The Western Wizard (64 page)

Colbey searched for Shalfon Brignarsson and found the knight’s apprentice standing aside, in earnest discussion with a knight on foot. The youth wore a mail shirt. He clutched a pike in one hand, its butt resting in the dirt, and the reins of his gray in the other. The knight’s white charger grazed, untied, near the fence. A few peasants had gathered. Colbey recognized some of these as patrons who had attended the bar at the time of the challenge. Others, he presumed, had seen their king and his entourage and followed out of curiosity.

Colbey frowned, hating the pomp. He viewed war as a normal part of life and death in glory as the ultimate goal, but he saw nothing admirable about two young warriors fighting to the death over the honor of a barmaid only one of them wanted. Killing was a necessity. A competent battle was an honor, not a game to be played in a ring, surrounded by gawking spectators eager for blood, so long as it was not their own.

As Colbey and Rache crossed the fields, looking out
of place in their dusty travel garb, a knight approached on horseback. He offered Rache a mail shirt.

Rache frowned, refusing with a gesture of disdain. He spoke loud enough for all the men and women gathered to hear. “Only cowards hide behind armor. And
I’m
no coward.” He tossed his tousled head defiantly.

Frowns scored the knights’ faces. Shalfon took the bait. “Are you questioning my courage, peasant?”

“No!” Rache shouted back. “There’s no questioning involved. It’s clear enough for this peasant. You hide behind armor; I don’t. Is that because you’re too lazy to dodge? Or are you just afraid I’m quicker than you?”

Colbey watched the knights’ faces flush the same shade of red, all a tone lighter than Shalfon’s. Colbey placed his hand on Rache’s shoulder. “That’s enough,” he whispered. He added good-naturedly, “Did you inherit that tactless mouth from your father?”

Rache grinned. “From my
torke
actually. A man crass enough to insult Wizards.”

Now Colbey smiled, too.

Shalfon and the knight exchanged a few words that Colbey could not hear, punctuated by angry gestures. The Renshai guessed that the knight was Shalfon’s father, the one the youngster had called Brignar. Apparently, the father lost the argument, because he threw up his arms in a wild gesture of surrender. Shalfon began stripping off his mail, replacing it with a silk shirt and tabard.

While Shalfon dressed, a page appeared from the opposite side of the field, leading a small bay mare and using a pike like a walking stick. He approached Rache. “Your horse and weapon, sir.” He passed the reins to Colbey and leaned the pole arm against the horse’s side.

Colbey studied the horse. It carried more weight than he liked; he could neither see nor feel its ribs. It stood shorter than Shalfon’s mount, not as well muscled or exercised. Despite its inferiority, its conformation seemed sound, and it did not shy from the touch of the weapon.

Shalfon swung into his saddle, took his pike, and rode onto the field amid the crowd’s applause.

Colbey cinched the girth a notch tighter around the bay. “Patience,” he reminded Rache. “Dodging blows is never cowardly, and sometimes it’s necessary when
you’re measuring opponents. Parry until you get used to the weapon.”

Rache nodded, twitching with nervous energy as he climbed into the saddle. He lowered his head.

Colbey placed a hand on Rache’s thigh, feeling the muscle loosen as Rache used the Renshai’s mental techniques to steady his body and mind for battle.

“Quit stalling!” someone yelled. The peasants caught up the sentiment, questioning Rache’s hesitation in a wild hubbub of encouragements and name-calling.

Colbey did not react, glad that Rache did not either. After a time, the youngster opened his eyes. Reluctantly, he passed his sword and belt to Colbey.

Colbey accepted the sword, giving Rache his new weapon. The younger Renshai studied the length of smoothed wooden pole, tipped with its sharpened barb. Then, awkwardly balancing it against the saddle, Rache turned his horse toward the ring.

“May Rache, your namesake, guide your hand from Valhalla.” Colbey gave Rache’s booted foot a last pat. “Use his guidance. He can help more than anyone. He was resourceful and a master of many weapons. You know he taught your father.”

Rache nodded once, curtly. His right fist clutched the pike to his horse’s withers, while his left guided the reins. He walked the animal into the ring.

Avoiding the crowd, Colbey found the only position along the rail, directly at Brignar’s side. The peasants had given the knight a respectful berth, and his fellow knights perched high enough on their horses to see over the others’ heads. In a strange, inexplicable way, Colbey felt a kinship with his enemy’s father.

