Ladyhawke

by Joan D. Vinge

  Behind him in the empty alley, Imperius peered out of a shadowed doorway with the hawk on his arm, his face lined with concern.

  Phillipe worked desperately at the lock, getting nowhere. The mechanism was too large and stiff for the slim blade of his dagger to budge. But he couldn’t fail now . . . he didn’t dare. If he could only have a few more minutes, uninterrupted . . .

  Behind him the congregation rose to its feet as the prayer ended. He straightened up and turned around, pressing back against the door. The clerics all still faced the altar, even the Bishop. He wiped his sweating face on his sleeve and turned back, probing the lock more mercilessly.

  But one man in the congregation was not facing the altar. The Bishop’s bodyguard stood discreetly to one side, his short sword hidden beneath his robes, his gaze scanning the crowd. His eyes widened with sudden interest at the unexpected sight of someone standing in the shadows by the doors. The figure was only dimly lit, but he could see enough to realize that whoever stood there had his back turned to the altar. The bodyguard put a hand on his sword hilt and began to drift slowly and unobtrusively through the edge of the murmuring crowd, heading for the rear of the cathedral.

  Navarre rode out of the side street into the cathedral square. He reined in the stallion; he sat motionless, studying the familiar view of the cathedral’s arched and curving walls of stone, the elite troop of mounted guardsmen fanned out across the square before him. He watched their faces freeze with disbelief as they spotted him; saw them glance at each other in sudden uncertainty. He knew most of the faces as well as they knew his. “Navarre . . . Navarre . . .” He heard his name spread from man to man like a sigh.

  Marquet was nowhere in sight, Navarre noted, with fleeting disappointment. The lieutenant in charge, a fresh-faced youth he did not recognize, looked right and left in open distress as he searched in vain for his captain.

  Navarre started forward, Isabeau’s token fluttering brightly against his black sleeve as he rode across the silent square. He halted the stallion again when less than twenty feet separated him from the line of guards.

  The lieutenant swallowed visibly, his eyes riveted on Navarre’s winged helmet. “Put away your sword, Navarre,” he said, with creditable determination, meeting Navarre’s gaze at last. “Then dismount. You are . . . my prisoner,” he finished weakly, as Navarre stared at him, unmoving. The lieutenant glanced back over his shoulder, as if he were unsure even of how his men would respond to his orders.

  Navarre searched the line of guardsmen with his own eyes, found them all staring at him, their faces tight with indecision. Navarre took a deep breath. “As your captain who was,” he said, “and through God’s Grace will be once again—as a man who treated each one of you with respect—I ask you to let me pass.”

  The line of men did not move; but he saw swords quietly lowered, and the tension ease in face after face. He started forward again.

  “Stop where you are!” the young lieutenant shouted hoarsely.

  Navarre did not stop.

  The lieutenant’s jaw muscles twitched. “I have my orders!”

  Navarre kept riding. All at once the lieutenant raised his sword, spurring his horse forward. Navarre swung his own sword as the other man charged him and parried the lieutenant’s clumsy blow easily. He jammed the hilt of his sword into the young officer’s stomach, knocking him from the saddle; his free hand wrenched the sword from the lieutenant’s grasp as he fell. The guardsman sprawled on the hard pavement, lay moaning with pain and surprise.

  Navarre slung the captured sword out across the square toward the line of guards. He sat waiting, his head high, his eyes burning.

  The line of guards parted silently, clearing his path to the cathedral doors. Looking straight ahead, Navarre urged Goliath forward toward the waiting entrance.

  Behind the doors Phillipe worked frantically on the lock, as the muted sounds of challenge and battle reached him from out in the square. He heard the sound of iron-shod hooves ringing on the stone steps of the cathedral—heard the soft scrape of a sword being drawn behind him. He turned, and gasped as he saw the Bishop’s hulking bodyguard almost on top of him, saw the bodyguard’s sword rising above his head. He jammed his blade into the lock with a last desperate thrust.

  The lock mechanism clicked open. Phillipe threw himself aside with a cry of triumph and terror as the bodyguard lunged forward.

  The doors burst open, as Goliath reared and drove his forelegs against them. One of the swinging doors smashed into the bodyguard’s head, knocking him senseless to the floor. Navarre rode into the cathedral.

