Hard Day's Knight

by Katie MacAlister

  I carefully clipped around the area, swabbing it down with antiseptic before picking up the syringe. Vandal was at Marley’s head, stroking the horse’s long face and mumbling reassurances in his ear. Butcher squatted down next to me, watching me closely, holding a flashlight on Marley’s leg. CJ and Bliss and Fenice were on Marley’s off side, their expressions grim. The only people missing were Geoff and Walker. Geoff was spending the night at the hospital with Bos; presumably Walker was on his way back to the Faire. I hoped he’d stay away until after I was finished with my bit of illicit surgery. The last thing I needed was him yelling at me.

  “Can someone act as a nurse and hand me things as I need them?” I asked. “It’s not complicated, but if I don’t have to go rooting around in the clean instruments, it’s much easier.”

  “I’ll do it,” Butcher said, his voice hoarse.

  “Thanks. The tools in that bowl are the sterilized ones. Do you have gloves? Oh, good. Okay, well, it’s showtime, folks!” Five unmoving faces stared at me. “Right. It’s kind of a hard crowd tonight, Marley, but I think we can bring them around. For those of you playing the home game, I’m administering the local now. It’s called infiltrating a wound, and after the first prick of the needle, he won’t feel a thing.” I slid the needle under the skin near the slight swelling. “There, see? He didn’t even notice it. Now I’ll do the other three sides of the injury . . . just sliding it along at the end of the anesthetized part . . . and voilà! Give it a few minutes and that whole area will be numb.”

  The light on Marley’s leg wiggled. “Scalpel, please. You okay, Butcher?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, but I noticed there was a faint sheen of sweat beaded up on his forehead. “It’s a bit warm in here, though, isn’t it?”

  I smiled as he carefully placed the scalpel in my hand. “Don’t worry; it’ll be over with quickly. Marley probably is dozing off, he’s so bored with what we’re doing.”

  He made an inarticulate choking noise as I probed the anesthetized area with my fingers, watching closely to see if Marley felt anything. When I judged it safe to incise the wound, I made a cut about an inch long, watching with satisfaction as the infected matter dribbled out of the incision, followed by a slow trail of blood.

  The light on Marley’s leg wavered, then dropped as Butcher, with a soft sighing noise, keeled over in a dead faint.

  “Poor lamb,” CJ said rather dispassionately as she grabbed the light, readjusting it to shine on the surgery area. “He’s absolutely great when it comes to people’s injuries, but animals . . . he’d never make it on Grandpa’s farm.”

  “Mmm. Can someone else play nurse?” One of the two women rustled behind me. I paid no attention to them as I watched the blood seeping down Marley’s leg, judging whether or not I’d need the artery forceps to clamp down on the bleeding. “Doesn’t look too bad. . . . Forceps.”

  A familiar weight of cold stainless steel was placed across my palm. By the time I cleaned the small clot out of the wound, the bleeding had stopped, reaffirming my assessment that the wound was a minor one. Cleaning it was accomplished quickly—each time I held my hand out for more cotton wool, it was there waiting for me. I finished picking out the ugly bits, applied a dash of antibiotic powder, and used the suturing needle that was in my hands before I asked for it to place two tiny stitches.

  “There you go, all right and tight, a nice clean closing. I think you’ll survive to joust another day, Marley.” I accepted the bandage that was handed to me, placing it over the wound so it wouldn’t get dirty in the next twenty-four hours. “Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building! Did someone round up an antitetanus shot?”

  I stretched my tight shoulder muscles and stood up, patting Marley’s side, genuinely impressed with his ability to not stomp on me while I was working around his leg.

  A capped syringe was shoved toward me. I narrowed my eyes at the large hand holding it, following the hand up to an arm, and over to a broad chest housed in a familiar red-and-black tunic. Silver eyes glittered at me from the face above the tunic.

  “Oh. Walker. I didn’t know you were back. Um. That’s okay; you probably know how to give a tetanus shot.”

