Read an Excerpt
One
Azure, Three Scepters, a Chevron Or
Collum punched the other knight in the face with the pommel of his sword gripped in his gauntleted fist, so hard the dark inlaid metal dimpled under his knuckles, but his opponent showed absolutely no sign of falling over or surrendering to him. He swore under his breath and followed it up with a kick to the ankle but missed and almost fell down, and the other knight spun gracefully and clouted him smartly in the head so his ears rang. He would’ve given a thousand pounds to be able to wipe the sweat out of his eyes, not that he had a thousand pounds. He had exactly three shillings and two silver pennies to his name.
The two men backed off and circled each other, big swords held up at stiff angles, shifting from guard to guard, heavy shards of bright sunlight glancing and glaring off the blades. They’d dropped their shields after the tilt to have both hands free. No mistakes now, Collum thought. Circles not lines, Marshal Aucassin whispered in his mind. Watch the body not the blade. He threw a diagonal cut that glanced harmlessly off the other knight’s shoulder. The inside of his helmet was a furnace, sharp smells of hay and sweat and raw leather. He’d come here to test himself against the flower of British chivalry, the greatest knights in the world, and by God he was getting what he came for. He was getting the stuffing beaten out of him.
They stepped lightly, testing, offering, up on the balls of their feet. Every tiny movement made their armor squeak and clank and jingle in the quiet of the meadow; even the tips of their swords made tiny whips in the stifling air. Why—why had he thought this was a good idea? Why hadn’t he stayed back on Mull? Heatstroke prickled at the back of Collum’s neck. They weren’t fighting to the death, but if he lost he’d lose his horse, and his armor, which he hadn’t gone through all the trouble of stealing it from Lord Alasdair just so he could hand it over to some nameless knight who probably had half a dozen spares waiting for him back at his cozy castle.
And without his horse and armor Collum was nobody and nothing. An orphan and a bastard, poor as a church mouse and very far from home. And he could never go back. He’d made damn sure of that, hadn’t he?
He didn’t even know who he was fighting; he’d stumbled on this man purely by chance, or possibly by God’s will—thanks a bunch, as always—sitting under a crooked ash in a meadow, head in his hands, as if the weight of the sunlight itself were too much for him. He’d looked up and shouted a challenge at Collum, and who did that anymore? It was like something out of the stories. Whoever this was, he was a knight of the old school.
His armor was old-fashioned, too, the breastplate black steel damascened with a pattern of fine silver whorls and a rose at the center. A rich man’s armor. A nobleman’s. His helmet had a pointy snout like a beak, and like Collum he bore the vergescu, the plain white shield of an unfledged knight. Collum bore it because he was not technically—as he’d tried to explain—a knight at all, not yet, he hadn’t sworn the vows, but there were other reasons to bear the vergescu, like to hide your identity if you were in disgrace. Or Sir Lancelot bore it sometimes because otherwise no one would fight him.
This man was no Lancelot, but he was pretty damn good. Thoroughly fledged. Collum was taller but the mystery knight was faster—he barely saw him move when bang! his wrist went numb and ping! a tiny fastening pin sprang off his gauntlet and disappeared forever into the grass. He stepped neatly inside Collum’s reach and grabbed for his wrist with his off hand, and Collum skipped back, panting like a bellows, but he stumbled and the man jammed his blade in the gap where his gardbrace didn’t fit right, shaving off a sharp curl of bright steel.
He pressed his advantage, whipping a backhand strike at Collum’s head that just missed—
There it was. The knight let his follow-through pull him round just a little too far. He was tired, or he’d overcommitted, either way he couldn’t quite stop the stroke and it left him off-balance. Collum’s blood broke out in a martial chorus and with the last of his strength he barged ahead behind his gauntleted fist MANG! to the side of the knight’s helm, and twice more, MANG! MANG! Just like that he was through and into that other place, the one where he felt like a solid shining steel godling and nothing could stand against him, certainly not this soft, staggering wretch he saw before him! Collum regripped and delivered a clean, high, two-handed horizontal cut and the knight’s head snapped round and he sat down backward on the grass.
Sir Vergescu tried to raise his blade but only dropped it again, as though fairies had cursed it so it weighed a thousand pounds. Collum let himself bend over panting, hands on hips. Sweat stung his eyes and gathered and dripped under his chin. Had he won? Really won? The man just sat there. He’d won.
He dropped to one knee and pressed the top of his helm against the cross of his sword. Thanks be to almighty God in Heaven! Thank you God for giving me—your unworthy servant—this magnificent fucking victory! He’d fought a British knight in a British hayfield and he had won. He could keep his precious armor, for now at least. In the darkness of his helmet un‑knightly tears prickled in his eyes. Somewhere inside him there was strength, the strength he’d always longed for but never quite believed in. Not really. Not truly.
