The Knight: A Tale from the High Kingdom

by Pierre Pevel

  The man was likeable. He only stopped talking to whistle for jugs and bottles which Lorn willingly paid for. Born in Sarme, Delio was a former sailor who had spent the first part of his life at sea and not re-embarked after a stopover in port. Delio himself could not say why. At the appointed hour, he’d ordered another glass of wine instead of returning on board. That had happened in Samarande, fifteen years earlier.

  ‘I tell myself that one day, perhaps, I will leave on another ship. But I know that it won’t happen. I’ll die here. And as far as dying goes, this city is as good as any, am I right?’

  Lorn had nodded.

  The beggar was talkative but he wasn’t inquisitive. Besides, he knew all he needed to about Lorn: the man had money and was willing to spend it buying Delio drinks. On that point, Lorn had no illusions. He did not doubt that Delio would abandon him as soon as he ceased paying and would forget all about Lorn by the following day. But it didn’t matter. Delio distracted him. He was joyful and, when inebriated, proved to be a bountiful source of funny and increasingly bawdy tales. One of them made Lorn burst into laughter and cough up the mouthful of wine he had just drunk. It splashed on a man and they would have come to blows if Delio had not defused the situation with a jest.

  As the night advanced, the celebrations came to a close in Samarande. The musicians put away their instruments, people went home and the streets emptied little by little. Soon there remained only a few drunks who were chased away by the city watch and some lovebirds who did not want the evening to end.

  But Bejofa was a neighbourhood that never slept entirely.

  They were going from one tavern to another when, passing a dark alley, Lorn detected presences in the shadows. At first, he acted as if he hadn’t noticed and counted six men. Then he pressed a protective hand upon Delio’s chest to keep him back.

  ‘Careful,’ he said.

  The beggar retreated as the men revealed themselves. Petty criminals. Thugs used to performing dirty deeds. Dressed in thick leather and rough cloth, they had daggers at their belts and all of them held weighted clubs, except for one. He stood with his arms crossed. Tall and bald, his bare shoulders covered with black hairs, he seemed to be the gang’s leader.

  Sure of himself, he struck a pose.

  ‘You gave us quite a chase,’ he said.

  ‘You were looking for me?’ Lorn asked.

  ‘You could have killed yourself throwing yourself out that window …’

  Sincerely indifferent to his own fate, Lorn shrugged. He heard Delio, behind him, running away before it was too late.

  The thugs advanced, ready to fight.

  ‘It would be simpler if you followed us,’ the bald man said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  Lorn let out a sigh.

  The thugs slowly encircled him, moving cautiously, some of them slapping their clubs on the palm of their hands. Without doing anything to prevent them, Lorn considered his situation. He did not feel up to contending with these men. Indeed, he did not feel up to contending with anyone or anything. But the idea of surrendering to these brutes was unbearable.

  ‘I won’t follow you anywhere.’

  ‘There are six of us.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  Unarmed since he had planted a dagger in the wall at Elana’s place, Lorn balled his fist and adopted a fighting stance.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ the bald man told him.

  ‘That makes me feel much better. I think that, above all, you want me alive.’

  The man smiled. Most of his teeth were missing.

  ‘You’re cleverer than I thought,’ he said.

  ‘Because you actually think?’

  The bald man’s smile faded.

  ‘As you like, then … Don’t kill him,’ he said to his men. ‘And don’t mess him up too badly.’

  The thugs knew how to win a street fight: they attacked all at once. Before he had time to react, a blow from a club landed on Lorn’s ribs, then a second upon his back, while a third almost broke his wrist. He let out a cry and did not see the blow that hit him beneath the chin and caused him to stagger backwards. He fell down at the foot of a crumbling wall.

  The gang members tightened their ring around him. Their leader parted them to pass through.

  He hadn’t struck a single blow.

  ‘It’s over,’ he said.

  But Lorn got up with the help of the wall.

  Tottering, he displayed a deranged smile and spat out a bloody gob. He raised his fists and once again took up a fighter’s stance. He was unsteady on his feet and his gaze was blank.