  “You’re the expert,” he said, his voice low and intimate in the close surroundings of the stall.

  I said nothing to that, but gave Marley the shot in the heavy muscles of his neck, patting him again as I stepped over Butcher’s prone form to collect the instruments. “I’ll just go clean these things. . . .”

  CJ and the others on Walker’s team closed around him as I went out to wash off the tools, all of them questioning him about Bos. I wondered briefly where Moth was, but found him quite happily settled in a small wooden crate lined with a soft blanket. “Talk about spoiled,” I told the cat as I washed the tools at the outdoor spigot. “Don’t try to look pathetic to me; I see those two empty bowls next to you, and I recognize that sated, well-fed look on your face.”

  “Fenice took care of him.” Walker’s voice emerged before him from the doorway of the stable. He leaned against the door frame, an indescribable parade of emotions passing over his face. “You’re not afraid of horses.”

  “Seems to me I’ve told you that.”

  “You acted like you were.” He had such a disgruntled look on his face I had to squish my lips together to keep from snickering. “You made me believe you were afraid of them.”

  “Well, I’m not. I just don’t like them stepping on me or biting me or eating my hair, all of which horses usually do to me.”

  He was silent for a moment as he watched me clean the instruments. When he did speak, his voice held an undertone that I could have sworn was something warm and fuzzy, like admiration. “That was good work you did. You didn’t tell me you were a vet.”

  “That’s because I’m not.” Despite the familiar frown that settled on his brow, a little kernel of pleasure glowed deep within me at his praise. “You . . . uh . . . didn’t just show up at the end?”

  “No, I arrived in time to see Butcher pass out.”

  So it was he who had done such an efficient job of handing me instruments. “What I did was probably illegal,” I pointed out, glancing around to make sure no one overheard me. It was getting on to the dinner hour, so most of the Faire folk were either drifting back toward their camps or were enjoying themselves at the various eateries to be found at the Faire proper.

  “Fenice said the owner gave his permission.”

  “Yeah, well, there is still the fact that I’m not a vet. I’m sure the Faire vet would have done a better job.” I straightened up, wiping the instruments on a clean cloth and placing them in a small surgical pan.

  “Fenice also said that you think the injury wasn’t an accident.”

  I dried my hands, gauging how upset he was at that news. “No, I don’t think it was an accident. The cut was too perfect, at a spot guaranteed to cause trouble if it hadn’t been spotted, which it likely wouldn’t have been, what with all the concern about Bos. And speaking of him, how is he?”

  “Bruised, one broken bone, two cracked ribs. They’re keeping him overnight to make sure he doesn’t have a concussion.”

  “So it’s not serious?”

  “Not in the life-threatening sense, no.” Walker’s eyes narrowed. “You’re sure about Marley?”

  “About the cause of the injury?”

  He nodded.

  I folded up the clean cloth and set it on top of the tools, closing the lid to Walker’s equine first-aid box. “Reasonably certain. I take it you’ve had a look at Bos’s lance?”

  “Butcher did. He found signs that the length of the lance had been scored deeply, then doctored with wood putty to make it look whole.”

  I pursed my lips, the feeling of cold returning inside me. “That’s a really nasty thing to do to Bos—first hobble his horse, then tamper with his lance. How would the person doing it know which lance was his?”

  Walker ran a hand through his hair in a strangely endeari
ng move. “They wouldn’t know. All the lances are stored together, each group’s painted slightly differently. The people putting on the competition provide the lances. We don’t have access to them until it’s time to enter the list.”

  “You don’t? Then why did Bliss have a couple of lances for me to use this morning?”

  “Those are our lances. We brought them for practice.” His eyes were like icebergs in a sea of silver, but I had a feeling it wasn’t me he was seeing. “No one could have known who would have received the weakened lance.”

  “Which means it could have been meant for anyone on the team?”

