The New Magic

SWORD DAYS-2

A lot of people in this room, Jarrod noted, were wearing heavy armor. Also, the two knights in this room were from royal orders, not mercs. Heavy hitters.

Two men sat at two stone tables near the throne, well-dressed and warm, and Jarrod knew them both. The first was Lord Doravai, the Falconsrealm commonwealth marshal. Tall, thick-shouldered, in gray layered tunics and a black knit cape doubled over his shoulders, he had a heavy brow and a head and face shaved clean even in the chill of the end of fall. He was the levy commander, and essentially a reserve general. If he was in this meeting, the princess was contemplating calling up a yeomanry.

The other was a long-haired bulldog of a man in fine and bright clothing of burgundy and silver, his dark beard in braids. His name was Ravaroth Anganor, informally called Lord Rav. He was a former infantry commander and advised the princess on matters of state security.

A small session meant that this was also a confidential matter.

Jarrod bowed with a flourish to Adielle, fist over heart. “At your hand,” he said, a Lord Protector’s greeting to royalty.

“Lord Protector,” said Adielle.

She had been addressing a man who stood away from the table, a man Jarrod didn’t know. He had a tight dark beard, and he wore black baggy silks with knee-high boots and a beautiful black silk cape with gold embroidery on the edges and gold on the reverse, which Jarrod could just see when the man turned to face him.

Black clothes were expensive. Gold embroidery, much moreso.

Rich as hell, Jarrod thought.

He also had a large knight behind him in mail, dark furs, and a full helmet. It wasn’t one of the Falconsrealm half-helms with its skirt of mail covering the face from the cheekbones down, but an expensive full helmet, vaguely Corinthian, the face slitted in a Y. Jarrod took him for a mercenary out of some trading crossroads and made a note to ask later.

The rich guy had a huge goddamn sword at his side, too, with a dark red handle jutting nearly to his shoulder, much larger than would normally be allowed in the castle except for nobles, patricians, and knights on duty. Jarrod had to wonder how he’d gotten in, and more to the point, how he’d gotten that close to the princess with a sword that size. It set off every alarm in his body at the same time. All he could come up with was that the guy had to be on a first-name basis with the royal family.

There was a familiar set to his jaw, a unique slant to his nose. Jarrod couldn’t quite place him, but he looked like . . .

“Son of a b***h,” said Jarrod under his breath, in English. The Hillwhites, the disgraced patricians of Falconsrealm, had sent a representative to meet the princess. With a great big sword and a goon to back him up.

“You just stay right there,” Jarrod warned him. “Keep your distance, Hillwhite. And keep your hands still.”

The man, who was clearly kin to the late Edwin Hillwhite given his height, broad jaw, and shock of dark hair with flashing eyes, paled. “You,” he stammered. “You’re –”

“Yeah,” said Jarrod. “I am. Which one are you? Nice sword.”

“I’m . . . I’m Halchris Hillwhite,” the man stuttered. “Cousin to Duke Edwin, the man you murdered.”

“I didn’t murder anybody,” said Jarrod. “Are we back to this, again? We handed him off to the Faerie, who dealt—”

“You killed him!” the man shouted. “You murderous little prick!”

“The Faerie dealt him justice as they saw fit,” Jarrod continued. “If you have a problem with that, you can go to war with them. In the meantime, I’m a Lord Protector of Falconsrealm, which gives you the right to meet me in one-on-one combat. Let’s step outside.”

The large knight—who was significantly larger than anyone in the room, with muscles evident even under his mail— shifted behind Halchris Hillwhite.

Halchris was big, as were most Hillwhites Jarrod had met. He was just over six feet, and Jarrod’s boxer’s eye put him right at two hundred pounds. The guy behind him, though, would present an interesting set of problems to solve.

“Duke Edwin broke the law,” said Adielle. “His lands were forfeit to Gateskeep. My father, King Rorthos, awarded The Reach to Knight Chief Lieutenant Sir Jarrod, personally. Halchris, I give you five days to disband your armies and leave The Reach, or we will remove you.”

