The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle)

by Miles Cameron

  As quick as thought, she was praising God inside her head, and acting.

  De Rohan clasped the King’s hand. “I have ordered the arrest of the herald, and his knight,” de Rohan said.

  The King nodded heavily. “Yeess,” he said slowly. His head barely raised off his chest.

  “Sire!” De Vrailly pushed de Rohan roughly. “Sire—do not listen to him!”

  The King made no movement.

  “Stand down, de Vrailly. No one doubts your honour. But the King needs no champion in this.” De Rohan gave his most placating smile.

  The archbishop put a hand on de Vrailly’s armoured elbow. “Do not presume—” he began.

  The King’s head shot up, as if he’d been stung by a hornet. For a moment he had a look of wild insanity.

  Then his eyes focused.

  De Vrailly was no longer looking at the King. “De Rohan, by all I hold sacred—I will strike you down with my own right hand if you impede the cause of this quarrel. The herald—presumptuous as his speech might be—has every turn of the right. We must fight, or be found to have lied. I am ready, armed in every point. What possible exception can you make to the law of war, de Rohan?”

  The King stood.

  A ring of silence spread out from his person, like the ripples of a pebble tossed in a pool of water.

  His voice was low and rough, as if unused. “Do I understand that the Queen has a defender?” he asked slowly.

  He took a step—an unsteady step. De Rohan clasped his elbow.

  “Get the King a cup of his wine,” he said to an attendant. “Your grace—”

  But de Vrailly’s face was mottled with anger, and he pushed de Rohan—quite roughly. They were both big men—de Rohan had, after all, been de Vrailly’s standard bearer and was reckoned by some the best knight after de Vrailly himself. But de Vrailly’s anger was like an angel’s wrath, and he moved de Rohan as if he was made of paper.

  “Your grace—the Red Knight, the sell-sword, has been paid by the Queen to defend her. And I am happy—indeed, delighted”—his face bore anything but delight—“to engage this wastrel on your behalf.”

  The King’s eyes went back and forth. “The Red Knight?” he asked, his voice plaintive. “Oh, sweet Christ.”

  Inside the King’s aura, Amicia felt the wave of pain pass over him.

  Out in the lists, the Red Knight changed horses. He did nothing showy—he merely dismounted easily from his riding horse and remounted a huge roan war horse with nostrils so red that he appeared to breathe fire. Then he took a lance from his squire and raised it in the air.

  The herald blew his trumpet again. “For the second time, the Red Knight challenges any child born of woman to meet him, steel to steel, in the lists. He maintains the right of the Queen, the chastity of her body, the purity of her heart. Let any who stand against her beware! My knight offers a contest of the weapons of war, until one shall be defeated, or dead.”

  The crowd roared in approval.

  The Red Knight began to ride to the head of the lists, lance in hand.

  The King was seen to bite his lip. His face writhed as if inhabited by snakes.

  De Rohan glared at de Vrailly. “Your grace, this is mere foolish posturing. Let me press the order of arrest.”

  De Vrailly looked at his former standard bearer with utter contempt. “You are not only a caitiff but a fool,” he said. “By God and Saint Denis, D’Eu was right about you. If you do not let me fight, these people will go to their graves believing their Queen was innocent.”

  De Rohan and de Vrailly locked gazes—Amicia could see that each thought the other a fool.

  Amicia also noted—with shock—that de Vrailly burned like a second sun in her alternate, aethereal sight.

  Out in the lists, a dozen Royal Guardsmen stood sullenly under the royal box. A man in de Rohan’s livery was gesticulating at the Red Knight.

  De Vrailly turned to the King. “You must let me fight—for your honour!”

  The King’s eyes went back and forth like those of a trapped animal.

  At the base of the stands, the Queen sat on a stool in her plain grey kirtle, her golden-brown hair lank but her face at rest. She looked at her champion—and then up into the royal box.

  “Even now, I pity him,” the Queen said.

  Blanche—over her first terror—cursed. “Pity who, your grace?” she asked. The coming of the Red Knight—Master Pye’s friend, and Ser Gerald Random’s and thus a good knight in her books—gave her hope, and Blanche had desperately needed some hope.

