The King’s Justice

by Katherine Kurtz

  Both Dhugal and Morgan saw the Mearans’ intent, though from much too far across the field to make a difference. Dhugal, fighting a heated encounter with Mearan lancers, Ciard and other of his MacArdry clansmen at his back, could only rage inwardly, redoubling his efforts to reach his father. Morgan was no less pressed, but his greater experience conceived a plan that just might buy Duncan a little time—but only if he could find Kelson.

  “Jodrell, to me!” he cried, standing in his stirrups to look for the king. “Guard my back!”

  He spied Kelson almost at once, sword in hand but relatively unpressed behind a phalanx of Haldane bodyguards and officers. Attackers swirled around the king’s party, drawn by the Haldane standard Ewan bore behind him, but Kelson himself was virtually in the clear, as Morgan was not.

  Fending off a Mearan spear thrust that got past Jodrell, Morgan focused all his concentration on touching the king’s mind, if only for an instant.

  ’Ware for Duncan! he sent, faltering briefly while he took time out to plunge his sword into the throat of an attacking Mearan foot soldier. Kelson! Remember the archery yard!

  But Kelson had already noted Duncan’s increased danger—and grimly reached the same conclusion as to what must be done. He disliked making public display of his powers, but none of his archers were in range to handle things more conventionally. Nor could Morgan assist him, for working the delicate magical balance required was next to impossible when one was physically fighting for one’s own life. Morgan’s very warning was something of a miracle, under the circumstances.

  Glancing around quickly to confirm that he was well protected physically, Kelson rested his sword across his saddlebow and drew deep breath to center, stretching his mind tentatively toward the stake and its helpless captive. He could feel the strain, for the distance was nearly twice that to which he was accustomed. Nor was working the spell under battle conditions the same as the light diversion of a quiet practice yard. It was one thing to guide an arrow of one’s own sending, where the stakes were only points in a game—quite another to deflect another’s shaft from feathered death, and not once but many times.

  But the proper connections locked into place in time to deflect the first-loosed arrow. He saw the archer mouth a curse as the shot went wide, and shifted his attention to the next, just then setting the nock to his ear.

  Even above the sounds of battle, he seemed to hear the twang of the second shot; and the feathered shaft again zinged harmlessly past Duncan’s head. He could see the look of dismay on the archer’s face, and the determination in the stance of the first as he and the third man nocked and drew simultaneously. Beyond, Duncan had closed his eyes, and only flinched as the third and fourth arrows thudded home in the stake itself, fletching tightly interlocked, less than a handspan above his head.

  “The priest defends himself with magic!” one of Loris’ men cried, pointing at the stake as a fifth arrow whizzed harmlessly past Duncan’s shoulder.

  “That’s impossible!” Loris shouted, looking wildly around from the back of his rearing horse. “He can’t be working his magic—not with the drug! He can’t be!”

  “It’s Morgan, then,” Gorony muttered. “But he can’t do it if he’s fighting for his life.”

  And with an oath, he wheeled his charger and took off in Morgan’s direction, two score of his episcopal knights giving him support.

  Only a handful of men remained to Loris himself, most of them shaken by the merest suggestion that Deryni magic might still be operable, whether from Duncan or some other Deryni. All but three turned tail and ran, one of the archers among them. But at Loris’ even more vehement exhortations, the remaining bowmen only increased their efforts—though to no better effect.

  It was Sicard who, fighting his way ever closer to the Haldane standard, finally connected Kelson’s motionless stare, concentrated on the chained Duncan, with the extraordinarily poor showing of the Connaiti archers.

  “Kill the king!” Sicard shouted, motioning his men with his sword to charge the royal position. “Break his concentration! ’Tis he who works magic to save the Deryni priest!”

  The distraction had its effect. As Sicard and his shock troops swept up the hill in attack, and Kelson’s warband must begin more vigorous defense, Kelson himself faltered—and a Mearan arrow skittered along Duncan’s side, deflected by his ribs but opening a painful gash. Duncan’s cry of pain further unnerved the king, and before he could recover, a second shaft thudded home in Duncan’s right shoulder.

  “Father!” Dhugal screamed, not caring who heard as he and his bordermen continued hacking their way toward the stake, though most would have taken the epithet as reference to Duncan’s priestly office.

