“Everyone in your family, for starters. More importantly, there was a sorcerer in the inn that night—”
“A sorcerer?” the ghost cried. “Of course it was he who slew me!”
“Why? Because he had magic? Believe me, I haven’t found the slightest sign that he shoved the knife into your ribs, or made a knife stab you by itself. Besides, he denies it.”
“Of course he would, you dolt!”
“Hey!” Matt snapped. “Do you want me to try to find your murderer, or not?”
“Of course I do! How dare you even ask?”
“Because I’m the one who can do it—maybe. You talk to me with respect, or I’m walking off the job.”
“You cannot speak so to a prince!”
“I can when I’m married to a queen,” Matt reminded him. “In fact, if you want to get technical about it, that makes me a prince, too—and one who’s got a bit more power in this situation than you do. Just give me a good reason to drop this investigation and I will.”
“If you do, I shall haunt you all your days!”
“You’re a little late,” Matt told him. “Somebody already got there—a bauchan. You want to cross horns with him over haunting territory?”
Gaheris spluttered incoherently, but there was a definite tinge of fear to it. Matt reflected that the superstition of the Middle Ages could be very useful. Here the prince was, a haunt himself, and he was still afraid of the bauchan!
“Go away,” Matt grumbled. “I need my sleep. How can I catch your killer if I’m groggy?”
“You will rue this one day, wizard!” Gaheris blustered.
“I doubt it,” Matt snapped, and mentally rolled over and pulled the metaphorical blanket over his head. “Go away.”
Amazingly, Gaheris did—possibly because Sir Orizhan woke Matt for his watch. Half an hour later he decided that after that dream, being awake was very restful.
The army of Earl Salin, the Marshal of Bretanglia, came striding behind its knights along the high road—really high, for the ground fell away to both sides. Ahead, though, it passed through a cleft in the hills.
Atop one of those hills, Sir Gandagin, a knight in his forties, sat on his horse, shielded by a great boulder to either side, and counseled Prince Brion, “We may hold the high ground, Your Highness, but they still outnumber us by half, and Earl Marshal is the most excellent knight in Bretanglia. Saving your presence,” he added hastily.
“Spare me flattery, Sir Gandagin,” the prince said. “Though I might hope to equal a knight of Earl Marshal’s excellence in chivalry, I know I cannot compare in prowess with a man thirty years my senior. I own you have sense on your side— but the marshal is all sense and no nonsense, with great faith in the order in which he has drilled his men. If we come upon him like wild Celts, we may do to him as Queen Boadicea did to the armies of Reme when she found they had cheated her of a whole county, by trading it for gems she discovered to be glass. She chewed them to bits, for they knew not how to counter her disorder.”
“Soundly planned,” Sir Gandagin admitted. “Still, my prince, do remember that Reme eventually brought Boadicea to heel.”
“Eventually,” Brion reminded him. “I need not win the war—only this battle.”
Below, the vanguard of the marshal’s army entered the notch.
“Out upon them!” Brion commanded, and swung his sword high with the same eerie, ululating battle-cry that had struck fear into the hearts of legionnaires a thousand years before, a battle-cry taken up by five hundred mouths, echoing from both sides of the road as men in half-armor came charging down, spears leveled.
“Close ranks!” the marshal bellowed, and the double file of soldiers pivoted to face outward, shields coming up to present a solid wall that bristled with spears.
But the attackers had spears, too, and were striking downward. They hurled their javelins, and a score of soldiers fell dead. Then they struck into the shield-wall, long spears stabbing down over the tops of the shields. Most of the soldiers snapped their shields up, deflecting the spears and striking back with their own, but a few were slow and fell, blood streaming down over their breastplates. The attackers caught the spears of the shield-wall on their own shields, though another score fell in trying. Then the two forces grappled one another in a desperate melee that filled the road. One by one, men fell and rolled down the sides, defenders and attackers alike.
Through the press rode the knights, hewing and hacking about them as they sought to come to grips with one another. They roared with anger, and footmen stumbled out of their way as quickly as they could, but stumbled and went down as often as they stumbled to safety.
Prince Brion chopped his way to Earl Marshal, blood singing high within him, head filled with visions of the honor of crossing swords with one of the finest knights in Europe. He chopped, he roared, and the marshal turned his steed at the last minute, shield rising to meet Brion’s broadsword. Then they hewed and hacked at one another while their warhorses circled about and about until finally the old knight struck a third blow in exactly the same line on Brion’s shield, and the metal and wood fell apart. Brion snatched at his dagger, better than no defense at all, but the marshal spurred his horse and struck the prince squarely with his own shield. Brion fell, and the marshal bellowed, “Surrender! Your prince is down!”
His knights echoed the cry, and the foot soldiers froze. Then, one by one, the attackers threw down their spears, but kept their shields high.
“Mercy, Lord Marshal.” Prince Brion struggled up to his knees, hands upraised.
“Mercy?” The marshal glowered down at him. “Wherefore should I show mercy to a traitor and a would-be parricide?”
“Mercy for my men and knights!” Brion cried. “This is no work of theirs! No will of their own has driven them to fight their king, only loyalty to me!”
The marshal towered above him, immobile as a rock, for long seconds. Then he said, “Even so. We shall show them quarter.” He turned to his aide-de-camp. “Bid the knights surrender their swords; we shall hold them for ransom.”
“It shall be done, my lord.” The aide lifted his visor. “What of the footmen?”
“Bind them and march them back to Castle Westborn,” the marshal commanded.
His footmen lowered their spears. The attackers finally set down their shields and turned their backs; the defenders drew thongs from their belts and tied wrists together. A knight with a dozen men started them back the way the marshal’s army had taken, the knight visibly reluctant to miss his chance of glory in the main battle yet to come.
“Take up the march again,” Earl Marshal told his aide, “and pray that we have not come too late to aid our lord the king.”
The aide nodded and turned away to relay the order. As the army moved off down the road, the marshal turned back to the prince. “For your deeds, Your Highness, I should smite you down where you kneel. But you are the son of my sovereign liege, and for that I will spare your life.”
“I—I thank you, my lord.” But Brion could only stare up at Earl Marshal, stricken by so stinging a rebuke from so chivalrous a knight As the marshal turned away, Brion bowed his head, for the first time doubting the rightness of his cause.
Earl Marshal spurred his horse to a canter, to overtake his own army. As he neared them, though, a soldier looked back at the sound of the earl’s hooves, looked back and stared, mouth and eyes wide in shock.
The earl turned to look back even as he turned his charger, and saw a knight in blue armor riding down the trail toward the prince, who was struggling to his feet with the aid of a roadside boulder. He heard the galloping hooves and looked up just in time for the huge broadsword to strike him down again.
The marshal shouted in anger at so foul a blow against a knight unhorsed, and spurred his charger, riding to the rescue of the man he had just condemned.