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The king’s herald climbed up on a platform and started reading the rules. “If you are struck, you must take a knee or sit where you are, unless if by doing so you impede the progress of your opponent, or if by doing so you would place yourself in danger, in which case you are to take the shortest number of steps necessary to find a clear and unobstructed position in which to sit.”
All nine teams had assembled in the rose garden, and very few of them were paying any attention to the herald. They kept glancing at each other out of the corners of their eyes, sizing up the competition, looking for weaknesses.
Quin wasn’t listening, either, but for a very different reason. He kept stealing glances at Gloria, who stood alongside their little squad, arms crossed, chin lifted, eyes wide. She had on a green dress with a silver bodice that looked nearly like armor. Except that armor didn’t usually fit quite that tight. Or curve in quite that way. She was beautiful, and he wanted to say something, but he didn’t know how to do it.
No one had ever accused Quin of being a ladies’ man. In fact, his sister, Eloise, had once called him “impervious to romance.” That had been a few years ago, at a Seefest party in Lanwit, when one of Eloise’s friends had kept pestering Quin to take her sleigh riding, or go ice skating, or come up to the library and read by the fire with her. Later, when Eloise had told him what the girl was trying to do, Quin had said, “I feel like an idiot.” Eloise had kissed him on the cheek and said, “You should, dear.”
Now he had that same feeling. He was sure something had almost happened with Gloria two days ago, when they had been alone and she had been helping him with his swordsmanship. He wished that Ilsa hadn’t interrupted them. He felt like an idiot for not talking to Gloria directly. But he didn’t want to make everything awkward with the team.
He was still thinking about that, and not about the tournament, as the teams started filing out of the rose garden and heading over to take up their positions on the melee field. Rishi came over and pounded Quin on the back with a rattle of armor and mail that shook Quin out of his reverie.
“Anything wrong?” Rishi asked, grinning. “You look like you had a bad egg at breakfast.”
“I never eat breakfast before a fight,” said Ilsa.
“Because you’ve got a hangover?” Baldwin asked.
“No, it’s something we Befalas learn in Landatid,” said Ilsa. “They tell you it’s so that if you get an arrow to the gut, the wound stays clean. Personally, I think it’s so you don’t have members of your squad running off to find the privy in the middle of the fight.”
“I’m fine,” said Quin. He took a deep breath. “Really, I’m fine. Let’s go do this, shall we?”
They reached the field through a crowd of spectators, past the elevated pavilion for the king and his guests that had been put up earlier that morning. Quin noticed a few girls waving banners with Baldwin’s coat of arms. No one with the red boar of the Porcher family, although he didn’t really expect there would be.
Once they stepped over the rope and into the field, Ilsa spotted a nice stretch of empty lawn, halfway down the hill between the rocks and the stream, and they walked over to stand there. Kostas’s team had the rocks. Amund’s had the copse of trees that Gloria had wanted. Prince Nikil, nephew of the Sahasran king and local crowd favorite, had positioned his people at the bridge in the very middle of the field. The other five teams found spots on either side of the stream, hoping to use the water to protect their flank and rear.
But Quin and his team had a different strategy. They were going to keep moving; they didn’t want to get trapped in one place. And if they needed to cross the stream, they didn’t mind getting their feet wet.
A trumpet blast from the royal pavilion announced the start of the fight, and several teams moved immediately to the attack. The Duke of Sortland’s team rushed the bridge, trying to dislodge Prince Nikil’s people. After barely half a minute, Quin saw one of the prince’s men, Lord Kaur, throw up his hands, shuffle off the bridge, and sit down on the grass in a spot that was out of everyone’s way. He was the first “casualty” of the day.
“Idiots,” muttered Logan. “Why do they think they need that bridge?”
At the same time, the Duke of Pinshire’s team, wearing identical new tabards of green and silver silk, sprinted up the hill to attack the rocks. Kostas stood back, directing the defense, while Lord Cesseron, the Immani nobleman, and Lord Joakim Unset counterattacked from behind a boulder. Two Pinshire men went down in seconds, and the others retreated in confusion.
Unset and Cesseron stared down at Quin’s team, only twenty yards away, as if wondering whether to attack. But then, apparently obeying some prearranged strategy, they climbed back up behind the rocks and rejoined their comrades. The two Pinshire casualties removed their helmets, shared a drink from a silver flask, and broke out a pack of cards.
Farther down the hill, the Earl of Nordligsby’s team splashed through the stream and started up toward the rocks. “We’d better move,” said Logan. “We’re going to get trapped here between those people and Kostas.”
They hurried across the field, steering well clear of the ongoing “slaughter” at the bridge, where the Graf von Konrad’s team had now joined in. More than half a dozen fighters had been eliminated, and they sat on the banks of the stream, chatting together.
Just above the bridge, however, Quin’s team faced their first combat. The Duke of Keneburg’s team, led by Lord Wallace Montgomery, apparently thought better of joining the scramble for the bridge, and instead veered off to intercept Quin and his comrades.