Both men stood in silence as their charges met midfield. Shalfon’s voice wafted softly to Colbey.

“I’ll teach you that vermin cannot question the nobility of the Knights of Erythane.”

“
Apprentice
knight,” Rache reminded. “And us vermin do anything we wish.”

Shalfon tugged viciously at his reins. His horse whirled halfway around, then cantered to the opposite side of the ring. Rache rode in the other direction. They turned to face one another, the knight-in-training sitting straight in
his saddle, Rache trying clumsily to maneuver his pike into the correct position that he and Colbey had discussed the previous night.

Shalfon waved, but he remained in place.

Rache shifted restlessly. At length, he repositioned his pike and nodded his readiness.

“Let the match begin!” King Orlis shouted.

The horses surged toward one another. The point of Shalfon’s pike bounced toward Rache’s chest, as if magically guided. As the gap between the horses narrowed, Colbey became fanatically focused on every one of Rache’s movements. He could see Garn’s son struggling for a more comfortable grip on his oversized weapon, and he willed Rache balance. Unconsciously, his hands clenched on the wooden edge of the fence.

The weapon points came together and overlapped. Rache swung out and over Shalfon’s pike, then snapped it into a taut arc. Wood rolled across wood as the shafts slid harmlessly to one side, and the horses passed right shoulder to right shoulder.

Both horses turned for a second pass. Rache wiped his palms on his pants, and his horse’s uncommanded lunge nearly unseated him. Yet, somehow, Rache managed to cling to charger and pike. A parry identical to the first took him safely past Shalfon again, and they prepared for the third run.

The audience hissed in annoyance. “Are you going to fight?” someone yelled. “Or are you going to dodge and hide?”

“Patience, Rache,” Colbey said, hoping the wind would carry his words to Rache, too far across the field to hear him.

Rache parried the third attack, and the combatants parted and turned for the next rush. Shalfon shook his head indignantly, his neat curls scarcely ruffled. A slight tensing of Rache’s demeanor told Colbey that his student had come to a decision. A cold wind snatched a strand of the teen’s hair, carrying it like a ghost. Sweat reddened his features. The set of Rache’s jaw told Colbey that Rache had a strategy that went beyond gaining control of his monstrous spear.

As Rache, at last, lowered his pike to the level of Shalfon’s,
the jeering dispersed. The horses galloped toward the final bloody impact. Colbey’s fingers tightened on the fence, running splinters beneath his nails.

A gap three times the length of the weapons still separated the two men when Rache made his move. His arm drew back, then snapped forward. He released the pike. It cleaved the air like an arrow from the bow of a giant. Yet Rache had no experience with hurling pikes, and the weapon was not balanced for throwing. It dropped too soon, its barb burying into the chest of Shalfon’s gray. The charger managed a single frenzied bleat. It collapsed, and Rache’s pike shattered beneath it.

As his mount crumpled, Shalfon sprang free. Rache dismounted, snatching a shard of his broken weapon, choosing one about the size of the staves that Garn had used to train him.

Colbey laughed, pleased by Rache’s cleverness, though he heard a chorus of knights behind him calling a foul. He sincerely doubted the rules said anything about a warrior disarming himself, and now the strength Rache had inherited from his father seemed a godsend. “Hack the fool down, Rache!” From habit, he shouted an encouragement meant for a different weapon, but it spurred the youngster on just the same.

Brignar glared. “That’s my son you called a fool, you scofflaw.”

Colbey did not even grace the speaker with his attention. His eyes remained locked on Rache. “You only need to look at him.” He pointed at Shalfon, who was staggering, trying to control his pike without the horse’s support. “What do you call a man who wields a pike on foot?”

Rache bore in with his smaller, more manageable weapon. Shalfon retreated, desperately trying to keep the point of his pike between himself and Rache.

Brignar stepped closer, within easy sword reach, and his hand fell to his hilt. “You speak of fools. Your
kadlach
hid from combat and wielded a pike with a bowman’s cowardice.” He spat at Colbey’s feet. “I can see by your smirk that you support his ignobility. What else could I expect from a dirty half-breed with Northie
blood? I presume he descends from a long line of cowards?”