  Silence fell as the assembled multitude of clergy turned to gape at Navarre, aghast and uncomprehending. The Bishop turned slowly from the altar, staring at the rider in black who sat silhouetted at the entrance to his sanctuary. His pale eyes blinked and blinked again, refusing to accept the reality of the vision before him.

  Navarre urged the stallion forward into the cathedral. Goliath’s hooves rang hollowly in the excruciating silence of the hall as Navarre rode toward the Bishop.

  Phillipe tore his eyes away from Navarre, looked out the entrance at the sky, searching for a sign of Imperius’s promised change. The sky was covered with clouds, darker than any he had ever seen. Phillipe looked down again as he heard another rider approaching; he saw Marquet gallop into the square and pull up short, taking in all that had happened there at a glance. Digging in his spurs, Marquet came on toward the cathedral entrance, his eyes shining with bloodlust.

  Phillipe pushed himself up and slipped out the entrance, bolting away across the square toward the warren of streets beyond.

  C H A P T E R

  Twenty

  Navarre swung the stallion around as he heard Marquet ride into the cathedral. Marquet pulled his mount up short just inside the entrance. The two men faced each other, their eyes deadly with hatred, each of them knowing that this would be the last time they ever faced one another. The two stallions pranced and pawed the smooth stones of the floor, feeling their riders’ tension, waiting for the signal to charge.

  Marquet’s gray rose on his hind legs suddenly and lunged forward. Goliath reared up at Navarre’s signal, as Navarre raised his sword and rode to meet his enemy.

  Clergy scattered in panic-stricken disbelief as the two warriors turned the cathedral into a battleground. Navarre drove ferociously at Marquet as their horses met. Marquet parried his blow; sparks flew as steel met steel. Marquet’s eyes were dark with rage as he hacked at Navarre’s gold-winged helmet. Navarre’s sword flew up to knock the blade aside; struck back before Marquet could recover his balance, slashing at his throat. Marquet flung up his arm; his brass-mailed overshirt turned the blow aside, but Navarre saw a thin line of fresh red stain its white sleeve. Fleetingly it occurred to him that the clergy gaping at them from every side must have no idea why they were fighting here. Let the clerics bear God’s witness, and they would learn soon enough what injustice had driven him to commit murder in God’s house . . .

  Phillipe ran back through the winding city streets, searching for the alleyway that Imperius had described to him, the place where he would find the monk’s cart hidden. The sky was darkening even more as he ran, until it almost seemed to be twilight in the narrow, crowded lanes. Even the air was growing colder. He glanced up at the clouds again with anxious eyes; he had never seen a sky like this one.

  Finally he reached the corner he had been searching for, and raced down the alley. He skidded to a stop as he saw the dead guard and the empty cart. There was no sign of Imperius or the hawk. It didn’t matter—Navarre was the one who needed his help now. Phillipe dropped to his knees, groping up underneath the cart. His tense face broke into a grin as his hand found the hilt of Navarre’s sword, wedged into the corner boards where he had hidden it two nights ago. He jerked it free and pulled it out. Holding the sword close, he ran back out of the alley toward the cathedral.

  inside the cathedral, Navarre lunged at Marquet, braced himself again
st the shock as Marquet parried his blow again. They both bled now from minor wounds, but neither one could land a crippling blow. Gasping with exertion, he grimly acknowledged to himself that they were far too evenly matched. He saw the gleam of fanaticism and fear behind the hatred in Marquet’s eyes—and knew what drove Marquet almost as mercilessly in this battle as the need for revenge drove him. But Marquet was not his true enemy; Marquet was only an obstacle that he must get past now, to reach the Bishop. He must not lose his only chance.

  He attacked Marquet again with all the murderous fury of his obsession. He drove past the other man’s guard; his sword hilt struck Marquet’s helmet, unbalancing him in the saddle. Goliath reared against the gray, horse and rider moving instinctively as one; Navarre slammed his blade down onto Marquet’s. Marquet tumbled from the saddle, his helmet and sword flying away across the floor. Marquet’s horse charged off down the hall.

