It was all part of the network of fosterage and service that tied the great houses together. There had also been persistent talk of a marriage between the Countess-regnant of Tillamook, or the County on the Edge of the World, as it was also known, and Count Conrad Renfrew’s youngest son. Marriage was another part of the network.
He went on to Huon: “I just got this from Her Grace.”
He tapped a knot of ribbons in Tillamook’s colors on his shoulder, gray and green and silver around an embroidered rose. Wearing a lady’s favor wasn’t precisely a pledge of marriage, that depended on circumstances. But it did entitle you to fight for her name and fame, and it was a serious matter, where the honor of each depended on the other.
“I sent a letter by heliograph after the Battle of the Vanguard, telling my lady Anne how I’d been knighted by the High Queen on the field of honor and begging leave to send her my first spurs and dedicate the deeds to her glory. This came in this morning with the couriers, and this.”
He pulled out a locket strung on a silver chain, shaped from an oval of walrus-ivory as long as a man’s thumb and half as wide, carved in delicate filigree and clasped with granulated gold. When he clicked it open there was a portrait of a striking fair-haired young woman, with his own on the other side.
“It’s beautiful, Sir Ogier,” Huon said. “She is, I mean, your lady the Countess; most fair and gracious, fitting for a Peer of the Association. She gave my sister Yseult shelter when it was, ah, awkward. We’ll always remember that with gratitude.”
He spoke quite sincerely; that too was a bond. The locket was fine work, and Anne of Tillamook was lovely…though also several years older than the young knight. And Ogier had been a good companion to work with, not stuck-up or birth-proud at all.
So I wish him all good fortune in his marriage, and her too, when and if. His son will be a Count, after all.
Huon stepped back so that Lioncel could take a look as Ogier beamed at the picture. That let him pivot at the first shout of alarm, and his bow was still in his hand with a nocked arrow resting in the cut-out. One of the not-quite-prisoners had ducked under a guard’s horse, slashing the girths as he went, and he was throwing himself headlong at Sir Ogier with a long glitter of steel in his hand, dodging the rider’s draw-and-cut as the man toppled onto his own sword with a yell.
“Look out!” Huon called crisply, into the chaos of rearing horses and men shouting, drawing and loosing as he’d been taught.
He hadn’t had time to aim except by raw instinct, or to worry about missing and hitting someone else. The string struck his forearm, hard enough to feel through the stiff leather of his arm-guard. The arrow hit, low and at an angle; he could hear the wet smacking impact. There was a screech, and the body of the attacker struck him and he went over backward with a painful thump, too quickly for his training in how to fall to do more than help a little. It gave him a good viewpoint to see the assassin who’d been masquerading as a deserter run into Lioncel. He was a grown man, though wiry and slender as most light cavalry were, a third again as heavy as the young squire. But he stopped rather than overrunning him. The curved dagger in his hand slit the surcoat on Lioncel’s shoulder and grated off his mail, then fell to the ground point-first and stood quivering.
The man slumped downward, leaking blood from nose and mouth. When he hit, Huon could see the silver wire around the hilt of Lioncel’s misericorde dancing in the center of his chest. The narrow blade of the weapon had slipped easily between the links of the mail shirt, which was what it was designed for. And equally easily between two ribs and into the big blood vessels over the heart, driven by the man’s own weight and momentum. Behind Lioncel, Ogier Renfrew extended a steadying armored arm against the squire’s back as he staggered.
When the knight spoke an instant later, it was to his men, though, in a sharp carrying voice:
“Put up your weapons! I’m all right, by the grace of God and St. Dismas! No killing! Remember the High King’s order!”
The crossbowmen and men-at-arms raised their weapons, or lowered the points of their swords. The prisoners were in a tight clump, hands raised or on their heads, mostly blank-faced but slightly crouched; they’d thought themselves about to be massacred…which might have happened, if Ogier hadn’t spoken swiftly.
OK, make a note of that, Squire, Huon thought, struggling to draw a breath and then get back to his feet. Focus on the immediate need. Prioritize!
“Not one of us!” one of the Boise men called. “Bastard wasn’t in our platoon! Just turned up and said he was switching sides too, on his own.”
Ogier stepped forward and indicated the curved dagger with the toe of his steel sabaton. It was fine work, with a rippling watermarked pattern wrought into the blade, and the pommel was a ball engraved with the shape of a rayed sun.
“Hand of the Prophet,” he said. “Kill-dagger. Those sons of whores operate in threes.”
The prisoner who’d spoken before did again: “He was alone. We haven’t seen any others.”
“Then they may turn up. Or you could be lying.” He shook his head and went on to the deserters: “I’m afraid we are going to have to tie you and search you.”
In a harder voice, directed at his own followers, who were shuffling their feet:
“Search you again, only thoroughly this time.” Then he went on to the prisoners:
“This is a temporary measure, until we get you to Goldendale and sort out who’s who. That’s how the enemy operate, trying to destroy honest men’s trust in each other.”
One of his own men-at-arms bent to retrieve the assassin’s knife.
“I wouldn’t use my bare flesh on that, if I were you, Teófilo,” Ogier said dryly. “It was consecrated to the service of Hell and the death-demons in Corwin, probably by the Prophet’s own hand.”
“¡Dios mío!” the man blurted. “Thank you, my lord!”
He used a stick to push the knife onto a cloth, stuffed the bundle into a leather sack, and put that on a pack-mule. His comrades attended to binding the prisoners, and the knight turned to the squires.
“Good work, very good work,” he said. “Her Majesty will hear of it, and the Grand Constable, too, of course.”
“Lioncel did the work…killed him,” Huon said, suddenly feeling a little weak as he looked down at the dead Cutter, wrinkling his nose at the coppery metallic stink of blood. There was a lot of it in a man. “All I did was shoot him in one butt-cheek.”
Ogier laughed, and Lioncel gave a startled chortle. “I…just drew and stabbed,” he said, his voice wobbling a little.
“And jumped in front of me towards the danger, like Huon,” Ogier noted. “It’s when he’s surprised that a man shows his real instincts, or his training, or both. My lord my father told me that once and I’ve never forgotten it.”
Huon looked down at the dead assassin; the arrow had gone in over the hip-bone and then down through one buttock. The red point stood out just where it joined the upper thigh. He didn’t pull a very heavy bow, but flesh was so…
Tender, Huon thought uneasily.
“And you can truly say that this is now a thoroughly half-assed assassin,” Lioncel said.
Something unknotted in Huon’s gut as he joined in the laughter.
CHAPTER THREE
COUNTY OF AUREA
(FORMERLY CENTRAL WASHINGTON)
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
OCTOBER 30TH, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
“Was that your first?” Huon asked an hour later; he thought the younger boy wanted to talk.
Lioncel shook his head. “No…they, assassins like that, tried to kill my lady the Grand Constable in Walla Walla a few months ago, the very same day I’d been made squire. And the Count, and my lord my father, all on the same night.”