Firethorn (51 page)

he saying is that hearts break, but that's not what happened to me. Instead my heart was squeezed and squeezed, my body a fist around it. After a while there was nothing left but a hard pit, like the stone of a fruit, small and heavy. And my breath clouded the cold air and I found I was not dead, after all.

I stood on a hill above the tourney field, and all the other inhabitants of the Marchfield were there too, spreading around the horizon, and every one of them jostling for a better view—and the Sun was a handspan high, spilling gold over the land, and the sky was a sheer deep cobalt above the sea—and I saw what a fool I was; I saw the more clearly because my heart was stony. I saw how a man astride a courser becomes one with it, they become a great singular beast, much more fearsome than a man who stands on his own legs. Put ten, twenty, thirty of these beasts together, put a man among them, and see how small he is. That's how small Galan was, standing below me on the tourney field.

And I knew my concern over Sire Rodela, whether Galan should or should not kill him, was a trifling distraction. Galan must have known, as I knew now, that he'd be the first to die today, ridden down in the charge. I'd shied from it; perhaps he had too, with his jealousy, his threats and promises. He was a man, after all, he would boast.

I saw Galan looking up at the sky and I followed his gaze to see white gulls and black ravens and, high above them, two falcons tilting as they wheeled.

The crowd was restless. A great altar had been set up between the lines, and the procession of sacrifices was long. While the clans of Crux and Ardor fought on the field that day, so too their gods would contend, and each clan vied to make the most lavish offerings. And each warrior prayed to his forebears or to Rift or Hazard or any god whose favor he sought, and sent his prayers winging on their way with blood:
Make my armor strong and my arm stronger.
I saw my mare Thole among the horses dedicated to Hazard, and wondered if Galan offered her on my advice or to make me rue it. She died and I felt nothing.

So many animals slaughtered, one by one: oxen and horses, goats and sheep, roe deer and fighting cocks. Among so many opposing prayers, not all could be answered. If any god might listen to me, it would be Ardor—but today Ardor was Galan's enemy, and therefore mine. Today my prayers were leaden, and couldn't rise.

It had been four tennights and a hand of days since we came to the Marchfield, and I'd never seen such a crowd, not even on Summons Day. When the word went out that the king had called for a mortal tourney, his whole army came to watch, along with the queenmother's Wolves. The merchants left their stalls guarded by boys who followed as soon as their masters' backs were turned—and the armorers came, and the goodwives, butchers, shepherds, laundresses, shipwrights, and the bare-legged children who dug shellfi sh in the tide pools. Then came those who preyed on the rest of us, the pickpockets and strongarms, peddlers of pisspot ale, two-copper whores. And every man sporting a sprig or a ribbon, green for Crux or rose for Ardor, and tempers dry as kindling. Every one in motion, shoving downhill to get closer to the field, pushed back by the Blood of Prey and Rift, who guarded the boundary, herded this way and that by varlets clearing space so that their masters could see the tourney from seats under their bright canopies. Every one gossiping, bickering, quarreling because one stepped on another's toes. Every one wagering. The oddsmen gave the two clans an even chance, though Ardor outnumbered Crux by four cataphracts. The odds were eleven to one against Galan.

We drudges of Crux watched from a hillside south of the tourney field, nearest to our clan's line. Flykiller had chased some kitchenboys from a boulder and now we stood upon it, a head above the crowd, with Fleetfoot and Galan's horseboy, Uly. Flykiller's long reach and his glower kept others away from our perch.

The Sun rose and shadows retreated across the field. It was a clear cold day: no fog, no clouds, nothing but smoke from the smudge pots and braziers, mist from our mouths. I'd draped Mai's shawl over my headcloth to cover my shoulders, but the Sun found my burns and set them afire again. Elsewhere I was chilled.

Priests examined the entrails for omens and the carcasses were dragged away. There'd be such a feast after this tourney that the meanest beggars would eat.

A rumormonger nearby amused the restless crowd in the lulls between sacrifices. He rode upon the shoulders of a massive fellow who bore him with the sullen patience of an ox. His long, bony legs dangled around the man's neck. His standard, a hollow tongue of cloth, waggled on the pole when the wind caught it. For a copperhead he'd make up a riddling rhyme about one of the warriors on the field, and many a drudge asked for one about his master. They were not all flattering. I had a few coins knotted into my shawl, and I gave two copperheads to Fleetfoot to bid the man come closer.

The rumormonger looked down at me and I up at him. He wasn't one I'd seen before. I said, “That man afoot down there, who is he?”

He said,

“I don't want one of your riddles. I want his name.”

“Sire Galan dam Capella by Falco of Crux. And you're his sheath, so why do you ask?”

I was not surprised he knew Galan. A rumormonger should know every man of Blood in the Marchfield by his insignia, his armor and horses, his manner of fighting. But if he knew of me, surely he was good at his trade. I said, “Will you stay by me and keep him in sight and tell me how he fares?” I showed him two silverheads in my palm. His mount gave me a wink, which was startling; the man seemed so like a beast, I'd almost taken him for one.

The rumormonger looked at the coins and said, “Keep your silver. This is as fine a spot as any to stand.”

Down on the field they were also restless. There were more than seventy horsemen, all told, and each man kept his stallion on a short rein to make him prance and stamp and toss his head, to show off the fine arch of his neck.