  “Yes.” He almost bit the word in two, his jaw tightening as his lips formed a grim, thin line. “Thank you for what you did for Marley. As far as payment—”

  “Don’t even think about it,” I said, watching him closely. Considering he was a man I instinctively knew was very private, I found it incredibly easy to read his face. Right now I knew he was very angry, not only at the person who harmed Bos but also, I suspected, at himself. The silly man probably blamed himself in some way. “If it has the result of allowing me to see you joust, it’ll be worth the trouble.”

  Walker’s frown darkened as he turned toward the stable. “I will not be jousting.”

  “Wait a minute!” I grabbed his arm before he could retreat. “What do you mean, you won’t be jousting? Fenice said you’re the alternate.”

  His gray eyes went icy as he transferred his glare from my hand where it rested on his arm to my face. “That’s merely a formality. Every team has to have an alternate. I do not joust.”

  “You used to.”

  “I don’t now.”

  “Why? Because you got hurt? That’s kind of cowardly, isn’t it? I mean, doesn’t taking a few blows go along with the whole ‘I’m so manly I want to knock another man off a horse’ scenario?”

  He wrenched his arm away from my hand, heading toward the stable. “You don’t know anything about it.”

  “I know that everyone might as well pack up and go home right now if you don’t agree to joust.” I followed him into the darkening gloom of the stable. Motes of dust danced lazily in the angled beams of the evening sunlight. “I know that because you’re so caught up in your own pride you’re ruining the rest of your team’s chances at a little fame and glory.”

  His shoulders twitched, but he didn’t stop walking down the corridor. Horses popped their heads out of their stalls, some of them whickering hopefully at the sight of him, probably wanting their dinners. “Everyone on the team knew that an injury would force us out of the competition. They agreed to participate regardless.”

  “That’s probably because they expected that when the chips were down, you’d come through for them, not run away from a challenge.”

  Walker spun around, stalking back to me, his face all hard lines and angles in the weak electric lights of the stable. “I am not running away. I am simply using a little good sense, something you obviously have only a passing familiarity with!”

  I stood watching him for a moment, reminding myself that I had just called him a coward, and that I deserved whatever insult he slung my way.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and spoke through gritted teeth. “I apologize. That was rude of me. You showed a good deal of sense with regard to Marley’s injury.”

  I gave him a little smile—just a little one, one that hopefully he wouldn’t read too much into. “It was nothing. But this—your forcing the team to quit before they even get a chance to compete—this isn’t nothing. It’s big, Walker. I might not have known you guys for very long, but I know how much the competition means to everyone.”

  He took a step closer to me until I could feel the heat of him through the thin tunic he wore, his spicy Walker smell teasing my nose. I fought down the urge to throw my arms around him and ease whatever was causing the pain I saw deep in his eyes. “I appreciate your concern, but the team will be just fine having to go home early. It’s a disappointment, but disappointments happen in life. This one won’t destroy anyone, I assure you.”

  “I wouldn’t be so certain of that,” Vandal said, emerging from the tack room. If I thought Walker’s face was stark, Vandal’s was downright tortured. He glanced at me for a second, then took a deep breath and faced Walker. “There’s a little matter of our future—Fenice’s and mine.”

  Walker’s eyes narrowed on his friend. “What do you mean, your future?”

  For a second I saw another Vandal, not the carefree, devilish, flirtatious man with sleepy bedroom eyes, but a young man of about twenty-five who seemed to have the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Do you remember the money I told you I won in a lottery?”

  Walker nodded.

  “I lied. I didn’t win it.” Vandal straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin. “I know it was stupid to tell you that when it wasn’t true, but Fenny wanted us to come to the competition this year, and you said I was ready for it, and I knew Butcher was dying to come to Canada, and Bos and Geoff worked so hard, too, and . . . I lied.”

  “What money?” I asked Walker in a whisper, feeling more than ever like an outsider, but one who was determined to find her way into the inner circle.

