On the dunes behind, Dentos judged the time right and unleashed his archers. Over the years the company of bowmen had grown to two hundred men, slow-loading crossbows long since abandoned for the Order’s strongbow. Skilled and practised veterans, they took down at least fifty riders with the first volley before commencing their arrow storm, drawing and loosing as fast as they could. The Alpiran’s charge stalled and then stopped under the relentless rain of arrows, the three proud lines now a confused jumble of wavering lances and rearing riders.
Vaelin nodded to Janril once more and the bugler sounded the three long blasts that signalled the charge of the whole regiment. A shout rose from the ranks and all four companies surged forward at the run, pole-axes raised to stab at the riders, many dropping their lances to draw sabres in the press of the fight, clashing steel adding to the din of the battle. Vaelin could see Barkus in the thick of the struggle, his hateful two-bladed axe rising and falling amidst the chaos, cutting down men and horses alike. Over on the left Caenis had led his company in an oblique charge against the edge of the Alpiran line, hedging them in and preventing a manoeuvre around the regiment’s flank.
As the two sides thrashed at each other, Vaelin watched with a practised eye, waiting for the inevitable moment of crisis, when the tide of battle would turn in favour of friend or foe. He had seen it happen many times now, men would assail each other with seemingly boundless ferocity then abruptly turn and flee, as if some primal instinct warned them of impending defeat. Seeing the way the white-cloaked Alpiran cavalry continued to hack at the Wolfrunners despite their mounting losses and the continual rain of arrows, he knew instinctively there would be no sudden rout here. These men were determined, disciplined and, if he was any judge, resolved to fight to the death if necessary. The regiment had killed many but they remained outnumbered, and the Alpirans were beginning to build up on the right flank, where Brother Inish’s company had started to bow under the pressure, riders forcing their mounts through the crush to slash down at the hard-pressed infantry. The barrage from Dentos’s archers continued unabated but soon their arrows would be exhausted whilst the Alpirans still had plenty of men.
Vaelin glanced behind him once more, seeing no sign of reinforcements cresting the dunes. I might kill Lord Al Hestian if I live through this. Drawing his sword, he scanned the field once more, seeing a tall pennant waving in the centre of the Alpiran throng, blue silk emblazoned with a silver wheel. He waved to get Frentis’s attention and pointed his sword at the pennant. Frentis nodded and drew his own sword, barking a command at his men to follow suit.
“Stay close,” Vaelin told Janril then spurred Spit into a gallop, Frentis and his scout troop following. He led them around Brother Inish’s wavering company, keeping a good distance from the fight so as not to be drawn in too soon, then turned sharply towards the naked Alpiran flank. Fifty horse against two thousand. Still, an adder can kill an ox if it finds the right vein.
The first Alpiran he killed was a well-built man with ebony-dark skin and a neatly groomed beard showing beneath the chin guard of his helm. He was an excellent rider and a fine swordsman, nimbly bringing his mount around and raising his sabre in an impeccable parry as Vaelin closed. The star-silver blade took his arm off above the elbow. Spit reared and bit at the Alpiran’s mount, trampling the rider as he slipped from the saddle, dark blood jetting from the stump of his arm. Vaelin spurred on, cutting down a second rider, slashing through his leg then hacking at his face until he fell, his jaw hanging loose from his skull, his scream a silent gush of blood. A third rider came for him at the gallop, lance levelled, face livid with rage and bloodlust. Vaelin reined Spit to a halt, twisted in the saddle to let the lance-point miss him by inches, bringing his sword up and down to cleave into the neck of the charging horse. The animal went down in a welter of blood, the rider tumbling free of the saddle to surge to his feet, sabre drawn. Spit reared again, his hooves sending the Alpiran reeling, his helm flying.
Vaelin paused to gauge the impact of the charge. Nearby Frentis was running his sword through a dismounted Alpiran whilst the rest of the scout troop were cutting their way through the throng, although he could see three blue-cloaked bodies lying amidst the carnage. Looking over at Brother Inish’s company, he saw that the ranks had stiffened, the line straightening as the Alpiran advance lost momentum.