  Navarre swung Goliath around, lifting his sword for the stroke that would finish Marquet. But his eye caught an unexpected motion at the back of the cathedral. He glanced up, saw the Bishop’s bodyguard stumbling toward the untended belfry to sound the warning.

  Navarre turned Goliath back, forgetting Marquet as he saw the bodyguard reach for the ropes. Desperately he pulled his crossbow from his saddle and took aim, fired. The arrow stuck its mark, and the bodyguard fell with a scream. But as he fell, his thrashing body tangled in the ropes, and the bell began to toll.

  Navarre froze in horror as he heard the warning bells, and knew what he had done—realized who else would hear those bells and carry out his final orders. “No, Imperius!” he shouted, as if his voice could drown out the sound of bells. “No!”

  Imperius stiffened upright in the darkness of the doorway where he had taken refuge. The cathedral’s bells tolled out across the city, sounding the alarm. Navarre had failed . . . they had both failed. The old monk sagged back against the wall, listening to the sound that he had prayed he would never hear. He looked down at the hooded hawk clinging blindly to his sleeve, at the dagger he held in his other hand; his eyes blurred.

  “Lord God Almighty,” he murmured, his voice faltering, “I do not understand why this beautiful creature should have to pay for my sins with her life. I never meant harm to anyone, and yet I have caused so much. Your ear is deaf to me, but I beg you to listen to the final heartbeats of this good woman, and of the man she loved, and grant them their rightful places in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

  He raised the dagger to the hawk’s breast with a trembling hand . . . raised his eyes one last time, searching the leaden skies for a sign. Beyond the city roofs, high in the mass of gray, a tiny crack of blue appeared, as the clouds began to part.

  Navarre sat motionless in his saddle for a moment that seemed eternal, stunned with grief. Marquet roused himself, scrambled up from the floor, searching for a weapon. He found his fallen helmet and caught it up, hurling it at Navarre.

  Navarre came alive, dodging out of the helmet’s path as it flew at his head. He looked around and up as something shattered high above him, saw a rainbow of colored glass shower down as the helmet smashed the rose window above the cathedral doors. Navarre gasped. In the jagged gap shone a patch of brilliant blue sky . . . and the face of the sun, almost entirely covered by the disc of the moon. Awe filled him as he gazed up at the eclipsing sun; seeing at last the thing he had never believed he would live to see: a day without night, a night without day . . .

  He heard the shouting and screams of the terrified clergy, as more of them fled from the cathedral out into the darkening square. The bells continued to toll, announcing doomsday . . . reminding him that this moment had come at last, one moment too late.

  Navarre turned back to the altar, where the Bishop stood clutching his staff, alone and unattended. The Bishop’s mouth pulled back in a rictus of a smile that might have been fear, or cruel mockery. Navarre saw nothing else; remembered nothing else but the need to claim his vengeance. “Damn you!” Navarre shouted furiously, both a curse and a promise. “Damn you to hell!” He dug in his spurs, and the black stallion bolted forward toward the altar.

  Seeing Navarre’s intent, Marquet jerked the pole of a black-and-white pennant free from its socket. Running toward Navarre, he jammed the tip of the pole into the floor and vaulted through the air, smashing into Navarre’s side. Navarre fell from his horse, and both men crashed heavily to the stones.

  Navarre struggled to his feet, his helmet gone now, along with his sword. He scrambled after his weapon, as Marquet found his own sword and caught it up. Marquet was staggering with exhaustion; but so was he. Navarre pulled his dagger, held it ready in his fist as he snatched up his sword and turned to face Marquet’s attack. The clergy who had not fled into the square still huddled between the pillars of the arcades, praying for deliverance from the end of the world, or gaping at the two men like spectators at a bear-baiting.

  Navarre drove at Marquet with every brutal trick he had ever learned in battle, using sword and knife and fists, desperate to make an end of the fight before the moment in which he must confront the Bishop passed and was lost forever.

  Marquet fought back viciously, but he was fighting for his life now, and Navarre sensed his growing fear. Navarre’s battering attack forced him back and back, until finally Navarre’s sword hilt and fist smashed into Marquet’s jaw, driving him to his knees.

