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 finework, 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
“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 finework, 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
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