Raven Flight (32 page)

The games went on. What we had seen was only the start of it. It became plain to me that there were few bouts or contests here that were not devised as punishment for those who had offended the king. The events grew more and more brutal as the day progressed, a sequence of cruelly devised entertainments that saw folk hobbling from the field with terrible injuries, the kind of hurts that would blight the whole of their lives. Craftsmen with fingers gone. Archers blinded. Horsemen crippled. It came to me that Keldec was not only evil, he was deranged. When I could no longer bear to look at the games, I watched him, and I saw how often he bent to seek the queen’s opinion, and only decided one way or another after she had whispered in his ear. I saw too that the man who had performed the trick with fire now sat on Queen Varda’s other side, and spoke to her often as if he were a trusted confidant.

There were other kinds of hurt on show, other kinds of atrocity. Taunting, humiliation, mockery. The requirement to insult or damage a loved one publicly in order to avoid a worse punishment. The requirement to stay quiet and compliant as a friend or family member was assaulted.

Eventually came a break for everyone to take food
and drink. There were communal privies out in the camping area, and some folk were going out to use them. I was sorely tempted to follow them and run for the forest. Every instinct urged me to flee this charnel house. But there would be no escape; the river mouth was in full view from the sentry point in the Summerfort tower, and there was no way I could cross without being spotted. One woman heading in the wrong direction would be immediately noticed and brought back to account for herself.

The friendly young man offered me a share of his provisions, and I accepted some bread and cheese, but found I could not eat. After the meal, the official announced that the next event was a fight between two Enforcers. My tight belly relaxed a little. This, surely, would be a straightforward display of strength and skill, a reminder to us all of the power the king held in his fist.

I knew the king’s men were ruthless. They were dedicated to the task. I had seen them as they swept down on Darkwater, bringing death and destruction. I had not seen them pitted one against another like this. Their movements had an economy of style, a fluid control that made their bout a deadly dance. Short sword and knife flashed in the sunlight; it was both beautiful and terrible to behold. How had my brother, fourteen years old, untrained in fighting and armed with a homemade spear, managed to stand up to the king’s men even for an instant?

Both combatants wore the emblem of Seal Troop; they were comrades. Perhaps that was why the bout stretched out so long, with the skill and strength of the fighters
making it near impossible for either to prevail. Caught up in the excitement, the people around me shouted, cheered, groaned when one or the other combatant was forced to give ground or release a punishing hold. But not the watching Enforcers. I’d have thought fighting men might lay wagers on such a contest; at the very least, I would have expected them to be yelling encouragement with the rest. But they were uniformly grim and silent.

It went on and on, and as it progressed, the crowd grew quieter too. Both fighters were flagging; soon, surely, one must make a small error of judgment and lose a weapon or fall to his knees in surrender. They’d already stayed on their feet and in possession of their weapons for far longer than I’d expected.

The king rose to his feet; the combatants stepped away from each other, breathing hard.

“Set aside your weapons,” Keldec said.

A pair of guards came forward; the fighters handed over their swords and knives. It seemed common sense had prevailed, and the bout would be declared a draw.

“My people,” the king said, and spread his arms out as if to embrace all of us, “I am sad to tell you that even within the ranks of my own most loyal fighters, acts of disloyalty sometimes occur. This is rare; my Enforcers are the best of the best, warriors unparalleled, a force truly to be feared. I expect of them what I expect of every man, woman, and child in Alban: complete and unswerving loyalty. These men you see before you have erred since last we gathered here. Erred in small ways, perhaps; but small
mistakes can lead to more significant blunders. If not unchecked, disobedience will spread its creeping evil like a canker through the community. My people, I do not tolerate dissent in any form. That it can occur within the ranks of my own fighting force is deeply troubling.

“Hence this combat you have witnessed today, an even fight between two skilled warriors. Warriors I trust, or trusted.” Keldec’s tone was that of a disappointed father, sorrowful and benign. Perhaps, when an Enforcer displeased him, a public humiliation such as this was all the punishment meted out.

