Count Scar - SA (46 page)

Raymbaud would have told you I'm handy with a sword even when badly wounded. If you help me up I can hop. Once I have my balance you'd better defend yourself!"

He set down his helmet and pulled me to my one good foot with a jerk. For a moment we stood only inches apart, glaring into each other's eyes, his black and uptilted at the corners—just like his
sister's. He still supported me with a hand at the elbow. The watching knights, thirty feet away, could have been in another county. "All a trick," he growled. "Your only purpose was to get me
out of the keep. Now, if you but raise one hand, all your knights attack me at once."

"Put it to the test," I said, managing to stay upright this time even when he let go of my arm. "Run me through right now. I swore to you that I would not withdraw from this fight—or make it
less than fair by having anyone but me try to kill you."

"Fair!" he snapped. "Dear God, Caloran, is it supposed to be fair for me to kill someone who can't even defend himself?"

"If it makes you feel better," I said, drawing my sword, "I'll take the first stroke at you."

He stepped back easily out of range but drew his own blade. "This," he said between his teeth, "is going to be the strangest fight—"

"Gavain!" a woman's voice suddenly rang out across the courtyard. "Don't hurt him!"

The heretic war-leader's sword suddenly darted out, and with one sharp blow he knocked my own blade from my hand. A blister had come up on the palm; I hadn't been able to hold the hilt very
tightly anyway.

I staggered and closed my eyes for a second, then, when nothing happened, opened them again.

Gavain was laughing, his lips pulled back from his teeth in silent but apparently genuine mirth. "You tried to speak to me of your honor, Caloran," he said, "and yet you'll spend the rest of your
life knowing you owe that life to a woman."

I let out all my breath at once.

"I haven't really seen my dear sister Arsendis for years, but that particular note in her voice hasn't changed since she was a little girl. It's the voice of someone who really knows what she wants.

It's much too late ever to make it up to my father, but I still hope someday Arsendis and I might be friends again—and it would never happen if I had killed you."

"Then what are you going to do?" I asked when he did not seem about to do anything, instead standing with the point of his blade uncomfortably near my throat and my own sword under his
foot.

"Take the amnesty you so generously offer," he answered at last, and now his voice was bitter.

I breathed an inward prayer of thanks and wondered if Gavain too was giving thanks to God—even if he and the rest of the heretics had completely misconstrued God's message. "You haven't
lost," I said, speaking low and fast, hoping he was listening. "I know I told you last night that you had, but I just wanted to get your men out of my keep. In over forty years, no one had taken
Peyrefixade, whether by assault, by siege, or by stratagem. You captured it, and you can sweeten your memories of Melchior and me capturing it from you by recalling that you took it from me in
the first place." I paused to make sure I had his attention. "And though we now have the battle telesma, we are not going to use it against you."

He had been looking off across the mountains, but at this he turned sharply back toward me, eyebrows raised. This, I thought, was probably something else I should have first raised with the duke.

For that matter, I should have brought it up with the Magians, but for at least one Magian—I knew what he'd say. "It's Melchior's—the priest you seem to trust more than me. He doesn't want
it to be used again to kill—either followers of the True Faith or even heretics—and neither does his Order. It will be hidden again, somewhere you'll never find it this time, but you need not fear
to see the scorpion crown coming to blast your mountain settlements." I smiled for the first time in what seemed an extremely long time. "You will live to fight again, Gavain."

He laughed then, still with an edge of bitterness but only an edge. "Then don't let yourself get too soft, Count, dancing attendance at court and doing whatever my fathers whim demands. You're
a younger son, aren't you? Well, you should have plenty of experience being the obedient and dutiful son, rather than emulating Lucifer, God's rebellious older son. Practice your swordsmanship
against my coming!" He snatched up his helmet and was off, running across the courtyard. I signaled frantically, making sure no one would try to stop him. He swung up onto his stallion, then
for just a moment he paused, halfway over the rubble at the castle entrance. Then he saluted his sister with their father's sword and was gone.

The duke's physician-surgeon declared I had done new damage to my leg and ordered me straight into bed. Duke Argave had his servants carry me into what was left of my great hall and place me
on my own great bed. There he left me with my knights about me, and took himself, his own knights, and his daughter back down to the siege camp. Only then could I be sure at last that he really
intended to leave Peyrefixade in my hands. Gavain had doubtless been sleeping in my sheets, but at this point I didn't care. I was smiling as sleep claimed me.

When I awoke again in late afternoon I was pleased to discover that the knights and servants had already begun the job of cleaning up the devastation. But several were waiting when I opened my
eyes to ask me something trivial, and I realized I was going to have to give the household orders myself for a while, since I now had neither a bouteillier nor a seneschal. The cook, in spite of his
despair over the state of his storerooms and kitchen, somehow rallied to produce a simple but hearty stew. As evening came on, some of the servants improvised a kind of curtain stitched from the
worn out hangings the countess had rejected and strung it across the gaping hole where the doors had been. The place might be half in ruins, but I was count in my own castle once more.

