The rampant bear of Garsenc, crimson on its deep blue ground, carried its own full measure of significance for those who had not even known who he was until this moment. And above it, in pride and glory and most brazen declaration, flew the banner of the kings of Gorhaut.
Standing at the centre of a growing tidal wave of noise, Blaise looked up at that golden sun on its white ground, with the crown of kings above it and the sword of the god below, and it seemed to him, oddly, as if he had never really seen it before. In a way, he never had; not like this. Not lifted in the breeze and the light by his own command. It had begun. With this banner flying above his head and raised in his own name before the emblem of his country's kings as the noise from all around grew to a climax, louder than he would ever have thought possible.
He knew how to quell that sound. To bring the pavilions and the standing grounds back, like hunting dogs to heel, to what lay ahead of them now on this green grass beneath the morning sun. It had begun here, and it might end here, for there was still the affirmation of the god to be sought. Of Corannos, and of the goddess of Arbonne. For the first time in his life Blaise of Gorhaut offered a prayer to Rian. Then he turned to the Arimondan and he drew his sword.
Jousts for pleasure and sport were done on horseback in full tournament regalia, horse and rider armoured magnificently, the display lying as much in the glitter of the coran's equipment as in anything else. No one ever enjoyed losing—it could be hideously expensive for one thing—but the armour prevented all but the rare serious injury, and in the long run, save for a handful of the most celebrated fighters, wins and losses tended to even themselves out. Tournaments were entertainments, a parading of wealth and success, a revelation of prowess, diversions for the pavilions and the commons both, and they were regarded as such.
Challenges to the death were contested on foot. Only limited protection was allowed. There was no glitter to them, no elaborately ornate breastplate or decorated helm. Death fights were primitive encounters, even holy ones, reaching back to far distant times before the Ancients had come, most purely testing a man's courage and will and the power of his goddesses or gods. They were an entertainment too, of course, as the excitement of the assembled watchers now attested, but of a darker sort, with a grim, foreknown destination: a man broken and dying on trampled grass, mortality made harshly manifest for those gathered to bear witness and be reminded of their own end.
It was because of this more than anything else that when Blaise drew his sword the screaming stopped. In the dining halls of the sanctuary retreats of Corannos, where men and women sometimes withdrew from the world as they felt their endings draw near, there were always tapestries or paintings hung upon the walls, and in every sanctuary at least one of these works would show the gaunt, laughing figure of Death, bearing the mace with which he ground the life from men, leading a winding procession over a wintry hill to the west where the sun was going down. And always, by long tradition, the first figure in that procession, even before the crowned kings and queens of earth, hand in hand with Death himself, would be a tall coran in the prime of his days, his sword useless in its scabbard as Death led him away.
Quzman di Perano, with a smile, reached up and pulled his curved blade from the sheath on his back. He drew upon a clasp and let the scabbard fall behind him on the grass. One of his appointed squires from Miraval quickly knelt and picked it up. The Arimondan moved forward, light on his feet as a tumbler for all his size, and Blaise, watching closely, saw that his first steps carried a little west. As expected. He had seen this manoeuvre before, the last time he'd fought a challenge with a man from Arimonda. He had almost died that day.
Moving to meet the man whose brother he had slain, Blaise regretted, not for the first time, that he knew so little about his foe and how he fought. For all Valery's words about the propensities of those using curved swords—tendencies Blaise knew well—they had little actual knowledge of Quzman beyond what was obvious. He was a big man, cat-quick, and brave, with a longing for revenge and nothing at all to lose today. I could, Blaise thought, be dead before the sun rises much higher.
It had always been possible. There was no honour to be sought or found in a meaningless challenge, no elevation in the eyes of the gathered world beneath the banner of Gorhaut's kings—which was, of course, the point of all of this.
