Sword of the Bright Lady (43 page)

“And if you could catch him, then what? Can your band of mercenaries defeat him and his knights?” The prisoners had also told them that Bart had six knights, although they were newly promoted and poorly armed.

“Probably not,” Gregor said, “but we'll try. If the Pater has any more charges in his wand of fire, we have a chance.”

“I don't have a wand,” Christopher said with exasperation. “It's just the sky-fire stuff.” But he checked his satchel while he was talking. “I've got three left.”

“He knows I will send messages to Cannenberry and Copperton. He will not dare to pass those lands. So he must go twenty miles south before he can go east.” Rana seemed to be talking to herself.

“Can't you send riders to the other counties?” Christopher asked.

“That would involve a discussion, and by then Bart will be home. We have only this day to act.

“Are you both committed, regardless of the danger?” she suddenly asked them. “For no gain but to save men and women you do not even know and owe nothing to? To strike against the Dark now that it is exposed, regardless of the risk?”

“Yes,” they both said in accidental unison.

“Perhaps I have sat too long,” she said to herself. “To bring the soul-trapped into our lands is an insult no one will deny.” Her glare blazed out at Christopher. “If I must be driven before the lash of your Patron, I will not spare you. Prepare yourselves for a day of hard riding and harder deeds. Just the two of you. I cannot support more. You have one hour.”

She folded her hands in meditation, and they were dismissed.

Outside her office Christopher was mystified, but the knight was grinning.

“Get a comfortable saddle, Pater. Don't bother to pack food or water, but bring your bag of tricks.”

“She's going to send us after him alone?” Not that he was going to back down now, but the venture seemed unlikely to succeed.

“No, Pater. You've stirred the mountain to move. She's coming with us.”

An hour later, Christopher and Gregor stood outside the church in the cold light of the spring morning. Karl and the men were there, disappointed that they would not be accompanying the chase. They had brought Christopher's armor, and so he was arrayed in the heavy plate and chain, a steel engine of woe.

“You'll need it, Christopher,” Karl said. “Without your magic you'll need every edge.” Christopher's spells, exhausted in the night, would not renew for many hours yet.

“How can the horses run with all this weight?”

“Little good it will do to catch them if we are naked,” Gregor answered. “The horses are trained to this. It is only for one day.”

Once again Vicar Rana came out in her armor, her guards leading her horse. Christopher's mind could not reconcile the transformation from middle-aged woman to warrior, no matter how many times he saw it. Nor, apparently, could anyone else's. The crowd of guards and priests watched in silent confusion, unsettled by the loss of their well-known Lady and this strange replacement. Only Gregor seemed comfortable with it.

“I cannot fight well,” she told them matter-of-factly, “but I am still sixth rank. And I have my magic. You must dispatch his knights quickly, either with death or fear. Then you must help me with the monster.”

She turned to each horse and cast a spell. Royal seemed to swell up, and his ears twitched with eagerness. When Christopher mounted, the horse moved under him like he'd just been let out of his stall.

The horses turned to the south, their heavily laden hooves ringing hollow on the bridge.

Next to a small wood they paused, while Rana called a huge black crow down from a tree to her open hand. She spoke Celestial in heavy concentration as she locked eyes with the bird.

“Here is bread, feathered friend. See that I call you to share in my bounty. Will you call me to share in yours?

“No,” she said when the bird answered her in squawks, “I do not want fresh berries or aged meat. I seek no worms, fat and tasty as they are. I seek a party of horses, many horses, with not enough men. Go, find them, and lead me the way. You will have bread for the rest of your days and my eternal gratitude.”

The bird preened, cackled, and took to the air. The horses took to the ground, and they flew south, over tracks and trails, through fields and pastures. The horses were not in full-out gallop, merely cantering, but even twenty minutes of that should have left Royal wet and foaming. Royal ran on and on and on, long past Christopher's experience and past his own endurance. His butt was getting sore. But it was just pain, so he ignored it.

They stopped to water the panting horses in the middle of a field of stubble. Rana handed out empty leather waterbags, then held her fingers in an “O” over each one in turn. Water gushed from her hand like a magic trick.

While the horses drank she spoke to Christopher.

“Do not seek to appease me by flattering my son.”

“I do not flatter him,” he answered automatically. “I need him. He is like me, in a way. He works with metal in his head, not with his hands.”

“It is true he obsesses over your scrollwork. I caught him wasting good Church paper trying to do his own. I would think him enspelled if I did not know better.”

“I'm sorry. I'll replace the paper.” Paper was something Christopher had plenty of now.

The coldness he had come to expect from her suddenly cracked, as if his simple apology had been a piton driven into a block of ice.

“No, you owe me nothing,” she said. “I owe you, for you have given my son what I could not. Day by day he summons your machine into being, turning paper into metal. With each part his father's respect grows. Your gold fills the shop's coffers, wrung out of your papers like water from rags. Jhom does no metalwork but directs the men, and as your machine takes shape so does their respect.

“I fought your changes, in everything. And now here I am, lashed into war, punished for my intransigence. You have taken my Saint, my town, my son, and now my peace.”

