The Serpent

by David Drake

  “I wouldn’t have him do anything different,” I said.

  “Pal,” Clain said. “Would you be willing to have me in your corner?”

  “You, Lord Clain?” I repeated. “Milord, I’d be greatly honored if you were willing to do that. And if the Leader was all right with it also.”

  “Jon is all right,” Clain said. “If the Chancellor were to appear for a party in a private matter, Jon would object, but he sees no problem with me standing on the sidelines for my friend Pal.”

  “Then thank you from the bottom of my heart, sir,” I said.

  This was the first good news I’d had since learning that Joy’s Champion was Lord Morseth. It was definitely a time for good news.

  CHAPTER 18

  Choosing Sides

  When I got back to the townhouse at noon, Fritz was still preparing lunch for three but May and her guest weren’t here yet. They came in a few minutes behind me. Instead of a female friend from the palace, she was leading Lord Reaves.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting you, but I’m bloody pleased to see you.”

  “Yeah, May’s been on me about convincing Morseth to take it easy on you,” Reaves said. “You going to take up where she left off?”

  “Hell, no,” I said. “I’d save my breath.”

  Dom came down the stairs with glasses and a bottle of wine. “I’ll have water with dinner, and maybe a jack of lager afterward,” I said. “I’ve got a while to go at the hall later so I’m not drinking myself legless.”

  Fritz tapped the small gong at the dining room doorway, and I led the way up. “Say,” I said over my shoulder to Reaves. “Say, I’ve been working with the machines but you wouldn’t care to give me a bout for real out on the jousting ground, would you?”

  “Guess I could do that,” Reaves said. The practice machines were better in theory, but my experience is that a human being can respond in ways a modeled human personality will not. That level of randomness is something you’ve got to keep in mind in a real fight.

  Add to that the fact that Reaves is very good and that he partnered with Morseth in many fights made him a perfect sparring partner for somebody planning to fight Morseth in the near future.

  “Pal, I want you to know,” Reaves said as we all settled in the dining room upstairs. “If there was a way I could convince Morseth not to fight you I’d have done it already, but he says so long as Lady Joy wants to pursue it, he’ll keep his word. There’s one good thing about this—Morseth got so pissed off at the way Joy got hardass about any kind of compromise with her sister that he’s not sleeping with her anymore. She’s a poisonous bitch if ever there was one.”

  Reaves paused and put his wine cup down. “Look, Pal,” he said. “You mustn’t blame Morseth. He really doesn’t want to fight you.”

  I sighed and said, “I don’t blame him. I sure as hell wish that Jon had sent somebody other than a friend of mine to fetch Lady Joy back from Laferriere, though.”

  That was true, but I knew just why the Leader had picked Morseth and Reaves for the job. They were hard-nosed men who would bring Lady Joy to Dun Add regardless of her protests. Joy could not divert them from their duty regardless of what she offered. If her body could win Morseth to sympathize with her, there was nothing dishonorable about that—so far as he was concerned.

  I might wish that Morseth had better taste in women, but I’ve thought that about plenty of other men. I was very lucky that May was as good and nice as she was.

  CHAPTER 19

  Appeal by Combat

  Lord Clain was waiting for me on the jousting ground when I arrived fifteen minutes before the bout. Before we even had a moment to chat the trumpeter standing with Jon and his court at the north end of the field blew three short notes, then paused and three more: the assembly signal.

  “I suppose you’re being summoned to receive Lady Jolene’s favor,” Clain said. “Nobody discussed it with me.”

  “At any rate we know we’re to assemble on the standard,” I said. I started off for the colorful clothing on the north end.

  I was honored by the Consort’s notice but part of me thought of it as another bloody complication. Though—

  I glanced over to Lord Morseth when I came abreast his location farther up the field. As challenger he wore black, and he looked bloody huge. He was a big man in all truth but I swear he’d grown since we met the night before.

  “I won’t wish you good luck today like I usually would,” I called to him.

  “The last chance of good luck was before we got into this mess,” he responded.

