Balin raised his shield too.
“Is it…is it really you, Balin?” the knight asked, and Balin recognized his brother’s voice at last.
Brulen lifted the visor of his helmet. As always, it was as though Balin were looking into a mirror.
“By the poor soul of our mother Eglante and the bones of our father Sir Ballantyne, it is,” Balin said lifting his own visor, unable to keep from grinning.
Brulen rode up alongside his brother, and the two leaned from their saddles and clasped gauntlets awkwardly.
“Beyond all reason, my brother!” Balin exclaimed in awe.
He looked over Brulen. That armor was dented and tarnished though and did not gleam in the light as his own did. The shield at his side was equally battered, the paint of the charge chipped and flaking, attesting to its use. What roads had Brulen traveled in these intervening years? “Balin!” Brulen chuckled. “I confess I didn’t believe the Merlin when he said I’d find you here.”
“The Merlin said you were coming, but in my anxiousness, I’d forgotten,” Balin said.
“He said you would have need of me,” said Brulen warily.
Then Balin heard the rumble of approaching horses, and the clatter and creak of arms and saddles.
“He was right in that,” said Balin. “Look.”
Down the narrow northern road rumbled a long column of men, lance points bobbing in the sky, the torches of the vanguard blazing, lighting the five who rode abreast in hellish fire, like warriors culled from Satan’s host. They rode in orderly rows of five, stretching twelve deep.
“What is this?” Brulen hissed.
“King Rience and sixty knights,” Balin said. He leveled his lance. “Make ready!”
“Sixty!” Brulen whispered. “Balin, are you mad? There are too many. Let’s withdraw till they pass.”
Balin stayed firm.
“Go if you must, brother. I stay here. Tonight, I take Rience to Arthur a prisoner or die in these crossroads.”
Beside him, Brulen drew back on his reins. His horse turned uncertainly in the road, snorting.
***
In a little more than a week, King Rience anticipated he would be High King of Albion, and the bare patch on his kingsbeard mantle would be filled. The Queen of Norgales’ vast spy network had led him to a steady series of victories against the other rebel kings, but the final move he was proud to claim himself.
Carhaix was a rich city, but secure in the south of Cameliard with allies at its back. Rience had directed Colgrin and Baldulf to take their seven thousand men and harry Leodegrance from the north through Northumberland, which the cowed and clean shaven King Clarivaunce had graciously allowed them free passage through. The threat of the Saxons had forced Leodegrance to pull the greater portion of his men from the south to reinforce Daneblaise in the north. Carhaix was barely defended, and the southern roads were empty, allowing sixty knights riding silently with their armor carefully bundled on their pack horses an uncontested ride under cover of darkness.
By morning they would take the town unawares and likely bloodless. The gate would be lowered for them by a paid turncoat on the wall. They need not even stop to don their armor. Then, once word reached Arthur in Camelot that they had Carhaix and his dear fiancé, he would come with his knights. King Pellinore would be no help, as he was busy dealing with the Saxon chief Cheldric raiding his lands. Even the greatest of Arthur’s knights, Sir Gawaine and his two brothers, would not likely draw sword against their own father. Lot, Sir Segurant, and Osla Big Knife would pour in from the west with five thousand men and crush the boy king at the gates of Carhaix. Perhaps Leodegrance, fearing for his daughter, would even pull back from the northern skirmish and in his passion be brought down too.
Rience had Nimue to thank for the plan. Her casual mention of Leodegrance’s daughter as Arthur’s betrothed had sparked the notion in him.
The gods were with him, he knew. They wanted him to be High King. The breaking of Macsen’s sword was only the first sign. Hadn’t three of the most ambitious kings fallen to his sword by a combination of guile and luck? He had fortuitously caught King Aguysans without his famed Hundred Knights. He had slain King Cradelment when he had learned the disguised monarch had slipped from his fortress for a tryst with a sheriff’s daughter and met him there instead. He had happily given King Idres to the Saxons at Wandesborow to appease their blood feud with Cornwall and provide a warning to the survivors.