  ‘Go on,’ ordered the bald man.

  One of the thugs attacked. Lorn surprised him with a right hook to the temple, but he was powerless to counter the others. Blows started to rain down. On his sides. On his back. On his belly. Unable to defend himself, Lorn protected his head with his elbows. He gritted his teeth, reeled but did not fall. His opponents were forced to persist and the ordeal went on.

  Finally, a blow to the back of his thighs forced him to his knees. The next blow, on the back, forced him to arch his body and lower his arms. The last blow, right in his face, toppled him.

  Lorn lay exhausted and broken, his hair sticky, his face covered in blood and mud. His arms stretched out, he coughed up a thick bile that stained his lips. He was almost blind. A buzzing filled his ears. He was in incredible pain and wanted to die.

  The gang leader towered over him.

  ‘Why do you bring this on yourself?’

  Lorn did not reply. He groaned and raised himself with difficulty on all fours. He was still trying to stand up.

  ‘By the Divine Ones!’ the bald man muttered.

  Then there came one blow too many.

  It was a violent kick to the ribs which blasted Lorn with pain. The thugs’ leader thought it was the finishing blow. Looking satisfied and almost relieved, he gazed down at Lorn who had fallen back on the dirty paving stone and lay motionless. Was he still breathing? Yes, fortunately. But he would no doubt keep some traces of his injuries. No one could fully recover from the beating he had just endured.

  A few seconds went by in the silent alley.

  Then, just when the bald man was about to give the order for him to be carried off, Lorn rolled onto his belly. And slowly, ponderously, like a stone giant who had slumbered too long, he rose up.

  On one knee first.

  Then up on legs that did not tremble.

  His chest lifted by deep breathing, Lorn straightened up his shoulders and head. He balled his fists. On the back of his left hand, the leather band slipped off and revealed the stone seal. A strange gleam shone in his eye. Running through his left arm, the pain had completely overwhelmed him and become welcoming, soothing.

  It cradled him.

  ‘What …?’ managed the gang leader.

  Abnormally lucid and calm, Lorn dealt first of all with the two quickest thugs. He dodged an attack by the first and delivered a palm blow to the base of the nose that drove his opponent’s nasal bones into his brain. As the man collapsed, Lorn seized the second’s wrist. He turned him round by raising his arm at his back, forcing him to put one knee on the ground, held his jaw in the crook of an elbow and, with a sharp twist, broke his neck from behind.

  The cracking sound caused his remaining aggressors to freeze. They instinctively backed away and exchanged anxious glances.

  Lorn released the corpse which slumped to the ground. He retrieved the man’s dagger while the thugs and their leader kept their distance. He resumed a fighting stance, planted on bent legs, and challenged his adversaries with a look.

  He felt good and smiled. It had been a long while since he had felt this …

  Alive.

  One of the thugs decided that the game was no longer worth the effort and fled before his leader could retain him. The two others hesitated. In their eyes, the odds had changed.

  It was Lorn who launched the next assault.<
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  He leapt forward, avoided a clumsy blow from a club, spun round as he slipped beneath the guard of one thug and, rising up, planted his dagger several times in the man’s body: three quick stabs, each of which pierced a vital organ. Returning to the one whose club he had dodged, Lorn sank his dagger into an eye. The blade broke off and remained in the socket, from which blood spurted.

  The leader finally attacked.

  He’d unsheathed a very long dagger. It was a blade of fine quality, which he’d looked after with care and knew how to use. It hissed twice in front of Lorn’s nose. On the third pass, the knight grabbed hold of his opponent’s wrist with both hand, drove his knee into the man’s belly and followed up with an arm lock. The bald man grimaced and fell to his knees, incapable of making the slightest gesture due to his pain. He dropped his dagger and moaned:

  ‘Mercy …’

  But Lorn pressed down with his full weight and dislocated the man’s shoulder. With tears in his eyes, the man choked with pain and vomited. Lorn bent down, seized him by one ear and obliged him to look him in the eye.