“It pains me to do this,” the king said. “But justice must be served, and lessons learned. Men!”

The two fighters stood shoulder to shoulder, arms by their sides.

“You will fight to the death. Unarmed. Win this combat and your indiscretion will be overlooked. This time.”

The men’s self-discipline was exemplary. They might have been responding to a request to provide a demonstration bout for new recruits. They squared off, facing each other at two strides; four Enforcers moved from the ranks of Stag Troop to stand around them, marking the boundaries of the combat area. They fought. I imagined how it would be, knowing you must kill a comrade to save yourself, to prove your unswerving loyalty. Knowing, I supposed, how arbitrary, how unfair this penalty was, for both had shown themselves to be peerless fighters, and surely either could prevail. What if they’d refused to fight? Perhaps the king would have thought of something still crueler,
something ingenious, something that might have ended up with both men dead.

It seemed as if this one contest might go on all afternoon, so evenly matched were the two. One would get the other down on the ground, only to have his opponent wriggle from his grasp or surge up in a display of sheer force. One would leap on the other’s back and cling like a barnacle, seeking to choke his adversary, and would be dislodged when the first whirled around in circles until he shook the burden off. The sun moved across the sky; the shadows lengthened. By the fortress gates a fellow with a drum began to hammer out a steady beat, as if to signal change.

At last, at long last, one of the fighters began to flag and, sensing this, the other delivered a series of swift strikes, to the belly, to the lower back, to the face. When his opponent staggered, he moved fast as an attacking wolf, and in a flurry of movement brought the other to the ground, facedown with his arms pinned behind his back. The crowd’s cheers were somewhat muted; it had been long, and folk were tired. Besides, Keldec was full of surprises.

“My lord king.” The victor’s voice was remarkably steady. “I am without weapons. Will you allow the use of a knife for a merciful ending?”

Please
, I begged silently.
If this must happen, make a quick end to it. Or change your mind and spare them both. You said their errors were small
.

Keldec had watched the entire bout impassively. Now he consulted his wife again, and I saw her little shake of the head.

“Were you not listening, Buan? No weapons. Make an end of this.”

Something odd happened then. When Buan released his hold on the fallen man’s arms, the other made no effort to get up and fight until the last. Instead, he rolled onto his back, eyes on Buan, who knelt above him. I could not see what passed between them in that last moment, but perhaps it was a recognition that to be finished quickly by a man you trusted was not such a bad death. Buan put his thumbs on the man’s neck and pressed down, dispatching him with an efficiency no doubt born of long practice. He stood and faced Keldec. “Hail the king!” he cried out, and a great shout arose from the Enforcers stationed around the area, “Hail the king!”

Enforcers from Seal Troop came with a stretcher and bore the dead man away. With a wave of the hand, Keldec dismissed Buan, who bowed low, retrieved his weapons, and disappeared into a group of his comrades. He would be spared to fight another day.

I wondered what the loser had done to deserve death at the hands of a friend. It was a brutal code to live by; a man might almost wish to be enthralled into obedience, since that would mean he was incapable of offending the king. I prayed that somehow Flint’s unauthorized trip back to the isles had not been reported to the king. Let him not be dragged out there before my eyes to face the same harsh discipline. And what lay in store for Tali?

The day was not yet ended. Folk were hauled up and punished for saying one word out of place, for setting one
foot over a border, for speaking up to defend the good name of a wife or child or elder. I felt sick, sad, furiously angry. If the gods still looked down on Alban, they must be hiding their faces now.

When the rebellion comes
, I thought,
when our great battle is won, we will restore the Gathering to what it should be. But we will not forget what it was allowed to become; folk need to remember, so this can never happen again
. I tried to imagine Regan’s final plan in action: a great force of men-at-arms and ordinary people, of Good Folk and rebels, surging forward over this flimsy barrier to take on the king’s army in open combat. I tried to think of myself there in the middle of it, using my gift to make things happen. But my eyes were full of horrors, and I could not see it. Even if Regan won his battle and the king was deposed, how could the damage wrought in Alban be set right in one generation, or in two, or even in three? Every man and woman who stood here and watched this unfold without protest, every single person who failed to speak up against what they must surely know to be wrong, was as guilty as Keldec himself. The stain of it was on us all.

