Sword of the Bright Lady (10 page)

Sparkling confetti appeared, showering the area around Christopher. It sank into the snow, leaving no trace.

Hobilar's roar changed tone, and he lumbered into a charge.

Christopher was still praying. He whipped the katana from the scabbard, pointed it at the chapel.

“If this be your blade, Marcius,” he shouted, “then bless it!”

The blade began to shine, a silvery sheen, painfully sharp to look at.

Hobilar clanked and pounded behind him. Christopher sprung to his feet, spun around in midair, froze Hobilar in his tracks with an iron stare, their eyes suddenly manacled together. Now he could see fear in Hobilar's eyes. He held his katana in both hands, in high right guard, like a baseball bat of terrible glowing menace.

Faren's voice carried across the field. “In the shadow of the wrath of god, Ser, will you not yield?”

Greed, stupidity, cruelty. Hobilar's faults were many. Cowardice was not one of them. The cowards were culled out by the draft.

Raging inarticulately at the unfairness of the world that had birthed him, the knight charged, lunged at Christopher, his head tucked under the broad steel shield, his longsword lashing out like a jackhammer.

Christopher stepped back with his left foot, launching his own oblique strike. The longsword burst through his chain mail, sinking deep, but the katana was already in motion, and it did not deign to notice this interruption. It swept a glittering arc across and down, the tip of the arc intersecting Hobilar's sword arm, just above the plated gauntlets, just below the steel cup that protected his elbow.

Christopher struck, without anger, or fear, or guilt. His mind, given over wholly to the moment, could register only that it was a good strike.

Like cutting a melon: first resilient opposition, then flesh like water. The blade passed through Hobilar's arm, leather and cloth. Comically, the hand clung to the longsword as it fell, only releasing its death grip when it sank into the snow. From the meaty stump pumped gouts of bright-red blood onto the pure-white ground, like cherry topping on a snow cone. Hobilar sank to his knees, following his forearm down.

Faren was already there, grabbing the stump in one hand and the remains of Hobilar's arm in the other. Blood went everywhere, stark against the white robes. Christopher idly reflected that cardinals' robes were supposed to be red. Faren sang out in Celestial, held flesh to flesh, and prayed.

“Curse the Dark!” Faren raged. He stood up, letting the lifeless limb fall to the ground. But the blood had stopped, and perhaps the pain. Hobilar looked blankly at his ruined arm lying in the snow.

“You yield,” Faren said to the knight. It was not a question but a command.

Faren turned to Christopher, glanced at his wound, dismissed it as unimportant. “Heal yourself,” he ordered. Tael had bound Christopher's flesh in the wake of the sword, turning a killing blow only crippling. Christopher used the last of the spells in his head on himself, before his shock faded completely and left him to deal with the full brunt of the pain.

Faren glared down at the knight. “Do you hold your ransom?” he demanded. His voice rang like an iron bell.

Hobilar shook his head, tears running down his face.

“You have no ransom?” Faren roared, shaking with fury. His face turned red, or would have, if red still had any other meaning than that brilliant pigment spattered everywhere. “Your life is forfeit!” Faren bellowed.
“Forfeit!”
He turned to Christopher and asked through seething teeth, “Will you allow the Church to ransom this fool?”

Christopher nodded. Faren, not waiting for his response, turned back to the knight.

“The Church now owns your life.” He pronounced it like a sentence of death. “Your arms are forfeit! Strip him!”

Two of the church soldiers came forward and tore the armor off Hobilar with grim efficiency. This was one of the rules of the duel: you staked everything you brought into the ring with you. Christopher had not considered what that meant, until now.

The knight offered no resistance, weeping openly. It was degrading, disgusting, but Christopher forced himself to watch. He had caused this. He could not shirk from its conclusion.

The soldiers stripped Hobilar down to his undergarments, pulling his tunic and leathers off. They claimed his jewelry, pulling rings off the fingers of his left hand and yanking out an earring. For a moment Christopher was terrified they were going to open his mouth and look for gold fillings. They piled the booty at Christopher's feet, retrieving the sword from the snow and adding it to the pile. One of the guards, with cruel humor, stripped Hobilar's gauntlet from his severed hand and put the metal glove on top of the pile.

