Sword of the Bright Lady

by M. C. Planck

  “You’re married,” Karl said.

  Christopher was becoming angry, but the young man’s words could not be denied. However much he wanted it now, he would regret it later. He should be thankful that Karl was so faithful. Mostly he wanted to shove the man aside, but he knew he was supposed to be grateful.

  “My lady,” he said to the girl, still flirting with her, “I’m sorry, but I think he’s right.”

  Her eyes grew wide, then wet.

  “Do not I also deserve some comfort?” she cried, clinging to Christopher.

  Christopher began to have ugly thoughts. He’d finally found a girl that preferred him over the irresistible Karl, and now Karl was throwing a fit.

  “You’re being paranoid, Karl. Just because she likes me more than she likes you doesn’t mean it’s a trap.” But then gears started turning in his head. Didn’t it almost certainly mean that? It wasn’t inconceivable that a woman might prefer him to Karl. Just inconceivable that a woman like this would.

  She really was too pretty.

  “You can wait till you’re off-duty, like everyone else,” Karl said.

  Christopher leaped at the compromise, unready to give up all hope. “That might be best,” he said to the girl.

  Her face did not respond with sadness or regret, only ugliness.

  “Idiot,” she snapped, and touched her wrist. Karl reached out to stop her, but his hand was still in motion when Christopher struggled against the onrushing blackness, failed, and sank beneath the wave of darkness.

  Someone kicked him, not gently. Cannan, wearing a sour face.

  “What happened?” Christopher moaned, and sat up, looking around at all the unconscious bodies filling the room.

  The knight did not deign to answer, reaching over the bar and pouring himself another mug instead. A few feet from where he stood drinking, the girl sagged against the bar, her head hung low and unmoving. It took Christopher a moment to realize she was held against the wooden paneling by a sword through her chest.

  He struggled to reconcile his surging emotions. His lust for her was still strong, not yet balanced by the memory of the blackness. “Did you have to kill her?”

  “She was armed and had magic,” Cannan growled, kicking a dagger across the floor at him. “How was I to judge her rank? I only hit her once.”

  Staring at the evidence of the girl’s perfidy, he could feel the insensible lust fading. He still felt sickened by her death, but the dagger on the floor brooked no argument. “Why didn’t it affect you?” he asked.

  “An excellent question,” Niona said, entering the room warily, the kittenhawk riding on her fist like a weapon ready to be launched. She looked around the sleeping room, her face filled with dismay. “This is powerful magic.” And well used; the assassin had struck while Niona and half the troop were elsewhere.

  Cannan snorted, his counterargument obvious.

  Niona went to the body, her eyes bright with curiosity. She muttered a spell, staring intently, and then pulled a small gold chain with two mangled, crushed ornaments from the woman’s wrist. Niona sniffed the bracelet, her face curling up a like a cat’s, and then she tossed it aside. Placing her hand on the corpse’s forehead, she drew out the tael and examined it.

  “A single rank,” Niona said. “Insufficient for a spell of such potency. Your assassin was merely a tool, delivering a stroke prepared by others. It seems the Invisible Guild has decided to escalate their efforts.”

  “Thank goodness Cannan was here, then.”

  “Thank more than that,” Niona said, eyeing her husband critically. “Even his rank should not have stood against such a spell.”

  “Wife,” said Cannan, “you are not doing my reputation any favors.”

  “You are wearing the ring.” It was the closest to disapproval that Christopher could imagine coming from the carefully nonjudgmental Niona.

  “Aye,” Cannan answered. “I forgot to take it off this morning. I like sleeping with it on. Not only because I no longer fear a knife to the throat, but also because the bedbugs are powerless against it.”

  “It protects against magic as well as swords?” Christopher felt a pang of envy. He, too, would like to sleep soundly and without paying a blood-tax to a different population of insects every night.

  “A deal’s a deal,” Cannan said. Christopher couldn’t argue; the more powerful the ring was revealed to be, the more dangerous owning it would be. At some point it would even be dangerous for Cannan to keep, a fact clearly not lost on his unhappy wife.