  Reaves beside him looked as miserable as if he was at his best friend’s funeral. Well, that wouldn’t be long coming—or near to it.

  Both sisters were close by Jon now. So was Lady May in blue, what she knew was the outfit of hers I liked best. She was beautiful whatever she wore. I’d thought that the day I arrived in Dun Add, and okay, you can say what kind of taste can you expect from a kid who’s only seen peasant girls in a backwater like Beune?

  But I’d been over a year in Dun Add, and none of the women in the court or passing through it held a candle to her.

  The Consort wore red as she’d said she would.

  Now she stepped close to me and took her right sleeve in her left hand and tugged sharply. The sleeve came away in her hand—it must have been just whip-stitched. She waved it in the air, facing first the east and then the west long sides of the rectangular field.

  Jolene bent and brought the sleeve down to my right wrist. I opened my hand and helped her work the sleeve over my arm. It was made of flannel not muslin like the rest of her dress. I pinched a fold between my thumb and forefinger to be sure of the fabric; I met Jolene’s eyes.

  She said, “I was told that you’d be wetting your arm down to cool it in the course of the fight.”

  “Quite right,” I agreed, flexing my right hand.

  I was already wearing a flannel undersleeve beneath the slick bleached broadcloth of my outer garment. In a fight the warriors’ equipment heated up and except for the little that dissipated in the air the warrior’s hands had to absorb the heat. The fight with Lord Morseth was likely to go on for a very long time—unless I managed to lose quickly, which I hoped not to do.

  I wondered if Clain had advised her on using a sleeve material that would absorb a lot of water. It might have been Jon himself. Dun Add had been a robbers’ roost until Jon and Clain had cleared it to become the capital of the reborn Commonwealth. Because Jon was a lawgiver and a peacemaker, it was easy to forget that if he hadn’t also been a deadly warrior, there wouldn’t have been a Commonwealth to lead.

  I raised my right arm high, clenched my fist, and rotated to give all the spectators a view. This sort of showmanship offended me, but it was what Jolene wanted.

  Some opponents might have been impressed or even angered by the Consort’s blatant support for me. I didn’t expect any effect on Morseth. He would do his job in a workmanlike fashion. His job this time was to defeat Lady Hope’s Champion.

  Jon nodded and the trumpeter blew recall. Morseth and I walked back to our positions on either side of midfield, Morseth a little to the north of me. I offered Sam a bucket of water, and after he drank I ducked my right arm into it, soaking both layers of flannel. I then dried my palms on my thighs and drew the shield and weapon from my tunic pockets. I didn’t switch them on yet, however.

  Morseth and I exchanged nods. The worst thing about this business is that we really were friends.

  The trumpet blew to kick things off. I switched on the hardware and stepped forward with my weapon slightly raised because I expected Morseth to come on with an overhead cut.

  That’s what he did, swinging a pile-driver blow that I met with my weapon rather than taking it on my shield. I used Sam’s predictive ability—dogs track motion much better than human brains can—to slant Morseth’s weapon into the ground.

  Even though I avoided most of the energy Morseth put into his stroke,
my arm took a terrific shock. I was able to carry on as planned, however: I thrust into the center of Morseth’s shield, just as I’d practiced so many times.

  It didn’t rock him off-balance but it wasn’t what he’d expected and he didn’t strike back as quickly as he might have done. When he did, it was with another overhand blow, though not quite such a powerhouse. It was still a good one to redirect rather than take on my shield. It was a very good shield, but a warrior like Morseth could batter through it if allowed to.

  I pecked the center of his shield again in response. Already the focused energy of my blows must be raising the shield’s temperature noticeably. Not dangerously yet, but a warrior as experienced as Morseth must have been aware of the risk.

  This was a good bout for the spectators. When I met his weapon with my own, there were showers of sparks in all directions. I was very glad to have soaked my tunic sleeve before we started. I’d learned that when I fought Lord Baran. Morseth is more clever than Baran, but I swear he’s even stronger as well.

