In the Eye of Heaven (68 page)

He looked to Durand, then back to his men.

"And before we go, I'll tell you where I screwed up," the captain said. "I reckoned they'd all go for Moryn. I reckoned they'd come for him and knock down whatever got in their way. It never struck me how many would see our Lamoric and still be looking out for their own purses. This, now, is Rado's last chance. You know what that means by now."

Then they waited in the saddle. Men sucked last shaking pulls from skins of blood-colored wine. Warhorses stamped and tossed their heads.

The trumpets brayed, and they drowned the sound with howling as they exploded across the field. Lance-points stormed past Durand like iron birds. The two hosts hurtled into each other, and then caught, locking in a long, knotted convulsion.

Durand spotted gaps, setting his bay leaping and spinning through the crowd, hunting for every twitch in the throng. A hundred blows battered him, but he saw: after the first pell-mell collision, some part of the enemy had sagged away. Spinning in his seat, he fixed on the reason: There was no Yr-lac green. Radomor's uniformed foreigners had gone, leaving their allies to fight a mismatch.

There was nothing to do. Durand fought on and on while bands of agony clamped his ribs and shoulders. If he lowered his guard for the briefest instant, a sword or mace would whistle over. The thousand agonies of each moment drove every thought from his skull; he forgot the missing soldiers in green.

Then the captain shouted a warning, and Durand flinched from a flash of motion and a sheet of mud and iron. Green horsemen crashed through the line. The soldier beside Durand jolted into flight, batted from his seat like a doll. Horses tore through on all sides.

The men of Yrlac could have been the leopards of their blazons as they clawed their way into Moryn's men, slashing with the energy of fresh arms and clear heads.

Coensar screamed Lamoric's conroi close, 'To Mornaway!" And, catching each other by arm and bridle, they bulled their way toward the diamonds of Lord Moryn's sur-coat, hoping only to outride the green men who rode the same course.

Flashes burst in Durand's skull as they finally battered their way through, then, with disorienting speed, the green horsemen tore free of the battle. Durand's bay actually stumbled as the shoring weight of the green horsemen whirled off into the rain.

Though he was exhausted, Durand and a half dozen threw themselves after the retreating knights, jouncing to a halt in the open yard only when Coensar shouted them down.

Curtains of rain swung shut behind the retreating horsemen. The free men of Radomor's company looked baffled as any of Moryn's knights, as the whole Yrlac conroi fled.

Someone whooped in victory.

Coensar raised a cautioning hand to his own men. "They're coming back. Wait for them." He stood in his stirrup irons, scanning the rain for shadows.

A few knights began to shout to one another. Somewhere, a duel clattered back to life.

When even Durand doubted that Radomor would ever return, hoofbeats shuddered in the air: very close. His eyes swept the gray void. For one breath, he would have swom that Radomor was already through—invisible. The ground throbbed in a hundred directions. He gaped, and then heard the screams explode behind him.

They had circled.

Blades sleeted through men and horses.

Only a few paces from Durand, Radomor's Champion tore through the crowd, batting men down like scarecrows, nearer and nearer. With mace and fists and fingers ripping through armored knights, the Champion looked like a beast scaled in iron. As the brute took the last man in his fist and threw him from his seat, Durand found himself caught between the Champion and the son of
Mornaway
.

Durand clenched his teeth. "Hells!"

The Champion loomed high, whipping his thorny mace down for Durand's head. Three spikes jutted from the inner face of Durand's shield. The Champion reared back, wrenching his mace free with a force that nearly tore the shield away. There could have been a bear in the man's hauberk. The mace whistled down, a single spine flickering through Durand's gauntlet and knuckles as he threw a parry high.

Durand jabbed his spurs home, the bay leaping clear as iron thorns swept past yet again. But, setting his teeth against terror, he knew mat he must not run. He turned back against the monster. The thing must not get by.

The Champion had already made to move on when Durand pitched back into its path. He was like a dog at a bull's ankles. Durand barged into the Champion; a disembodied throb roared from the man. He vibrated like his skin had been packed with bees. An obscene reek and a gray beard gushed from under the monster's helm.

Durand swung, but his hesitation cost him. The Champion's mace struck first: a claw of spikes tearing Durand's shield. The big man muscled the mace into a swing Durand could do nothing about. Hardwood thundered over his shoulder. Iron tines darted between the bones of his back.

For an instant, Durand was nowhere.

Lolling.

He was drowning, gulping for air, doubling over against his will. He heard a whining, high, and the beehive roar. Some quarter of his mind waited like a falling man waits for the earth. Another part knew that a killing blow would fall in an instant, and he would be driven from Creation.

But he lived: long enough to wrench a glimpse from the chaos. A wedge of Radomor's men had driven through to Moryn. Knights of all sides surrounded the lean son of Mornaway. And Durand could see, in that instant, that the two sides were balanced. Radomor's Champion had turned his head. All at once, Durand saw that the man would hurl himself against this stalemate like a thunderbolt.

It would all be over.

Durand lashed out. The wild blow scrabbled from the Champion's shoulder. The monster twisted, unable to reach back, as Durand's second swing clipped his helm, catching and wrenching it round. The Champion flailed. Now, Durand reeled free. He swung again and again with blacksmith blows.

The thing would never reach Moryn.

A last strike clanged, and Durand rose in the stirrups, reversing his blade and, with the force of both fists, drove the point down into the brute's chest.

He meant to throw his weight behind the driving point, but the blade slipped deeper than he could understand, plunging like a fork into straw. A torrent of flies battered Durand's lips and eyelids. No blood erupted.

They were falling.

Durand landed hard in a belch of corruption: a tanner's midden, a putrid grave. Flies stormed around him, curling in his eyes, clotting his mouth and nostrils. Under his hands, the man was like rotten branches. Impossible. Durand scrambled, remembering only at the last instant to snatch his sword free. The blade came away dry.

