Gabriel drew his long war-sword across his body. He still had his shield. There was something amiss about his adversary-but the man had his spear in its rest, and the point was coming, held across the charging horse’s crupper in the proper way for fighting in the lists-
Five strides from contact, Gabriel gave Ataelus the slightest right knee and spur, and the horse turned-more of a gliding sidestep-
– and then another.
The lance tip now had to track a crossing target-
Gabriel caught the oncoming lance-off angle, if only slightly-on the forte of his long sword and flipped it aside with an enormous advantage in leverage and Ataelus took one more stride, just threading diagonally past the onrushing white charger so that the two knights passed, not left to left as de Rohan intended, but right to right.
De Rohan tried to raise the butt of his lance-
The Green Knight’s pommel smashed into his visor. It did no damage beyond a spectacular flash of sparks-but the pommel slid to the shield side, crossing de Rohan’s neck even as Ataelus turned on his front feet so that the two knights were crushed together for an instant.
The Green Knight’s arm locked on de Rohan’s head and he crashed to the dust as the Green Knight’s sword arm swept him from his saddle like the closing of an iron gate, wrenching him over the seat of his high saddle and staggering his horse, too, so that it tottered and fell a few steps on.
Ataelus, fully in hand, finished his turn.
The Green Knight let Ataelus come to a halt. Twenty feet away, de Rohan clawed his jousting helm off his head and drew his sword. It was clear that his left hand was injured, and blood dripped from his gauntlet and arm.
De Rohan’s sword went back. He spat. “Fuck it, then,” he said.
Tom Lachlan and Ser Michael and ten other knights began to ride along the north side of the lists. No one was watching them. Only Ser Gavin stayed in his brother’s box. He was watching the Green Knight with the intensity of a cat watching a mousehole.
“Do it,” he whispered.
In the royal box, the King got to his feet. He towered over his courtiers, and he put his hands on the rail of the enclosure and leaned forward as if he would jump the rail.
Gabriel saw his knights move towards the Queen and he made a decision. He backed Ataelus a dozen steps.
Fifty paces away, Gavin said, “No. No, Gabriel.”
The Green Knight unbuckled his great helm, pulled the lace under his chin, and dropped it in the sand. And then he dismounted.
Gavin shouted, “No! Just kill him!”
The Green Knight-now only in a steel cap over his aventail-walked carefully across the sand towards his opponent, who held his great sword over his head.
A hundred paces from the King, Wat Tyler drew his great yew bow all the way to his ear. He raised the head of his arrow four fingers’ breadths above the head of his target. A dozen people saw him.
No one stopped him.
He loosed.
The Green Knight moved forward, passing one foot past the other like a dancer, his shoulders level.
He pressed straight in, not pausing for the usual circling.
Again, just as he pressed into de Rohan’s measure, he felt the entanglement.
He almost flinched. As it was, he was a fraction late catching de Rohan’s great blow-instead of rolling harmlessly off his rising finestre like rain off a good barn roof, the two swords crossed at the hilts, and he was weaker at the bind.
De Rohan pushed.
The Green Knight slammed his pommel, two-handed-into the exposed chainmail of the back of de Rohan’s neck even as the Gallish knight snapped a rising cut into his torso, cutting his beautiful green silk surcoat and bruising him.
De Rohan staggered back.
Tom Lachlan was a horse-length in front. He had his horse well in hand and unlike Gavin, he trusted his captain to kill the Gallish knight and move on with the plan of the day.
Bad Tom had no need to wait around while the Galles and their rats came to their senses. Nor did he have any hesitation about killing Albans. Hillmen had been killing Albans for fifty generations.
He put his spurs to his horse when he was almost a lance length from the first episcopal guardsmen. His black beast seemed more to leap than to gallop, and his lance slew one guard, passing through his crushed breastplate and destroying the hip of the man next to him before the horse was in among them, his hooves like four warhammers.
Had there not been nine more knights behind Tom Lachlan roaring his cry-“Lachlan for Aa!”-it might have been possible for the twenty or so guardsmen to rally and fight back. Or perhaps not.
Five of them were messily dead before Michael’s mace crushed a helmet.
He set his horse at the barrier surrounding the Queen and, armoured knight and all, the gallant animal leaped. He landed and his mace licked out to kill the sergeant who, with more loyalty than might have been expected, had moved to put a spear in the Queen. Blanche had the other end of his spear. She was spattered with his death.
Chris Foliak’s horse made the leap, too, and the dapper knight reached down a hand.
“A rescue, your grace,” Foliak said. He didn’t await her answer, but pulled her over his saddle.
Ser Alcaeus, a more prosaic man in every way, had lifted the gate to the barrier with his sword.
“Bring Blanche!” the Queen shouted, but the knights were all turning their horses, and Blanche had already slipped under the barrier-rescuing herself was her specialty, and the gore of a dozen dead guardsmen might haunt her memory later, but for now she was free, and running. She ran for the end of the lists. Something was happening in the middle-she’d lost track of the fight when the rescue started.
Thorn stood in the deep woods, a trebuchet’s throw from the walls of Ticondaga, watching the castle and events therein through the lens of the awareness of fifty insects slaved to his will.
He had moved on from moths. And Ghause was far too busy working to defeat him to watch for his simpler intrusions.
Yet even as she shored up her castle’s hermetical defences and turned his workings, her attention was elsewhere, and Thorn followed her as avidly as the moths followed a candle, waiting for her to make her great working. He had been ready for days-indeed, Ser Hartmut and Orley importuned him daily about his promises of breaking the castle’s defences. The castle had sent out messengers through hidden passages.
Thorn cared nothing for any relief force. Ghause, his target, was focused on the Queen in far-off Harndon. He wished he knew why, the more easily to predict her actions. Six months, she had laid a working of such power and complexity that Thorn readily admitted he had underestimated her.
She was powerful.
But she had made an error. She had compounded that error. And now, as she watched the Queen’s rescue in her crystal, he watched her.
Ser Hartmut and Kevin Orley were away to the south of the castle, storming Mount Hope, or so they claimed, intent on taking the one piece of ground that would overlook the castle walls.
Thorn felt Ash’s imminence before it happened.
He became as two men-a pair of fools, dressed in faded, tattered motley.
Both men were juggling arrows.
And laughing-the sort of horrible, derisive laughter that bullies use to torment victims in the back alleys of the world.
Tyler’s arrow slammed into the King.
The King fell.
Ash began to caper-both of him. “Beat that!” he said. “Do you not think that the silken girdle that binds the robe of Alba is ripped asunder?” His two bodies laughed, and their laughter was a cacophony and a polyphony of laughter. “She thought it was about the woman!” Ash roared in delight, and slapped all his thighs. “I lied to her, and she believed me!”