For King & Country (26 page)

They rounded the great curve at the far end of the central spine, cantering around and down the homestretch, past cheering Britons, a handful of sneering Saxons, and the royal pavilion where Morgana and the flower of Briton royalty sat, the former, at least, as still and white as an ancient marble masterpiece. Her fear, Stirling realized, was as much for Ancelotis, her brother-in-law, as it was for a necessary show of strength before the Saxons. They flashed past the terminus of the central spine and Ancelotis reined around to face the far curve once more, moving his dancing charger sideways until the animal stood more or less in place at the right-hand side of the low spine. Cutha had reined around as well, heading at a gallop for the far curve, where he took up a similar position.

It was to be a joust in fine medieval style, but with critical differences. Both men readied lances, shafts of seasoned ash a full five feet long with wicked iron points that added another seven inches to the weapon's length. But unlike medieval lances of later centuries, these featured no hand guards, no bell-like flare to help brace one's grip. Ancelotis tucked the butt end under one arm, securing it as snugly as possible while using hand and wrist to point the tip toward Cutha—no easy feat, given the weight of the weapon. Neither he nor Cutha wore armor that would even begin to deflect such a lance's point, driven at full power by a charging war-horse. It was abruptly all too clear why men had died at this sport, even when protected by the heavy plate armor of "classical" tournaments of knights. In a.d. 500, the very concept of "knights" had yet to be invented.

The Scots king lifted his shield to protect his torso, draping the reins loosely across the front of his saddle. With a skill that bespoke years of practice, he guided the massive war-horse with knees, legs, and feet alone. They were in position now, weapons at the ready. Stirling tensed, waiting for the signal. The bruised sky flickered with lighting, like bubbling pots and cauldrons in the sky. Wind blasted through the arena and hurled cold droplets against his face, the first spatter of what promised to be a deluge very soon.

Trumpets screamed at Stirling's back.

Ancelotis and Cutha kicked their horses into a thundering gallop. The central spine whipped past, a blurred red snake in Stirling's peripheral vision. They crouched low behind shields, lances held like battering rams. Closer... closer still...

The shock of concussion nearly unseated Stirling.

He came several inches out of the saddle, both arms almost numb. Without stirrups, he'd have landed flat on the ground. Cutha's lance had struck his shield a glancing blow, failing to bite solidly into the wood. His own spear had smashed into Cutha's shield with such force the collision slammed the young Saxon nearly a foot backwards. Lacking stirrups, Cutha toppled right off his horse's backside, dragging Ancelotis' spear with him. With its point deeply embedded in Cutha's shield, the long shaft dragged at his arm, hindering him as Cutha staggered to his feet on the arena floor.

Stirling's surge of confidence was short-lived, however. Even as the Briton crowd roared approval, delighted at the Saxon's early downfall, Cutha tossed the encumbered shield aside, scrambled to recapture his horse, and vaulted back into the saddle. The man detailed to assist him raced forward with a second shield, then put booted foot on the other one and yanked out Ancelotis' spear, handing it up to Cutha. Ancelotis snarled under his breath, but his own man, Gilroy, had already reached his side, handing up two Roman-style
pila
to add to the one he still carried. The javelinlike weapon was not as useful for cavalry work as the long, heavy lance, but Stirling was quite happy to postpone hand-to-hand fighting as long as possible, given the state of sixth-century medical care.

They made a second thunderous charge.

Ancelotis leaned low over his horse's flying mane, one
pilum
in his right hand, the other two resting in the socket on the saddle that had held the lance now in Cutha's grip. They were still several meters apart when Ancelotis hurled the first
pilum.
Stirling was about to shout
you bloody idiot!
—and other, less civilized epithets—when Cutha's shield jerked abruptly down. The
pilum
's long, soft-iron neck had bent downward, dragging at the shield just as heavily as the lance had. Distracted, Cutha's lance point wobbled slightly off course—and completely prevented him from seeing Ancelotis' next move.

Using knees and thighs, the Scots king urged his charger slightly to the right, in a shallow swing out of range of the unsteady lance point, which passed harmlessly by Ancelotis' shoulder. The clean miss upset Cutha's balance, braced as he was for the shock of collision. The lance was considerably longer than the
pilum,
which meant that Cutha's missed blow, due to arrive at Ancelotis' shield at least a full horse's length before the two horses drew even, left plenty of time for the Scots king to hurl both his second and third
pila
into the Saxon's shield, dragging Cutha even further off balance.

