Dragonheart (2 page)

“Noble . . . ?” Bowen’s scowl curled into a sneer of contempt. “Crushing desperate, frightened men . . .”

“Traitorous scum!” Brok corrected Bowen. His horse snorted nervously at the sharp snap of his voice. “The king commands! Bring him! . . . You can watch too, nursemaid.”

The sour grin was back. Brok whipped his horse and rode off with his men into a splash of setting sun. Bowen turned and walked to where his and Einon’s mounts were tethered to a piece of decaying timber. Taking the tunic flung over his saddle, he started to pull it on.

“Why do you let him insult you like that?” Einon’s voice tensed in hurt agitation. “You, a knight of the Old Code! You’re not afraid of him!”

“Nor of his opinions.” Bowen laughed. His head poked through the neck of his jerkin with a shake of his unkempt mane. He’d already proven himself against Brok. They both had vied to be the prince’s mentor. Freyne’s choice of Brok would have gone unchallenged had it not been for Queen Aislinn. She had wanted Bowen. She had wanted a knight of the Old Code. Freyne had only agreed to a competition because he thought Brok would defeat the young knight who had lately come into his service in the trial by combat. Freyne had been wrong. By rights, Bowen could have killed Brok that day. But he let him live. Brok would never forgive him for it.

Bowen threw on his leather surcoat. As he belted it he caught Einon staring glumly at its emblem—a silver sword, hilt up, within a golden circle. He wanted the boy to respect the symbol, not be disappointed in it. He had taught him the words: “Inside the table’s circle, under the sacred sword . . .” But Einon was still a boy, and words were subtle things, and boys didn’t appreciate subtleties. Honor is honor. And an insult an insult. And it must not go unanswered. Bowen gave the only answer he could, knowing it would not satisfy.

“I expect no less of Brok. He is the king’s man.” The distaste in his voice was too obvious, as Bowen well knew. He saw it register in Einon’s uneasy frown. Hard to be the son of a barbaric tyrant. Hard to serve one. The boy caught him looking at him and managed a smile.

“When I am king, you will be my man, Bowen.”

“I am already your man, my prince.” Bowen clapped the lad warmly on the shoulder and helped him into the saddle.

The shriek of battle shattered the night. Clanking steel and shouting men and groaning horses clamored in a cacophony of violence and death.

Gray smoke smudged the black sky. Fire tinged it blood red. Out of the slate-and-crimson haze flared a glint of gold. A crown. Spiraling to the ground. Into the mud and blood.

Feet scrambled past it. Stomping hooves nearly trampled it. A body careened down next to it. An armored knight. Emblazoned on his surcoat was a dragon’s head impaled on a sword. As he collapsed, mud splattered across it, mingling with the blood that was already there. Blood also trickled from his mouth, flecking his beard. King Freyne had been struck a mortal blow. He was dying.

But even in his death throes, his glazed eyes spied the crown. His gauntleted fingers clutched for the golden orb, falling limp just short of it. His eyes stared vacantly at the unreached goal. His mouth went slack, a gurgle of blood bubbling on his lips. The king was dead.

“Father!” Einon’s wild wail pierced the battle din as he whipped his mount through the carnage of the field. Armored warriors clashed against a motley rabble whose only weapons were crude farm implements. A scythe, wielded by a red-bearded peasant giant, had sliced Einon’s father from the saddle. Einon had witnessed it all from the safety of a hillock above the fray. Bowen had insisted they watch from there . . . and watch only, though Einon had longed to be in the thick of things, if for no other reason than to see Bowen in action. He was the best swordsman of all the knights. The best, and the least liked. Einon attributed it to envy, but he also knew they could not stomach Bowen’s pristine disdain for their ways. It was the same disdain he felt for this battle. Still, he should have been down there. If Bowen’s blade had been at the king’s side, the red-bearded dog of a rebel would have never cut him down.

He knew Bowen was somewhere behind him. He had heard the knight shout after him when he spurred his horse down the hill. But Einon had lost his mentor in the confusion. He was glad—Bowen would only steer him to safety again, and he had to get to his father.

