Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (38 page)

More applause snagged his attention as it rippled from the lower pavilions, punctuated with a few cheers as the good burghers of Dremen felt the effects of their refreshments. A grinning novice was galloping the length of the arena with five rings nestled on the neck of his spear; across the lists, his opponent flung his own weapon to the ground in a temper as the trumpeters blew a flourish to signal the end of the round.

Ansel peered over the heads of the Curia to watch the Master of Swords, Master of Horse and Master of Arms conferring at the judges’ table.

‘Come on, come on,’ he muttered. A page appeared at his elbow to offer him a goblet of wine, but he waved the boy way. At last the three Masters completed the draw for the next round and handed the sheet of paper to the herald to announce. ‘Finally!’

He dismissed most of the names until he heard the one he was listening for. Selsen had been drawn against the boy who had won the final heat, and they would compete last.

More agony for his nerves. Waiting. Hoping. Knowing Selsen would do well, having observed the preceding two days’ events, but worrying nonetheless. Worrying most of all that his concern would show on his face, for it would never do for the Preceptor of the Order to display favouritism. He could not afford to, not at any cost.

In the end, he needn’t have fretted. Selsen survived that round and the next two and recovered from a heartstopping stumble in the final, when the horse lost its footing in the churned turf at the third turn, to win the event by a nose.

Relieved, Ansel sat back in his chair to watch the victor’s parade around the lists. Spear-butt propped on toes and the five brass rings chiming to the rhythm of the horse’s trot, Selsen nodded graciously to the applause whilst the other novices clustered at the paddock rail whistled and punched the air.

Ansel couldn’t help but smile. Selsen’s easy grin had won more than a few friends at the Motherhouse. The lack of a voice had proved no barrier; in fact several of the novices had asked to be taught some thieftalk, much to the consternation of the novice-master who could not find a way to punish them for speaking in the refectory when they hadn’t actually made a sound. As Preceptor he’d had to take a hand to enforce the silent contemplation of the Goddess’s bounty on the table, but he’d been hard pressed not to laugh.

‘See, Ansel?’ Danilar prodded his knee. ‘Didn’t I say the boy would do well? The Daughterhouse at Caer Amon can be proud of that one.’

‘Aye, and his mother too, I reckon.’
Selsen owes it all to you, Jenara. You had the raising of that splendid child. How I wish you could be here today!

In the lists the tilt-marshals prepared the ground for the final event, trundling heavy rollers up and down the hoof-marked turf and moving racks of blunted ash lances into position, but Ansel didn’t see them. All he could see was a sunlit cobbled courtyard with wild roses on the wall, and a little girl in a yellow dress hanging daisy chains around his neck.

Jenara. He hadn’t let himself say her name, hadn’t let himself even think it, in so long. It still sounded like music, even in his mind.

‘Will she be here to see him take his spurs, d’you think?’ Elder Festan, in the row below, had twisted around in his seat.

‘The Superior at Caer Amon tells me Selsen’s mother took holy orders some years ago,’ said Ansel. ‘The Tamasians, I believe, on Sanctuary Isle.’

‘The leper colony?’ Festan made the sign of blessing. ‘I suppose she won’t, then.’

‘Did you know her well, Preceptor?’ asked Ceinan, from further along the row. A hint of a smile played around his lean features. ‘You appear keen to see her son succeed today.’

Just what do you think you know?
‘I am keen to see any gifted novice do well, Elder,’ he said casually. ‘Selsen will be an asset to our Order.’

‘I’m sure he will.’ Ceinan’s voice was smooth as buttered silk. He looked down at his sleeve and brushed away a speck of something too small to see. ‘I thought perhaps you had some connection to the boy.’

The day’s sunshine lost all its warmth.

‘Connection?’ Ansel asked.

‘That he was a relative.’ When Ceinan looked up again, his pale-blue eyes were veiled with innocence. ‘A son, perhaps.’

And there it is
.

Several shocked Elders stared back over their shoulders, open-mouthed and glassy-eyed as fish on a slab.

Danilar recovered fastest. ‘Elder Ceinan, that is an outrageous suggestion! How dare you imply—’

Ansel reached out a hand and gripped the Chaplain’s shoulder, silencing him. ‘No, Elder. That novice is no son of mine.’ He spoke clearly, calmly, but couldn’t resist adding, ‘Although his mother has seen me naked.’