  Kelson knew his control was gone as another arrow smacked into the fleshy part of Duncan’s right thigh, but Sicard’s attack had all but ended any possibility of continuing. Swept suddenly into a running battle with Sicard and his men, Kelson was able to spare only one last, desperate plea to Morgan, before physical survival became the highest priority, even for a Deryni king.

  But Morgan was closer by half than he had been before. Though beleaguered himself by Gorony’s new assault, he barely managed to slide into the protective link even as Kelson abandoned it altogether. The distraction from his own defense cost him a bruising blow to his side, but the brigandine held, and the next arrow meant for Duncan only grazed an ear, rather than burying itself in his unprotected throat.

  Morgan was able to hold his defense long enough to make the difference. After a few more diverted shots, when it became apparent that someone besides Kelson was now protecting the prisoner, one of the remaining archers spotted Morgan standing in his stirrup and surrounded by men determined to give him respite from the general fighting—and galloped off, taking his companion and Loris’ last mounted guard with him.

  Loris raged at the abandonment. And as Sicard drew the king farther from the pyre, and Gorony forced more aggressive defense by Morgan and his men, the rebel archbishop suddenly reined in at the edge of the fire and threw himself from his horse. Cursing, he thrust his crozier into the burning bundles of kindling and began wrenching them aside.

  “Watch Loris!” Morgan bellowed, blocking a blow to his head and cleaving a Mearan knight through the shoulder as, unable to do anything himself, he watched Loris toss aside the crozier and begin pulling and kicking bundles of kindling out of his way, tearing at them with his gloved hands in order to reach his prey.

  Dhugal saw the new danger, too, and set his charger bolting toward the flames, counting on surprise to give him some advantage. With Ciard and several other MacArdry men at his back, as well as a few Haldane knights, he managed to penetrate deep into the thinning Mearan host before his momentum was broken. As he fought like a wild man, Ciard and the others fanning out to help him cut through the defending episcopal troops, he could see his father’s face contorted with pain, blood running down his tortured body from several wounds—and Loris, working his way ever nearer his helpless victim, eyes wild, gauntleted right hand drawing a long dagger in triumph as he all but gained his prize.

  “Lor-i-i-i-s!” Dhugal screamed.

  Loris’ abandoned mount bolted past with mane and tail aflame as Dhugal gained the outer perimeter of the pyre. Dhugal’s horse reared and screamed, shying from the flames. Loris’ once-white cope was streaked with soot, smoldering along one edge, his mitred helm discarded, only a few feet now separating him from his weakly struggling victim.

  “Lor-i-i-i-s!”

  Brutally, Dhugal raked his spurs along his horse’s sides, trying to force it to leap the flames, but the animal reared up with a squeal of defiance, pawing the air and nearly going over backward, all but pitching Dhugal himself into the flames. Nor did Loris, clambering over the rough kindling, even glance at him, though Dhugal’s men, scrambling after him on foot now, seemed to spur his progress, and more Haldane knights were drawing rein and dismounting also, having routed the last of Loris’ men.

  “Lo
ris, damn you, no!” Dhugal swore, panting as he wrenched the horse’s head around and again demanded the jump, this time flat-blading the beast across the rump to underscore his determination.

  Again, the animal refused, this time exploding in a series of mighty bucks that cost Dhugal the grip on his sword and nearly his seat, showering burning kindling inside the ring of fire as well as without. The commotion distracted Loris’ single-minded advance toward his prey, but only momentarily. As his cope snagged on a bundle of kindling and he had to stop to rip it free, staggering, he spared but a single glance for Dhugal before lurching on, the dagger still gleaming in his hand, rising above his head.

  Only an instant remained. Dhugal’s men would not reach Loris in time to stop him, and Loris knew it. All too clearly, Dhugal saw the blade drawing back to strike, the look of numb disbelief on his father’s face, that rescue should fail by so little. In desperation, Dhugal grabbed a handful of mane and sent his mental command into the horse’s panicked mind, knife-sharp, demanding obedience regardless of the cost.

