Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘You had best do what I tell you, boy,’ Lascari snarled at him.
‘You have no rule over me.’ He seemed so calm, did Scavian. The fury was visible in every line of him, in his face, his stance, the very tilt of his head, but his voice was as
mercilessly calm as a cloudless sky.
‘Giles, just let him go,’ Emily urged him. He spared her only a brief glance. His fierce expression brought tears to her eyes.
‘Listen to her,’ said Lascari, and moved to push Scavian away. Fire leapt between them, and the older man flinched and hissed.
‘Defy me, boy, and you defy the King.’
‘I am the King as much as you are,’ Scavian replied.
‘Get out of my way!’
At last Lascari broke and physically threw himself at Scavian, knocking him out of the doorway as flame seared out across the both of them. It flashed
across Emily’s face and she drew back, then rushed forward again to see them roll to the ground, and break apart. When she herself got to the door they were each kneeling on the damp earth
outside, random quirks and snakes of fire dancing over them.
‘You do
not
want to make more of this,’ Lascari warned. He looked tired, terribly tired; hopeless and empty.
Scavian just stared back at him, and the older man broke eye contact first.
‘How can you invoke the King’s name?’ Scavian demanded. ‘How do you hide behind his name to do such things?’ He rose and went to Emily, as she stood in the doorway
in nothing but her nightgown. He turned his back on Lascari fearlessly and the older man did nothing, just watched. ‘Did he hurt you?’
He would have raped me. How much more hurt is there?
‘No. No, he did not.’ She could have taken revenge, willingly and without guilt, but she did not want to risk Giles on a
throw of that coin. He meant more to her than did any retribution exacted on Lascari.
But his hand lifted to touch at her throat, and she felt the sudden pain, the tenderness there in the shape of Lascari’s hand, like her own anointing. There was a burnt patch, too, over
her thigh, that showed a similar mark. Scavian’s face adopted a calmness even more dreadful, for there was cold-blooded death in it.
‘In the King’s name,’ he said again, fixing Lascari with a look. ‘The very thought would sicken him. Assault of a woman, attempt at rape – are those the deeds you
were anointed for?’
Around them there was quite a crowd now, fractious and whispering. Emily saw Doctor Carling’s wife there, saw Caxton’s pale and nervous face, and Brocky’s bulk.
‘Giles, please, don’t do anything rash,’ she said, as softly as would still carry to him.
Scavian looked straight at her. His face was set, brave and terribly young. ‘I believe in the King,’ he told the world at large.
‘Then go away.’ Lascari levered himself to his feet. ‘Walk away.’ He looked old in the lamplight, old and sick of it all. ‘I have no liking for you, but no
quarrel.’
Scavian said simply, ‘You are not fit to wear the King’s mark.’
A deadly quiet descended on the watchers. Emily felt her heart lurch with the look of old, sour hatred that descended on Lascari.
‘I have worn this mark for twenty years, boy. How long has it been on you? Two seasons? Three? When were you made a wizard? After all the real Warlocks had already fallen? Why did the King
touch you, save there were no others in arm’s reach.’
‘Anointed for one day or a hundred years, I am a king’s wizard,’ said Scavian reasonably. ‘No man may take that from me, unless I am dead. Do you want to try your hand,
Mr Lascari?’
‘Giles, he’ll kill you,’ Emily hissed at him.
He touched her hand briefly, his fingers hot and dry. ‘Do not fear for me. You know I must do this.’ She remembered the torturing of the Denlander scout, and Scavian’s distress
as he tried to reconcile it with his duty, with his king. He had been a loaded gun from that moment, and Lascari’s assault on her was nothing more than the trigger being pulled.
Scavian’s eyes flicked to Lascari, glinting cold and regal as an emperor’s. ‘I have suffered you ever since I came here. I have borne your ill humours, your tortures and your
cruelty, and passed over it, saying that you merely did your duty. Now I unmask you. You are unworthy of your office. You are a disgrace to our order. You put truth into the mouths of the
Denlanders when they curse us.’
Lascari looked, in that moment, not at Scavian but at Emily, and she read in his face the long book of his losses, his bitter debtor’s account in life. Long years of misery, of enforced
and hateful service. Sent here to die, thwarted in his last and most desperate scheme to secure continuity. And now this: insulted by a youngster before the entire camp.