Rience was wiling the time in the saddle alternately anticipating his meeting with Arthur and dreading negotiating the marriage of his fiery daughter Britomart with one of Lot’s sons to solidify the union of Albion beneath him, when the vanguard halted in its tracks, bringing the whole retinue to a stop.
“What’s this?” Rience growled. “Why are we stopped?”
“Riders in the road, my king,” called a man from the front.
“How many?” Rience called back, breaking into a sweat and gripping Marmyadose at his belt. These roads were supposed to be clear. Had he misread Leodegrance’s mind or been misinformed as to the strength of his forces? They were caught in a narrow stretch of road which cut through the dense forest. His men were closely packed together.
“Two,” was the reply.
Two?
“They must be an advance scout,” muttered one of the knights at Rience’s side, Sir Colivre.
Rience spurred his horse and moved up behind the point riders.
There in the moonlight, standing in the center of the crossroads, were two armored lancers, one mounted upon a gray destrier and the other upon a dark courser. He could not make out the blazons on their shields.
“Kill them,” Rience ordered.
***
Balin and Brulen spurred their horses and charged, bellowing a savage cry in unison.
They lowered their lances and cleared the distance in no time.
The five torch-bearing riders of the vanguard crumpled as Balin and Brulen hurtled headlong into them, spitting the lead horsemen fully on their lances, lifting them bodily from their saddles, and swinging them mightily into the surprised men to their immediate right and left, unhorsing the whole line.
Their lances were so entrapped, they dropped them and ripped their swords free of their scabbards. Balin discarded his shield and drew the Adventurous Sword. He cleaved furiously about him, without any regard for his own defense. It was all or nothing. Glory or death.
***
The whistling of Balin and Brulen’s blades were like the constant whisk of hunters beating quail from the brush. Men fell screaming three at a time, nothing but their night cloaks between them and the swift, keen edges that bit into them to the bone. Even their shields were fastened to their saddles, and the first two lines of men tumbled bleeding into the road before this pitiless onslaught like harvest wheat before the reapers.
The torches fell into the road, flared hellishly, and were extinguished by the fear maddened hooves of the stamping horse train. The skirmish became a mad shadow play.
The third line of King Rience’s men overcame their shock and managed to pull their swords, but the hasty blows they landed rang bootlessly on the brothers’ mail. Balin felt nothing but the distant impacts. His answering ripostes parted flesh and muscle, sheared through limbs, sent hands spinning into the air like spiders fallen from their webs. Heads rolled in the road, still mouthing interrupted screams of terror and pain. Ropes of black blood snaked across the moon.
It was like slaughtering sheep.
The fourth row of five broke and tried to close around them, but the fifth hadn’t expected the maneuver and faltered in confusion. Reins tangled, horses screamed as their flanks were cut by other riders’ spurs and deflected swords. Some reared and shed their masters into the road or threw them end over end to crash upside down against the penning trees.
Balin and Brulen spun their mounts expertly, and the worthy animals partook themselves of the combat, horses and riders fighting together, crushing breastbone
s with terrible kicks of their muscled back legs and cutting enemies from their saddles.
“Their horses!” someone yelled from the back of the column. “Cut down their horses!”
Balin looked for the speaker and saw a gigantic man in a multicolored fur cloak hemmed in by a pair of burly men at arms who had managed to free their shields and swords and were fumbling with helms.
“Balin!” Brulen called at his side and pointed with his bloodied sword. “That’s him! That’s Rience!”
Balin knew it. He remembered him from the bridge at Aneblayse. This was the man who had cut off Bedivere’s hand. Balin kicked his horse and pushed into the center of the column like a dagger point. He raised the Adventurous Sword and brought it down on the first of the bodyguards, shattering his helmet and washing the man’s grimacing face with dark blood that splashed over his horse’s shoulders as he grunted and slumped over its neck.
Brulen surged in behind and unhorsed the second.
