Valdemar 06 - [Exile 02] - Exile’s Valor (54 page)

This was the best day for practice that they had gotten in a long time. Spring rains hadn't yet begun, the ground was good and dry, and although the air was chill, it was not cold enough to be uncomfortable even if you weren't moving.

Alberich watched his teams as they writhed in a knot of flying sticks and flailing bodies; the view was excellent from the sidelines, and he allowed himself a moment of grim satisfaction. They were good. And they were ready. He had believed in them, and they had repaid that belief in full.

Even young Mical, that most unlikely of prodigals.

The boy had flung himself into his self-appointed niche with the controlled energy of a tightly-wound spring, and a concentration Alberich suspected he never would have had if he had not spent those moons in the glassworks. You dared not lose your concentration around hot glass, for if you did, the best you could expect was the total ruin of all your work. And the worst—the worst could cost a limb, or a life, or worse than just your life, if you were a glassblower. He didn't know if the Collegium Healers could do anything about scorched lungs before the patient died of the injury. He did know that it was one of the nastier and more painful ways to die.

Although no such disaster had occurred at the glassworks while the two Trainees had been serving their time there, Mical had probably been witness to several minor accidents, and certainly had been told all of the horror stories, It was amazing to see the level of steadiness and concentration he had attained—

It was nevertheless true that steadiness and concentration couldn't make up for a difference of three years of age and growth. The boy was
not
the most skilled of the skirmishers. Although in the normal Hurlee games Mical was a star player, in these practices he was merely at the level of all the others. Still, given that they were three years older than he, and had several moons of learning and practice that he
hadn't
had, that was absolutely astonishing.

Part of it, Alberich was sure, was a natural ability in combat, or exercises that were combatlike. Alberich had taught a few youngsters who possessed that near-magical combination of reflexes, strength, coordination, cleverness, and the instinct for combat; Mical was definitely one of that number. Take, for instance, the way that he and Eloran worked together, moving through the pack, smooth as an otter in a fast-flowing stream. Never a wasted moment, often managing to anticipate the next blow and thwart it by the simple expedient of not being there when it fell—

—the next blow—

Alberich clung to his pommel as the Foresight Vision slammed him between the eyes.

But it wasn't a long one.

It didn't need to be, actually. He had spent the last several moons anticipating exactly what it showed him; all it needed to give him was the
where
and the
when.

Outside the city walls, on the Home Farms. He recognized that spot, along the riverbank, beyond the point where he and Selenay had fished for eels. It was secluded there, quiet, and out of sight of any of the farmworkers.

Soon—

Too soon. Moments at most. Terror rose in him.

:Not for us!:
Kantor said fiercely, before he could even begin to panic, as the players suddenly froze in place, their Companions relaying to them what Alberich and Kantor already knew. “Weapons!” cried Harrow. “No time!” shouted someone else, and suddenly they were all in motion, Alberich and Kantor in the lead, flying across the grass, leaping obstacles, scattering Trainees and courtiers out of their way, and out of the main Palace Gate before Alberich even had time to
think
about what they were doing.

They knew! How did they know?

No—no they didn't know—or hadn't known
consciously
before this moment. But the peak of readiness they had attained was such that at this point they had been ready for
anything.

:Warn Caryo!:
he told Kantor urgently—and needlessly, of course—

:I—the trap's sprung. Don't panic. We can get there in time—:
And with grim satisfaction,
:They weren't expecting her to fight.:

Alberich had his sword, for even in the Hurlee practices he never left the salle without putting it in a saddle sheath. The teams, however, had no weapons. But they
did
have their modified Hurlee sticks, special sticks sheathed in metal, of a wood so hard they called it “iron-wood,” so dense and tough that even without the metal sheath it dulled blades that tried to cut it. And they were all in their fitted armor, which Alberich had insisted they wear as soon as it was available.

And the
Companions
were armored.

In all the time that Alberich had been a Herald, he had not understood what it was like to be in the saddle when Kantor was at full gallop. He had
heard
about the extraordinary speed of a Companion, but he had never fully experienced it for himself. When Kantor had rescued him from the burning shed and carried him out of Karse, he had been drifting in and out of awareness.

It was exhilarating and terrifying.

Already the troop was down in the crowded streets of Haven, and the houses and shops blurred past as the hapless bystanders pressed themselves against the walls in an effort to get as far out of the way as possible. Somehow the crowds were parting before them like a school of minnows in front of a pike.

Thank the Sunlord!
Being in the lead as he was, he could see them making way, as if something invisible was shoving them to either side of the street ahead, just in time to avoid being trampled. But if someone
didn't
get out of the way in time—

Somewhere behind them, the Palace and Collegia were aboil; of course, only he and his teams had been
instantly
ready to respond, but the rest, every man and woman who was in Whites and no few in Grays were scrambling to join the rescue, getting weapons, saddling up—some, like Keren, probably not even bothering with a saddle.

How did that bastard know?
The vision had shown him the Prince and a mob of his hangers-on; how had he
known
that Selenay would be there, and alone, when even
he
hadn't known she'd left the Palace?

He must have had a small army of watchers on the Palace, waiting for her to leave under
exactly
the right circumstances, following her to see where she went, sending back the message he had been waiting for. This was not spur-of-the-moment or something conceived in passion. This had been long in the planning, probably from the moment he came into Valdemar.