“I’ll be checking the ledgers and talking with the foremen at the mine,” Jarrod added. “If your guys take so much as a rock from that hill, you will give it back or I, personally, will come find you and break all your stuff.”

The big guy stepped forward. Halchris put a hand on his shoulder.

“We can take The Reach,” said Halchris, changing the subject and talking fast, now, because Lord Rav was, literally, growling. “We have it surrounded.”

“Maybe,” said Jarrod. “And your guys are going to camp through the winter? In the North?”

“No,” said Halchris. “We’ve taken the villages of Grach, Astalia, and Walby, as well as your garrison at Maceshadow, and now Northtown.” The town nearest The Reach. “The Reach is ours.”

The room finally quieted.

“Halchris Hillwhite,” said Adielle, sitting down on her throne. She spoke with a clarity and gravity that Jarrod had never heard from her and had hoped not to. “You have the right to audience with me to settle your grievance. You know the law.”

“We’re done with your laws,” said Halchris Hillwhite. “And we’re done with you, highness. We’ll take what’s ours.”

The room went still except for Jarrod’s fingers drumming on the grip of his rapier.

Lady Aveth picked up her helmet and seated it on her head, reducing her face to a curtain of mail below her eyes. The other knight followed suit. The message was unequivocal.

“Lord Jarrod,” said Halchris, “tell your lord chancellor to surrender the castle. And the mine. And the vault with the coinage. We will take what’s ours. And then, you come with us.”

Jarrod grunted a short laugh and shook his head, smiling.

“What the hell are you smiling about?” snarled Halchris.

“You’ve signed your own death warrant,” said Adielle to Halchris.

“At your hand,” Jarrod assured her.

“Halchris Hillwhite, you’ve committed treason,” said Doravai.

“We’re past that,” said Halchris. “Kill me if you want—”

“Okay,” said Jarrod, stepping forward. The big guy behind Halchris shifted, and Halchris motioned for him to stay.

“—but we’ll still take The Reach,” Halchris continued, speaking fast, “And Gateskeep can’t reinforce you at The Reach and also fight us in the west.”

“’The west?’” Adielle asked.

“From Long Valley to the sea. We are The Western Hold,” Halchris announced.

“You can’t just declare yourselves a kingdom,” said Lord Rav. “I mean, you need . . . well, a king, for starters.”

“We are the Western Hold,” Halchris repeated. “Every lord in Long Valley has sided with us. We have enough troops to fight Gateskeep and win.”

“You’re jesting,” said Adielle.

“All we want is the stores at The Reach, which are rightfully ours. Surrender them without bloodshed. If you do so, we will remain a protectorate of Gateskeep in the west, we will control The Reach, and we will once again be your financiers.”

“Or,” offered Jarrod to Halchris, “I could just send them your head in bag and we could forget this ever happened.”

“We have dozens of families allied to us,” said Halchris, turning on Jarrod, exasperated. “Hundreds of knights. Gateskeep doesn’t have the troops to fight us. Falconsrealm certainly doesn’t. How are you going to fight without Hillwhite iron? Without Hillwhite silver? How are you going to field your knights?”

“How are you going to do it?” countered Jarrod. “If your men are outside my keep, and not in it, then the bridge is gone. We can stay in there for a thousand years. That keep survived the last Cataclysm.”

Adielle announced, “He knows this, Lord Protector. His family used to own it.”

She stood, then spoke clearly. “I’d say he’s here because their initial push failed. I'd say your chancellor held them off, Lord Protector, and now the bridge is gone. They need us to surrender The Reach because if we don’t, their forces will starve.” The mountains near The Reach gave way to what Jarrod figured was a good three miles of tundra and scrubby grass before ending at the rocks and the massive cliffs under his castle, which spouted stunning waterfalls like faucets for gods. There wasn’t much to eat. Or hunt. Or burn for heat.

Halchris’s face fell.

“Nice try,” Jarrod told him. “Go home.”

Halchris licked his lips with a very dry tongue.

“We will take The Reach,” said Halchris at last. “And you, Lord Sir Jarrod, if you won’t come with me to meet your rightful fate, I’ll kill you now.”