  The Queen smiled. “The King, of course, my dear.”

  “Christ on the cross, your grace! Why spare the King any of your pity? He’ll have no mercy for you.” Blanche looked down the lists and clapped her hands. The Red Knight’s near twin—the Green Knight—was cantering along the lists, entertaining the crowd, and shouting insults at the Galles.

  The Queen was serene. “Those who have known pain should have mercy on others,” she said. “There sits my husband—whom I swore to defend ’til death do us part.” She frowned. “I find it hard to make room in my heart for him. But I would not wish his fate on any man.”

  Blanche sighed. “Beyond my likes and dislikes, I suppose, your grace,” she said in obvious incomprehension.

  The Queen raised a very sage eyebrow. “My gallant defender is the King’s son,” she said.

  Blanche’s white hand went to her throat. “Jesu Christe!” she said—a true prayer and no blasphemy. “The Red Knight is the King’s by-blow?”

  The Queen frowned.

  Blanche cast her eyes down. “Apologies, your grace. I’m a laundress, not a courtesan—er—courtier.”

  The Queen flashed her a smile. “You are no courtesan,” she said. “And you made me smile.”

  The Red Knight clasped gauntlets with the Green Knight and then rode down the lists towards the Queen. The whole of the crowd, gentle and common, was on their feet.

  Amicia watched a servant bring a cup. She needed no potent workings to know that the cup held poison. Or some poppy or other sleeping stuff.

  There was no one around her to help her, and she knew of no way to affect this in the aethereal, without giving away her working. So she pushed past a pair of purple-clad guardsmen. Her path was eased by a sudden movement of the archbishop, who was looking at the red-clad lawyer.

  “Just see to it,” the archbishop hissed.

  His eyes went right past her, but his bulk opened a path until she was able to put her hip into the serving man. He didn’t fall, but the cup of wine soaked Du Corse.

  She stepped back—her heart beating overtime. Heads turned, but every head looked at the serving man.

  He was red in the face, protesting his innocence.

  De Rohan struck him with the back of his hand, his two rings cutting furrows in the servant’s cheek. Amicia flinched.

  The King shook his head vehemently.

  De Vrailly stood his ground. “I am your Champion!” he said. “If I do not fight then you are admitting the charges are false.” His accented Alban carried.

  “Free the Queen!” shouted a bold onlooker.

  The cry was taken up.

  The archbishop leaned over and whispered in the King’s ear.

  The King turned. He was pale—but in control of his face.

  The King stood straighter. “De Vrailly,” he said. “For what it is worth, I believe my wife is innocent. Will you still fight?”

  De Vrailly spat. “Bah!” he cried. “I’ll prove her faithlessness and the murder of my friend D’Eu on this Red Knight.”

  The archbishop made a signal.

  The King shook his head. “Very well,” he said, with real regret.

  De Vrailly began to walk down the steps to the lists.

  The archbishop followed. As the King began to follow the archbishop to the lists, Amicia did her best to move along with him, an arm’s length away.

  The man in red looked at her—right at her.

 
He was in the midst of a working. Magicking a silver chalice—a chalice of water.

  He went back to his working, the traces of his fingers and his symbols leaving marks in the aethereal. She lacked the kind of training that would tell her what he was doing—another poison?

  Suddenly his eyes came back to her—now wide with realization.

  She had no idea what gave her away.

  The Red Knight walked his horse to the base of the steps as if he had nothing to fear from the Galles or the purple soldiers waiting there. The marshal of the lists had beckoned him, and now stood with a sword in one hand and a set of gospels in the other. All eyes were on him.

  Amicia moved a few inches closer to the King and the archbishop, and readied her shields.

  The archbishop took the chalice, held it aloft, and began to pray loudly.

  Most people fell silent—many fell on their knees, and Amicia joined them because it took her out of the sight line of the man in the scarlet hood. In front of her, a Gallish squire brought out de Vrailly’s magnificent war horse. The knight himself checked his girth and stirrups before turning and kneeling before the archbishop.