“Your horse is forfeit,” Faren pronounced.

The other guard fetched the animal, led it over to Christopher's growing hoard.

“You can crawl to Kingsrock,” Faren ordered Hobilar in bitter dregs, “and beg the Saint for your worthless life. You can beg him for your worthless arm. You can beg him, but do not expect pity.”

The priest turned on his heel and strode away, leaving the broken knight shivering and sobbing on his cold blanket of snow.

“Your mount, Pater,” the guard said, handing the reins to Christopher.

Christopher realized he should put away his sword. The brittle light had faded from its blade, leaving only a bloody piece of steel. He dropped the reins and looked around for a bit of clean cloth. The guard saw, and with a wicked grin walked to the weeping knight, pulled out his dagger, and cut a patch from the man's linen under-tunic. He handed the cloth to Christopher, and went back to help with the booty.

Christopher cleaned his blade, dropped the bloody rag in the snow. He took a few deep breaths and sheathed the sword properly, without looking. He didn't cut anything off, so he must be functioning, but he didn't feel like it. He felt like he was still outside of himself, looking in.

He tried to follow the other soldiers back to the chapel. The horse objected, raising its head and flattening its ears. Christopher tried to calm it, stroking its nose and saying kind words. It was a beautiful horse, a huge chestnut stallion. The horse pulled at the halter, wanting to go back.

Faren came over and talked to the horse. Christopher couldn't recognize the language, although the horse could. It argued with Faren, neighing its disapproval, but Faren was implacable. Finally the horse hung its head and came at Christopher's gentle tugging.

“I told him you are his new master,” Faren said, “but he is a horse. He will forget unless you master him in the conventional way.”

Christopher could only nod stupidly. The magnificent beast followed him now, so he and Faren led it into the chapel through the double doors, to get out of the cold. The soldiers were piling up the loot and judging it with a professional eye.

Faren looked upset.

“I didn't kill him,” Christopher said. “You asked me not to kill him and I didn't.”

“Truly, you are ‘The Impossible Apprentice.' You pervert every command to punish the master.” Faren laughed mirthlessly.

“You can fix his arm, right? I mean, you can revive the dead, so surely you can reattach an arm?”

“If I had been quicker, perhaps. But now, in all the Kingdom, only Krellyan can do this. And the cost is more than a man of Hobilar's rank can pay. You have ruined him.”

“If it's any consolation, I didn't plan that. I just took the shot offered to me.”

“If I'd had any idea you were capable of such a feat, I would have expressly forbidden it,” Faren said with some of his old twinkle. Then his pensiveness returned. “Again I think to see the work of Marcius. The message is plain enough. Raise a hand against the new Church, and it will be cut off. Who will dare oppose you with that kind of imagery?”

“Krellyan will,” Karl said. “He won't blink to balk a god.”

“Your faith is touching,” Faren said wryly, “but even our good Saint is not that dense. No, I fear this is a herald. I think to hear the gong of battle in the distance.”

“I'm not trying to cause trouble,” Christopher protested.

Faren looked at him with annoyance. “Marcius may be a god of War, but he is still White. He does not plunge us into violence needlessly. I do not fear that Marcius seeks to drive us to battle. I fear that he seeks to warn us of approaching woe.”

“But there's a draft. You're already at war.”

“There has been a draft for my entire life, yet the gods never felt the need to intervene before.” Faren shook his head in dismay. “I fear no ordinary border skirmish but a threat to the Church—nay, even to the survival of the Kingdom.”

The soldiers had stopped their looting to stare at Faren in slack-jawed fear. Even Karl watched with closely hooded eyes.

“The Black Harvest . . .” one of the soldiers said, his voice fading to a whisper.

“Children's tales have no place here,” Faren growled. “Just a cynical old man reading too much into blood on the snow. We'll speak no more of it.”

6.

AFTERMATH

Karl took Christopher and his horse out into the village to find a stable. Turning the animal around inside the chapel was harder than Christopher had expected. The beast was the size of a small car and not inclined to put up with any foolishness.