Einon galloped through a veil of smoke, surging past blades and bodies to the spot where the fallen king lay. Dismounting, he scrambled to his father, laying a hand to his breast . . . and with a shudder pulling it back, covered in blood. Stunned, Einon stared from his hand to his father and then . . . to the crown.

It lay an arm’s length away, catching firelight and spraying it back. The glinting spokes of light that emanated from it like golden fingers dazzled Einon, seeming to beckon to him. Trembling, he reached over the limp corpse of his father to pluck the golden chaplet from the mud.

It made a sucking slurp as Einon pulled it loose. It felt heavier than he had expected. As he lifted it to himself, metal-encased fingers suddenly clamped onto the circlet and yanked it . . .

. . . down! Einon went with it and found himself staring through the golden ring of the crown into the fierce eyes of his father! Alive and determined. Startled, Einon instinctively jerked back. The crown came with him. Freyne clutched for it possessively, but Einon swung it from his reach. Freyne’s fingers convulsively clawed at the air for a moment, then his outstretched arm fluttered and flopped onto his chest. A hoarse rattle seeped from his bloody lips and his eyes gazed at his heir in deathly astonishment.

Einon pulled back from his dead father. He realized he was still holding the crown aloft. Again, flamelight flickered across it, making it burn brightly in his hand. Then a hulking shadow behind him snuffed out the glow.

“The pig’s brat. Come to wallow in the mud with his father.”

Einon turned. A lean, sinewy giant hovered over him. The rebel’s hair and beard were the color of the blood that dripped from his scythe, He was flanked by a barrel-chested bear of a man who wore a blood-soaked rag tied over his left eye and a gangly youth perhaps a few years older than Einon. The youth wore a bucket on his head with one side cut out as a crude helmet and watched the red beard in nervous uncertainty. Others crowded behind them.

“Thank Riagon, piglet.” The one-eyed bear sneered. “His stroke made you king.” This elicited laughter from several of the others.

“Hush, Hewe!” Riagon commanded. His eyes were hard and hateful and bore into Einon. “My stroke will unmake you.”

Riagon the red beard raised his scythe. Einon cringed. From the corner of his eye, he saw Buckethead squeamishly turn away. Einon wished he could do the same, but his eyes were transfixed by the stained blade above him. Stained with the blood of his father. As Einon watched death arc down at him he suddenly felt himself catapulted backward; the scythe swooped past his head, carving only a jagged slice across his hand. Einon winced at the sting and the crown went flying from his fingers. But miraculously he was alive. Alive and ahorse! Bowen, grim determination distorting his handsome features, hauled the boy into the saddle behind him and whirled to meet the swishing scythe of the red beard.

He nimbly ducked the swirling blade, grabbed the shaft of the scythe, and with a rough jerk, cracked Red Beard under the jaw with the blunt end. The rebel lost his grasp on the scythe and staggered into the arms of Buckethead, driving them both to the ground, dazed.

“Only expose your back to a corpse!” Bowen growled at Einon as Hewe the Bear charged him. “Will you never learn?”

Hewe’s barrel chest collided with the heel of Bowen’s thrusted boot, which sent the peasant lurching back. Not forgetting his charge, Bowen continued his lecture, even as he clouted another rebel with the dull end of the scythe. “Do you forget everything I teach you?”

“Don’t teach! Show! Kill the scum!” Einon screeched, his temper exploding in the aftermath of his grief and fear and the quivering humiliation of his own near death. He snatched the scythe from Bowen and wildly swung at another attacker. Bowen grabbed the weapon back and swatted the peasant with the shaft.

“I don’t need to kill them!” Bowen sharply admonished, and flinging the scythe away, spurred his horse out of the melee and across the field.

Bowen whipped his horse up the hillock under the spectral shadow of a dead tree. Reining the steed, he leapt off and turned to Einon, still ahorse, anxiously examining the boy’s cut hand.

“Are you all right? Do I waste my breath on you?” Bowen’s angry reproof could not hide the tense concern in his voice. “Use your head—”

“—or lose my head,” Einon timidly recited the rule, like a chastened schoolboy. It did not soften Bowen’s stern sermon.

“And your first battle will be your last . . . if you call this bloodletting a battle!”

