"Bastards!" he swore, and, in a wavering instant, his expression changed from anger to fear. He started to run for help. There would be people enough in the village to stop them and douse the fire before it was properly started. Ouen stumbled through the ragged smoke to catch the man.
Durand jumped. The man had hardly made a step, but now he was bracketed between Durand and the fire.
The peasant's eyes snapped over the whole scene. He saw one chance: to dodge past the big lad on the village side of the bridge. He moved.
Durand lunged. His elbow hit the man high. It should have knocked the peasant flat; instead, the man struck the low railing of the bridge.
In an instant, he had cartwheeled over.
"God!" Durand said. His fingers batted an ankle, but he could not catch hold. A great hollow knock shook the bridge from a beam far below. There was a deep, sucking splash. Durand doubled over the rail, looking down. A red smear gleamed on the corner of a beam a fathom below, and the body tumbled bonelessly downstream.
The man's tunic was blue-gray.
Smoke burned Durand's eyes. Someone was pulling his sleeve, but he watched as the blue tunic tumbled and rolled to where the river rounded a bend—under a bank that rose like the prow of an upturned ship.
"Hells, lad," Ouen said. "Come on. Bad luck to stay behind when you're burning bridges."
Durand's finger touched the green veil's knot.
When they returned
, it had already begun.
Coensar stood alone in the high center of the span, blue and silver against the shining mist. A spectral company had gathered on the Bower Mead side, their way barred. Horses huffed and thrashed their heads. The river spun.
For the moment, Durand and his comrades were trapped down below on the Bower side.
Coensar's voice echoed in the ravine. "No one crosses this bridge unless they come after His Lordship, Baron Cassonel of Damaryn. I've no quarrel with any man here but he, though you must all wait on the courage of Baron Damaryn."
Already, the acid bite of smoke had stained the air. Not a man of all those gathered rode for the upper bridge. Where Durand might have felt pride, now he curled his fists.
The Glass gurgled round the piers of the bridge, nearer to Durand than anyone. He thought of the dead man and wondered if he had already passed or if he had fetched up among the piers of the bridge and waited there even now. He had to force himself to look into the dark curls of the water.
There was no blue shirt.
Heremund and Ouen waited silently in the cool gloom beside him.
Cassonel did not make them wait long. Men moved aside, slipping out of view beyond the bank. Then, Cassonel's sable and silver standard appeared above the mist, a perfect rectangle. The baron had sent a standard bearer.
Coensar waited.
Finally, Cassonel himself rode out. His horse and surcoat were sable, but his limbs were sheathed in mail that might have been woven from the mist itself. Cassonel had taken the time to arm himself.
He stopped a few paces from the bridge, just in sight. "Sir Coensar," he began. "You mean to deny this bridge to me?"
"I wish the chance to return the favor you did me at Tern Gyre some years ago."
Cassonel nodded once: So be it.
Coensar spoke formally. "You, Cassonel, Baron of Damaryn, liegeman of Duke Ludegar of Beoran, will not pass this bridge without first besting me."
Cassonel sat erect. The top of his helm, clutched under his arm, flashed like a silver penny. "Sir Coensar, as you once fought to pass a door, I now fight to cross a bridge. So the rash acts of youth are never forgotten."
The man dropped from his horse in a rattle of armor audible over the Glass's rush. He set his battle helm on his head and raised his black shield, its two white diagonals like crossed swords. As he stepped onto the span, he drew his sword. The blade's weird hissing ring reminded Durand he was looking at the named weapon, Termagant.
Durand saw Coensar's hand dart up to turn his helm a notch, or seat it tighter, then the captain calmly settled into a fighting crouch. The terns and blue sky of his shield bobbed into view.
And for a moment the two swordsmen balanced there.
Water rushed below; horses coughed; Termagant and Keening whispered and moaned to one another, the Eye of Heaven gilded both mist and mail.
Durand could hardly see.
It was the baron who moved first.
Cassonel leapt into a deep lunge. The scuff of his soles on the bridge deck was like a startled gasp. Termagant glanced from the blue shield, and the baron narrowly evaded Coensar's fierce counter. Durand saw enough to guess: an undercut for the baron's shins. For a few heartbeats, the fight was on. Termagant shrieked like a high string. Shields blinded. Blades flashed at faces and shins. Few men could have kept pace.
Then the two combatants stepped apart, circling while the Glass poured into the sudden silence.
Coensar leapt this time, and Keening caught among the painted bars of Cassonel's salrire cross. The two men wrestled, grunting and straining, fighting to bring their blades to bear. For a time, Cassonel fought with Lamoric's men at his back. It didn't matter.
The two reeled apart, their blades tearing shrieks and whistles from the mist. One moment, Coensar was crouched under his shield. The next, Cassonel was staggering.
A rising cut flashed. It caught Cassonel's black helm, and chopped it into the sky.
And a heartbeat later, the tumbling thing struck the Glass only a pace from Durand, its gulping splash throwing water over the three under the bridge, and it sounded for all the world like a bucket down a well.
Overhead, Cassonel was reeling. Durand caught a glimpse of his face suddenly bare and crossed with dark threads of blood. The crowd hissed. Boots thudded on the deck as Coensar's stalking strides kept him a sword's length from his victim. Then the stricken man sank to his knees—twin thumps.
Durand imagined Keening's edge at Cassonel's throat. "I—I—I yield, Sir Coensar," a ragged voice said. He must have spent a moment catching his breath, fighting for air.