  The Red Knight dismounted and knelt, too, a good sword’s length between himself and the Gallish knight.

  The prayer came to an end.

  The marshal went to the Red Knight. “Do you swear on your honour, your arms and faith, to fight only in a cause that is just, and to abide by all the law of arms in the list?”

  The Red Knight didn’t open his visor, but his voice was loud. “I do,” he said.

  The marshal went to de Vrailly. “Do you swear on your honour, your arms and your faith, to fight only in a cause that is just, and to abide by all the law of arms in the list?”

  “I do,” de Vrailly said.

  Both men rose.

  “Stop!” roared the archbishop. He took the chalice. “The Red Knight is a notorious sorcerer. Have you any magical defence about you?” he shouted. “I accuse you! God has shown me!” And he flipped holy water from the chalice at the Red Knight.

  It sparkled in the air—a brilliant lightshow of red and green and blue.

  Amicia moved from her knees even as the crowd gasped.

  The marshal frowned. “It is against the law of arms to bear anything worked with the arts into the lists,” he roared.

  The Red Knight started back. He was on his feet—

  The marshal struck him lightly with his mace of office. “You are barred from the lists,” he said.

  Amicia heard the Red Knight grunt as if in pain, but she was already moving. She took the chalice from the archbishop’s hands as smoothly as if he was cooperating with her in a dance, and upended the contents over the kneeling Gallish knight even as she placed her own working—a true working—to make the water show anything hermetical. The man in the red hood had merely faked the effect with an illusion.

  In front of five thousand people, de Vrailly glowed. If the Red Knight had sparkled with faery light, de Vrailly burned like a torch of hermeticism.

  The flame of the holy water hitting de Vrailly was so bright that a hundred paces away, Wat Tyler had to turn his head to keep the dazzle from his eyes. He cursed as he lost his target.

  The other Galles were speechless. Amicia stepped back—but the man in red saw her. “She—” he began.

  And then he pursed his lips, looked at the archbishop, and said nothing.

  The crowd was clamouring.

  The marshal had not been bought or paid for—he struck de Vrailly with his mace. “You, too, are barred from the lists,” he said.

  De Vrailly’s visor was up—and his face worked like a baby’s. He knelt there as if unable to move.

  It was Du Corse who took charge. The crowd—both gentle and common—was restless. Commoners were beginning to challenge the lines of guards on the edge of the lists, and the twenty or so purple-liveried episcopal guards around the Queen were not looking either numerous or dangerous enough. He sent a page for his routiers and made a motion to his own standard bearer.

  The archbishop was still stunned by the apparition of de Vrailly, the King’s Champion, suffused with a sticky green fire that could only mean a deep hermetical protection—cast, of all things, by the Wild. Satan’s snare.

  In front of them, a line of knights appeared behind the Red Knight. A Green Knight put his hand on the Red Knight’s shoulder, and behind him was a giant of a man in a plain steel harness and a surcoat of tweed, and then another giant, this one blond, bearing the differenced arms of the Earl of Towbray.

  The Green Knight stood forth.

  “I will stand for the Queen,” he said. His voice carried.

  At his back, Tom Lachlan raised his visor. “And I,” he said.

  Ser Michael didn’t dismount, but he snapped his great helm off his head and let it hang from the buckle. “And I, your grace. My father is attainted, but I am not. There are many knights here to fight for your wife today, your grace. I am a peer of Alba. I demand justice.”

  The Green Knight did not raise his visor. He merely saluted the marshal. “Try your holy water on me,” he said.

  The marshal took the empty cup—and held it out to the archbishop.

  The man in the red hood made his working—while the archbishop’s own secretary frowned in disgust so plain that Amicia noted it.

  Amicia did nothing to prevent his casting. The archbishop’s hands moved with an ill grace.

  The man in the red hood choked. The water flew, and did nothing but make the Green Knight’s surcoat wet.

  “Choose your champion!” he called, his voice mocking.

  Amicia would have grinned, if she had not been so afraid.