  “At least I can safely say the bracelet has no power left,” Niona said. “And we are doubly blessed; its compulsion did not affect you, though its lower rank makes that explicable.”

  “It did affect me,” Christopher answered. “But not Karl. Him and his protocol.” He went to wake his young savior, who was snoring peacefully beneath the table, before Cannan could get around to kicking him. Karl deserved better than that.

  20.

  ON THE ROAD, AGAIN

  The enemy waited for their next strike until after the very last village. Perhaps they wanted all the money, or were waiting for the crowd of mummers to disperse, or wanted the troop as tired as possible. On the morning of the last day, as Christopher’s party headed for the border to County Fram, Niona’s kittenhawk came swooping down to her shoulder and she cried out in alarm.

  “Bart comes, riding hard behind us, with horses and men!”

  “We can’t fight cavalry,” Cannan snapped. “Get off the road.”

  Karl leapt from his mount, smacked it on the flanks to drive it on ahead. No such luck with Royal, of course, who would not leave Christopher behind when he could smell a fight brewing. The big warhorse followed Christopher into the woods, pushing through bushes and branches.

  “You do understand that there will be no reviving this time,” Karl said, apparently concerned that Christopher was not frightened enough. “He will burn our bodies and scatter the ashes to the wind.”

  “Shouldn’t we try to hide?” Christopher asked.

  “I suppose that would be a good idea,” Karl mused, looking at the massive equine head hanging over Christopher’s shoulder, “but I don’t think it’s possible.”

  “No,” Niona agreed, “I fear not. Look: he comes.”

  Out on the road they could see the black column already turning into the woods.

  Christopher gathered everyone together, a desperate football huddle, calling upon Marcius’s blessing for the battle ahead. The spell had helped alleviate the fear that Bart projected into the duel. Christopher was ill with the prospect of facing that despair a second time; he was sure it would shatter his untested boys. But the twinkling lights of magic stiffened their backs. Gray-faced but not trembling, they turned to face the incoming threat.

  Behind them Christopher drew his blade and waited, trying to match Karl’s icy calm. Cannan was grinning wildly, which meant the danger was extreme.

  The three men would be hard-pressed to beat Bart again, especially with Cannan in chain mail and longsword instead of his superior equipment, a deficit barely erased by the ring changing hands. That left thirteen poorly armed boys to fight eight first-rank knights. Impossible odds. Niona was their only advantage. He did not see how it could be enough.

  A salvo of crossbow bolts flew out from Christopher’s battle line. Most missed, but one struck Bart squarely in the shoulder, and the black knight cursed in annoyance.

  “Ha ha, it hurts now, doesn’t it?” Cannan laughed.

  “Fool,” Bart snarled. “That ring was not meant for you!”

  “Drop your trousers and I’ll give it back, though I warrant you’ll change your mind after the first three knuckles.” At least the knight was reloading while he bantered. Christopher would have preferred that he remain silent altogether. It might have benefited them if Bart had not known exactly who he faced until the last minute.

  The boys stood their ground, held only by the anchor that was Karl. They got off a second salvo
before the cavalry closed through the trees, but against ranked knights it had little effect.

  Niona chanted in her unknown tongue, and the forest came alive. Bushes clutched at the horses’ legs, tree branches grappling for the riders. One knight was pulled from his horse and held, struggling, five feet off the ground. Their horses screamed in panic. Christopher almost joined them; this was magic on a scale he had not yet witnessed. He took a step back but was blocked by Royal’s stalwart shoulder.

  The remaining knights dismounted, which wasn’t much of an improvement. The underbrush clutched at them, too, but several pushed free and attacked the line of spearmen.

  Karl had the boys in teams, two with spears protecting one with a crossbow. Christopher wanted to stay with them, but Bart had forced his horse through everything and bore down on Cannan.

  Bart’s sword was magical, so the ring would be of no use. Cannan flew into his tael-fueled rage, but it would not make up for plate and steel. Presumably he knew this, but he did not seem to care.