  What the gang leader saw there terrified him.

  ‘M … Mercy,’ he repeated.

  Lorn slowly leaned forward, until their cheeks brushed one another and the scent of the man’s sweat and filth filled his nostrils.

  ‘Thanks,’ he murmured in the man’s ear as he picked up the fallen weapon.

  The bald man gave him a look of disbelief.

  ‘Th … Thanks?’

  He did not see the dagger thrust that passed through his throat. Lorn stood up and took a few steps back to watch the man choke in his own blood, his heels scraping the ground while a necklace of pink bubbles soaked his chest.

  When the body no longer moved, Lorn took a deep breath before walking over to a barrel of rainwater placed beneath a drainpipe at the entrance to the alley. He plunged his head in, washed off the mud and the blood covering his face, and brusquely straightened up, refreshed, his hair dripping.

  But something wasn’t right.

  He sensed it just before the pain struck him in the abdomen like a hammer blow. He fell to his knees, moaning and grimacing as he held his belly. It felt like a small animal was devouring his intestines. He took hold of the barrel, trying to stand up, but his suffering was too great. And suddenly, he thought a red-hot nail had been driven through his left hand. He let out a cry. Incredulous, he lifted up his marked hand before his eyes burning with sweat and observed it as if it did not belong to him, as if he were seeing these curled fingers and muscles tensed to the breaking point for the very first time.

  The pain in his belly intensified and blinded him.

  He collapsed.

  Rolled onto his back.

  He retched and, before passing out, vomited a thick black bile which spilled across his cheeks.

  13

  ‘Exasperated by the queen, some great lords had reached the point where they nurtured projects of rebellion. They united behind the Duke of Feln, who was an inveterate plotter.’

  Chronicles (The Book of the Three Princes’ War)

  A secret messenger had announced their coming.

  The riders arrived in the night and, from his window, Count Teogen of Argor watched them enter the courtyard of his castle. It was a keep built on the side of a mountain and partly hollowed from the granite, an austere and solitary dwelling to which the count had retired after being removed from the High King’s Council. He loved this place, no doubt because he flattered himself in thinking it resembled him: hard and cold, but solid and without pretence.

  And belonging to another era.

  The riders wore great dark capes which covered the rumps of their mounts. Swordsmen for the most part, they numbered a dozen, but only two dismounted, following the servants who had hastened to meet them with torches.

  Teogen remained at his window, his gaze lost in the direction of the dark ragged silhouettes of his mountains. He knew what had brought the horsemen. He already knew what Duncan of Feln was going to propose and he was not yet certain what answer he would give. But the High Kingdom was in a bad way. According to some, the realm was poised on the edge of a deep abyss. It was all the fault of a king who no longer ruled, and an ambitious and hated queen.

  There was a knock at the door.

  As soon as he entered, the Duke of Feln threw his cloak on one of the armchairs placed in front of the fireplace and exchanged a formal embrace with Teogen.

  ‘Good evening, count.’

  ‘Good evening.’

  They had not seen one another since the Count of Argor had returned to his mountains. The count remained a force of nature despite his fifty-seven years. Tall and massively built, he had grown stout but still seemed capable of crushing a helmet and the skull inside with a single blow from his mace, his favourite weapon on the field of battle. Although he wielded a sword instead, Duncan had also distinguished himself by his courage in combat, which had earned him the scar that marred his cheekbone. He was reputed, however, to be more a wily politician than a man of war. With a well-trimmed beard and a confident gaze, he was ten years younger than Teogen.

  ‘My daughter accompanies me,’ he announced. ‘If you would permit it, I would like her to be present during our meeting.’

  The count turned towards Eylinn of Feln, viscountess of Beorden, who entered the room in her turn.

  ‘Just one word from you and I will retire, count,’ she said, performing a curtsey that etiquette did not require.