‘What’s all this?’ demanded the colonel’s slightly befuddled voice, as he pushed through the crowd that had gathered. ‘What’s going on? Lights and
shouting?’
‘A personal matter, Colonel,’ said Lascari, ‘between Scavian and myself. Go back to bed.’
‘Called you out, has he?’ the colonel said, rubbing at his eyes and not quite understanding. ‘Good heavens. Now, look, we can’t have that. Bad enough with the enemy
trying to kill us. No, no, completely out of the question.’
Lascari eyed him coldly, and Emily saw how he had no respect for the old man whatsoever, any more than he did for anyone around him.
How alone he is.
‘Keep away, Colonel. This is
none of your concern.’
‘Now listen here, I forbid it!’ Colonel Resnic insisted. ‘Can’t have this. Bad for discipline, Lascari.’
‘Forgive me, sir, but you have no authority,’ Scavian reminded him. ‘In truth, we are ruled by the King only, and we cannot be stopped.’
It was that ‘in truth’ that brought a lump to Emily’s throat: that little quirk of his; his insistence on truth to cover his own uncertainty about the world. She had seen the
set of Lascari’s face, and she was very afraid for her friend. Giles Scavian, who she surely loved, had roused a serpent.
‘Giles, please, I’m asking you not to do this,’ she said, knowing that he had set his course and would stay on it. He put a hand on her shoulder and his lips twitched as if to
say something, but then he looked past her, at Justin Lascari.
The older man stood, surrounded by a circle of bare ground that none of the onlookers would encroach onto. ‘I would have avoided this,’ he declared, the words almost lost. ‘I
would have walked away – as you could have walked away. But now I see that I have wanted this. I have wanted it since . . .’ He waved a hand idly and an errant spark of fire danced
across him, making those closest jump back. ‘You will never know, Scavian, of what you have. You will never value what is freely given to you. As I am likely to die any day, I will die with
one comfort left me, that never more will
she
mistake me for you. For one or other of us will be gone.’
Scavian would have said something more but Lascari thrust his hands out without warning, and with them came a vast boiling sheet of flame that lashed across the younger Warlock and half a dozen
others. Emily felt the battering heat of it, but Scavian had thrown her to one side even as Lascari moved, and it only singed her hair and gown. Several other men were down, beating at their
burning clothes, but Scavian – he stood where he had stood before, a faint steam rising from him, and unburnt, untouched. He splayed a hand out like a man fanning cards, and a claw of fire
raked at Lascari, to be fended off by an errant gesture. The two wizards stared at one another as all around them men and women scrambled back to give them space.
‘This is terrible. What a thing to happen!’ The colonel was abruptly beside Emily, sounding as though some social gathering had been rained off. Before she could reply, the real
fight was on. Lascari lanced a spear of fire at Scavian, who sidestepped it, blasting fistfuls of flame back. The searing heat slid off both men, not even smouldering their clothes. But they were
only starting. Emily remembered Scavian on the battlefield, tired and drained by his exertions, and she knew that this battle would be one of stamina, which of them could shoulder aside the
other’s attacks for the longest, holding back enough in reserve for the final killer blow.
She watched as they circled, the flash and roar of their parries and ripostes lighting up the camp, singeing the nearest tents. Lascari was backing up now, running and hopping across the camp,
hurling blazing handfuls at Scavian, who pursued ferociously, driving him forward.
‘Water! Someone draw some water!’ Emily shouted. ‘Three buckets at least! Caxton, come here!’
As the new-made sergeant ran up, a wave of heat washed over them, sending them both crouching to the ground. She could hear the colonel calling out something, still trying to reason with two men
now beyond it all. In her mind’s eye was, all too clearly, the image of Scavian faltering. Lascari was older, more experienced; all Scavian had was the knowledge that he was in the right. How
could that prevail against the skills of a man like Lascari?
Damn fool Giles! How could he . . . and for me? Am I worth his life, or is it his own honour he’s fighting for, or the King’s?
‘Here, Lieutenant.’ Caxton crawled closer to her.
‘Get your musket, load and prime it,’ she told her and watched her eyes widen in the leaping, spreading firelight.
‘But . . .’