Rience slipped from his saddle, drawing a bright broadsword and standing ready.
“King Rience!” Brulen yelled down.
“Here!” The king roared, and he passed its enchanted edge entirely through the neck of Brulen’s dark courser. As the horse’s head tumbled away, it crumpled to its forelegs and catapulted him over Rience’s head.
Balin’s heart leapt into his throat as Rience pivoted and chopped down at Brulen. Brulen managed to twist and bring up his shield in the last instant, and Rience’s sword split his charge between the two rampant boars and wedged in the lower cannon of his right vambrace just beneath the gauntlet.
“Brulen!” Balin cried and swung down from his saddle, leaping for Rience like a panther.
Rience grinned and met the rush with his sword. Balin fully expected to break the king’s sword and cleave that bearded, leering face. To his astonishment, the king’s broadsword checked his magic blade and held. The meeting of the two swords, for a brief instant, lit the blood soaked road, glutted with mangled men and horses in an outward rolling flash of incandescent white light that made Balin flinch and shield his eyes till it passed into the dark forest and dissipated, leaving red spots pulsating across his vision.
Rience, too, looked shocked. Then he pressed in. He feinted, but Balin would not be fooled, and he sliced the king’s right thigh with his other sword, bringing Rience suddenly down on one knee.
Rience cursed and slipped Balin’s enchanted sword, intending to gut him swiftly at the waist. Balin saw his death in that instant, but from behind, Brulen flung out his bleeding arm and hooked his elbow, stymying the swing.
Brulen pinioned Rience’s arms. The king snarled and flung all his great weight backward, forcing Brulen to the ground beneath him with a crash.
Then a slew of Rience’s shattered retinue regrouped and leapt to his side rushing Balin.
Balin whirled his blades, dealing death to each man in turn, ducking or stepping out from their attacks and countering alternately with his left and right swords, not giving ground against the superior force, but slowly, inexorably, advancing against it, fighting to get to Brulen.
***
Bodies that had passed over Rience, roaring their intent to defend him, now sailed back the way they’d come, collapsing atop him, so quickly that he soon found himself buried beneath an increasing pile, unable to free himself even with his own great strength. The screams of his men were muffled by the corpses of their predecessors. Blood ran in his face, so that he, too, screamed at the horror of it. Rience did not know how long he lay pinned in the close dark beneath the corpse pile, but suddenly the moon looked down on him again, and the press was off his heaving chest. That awful knight with two swords towered over him, silhouetted by the milky brightness, blood dripping as regular as cave water from his two swords.
Rience had never before in his life feared any opponent.
But now he stammered like a chastised child, eager to spare himself the lash of the rod.
“Dread knight!” He gasped. “I yield to you. My sword, Marmyadose.” He tried to free it, but his arm was still weighed down by corpses, “is yours.”
The knight jammed one of his swords into the ground, or perhaps into a body that lay on it, for Rience could scarcely believe there was an inch of road not covered by corpses, and reached down, his blood slick gauntleted fingers closing around his tunic.
***
Balin pulled Rience free of the sliding corpse pile and flung him to the road, ignoring the proffered sword, ignoring the surrender and his own triumph. Suddenly none of that mattered.
He stooped and felt in the road for Brulen, found his blood stained harness, and pulled him up gasping.
Then all the night’s labors fell upon him at once, and he fell to his knees and sagged against Brulen, who sucked in the night air gratefully.
“Are you alright?” Balin asked after he had caught his breath.
“Yes, I think so.”
***
Balin pulled his brother close until they touched brows, grateful they had both survived. He mumbled his thanks to God, then turned to regard Rience, lying in the road, staring at the islands of dead in the pooling blood in the moonlight.
Balin got slowly to his feet and retrieved his sword. He went and stood over Rience, who held up a warding hand, real fear on his face.
“Rience, king of Snowdonia?” Balin said.
“And Norgales,” said Rience, lamely. “Who are you?”