Moving forward, Blaise found what he was looking for. His small round shield rested on his left forearm, leaving his fingers free. He transferred his sword to that hand and stooped quickly. In the same motion, as Quzman came straight towards him, he seized and hurled a clump of earth squarely at the Arimondan's gleaming shield. Quzman stopped, surprised, and Blaise had time to rattle another dulling handful of mud against the shield before straightening and reclaiming his sword in his fighting hand.
Quzman was no longer smiling. It was Blaise who grinned now, with deliberate mockery. "Too pretty a toy," he said. It was quiet now, he did not have to raise his voice. "I'll have it cleaned when you are dead. How many men have you killed by blinding them first like a coward?"
"I wonder," said Quzman after a short silence, his beautiful voice thickened by passion, "if you have any idea how much pleasure your death will bring me?"
"I probably do. Blood ants on the plain. You told me already. By contrast, though," Blaise replied, "your life or death mean almost nothing to me at all. Welcome to the dance. Do you want to talk all morning or are you actually able to use that blade you carry?"
He was. He was more than able, and sorely provoked. The first stroke, exactly as Valery had predicted, was a downward angled slash on his backhand. Blaise parried smoothly, guiding it short of his body—but then was only barely quick enough, even with the anticipation, to block the vicious return sweep of the curved blade along the level of his knees. The impact, a grinding collision of weapons, was almost enough to numb his wrist. The man was strong, enormously so, and his reactions were even quicker than Blaise had guessed they would be.
Even as he thought this, Blaise was twisting desperately and dropping, guided only by reflexes of his own, an utterly instinctive movement shaped by years of combat in tournament and war, the primitive drive for survival letting him react to the curved sword abruptly planted, quivering, in the earth, to Quzman's gloved hand reaching for the back of his calf and the knife blade flung in a blurred motion for his throat. It went by, almost. Blaise felt a searing pain at the side of his head. He brought his sword hand quickly up to his ear and it came away soaked with blood. He heard a sound from the pavilions then, deep and low, like wind on a moor.
Quzman, his sword recaptured before it had even stopped vibrating in the ground, was smiling again, the white teeth gleaming. "Now that," he said, "is pretty. Why don't you throw some mud on it like a peasant? You do seem to enjoy scrabbling in the earth."
The pain was bad and would probably get worse, but Blaise didn't think his ear was gone. Not entirely, at any rate. He seemed to still be hearing sounds from that side. He thought of Bertran suddenly, with his own missing ear lobe. He thought of how much depended on his walking alive from this field. And with that his anger was upon him fully, the familiar, frightening daemon that came to him in battle.
"Spare your breath," he said thickly, and surged up from the ground to engage the other man. There were no words then, no space for words and indeed no breath, only the quick chittering clatter of blades glancing and sliding from each other, or the harder, heavier clang as sword met blocking shield, the controlled grunting of two men as they circled each other, probing with cold metal and cold eyes for an avenue along which they could kill.
Quzman of Arimonda was indeed good, and driven by the fierce pride of his country and his family, and he had a sworn vengeance to claim. He fought with the fluid, deadly passion of a dancer and Blaise was wounded twice more, in the forearm and across the back of his calf, in the first three engagements.
But Quzman's thigh was gashed, and the leather armour over his ribs was not quite equal to the
scything blow it took on a forehand slash from an Aulensburg sword wielded by a man with a passion and rage of his own.
Blaise didn't stop to gauge how badly he had wounded the man. He drove forward, attacking on both sides, parried each time with impacts that sent shocks up his elbow and shoulder. He registered the welling of blood at Quzman's left side, ignoring as best he could the stiffening protest from his own leg as he pushed off it. He could easily have been crippled by that low blow, he knew. He hadn't been. He was still on his feet, and before him was a man who stood in the path of… what? Of a great many things, his own dream of Gorhaut not least of all. Of what his home should be, in the eyes of the world, in the sight of Corannos, in his own soul. He had said this two nights ago, words very like this, to King Daufridi of Valensa. He'd been asked if he loved his country.