A warning shout from Frentis dragged his attention back to the battle. Another Alpiran was charging, sabre outstretched, then abruptly pitching from the saddle as a well-aimed arrow from the regiment’s archers on the dunes punched through his chest. However, the man’s horse kept coming, eyes wide with panic and fear, ploughing into Spit’s flank, the force of the impact sending them both sprawling to the ground.
Spit was up quickly, snorting in rage, kicking and biting at the offending horse then chasing after the terrified animal as it fled. Vaelin found himself dodging determined sabre thrusts from an Alpiran mounted on a grey stallion, parrying desperately until Frentis spurred between them to cut the man down. “Wait there, brother!” he called above the din, reining in to dismount. “Take my horse.”
“Stay in your saddle!” Vaelin shouted back, pointing again at the tall pennant in the centre of the Alpiran host. “Keep cutting!”
“But, brother—”
“GO!” Hearing the implacable note of his command, the young brother hesitated before reluctantly riding away, quickly swallowed by the swirl of battle.
Glancing round, he saw that Janril was also dismounted, his horse lying dead nearby. The minstrel’s leg was gashed and he supported himself with the regimental standard, slashing clumsily at any Alpiran who came close. Vaelin sprinted to his side, dodging lances, casting a throwing knife at the face of a rider who raised his sabre to hack down the minstrel, the man wheeling away with the steel dart embedded in his cheek.
“Janril!” He caught the man before he fell, noting the bleach white of his skin, the pained sag of his features.
“Apologies, my lord,” Janril said. “Not so fast a rider as you…”
Vaelin jerked him to one side as an Alpiran bore down, his lance-point gouging the earth. Vaelin hacked the lance in two then half severed the rider’s leg with the backswing, grabbing his mount’s reins to bring the animal to a halt as its owner collapsed, screaming. He calmed the panicked horse as best he could then hauled Janril onto its back. “Back to the beach,” he commanded. “Find Sister Gilma.” He slapped the flat of his sword against the horse’s flank to send them on their way, the minstrel swaying alarmingly as they sped through the confusion of flesh and metal.
Vaelin grasped the standard and thrust it into the earth, leaving it upright, the hawk sigil snapping in the stiff morning breeze. Defend the flag, he thought, smiling in wry amusement. Test of the Melee indeed.
About twenty yards away he saw a sudden convulsion in the Alpiran ranks, men reining in to wheel to one side as a rider on a magnificent white charger forced his way through, waving his sabre for them to clear a path, his voice raised in command. The rider was clad in a white enamel breastplate adorned in gold with an intricate circular design that echoed the wheel sigil on the pennant still standing tall in the Alpiran centre. He wore no helm and his bearded, olive-skin features were tense with rage. Oddly the men around him seemed intent on restraining him, one even reaching out to grab his reins, then shrinking back in servile deference as the white-clad man barked a harsh rebuke. He cantered forward, halting briefly to point his sabre at Vaelin in challenge, then spurred into a charge.
Vaelin waited, sword held low, legs balanced, breathing slow and even. The white-clad man came on, teeth bared in a snarl, rage burning in his eyes. Anger. Vaelin recalled Master Sollis’s words, a lesson from years ago. Anger will kill you. A man who attacks a prepared enemy in anger is dead before he makes the first thrust.
As ever, Sollis was right. This man with his fine white armour and excellent horse, this brave, rage-filled man, was already dead. His courage, his weapons, his armour meant n
othing. He had killed himself the moment he began his charge.
It was one of the more hazardous lessons they learned at the hands of mad old Master Rensial; how to defeat a headlong charge by a mounted opponent. “When you are afoot a mounted enemy has but one advantage,” the wild-eyed horse-master had told them on the practice field years ago. “The horse. Take the horse away and he is just a man like any other.” That said, he had spent the next hour chasing them around the practice field on a fleet hunter, attempting to ride them down. “Dive and roll!” he kept calling out in his shrill, madman’s voice. “Dive and roll!”