‘Preceptor?’ Festan spluttered.

Ansel forged on, as more and more Elders turned to watch. ‘Yes, and more than once. She ran a hospital for the Order during the desert wars. I had a broken arm, badly set by the field surgeon. She rebroke it and set it straight for me. Thanks to her I could still couch a lance at Samarak, so in a way she saved my life. When Selsen was of an age to join the novitiate, the least I could do was find a place for the child.’

He stared at Ceinan, waiting for a reaction, but the Dremenirian’s mastery of his expression was absolute. Not so much as an eyebrow twitched.

‘It appears I am misinformed,’ he said and inclined his head. Politeness, not apology.

‘Apparently you are.’

Ansel turned back to face the lists, giving a quick shake of his head in answer to Danilar’s anxious frown. He would not take this further, though the Elder was straying perilously close to a charge of Curial misconduct. Best to let it lie for now, and allow the tourney to play out. There was too much at stake to permit himself to be goaded, too much that could still go wrong. Soon enough, Goddess willing, it would cease to matter.

Nonetheless it worried him that Ceinan had tried to trip him so blatantly, so publicly. It must have been misdirection, a colourful lure to hook his eye whilst the assassin’s blade slid home from the other side. The executioner’s stroke – when would that come? Or had Goran’s arrest deprived Ceinan of his cat’s paw and driven him to act in the open instead of at one remove?

Goddess, his brain was as twisted up and useless as his arthritic hands. He couldn’t think it through. His heart raced to keep pace with his thoughts as he stared unseeing at the advancing herald, the two trumpeters raising their instruments for the fanfare that would signal the final event.

Ceinan had always been the one to watch. Ansel should never have allowed himself to become so focused on Goran. However lofty the man’s ambitions or how heinous his sins, that fat deviant had never been a real threat to the Preceptorship. Ceinan, now – he was another kettle of herring entirely.
What does he know?

The silvery flourish of the trumpets jolted him from his brooding and he dropped the thread of his thoughts. Whatever the Dremenirian fox had planned, it was too late to worry about it now. The joust was about to begin.

At the end of the lists to the left waited the Order’s first champion, anonymous in a white and gold surcoat over unadorned plate, his shield plain, his visor down. Traditionally, the novices never knew who they would face in the lists on this day. Their opponent was drawn by lot from the ranks of full Knights present at the Motherhouse; in times past, even the Preceptor could be drawn for this duty, when the incumbent was still hale enough for tilting. Some were betrayed by their height or breadth, their manner of sitting a horse, but in most cases all the young Knight-to-be knew was that they faced one of the best the Suvaeon could field, and he had to measure himself against that standard.

From the right came the first challenger, already helmed, reining his restive horse into position. Around his right upper arm was tied a coloured ribbon to identify him to the judges and the eager spectators. Liveried tilt-marshals did duty as squires, checking the combatants’ gear was properly secured and handing each man a lance before scuttling to safety behind the Oak-painted hoardings.

Even though the rider was not Selsen, Ansel couldn’t help but lean forward in his seat as he waited for the signal. The crowd had fallen silent, only the snapping banners giving the lie to the feeling that the world was holding its breath.

Grinning fit to burst, the Order’s master farrier brought his hammer down on the anvil across the lists from the judges’ table with a mighty clang, and the two combatants surged forward.

In a handful of strides the horses were at a rolling canter. Two lances swept down to the couch. Two shoulders tensed and blunt coronals crashed into shields to a chorus of cheers from the crowd. Both combatants swayed but retained their seats, trotting back into position to receive a fresh lance from the marshals.

Clang!
The second pass jolted the novice hard in the saddle, the boy mistiming his thrust so his lance-head glanced off the Knight’s shield in a shower of paint-flecks. The third all but unseated him; he had to drop his lance and hold tight to the saddle bow to keep his seat.

On it went into the afternoon, clangs and crashes and thundering hooves, roars of appreciation and gasps of dismay. Ansel saw four novices unhorsed, including one youth helped to the hospital tent with a badly broken arm, before the youngsters got their own back with a decisive unhorsing of their own.

‘Who was that?’ he asked, applauding vigorously as the discomfited Knight collected the reins of his mount and the victor took the acclamation of the crowd with a florid bow from the saddle.