‘Damn his honour,’ Emily hissed. Scavian and Lascari were further away now, moving out towards the edge of the camp, still trading bolts and balls of flame that would have roasted
any ordinary man in a second. Caxton ran off for her gun and Emily ran to keep the fighting wizards in view. All around her, men and women were staring in fascination or fear, or hurriedly putting
out newly started fires. The colonel kept shouting at the pair, but they were beyond hearing him. She caught a glimpse of Scavian’s face, all bemused concentration like a man wrestling with a
riddle. Lascari’s was a mask, untenanted save for the eyes. He shrugged off the firestorm Scavian sent against him, shoulders hunched like a man in a high wind. He was shepherding his
strength, letting Scavian’s best efforts slough off him. Still, they battered him, though, rocking him on his feet as he retreated and retreated. Scavian fought to press home the advantage he
saw, trying to crack Lascari open with the force of his onslaught, beating repeatedly at the older man’s iron resolve. He was overextending just like a fencer, so that Lascari’s
counterattacks came in beneath his guard, a succession of near misses to be read in his gritted teeth and wincing eyes.
She had to do something to separate them. She saw Scavian falter for a second, as another vast sheet of fire enveloped him. His eyes were narrowed now and he gave ground as Lascari stalked
forward. The older man kept pushing his attack, conjuring arrows and scythes and great shapeless masses of incandescence to pummel Scavian, over and over, until it seemed there could not be so much
burning in all the world, and yet there was always more. Scavian’s counterattacks glanced off his rival’s dark robes, or vanished into them and were extinguished. The younger man lost a
step, then half a dozen steps, as Lascari drove him along the perimeter of the camp. It seemed all too obvious to Emily that Scavian was getting the worst of it, and yet his face never lost hope or
the belief in his own right.
He put both hands together and directed them at Lascari with a great yell, bracing himself on feet wide apart. The thrust of fire thundered into the robed man’s defences and rocked him,
almost spun him round with the force of it. Fires sprang up and were extinguished across the darkness of the Warlock’s robe. Scavian tried to follow up, to batter him again, but Lascari was
lunging closer, sending a great fiery ram into Scavian’s chest that knocked him back and sent him sprawling across the ground, spilling one of the boundary lanterns over to spread a pool of
burning oil. He retaliated from the ground, and Lascari caught it awkwardly but kept his feet. His face looked haggard and half dead, but he advanced on Scavian with a gleam of triumph in his
eyes.
Caxton was now at Emily’s side, frantically priming her musket, then ramming the ball home.
Scavian tried another attack but it only rolled over Lascari, whose robes were scorched now in a dozen places. The older man smote down on him, and Emily saw sparks in the younger wizard’s
hair before he hid his face with his hands. Time stood still as Lascari paused for breath, the future strung between him and Scavian, between Emily and Caxton with her ramrod.
Lascari gave a great, mad cry, the shriek of a bird as it stoops on its prey, then raised his arms to heaven and made fire boil from the air between them.
He screamed some word or insult that was so hate-twisted and tortured by fatigue that Emily could not hear what it was. His voice seemed to join with hers as she screamed at him to stop, joining
the colonel’s futile pleadings.
He sent the fire against Scavian, and a shot rang out. Lascari lurched and went down on one knee with the force of it. Emily could see a dark mark on his temple, where the ball had gone in. She
looked round for Caxton, instinctively assuming the sergeant had done it, but Caxton held the now-loaded musket in her hands and just stared.
And, besides, the shot had come from the wrong direction. It had come from outside the camp.
Even as Lascari’s last fires guttered and died, and he pitched over onto his side in a tangle of robe and limbs, she was shouting at the other soldiers, ‘Get to cover! Fetch your
guns! Move! Move!’
The shooting took up then, isolated musket flashes from the darkness. Men and women lit bright by the remaining fires were being shot off their feet, falling in astonished death across their
fellows. The others scattered frantically, behind tents, behind the Leopard Passant command hut, or sheltering in dips in the ground. Some were shot as they ran for their weapons, and some as they
stood staring in utter bewilderment.
Emily, crouching alongside Caxton behind a tent, was trying to count the enemy, but they remained utterly invisible in the darkness, announcing themselves only by flashes of fire. She heard
Caxton’s gun discharge as the sergeant tried to sight on one muzzle-flash, and the colonel was shouting something, somewhere.