Or was there? Was there not something about this victory that was just a little bit too easy? Collum pushed that unappealing idea away, sniffed, and hauled himself to his feet again.
“Well fought, sir,” he said. “Do you yield?” Collum thought in Gaelic, the language of the north, but for the occasion he used the courtliest, most correct, most Roman Latin he could muster.
The man didn’t answer. That beaky bird-helmet just gazed up at him, expressionless. It looked quizzical and a bit funny.
In fact, now that Collum had a second to take it in, the man’s appearance was stranger than he’d realized. Armor hid his face but in other ways it spoke volumes. That pretty silver rose on his chest had been scratched and scribbled over; somebody had taken a nail or a sharp rock to it. On top of the knight’s helm, where a lady’s favor might have been, a knotted hank of dry grass was tied instead.
There were streaks of rust on his mail undercoat where the armor plates overlapped and trapped the wet. Sir Vergescu’s cozy castle was far away, if he even had one. He must’ve been out on the road a long time. Maybe not so different from Collum after all.
He shook off his gauntlets and fumbled with his bare fingers at the buckles and catches at the back of his head and tore his helmet off and dropped it on the grass. The bright world blasted in on him from all sides, loud and acid-green. He rubbed his face vigorously with both hands. The hot summer air felt marvelously cool. The rush of victory was fading now, and the heat and hunger and thirst were coming back. His knees felt weak. He hadn’t eaten in two days.
He hoped the man wasn’t hurt. He’d actually been looking forward to having a chat with him. Breaking down the combat, talking some shop. Maybe he knew how things stood at Camelot. Maybe he even knew Sir Bleoberys of the Round Table.
“Well fought, sir,” Collum said. “Do you yield to me now?”
“Fuck your mother.”
The man’s voice was hoarse and weary. Somewhere a woodlark sang: loo-loo-loo-loo-loo tlooeet tlooeet tlooeet.
“Beg pardon?”
“Your mother.” His Latin was surprisingly refined. A lot better than Collum’s. “Fuck. Her.”
Maybe they weren’t going to be having that chat after all.
“That is ill said of you, sir.” Collum cleared his throat. “I ask again: Do you yield to me now?”
“Well, that all depends,” the man replied, “on whether or not you’ve fucked your mother yet.”
He was angry, obviously. It was embarrassing, losing to an unfledged knightling. God knows he, Collum, wouldn’t have wanted to lose to himself. But it wasn’t his idea to fight, was it?
Maybe he was hurt after all. Maybe he was in pain. Collum put out his hand to help him up, and the mystery knight held out his own—but then quick as a lizard he grabbed Collum’s wrist instead, and with his other hand he whipped something thin and dark out of a sheath at his waist—a misericord, a long, thin knife made for slipping between armor plates—and thrust it up at Collum’s groin.
Purely on instinct Collum twisted his hips and took the blow smartly on his steel skirt. He caught the man’s knife hand and for a heartbeat they strained against each other, trembling. The knight kicked Collum’s ankles out and rolled on top of him with all his weight, and Collum lost the knife hand—God’s blood!—and panicked and scrabbled and caught it again just in time to keep his throat from getting laid open.
He threw his other arm around the man’s shoulders, heaved with his hips, and rolled them back over.
“God’s nails, stop!” His voice cracked hysterically. “Just yield!”
Collum fumbled for his own knife and forced it through the slit in the knight’s helm. The knight trembled like a rabbit in a snare and clawed at Collum’s face and thrust wildly with his pelvis. Then he coughed once and went still.
The sound of insects was loud, like dry seeds rattling in a dry pod. Silent pillars of golden country sunlight were slowly burning the green timothy grass into hay.
The knight lay flat on the ground as if he’d fallen there from a great height.
Jesus. Collum scrambled to his feet, breathing hard. Shitting Jesus. Thou recreant knight. He’d never killed a man before. God have mercy on us both.
The man kicked once and then stopped moving forever. The only part of him that was exposed was that one fish-pale hand, the one he’d bared to go for his misericord. There were brown speckles on the back of it, some ropy blue veins. Sir Misericord had not been in his first youth.
And now he was dead. And for what? Nothing. A game, played for no one, in an empty field.
And to think that they were barely a day’s ride from Camelot, the sun that bathed all of Britain in the golden light of chivalry.
“God have mercy,” Collum whispered. An hour ago he’d been no one, then he was a hero, and now he was a murderer. He stood there for a long time, he didn’t know how long. A cloud passed in front of the sun. The two horses, his and the dead knight’s, watched him with long-lashed disinterest.
Then Collum knelt and with a shudder drew his knife out of the man’s eye socket. He walked over to where the fallen knight’s shield lay face down on the matted grass and turned it over with his toe. You could still make out the arms under a hasty coat of white paint: Azure, Three Scepters, a Chevron Or.