  My ripostes to his mighty swings were much less colorful, but I was giving blow for blow and doing damage to his equipment that he can’t have expected. Morseth was wealthy and could afford the best hardware he could find. Because of his strength he could use much larger and heavier gear than I did. This may have been one of the first times his shield had been stressed to the edge of failure.

  I wasn’t trying to overpower Morseth or to wear him out, but I was forcing him to fight on my terms rather than his own. I’d frightened Lord Baran into thinking that because I was a Maker, I somehow had created equipment better than his. Morseth knew that his own hardware was as good as Louis himself could create, but he really respected my intelligence. When he felt his shield getting dangerously warm he feared that I’d identified a design flaw and was exploiting it.

  There was no flaw. I was just hitting exactly the same point as a result of practice on Guntram’s compilation. When Morseth had switched hands before his shield had been overpowered by multiple opponents.

  I was alone but I was being very precise.

  I suddenly realized that I could defeat Lord Morseth without any trick. He was trying to batter through my defenses. I could peck a hole in his and if I did he’d have to yield or die, and knowing Morseth I couldn’t be sure of which he’d choose.

  The trumpet blew the end of the round.

  I took a step back and would have fallen if Lord Clain hadn’t moved up to catch me.

  The trumpet sounded again, a long complex call indicating the end of the match. “What’s going on?” I shouted at Clain.

  He’d brought the water bucket. I thrust my arm into it thankfully, then made room for Sam, who slurped water in his turn. He never overwatered himself in the middle of a battle.

  “I have no bloody idea!” Clain said. “But here’s the man who can tell us!”

  Jon had walked over from the noble spectators. Lady Hope was with him. To my surprise, the Leader waved Lord Morseth to him also. He and Reaves stumbled over.

  The ground where we’d been fighting looked like a partly plowed field from where Morseth’s redirected blows had scarred the turf. No wonder my arm feels like it went through a sausage grinder!

  “Sir,” I said to Jon, speaking more politely than I had Lord Clain a moment before. “Can you tell us what’s going on?”

  “Right,” Morseth said. “I’m not complaining, but it sure didn’t seem to me that the bout was over.”

  “I ended it,” said Lady Hope. “I couldn’t bear to see you doing such terrible things just for money. I told Lord Jon that I resign my claim to our father’s estate.”

  May was standing right behind Hope looking pleased. Everyone agreed that Lady Joy wasn’t going to back down, so May had worked on Hope, who was just as nice as I’d thought she was.

  “Lord Morseth,” I said, “I declare myself beaten. I’m not capable of fighting you any longer. You win this combat.”

  I reached over to take his hand and found I had trouble lifting my arm and bending the fingers. Morseth reached out with difficulty. His weapon and shield were in the holsters which hung from his bandolier. I could smell leather charring.

  Morseth said, “I can’t let you do that, Lord Pal. My shield was on the point of failure and I couldn’t go out again without committing suicide—which I didn’t sign on for. I knew you were good, Pal, but I didn’t know how bloody good you were. I cede the victory to you—and anybody who thinks I’m a wimp for saying that is welcome to challenge me and see how much of a wimp I really am! I yield.”

  He looked at the Leader then switched his eyes to Lady Joy, who had joined the group also—but on the other side of May, from where her sister stood.

  “I don’t think anyone who watched this bout,” said Lord Clain, “will deny that it was the hardest fought of their experience. As it certainly was of mine.”

  “Wait a minute,” Lady Joy said. “Hope yielded. That means I won my appeal!”

  “No, milady,” said Jon. “You put the matter out of your hands when you appealed to combat. At that point it became the warriors themselves who have sole jurisdiction over the matter. They have chosen to yield to one another after a duel which demonstrated their good faith. The matter is therefore in my hands to decide.”

  Joy appeared to be about to speak. Jon looked directly at her and spoke over the would-be interjection, “I will announce my decision at midday tomorrow in the courtroom.” He turned and walked off.

