I will go down clean. This is who I am.
Eye.
Lance point.
Target.
Michael was a bowshot away. He could not breathe.
Neither adversary saluted. There was no flourish. They went at each other with a simple intensity of purpose.
To a veteran jouster, the open field, lack of barriers, and slight unevenness of the ground offered an endless subject for doubt.
Both horses went straight forward, perfectly in hand, perfectly balanced, their riders like statues in their saddles, tall and strong.
As the two came together, it seemed to Michael, watching, that both horses stepped offline. His pulse pounded in his throat, his dry mouth-he was clutching his saddle-
The sound carried after the impact was visible.
Both lances shattered, and both men rocked back. De Vrailly’s head seemed to snap back, and Gabriel’s body twisted badly, the shards of their lances falling like red and blue hail. But both horses had done what they’d been trained to-an oblique step at the moment of contact-and because there was no barrier, the two great chargers collided, breast to breast.
They rose, front hooves flailing, rearing as if neither monster had two hundred pounds and more of steel-clad man on their backs. They rose like fighting cocks, and iron-shod hooves flew like arrows on a stricken field-so fast, so many blows struck, that no watcher could even follow the course of the horse-fight.
De Vrailly’s horse came down first, and in that beat of a heart, Ataelus landed two great blows-left, right.
The sound of them carried across the field. One struck the armoured plate on the front of de Vrailly’s destrier, and the other did not, and sounded like a butcher’s hammer on raw meat. But de Vrailly’s destrier-slightly larger-sank his teeth into Ataelus below the neck armour-both animals writhed like fighting wyverns-
And both riders were thrown. Neither had ever recollected his balance from the breaking of the spears, and the sudden rear, the curvet and the roll finished both.
The two armies were almost completely silent. Many men were not breathing.
The earth had had three days of sun. Even in a hayfield, there was dust, and now the fight was obscured by the rising of the Cloud of Mars.
Armour glinted in the dust and both armies roared.
De Vrailly’s sword came to his hand like a falcon to its master and he was on one knee. The dust was all around him.
Something was wrong. Some part of his great helmet was loose-the helmet moved on his head as he swung, and his left thigh was a dull ache that could turn to real pain, but he couldn’t see what was hurt and had no real picture of anything after the moment of impact.
The dust was choking. His horse, Tristan, was fighting the Red Knight’s horse with all the savagery of two wild lions, and they raised dust.
He saw the glint of armour and stepped towards it and felt the pain in his left thigh again. He raised his left hand to his helmet and it moved-
Gabriel struck the ground hard, on his left side, his shield trapped under his body. He rolled off the shield and began to get to his feet just as the two fighting horses passed over him. He got a blow in his back plate that pitched him forward on his feet again, and the pain was intense.
Something was gone in his left arm. Or hand.
He saw de Vrailly, and the bastard was standing, almost relaxed, with his left hand on the visor of his great helm.
His own left hand was broken-possibly the wrist.
He stepped forward, his legs good, just as de Vrailly closed. He had to draw straight into a parry as de Vrailly’s huge blow crashed down, but he made the cover one-handed, took a little of it on the shield on his left arm, and the pain-
De Vrailly saw immediately that his opponent was covering his left-he threw a second blow and a third, aware that his own balance was precarious because of whatever had happened in his left thigh. Despite which, he pressed. His adversary parried and parried.
His third blow struck home.
Gabriel took the blow over his sinking left arm and shield, which he could no longer keep up. It smashed down from a high guard and struck just where the left pauldron met the maille of the shoulder under the aventail, which by bad fortune was caught on a buckle.
The blow knocked him to one knee, and for a long, sickening moment the pain stunned him.
A second blow slammed into his helmet.
And then the two horses crashed through the knights-so rapt in their own rage that each horse injured its own master, Gabriel knocked flat by Ataelus and losing his sword and de Vrailly caught by one of Tristan’s hooves in the back of a greave and also knocked to his knees-close enough to Gabriel that he could see the Gallish knight’s halting efforts to rise on his left leg, and the split where his lance had apparently opened a gap between the great helm’s visor and the frame-and deformed the whole outer helm. Like many knights, de Vrailly wore an outer helm and an inner, called a cervelleur.
So close. Gabriel could see that his lance tip must have come a finger’s breadth from ending the fight at the first pass.
In his bascinet, Ser Gabriel smiled. Not bad, he thought. I did that well enough.
And with that, he shook the shattered shield off his broken hand and arm, rolled to his right to rise with his empty right hand, and beat de Vrailly to his feet.
De Vrailly was slower rising.
Gabriel had a moment when he might have gotten on de Vrailly before the other knight could get to his feet. It passed. Gabriel couldn’t have said whether he was chivalrous or merely tired and wounded, but the moment passed.
He had a dagger, facing the best knight in the world with four feet of steel.
He began to bounce up and down on his toes.
De Vrailly had a moment of real fear when the horses hit, and then he was down, on his face in all the choking dust, and then back up-up with a missed attempt as his left leg almost refused its function. The second try he made it.
The Red Knight was already on his feet. He had a long baselard in his right hand, the tip of it held with his left, and he was bouncing on his toes like a boxer.
De Vrailly flicked a cut and the Red Knight parried on his heavy dagger blade.
De Vrailly stepped forward and threw two cuts-a rising cut at the Red Knight’s dagger hand from the guard of the Boar and the consequent falling blow, but the latter was out of distance as the Red Knight skipped back.
De Vrailly’s left leg failed, like a dull student. He didn’t fall, but suddenly the Red Knight was on him, covering into a close play. De Vrailly raised his hands-
Gabriel bided his time, managed the distance between them, and made his covers-and when the Gallish knight moved, he faltered in his forward motion and his sword moved into empty air.
Gabriel closed, powering into the bigger man with an effort of will that emerged as a shout. He got his left hand on de Vrailly’s hands-missed his pommel, and his left hand screamed at him.
But he had all the time in the world to slam the baselard overhand into de Vrailly’s neck where the aventail met the shoulder.
Except that the blow bounced, skidding off the mail as if off plate armour.
Quick as a cat, Gabriel struck again and again, as even de Vrailly’s strength was not enough to push down the desperation of his arm. Three times his point struck home and failed to bite. No link broke. No penetration.
The armour was protected.
Gabriel was losing his fight with pain and with de Vrailly’s strength, and he slipped free and spun so that de Vrailly’s counter blow merely clipped the point of his own bascinet.