As I sat in the window seat gnawing a slightly stale loaf the next morning, Prior Belthesar swept into the hall and made a very minimal obeisance. "Brother Melchior requests me to say he would
like to speak to you, Count," he declared, looking as if he would have preferred not to have Melchior disturbed at all. "But make sure you do not tire him! He has serious mage-sickness and needs
to build up his strength so that we can take him back to our Mother House, where the Brother Infirmerian can tend to him properly. He's being very stubborn about going, so please do not
encourage his obstinacy!"

I called for the burliest of my knights, and by hooking one arm over his shoulder managed, without doing any further injury to my leg, to hop to the chamber where Melchior was being attended
by the prior's servants. He looked even worse than I probably did, ashen-faced, with dark bags under his eyes and a weird, faint translucence to his skin. But he smiled as the knight helped me onto
a stool at his bedside.

"I heard what you did with Gavain," he told me in a weak voice. "It was both brave and wise."

"Brave, perhaps. I don't know about wise. Foolhardy maybe."

"No, wise. The True Faith teaches that we do not have the unaided strength to win the greatest prizes. We attain them by facing that which opposes us even though we know we are far weaker."

"Still acting as my spiritual advisor, Father Melchior?"

"I would certainly like to, if you still wish to have me after I've destroyed the castle that was your treasure and pride."

"Of course I want you back!" I caught a glimpse of Prior Belthesar frowning from the door. "But only when you are fully recovered. And my castle is not all destroyed, as you can see from the fact
that you are lying here in your own bed! But for now you must go back to your Order and recover your strength. We'll be all right here; I presume even that scruffy priest from the village can sing
a valid office in the chapel. Besides, I'm too immobile and the men will be far too busy for much sinning!"

"I can recover here, Count—" I cut him off as I saw the prior frown again and shake his head.

"No, no, Father Melchior, I won't hear of it." He started to protest again, but I had an unanswerable argument. "Think of the great battle telesma. I want that devilish thing out of this castle as
soon as possible! You don't think I'll trust the other Magians to get it safely stowed within the House of the Three Kings unless you are with them, do you? A good war-captain wants each
soldier under his command to be where he can function best, you know. You say your task is to serve me; well then, these are your orders. Just you make sure you get your tonsured head back here
again right away as soon as you're well! You're the only capellanus I want at Peyrefixade."

A smile slowly spread over Melchior's weary face, and he murmured, "Yes sir, Captain." At the door, the prior smiled, too. I squeezed Melchior on the arm, asked him for his blessing, and left the
room leaning on my knight. I hoped he recovered and returned to us soon. Peyrefixade needed him.

Arsendis and I stood at the top of the great tower two days later, looking out across the mountains. Higher peaks, still touched with snow, frowned down on Peyrefixade, but the valleys below us
were verdant. The shadows rose and dipped over the slopes as clouds raced across the sky high above. Six months ago, I had been sitting in my brother's castle as bitter winter closed in, with
nothing of my own and no future. Now early summer breezes played around my own castle, and, even if the beautiful woman beside me might ultimately decline to marry a man both scarred and
crippled, at the moment she seemed happy to be with me.

"I have been eager to ask you this, Count," the duke's daughter said, glancing at me sideways from dark eyes. "How did you know when you challenged my brother, and went to meet him though
too weak to fight, that he would not kill you?"

"I didn't."

My words hung for a moment while she turned to stare at me. "You went to meet him thinking he might slay you on the spot?"

"There was always that possibility. I could have died unshriven in my own courtyard." I had a crutch now and was getting better at maneuvering. With luck I would be able to walk again in a
week or two, although a slight limp would be permanent. I now turned to lean my back and elbows against the parapet. "I did however hope that his youthful training and knightly courtesy
would be too strong for him to kill a defenseless man, even his enemy— and I was right. Sometimes one has to take desperate risks to get what one wants, which means that sometimes one fails."

"I think Father was very pleased," she said after a minute, "though he refuses to say so. It's harder to say what Uncle's opinion will be, when he arrives with the Inquisition to learn that his
nephew is safe but a whole coven of heretics have been allowed to escape."

"I assume that's why your father is in such a hurry to leave," I said, "so that he may intercept the archbishop in his own ducal court and explain the situation to him at greater leisure."

She nodded. "We depart within the half hour. But tell me, Count, if it is not too secret: what will happen to the battle telesma?"

"It's not really secret," I said with a smile, "though I'd recommend you not discuss it with your brother if you happen to see him again. It's leaving today, too, secured under powerful spells in a
leaden casket, to travel to the House of the Three Kings. The Magians will lock it away there and guard it, lest anyone else be tempted to use its awesome powers. The archbishop might want to
commandeer it for the church hierarchy, but it will be hard for him to do so if it's already gone, and it would be even harder for him to argue that the best place for it wasn't among the Magians. It
will travel heavily guarded, but the telesma itself, accompanied by two priests of the Order, should be able to guard itself."

Arsendis seemed about to speak but instead just looked again out toward the highest mountains. Down in the courtyard, I heard a horn blowing and knew that the duke was assembling his men
for departure. She turned with a swirl of her scarlet cloak to go, but then paused at the top of the stairs, smiling back over her shoulder. "The view from your castle is most pleasing, Count. Thank
you for showing it to me at last. I can well understand how you—or anyone —would enjoy the prospect of living here permanently."