Vaelin waited until the white-clad man’s sabre was an arm’s reach away then shifted to the right, diving past the thunderous drum of hooves, rolling to his knees and bringing the sword round to cleave through the charger’s rear leg. Blood bathed him as the horse screamed, crashing to the earth, the white-clad man struggling free of the tangle as Vaelin leapt the thrashing animal, his sword sweeping the sabre aside then slashing down, the enamel breastplate parting with the force of the blow. The white-clad man fell, coughed blood and died.
And the Alpirans stopped.
They stopped. Upraised sabres hovered then fell limply to their owner’s sides. Charging riders reined in to stare in shock. Every Alpiran within sight of the scene simply stopped fighting and stared at Vaelin and the corpse of the white-clad man. Some were still staring as arrows took them or the Wolfrunners hacked them down.
Vaelin glanced down at the corpse, the sundered golden wheel on the bloodied breastplate gleamed dully in the gathering dawn light. A man of some importance, perhaps?
“Eruhin Makhtar!” Words spoken by a dismounted Alpiran, stumbling nearby, clutching at a wound in his arm, tears streaking his bloodied face. There was something in his tone, something beyond anger or accusation, a depth of despair Vaelin had rarely heard. “Eruhin Makhtar!” Words he would hear a thousand times in years to come.
The wounded man staggered forward, Vaelin making ready to knock him unconscious with his hilt guard, he was unarmed after all. But he made no move to attack, stumbling past Vaelin to collapse beside the body of the white-clad man, sobbing like a child. “Eruhin ast forgallah!” he howled. Vaelin watched in horror as the man pulled a dagger from his belt and drove it without hesitation into his own throat, slumping across the white-clad corpse, unstaunched blood gouting from his wound.
The suicide seemed to break the spell gripping the Alpirans, a sudden fierce shout rising from the ranks, every eye fixed on Vaelin, sabres and lances levelling as they stirred themselves and began to close, murderous hate writ on every face.
There was a sound like a thousand hammers striking a thousand anvils and the Alpiran ranks convulsed again, Vaelin could see men thrown into the air by the impact of whatever had struck their rear. The Alpirans struggled to turn their mounts and meet the new threat, but too late as a wedge of burnished steel skewered their host.
A hulking figure clad head to toe in armour and seated on a tall black charger smashed his way through the lighter mounts of the Alpirans, his mace a blur as it clubbed the life from men and horses alike. Behind him hundreds more steel-clad men wreaked similar havoc, long swords and maces rising and falling with deadly ferocity. The enraged Alpirans fought back savagely, more than a few knights disappeared under the mass of stamping hooves, but they had neither the numbers nor the steel to stand against such an onslaught. Soon it was over, every Alpiran dead or wounded. None had fled.
The hulking figure on the black charger hitched his mace to his saddle and trotted over to Vaelin, pushing his visor back to reveal a broad weathered face distinguished by a twice-broken nose and eyes deeply lined with age.
Vaelin bowed formally. “Fief Lord Theros.”
“Lord Vaelin.” The Fief Lord of Renfael glanced round at the carnage and barked a laugh. “Bet you’ve never been so glad to see a Renfaelin, eh boy?”
“Indeed, my lord.”
A tall young knight reined in beside the Fief Lord, his handsome face smeared with sweat and blood, dark blue eyes regarding Vaelin with clear but unspoken malevolence.
“Lord Darnel,” Vaelin greeted him. “My thanks, and the thanks of my men, to you and your father.”
“Still alive then, Sorna?” the young knight replied. “At least the King will be pleased.”
“Still your tongue, boy!” snapped Lord Theros. “My apologies, Lord Vaelin. The boy was ever spoiled. I blame his mother, meself. Three sons she bore me and this is the only one not still-born, Faith help me.”
Vaelin saw how the young knight’s hands twitched on the hilt of his long sword and the red flush of fury that coloured his cheeks. Another son who hates his father, he observed. A common ailment.
“If you’ll excuse me, my lord.” He bowed again. “I must see to my men.”
Striding back towards the beach, stepping over the dead and the dying as the morning sun rose on the field of blood, he reached again for the bluestone, lifting it to let the rising sunlight play on the surface, thinking about the day the King had pressed it upon him, the day Lord Darnel came to hate him, the day Princess Lyrna had cried.