Or else someone else had planned it all for him.

No time to think about that now. He had to try and remember what the vision had shown him—

Swiftly, as swiftly as Kantor was running, he worked out a rough plan. They'd have to be fools not to expect rescue coming from the Heralds. But they wouldn't be looking for it so soon.

Alarm bells were sounding all over the city; if the Prince had thought he was going to be able to carry this off quietly, he was going to get more than one rude surprise. At least the alarms had the effect of clearing the streets entirely; Kantor somehow redoubled his speed, and they shot through the gates going at such a rate that even Alberich was dizzy. And he was
not
going to think about what would happen if any of them tripped and fell—

There was no finesse in this. Down the road, in at the gates of the Home Farms, riders clutching their weapons in grim silence, hooves pounding like thunder—so loud they couldn't hear the fighting ahead of them—

—so loud that the ambushers surely thought it
was
thunder—

And they didn't even pause as they sighted their target. Just as the team had been taught, just as they had practiced for moons and moons, they crashed in among the milling ambushers, exactly as if it was a Hurlee skirmish. They broke into the mob around Selenay, and their sticks went to work.

In that first and last glimpse, Alberich got the sudden, heart-sinking realization that there were more of them than he had thought there would be, or than he had Seen. A lot more. The odds were roughly two-to-one, in fact.

Hard on the heels of that realization was another—he hadn't
heard
about this down in the rough parts of Haven because the Prince hadn't needed to recruit anyone for this plan. He'd brought them with him, in the guise of servants, of hangers-on, of sycophants.

And last of all—even as he raised his stick and Kantor ran straight into the horse of one of these pseudo-servants, he looked up and saw Selenay lose her sword—

—to Norris. Norris, who had regarded women as mere objects of convenience, and would no more hesitate to kill her than he would hesitate to kill a fly.

There was a bulwark of fighters three deep between him and her. There was no way he could fight his way to her in time.

And that was when he saw the incredible, the miraculous, the totally insane.

Eloran, coming in at full gallop from the
side,
where there was no one in the way; crashing into Norris' horse.

Just as Mical rose in his stirrups, pushed off, and with the momentum of Eloran's charge behind him, flung himself out of his saddle at Norris.
Somehow
he wrapped his arms around the actor when he hit, pinning Norris' sword to his side as they tumbled out of the saddle to the ground.
Somehow
he managed to stay uppermost. They went over the side of the horse and out of sight.

Selenay took advantage of the moment of confusion that followed to get Caryo a little farther into the open, where the Companion's hooves came into play. That cleared a little more space for her to fight, and as Alberich's stick connected with the man in front of him, Kantor shoved through to her side.

“Here!” he shouted, and tossed his sword, hilt-first, at her.

“Here! Alberich!”
he heard from somewhere below, and as Kantor pirouetted on his hindlegs, Mical thrust a sword up at him from the ground, hilt first, doing so left-handed, holding his right tight to his belly. Norris wasn't moving, so the blade was presumably the actor's. Alberich snatched it, and Mical scrambled out of the way. Eloran rammed his way in beside his Chosen, and, even one-handed, Mical was able to haul himself back up into the saddle.

From the way he was holding that arm, however, he wasn't going to be a further factor in the fighting.

Then it all stopped having anything to do with thought, as the mob closed in around them again, and he and Selenay fought side-by-side against the tightening circle. Kantor kept himself interposed as much as he could between the fighters and Caryo.
He
was armored; Caryo was not.

Norris' sword wasn't much better than a Hurlee stick, but at least it had a pointed end and not a blunt one.

And that was just about all that Alberich had time to think about.

Then, for what seemed like forever, it was all shouting, blow and counterblow, screams and blood and last-minute parries, and far too many people trying to kill his Queen.

Until suddenly the fighting melted away from in front of him, and those who were not on the ground groaning (or dead) were in full retreat, as the reinforcements came pounding up on their Companions with swords in their hands and rage on their faces.

And it was at that moment that he looked down and realized that the last man he had bludgeoned to death with that pathetic excuse for a sword was the Prince.

He had not even known who it was he was fighting.

Mical had a broken wrist; there were some slices and cuts to the others, but his was probably the most serious injury. Alberich could have wept with relief; his gamble of putting them into armor had worked, for the Prince's ambushers had foolishly worn none at all.

Mical had done the impossible, and Norris' phenomenal luck had run out just before the Prince's had, for when Mical had hit him and taken him down to the ground, he had not been able to compensate for his attacker's weight. All of his agility and training had, after all, counted for naught. He'd broken his neck as they hit the ground together.

Alberich limped over to where Crathach was tending to the boy, who looked up at him, too weary and full of pain to care about much of anything. “That, one of your fool play-acting moves was,” Alberich growled. “Yes?”

The boy nodded.

“And practiced it, you have been?”

Mical hesitated. “Um.
Sort
of. With a straw-man. Eloran and I didn't think it was really going to work, so we'd kind of given up on it, but when we came up on the ambush and saw Norris with Selenay. . . .” He shrugged and hissed with pain. “I
knew
I couldn't fight him; it's not just stage-fighting he knows and he's better than me. The important thing was to immobilize him long enough for you to get to her.”