“You are returned a great warrior, I am told. Greene told me of your exploits before he knew your crime. Luke, the slayer of the Bayemot, who won a king’s daughter in the land of the Wilsh. . . . I am honored to face your sword.”
I lunged while he was talking. He parried, back-handed, without breaking the rhythm of his speech. Steel struck steel and the shock jarred up my arm. I darted back, expecting the riposte, but he stayed where he was and laughed.
“Is this the Bayemot-killer? Is Bayemot the name the Wilsh give to rabbits?”
I thrust once more and was beaten back, and thrust again. I called in my mind to my demon to aid me, to bring me the strength and fury that I needed now as much as when I had struggled in the clinging embrace of the monster. But he would not come. Instead I saw the gentle face of Ann and my brother’s mask of grief. I was innocent of her murder but she had died because of me. That much was true.
Again I came at him but my blows were like the wing beat of a fly against a hornet. The crowd cheered him on but he needed no encouragement. Once my foot slipped and, still smiling, he allowed me to recover.
He mocked me. “You sweat. Are you warm, rabbit-killer? You will be warmer soon.”
Then, as I attacked, instead of passively taking the blow he struck. Fatigued and sick at heart as I was, I could not but admire the way he did it, pivoting perfectly and smashing his sword across my own. My nerve endings were shot through with pain. I staggered and fell, and the sword dropped from my numbed fingers. He took a step forward and put his boot on it.
“And now,” he said, “will you walk to the stake like a man, or shall I prick you on with my sword point?”
The mob was shrieking for joy. I looked up at him, smiling with hate above me. I thought I heard my name called but it could only be in derision. Then I heard it again, through the baying.
“Luke!”
I turned my head. Edmund had pushed through beside his brother. He had something in his hand: another sword. The sword I had left in the camp when I went out to walk in the moonlight—the sword the High Seers had forged for me in the Sanctuary.
He sent it skittering across the cobbles. Peter could have struck me down as I reached for it but did not. He said:
“I think now you have run out of friends and swords. One more makes no difference.”
My hand closed round the hilt. I had one friend in the crowd, as Peter had said, and it had taken great courage to do what he had done. Courage in a cause which he must be sure in his heart was lost. And another friend, hanging in chains and waiting for the torch to be put to the straw at his feet. At last the demon rose and I leaped at my tormentor with an angry shout. They might give me whatever death they could impose, but they would not make me go tamely to it.
Peter knew the difference with a warrior’s instinct. There was no more careless ease and no more mocking. He fought with skill and coolness and professional silence. The crowd, also sensing the change, quieted in their turn. I heard nothing but the thud of our feet, the clang and hammer of our swords as we traded blows. Once there was a deep indrawn sigh, from a thousand throats. It was not until blood trickled down my arm and split in heavy drops on the stones that I realized what had prompted it; and that I was hit. I had felt nothing.
Always his strength forced me back. I battered against a moving wall of steel, and muscle that seemed no less hard. I slipped a second time and he did not stand back but came after me. I twisted away from the blow which, had it landed, would have sliced my arm off at the shoulder as one carves a chicken at table; and darted clear. He moved swiftly, swinging his sword in an arc of brightness through the dull air. Then I met him, with every ounce of strength I could muster, in a downward smash that matched his own. Metal shrieked in the clash, and the agony of the shock almost made me fall. But I kept my balance and my sword. And saw his, broken to a stub only inches from the hilt, the blade shattered and useless at his feet.
For a moment we stared panting at each other. I could scarcely draw breath to speak. At last I said:
“I am innocent of her death, as Martin is. Keep your city and your title. We will go elsewhere, my friends and I.”
His answer was a howl that was neither of grief nor rage. It had both in it and more: madness and despair. He rushed at me, swinging his broken sword, and could have wounded me, even killed me, had I not jumped clear. He turned and came again. I thrust for his right shoulder to disarm him. But he leaped, careless of defense, seeking only to reach my skull with his shattered weapon, and the point of my sword took him between the ribs. His weight and the impetus of his charge wrenched it from my grasp.
But he lay on the cobbles, unmoving, with the point thrusting out through his back, and his blood gushing from beneath him. The stones were not stained for long. In the silence that followed, while people strove to take in what they saw, the first thick drops of rain fell from the sky. After that it came in a torrent, washing his blood away.
• • •
My first act as Prince was to make Edmund a Captain. He sat with the others in the Great Hall when Ezzard was brought to me. I said:
“Before Prince Peter, my brother, you were charged with using machines, with treason, and with murder. Each of these crimes is punishable by death. His court condemned you. Do you have anything to say against the sentence that was passed?”
He stood there, very tall in his black robe which was torn at the sleeve and rust-smeared from the chains. The deep blue eyes stared above the beaked nose. He said:
“No, sire.”
“What of your Acolytes?”
“They acted only under my orders.”
“All of them?”
“Not all. There were some who knew nothing of this.”
“Name them.”
He spoke three names and the third was Martin’s. I felt the tremor of relief run down my legs. I said:
“Do you swear it, as you stand in the shadow of your death?”
He said in a cold, bleak voice: “By the Great Spirit, I swear it.”
“Then the sentence on those three is rescinded. On you and your accomplices it stands. For the crimes which you confess you must die in the palace yard. But we will have no more burning. The ax will take your life.”
The tall, thin figure bowed toward me.
“I thank you for this mercy, sire.”
My legs trembled still, and I shifted my feet to hide it.
I said: “Take him away.”
• • •
When the High Seers came I received them with formal ceremony. Later we sat in private in the little chamber behind the Room of Minors. Lanark said:
“You have done well, Luke.”
I said: “And so have you. Ezzard is condemned by the High Seers as well as by the Prince of Winchester. You bring us a new Seer to replace one whom false Spirits drove mad. And the true Spirits speak again in the Seance Hall.”
Lanark watched me. He was very old, with brown grave marks on his hands and face. He said:
“Ezzard also played his part.”
“I am tired of this playing of parts,” I said. “We talk of men, not actors. I saw him die. The axman, I suppose, was nervous, never having taken the head of a Seer before. It required three blows to finish him.”
“At least you saved him from the fire.”
“And those four others who merely did as they were told, and helped him lay the cable and set up the generator? They obeyed orders and died for it. But whose orders did Ezzard obey?”
“No one’s,” Lanark said. His voice was tired. “And he did not tell us what he planned to do.”
“Can I believe that?”
“It is true. He did many things without consulting us. It was by his doing that your father was made Prince. He was a man of initiative but the initiative was not always well based. There was no need for this, and it put everything at risk.”