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CONTENTS
Chapter One Four Swords in Candlelight
Chapter Two The Young Captains
Chapter Three The Seance of the Crowns
Chapter Four The Prince of Winchester
Chapter Five Fire in Winter
Chapter Six The Machines of Petersfield
Chapter Seven The High Seers
Chapter Eight A Head on the East Gate
Chapter Nine Bold Peter
Chapter Ten The Prince in Waiting
Beyond the Burning Lands Excerpt
About John Christopher
To Rosemary, In Lieu of H. or M.
ONE
FOUR SWORDS IN CANDLELIGHT
THE ARMORER’S FORGE WAS EAST of the river, in that part of the city called Chesil. It was a large, cavernous building, its floor of ancient stone cracked in places but all of a piece, dark except where the great central fire sent sparks springing up toward the square hole in the timbered roof. In the dimness the dwarfs moved here and there to the clang of metal on metal. They did not look up from their work when I came in. I stood for a moment by the door, watching and accustoming my eyes to the light. The Armorer Dwarf was on the far side of the fire, stooped over the big anvil. I went to stand beside him.
“Health, Rudi,” I said.
He did not answer at once. He took a sword off the anvil and held it between himself and the fire, lifting it up and down slightly to judge its trueness by the shifting gleam of light. He nodded and gave it to the dwarf who stood beside him, balancing the blade on his palm and offering the hilt. Then he turned to me.
“Health, Master Luke. How is the world outside? Freezing yet? Your cheeks look as though frost has stroked them.”
“It’s cold enough. A north wind still.”
“A pot of mulled ale, would you say?” He called an order to a dwarf apprentice who went off roll-gaited into the shadows. “Come and sit with me, Master Luke, and tell me how life goes in the city.”
My eyes followed the sword which had been taken to the whetstone. The dwarf there treadled with his foot and the wheel went round. He brought the steel edge to it and bright sparks flew.
“Is that . . .?”
“For the Contest? No, those are already made and burnished. Would you see them?”
He lit a candle, thrusting the wick into the fire’s heat in a way that would have scorched my flesh, and took it to the wall where swords hung waiting collection. The four made for the Contest rested apart from the others. They were also smaller, no more than two and a half feet from hilt to tip. Rudi took one down and handed it to me. The hilt fitted my grasp. I swung it lightly in the air.
Rudi watched me. He was big for a dwarf, close on five feet in height, and he did not have their squatness of figure to so marked an extent as was usual. His arms were brawny, muscled from his work, but the lower part of his body might almost have been human. His face was broad, brown and wrinkled, his hair and beard white. He said:
“Being chosen for the Contest is not everything, Master Luke.”
I did not answer but swung the sword once more and gave it back. He hung it carefully on its hook.
They were not, of course, the swords that would actually be used in the Contest. Those were of wood, unpointed, capable of prodding or sweeping an opponent off his horse but not of penetrating the stiff leather jerkins they wore. But at the Contest’s end each of the Young Captains would be given his real sword, one of these four. That nearest me had a red stone in its crosspiece that winked in the candlelight. It would go to the winner of the Contest, the conqueror.
Pots of ale were brought to us. Rudi offered me his own seat, its high back carved with the figures of past Armorers, but I refused it. I sat on a stool and sipped from the pewter pot. The ale was hot and sweet, flavored with spices. It warmed my throat and belly but did not lift the black depression from my shoulders.
Rudi said: “You would have been young for it.”
“No younger than Matthew is.”
“But his father is cousin to the Prince.”
“Yes.”
He drank deeply and gave his pot to a dwarf for refilling. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “You take things hard, Master Luke. It is a failing, if I may presume to say so.”
I would not have taken such a criticism from any other dwarf, but no other would have made it. In the past I had often taken troubles to Rudi and had good counsel from him. This counsel, too, might be good, but I got no comfort from it.
The Contest was part of the Fair which, in mid-March, was meant to mark the end of winter’s grip, the coming of spring. (Though year by year, it seemed, the cold stayed longer, the trees were slower in budding.) In it four sons of Captains led their troops against one another in a series of skirmishes on the Contest Field. To be chosen one must be between thirteen and fourteen years of age. My thirteenth birthday had fallen two months ago.
This year three of the four contenders were obvious choices. There was Edmund, the Prince’s second son. There was Henry, whose father, Captain Blaine, stood high in the Prince’s war council. There was also Gregory, son of Captain Harding, and the Hardings ranked with the Blaines in distinction. And not only rank was in their favor. They were older than I—Henry would be fourteen a week after the Fair—and known to be good fighters. Matthew, on the other hand, was three weeks my junior and I could beat him any day at swordplay or jousting. But his father, as Rudi had said, was a cousin to the Prince while mine had been a Sergeant ennobled on the field of battle, a commoner born. My hopes of taking the fourth place had always been slim, but they had been hopes. And dashed three days ago when the herald cried the news at the palace gate. Matthew was to be the fourth Young Captain, and wear the sword afterward.
Rudi said: “It is not much help to tell anyone that he must bear his disappointments, but it is a truth that has to be learned. Some find it more difficult than others.” His pot was returned brimming and he drank. “So they must school themselves harder.”
“You can say that,” I said, “as Master Armorer.”
He nodded. “Master Armorer. And dwarf.”
“But . . .”
I stopped. His words had startled me. If he had been a polymuf I might have understood. They, after all, were the lowest of the low, servants to men, landless, holding no property except at a master’s whim. These things, as much as their deformities, set them apart, and while many fawned, some glowered. Disgusting to men, their condition must be hateful to themselves.
But dwarfs had pride, not just in their crafts but as a race. For the most part they bred true and could trace their families back for generations, often further than proper men. They had houses, small-holdings, polymuf servants. They could amass wealth and loved to dress their dumpy womenfolk in silks and decorate them with bright jewelry and heavy gold chains. They could not bear arms and so could not be ennobled, but they were, and knew themselves to be, essential to the life of the city as workers in metal and leather, weavers, brewers, grooms to the stables—all kind of necessary crafts. They could rise to positions of high status. Rudi himself had a seat at state banquets: below the second salt but at the Prince’s table.