“I didn't mean to,” Christopher said helplessly.

“Your Patron has much to answer for,” she said equally helplessly. “But I forgive you now. I can do this because we likely ride to our deaths. Thank you,” she said humbly, “for the light you have put in my husband's eyes and for the spring in my son's step. Should it all end here, those moments were worth it.”

What could he say? So he said nothing.

The waterbags were empty. Rana went to each horse and cast a healing spell on them.

“A shameful use of power,” she said. “But it is to need.”

And they rode again, cantering through the sunny day, the horses fresh as if they'd just left the barn.

Their feathered guide circled them late in the morning, cawing, and winged to the east. They followed as best as they could.

“I should not have sent him out so soon,” she told the men, “but we are in luck. No hawk took him.”

“Will Bart know he is followed?” Christopher asked.

“He'll assume it,” Gregor said. “We'll not catch him napping.”

But it was starting to look like they would catch him. The horses had run for an unnatural length of time, and still they pressed on.

Shortly before noon, the horse-magic faded. The horses were merely mortal again, and Rana had no power to spare to refresh them, saving the rest of her spells for battle. But they had covered an incredible distance.

Bart had barely more than two hours' head start on them. He had double horses, but they had magic ones, and they had a guide. The sun was still high in the sky when the crow squawked, calling attention to the herd of horses traveling east.

They were spotted, too, and the herd broke into a gallop.

“Idiocy,” Gregor declared, as their own horses burst into pursuit, but then he saved his breath for the coming fight.

Bart did not seem to have a plan, just a panicked flight. He ran his horses brutally, but they simply could not keep up the pace, not after a long day of hard traveling. When one of them simply stopped running, and then a half-dozen began to stumble, he came to his senses and stood his ground.

The black lord and his six knights pulled their panting horses into a wide, ragged line as Christopher's party slowed to a trot. The men were in chain mail, with cheap wooden shields.

“I do not see the mage,” Gregor said with a frown.

“I rejoice at your coming,” Bart shouted at them, his voice tinged with maniacal frenzy. “I will take your head to the altar and be redeemed. I will show I am the stronger servant.”

Rana ignored his lunacy, addressing his troops instead. “Flee now and we will not pursue you. We seek only your master.”

“Stupid bitch,” Bart growled. “I'll not hesitate to burn your corpse. Get away while you can.” At least now his words seemed to be relevant to the occasion, as if the unexpected presence of the Vicar had steadied him.

“You brought soul-trapped into my lands,” she answered him. “You have gone too far.”

“Her tael will make one of you a captain,” Bart promised, and he kicked his exhausted horse into a canter, charging at them, his men following with ragged shouts.

The grass rose up on one flank of Bart's line, grabbing at the tired horses. Bart looked around wildly for the druid, and so did Christopher, but it was Rana chanting the spell. Gregor cut across in front of her, charging the other flank. The blue knight ignored Bart, who ignored him also and drove straight to Rana. Christopher would have been worried about her if there wasn't a sword in his face demanding its own attention. One of the knights had closed with him.

Neither of them was a great horseman, but Christopher had a great horse. Royal instinctively went to the man's shield side, making his attacks awkward. Christopher didn't have a shield, so he didn't care which side his foe was on. He started beating on the man's shield. It was wood. It might come apart.

Gregor battled two other men. On horseback he had a great advantage, since they could not press against him tightly. He kept slipping out of the reach of one or the other, making it practically a one-on-one fight, where his rank would guarantee him victory.

Bart bore down on Rana, who stood her ground. Christopher heard her cry out in Celestial, turned enough to see her thrust her hand out at the black knight. The knight shuddered but shook off the spell, cursing at her.

He charged upon her and slashed his huge black blade across her head. Her plain, open-faced helmet disintegrated under the attack, falling in pieces to the ground with lengths of her hair. Absurdly, she took the blow with little more than a shrug and repeated her command in Celestial.

“Hold!” she ordered, her fingers gripping the air in front of her as if it was his throat, and this time Bart held. He went rigid, like a person pretending to be a statue. Only then did her desperation become apparent, by the quality of her relief.

She leaned forward, caught the halter of his horse, held it still next to hers. She did not speak but waited patiently against the ticking of the clock.

Christopher's foe held his shield above his head and swept his blade under it horizontally. The blow failed to penetrate Christopher's half-plate despite the ringing force, and it gave him room to slide his katana under the shield and thrust up into the man's armpit. The man squawked, but the chain held. And then Royal sidestepped, putting his weight behind the katana, and it burst through the chain and slid deep into the man's body.

The man fell from his horse like a rag doll. Christopher urged Royal around to Rana's side. Gregor was winning, one man down, but then he had to wheel about to face another rider who had freed his horse from the circle of grasping vines.

Christopher raised his sword and took aim at the immobilized form of Black Bart.

Rana spoke: “Strike hard, for the spell ends with your first blow.”

Christopher looked again at the thick armor and lowered his sword. “How much time do we have?” he asked.