  ‘No,’ replied Teogen. ‘Since it pleases your father that you should remain …’

  A humble smile upon her lips, the young woman straightened up and undid the lace of her cape, allowing a servant to take it away. She possessed a delicate beauty: a lily-white complexion, a sweet face and ruby lips. But the most striking thing about her was her eyes, eyes full of life, intelligence and cunning.

  ‘Thank you, count.’

  She was dressed as a rider, wearing black and red only as she was still in mourning for her husband, a very old and very rich lord whose fortune had refilled the chests of the Feln family.

  Teogen invited the duke and his daughter to sit near the hearth, in order to enjoy the heat and the light of the fire crackling therein. Then he waited for the servant to pour the traditional ice wine of the Argor Mountains and leave, before saying:

  ‘I’m listening, duke.’

  ‘You already know why I’ve come here, don’t you?’

  ‘You want me to join your cabal.’

  Without showing any sign of it, Eylinn was amused. It was Teogen’s way to get straight to the point: he belonged to a different era and a different world from her father. But Eylinn knew this was also a role he played in order to hide his own game and destabilise whoever he dealt with. The duke was aware of this as well, for he did not miss a beat and calmly declared:

  ‘I would like you to join the forces that will restore the High Kingdom to its former grandeur.’

  The count smiled. He drank a mouthful of wine, keeping his eyes on Duncan’s. The duke continued:

  ‘If the High Kingdom was in a poor state when you were dismissed from the Council, matters are worse today. There are rumblings of revolt in the countryside. The harvests were poor and the people are overburdened by taxes. Nevertheless, the treasury’s chests are empty and the funds are lacking to attend to the kingdom’s essential needs. And what will happen when the High Kingdom is no longer able to defend its borders?’

  Teogen frowned.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘For the last two months, the soldiers in the garrisons of the North and the East have been on half-wages,’ the Duke of Feln explained.

  ‘I doubt that Vestfald will attack us.’

  ‘I grant you that. But what about Yrgaard?’

  ‘Yrgaard?’

  ‘The High Kingdom is about to cede Angborn to it.’

  At these words, Teogen’s fists balled. Duncan noticed this but gave no sign.

  He added:
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  ‘Selling it would be a more accurate description.’

  His fists still closed, Teogen clenched his jaw while Eylinn, whose eyes flashed, contained a smile. She knew the count numbered among King Erklant’s earliest companions, with whom he had reconquered the province of the Free Cities, defended his throne, and driven off the Black Dragon’s armies. Abandoning, losing, or – worse still – selling Angborn was a breach of the kingdom’s integrity, but also, for a warrior and a man of honour like Teogen, an insult to the memory of those who had shed their blood or given their lives to liberate the Free Cities from the Yrgaardian yoke.

  ‘For the High Kingdom,’ the Duke of Feln was saying, ‘it’s an opportunity to replenish its coffers. But for Yrgaard?’

  For a moment, Argor thought the question was merely rhetorical, but Duncan evidently expected an answer. Annoyed that the duke was playing at being a teacher with him, he shrugged his shoulders, but nevertheless deigned to respond:

  ‘Yrgaard acquires Angborn, of course!’

  Duncan of Feln could not prevent himself from showing a small, superior smile. Eylinn saw this and raised an eyebrow: because he thought he was more intelligent than almost anyone else, her father was sometimes his own worst enemy.

  ‘Yes, but more than that,’ he said. ‘Yrgaard acquires Angborn and its fortress. Which stand at the entrance to the bay of the Free Cities. Do you remember that island, Teogen? Do you remember that fortress?’

  The duke nodded grimly.

  Angborn had been the key stake in the final act of the Free Cities’ reconquest. For several months, a terrible battle had been waged in its ditches and upon its ramparts, the Yrgaardians fighting to the last to defend it. How many men had perished there? Teogen could only name some of them, but all had fallen close by him …

  Still watchful, Eylinn reminded herself that her father knew what tune he needed to sing to Teogen. Yet, wasn’t he singing a little too loudly, forcing the note? Despite appearances, the count was not some easily fooled yokel.