  “Lor-i-i-i-s!” he cried, as the animal gathered itself in a shuddering, terrified leap and launched itself across the wall of fire surrounding Duncan—and died in midair as its mighty heart gave out with the strain.

  The horse was dead meat under Dhugal even before it landed, legs all akimbo, but Dhugal somehow managed to throw himself clear just before impact and get a hand on Loris’ cope.

  “God damn you, Loris!”

  His desperate wrench at the handful of linen was just enough to deflect the killing blow. Instead of plunging into Duncan’s heaving chest, Loris’ stroke skittered harmlessly along the stake with a shower of bark and stopped against a branchlet.

  The archbishop howled with outrage as the younger, slighter Dhugal began grappling with him for possession of the blade, the two of them rolling over and over in the rough kindling, both crying out when burning brands connected with bare flesh. Roger, Earl of Jenas, was one of the two Haldane knights who finally pounced on Loris and overpowered him, twisting the arm with the dagger until Loris screamed in agony.

  “Drop it right now, or I’ll break your arm!” Roger demanded, wrenching the dagger out of Loris’ hand.

  Ciard hurried to help his young master to his feet, brushing glowing embers from leather as his companions scrambled over Dhugal’s dead horse to assist in securing the prisoner. The scattered fire was beginning to die out.

  “Father?” Dhugal breathed, as he pulled away from Ciard to stagger toward the stake.

  Duncan raised his head at the sound of Dhugal’s voice, still hardly comprehending, in his pain, that he was still alive.

  “Dhugal—” He winced and gasped as Dhugal’s unsteady approach jarred glowing sticks of kindling against his raw and bloody toes. “Dear God, I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “Did you think I could let you die?” Dhugal answered.

  Duncan shuddered and shook his head as Dhugal began urgently shifting debris out of the way to reach him, Ciard assisting. Bright blood seeped from around the arrow in Duncan’s shoulder, and from his other wounds, and he moaned as Dhugal reached him, closing his eyes and shrinking from Dhugal’s touch as gloved fingers brushed the shafts protruding from shoulder and upper thigh. Dhugal was estimating the damage, quickly surveying the other injuries, noting the nailless fingers and toes with a sibilant intake of breath. He stripped off his gauntlets as Ciard attacked the shackles binding Duncan’s arms around the stake behind him, but Duncan shook his head when Dhugal would have made a closer examination of his wounds.

  “No! Merasha!” he warned weakly, dully noting Roger helping to support him under his left arm as Ciard picked at the shackle locks with the point of a border dirk. “Tell Alaric—important—”

  But the exertion cost too much, after what he had already been through, and he mercifully passed out. And when the locks did not yield quickly enough to Ciard’s manipulation, Dhugal set his hand on one and sent his mind into the stiff, dust-clogged mechanism, not caring, in that moment, who saw the result and learned what he was.

  “Lord Dhugal? You?” Roger gasped, as the first one gave, though Ciard did not bat an eye.

  As the second sprang open, setting both of Duncan’s wrists free now, and Ciard and Roger caught Duncan’s dead weight between them, Loris craned in his bonds just in time to see Dhugal open the ankle fetters with a touch.

  “A Deryni! Oh, God, you’re Deryni, too!”

  Dhugal hardly spared Loris a glance as he helped Ciard and Roger ease Duncan into a careful carry-hold, avoiding the protruding arrows.

  “That’s right, Loris. I’m Deryni. Bishop Duncan is my father. And you’d better pray he lives,” he added.

  “So the Deryni heretic has himself a Deryni bastard!” Loris muttered, before one of Dhugal’s borderers cuffed him into silence. But his outburst partially covered the astonished doubletakes of those others who had not known.

  Dhugal did not even care, as he helped Ciard and Roger ease his father’s limp form down off the kindling around the stake, that the revelation would be the talk of the camp before nightfall.

  Meanwhile, the battle around them had not abated, only moved on to other venues as Kelson’s army shattered the Mearan command and routed the surprised Mearan levies. Once the enemy was in retreat, Kelson employed the same tactics he had used at Talacara, albeit on a larger scale, his highly mobile lancers and heavy cavalry gradually cutting off and isolating groups of Mearan warriors for slaughter or surrender, mounted archers backing them to reinforce the options.