Now, Durand was crawling at the bottom of a maelstrom of horses and flying muck. No one had time to look down, but Durand hardly noticed. He scrambled.

Then a great shape whirled high above him. Durand heard a roar, and a hail of iron-shod hooves stabbed down. He had to forget horror. He had to roll. He caught glimpses of green as hooves hammered from warding arms. Above it all, the red leopard of his attacker's crest seemed ready to leap over its master's shoulders. This was the duke himself.

The hideous will of the man bore down on Durand alone.

Suddenly, the hunchbacked duke was gone—a mighty storm sucked back into the clear blue Heaven. But the duke was only gathering himself. When his horse was clear, Radomor spun, a razor-edged axe flashing in his hand, and charged. Durand couldn't move for mud. The duke rode a hail of flying muck, and his axe flashed high.

Then a spray from another horse slashed across the duke's path. Hooves stamped down. Coensar's blue and white flashed. Durand tumbled and tore himself to his feet. There were limbs and men in that mud. He could be crushed as easily by friends as foes.

The duke and captain turned round each other, Radomor suddenly without a helm. The duke's beard jutted from a tight chain hood, his eyes flashing like spear-points. Coensar had cornered the hunter. Durand staggered from the tight gyre of the circling horses. If Coensar struck swiftly, the day was over.

Duke and captain circled shield to shield. Blows flickered through the rain with the snap and flash of lightning.

They swung apart, forcing Durand to pitch himself another few paces off just to keep clear. Their circle trampled the carcass of Radomor's champion. Durand saw what looked to be masses of crawling, muddy rags as a hoof
shlupped
from the corpse.

It was no even battle. Radomor needed only to delay his attacker. Any moment, some green bastard would spring from the crowd and spot his paymaster in trouble. But the duke was not waiting. His shining blade flashed out, biting deep into Coensar's shield. It could have had his arm. But, just for an instant, the face of the axe was trapped in the wood. Durand had a sudden flash of Cerlac's blade caught just the same in Hesperand.

Coensar seized his chance, ripping at the breaking shield, pitching the duke into Keening's arc: a flash with the bite of a siege engine. The blade skipped from ear to bad shoulder.

Even Durand stumbled with it.

In the instant that followed, Radomor managed to jam his spurs home, and his warhorse lurched out of the tight circle of the warriors' dance. Radomor's leopard shield tumbled from his fingers. He lolled; any other man would have fallen.

Silence and rain flooded into the churned space between them.

Men looked to Coensar as though asking permission, but he only huddled over his saddlebow, watching.

Radomor turned from the lists. He should have been in the mud. Keening had struck like a thunderclap. The blow would have split an oak tree. Durand could hardly believe the duke was alive, but here he was—awake. He had lost, that much was certain, but he should have fallen.

There were scattered cheers.

As the duke rode, Durand saw his face: stiff with fury enough to keep his seat if every limb had been torn from him. He would never fall. And the Rooks were flapping into motion among the man's tents.

On the field, Yrlac's shocked host sagged away from the fight, and Moryn's men bounded close to Coensar, tipping their helms back and clapping his shoulders. Moryn himself, a few yards away, looked around like a man doubting his deliverance. Horses reared and knights, thrust their lances in the air. Only a neat step kept Durand from being trampled under by heedless comrades.

Durand glanced back through the rain toward the rebel duke. The Rooks had reached up to their master's hands, and a faint, clotted blackness poured from their lips. As Durand stared, he felt their strange sorcery tugging at the breath in his lungs.

Durand looked on, alone in horror. While the others slapped Coensar's shoulders, shadows came alive over the Duke of Yrlac, brimming—as he turned back toward the celebrating fools in the lists—in the sockets of his eyes. A snarl of bare teeth glinted in his beard. As Durand howled a warning, Radomor pitched his wild-eyed mount into a turf-shredding rush straight for Coensar.

Knights—shields loose, faces bare—began to turn. In a heartbeat, the duke would crash down on Coensar and his crowd of well-wishers. The duke stood in his stirrups, the bloody axe high.

At the very last, Coensar wrestled Keening around— hopeless.

But Radomor did not swing. A twitch sent him past Coensar and careering on to the Lord of Mornaway. Moryn was just turning round.

Too late, his men understood. Too slow, they sprang to close ranks. The duke's tall horse tore a gap. Moryn's mouth was a black hole in a white frame. Swords slapped Yrlac's armor. The wheeling axe met Mornaway's shoulder and chopped him down.

Yrlac rode through as Moryn cartwheeled to the mire.

Durand swayed where he stood. Killing the heir was pointless. Where was the boon? What was to gain? Rain poured down like misery. Ouen and Berchard jounced close and reached to hook him under the arms. Durand swore, shaking off their nursemaid hands. Radomor's green knights were whooping as they left the field. Durand looked for the spot where Lord Moryn lay and saw a crowd of his people. As Durand slogged toward them, he caught a glimpse through the screen of henchmen: Lord Moryn was pulling himself up from the mud.

"Great is the Lord of Dooms." A grin twitched across Durand's smeared face. Yrlac had not succeeded. Moryn had survived. They had won. The crown was safe, war averted, and all of them were free. Ouen and Berchard trotted into the celebration.

It was then, as they left him momentarily alone, that he heard something: a slender whisde.

He was alone for yards in every direction, and the thin shrieking sound rose from nearby.

Someone moaned,
"No-o-o."

The mangled form of the Champion lay only a few paces distant. The sounds piped from the carcass. Or somehow beyond it. "It is enough. It should be enough," he heard. The dry shriek whistled on, arising from some deep place as though the flattened corpse lay over the gate of some vast catacomb.