Colbey frowned but did not directly answer, not even to correct the obvious misconception that he was Rache’s father. Even this close, he did not see the knight as a threat, and he would keep his eyes on the battle until it finished. He watched as Rache slipped past Shalfon’s pike, rendering the larger weapon useless.

Colbey smiled at the certain victory. “Your son challenges a man half his age to battle with a weapon his opponent has never seen. That challenge required no courage. And Rache’s accepting that challenge could hardly be considered cowardice.”

Rache delivered a blow that grounded Shalfon, then several more that took him to oblivion. Brignar made a high-pitched noise of horror. Colbey felt a wave of hopelessness radiate from the knight at his side. Then, the emotion exploded to black rage. “My son is dead, and you would defile his name!”

Colbey felt certain that Rache had only knocked the apprentice unconscious, but he did not waste the words to argue. The events spoke for themselves.

“I shall have to call you out!”

Seeing the danger in letting Brignar choose the weapon, Colbey clung to semantics. “Don’t trouble yourself. I challenge you first. Swords. Now!”

Despite the questionable ethics of who had called the challenge, Brignar drew his sword and sprang. Before the blow fell, Colbey parried. His sword met Brignar’s charge and redirected it. He read the knight’s skill from that single lunge, and Colbey found it lacking. Either anger had befuddled the knight’s style, or he needed a better instructor. “Higher,” Colbey shouted. “By Thor, aim for me, not the ground.”

With a cry of rage, Brignar swung again. This time, Colbey dodged, not bothering to take any of his openings. “Take some weight off your front foot.”

“Stop it!” The knight snapped and howled like a berserk, while the Renshai parried and shortened death strokes with hawklike precision. Colbey felt cruel for the lesson, aware that the knight would see dishonor as worse than death. But Colbey had no wish to slaughter one of
Sterrane’s knights, no matter how little the nobleman valued his own life.

Brignar executed every lethal trick at his disposal, and Colbey met each with maddening ease. “Stop playing with me!” Brignar said through gritted teeth. “May Zera’im, god of honor, strike you down.” His sword leapt for Colbey’s throat.

Colbey met the attack with enough force to drive the knight’s arm and weapon nearly to his sheath. With one swift movement, Colbey caught his opponent’s sword wrist and held it in his left hand. “Your god of honor will lose his followers if, in peaceful times, he forces them to call out men who can slay them.” Colbey released the knight and sprang aside. Turning his back in a fearless gesture of scorn, he walked to Rache, who stood just outside the competition ring.

The knight’s coiled rage remained tangible at Colbey’s back, and he felt it boil into a frenzy. Then, suddenly, the emotion changed. A misplaced sensation trickled through, one that Colbey did not recognize until it strengthened. Even then, he had no name for it, only the realization that it reminded him of the aura of the demon called Flanner’s bane. All pride and nobility evaporated from a man the West had trained to chivalry, leaving only a smoldering need for vengeance. Brignar sprang for Colbey’s back.

And died on Colbey’s sword.

The spectators fell silent, though whether in shock over Brignar’s treachery or Colbey’s slaying of an Erythanian knight, he did not know. He turned back to Rache. Though Colbey’s own blade needed tending, he passed Rache his sword and belt, thinking it ruder to keep a warrior from his weapon. “You did well.”

Rache said nothing, though he smiled while he fastened on his sword.

Colbey ignored the riot of thoughts and emotions radiating from the crowd, not bothering to focus on individuals. He thought it best to leave Erythane as soon as possible. “Come on. The others are waiting. We’ve got a message to deliver and hostages to rescue.”

“Hold!” King Orlis shouted, his voice projecting enough authority to cut over the crowd.

Colbey tensed and spun, sword still unsheathed and trailing blood. Rache’s hand went to his own hilt. Both were prepared to fight through all of Orlis’ knights, if necessary.

Only one knight approached, riding toward the Renshai without his pike and with his sword sheathed. He drew up a polite distance in front of Colbey and Rache, though his gaze locked on the elder. “You bested a Knight of Erythane in fair challenge.” He cleared his throat, tensing as if to glance back at the king for encouragement. Instead, he continued. “By law, you’ve earned his title and the king’s grace. King Orlis wishes to bestow the honor and present you with your steed, Frost Reaver.” He waved in the general direction of the jousting ring, though he seemed concerned about taking his eyes from Colbey.