Brion looked up and saw his death. He held up a hand, crying, “Hold! Grant me this boon, since you mean to take my life—let me at least look upon the face of the man who slays me!”
The Blue Knight hesitated for a moment, then lifted his visor, revealing only darkness and emptiness within.
Brion screamed with fear, but even as the huge sword stabbed down, his cry changed to anger. He seized the steel leg of his opponent and tried to pull himself up, bellowing, “Sorcery!” Then the sword lanced into the crack between breastplate and gorget, down beneath the collarbone toward the heart. The prince’s eyes rolled up as his body fell full-length into the dust of the road.
The Blue Knight turned his horse and rode away.
Seconds later the Earl Marshal pounded to a halt and swung himself down to kneel by the prince’s body. He swung open the visor, but one look at the pallid face told him all. Slowly, he slipped off a gauntlet and reached down to close the prince’s eyes. More slowly still, he closed the visor. He looked up as several knights reined in their horses beside him. “Take up his body and bear it in state to his father, men of mine,” he told them, “for he died with honor, though he died by a foul blow.”
The knights lifted their visors in respect. Then two of them reached down to help the marshal mount again, while footmen came to lash spears and a cloak into an improvised litter. They used it to take up the body of the murdered prince and hand it to the knights, who bore it gravely onward as they turned to follow the marshal to the battle.
But when they came to the plain on which the armies contended, there was no time to take the body to King Drustan, for they arrived in the midst of a melee. Queen Petronille and her army had taken their stand atop rising ground with a hillside at their backs, but their ground was not high enough, for the army of the king had surrounded them on three sides, and the fourth was too steep for horses. The queen sat her charger, armor glinting from the waist up, mail skirt hidden beneath silk, hewing about her desperately, crying, “Hold them! Strike down upon them! Hold them till their cowardly master comes to strike his own blows! Oh, where is my relief? Where is my son, my Brion, with all his knights and his men?”
At the edge of the fray Earl Marshal drew rein, holding up a gauntleted hand to halt his army.
“We have come too late,” said his aide-de-camp. “Could they not have waited battle for us?”
“They have not,” the marshal returned, “but we can shorten it for them. Lay the prince’s body atop the hill and set knights and a dozen men to guard it! Then follow me, for we must attack the queen from the rear and shorten this battle. We may yet save some hundreds of men’s lives by this!” Then he spurred his mount and charged into the melee, bellowing his war-cry. His army followed him, yelling for blood, as four knights turned away with regret to lead a dozen soldiers up the nearest slope, bearing the prince’s body with them.
The soldiers, however, were not disappointed.
With the marshal striking from the rear, the battle was short indeed; even Queen Petronille saw she would have to surrender, and called for mercy. When her knights and men were disarmed and bound and she herself was hemmed about by armored men, she endured her husband’s gloating as he decried her for a traitor, then jeered further at her for an unnatural mother and wife. The marshal then dismounted and approached them both, with a solemn pace and thunderous brows. Even Drustan, late arrived to the scene, realized that the news must be bad, for he broke off his sneering just as Petronille’s throat was swelling with a scathing retort—but she swallowed it as she saw the Earl Marshal’s face.
“What news have you for us, my lord?” the king demanded.
Ponderously, the marshal knelt and bowed his head. “The worst, Majesties.”
“Call her ‘Majesty’ no more, for she has abdicated by this rebellion,” Drustan commanded, but apprehension filled his face.
“What news could you give me that is worse than my defeat?” Petronille asked, but spoke with foreboding.
That, of course, was exactly what the marshal had intended—some slight warning, so that his sovereign and his queen might brace themselves at least a little. “It is the prince, my lord—Prince Brion.”
“Tell us,” Drustan commanded, his face granite.
Petronille held her breath.
Earl Marshal launched into an account of Brion’s ambush and defeat, of the sparing of his life—then of the treacherous attack of the Blue Knight, and the prince’s death.
“Surely it cannot be so,” Drustan said, his face white.
“I shall not believe it until I see his body!” Petronille exclaimed.
“Come, then,” the marshal said gravely.
Footmen helped him to mount. King and queen alike were horsed and followed. Up the hill they rode.
They found four knights and a dozen men lying unconscious. Of the prince’s body, there was no sign.
“He has been stolen away!” Earl Marshal cried, then dismounted and wrenched off his helmet, bowing his head. “Strike if you will, Your Majesty, for your son’s body was in my keeping!”
Then Queen Petronille began to scream.
The stick swung high. Papa lifted his own staff to block it, then swung the lower end at his opponent. The soldier dropped his own staff, and Papa’s stick cracked against it a second before the soldier caught him a glancing blow on his crown with the tip.
It was only a tap, and though it hurt, it wasn’t any major pain. Papa stepped back, laughing. “Well struck, Trooper Cole! I yield me!”
“Well struck yourself.” The trooper lowered his staff, grinning. “Your pardon, milord, but I never expect noblemen to be as skilled with the quarterstaff as we peasants.”
“I studied it quite seriously at one time.” Papa remembered his army pugilstick training. “Though I own I’ve improved considerably since coming to this castle and always having sparring partners available. Still, I think that’s enough for one morning, Cole. Shall we rest a moment and take a stoup of ale?”
“Gladly, if Your Lordship pleases.” Cole grinned and followed Papa to a table at the side of the yard, where they each tapped a small mug from a huge keg. Papa sipped, reflecting that to these people, ale was only a beverage, and surely its alcohol content was low enough to qualify it as such. Soldiers frequently drank ale with their breakfasts—and lunches, and dinners. In fact, they were joining a group of other soldiers who were taking a break in their morning practice, watching their fellows who still swung and blocked in the exercise yard and discussing their merits.
“Elbert is quick, but he is still clumsy,” one soldier opined.
“Aye, but improved,” a sergeant pointed out. “A little more instruction, and he’ll be able with a spear as well.”
“Will he then be ready for the halberd?” Papa asked.
A silence fell on the group. The sergeant broke it. “Ready to begin the halberd, yes. Your pardon, milord, but we are still amazed that a nobleman will practice with us commoners.”
That is because I was born one, Papa thought, but aloud he only said, “I may have to command you, if King Drustan brings war to this castle, Sergeant, and I believe in coming to know my troops as well as I’m able. Besides, you have knowledge that I lack.”
The men shifted from foot to foot with a brief mutter, and the sergeant said, “Begging your pardon, milord, but most knights consider the quarterstaff and halberd to be below their notice.”
“Until one cuts them in the midst of battle,” Papa said dryly. “Still, I’m not only speaking of arms and weapons, Sergeant. For example, I suspect there is much you men saw and heard about the Bretanglian royal family that we above the salt did not.”