“I doubt that,” said Jarrod.

The big guy in the helmet stepped forward.

“You’re right,” said Halchris Hillwhite. “He will.”

And then Jarrod recognized the muscles, and the ringed guard of the longsword at his side, painstakingly forged and ground with loving detail by the same smith who’d made Jarrod’s rapier.

“Hello, Jarrod,” said Renaldo Salazar.

“Let me get this straight,” said Jarrod, waving his hands to stop the conversation and addressing Halchris. “You go all the way to my homeland to find yourselves a champion, and you come back with him? This—” they had no word for dilettante, much less for wannabe. “—This? What did you do, lose a bet?”

“Lord Blacktree is our champion,” said Halchris.

“‘Blacktree,’” said Jarrod. “Like ‘Hillwhite,’ only dumber.”

“They made me a pretty sweet deal,” said Renaldo, addressing Jarrod in English. “All I have to do is kill you.”

“Yeah,” said Jarrod. “Good luck with that.”

The sword at Renaldo’s belt was a four-foot longsword, and Renaldo, for all his muscleheaded, loinclothed, idiotic preening at Renaissance festivals—where Jarrod had mainly seen him—was gifted with it. He competed in longsword at the international level, and Jarrod knew that Renaldo had made quite a name for himself in the world of illegal underground dueling that had cropped up after “The Incident” in Paris, in which Jarrod had accidentally killed a fellow Olympic saber hopeful in a drunken swordfight.

If they both drew, Jarrod knew he was pretty much screwed. His rapier, even with its heavy blade, would never get through Renaldo’s mail, which was certainly welded steel and not the local riveted iron, which Jarrod would still have had trouble with.

Renaldo, facing the unarmored Jarrod, had no such concerns. He might as well have been carrying a chainsaw.

“You understand,” said Jarrod, addressing Halchris and switching back to the local language. “If you kill me now, they’ll hang you both.”

“If we kill you all, we walk out,” said Renaldo, in the same. His accent was guttural, monotone, slightly slurred. He hadn’t been here long.

Jarrod drew his rapier, and the assembly moved in front of the princess as Renaldo’s mammoth blade cleared its scabbard.

Time slows in combat. Men weep as seconds crawl by, as friends fall, as prayers fly and horses scream. A thousand things happen inside a blink of combat time. The world drags.

Jarrod Torrealday relished combat the way others relish dance: consecration of the body, an invitation for a greater power to shepherd worldbound incapable flesh to the realm of the sublime. The cage of his rapier flashed in the light of the chandeliers. His eyes hardened to coals.

He lived in combat time.

Both knights and the soldier plowed into Renaldo as Halchris closed with Jarrod. His sword was very big and very shiny for a Falconsrealm weapon, a massive two-hander even larger than Renaldo’s.

A feint, an envelopment, and Jarrod sent the huge sword out of line, steel singing and scratching. He lowered a shoulder into Halchris’s belt and lifted him by a handful of pantleg, dropping him heavy and hard. Halchris scrambled up and Jarrod punched him in the face with the cage of his rapier, sending him back to the floor. As he came up again, the tip of Jarrod’s rapier, scalpel-sharp, snaked out and caught him under the chin and came out below his ear. The greatsword rang off the floor and blood fanned the room like a thumb over a garden hose as Halchris stumbled back, shrieking and clawing at the side of his throat.

Renaldo was fighting off all three troops at the same time, hitting them with armored shins and elbows and throwing them into walls. Jarrod watched the local swords bounce off Renaldo again and again, blow after blow that should have been fight-enders. One—the skinny kid—got to his feet and Renaldo stabbed him through the chest. The point of the longsword came out his back, tenting the mail. The local armor and weapons were just no match.

Beside Jarrod, Halchris’s legs kicked as he made creaking noises, blood misting from around his clenched hands and pooling on the floor.

“Sorry,” Jarrod said, and charged into the fray to interpose himself between Renaldo and Adielle, who had her sword out as two of the three troops rolled on the floor and the third lay crumpled.