Bowen spat contemptuously, glaring down on the field. The peasants were determined fighters, but woefully outmatched. The king’s men were slowly devastating them. He turned away in disgust to find Einon gazing at him in curious confusion. The boy spoke quietly, with both familiarity and deference.

“Is that why you do not fight, Bowen?”

Bowen’s glare melted into a smile, then a hearty laugh.

“What did you think that was back there, little warrior?”

“I mean with this!” Einon leaned over in the saddle and, grabbing the hilt of Bowen’s sword, yanked it from his belt, holding it aloft in boyish admiration. “Yours is the finest blade on the field!”

“Too fine to foul with the blood of helpless men.” Bowen tore off a piece of his tunic sleeve and wiped at the bloody cut on Einon’s hand. The boy winced. “My blade serves your safety, Prince, not your father’s slaughters.”

“He
was
my father, Bowen.” Einon faltered, his tone quiet and hurt. “And he was . . . the king.”

Bowen accepted the gentle rebuke in silent chagrin. In the chaotic fury of the last moments he had forgotten the boy’s grief, and it seemed that Einon had too. But Bowen’s thoughtless remark had pierced the wound afresh. Einon’s lip trembled as he tried to hold back tears.

“You
are king now.” Bowen spoke comfortingly, gently wiping away the tears with the bloody rag. “Be brave, Einon. Remember today. Remember the difference between battle and butchery. And remember the Old Code. Restore its forgotten glory so that the crown will shine with honor once more and never again will men have to take up arms against it. Then you will be a greater king than your father.”

Bowen turned back to the raging battle with weary eyes. Silhouettes of clashing men flashed out against the dark and smoke, framed in firelight.

“I promise, Bowen, I will be greater. And no one will take arms against
my
crown.”

A strange, harsh lilt in the boy’s voice made Bowen turn to him. For the briefest instant he imagined a dark glint in Einon’s gaze. But it must have been night shadows and fire glare. For Einon’s eyes suddenly bulged in startled remembrance.

“The crown!” he gasped, startled as if by sudden remembrance.

“—will do you no good without a head to plop it on!” Bowen grabbed the horse’s reins, anticipating Einon’s intention before he could act on it. He would not have the boy hurt—or tainted—in the bloody brawl below. “Victory—such as it is—before the spoils, my prince.”

“Your king!”
Einon coolly corrected his mentor. “I want what is mine!”

Still holding Bowen’s sword, he slapped his blade flat against the horse’s haunch. The stallion whinnied and reared, tearing the reins from Bowen’s hands.

“Einon!” Bowen’s shout was smothered under the pounding hooves of the horse as Einon whipped it down the hill to the fray.

Through the smoky haze, Bowen spied Einon riding for the corpse of his father, still sprawled in the mud. He had sped down the hill after him and onto the field. Though weaponless, he had encountered little opposition. The king’s men had the rebels in rout and most of the peasants gave an armored knight wide berth. One fool had come at him with a quarterstaff, only to have it wrenched from his hand and to be knocked breathless when it was thrust into his gut. Another had swung at him with a knife. Bowen had easily ducked the blow and run on.

He still ran as he watched Einon ride toward the crown perched on its side in the sloshy earth. Einon leaned low in the saddle, thrusting out Bowen’s sword to scoop up the prize, The circlet looped the blade.

“Einon!”

Bowen’s cry came too late. A gangly body, helmeted in a bucket, sprang off a small rise above Einon onto the horse. Bowen’s sword flew from Einon’s grasp and, still ringed by the crown, embedded itself into the ground. The two boys spilled into the mud, a jumble of arms and legs. The bucket helmet clattered off Einon’s attacker, who flopped facedown, a cascade of red hair falling to his shoulders. First to his feet, Einon lunged for Bowen’s still-vibrating sword, its point fixed in the ground.

Buckethead shook his red locks and whirled toward the blade. The rebel had his back to Bowen as the knight rapidly covered the distance between himself and the youths. From over the boy’s shoulder Bowen saw Einon grab the sword hilt, then suddenly hesitate as he turned toward his enemy, jaw dropping in surprise, as . . .