The Saxon prince sprawled in the dust a second time.

His lance shaft snapped under the impact.

The Britons in the stands went wild.

With both lances—Cutha's own and Ancelotis'—shattered and two shields damaged, Cutha was left on foot with one remaining shield, his sword, and a fighting axe. Ancelotis turned his mount and thundered down the track in a long, outward swing toward the stands while Cutha was still on the ground, staggering and trying to reach his horse. Ancelotis then swept across in a sharp one-eighty-degree turn and urged his massive war-horse to jump the central spine. The stallion's quarters bunched, then they were airborne, momentum and the animal's powerful muscles driving them straight across the sandstone barrier and—not coincidentally—straight into Cutha's still riderless mount.

The Saxon horse screamed in alarm and shied violently to one side, thus preventing collision by a matter of centimeters. Cutha, in the act of vaulting into the saddle from the other side, went down with a smashing blow from his own horse's shoulder. He rolled frantically out from under thrashing hooves, blistering the air with Saxon curses. The Scots king brought his charger around in a spinning turn worthy of an American cowhand, drawing his sword in the same instant. They plunged toward Cutha's already-shaken mount. Ancelotis shouted a blood-curdling string of Briton curses and swung his sword in a circle around his head. Cutha's poor horse gave another scream and kicked at his infuriated owner in sheer terror, then bolted and ran, leaving the enraged Saxon prince on foot and spitting curses of his own. The glare he turned on Ancelotis made Stirling's blood freeze.

The Saxon drew sword and war axe, gripping the latter in his shield hand. Cutha's assistant was frantically dragging iron points out of Cutha's shield, lunging and tossing the shield to the Saxon prince like a frisbee. Cutha clutched his axe in his teeth and caught the shield in a movement that would've broken Stirling's wrist, if he'd tried it. Lightning split the sky as Cutha thrust his axe into his belt and banged the flat of his sword against his shield, an invitation to mayhem. Thunder rolled across the arena, slapping up against the sandstone walls and reverberating back into Stirling's face, an avalanche of sound, with him buried at the bottom.

Ancelotis charged before the last echoing peals had died away. He swung mightily at Cutha's shield. Cutha dodged the blow, leaving Ancelotis out of position. The Saxon whirled around, faster on his feet than the Briton king's war-horse, which was already trying to pivot and strike. Out of position, neither Stirling nor Ancelotis saw it coming. One moment, the Briton king was turning his charger with knees and thighs—and the next, Cutha was underfoot, hooking the edge of his shield under Ancelotis' leg and wrenching upward.

The Scots king lost his stirrup, his balance, and his horse.

The bloody horse's back was taller than Stirling was.

It was a long,
long
way to the ground.

The landing jarred him so badly, Stirling couldn't draw breath for several critical seconds. Ancelotis' sword went flying from a numbed elbow, the abused joint having been driven into the ground with terrific force. The only thing that saved him from Cutha's sword at his throat was Ancelotis' Briton-bred war-horse. Trained for battle, the massive horse screamed a warning at the Saxon, biting and rearing threateningly, hooves the size of dinner plates lashing out like pile drivers.

Cutha was forced to scramble backwards, unable to get past those hooves and teeth without a lance or even a javelin and unable to maneuver fast enough to strike with his sword. The Saxon retreated, which gave Ancelotis time to drag himself to his feet. He hunted for his sword, couldn't see it anywhere in the sand, wondered with a chill if Cutha had snatched it up, then spotted it. The weapon had clattered onto the raised sandstone of the central spine.

Spitting curses, Ancelotis faced down the Saxon, who retained shield, sword, and axe, while Ancelotis was shieldless and weaponless. A frisson of real fear skittered through Ancelotis' gut, an eerie and unpleasant echo of the lightning overhead, which seethed like volcanic vents amongst the clouds. When Stirling looked into Cutha's eyes, he saw death leering back at him. Breathing heavily but grinning in supreme confidence now, Cutha charged, forcing Ancelotis backward, toward the sandstone barrier. He ducked the swing of Cutha's sword and scrambled away from the central spine, which lay at his back like a sandstone trap. Ancelotis danced out into the open, where he had more room to maneuver, and faced the Saxon again.