  Christopher fired his sword with the silvery enchantment and ran forward into the battle before he could allow himself to reconsider.

  He didn’t make it to Cannan. One of Bart’s retainers intercepted him, lunging with his longsword and missing his face by a hairsbreadth. Christopher counterattacked, slashing his katana across the man’s steel shield, but his enchantment was not that powerful. The shield was scored but did not fail.

  Christopher was driven back by the man’s flurry of thrusts. His two-handed sword was awkward in the woods and the close press of combat. At the last second he avoided accidentally stabbing someone coming up behind him. This was good, because it was Royal. The horse reared and lashed out with his front hooves at the enemy knight, teeth bared in a fearsome snarl.

  Christopher started to feel a little hopeful. He was pretty sure that he and Royal could take this guy. Letting the horse block the man from one side, he sidled to the other and advanced, blade at the ready. The knight was in a pickle. He needed to have his shield between him and the katana, and his sword between him and the horse, but right now it was the other way around. Suddenly he dashed straight between them. Christopher’s strike was slow and bounced harmlessly off the shield. The knight spun in place, and now he was arrayed as he wanted to be. He only had a second for his smile of triumph, though, before a curved blade came up behind him and tore his throat open.

  He fell, a gushing fountain of blood. Niona stood over him with fiery eyes, her bloody sickle in a professional grip. Without a word she moved on into the battle.

  Royal wasn’t convinced, stomping on the dead body with sickening crunches. Christopher could not afford to react, so he turned around and charged blindly into the fray.

  The boys were losing. Even with half the knights struggling with the flora, the boys were outclassed. At least one lay unmoving on the ground already, and more were in bleeding heaps. Cannan wasn’t fighting Bart but was trying to avoid him, dancing carelessly through the lesser knights. They couldn’t hurt him, but he dealt out terrible damage, uninhibited by their nullified weapons.

  Karl was stalking Bart, but the black knight ignored him, pursuing his real foe. He let his horse battle Karl to a standstill.

  Before he had time to think about it, Christopher sprung on a knight extricating himself from the grasp of several saplings. He lunged and thrusted, trusting to the tael to guide it between the chinks in the armor. The knight cried out and lashed back with his own sword. But he had dropped his shield, so Christopher ignored the weak blow that skittered off his mail and chopped savagely against the knight’s neck. The enchanted blade sank into the meat, came out red and dripping. The knight fell and Christopher turned away, ignoring the unreality of it all, the terrible feeling of having cut into living flesh, and sought out the real enemy.

  The black knight had won free of the area where the plants were active. He drove Cannan before him like a calf to the slaughter, back out to the open road where the warhorse could ride him down. From the road came two more horsemen, and Cannan was trapped as they plunged through the woods at him, but he was not their target. The unknown riders flew past the beleaguered knight and crashed into Black Bart.

  One rider was armored in blue half-plate, with a sword as large as Bart’s but glowing like a cobalt torch. His warhorse eagerly challenged Bart’s coal-black mount. The men whaled on each other in the peculiar offensive style of this world, ignoring blows that would have felled an ordinary man. Bart seemed to be dominating, but now Cannan was back into the fray, stabbing up from the ground. The second rider hung back, the smaller horse unwilling to join the clash of hooves, but the rider stood in the saddle doing something unusual. Christopher realized she was aiming a crossbow only when he saw the bolt sprout from Bart’s shoulder.

  He had not recognized her with a weapon in her hand. Lalania the troubadour, making a grand entrance. As usual.

  “Cannan! Save the boys!” Christopher cried.

  The knight glared angrily but did not hesitate. He sprinted back to the line, threw himself bodily into the black knot of armored warriors. Their swords rattled on him like sticks on a broken drum, but his blade flew in bright-red arcs as they fell around him.

  Christopher ran forward, feeling small in the midst of the huge horses and iron-clad men. Unnoticed, he stabbed at the seam in Bart’s armor where the leg joined the hip. A weak strike, but the sword flashed brightly and the black knight shrieked in pain. Bart urged his horse forward, as if in a panic.