It was late afternoon; in the viewing area most folk were sitting down, weary from the long day, perhaps anticipating the roast meat and ale the king had promised. When the horn sounded again, nobody seemed especially excited. But when the king himself stood up to speak, all eyes turned to him.

“Owen Swift-Sword!” Keldec called. “Step forward.”

A man walked out from the ranks of Stag Troop to
stand facing the king, and a jolt went through me. It was Flint, his face bare of the Enforcer mask. He dropped gracefully to one knee and bowed his head. Beside me, folk craned their necks to see.

The king waited. Four Enforcers advanced, one from each corner of the open area, to stand around Flint at a short distance. He remained kneeling, head down. What was this, a public execution? A battle of one against four? Cold fingers closed around my heart.

“Look at me!” The king spoke with crisp clarity. “You are called before this assembly to answer an accusation of disloyalty. You are a king’s man, a troop leader, a trusted servant of your monarch. You have given years of fine service; you have acted with courage and discipline. You have lent your king the strength of your arm and the comfort of your wise words. In the face of doubt and distrust, I have spoken up for you; in the face of twisted words and whispers in the dark, I have believed in you.” There was an intimacy in the king’s voice, as if he saw Flint as a true friend, almost a brother; he sounded utterly sincere. And then, in the blink of an eye, the tone changed. “If you have betrayed the trust I placed in you, if you have thrown back in my face the precious gift of friendship, you will pay the heaviest of prices. What have you to say for yourself? Speak now!”

Flint lifted his head; he looked the king in the eye. His face was chalk-pale. “I am loyal to the kingdom of Alban,” he said. His voice was soft, but the crowd was quiet too, captured by the intensity of this exchange. “I challenge any
man to provide material evidence that this is not so. I repudiate the accusations made against me; there is no proof. My lord king, I throw myself on your mercy, knowing a king of Alban does not lightly make the choice to punish one who has been among his staunchest supporters. If you believe that I have done you wrong, if you give credence to the testimony of those who have accused me, then I accept that. You are the king. I accept whatever penalty it pleases you to impose on me.”

For just a moment Keldec’s self-control seemed to falter; he appeared moved by Flint’s words, which had been delivered with powerful simplicity. Then Queen Varda got up and murmured in her husband’s ear, and he nodded. When he turned back to face Flint, he was calm and assured once again.

“I am minded to be magnanimous,” he said. “Nonetheless, a penalty must be paid, and be seen to be paid.” He glanced to his left, toward the entry to the Summerfort tower. “Bring out the prisoner!”

No. No, let this not be
. There must be many prisoners. There was no reason for it to be her, no reason for my heart to be pounding like a marching drum, no reason to panic, no—it was Tali. She came in with her head held high, her dark eyes blazing with defiance, and an Enforcer on either side. Her wrists were bound in front of her. She’d been hurt; I saw it in the way she walked. She had a black eye and a bruise on her cheek. They’d taken away the modest clothing she’d been wearing. Now she was in a kind of shift, long and coarse, with rents in it that seemed deliberately placed
to reveal her body to the onlookers, for the pale curve of one breast showed through a tear in the bodice, and a rip in the skirt revealed a good part of her thigh. The tattooed ravens still flew, swift and straight, around her neck; the spirals and twists on her arms were fully revealed by the sleeveless garment. Her hair had lost its usual spring; it lay in sweat-soaked strands as if it had already given up.

Her guards brought her to stand not far from Flint, to one side of the square marked out by his four minders. She glared up at the king. Where another woman might have made pretense of compliance, apologized, groveled to save herself, Tali’s furious defiance was written on every part of her. Whatever Keldec planned for her, she would go down fighting. Queen Varda said something to a woman sitting behind her—a sister, a friend, a confidante—and both of them laughed.