  Morgan, seeing Loris foiled by Dhugal’s amazing feat of heroism, made it his special mission to run Gorony to ground—and managed to restrain both himself and his men from doing the traitor-priest any serious harm once he was finally taken. And it was Kelson himself who led the band of knights that eventually brought Sicard to bay.

  “Give it up, Sicard!” Kelson shouted, as Sicard wheeled his tired greathorse in a tight, snorting circle, he and his men searching frantically for an escape route.

  A score of knights remained to Sicard, two-thirds the number in Kelson’s band, some of them men of rank, minor lords in their own right. Wary and desperate, they milled around him in a tight, well-ordered ring, facing outward. And though they bristled with weapons, and appeared ready enough to put up a last fight to the death, Kelson decided there had been enough killing for one day and determined at least to attempt some more moderate solution.

  “I said, give it up!” Kelson repeated. “Your cause is lost. You cannot hope to escape, Sicard. If not for yourself, then surrender for the good of your men, whose only crime is loyalty to the wrong leader.”

  Sicard was bleeding from half a dozen painful wounds, his face sickly pale as he slowly removed his helmet and tossed it aside, but he raised his eyes defiantly to Kelson, his blood-streaked sword a little wobbly in his hand.

  “I cannot do that, Haldane,” he said softly, weaving slightly in the saddle. “I swore an oath to my liege lady—that I would defend her cause to the death.”

  “Do you seek your death, and the deaths of these men, then?” Kelson asked. “For if you persist in armed defiance, you shall have it.”

  “Then, face me in single combat!” Sicard blurted. “I am not afraid to die. If I win, I go free. If not …”

  Coolly Kelson surveyed his foe. Though he could almost pity the man, Sicard MacArdry had already cost too many lives. While he pursued Sicard, the fighting had diminished to only a few odd pockets of desultory skirmishing, but the dead and wounded of both sides lay all too thickly on the plain of Dorna. And if, by some freak of physical endurance, the older and more experienced Sicard managed to wound or kill him—

  “No, Sicard,” he said at last.

  Sicard seemed almost unable to comprehend what he had just heard. Blankly his gaze flicked over the surrounding knights to Ewan and the other Haldane nobles gathered around the king, to the Haldane standard spilling over Ewan’s gloved hand, limp and motionl
ess in the stifling summer stillness, to the bright sword resting on Kelson’s armored shoulder.

  “What do you mean—no?”

  “I mean No, I will not give you single combat,” Kelson said quietly.

  “Not give—but—”

  Despair flickered in Sicard’s dark eyes as the full implications of Kelson’s statement registered. Breathing harder, he turned his horse a full circle on its haunches, glancing desperately at Kelson’s officers for some appeal. But the swords and lances leveled at him and his men did not waver, and he found only hard-eyed resolution on the faces of Kelson’s knights.

  “I—will not surrender,” he finally said. “You will have to take me by force.”

  “No,” Kelson said again, even more quietly than the first time. And then, over his shoulder, as he quietly sheathed his sword, he added, “Archers, attend. And someone bring me a bow.”

  Sicard’s face went grey, and his men began murmuring urgently among themselves as Kelson also removed his helmet and gauntlets and handed them to a squire.

  “You—you can’t do that!” Sicard rasped.

  “Can I not?” Kelson replied, not looking back toward the scout working his way closer with a bow and a quiver of arrows, or the troop of mounted archers that followed, interspersing themselves between the knights ringing Sicard and his men.

  “But, there are conventions of war—”

  “Oh? I had not noted a marked observation of conventions by the Mearan army,” Kelson said. “Or can you have been unaware that the Duke of Cassan was tortured while a prisoner under your protection?”

  “He was Loris’ prisoner!” Sicard protested.

  Without answering, Kelson took the bow the scout brought him and kneed his horse a few mincing steps to the right, to stand sideways to the Mearan commander as he tested the string.

  “But you—you can’t just cut me down like a dog,” Sicard said weakly.

  “Indeed?” Kelson said, calmly laying an arrow across the bowstring. “Sicard, I can and shall cut you down precisely like a dog, if I must. For, like a rabid dog, you have ravaged my lands and slain my people. Now, will you and your men surrender, or must I do what I would rather not?”