Cutha's second charge was a feint that lured Ancelotis off guard, but only for an instant; the Scots king was as agile as a wildcat, turning and skidding to get his feet under him again while avoiding the lethal reach of the Saxon's sword. A bone-deep ache stung one shoulder from a nasty blow from the edge of Cutha's shield. When Cutha drove straight toward him again, sword point thrusting straight for his throat and the killing blow, Ancelotis hesitated for a fraction of a second—

—and Stirling's close-combat reflexes took over.

He dove forward in a snap-roll that took Cutha completely by surprise and carried Stirling under the Saxon's swing. On the way past, he swept Cutha's ankles out from under him, knocking him flat even as Stirling came to his feet again. The Saxon, astonished by the move, rolled over and surged upwards, face flushing an angry red. Stirling not only sidestepped Cutha's off-balance blow, he applied just the slightest amount of leverage to that outstretched arm.

The aikido move, practiced hundreds of times in SAS training sessions, sent the Saxon airborne, careening out of control toward the arena's wall. Cutha lost his sword in the process and the edge of his shield dug into the sand, flipping him onto his back, like a stunned beetle. Ancelotis crushed the Saxon's shield wrist under one foot, scooped the sword up from the dirt, laid the point at Cutha's throat, and said softly, "It looks as though you must yield or die, Saxon."

Completing the Saxon's ignominious defeat, the sky chose that moment to crack wide open. Icy rain drenched them to the skin. Mud spattered Cutha's face where he sprawled under Ancelotis' foot. The defeated prince snarled at him, a truly hideous curse, but made no effort to rise. The Briton crowd had gone wild, rivaling the thunder with their roars of delight. Cutha's humiliation inspired a veritable hailstorm of coins, headgear, colorful snippets of plaid, even muddy shoes, which rained down onto the arena track.

Stirling slipped Cutha's war axe from his belt, then stepped back, allowing Cutha to rise. He smiled tightly. "I believe I'll keep this"—he hefted the axe—"for remembrance. You're welcome to your sword and shields. I've no use for weapons of inferior quality." He tossed the sword aside, where it landed in the mud with a splat.

Cutha's already crimson face went deadly purple. The veins in his neck stood out in stark relief, pulsing with the man's fury. "
Filthy cur!
" the Saxon snarled as he came to his feet. "Insult
me
with your open hand, will you? By Woden's spear,
you will regret this day
!"

"I seriously doubt it," Stirling replied with a lazy drawl.

Only then did Stirling belatedly notice Ancelotis' shock at the swiftness and arcane mystery of Cutha's defeat, when Ancelotis had actually expected to be spitted on the end of Cutha's sword. Clearly, nobody in the sixth century had ever seen the relatively simple close-combat and martial-arts moves he'd just used.
How did you
do
that, man?
Ancelotis demanded in childlike delight.
You must teach me more of this fighting style, Stirling of Caer-Iudeu!

Stirling groaned, realizing too late just how seriously he'd screwed up—again. If Brenna McEgan sat somewhere in that howling crowd of ecstatic, rain-drenched spectators—and he couldn't imagine that she
wasn't—
then he'd just given himself away in the stupidest, most boneheaded
public
display of twenty-first-century origins imaginable. Of course, it had seemed rather more important at the time to avoid having Cutha's sword jabbed through his intimate anatomy... .

Perhaps there would be a silver lining to this mess? The only one he could remotely imagine was that Cedric Banning might come forward, giving Stirling an ally. All in all, it had been a bloody stupid thing to do, an attitude which puzzled Ancelotis no end. Cutha gave him a stiff, formal bow and stalked away, limping visibly. He collected his horse, leading it out of the arena by way of the starting gates. He plucked his sword from the mud on his way.

Stirling was left wondering what to do next, so Ancelotis retrieved his own sword, thrust the Saxon's beautifully inlaid war axe through his belt, then rounded up his charger and mounted, moving somewhat stiffly, as bruises were already making themselves felt in a variety of places. Climbing the rain-slick steps to the royal pavilion required careful concentration to avoid falling flat and bouncing all the way down. The awning had kept the worst of the rain off, although Ganhumara wore a sullen look that boded ill for the laundress or fuller given the task of repairing rain damage to the silk he could see layered beneath her flame-colored wool.