  Because, of course, Gabriel was a very creature of magick. And so, he had turned the working himself. His skill towered over Red Hood’s the way an eagle towers over a squirrel.

  The archbishop turned on his two secretaries.

  Du Corse frowned and looked at de Rohan as the crowd roared its approval of the Green Knight. “Someone must fight him,” he said.

  De Rohan rolled his eyes. “Just take the lot,” he hissed. “We have the men. Surround them and take them.”

  Du Corse shook his head. “Nay, cousin. Someone must fight.” He looked at the commoners pushing against the guards. “Or we’ll all be dead before nightfall.”

  “Very well,” de Rohan said. “You.”

  Du Corse smiled a hard smile. “No,” he said.

  “L’Isle d’Adam, then.”

  Du Corse nodded. “But—” he said. “No. I recommend that you fight your own battle, de Rohan.”

  De Rohan’s eyes narrowed.

  Behind him, the King moved. Heads turned again.

  “Yes,” the King said. “You have been her loudest and most constant accuser, de Rohan. Take up your cousin’s sword.”

  A chair had been brought for the King. He was sitting by the lists now—more alert than many of the Gallish knights had ever seen him.

  Amicia began to edge away from the royal box.

  One of de Rohan’s yellow and black men-at-arms was pointing at her. She saw the man, and she steadied her working, which had slipped as she had moved in the real.

  The man’s gaze slid off her even as she sat suddenly between two Alban families in the lowest bench of the stands. There was no room for her, but men on either hand instinctively made space.

  The black and yellow man-at-arms looked her way, and then his attention—and everyone else’s—was on the lists.

  Inside the Green Knight’s helmet, Gabriel Muriens tried to distance himself from the heady brew of excitement and pure fear that rose to choke him.

  His heart was beating like a hummingbird’s wings, his chest felt tight and his arms weak.

  “It is easier to face Thorn in desperate combat than to do this with five thousand people watching and everything on the line,” he thought.

  “I volunteered to do this,” he thought.

  “I don’t know this knight,” he tho
ught.

  All his thought had been bent on de Vrailly. And when he had admitted that Gavin was the better lance, he had freed himself from all of the anxiety of the moment, and settled for the petty stress of command.

  And now it was all on him anyway. His mind multiplied his fears.

  And he wondered how and why de Vrailly had been disqualified.

  I should be relieved, he thought.

  Instead, his lance felt like lead, and the points of his shoulder ached as if he’d jousted all day, and his great helm seemed to suffocate him.

  But there was Toby, checking his stirrups, and Gavin, of all people, holding his shield.

  “You bastard,” Gavin said. He wasn’t really smiling. He was mad as hell. “You always get your way.”

  “This was none of my doing,” Gabriel said.

  Gavin pulled the straps of his jousting shield tight over his arm harness with more emphasis than was necessary. “No, of course not,” he said. His tone didn’t give away whether he believed his brother or not.

  “Gavin, I would not cede the lists to you and then take them away,” he said.

  “Really?” Gavin asked. “Then go with God and win. Even if you did, brother, I hope you win.” Gavin slapped him on the shoulder. Gavin—on the ground—looked at Toby. “Who is riding for the King?”

  “Marshal called him de Rohan.” Toby shrugged.

  “I don’t know any of these Galles,” Gavin admitted.

  “Anyway,” Gabriel said, a little pettishly through his great helm, “I’m not fighting de Vrailly.”

  Gavin nodded. “That’s why I’m not pulling you off your horse and beating you with the butt of your own lance,” he said. “You as nervous as you sound?”

  Gabriel swallowed with some difficulty.

  “Give him water,” Gavin said. “Your man’s in the saddle. You have a better horse. He’s taller. He’s got a very long lance. You know the trick we practised in Morea?”

  Gabriel drank the water. He didn’t quite feel like a new man, but he felt better. “You think?” he asked.

  “His lance is five hand-spans longer than yours, and his arms are longer as well,” Gavin said. “This is not sport—this is war. There are no tricks. If it were me, I’d lace my helm lightly so he could pluck it off without hurting my neck.”