“Remember to keep moving,” Logan warned them. “Don’t get stuck in place. Strike, slash, then move on.”
They formed up with Logan and Baldwin in front, Rishi and Ilsa on the sides, and Quin following at the back. Lord Wallace jumped straight in, exchanging blows with Logan, before spinning around and trying his luck with Rishi. Ilsa dispatched one of the Keneshire men, Sir Walter Spurling, with a quick jab to the upper thigh. Then, almost out of nowhere, Sir Thomas Wilkes rushed up and smacked Ilsa across the arm above her buckler. Quin jumped forward and struck Wilkes in the shoulder, but the damage was done. Ilsa sighed and sheathed her sword.
As the remaining Keneshire men fell back, Logan led Quin’s team in the opposite direction. Ilsa waved and called out, “Avenge me!” Then she sat down with Wilkes and Spurling. Quin heard her voice fading as he hurried away. “How are you two doing? Are you alright, Walter? I didn’t get you in the balls, did I?”
Quin’s team neared the stream in an empty portion of the field. “We can cross here,” said Logan, “and then we’ll feint up toward the trees to see if we can draw an attack from Amund.”
Even as they were crossing the stream, however, the three surviving members of the Graf von Konrad’s team abandoned their attempts to conquer the bridge and apparently decided Quin’s team looked like a softer target. The Ritter von Beckdorf—an excellent horseman whom Quin remembered from the riding competition in Keneburg—led the attack, slamming into Baldwin and raining down huge blows that Baldwin only just managed to block. Lord Heikkinen, a pasha from Alokko, darted toward Rishi, but then dodged around him and lunged at Quin.
Quin only got his buckler up in the nick of time, and he felt the breeze through his visor as the pasha’s sword glanced off and passed inches from his face. Heikkinen pressed forward again and again, forcing Quin back and keeping him off balance.
And then Quin noticed how the pasha’s sword moved—long, powerful slashing motions, starting all the way behind him and sweeping forward with all his weight. Exactly the sort of thing Gloria had told Quin to stop doing. Quin crouched down, lowering his hips, and stepped forward into Heikkinen’s attack, jabbing his sword out quickly. He felt the blade make contact.
“Well, bugger,” said Heikkinen, looking down. “You got me.” He sheathed his sword and tipped back his visor. “Oh, well. I was getting winded, anyway.”
Quin bowed to the man and hurried to help Rishi with another attacker. Then Logan shouted for them to pull back and “Just keep moving.”
As Quin, Logan, Rishi, and Baldwin ran uphill toward the trees, they heard angry shouts coming from the bridge. An argument had broken out there, apparently, over who had hit whom, and whether some of the fighters were cheating by pretending they hadn’t been hit. A pair of heralds were already coming down from the royal pavilion to adjudicate.
Turning their backs on this mess, Quin and his comrades approached the trees. Sir Amund Linwood stood leaning against one of the larger trunks, arms crossed. “Gentlemen, is there something I can help you with?” he asked with a smirk.
“Tell me,” said Baldwin, “is this how you got that tree on your shield, Linwood? Because that’s where you always hide?”
It would have been funnier if Logan didn’t have trees in his coat of arms, too—a fact that Sir Amund immediately pointed out.
Baldwin continued, unperturbed. “Are you coming out here to fight us, or do we have to come in there?”
Sir Amund bowed and drew his sword. “By all means, be my guests.”
“Remember, this is a feint,” Logan whispered. “We hit them and then keep moving.”
With that, he sprinted forward, catching Amund off balance and sending him staggering back. Lord Alan Arbuthnot emerged from the trees at the same moment and attacked Rishi. It would have been a close match, except that Sir Swithin Howard, another of Amund’s men, slipped around the side, pretending he was heading for Baldwin. Instead, he turned suddenly and tapped Rishi in the back with the flat of his blade. Rishi heaved a sigh, raised a hand, and then sheathed his sword.
Together, Baldwin and Quin counterattacked, heedless of Logan shouting for them to pull back. Baldwin struck Arbuthnot on the hip and squeezed past him into the green shade under the trees, where he traded blows with Sir Nico Xylander. When Quin tried to follow, though, he suddenly found his way blocked. Arbuthnot stretched theatrically, putting a hand on a tree trunk to either side.
“Let me through,” said Quin. “You can’t block my way.”
“You can go around,” said Arbuthnot with a smirk, pointing to a thicket of brambles to his right.
Quin muttered a curse under his breath and pushed Arbuthnot aside. By this point, he couldn’t see anyone in the center of the copse. The sound of steel on steel came from his right, though, and he circled around through dense beds of ferns and back out into the sunshine. He arrived in time to see Sir Swithin Howard score a hit on Baldwin. Quin ran after Howard, catching up with him fifty feet away, and tagged him on the shoulder with his sword, evening the score again.
“Come on, let’s go!” said Logan. He was a dozen yards down the slope, and while he fought off Sir Amund with one hand, he was pointing with his buckler down toward the bridge. Quin looked and saw Kostas’s team coming up the hill. A quick glance around the field showed that everyone else was down. Up at the royal pavilion, three banners were still flying. This was it: only three teams left.
