For two such skilled and accomplished Knights, the first pass is tentative, even awkward. Androctus, no doubt daunted by his opponent’s reputation, gives Sir Prosper and his huge cream-colored destrier a wide berth in the lists, and Sir Prosper feints clumsily with the big lance, clearly adjusting to the shield attached to his opponent’s right arm.
Lesser men would have undone themselves in the first pass, scrambling to topple their opponents at once in a flashy, obvious stroke. But poised and patient—what the older Knights called scientific—Sir Gabriel and Sir Prosper pass each other again, then once more. Only at the fourth pass does lance strike shield. The older, more experienced Knights, Sir Robert and Sir Ramiro included, settle back, expecting a long afternoon. Even the oldest, most veteran of Knights is surprised at the next pass. For it is as though each man discovers a weakness in the other’s defenses, and exploits it immediately. At the fifth pass the lances splinter, Sir Prosper’s striking Sir Gabriel’s shield head on, sending the Hooded Knight tumbling off the right flank of his destrier, where he catches his foot in the stirrup, is dragged a few paces, then tumbles free of the horse and scrambles unsteadily to his feet.
Sir Gabriel’s lance in turn has hit Sir Prosper’s shield head on, and as in the fateful tilt with Sir Orban, explodes through toward the breastplate of the charging Knight. But Prosper, though older, is quicker than his late comrade in arms: a lightening twist to his left avoids the padded end of the lance, which shoots by him at the speed of a meteor. Still, Sir Prosper’s turn in the saddle costs him his balance. He falls over the central railing of the lists and lands on his side, rising painfully by pulling himself up along the side of the railing. For a moment, surely each man thinks he has lost. Then, seeing his opponent dismounted, each draws his sword with renewed confidence and wades toward the other.
Ten feet from each other they stop. Sir Prosper reaches to the blade of his sword, blunted carefully in tournament fashion.
“Arms extreme, Sir Gabriel?” he asks, ceremoniously, politely, and coldly.
“If our host permits,” Sir Gabriel agrees. “After all,” he pronounces loudly, “Sir Robert has reminded us that it is his tournament.”
“Arms extreme” Sir Robert declares, without hesitation.
“Then so be it,” declares Sir Gabriel, and holds out his hand, into which the hooded squire slips a wickedly sharp sword. The squire of Sir Prosper follows suit.
Slowly and warily, the two Knights circle one another. Then, with snakelike quickness, they close. They lock blades.
“I can’t even follow the swordplay,” Sir Ramiro whispers to Sir Robert, then starts to say something else. But in that moment a flickering movement from Gabriel’s wrist strikes home. Sir Prosper wobbles, a deep and draining cut on the back of his right leg. It is all but over: tendons severed in the back of his knee.
“N-now, see here, Sir Gabriel!” Sir Robert cries out into the sudden silence of the tournament grounds.
“Don’t you think this is enough?”
“Enough?” Sir Gabriel calls back calmly. “Oh, hardly enough.” Another abrupt move of the dodging left hand, and Sir Prosper falls to his knees, then over face first, completely hamstrung. Still, never an outcry from Prosper. He is completely silent in the pain and in the prospect of pain—and worse—to come.
“You’ve won the tournament, my holdings, Enid’s hand,” pleads Sir Robert. “Now stay your sword.”
“Who was it agreed to arms extreme!” asks Sir Gabriel. “For once, Sir Robert, for once in the history of your family, abide by your word.”
For the last time, lightning-quick, the sword hand flashes down upon the defenseless head of Sir Prosper of Zeriak, who looks southward impassively in that moment before the blade strikes home.
So on the Sunday next, four days from now, Sir Robert di Caela will give the hand of his daughter Enid to her betrothed, Sir Gabriel Androctus. With his daughter’s hand he will give, in time to come, the lands and holdings of the di Caela family. He will give Castle di Caela itself.
Chapter Eleven
While all of this happened, we were still in the Vingaard Mountains.
In the steep foothills, our progress had slowed considerably as a heavy rain washed down over the trails. Agion and Bayard had been forced to stop on two occasions, fell some nearby trees, and lay logs across the mired trail—because, mired or not, off-road was so steep it was impassable for horses, and the road was our only way through the mountains without going back and around and missing the tournament entirely. After two days of mire and sludge and misery, we had begun to climb even more steeply, into a landscape of solid rock that formed the mountains themselves. That morning was gray but surprisingly cheery, for the sun rose veiled behind the clouds, and the promise of rain or worse weighed less heavily on all of us. Bayard rode at the lead of our party, flamboyant on Valorous.
The horse was obedient and danced gracefully on the pathway ahead of Agion, who was lost in the delight of an armful of apples he had gathered, and who carried me, sulking, on his back. I in turn was leading by the rein a pack mare whose sullenness had no doubt passed into smoldering rage back at the swamp, when Bayard returned the showy, burdensome Solamnic armor to her load.
The road began to level off at midmorning, and it was like passing through to the other side of the season. The grasslands of Coastlund, not yet lost entirely to autumn, faded to brown once we climbed into the foothills of the mountains, the rich soil that was the source of so much boring greenery and scenery giving way to a stingier, rockier ground beneath us.
It was getting on toward evening, and we had yet to reach Bayard’s remembered pass when we first saw the ogre. He was a hefty creature, dressed in full battle armor, his powerful thick legs rising to a chest as huge around as a vallenwood trunk, and broad shoulders atop that, upon which sat a helmet surprisingly small. His fangs were yellowed and as twisted as cypress trees. His knobbed feet seemed to sprout from the metal legs of the armor as though he was sending out deep, grotesque roots into the rocks. He carried a trident and net, as though he had come from the sea. His horse looked freighted and unhappy.
About him the air seemed to shimmer gray, shimmer black. It was as though something within the armor was on fire. The bare branches of the scrawny mountain trees that lined the trail bent away from him as though he were poison or an intense and unforgiving cold.
Ahead of me Bayard nodded, made as if to pass, but the monster reined his horse into Valorous’s path and stood there. Bayard saluted-and tried to pass on the other side, but again found the ogre in his way. From beneath me Agion called out, “The thing hath little courtesy, Sir Bayard. Don thine armor and civilize it.”
Bayard tried to pass the creature once more and was again obstructed. Now Agion’s suggestion sounded better to him. He wheeled Valorous about and trotted back to the pack mare, where he dismounted, dragged the armor to the ground, and began to dress.
“Well, squire?” he asked, looking up at me from the disarray of metal he had scattered across the ground.
“Well, sir?”
“Isn’t it your squirely duty to help me on with this?”
We sat there assembling in front of the monstrosity. I worked frantically, guessing which buckle went where, which strap tied over which, even which direction the visor faced as I slipped the iron helmet over Bayard’s head. Finally, Bayard stood pieced together before me, and I boosted him back atop Valorous. Agion stepped aside, too chivalrous to join the fight that was about to take place, and too dense to see the great advantage there would be if he only cast chivalry aside.
Of course I thought about turning and running. But I knew I would not get far on foot, and that the big savage would kill Bayard first, then Agion, then ride me down over the rocky foothills, tying my severed ears to his bridle as some sort of barbarian trophy. As Gileandos said, my imagination was “prone to frolic at disaster’s edge,” and it was frolicking now, through fields of murder and torture and every kind of mutilation for which there was a body part to be disfigured.