“Sir Balin of Northumberland. And my brother, Sir Brulen,” he said, gesturing to Brulen as he struggled to stand.
Rience hastily held out the hilt of his sword again. Balin stared at it for a moment. Never in his life had he dreamed he would be offered a second enchanted sword.
He made no move to take it.
“I will not take your sword,” he said. “That is for King Arthur to accept.”
“King…Arthur?” Rience exclaimed, his whole expression sinking.
A chilly night breeze whipped briefly down the road, and he drew his kingsbeard mantle closer with a shiver.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Balin and Brulen rode in the predawn light to Carhaix with Rience before them, tied to the saddle of a bowbacked sumpter. Brulen had claimed the king’s own destrier to replace the courser he’d lost.
“The last I heard of you, you were in the service of King Lot of Orkney,” Balin said.
“I was. That was where I saw King Rience. You left Clarivaunce then?”
Balin nodded.
“I don’t blame you, brother,” said Brulen. “He wasn’t fit to wear Detors’ crown. You went for Arthur then?”
“I saw him draw the sword of God from the stone at Londres,” Balin said. “A sword I could not myself free.”
Brulen snickered.
“What?” Balin demanded.
“It’s funny. You went to Arthur when he took up a Christian relic,” said Brulen. “When I learned The Lady of The Lake had given him Excalibur, I knew King Lot’s cause was lost.”
“Did you fight at Bedegraine?” Balin asked.
“Lot gave me another task,” Brulen said quietly. “I missed the battle.”
“I thank God you did,” said Balin. “Every man I faced, I feared it would be you.”
Brulen smiled thinly, and they rode in silence for a while.
All was well. Despite his misguided reasoning, Brulen was on the side of the Lord now. Providence had directed them together again. He had so much to tell him. So much to ask. They were comrades at arms now. Surely the blood of Rience’s men had washed away their enmity.
“You will join Arthur, too, then?” Balin asked, then.
But Brulen said nothing to this, only pointed ahead with his good arm.
“Here is Carhaix.”
When they arrived at Carhaix, Cleodalis, the seneschal of the city, ordered the gate opened.
“Sir Balin and Sir Brulen of Northumberland,” Cleodalis said with a bow when they entered, “Merlin the magician told me last night to e
xpect you.”
“How many men do you have here?” Balin asked.
“Four score and two hundred,” said Cleodalis. “But Merlin said that Arthur and his knights will be here by nightfall to reinforce us.”
Balin looked about the busy streets, at the children staring wide eyed at him from behind their mother’s skirts. It was not enough. Even if Arthur took all his knights and soldiers and left Camelot entirely undefended, it wouldn’t be enough.
A gray-haired knight with a great reddish falcon which clung to his black glove with sun yellow talons tipped in curved sable came forward with two guards and took custody of Rience and led him away to the dungeon.
“An epic victory, sirs,” said Cleodalis, watching the king’s mottled fur cloak receded with the clanking guards. But then he looked at Brulen and his expression fell. “Why, you’re bleeding! Let me call for the surgeon.”
Brulen swooned and had to be carried from his saddle by three stout squires. Though Balin begged to accompany the surgeon, an old cleric took him by the elbow and drew him aside.
“Please, sir knight. Tell me where you and your brother captured King Rience, that I and my acolytes might administer extreme unction to the men you slew.”
Balin could not, in good conscience, argue against that. When he had given their number and location, Brulen was gone away to the house of the healer, and he was left alone in the courtyard with Cleodalis, who took his arm and led him up the stone steps to the keep.
“I pray you, do not fret for your brother. Our physicians are the best in the land. There is one here who owes you special thanks and has asked that I fetch you as soon as you arrived.”
By various turns and ascents, Balin was led at last to a rich, guarded chamber, where he found himself standing before Princess Guinevere herself.
She was garbed in a long woolen dress that flowed over the floor, intricately embroidered and clasped with golden brooches at the shoulders and a purple silken tunic beneath with laced sleeves. She wore the cross he had first seen about her neck at Camelot.
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