Through the wooden deck, Durand could see a dark blot of shadow. And maybe a hand spread for support.
"My arms, my mount, and my person I surrender to you. Do with me as you will."
The captain might have done anything then. Nothing moved but the river.
There was a swish, then a snap as Keening shot home in its scabbard.
"Get up, Sir Cassonel," Coensar said, stepping back. "I want nothing more from you. It's not for arms or ransom I've fought, and I'll take neither. What I wanted, I have." He offered Cassonel his hand.
The Baron of Damaryn wavered to his feet. Over the bridge rail, the baron's bloody face was grim. 'Though you will take nothing from me, there is something you must have."
"You've no need to—"
"Our king has put his crown at hazard."
Coensar narrowed an eye.
"This last loan he's had of the Great Council: shiploads of silver for the fighting in Heith when the Borogyn and his Marchers wouldn't come to heel."
"He has borrowed before," said Coensar.
"But not a penny has ever been returned, and this time the Council has demanded a surety. And he has pledged it all. Ragnal has pledged his crown."
Durand felt a shiver through his marrow, picturing a thing like the crown of Errest the Old pledged against a debt.
"Lord of Dooms," Coensar breathed.
"And there will be no coin."
"When must he repay it?" said the captain, not arguing.
"It does not matter. The marches have spent his silver for him. They say he could not have foreseen how long the fighting lasted."
"What are you telling me?" Coensar said, his tone flat.
"The Great Council will sit. It may be that the barons will be lenient. The king will come to Tern Gyre and meet them. I am not the only rider on the roads this moon."
The baron wavered a fraction then. Durand saw hands rise all round, as though to save the battered lord. But he caught himself and spoke.
"You say you lost that long-ago day at Tern Gyre, and you have lived with that. I won that day at Tern Gyre, but I have lived with what I've won. The Silent King knows all dooms."
The crowd joined Coensar, saying, "All praise to the King of Heaven."
Lamoric
's
men rallied
at the bridgehead, including those who had waited under the bridge the whole while. As the retainers of other lords trooped across the bridge, some few were cheerful enough to jeer or shout congratulations. Everyone took his chance to slap their captain's shoulders. Though Cassonel's ominous tidings had unnerved them all, they had won a real victory.
Without thinking, Durand had stepped off a pace or two. The blue-shirted peasant wouldn't leave him. Lamoric watched as well, forced by the crowd to keep his Red Knight helm in place. The slotted eyes turned.
Guthred planted a hairy paw on Durand's shoulder. "Oh. You're just going to watch here, are you? There's plenty that's got to be packed up proper after our quick retreat this morning. What do you—"
"Guthred," said Lamoric. "Leave it."
The shield-bearer gaped for a moment. All the other serving men were busy, lugging packs and loading horses. But Guthred nodded. "Lordship." And got back to work.
Lamoric rubbed his neck. "That Heremund had a word. About this man on the bridge.
"You have had a bad string of luck, I think. It is a strange time. Unsettled." He paused. "A man cannot always see where a step will lead. Good beginnings have bad ends." He raised a hand. "This crossing of Hesperand—"
There was a shout from the bridge, louder than the normal jeers and congratulations. It seemed that Lord Moryn and his men were crossing. Moryn himself towered from a high saddle.
"Knight in Red," Moryn said, "I expect you in High Ashes."
Men of both camps jostled.
Moryn snarled at his men, "Stop!" And stilled them all. "You have missed nothing, Red Knight. The invitation—and the bargain—stand. I will take great pleasure in meeting you in the land of my ancestors."
"The pleasure will be mine, I think," said Lamoric. One of Moryn's lads gave Agryn a nudge, and the shoving match started with snarls on both sides.
But Coensar was moving. With the glamour of his victory still on him, he leapt between the two lords, setting his hand on Lamoric's chest.
"There's been enough brawling here already. Sir Moryn, His Lordship the Knight in Red bids you farewell on your journey. We will meet you again at High Ashes."
"High Ashes then," said Moryn, nodding a bow to Coensar. "These fools of mine will take their leave." The lean heir to Mornaway twitched his reins.
"And you lot, let him go," said Coensar to his men. "We'll see him again before we like. Get yourselves ready. They were the last to cross, and we're still in Hesperand."
As the other men turned to spur their shield-bearers or find their horses, Coensar caught Durand.
"Hold there, friend. Ouen was bragging about the bridge."
"Hells," muttered Durand.
"I'll make this plain," said Coensar. 'Today could've gone bad. Because it didn't, folk'll forget." He narrowed an eye like a chipped bead of steel. "I made a mistake, and, if not for you on that bridge, I'd have suffered for it."
All of this was true.
"You hear me, Durand. I cannot tell you how many tourneys I've fought. I cannot count the times I've felt my teeth crack in my jaw, hoping all the while to have another chance at that man." He jerked a few inches of Keening from its scabbard. "This old sword could have hollowed a mountain by now. Every swing to fight my way back to the day I stepped into the sally port with that man Cassonel twenty years ago." He stopped.
"If Cassonel had left me standing over the Glass while he and the best knights in the land rode round to that upper bridge
...
There aren't years enough left to me; I would not have been a laughing stock for long." This was no light admission. "I am no Lord of Dooms to choose who lives and dies. I can only say that your fellow's life bought mine, and, as I reckon things, the debt's mine. You did what you must for the man who leads you. What else is there?
"So. There's something I must do." The captain stabbed his finger at the muck at his feet. "On your knees."