Matt’s first instinct was to call on Stegoman—but he realized that the dragon couldn’t fit through the windows or the door, and by the time he’d have knocked down the wall, John the Dragon would have fried them.
Brion, undaunted, swung his sword back and waded in.
The dragon blasted flame down at him, but Brion leaped forward and stabbed at its chest. The beast slid aside like a snake and blasted again, but Brion pivoted, graceful and quick even in armor, and as he swung around, his sword slashed high at the base of the dragon’s neck. It writhed aside with a shriek of anger and fear, then blasted flame at Brion. He started to dodge, but the dragon blasted again, a little ahead of the knight. Brion howled with pain but sprang through the flame to stab blindly. His sword pierced scales and struck into the dragon’s shoulder.
The dragon roared in fear and anger and leaped back, one clawed forefoot coming up to press over the wound. It stared down wild-eyed at its own blood leaking out, then stared again at Brion, in shock that any mere man could actually hurt a dragon.
“I doubt that I could kill my own brother,” Brion told him, “but a dragon is another matter.”
The dragon body seemed to melt like hot wax, reforming until it was John again, right hand pressed to left shoulder, blood leaking through the fingers. “Curse you, Brion!” he screamed.
“I have not cursed you,” Brion said grimly, “but for that, I shall chastise you most sorely.” He raised his sword and strode forward.
John howled and stooped, snatching his sword from the floor.
Brion halted, mixed emotions warring in his face. “It need not come to this, little brother. Repent, and I shall spare you for a life of atonement and prayer, though you shall be imprisoned in a hermit’s cell.”
“You call that life?” John screeched. “Fifty years in a barred stone room, when all that stands between me and a kingdom is you?”
Then he sprang at Brion, hammering blows at him from every direction, and the perfect chivalrous knight was suddenly on the defensive, parrying madly to keep up with the storm of John’s strokes. Finally the usurper slowed a little, and Brion swung a counterstroke, but John parried it easily and slashed at Brion’s helmet without even riposting. Again Brion staggered back, barely managing to parry, and one blow in five struck through to his armor.
I cannot be proud of his deeds, said a deep old voice inside Mart’s head, but I may boast of how well I taught him to fight.
“Yeah, but he’s fighting with the fury of a cornered rat,” Matt muttered.
Brion managed to beat John’s sword aside long enough to aim a blow at his shoulder, but the sword rang off steel, and armor showed through the tear.
Armor under his robes! Gaheris sneered inside Malt’s” head. Ever the coward!
John leaped back with a shout of rage and jabbed his sword straight at Brion—but it was the rash movement big brother had been waiting for. His sword blurred, spinning in a bind, and John’s sword flew across the room to crash into the wall. John shrank back, but Brion followed him closely, sword centered unwaveringly on John’s eyes. Still screaming, the usurper backed away and backed some more, until he jarred against the stone wall.
“He has the blood of thousands on his hands!” Brock cried in agony. “Strike, my liege lord, strike!”
Yes, strike! Gaheris said with vicious glee inside Matt’s head.
Not my son! Drustan’s ghost groaned.
“I cannot,” Brion said, his voice agonized. “He is my brother.”
John shouted with triumph and stepped away from the wall, then struck the flat of Brion’s sword blade with his fist and kicked with all his might. Brion fell like a tree, his armor clanging hideously on the stone floor.
With a howl of delight, John leaped on him and wrenched the sword from his hand. He held it like a dagger and swung it high, point straight above Brion’s face.
“No!” howled Sergeant Brock, and threw himself forward, diving to shield Brion’s head with his own body. The sword plunged down, stabbed through the sergeant’s leather armor, and bit deep into Brock’s shoulder blade. He screamed with pain, and John, howling curses, wrenched at the blade, but it was stuck fast. John set his foot on the man and wrenched again.
In the shadows, the bowman with the furry leggins drew his arrow to his ear and loosed.
The arrow stabbed through John’s eye. John screamed, clawing at the shaft, then fell—and for a moment silence held the room.
Then John’s screams came again, but somehow not in the chamber itself, but distant, fading, fading…
Downward.
Inside Matt’s head Drustan groaned in grief, and Gaheris, for a wonder, had the courtesy to remain silent.
Brion wrenched himself up, managed to flip over, and shoved himself to his knees. Walking on them, he went to John’s body, pressed a frantic hand over his heart. “There must be a heartbeat! There must!”
“I’m afraid not, Your Majesty.” Matt stepped up beside him, face somber. “Your younger brother is dead.”
Brion howled, throwing his head back, a long and grief-laden keening. Then he caught his breath and looked about him, wild-eyed. “Where is he that shot the arrow! Where is the commoner who dared to slay a prince!”
They looked about them, but the archer was gone.
“Where could he have sped?” Sir Orizhan asked, his voice muted.
“He disappeared, period, and flatly.” Matt gazed down into Brion’s face and spoke with the full authority of a master wizard and student of mythology. “It was no common soldier who loosed that arrow, Your Majesty, but a spirit of the land. Bretanglia itself chose to save the life of its true king, at the expense of the life of a usurper.”
He sent for Rosamund, and she came quickly, kneeling before Brion, holding his hands in hers, while noblemen bore away the body of Prince John, and jailors hauled Niobhyte off to a cell, already deep in a coma induced by the sleep-spell that had held Brion in stasis, recited by Matt but provided by the true druids. Then Matt went outside to pace across the meadow that could have been a battlefield, and into the trees at its edge.
There he stopped and said aloud, “It occurs to me that you can never have too many friends, but you sure can have too many enemies.”
“So it would seem.” Buckeye stepped forward from the shadows. “And so John has proved.”
“I thank you for stepping in at the last moment.” Matt frowned at the bauchan. “I have to say I’m surprised, though. Glad, mind you, but surprised. I thought you had left me.”
“Not quite yet.” The bauchan shrugged. “Once I do, life will be dull, and for a very long time. It is far more interesting around you.”
“But much more dangerous?”
“There is some truth in that,” Buckeye admitted.
“One thing I don’t understand, though,” Matt said. “Don’t get me wrong—I appreciate your loyalty—but I would have thought John was just the kind of man to delight you.”
“He was indeed,” the spirit agreed. “I understood John’s pleasure in caprice perfectly.”
“Then why did you help kill him?”
“Ah!” The bauchan grinned, and his teeth looked to be very sharp. “Because I, too, am a creature of caprice, Lord Wizard.”
Matt shivered for the rest of the day.
Matt and his parents stayed around to see Brion’s coronation—under the circumstances, they wanted to make sure he was well and thoroughly established in power. They needn’t have worried, if the cheering of the London crowd was any indication.
Sir Orizhan led the way, bearing the scepter on a purple cushion. Rosamund rode next, bearing the orb. The crowd knew she was their future queen, and cheered her every bit as loudly as the tall, regal young man who rode behind her, in a purple robe trimmed with ermine—Brion, their rightful king. Behind him rode all the lords who had ridden with his army on his march from the coast. After them marched the leaders of the peasant army, all in new royal livery.