He did. He loved it with a heart that ached like an old man's fingers in rain, hurting for the Gorhaut of his own vision, a land worthy of the god who had chosen it, and of the honour of men. Not a place of scheming wiles, of a degraded, sensuously corrupt king, of people dispossessed of their lands by a cowardly treaty, or of ugly designs under the false, perverted aegis of Corannos for nothing less than annihilation here south of the mountains.
It was one thing to have ambitions for one's homeland, dreams of scope and expansion. It was another to use the sky-blue cloak of the god to hide a smoke-shrouded inferno of men and women—a nation of them—thrown to burn on heretics' pyres. Blaise had seen such fires as a boy. He would never forget the first time. His father had clutched his shoulder and had not let him turn away.
He knew exactly what Galbert wanted, what Ademar of Gorhaut would be guided to do when he came south. He knew how strong, how wealthy the army of Gorhaut would be by the time the snows melted in the spring. He had seen those pyres; he would not watch another burn. He had sworn it to himself those long years ago, watching an old woman die screaming, flames in her white hair. And to stop them, to stop his father and his king, he had first to defeat this Arimondan who stood now in his way with a curved sword already reddened by Blaise's own blood.
The most celebrated troubadours and the better known joglars did not watch the tournaments from the commons' standing ground. By courtesy of Ariane de Carenzu, as a sign of their high favour in Arbonne, they were given a pavilion, not far down the lists from her own. An invitation to sit among those in the pavilion was one of the prime measures of success each year among the musicians, and this autumn marked the first time Lisseut had found herself included in the elect. She owed it to Alain, she knew, to his own growing reputation, and to the little man's brash assertiveness that memorable night in Tavernel when she had sung his song to the queen of the Court of Love and the dukes of Talair and Miraval.
And to the red-bearded Gorhaut coran who was now battling for his life on the grass before them. It seemed he wasn't just a coran, though. Not since those two bright banners had been run up above his tent and the herald's voice had fought to be heard over a roar of sound. She had known since Midsummer who Blaise de Garsenc was and had kept faith by telling no one. Now he had revealed his identity to the world, and had done something rather more than that. The man she had upbraided so caustically in The Liensenne a season ago, and had then followed to the Correze gardens later that same night, was laying claim to the crown of Gorhaut.
It was with a sense of deep unreality that Lisseut remembered inviting him to come back with her that night in Tavernel. Unlucky to spend tonight alone in this city, she had told him. Unluckier still to have a degree of presumption as rash as her own. Her mother would likely be forced to take to her bed if she found out about any of this. Even now, months after, Lisseut could not stop herself from flushing at the memory.
Looking up at those two banners in the wind, she wondered what he must have thought of her, of the wet and straggle-haired, interfering, impertinent singer who had accosted him twice in a night and then taken his arm in the street and invited him to bed with her. He didn't even like singing, she remembered. Lisseut, among friends in a bright pavilion, had winced at that thought, too. No one had noticed. The others were busy wagering on the coming fight, laying odds on a man's death.
Then thoughts of herself and memories of summer had gone flying far away, for the two men on the grass had drawn their blades, the straight sword and the curved one, and had advanced upon each other. Blaise had bent to throw grass and mud at the other man's shield, something she hadn't understood until Aurelian, without being asked, had quickly stooped to speak an explanation in her ear. She had not turned to him. She had been unable to take her eyes from the two men on the grass, though a part of her was recoiling in horror even as she watched. They spoke to each other, but none of them could hear the words. She saw the Arimondan react as if scalded by something said, and then spring to attack. She saw him parried, once and then twice, as her breath caught in her throat. Death was here. This was not for show. The reality of that came home to her, and just then she saw the curved sword planted, unexpectedly, in the earth.
And it had been in the next moment, precisely then, she would afterwards remember—the Arimondan's flung dagger slicing through Blaise's ear as he twisted away, then the swift, bright flowering of blood—that Lisseut of Vezét realized, with a cold dawning of despair, that her heart was gone from her. It had left without her knowing, like a bird in winter, flying north to a hopelessly wrong destination where no haven or warmth or welcome could even be imagined.