“You know little of horses, for a man of rank,” Karl said.

“Well, I haven't been ranked very long, and there seemed to be other things to focus on.” Christopher instantly regretted his snideness, but the horse was snorting in annoyance, and he found it intimidating. Karl rescued him, taking the reins.

Outside, Karl went the other way around the chapel, avoiding the central square. Walking along the backside of the village revealed chicken coops and pigpens, straw-thatched hovels and outhouses, the wood-smoke and animal dung of rural Appalachia. The homey effect was spoiled when he noticed that the sty he was walking past held not two pigs but one pig with eight legs. The stretch-limo-sized beast waddled sinuously to the fence, staring out hopefully for a treat. Christopher found the sight unnerving, although neither Karl nor the horse seemed to find the pig remarkable.

The stable was obvious, the third-largest building in town after the inn and the chapel. Behind it lay a giant, reeking mound of manure so potent it was the only feature of the landscape uncontaminated by snow.

Christopher was just thinking how dominating the dung-pile would be in summer weather when his scabbard banged against his shin, the injury made all the more cruel by the cold. He had not intended to bring the sword with him merely to stable a horse. Karl had insisted, pointing out that going armed was a habit he must adopt. He would now, as Faren had said, live by the sword. The possibility that he would die by it seemed correspondingly increased.

Wincing in pain, wondering how much heat the fermenting manure was generating, thinking about chemistry and swords, he was suddenly paralyzed by an epiphany.

In the valley of the swordsman, the musketeer is king.

“Are you coming?” Karl called from the barn doors.

“Wait,” Christopher said, walking to the mound. Its stench could not hold him off; unthinking, he plunged an arm into the black mass, digging deeply, drawing out material from the depth. His reward was a handful of warm gooey filth, speckled with white.

“What the Dark is wrong with you?” Karl demanded from over his shoulder.

“It's already crystallizing,” Christopher said. “Don't you see?” He offered his treasure, but Karl stepped back, his hand on his sword.

Christopher finally realized what he looked like.

“Sorry. I just . . .” He struggled to think of an explanation. “This is valuable. No, really.” His hand, now covered in wet filth, was becoming uncomfortably cold. “I need to wash up.”

Silently Karl pointed to the barn, where a dour, narrow peasant watched in alarm. It was the same man Hobilar had called over before the duel.

“Sorry,” Christopher said, walking into the barn with his arm held out at a right angle.

“There's a shovel on the wall and a fresh batch in the stalls, if your lordship desires.” The peasant's tone questioned Christopher's sanity even while the words were careful to give no offense.

“Actually, I only want the old stuff.” Christopher found a barrel of water and plunged his arm into it. With a yelp, he jerked it back out. The water was near freezing.

“Goodman Fenwick owns the stable and would be happy to assist you, Pater,” Karl said. “For a reasonable fee.” The last was directed pointedly at Fenwick.

“We live to serve,” the stable-master muttered while picking up a huge horsehair brush. Then he grabbed Christopher's arm, shoved it back into the barrel, and began to scrub.

The pain was intense, and he struggled to remain calm while Fenwick worked. How could he be gutted like a fish and not even flinch, but this was enough to drive him to the edge of murder? When his arm came out of the barrel, pink and clean, he saw there was no physical damage. The tael only healed when necessary.

Fenwick finished drying his hands on a square of old horse blanket and tossed the cloth to Christopher.

“Understand,” Fenwick said, “he is a destrier. He cannot live on mere hay, like a farmer's nag. He must be fed barley and oats as well.”

After a moment Christopher realized the stable-master was talking about the horse.

“How much does that cost?”

The stable-master struggled with an answer, fairly obviously trying to decide whether to charge the local rate or the rich out-of-towner rate. He was spared by Karl's reappearance with a basket of tiny, dry apples.

“Remind the horse of why he is your friend,” Karl suggested, handing him several. Fenwick silently took the basket from Karl and returned it to its hiding place, while Christopher went to the end of the barn where the great chestnut stallion hung his head over the stall door.