The day the blood-song fell silent.
“Bluestone, spices and silk,” he said softly.
CHAPTER TWO
The inclusion of Renfaelin knightly contests in the Summertide Fair was a relatively recent innovation but had quickly become hugely popular with the people. The crowd was roaring their appreciation for a particularly spectacular joust as Vaelin made his way towards the royal pavilion, his hood pulled over his face to spare himself the burden of recognition. On the field a knight sailed from his saddle amidst a cloud of splinters, his opponent tossing his shattered lance to the crowd.
“That’s one snotty bastard won’t be getting up again!” a florid-faced man commented, making Vaelin wonder if it was the spectacle of combat they appreciated or the chance to witness the maiming of rich folk.
The guards at the pavilion entrance favoured him with a deeper bow than his rank required and glanced only briefly at the King’s warrant he proffered, pulling the flap aside and bidding him entry with barely a pause. He was only two days back from the north but the legend of his supposedly great victory over the Lonak was already widespread.
After being relieved of his weapons he was led to the royal box, where he was unsurprised to find Princess Lyrna, alone. “Brother.” She greeted him with a smile, holding her hand out for him to kiss. He was momentarily disconcerted, this was something she hadn’t done before, a sign of favour rarely bestowed, and made in front of the assembled population of the capital. Nevertheless he went to one knee and pressed his lips against her knuckles. Her flesh was warmer than he’d expected and he angered himself by enjoying the sensation.
“Highness,” he said straightening, attempting a neutral tone and not quite managing it. “I was summoned to your father’s presence…”
She waved a hand. “He’ll be along. It seems he mislaid his favourite cloak. Never ventures outdoors without it these days.” She gestured to the seat next to her own. “Will you sit?”
He sat, distracting himself with the knights’ contest. Two groups were assembling at opposite ends of the field, about thirty in each, one under a red-and-white-cheque banner with an eagle motif, the other under a flag displaying a red fox on a green background.
“The melee is the climax of the Renfaelin tourney,” the princess explained. “The red fox is the banner of Baron Hughlin Banders, that’s him in the rusty armour, once chief retainer to Fief Lord Theros. The eagle belongs to Lord Darnel, the Fief Lord’s heir. Apparently the melee will settle a long-standing grievance between the two.” She picked up a white silk scarf from a nearby table. “I have been begged to give this to whichever oaf I think more violent than the others. Apparently the sight of large men in metal suits beating each other senseless is supposed to make my womanly heart swell.”
“A singular misjudgement, Highness.”
She turned to him and
grinned. “Not one you are likely to make, brother.”
“I would hope not.” He watched the two sides line out, exchange salutes then charge towards each other at full gallop, swords and maces whirling. They met in such a crash of metal and horseflesh that both Vaelin and the princess winced. The subsequent fight was a confused morass of tumbling knights and clashing weapons. Vaelin knew the knights were only supposed to strike with the flat of the blade but most appeared to be ignoring this rule and he saw at least three steel-clad figures lying immobile amidst the chaos.
“So this is battle,” Lyrna commented.
“Of a sort.”
“So what do you make of him? The Fief Lord’s heir.”
Vaelin watched Lord Darnel smash his sword hilt into an opponent’s helmet, the man slipping to the churned earth, blood spouting from his visor. “He fights well, Highness.”
“Though not as well as you, I’m sure. And he has none of your insight, or integrity. Women will bed him for the influence and wealth he holds, not for love. Men will follow him for pay or duty, not devotion.” She paused, her expression one of faint irritation. “And my father thinks he will make me a fine husband.”
“I’m sure your father wants the best…”
“My father wants me to breed. He wants the palace filled with the squalling of Al Neiren brats, all of them sharing blood with the Renfaelin Fief Lord. The final seal on his alliance. All I have done in service to this Realm and my father still sees me as no more than a brood-sow.”
“The Catechism of Joining is clear, Highness. No-one, man or woman, can be forced to marry against their will.”
“My will.” She laughed bitterly. “With every year that passes without a marriage my will erodes further. You have your sword and your knives and your bow. My only weapons are my wits, my face and the promise of power that lies in my womb.”