I saw Galan among them, leaning on the shaft of his scorpion, trusting his fellows to keep their mounts from trampling him. On his baldric he bore his two swords, the greater and the lesser, and his mercy dagger. His buckler hung by a hook behind his hip; it served better as a weapon than a shield, with its sharpened rim, spike in the center, and a pair of sword-catcher horns jutting from the sides. There was no hiding behind it, for it didn't even cover his forearm.

His scorpion looked like a twig next to the war lances carried by the other cataphracts for use in the charge. These lances had ironwood shafts, twice a man's height and thick as a man's arm at the base, and leaf-shaped heads of the best steel to punch through shield, plate, mail, and underarmor to find blood and bone. No other weapon could do so much against a man in a metal carapace.

And Galan was not well armored. From where I stood the green canvas of his brigandine looked dull, save for the rows of rivets glittering in the Sun. The fire had taken his shining cuirass of plate, and he must gamble on speed. Soon we'd see if it served him. He had his back to me. When he turned his head, I saw his visor was down, the silver face in the beak of the iron gyrfalcon.

They carried away the altar, and two boys ran along the lines of mounted men with painted kites trailing behind them. Wind took the kites and lifted them as high as the birds overhead: the sign of Crux to the south, the sign of Ardor to the north.

The Blood began to roar and beat weapons against shields. The spectators raised their own clamor of whistles, hoots, shrieks, ululations, bellows, chants of praise and mockery. I covered my ears against this uproar and before I knew it—before I was ready, how could I be ready?—the warriors set spurs to their horses and the horses surged forward. I felt the pounding of hooves through the ground, as if the hills were hollow as a drum.

Galan moved when the horses moved, but soon he was left behind and all alone. Some spectators taunted him, calling him a coward, but those of us nearest to him saw clearly that he did not hold back, nor did he hurry. He strolled. The ribbons on the shaft of his scorpion fluttered and the banner of his house snapped in the wind, and he looked, in the arrogance of his grace, as though he set out to cross the king's hall rather than a battleground.

He had walked perhaps a quarter of the way across the field when the two lines of horsemen met in the middle, and I learned what was meant by a mortal tourney.

This time the cataphracts didn't aim to score points—so many for a hit to the helmet, so many to break a lance, so many more for unhorsing a man. This time the hills resounded with the clang of metal against metal instead of the crack of splintering wood. Many men were toppled from their saddles. Horses skidded, fell, thrashed on the ground. The lucky ones—men and horses both—staggered to their feet again. The dead were left lying underfoot, along with those too sorely wounded to help themselves, and at this distance no one could say which was which, not even the farsighted rumormonger. Though we all could see that Sire Choteo of Crux was dead, impaled on a lance through his chest. The melee boiled around them. Horsemasters rode into the field to lead remounts to their masters. They carried mercy daggers to kill the horses too injured to mend. I saw a jack cut down as he tried to drag his master to safety.

The rumormonger sang out the names of the fallen and cried victory for Crux in the charge. We'd lost five men to Ardor's seven, and many in the crowd around me shouted huzzah and waved their green-sprigged caps in the air. But how could the fallen be counted while men were still dying? For the battle hurried on heedless of such victories, swifter by far than a tourney of courtesy.

All this while Galan walked across the field.

There were four cataphracts of Ardor who passed through the charge unscathed and found, on the other side, Galan strolling toward them. Likely they'd come looking for him. I imagine they felt joy, seeing how harmless he looked, this troublesome man.

They converged, three coming from the left flank and one from the right, and each man put spurs to his warhorse, racing to be the one to ride Galan down. The three on the left galloped side by side and nearly neck and neck, and two of their armigers followed some lengths behind. The cat-aphract on the right looked to reach Galan first.

Galan went right. As if he were eager to meet his own death, he ran toward the cataphract bearing down on him. The rider (“Sire Tropel, house of Lamna,” the rumormonger called out) lowered his lance to take Galan in the chest. At the last instant Galan darted across the horse's path and past the lance head, and drove the lance downward with the shaft of his scorpion. The lance plowed into the ground, jolting the horse and shaking Sire Tropel half out of his saddle. Galan hooked him under the arm with the claw of his scorpion and pried him the rest of the way out. The lance fell one way and Sire Tropel another, and in that moment of falling, he left his element and became hapless and awkward. His foot caught in the stirrup and he was dragged along the ground, shouting and flailing. The horse cocked his head to see what was behind him and bolted.

Then Chance peeked under her blindfold and gave Galan a wink, we all saw it. As the stallion swerved, going crabwise to escape his own rider, he crossed the path of the three cataphracts who were still coming for Galan at full tilt. The one on the swiftest horse was ahead by two strides with his lance lowered, and he couldn't pull up in time. He struck Sire Tropel's mount below the withers with such force the lance pierced the stiff leather barding and buried itself in meat and bone, and the two horses collided, and then the other two slammed into them. There was such a thunderclap when they came together, I felt my teeth jar in my head.

A horse heaved himself up and stood with his reins trailing. That left three stallions on the ground in a moil. Sire Tropel's courser had been killed and the other two were hurt. The riders were thrown, winded, maybe wounded, and trapped in their mounts' caparisons as the horses rolled and churned. Galan ran toward them. The wagers were flying, the odds shifting: it looked to be a fairer fight.

Sire Tropel lay under his dead horse. All I could see of him was his helmet and shoulders and an arm so askew it must have been wrenched from its socket. We could tell he was alive because he rolled his head from side to side. When Galan reached him he steadied Sire Tropel's head under one foot and leaned down. Maybe they spoke.