Still crazy, Cal thought. But the excitement was burning in him, too, he knew that as he watched Hawk leap down and hand his horse to a boy who ran out for it and then draw his sword.
The blue knight flung off his helmet. He had a dark tanned face; he winked at Hawk. Then he attacked.
“Is this a setup?” Cal had Shadow by the shoulder.
“What?”
“Like a stage fight!” He had to shout in her ear. “Or is it real?”
She looked at him then, strangely, and her answer was so low he barely heard it. “They’ll never say.”
The swords rang and clashed. He knew nothing of this but it stirred him; he could see how the attacks were swept in, feinted, covered; how the parries worked to block and protect the body, that there were ways of balancing and using the other’s weight and force against him, that it was a whole science, a beautiful, deadly dance. Hawk slashed; the crowd gasped as the blue knight ducked barely in time, then rushed in, cutting right and left into the rock-steady parries, twisting, swinging swiftly around to avoid a vertical slice of the hissing blade.
Shadow was yelling, jumping up and down, and so was he, he realized, shouting, “Hawk! Come on!” and other useless nonsense, and it was back, something of that crazy desperate longing that he had felt before the Grail, that hunger, that loss of himself. “Hawk!” he screamed, and the golden knight turned with a great roar and smashed his opponent’s sword aside so that it flew and skidded over the muddy grass.
Everyone flung their arms up and cheered.
And the blue knight knelt gasping, breathless, and laughed, and Hawk leaned on his sword and laughed with him, sweat dripping from his chin.
And in that instant, a bird plummeted out of the sky. A sudden, violent shock, it screamed down straight into Cal’s face; he flung an arm up, caught a fluttering screech of hooked beak, a cold eye, felt the rake of talons. Then he was down, people around him scattering and yelling, Shadow dragging him and the bird diving at him again, a demented, terrifying slash so that he beat at it and flung his arms over his head, a hot scratch searing down his face.
“Cal! It’s gone. Are you all right?”
Carefully, he uncurled. “What the hell was it?” he gasped.
“A bird. Some sort of falcon. It seemed to go right for you.”
“An osprey.” A woman in a fifteenth-century shift pointed up. “There it is.”
It had risen, far into the blue, a point of darkness. Three times it screamed around the castle, every eye following it, until it swooped down and down onto the arm of a huge brawny red-haired man outside in the encampment. Cal was hanging so far out over the wall to see, Shadow had to grab him. The falconer looked up, one look. Sour. Then he was gone in the crowd.
“Who was it?” Shadow stared. “Did you know him?”
“That was Leo.” Blood ran onto his lip; he could taste it.
“From that . . . from Corbenic?”
“I’m sure it was him.”
“Cal!”
He turned. Hawk was down on the grass, pushing through the crowd that was streaming toward the archery butts set out in the upper barbican. When he reached the foot of the wall he stared up, the sweat still gleaming on him. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” Cal mopped the blood up with a tissue. “Great.”
The sarcasm was wasted. Hawk just nodded. “The Company want to meet you. Come on.”
At the end of the battlements was a small door marked PRIVATE. Ignoring that, Hawk opened it and led them in, and in the sudden dimness Cal saw he was in a tower room, the floor made of planks of wood, an apple-wood fire burning in the great hearth against one wall. He saw the blond-haired woman turn to him, and then, sitting by the fire, the man in the tweed suit, who looked up as they came in. He had a grave face, and for a moment Cal thought he seemed like a university type, a lecturer. And then he thought, No. A soldier.
The man had Cal’s sword on his knees. “So,” he said, looking hard at Cal, his voice soft. “This weapon was given to you? You must be someone very special.” The sword gleamed, its red stones bright in the flame light.
“And you must be Arthur,” Cal said.
Arthur stood. “Yes,” he said mildly. “So I am. This is Gwen, my wife. And my seneschal, Kai.” The tall man. So handsome that Cal hated him on sight. And the long dark coat had to be Armani, at least.
Kai smiled, slightly mocking. “Your face is cut. Why did the bird attack you?”
“My business.” He took a step forward and held his hands out. “That’s my sword. I want it.”
“Do you?” Arthur gestured toward Hawk. “My nephew tells me you want to sell it.”
“That was yesterday. Things are better today.”
“But what will you do with it?”
“Learn to use it.” Cal glanced at Hawk. “I’d like to learn. If you’d teach me.”
“We’ll all teach you, laddie,” Hawk said heartily.
“Indeed,” Kai said acidly. “You’ll need all of us.”
Cal turned to Arthur, who held the sword out in both hands.
“Then take it back, and everything that it means, and be one with us, Cal.”
Slowly, Cal reached out and took it, the weight of the metal, warm from the fire, put his fingers around the blade, held it tight.
Arthur smiled. “Welcome to the Company.”
Behind him, Kai folded his arms. “Maybe now we can eat,” he muttered.
Spear
Chapter Eleven
“Go thy way,” said she, “to Arthur’s court, where are the best of men, and the most generous and bravest.”
Peredur
December was already halfway over. The weather had chilled; as he waited on the corner of Otter’s Brook, Cal saw that the last few leaves which had clung onto the trees only yesterday were gone now, blown away by the blustery wind. As he watched them their stark bare shapes offended his longing for order—trees were so haphazard; he wanted to straighten them up. Plunging his hands in his pockets he paced the pavement, kicking rotten leaves into the gutter. He didn’t know what any of the trees were called. In Sutton Street there had never been any, just the stubborn weeds that sprouted every year from the cracks in the paved yard.
Hawk’s van rattled around the corner. Cal picked up the sword in its canvas case and ran over.
“Sorry.” Shadow had the door open, breathless. “Couldn’t get it to start. We daren’t stop.”
Cal jumped in, putting the sword tidily onto the heap of weapons and books and blankets and other junk under the seats. Hawk shuddered the gears, muttering to himself in exasperation. Then he said, “In the old days people knew how to travel. Horses. Fine carriages. Not these foul-stenched tin cans.”
“Just because you can’t afford a good one.” Shadow reached out and tickled his neck. He gave a yelp; the van swerved unnervingly. Grinning, he said, “In the old days I had the best. Warhorses, chargers. Men ran out of castles to help me dismount. Squires removed my armor in sumptuous chambers, and there were women, lady, beautiful women. And feasts.”
Shadow looked at Cal and rolled her eyes. He smiled back briefly, but the whole idea reminded him of Corbenic, and as the van roared up the hill the sword shifted against his foot, nudging.
Last night he had dreamed that the sword was hanging over him. He had lain there on his back in the quiet, warm room, rigid with sweat, not daring to open his eyes, and he had known, definitely, surely, with a sickening certainty, that the sword was pointing down in midair above his face, that its wickedly sharp edge was catching the glimmer from the security light on Trevor’s garage, that the icy point was only just above his forehead. He had felt it descend, felt the metal touch him, pin-sharp, so that he pressed back into the pillow with a gasp and then, quickly, summoning all his courage, snapped his eyes open.