Obviously Logan had the right idea—slip away quickly and leave Kostas and Amund to fight it out between themselves. Then, once they had practically wiped each other out, Logan and Quin could return and finish them off to claim the win.
As Quin started after Logan, however, something struck him heavily in the arm, below the pauldron. He spun around and saw Sir Swithin Howard grinning with a sword in his hand.
“What are you doing?” Quin demanded, flipping up his visor. “I hit you. You’re out.”
“Bullshit,” said Howard. And as if for good measure, he tapped Quin in the chest. “You never touched me.”
“Of course I did,” said Quin. He glanced around for Baldwin, hoping for confirmation, but Baldwin had a flask out and was looking the other way, chatting with Rowan Doherty from Amund’s team.
Howard held out a hand. “Listen, let’s go talk to the heralds. They’ll sort this out.”
Quin reached out to shake hands, but then Howard spun his sword around and smashed the hilt of it into Quin’s face.
For a minute, Quin didn’t hear or see anything. Gradually, he became aware he was lying in the grass somewhere. Then he heard fighting and the clash of swords, but it seemed to be coming from some distance away now. Slowly, he sat up and put a hand to his lip and nose, which were throbbing. His hand came away with blood on it.
“That was a dirty trick,” said a voice.
Quin looked around, his head aching with every slight movement, and spotted Sir Nico Xylander seated about five yards downhill of him.
“You hit Sir Swithin Howard,” Sir Nico continued. “I saw it, even if I was twenty yards away at the time. You could file a complaint with the heralds and Sir Duncan Weekes, you know.”
“Do you think that would help?” Quin felt his jaw. It didn’t seem broken, fortunately.
“Most likely not,” admitted Sir Nico.
“People would say all’s fair in love and war, or something like that, you mean?”
“Unfortunately, yes. But this isn’t war. This is a game, and if you don’t follow the rules, there’s no point in playing, as far as I’m concerned.” Sir Nico stood, walked over, and put a hand out. “Come on. You look like you might need stitches on that lip. I’ll take you to the hospital tent.”
As they walked across the field, Quin turned and saw Logan on the bridge, holding off the last two other competitors—Amund and Kostas. By all rights, the two of them should have fought each other before attacking Logan. They were standing practically shoulder-to-shoulder, after all. But they didn’t. Indeed, after half a minute, Kostas went down to the stream, splashed across, and circled around to attack Logan from the other end of the bridge.
“Well, that doesn’t seem suspicious at all,” grumbled Quin, as Kostas struck Logan down from the back. Moments later, Kostas and Amund met in the middle of the bridge. After a quick series of feints, Kostas left himself wide open, and Amund tapped his breastplate for the win.
“Do you think they’re cheating?” asked Sir Nico.
Quin remembered that Nico was on Amund’s team. “I mean, I wouldn’t like to make any accusations I couldn’t—”
“Well, they are. Now hurry up. The sooner you get those cuts looked at, the better.”
He left Quin with the surgeons, who stitched up his lip and bandaged a smaller cut on the bridge of his nose. Thankfully, someone passed him a flask first, and it didn’t hurt too horribly much. The surgeons were barely finished before Sir Nico returned, leading Gloria.
“Oh, fuck me!” she cried, rushing over. “Quin, are you alright? Does it hurt?” She waved her hand in front of his eyes. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“All of them,” he replied.
“Ah. Yes. Pardon me,” said Sir Nico, bowing. “I’ll show myself out.”
He left, and Gloria sat on the edge of Quin’s cot, leaning close and studying his face. She smelled faintly of the rose oil that was in all their rooms back at the caravanserai, or so he thought, since he mostly smelled a mix of whiskey and his own blood.
“Nico told me what Sir Swithin Howard did to you. I swear I will crack Howard’s balls like walnuts if this leaves a scar.” She dipped a handkerchief in a basin of water on the bedside table and started gently dabbing at the dried blood and dirt.
“We did manage to get third place,” he said, closing his eyes and enjoying the sensation.
“You fought very well.” There was a pause as she rinsed the cloth and wrung it out before starting to clean his face again. “Of course....” She ran a finger along his chin. “Maybe now isn’t the time....”
“Time for what?” he asked, his heart racing.
“Well, you did very well, but you could have been even quicker, you know. You tend to pause right before a fight, sizing your opponent up, instead of going straight in.”
He opened his eyes. She was staring at him, her eyes wide and shining in the lamplight. Her cheeks were getting redder by the second.
“So...I should go for it,” he said. “No hesitation, yes?”
He reached for her hand, but at the last second, she pulled away. “Yes. We’ll talk about it later, no doubt. For now, I should probably go see how everyone else is doing. They’re all worried about you, and they’ll want to know how good you’re looking. I mean, how good you’re feeling. Excuse me.”
She hurried away, leaving him frustrated, but also relieved. “I can’t mess things up with the team,” he thought. “Not now, when we came so close to winning.”