  Suddenly Marquet’s stallion, spooked away from the entrance by the panic-stricken crowd, bolted back between them and knocked Navarre sprawling. Navarre’s sword flew free as he fell, and shattered on the floor. Marquet looked toward the Bishop, a grin of cruel triumph spreading across his face.

  “Kill him!” the Bishop shouted. “Kill him!”

  Marquet started forward. Navarre struggled to rise, seeing his sword lying beyond his reach, broken in two. A sharp, piercing whistle drew Navarre’s eyes away to the cathedral’s darkened doorway. Phillipe stood there, holding a broadsword in his hand. He slung the weapon across the floor toward Navarre. With a kind of disbelief Navarre saw that it was his father’s sword—the sword he had believed was lost forever, along with all hope. He scrambled toward it, but Marquet was there ahead of him, cutting him off. Marquet’s foot lashed out, kicking Navarre in the face, knocking him backward. Marquet stood over his fallen enemy, his sword high. “You’re dead, Navarre,” he hissed. He brought the sword down.

  Navarre rolled out from under the blow at the final second. The sword struck the floor, sending up chips of stone; Navarre rolled back, pinning the blade with his body, wrenching it from Marquet’s grasp. His own hands closed over its hilt and jerked it free, swung it up with the same motion, and drove it into Marquet’s chest. Marquet doubled over in agony, and collapsed on the floor beside him.

  Navarre climbed slowly to his feet, breathing hard. “Who’s dead now?” he muttered sourly, staring down at Marquet’s motionless body. He had kept one promise to God. He glanced at Phillipe, standing wide-eyed in the doorway, and up at the rose window, where the sun’s face had completely disappeared. He leaned down to pick up his father’s sword; turned back, looking at the Bishop. Now he would keep his final vow.

  The Bishop stood before the altar, staring in stupefied horror at the darkened face of the sun, and at him. Navarre strode down the length of the cathedral toward the altar, his sword in his hand.

  C H A P T E R

  Twenty-One

  Navarre advanced on the Bishop, blind and deaf to the staring faces and stunned whispers on every side, possessed by the soul-deep need that consumed him now.

  The Bishop stood like a statue of glittering ice in the candlelight. He held up his staff as Navarre halted before him, a sword’s length away. “Kill me, Navarre,” he warned, his voice brittle, “and the curse will go on forever.”

  Navarre’s hand tightened over his sword hilt as his muscles tensed for a blow.

  “Think of Isabeau!” the Bishop cried.

  Navarre met his stare with empty eyes. “She’s dead.
”

  The Bishop’s mouth fell open; for a moment Navarre saw the terrible void of his own loss mirrored in the Bishop’s eyes. His grief blazed into sudden hatred, and he lifted his sword.

  “Navarre!”

  Navarre stopped, his arm frozen in midair, caught inside a memory by the sound of a voice he had thought he would never hear again. He turned.

  Isabeau stood in the cathedral entrance, framed by blackness—alive, and radiant with wonder at the miracle which had suddenly set her free. She wore the lavender-blue silk gown that she had worn the last time he had seen her, before the curse had taken them; the gown that he had carried with him and kept safe for her these past two years. He touched the piece of blue silk cloth bound around his arm, staring at her. Her eyes shone with love as she saw his face. She gazed back at him, blinking like a blind woman who had suddenly been given sight.

  Navarre watched her, transfixed, through the endless moment as she began to walk toward him. She moved slowly, as if she were still uncertain of her own reality; but her smile grew with every step she took that brought her closer to him. Navarre drank in the sight of her, like a man who had been lost in the desert and had finally reached the sea.

  Navarre turned back to the Bishop. His bloody gauntlet caught the Bishop’s wrist, staining the perfect whiteness of his robe. Navarre’s sword point pressed hard against the Bishop’s chest. “Look at me,” Navarre said, his voice deadly. “Look at me!”

  The Bishop stared at him, his eyes white-ringed with fear.

  “And now,” Navarre whispered, “look at us.” He caught the Bishop’s jaw, swiveled his head until he faced Isabeau.

  Isabeau stared back at them, still coming toward the altar. Midway down the length of the cathedral, a shaft of sunlight struck the floor in her path, as the sun began to emerge from behind the moon’s face beyond the shattered rose window.