Danilar squinted at the youth’s green ribbon. ‘Berengir,’ he said. ‘Top of the group for sword afoot, and young Selsen’s greatest rival for the oak leaves.’

The cluster of oak leaves was awarded to the most promising young Knight in the final year of the novitiate. Many recipients went on to be First Knight, in time. Ansel tried not to let himself hope too hard that Selsen might be one of them.

‘He’s good. That’s a seasoned Knight he just dumped on his arse.’

Danilar snorted. ‘He knows it, too. A little more humility wouldn’t go amiss there.’

‘His vigil tonight might teach him some. Sunset to sunrise is a long time to spend caught between the Goddess and your own thoughts.’

The crowd sucked in a collective breath as the next novice to tilt was all but unhorsed by an impact that shattered both lances into cartwheeling fragments. His reprieve was brief; the subsequent exchange ended with the Knight victorious and an unconscious novice carried off to the physicians.

‘This waiting is thirsty work,’ Ansel muttered, looking around for the hovering page. The liveried youth brought goblets and wine and the Preceptor shifted yet again on his pillows to find relief from the constant nagging in his joints.

Danilar eyed him over the rim of his own goblet. ‘Painful?’

‘It’s been a long day, and I’m a day older than I was yesterday.’

Ansel paused. A new novice had entered the lists, even before the tilt-marshals had finished clearing up the splinters from the previous bout. Stockily built, cramming a helm over sandy hair with an arm tied with a blue ribbon and a white.

You should be here now, Jenara. You would burst with pride
.

‘See?’ Danilar murmured. ‘Cool as you please.’

Ansel’s mouth was dry. He wanted to swallow but he had no spit, and he couldn’t move his arm to raise the wine to his lips. He could only stare.

Selsen looked every inch a Knight, sitting the horse easily, sighting down the lance the marshal handed up to ascertain whether it was as true as fourteen feet of tapered ash pole could be. The novice paid no attention to the crowd, by now so well refreshed they happily cheered anyone who entered the lists, whoever they were. Once the customary courtesies had been given, Selsen took position and waited as if there was no one else on the field.

‘Goddess keep you,’ Ansel breathed, then the farrier’s hammer came down.

Selsen’s bay horse leapt forward, quickly hitting its stride as the Knight raced up from the far end of the lists. With the crowd now silent, Ansel heard the drumming hooves, the creak of harness, and timed the run in his head as if he had the horse between his own knees.
Kick him on now
. The bay stretched into a gallop.
Fifteen yards and couch
. Smoothly the lance swept down, butt tucked beneath Selsen’s arm.
Now brace!

Selsen shifted forward to meet the charging Knight. Blunted spear-heads crashed into waiting shields and with whip-crack reports the two lances shattered. The crowd roared like some wounded beast, spectators surging to their feet. Whistles shrilled from the watching novices in the paddock and Ansel exhaled noisily. He hadn’t even been aware he was holding his breath.

Both challenger and champion discarded the useless truncheons and collected new lances from the marshals as they reined their mounts around for the second pass. On both shields the painted Oak was scored and dimpled, testament to the force with which the four-pronged coronals had struck.

‘He takes it well, eh, Preceptor?’ said Festan, twisting in his seat. ‘Oh to be that age again.’

‘Thirty years younger and a hundred pounds lighter!’ chortled another Elder, patting his ample belly, and set the whole row to cackling.

Ansel gripped the arm of his seat with his free hand as the marshals cleared the field and the farrier raised his hammer. Knight and novice waited, separated by less than a furlong of hoof-pocked turf. Hammer met anvil, spurs touched hide and the second charge began.

Again Ansel watched Selsen time the run perfectly and strike true. So too did the Knight, and the impact rocked them both in their saddles. Lances shivered but did not break, to gasps from the spectators that quickly became a cheer. Both combatants took new lances and reined their blowing horses into position for the final course.

Danilar gripped Ansel’s arm. ‘Don’t look so anxious, old friend. He’ll do fine.’

‘Does it show?’ he asked.

‘Just a little.’

Ansel took a swig of wine to steady himself. ‘I’m proud of this one, Danilar. Truly.’ Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ceinan’s head turn to listen and did not care.
Let him think what he wishes
.