  Morseth moved closer with Reaves beside him and said, “Say, Pal? How about coming over to the Silver Eel with me and Reaves and get outside a couple bottles of something? Clain, I’d be glad of your company too if you’d like to come.”

  I looked to Lady Hope, who’d been joined by her two law clerks, Loong and Toshi, who were presumably explaining the legal situation to her. “Thanks, buddy,” I said. “I’m really glad it ended this way. I think I better see my principal first, though.”

  “I suspect we’ll be there till pretty bloody late,” Morseth said, “so if you get done and want to join us, you’ll still be welcome.”

  Waving, the two friends went off toward town.

  Clain said to me, “Did you intend to force Morseth to change hands after all?”

  “That’s what it must have looked like,” I agreed, “but no, I hadn’t changed my mind. He’s too good a friend to trick into letting me cripple him. But I found I could keep him back by attacking his shield, so that’s what I did.”

  I stopped, which caused Clain to stop also. “Sir,” I said. “This was a real fight, don’t doubt it. I wasn’t holding back and I’ll tell the world Morseth wasn’t. But I’m really glad that neither of us got killed.”

  Clain clasped me on the nearer shoulder. “So am I, Lord Pal.”

  Hope and her law clerks watched us approaching. The clerks fell silent; from what I’d seen Hope wasn’t doing much talking to begin with.

  I bowed and said to her, “Milady, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for halting the fight.”

  “Lady May told me you and Lord Morseth were good friends,” Hope said. “I couldn’t let you kill each other.”

  Your sister certainly could have, I thought. Aloud I said, “Ma’am, I think Laferriere is a wealthy node, so there was quite a bit of wealth at stake.”

  Hope waved her hand dismissively. “Father didn’t keep us short,” she said. “I have property in Dun Add, including the villa I’m living in while I visit. I’m sure Joy has just as much squirreled away as I do. I can’t imagine why she’s so anxious to get my share of Daddy’s estate as well as her own. We’ve got enough.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said, “but there’s plenty of folks don’t see it that way. I’d guess your sister is somebody who thinks that everything ought to belong to her. I’ve met others that way.”

  I smiled and added, “People who think it all ought to be theirs are part of the reason I came to Dun Add to join Jon’s companions.”

  I c
leared my throat and said, “I wish I’d been able to clear things up for you.”

  She leaned over and kissed me lightly. “It really doesn’t matter, Pal,” she said. “You know, May is very lucky.”

  I didn’t know that, but I was glad to hear it from Hope.

  CHAPTER 20

  Court

  I entered the courtroom an hour early. There’d been a lot of spectators at the bout and I wasn’t sure how full the room would be for the climax.

  People drifted in slowly but in fact it never filled up. I guess there was a lot more interest in a battle between two Champions than there was in the division of an estate far from Dun Add.

  I sat just behind Lady Hope and her law clerks. Toshi saw me and instantly gripped my hand. That brought Lady Hope’s attention and she said, “Thank you, Lord Pal.”

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work out better,” I said.

  “I’m just glad that you both survived,” Hope said. “Watching the fight I didn’t think that would be possible. I never would have forgiven myself if one of you had been killed.”

  “Ma’am,” I said, “Lord Morseth and I both understood the dangers of what we were doing.”

  To my surprise Morseth and Reaves came down the wall-side aisle from the entrance, slid into my row, and moved all the way down until Morseth was right beside me.

  I shook hands with him and said, “I just told Lady Hope that we both understood the risks of what we were doing yesterday.”

  “Right,” said Morseth. “But we bloody well didn’t understand we’d be fighting each other till we’d pledged ourselves.”

  “We kept our words,” I agreed. “And I’ll tell the world that I hope never to have this tough a fight again.”

  Jon entered court from the back of his box. His herald struck a triangle softly, sending a plangent note through the big room.

  I noted Lady Joy sitting on the other side of the room with her clerks. I gestured to them with my thumb and tapped Morseth on the arm. He brought his lips close to my left ear and whispered, “I supported her on the field. That’s all of me that she owns.”