  He answered me without taking his eyes off of Vandal. “Each team has to pay not only the entrance fees to the competition—which amount to well over a thousand pounds—but their travel and living expenses, not to mention arranging for insurance for all members of the team during the competition, and for the purchase of any new costumes, tack, and supplies needed. All the members of our team have day jobs, and no one had the sort of money that was needed to come here for three weeks to compete—until Vandal raised the entire sum by a lucky lottery ticket. Or so he said. How did you come by the money?”

  Vandal tried hard to look like he wasn’t about to be sick all over the floor, but he wasn’t fooling me. “I arranged for a third mortgage on the house.” Walker swore under his breath, his hands fisted as he turned away as if he couldn’t stand to look at Vandal. “I know, it was foolish, but everyone wanted so much to go, and you said we were ready, and I thought Fenny and I would win back what we needed to pay off the bank. It’s not that bad, Walker; it’s not that big a sum of money. It’s just that the National Trust folk are putting pressure on the bank to hand the loans over to them, and . . . well, you know what that would mean.”

  “Something bad?” I hazarded a guess, watching Walker struggle with the need to kick a large metal grain bucket in front of him.

  Vandal nodded. “Fenny and I live in a house that’s been in my family for almost five hundred years. It’s a bit ramshackle at the moment, but it’s home. The National Trust has been after us to sell it to them, but it’s damned hard to hand over your heritage like that for a few quid. Fenice is attached to the old place. It would break her heart if we lost it.”

  “Ouch. That is tough.”

  I jumped when the grain bucket crashed into a nearby wall, Walker having given in to temptation.

  “Of all the bloody stupid things you’ve done, that’s the bloody stupidest!” he yelled, quickly dropping his voice to a low, mean hiss when the horses around us nickered in protest. “To risk your home—your sister’s home—on sport! You deserve to lose it if you’re so brainless as to indulge in that sort of folly.”

  “I didn’t think we could lose,” Vandal shouted back at him. “I knew we wouldn’t! You might not have any faith in us, but I do. Dammit, Walker, why won’t you give us a chance? Why won’t you let us prove to you that we have what it takes? That we can be as good as you were?”

  Farther down the corridor Butcher appeared, CJ close behind him. On the other side of the stable, Fenice and Bliss stood shadowed in an open door. All of them stood silent, watching as Vandal and Walker squared off in the middle of the stable. Even the horses in their loose boxes seemed to hold their breaths to see what would happen next.

  “I have nothing to do with—”

  “You tra
ined us!” Vandal shouted, stabbing his finger in the air toward Walker. Butcher hurried down the aisle toward us. “You are the one who taught us, you’re the one who told us we could do it, you’re the one who made us believe in ourselves. Well, now we do, and you’re trying to yank us back home even before we have a chance to prove to you that you were right all along.”

  Walker’s jaw worked, but he said nothing. I sidled a bit closer to him, not sure how I could restrain him should the situation come to that, but feeling that it was better if I was near him.

  “We’ve all talked,” Butcher said, coming to stand beside Vandal in a show of support. “We know what it would mean to you to have to joust in Bos’s place, but we’d like to stay. We think we can do it. We think we’re ready.”

  Fenice and Bliss and CJ were silent as wraiths as they joined the two men, all five of them facing Walker, each face wearing an identical expression of mingled hope and determination. My heart went out to all of them.

  “It’s just a competition,” Walker said slowly, looking at each of them. “No different from any other.”

  “Yes, it is,” Fenice said, slipping her arm through her brother’s. Her eyes were bright with tears, but her chin was firm. “I don’t say that what Patrick did is right, but it’s done, and he did it with the best of intentions. We’ve all spent the last two years working every bloody weekend, training, practicing, cutting costs and scraping and saving so we can compete. Even if you don’t care about whether or not Patrick and I lose our house, surely you won’t let us throw away our honor as well?”

  “Well put, Fenice,” Butcher rumbled as everyone nodded in agreement with her plea.