"Oh, mother," she whispered then, softly, to a woman far away among olive groves above a coastal town. No one paid any attention to her. Two men were trying to kill each other in front of them, and one of them had claimed a crown. This was matter for song, whatever happened; it was matter for tavern and castle talk for years to come. Lisseut, her hands gripping each other tightly in her lap, spoke a prayer then to sweet Rian, and watched, even as she felt the flight of her heart from her breast across the bright green grass.
Some things about fighting Blaise had had to teach himself, or learn from his brother at those rare intervals when he was at home and Ranald would consent to give him a secret lesson: Blaise was heading for the brethren, what use would skill with a blade be for him? Other elements he had learned from the men who guided him in swordsmanship, quite a few years later than most young men in Gorhaut, in the year after the king had already made him a coran, more as a rebuke to his High Elder than through any recognition of Blaise's merits.
But the greater part of his education had come in the field, in war and in the tournament melees, the nearest thing to warfare that peacetime offered. He was lucky he had survived in those first months and years. He knew that now. He'd been far too callow and untutored to have had any right to expect to walk away from battlefields at Thouvars or Graziani or Brissel, or those early tourneys at Aulensburg or Landeston in Valensa. By the time of Iersen Bridge, though, he had known the craft of killing and surviving extremely well. And it was there on that winter field that he had come nearest of all to dying: which was, of course, the darkest of many ironies at the heart of a soldier's life.
In any case, what Blaise proceeded now to do was as obvious to him as the direction of sunrise or the proper flight of birds in winter. The Arimondan was badly hurt on his left side. The task then was to make him use his shield again and again, to lift it high against forehand blows aimed towards shoulder or head. It didn't matter if the blows landed; against a good man they wouldn't be expected to. But with each one warded by a shield thrust upward in defence, Quzman's wound would be forced open more and his arm and side would grow weaker. It was straightforward, routine; any competent soldier would know this to be so.
Blaise became aware after a time that this was exactly what was happening. It began to be visible in the Arimondan 's face, though his expression of arrogant concentration never really changed. There was more blood now, welling from the wound in his side. Meticulously, with the precision all field surgeons claimed and most lacked, Blaise set about exploitin
g the injury he had inflicted.
His focus was calmly precise, unhurried, patient, so much so that he nearly died.
He ought to have been killed, for he was badly fooled. What Quzman did was feint a throw with another knife. For the second time he stepped backwards and stabbed his sword into the flattened grass, reaching towards his leg with his freed hand. Blaise, alert for the throw, was already dodging, twisting downwards again, when Quzman, on one knee, hurled his heavy shield instead like an athlete's disc with his left hand, cracking Blaise so savagely across the shins it sent him sprawling, crying out with the pain. The Arimondan seized his sword again and was up with frightening speed, lunging forward with a downward slash intended to decapitate.
Blaise rolled desperately backwards and flopped to one side, gasping at the pain in both legs. The descending sword bit earth a blade's width from his head, but Quzman was reaching in earnest now for his second knife, at quarters too close for swords as he fell forward upon Blaise.
He never reached that blade.
Years ago, during one of the endless campaigns against Valensa, King Duergar of Gorhaut, who had continued to take an interest in Galbert de Garsenc's curiously rebellious younger son, had called for Blaise to ride out alone with him one morning in the king's circuit of his army's encampment. On that springtime ride, as a purely passing remark, he had offered a suggestion as to where a useful blade might be secreted upon one's person, before pointing out how cherry trees in blossom were a good place for archers to hide.
In real pain, his sword useless, Blaise rolled again desperately and released his grip on his shield. And as he did so he claimed his own hidden dagger from the iron sheath he'd had made for it, at his king' suggestion, on the inside face of the shield. Jamming his right arm against the ground at the end of his awkward roll he rang the shield hard off Quzman's shoulder and then, pulling his left hand free with the blade, he stabbed the Arimondan twice, once deep in the muscles of the sword arm, and then a raking gash across the ribs already wounded.