began to wave his green pennant back and forth.

Michael was close enough now to see into the haze of dust.

Both men were down.

And as he cantered up, with Du Corse converging from another angle, Michael saw no movement at all. The two men lay in a huddle of limbs and arms.

Gabriel never lost consciousness.

He had time to panic about his position, and to realize that he was atop de Vrailly, and de Vrailly was not moving. Gabriel’s chin strap was broken, his neck hurt savagely, and his bascinet was twisted enough on his head to make seeing difficult. And his head was ringing.

He realized that he was covered in blood. It was an odd, slow realization—the stickiness of his right hand, the sheet of pain from his left with its slickness, the taste of blood in his own mouth and nose all slowly added together into a universe of blood.

He couldn’t use his left hand, trapped between them, at all.

He tried to pull at his dagger to get in another blow, all with aching slowness, and it came free with a slick, wet feeling that told him where it had been.

He used the dagger to push off the ground, and got to his knees. Shook his head to clear his vision, and ignored all the pains, and settled his visor so that he could see.

But no further blow was required. Somewhere in the fall, his dagger’s point had slipped from its position on the outer helm, baulked of its prey. It had followed the path of least resistance, probably driven by their contact with the ground, sliding in between the helmets, through de Vrailly’s left eye.