The Voice returned immediately, taking away the thought before it formed. Now! it urged. The sun is behind you! Now!
Verminaard looked over his shoulder into the blinding, blood-red sunrise.
Now!
With a shout, he launched the stallion toward the knight, who blinked, dazzled by the sun, then leapt away just as Verminaard drove the mace by his head.
"Midnight!" cried Verminaard, and the black light in Nightbringer's wake engulfed the man. He cried out once, struggled to his knees, and clutched his face.
"I can't see!" he shouted, groping through the dry grass for his dropped weapon.
Now! the Voice urged again. The mace has blinded him. Now!
Chapter 18
As he steered the horse toward the helpless man, his mace raised high for the killing blow, Verminaard saw something flash in the corner of his eye.
The last of the knights swooped by, a silver blur as rider and horse crossed in front of him. With a shrill whistle, the man leaned out of the saddle, stretching his sinewy arm toward his blinded companion. In one graceful, incredibly powerful movement, he caught up the injured man, lifting him onto the horse, and together they rode toward the open castle gates. Verminaard, astonished, pressed his horse hard behind them.
The Solamnic horse was now overburdened, but in the mile's gallop across the flatlands, Orlog's weariness made it hard for Verminaard to make up the distance. At last, sweeping wide around the hapless riders, Verminaard cut off the path to the castle bridge, and the Solamnic was forced to rein in his horse scarcely a hundred yards from the bailey walls. Resolutely the rider lowered his wounded companion and, rising in the saddle, faced Verminaard fearlessly.
"Good adversary," the Knight called out, raising his sword in the traditional Solamnic salute, "you have shown yourself strong in arms and enduring in battle. I give you the chance to show honor as well."
Listen to him! the Voice whispered as Nightbringer pulsed in Verminaard's hand. The Solamnic prattle of honor and code and oath is about to begin. Beware, my child: He will entangle you in honor.
Verminaard nodded. The Voice was right. He had seen the honor-mongers before, and he knew that their words carried poison and knives.
"My friend is injured," the knight continued. "He is blind and helpless. Allow him to pass over the drawbridge and into the bailey. Whatever quarrels you have with our country, our lord, and our Order, you and I can settle here on the plains, in full sight of my countrymen."
"Damn your country! Your lord and your Order be damned!" Verminaard roared, whirling the mace above his head until a dark spiral formed in the morning air, widening and widening until it covered the horses and riders, veiling the view of the garrison on the bailey walls like a thick, gloomy cloud. "As I see it, you've no grounds to bargain. Your companion stays where he is."
"So be it," the knight replied tersely. "Before these walls and the men assembled there, I say that you are a base, ignoble coward, and should the gods grant me the power to defeat you, you will be shown no mercy."
Verminaard sneered. "Oh, but I'll show mercy to you, Sir Knight. I shall prolong your miserable time of breath until the lord of the castle himself begs that I finish the job."
"Villain!" someone shouted from the castle walls, and from farther away, the shout was answered by another, the words indistinguishable, muffled by distance.
The raised hand of the knight stilled further outcry. "The lord of the castle begs to no brigand. If it must come again to sword and mace, then let it come, by Paladine and by Huma!"
"And let it come on foot," Verminaard declared, dismounting in a rustle of robes and a creak of black leather armor. "For I yearn to face you man to man and arm to arm, so that none will credit my victory to the stallion beneath me, nor your defeat to poor horse-mastery."
The knight dismounted as well, removing his shield from the back of the saddle and uncovering it so that the risen sun danced fitfully on the embossed white lance and black dragon that adorned its polished center.
Nightbringer shivered and hummed in Verminaard's hand.
Do not spare him, the Voice murmured with a new, frenzied urgency. Oh, do not spare him, Lord Verminaard, for he is the worst of our enemies and the fount of our suffering. Because of his line, we lie in darkness, and at the end of his descendants, we will breathe again!
"He will not be spared," Verminaard muttered, "for he stands between me and the lord of the castle."
As he approached the veiled knight, Verminaard knew that he faced the strongest fighter yet.
The man dropped into a swordsman's crouch, sidling gracefully to high ground, away from his wounded companion. Verminard lumbered after him, noisy and awkward afoot, but confident in his strength and his weapon and in the mysterious power that ran through the pulsing mace.
Their paths met on a little rise not fifty yards from the castle bridge. There, under the sight of Laca's archers, they circled each other twice and closed for the first attack.
The knight struck first, his saber switching and flashing like the tail of a snake. A quick backhand slash brought the blade across Verminaard's chest, furrowing effortlessly through the leather armor. Had the larger man not stepped back quickly, he would have been slain before the fight had really begun.
Backing away, gasping, Verminaard staggered down the rise, the knight in calm, relentless pursuit. The blade whistled by his ear once, twice, and he could barely stifle a whimper as he blocked a thrust with the handle of Nightbringer.
It was then, at the bottom of the rise, that sword locked with mace, steel with ancient stone. The knight pushed against Verminaard, his mailed face only inches from Verminaard's own, so that the young man could see the color of his enemy's eyes.
Blue. Pale blue like his own. Like Aglaca's.
Something in those eyes softened. Verminaard dug his heels in the dry, cracked earth and pushed, and the knight tumbled backward, landing with a rough clatter on the hard ground.
He was back to his feet at once, but the tide of the battle had changed. Verminaard knew now that he was stronger than the man before him, that for this time, at least, the quickness and skill of Solamnic swordsmanship fell short against the sheer brute power of muscle and rock.
With a jubilant shout, Verminaard brought the mace shrieking down at his pressed opponent, who scrambled free of the blow at the cost of a shattered shield. Reeling, his left arm limp and useless, the swordsman backed from the violet darkness and staggered up the rise once more, seeking the vantage of higher ground.
Now! the Voice urged again as the spiked head of
Nightbringer swirled, its stone surface roiling like black lava. He's yours if you strike now!
"Who are you?" the wounded knight rasped, weaving from pain and exertion.
Don't tell… don't tell. He will entangle you in honor…
"Verminaard of Nidus," the young man announced proudly. "I have come far to meet the lord of this castle and demand from him what is rightly mine."
The knight dropped his sword and fell to his knees. With his one good arm, he removed the helm and aven-tail. His blond hair was streaked with first gray, but his eyes were brilliant and young, as resolute as they had appeared nine years ago across the Bridge of Dreed.
Verminaard gasped. It was his own face, thirty years older.
"You!" he cried. "Laca Dragonbane!"
The man met his stare serenely. "What would you have from the lord of the castle, Verminaard of Nidus?"
Verminaard took a tentative step toward his blood father, then another. Laca rose slowly to his feet, turned his back on the approaching warrior, and walked calmly, almost casually to the side of the wounded knight.