  The warhorse plunged out of Christopher’s reach, so he chased after it. It reared on its front legs and kicked him squarely in the chest with two hooves. His tael absorbed the blow like a spring, transforming organ-crushing force into merely broken ribs, but nothing could dampen the kinetic energy, and he flew twenty feet through the air until he crashed into the trunk of a tree, which immediately wrapped its branches around him and held him tight.

  It didn’t matter; the battle was decided. The horses screaming against the unnatural ground that pulled at them, the groans of men, the clash of metal carried on, but the fight was done. Bart had forced the stranger’s horse into the circle of grasping shrubbery, and now his own black mount gathered itself for escape. Nothing could check his flight, but Niona appeared, singing in a high, beautiful voice. The black warhorse slowed, stopped, turned its head and stared at her, entranced. Bart raged on top of it, lashing out, striking it with his fists and feet, but it ignored him and did not move. The strange knight freed his horse and charged, his long blade held out like a lance, aimed at the rider. Bart snarled in fury, but his men were down, his horse was paralyzed, and his foes advanced upon him. He looked away, to where freedom lay, and then . . . was simply gone.

  His saddle was empty, the blue-clad knight’s sword passing through still air. Niona sang a different song, soothing and calm, and the panicked horses began to quiet and still, while the blue knight galloped around the circle of writhing shrubbery, looking in vain for the vanished foe. Lalania advanced carefully to the edge of the circle, took leisurely aim at a knight trapped in the trees, and shot him in the throat. He twitched once, twice, and then the tree, no longer sensing life, dropped the corpse to the ground in a heap.

  Then all the plants relaxed, returning to their normal placid torpor. Christopher fell forward and whimpered with the effort of drawing breath. He had to ignore the pain. He was not going to die, but some of the boys might.

  He managed to stand, but every step constricted his shattered chest like a vise. Never mind the way his sight faded with every flash of agony; he simply couldn’t breathe. With hand signals he waved to two of his boys, who carried him between them like a mannequin.

  “Show me the worst,” he whispered. They brought him to a corpse, mangled and still. Morbidly curious, he rolled the body over. It was Kennet.

  Three more boys were unmoving, one from shock, but the other two were dying. Being a priest of the Bright had its advantages. Although his last remaining spell for the
day was the fear-inducing one that had claimed his first casualty in this world, he was able to transform it into a healing spell, and bound up the wound of the boy before him.

  “Niona,” he tried to cry out, but she was already there. She bent over the other critical case and cast her spell. The boy opened his eyes and blinked.

  “I am down to orisons,” she told Christopher. He saw her costume was cut, and there was blood on it.

  “Me too,” he choked, coughing up blood into his hand. He looked at his reddened hand with horror.

  Niona reacted more practically, touching his chest and casting a spell. The pain faded, only flaring when he tried to walk.

  “You cannot heal them if you are dead,” she said, the nicest possible way of chiding him for his stupidity. Together they scanned over the remaining boys, spending their magic to stop the worst of the bleeding. The rest would have to depend on mundane bandages.

  Lalania helped, binding open wounds and in one case setting a broken arm. The boy sobbed in pain but did not scream, and she rewarded his bravery with a kiss.

  The blue knight cantered up, but not empty-handed. He dumped a whimpering yellow-clad figure on the ground. Christopher recognized the ugly little man as Bart’s priest.

  “I caught this rat sneaking away, though I could not find even a trail of his master. But I dared not search too far afield.” The blue knight’s voice was strong but not hard.

  Cannan stood guard, glaring at the knight on general principle.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “May I present the Baronet Gregor,” Lalania said, “late of Tomestaad. More recently, late of Goodman Parno’s wretched little inn.”

  “We’ve been shadowing you for days,” Gregor said. “But only this morning did we catch wind of Bart. We came to warn you, but you had already departed. We chased after you and found ourselves chasing Bart. And now he’s given us the slip.”