The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [155]
When he awoke again, he wasn’t sure why, but he looked up at a faint sound. At first he thought it was Ambria again, looking down at him in the darkness, but Ambria was still nestled against his back.
And then, even in the feeble light, he recognized Areana, tears glistening.
Before he could think of anything to say, she hurried away in her stocking feet.
CAZIO THOUGHT he understood what was going on pretty well, until Anne stood up in her stirrups, flourished a short sword, and shouted, “I am your Born Queen! I shall avenge my father and sisters; I shall have my kingdom back!”
For one thing, the sword she brandished was so silly; he’d rather fight with a piece of stale bread. But then again, she wasn’t fighting with it; she was leading with it.
Men in surcoats who didn’t look friendly were pouring into the square, and Anne didn’t seem surprised. From his point of view, she ought to be surprised, and if she wasn’t, by Lord Mamres, he ought to know why.
Had this been her plan all along, to be ambushed in a public square? It wasn’t a plan that made a lot of sense.
“What shall we do?” he shouted.
“You stay close to me,” Anne replied, then, raising her voice, gestured toward the men entering the square. “Keep them back!”
Forty of the fifty men in Anne’s company responded by charging across the square toward the city guard, or Robert’s guard, or whatever it was. It was a messy business right away, as the plaza was full of people, and though they were trying to clear the way between the two armed forces, there was a good deal of pushing and tripping and falling down.
Anne’s remaining guardians clumped around her as she dismounted and strode toward the actors. Taken by surprise, Cazio dismounted so quickly, he nearly fell.
As his feet hit the square, he was suddenly very pleased to have cobbles under them again. Not grass, not tilled land or wild forest floor or a lord-forsaken beaten desert of a track in the middle of nowhere, but a city street. He nearly laughed with joy.
He realized then that he had mistaken Anne’s target. It wasn’t the actors but Sir Clement, who had leapt from his horse and run to stand by the patir, arming himself with a sword from one of the churchman’s guards. The other Church soldiers lowered their spears into a hedge around the patir, keeping their swords in reserve.
But Clement, their betrayer, was a knight, so he would prefer a sword.
Cazio sprinted to put himself between Anne and the knight.
“Allow me, Highness,” he said, noticing the somewhat unnatural look in Anne’s eye, not unlike her aspect that evening in Dunmrogh. He realized he was doing Clement a favor.
She nodded curtly, and Cazio drew his steel as Clement rushed at him.
It wasn’t Caspator, but Acredo, the rapier he’d taken from the Sefry dessrator. It felt unfamiliar, too light, oddly balanced.
“Zo dessrator, nip zo chiado,” he reminded his opponent. “The swordsman, not the sword.”
Clement ignored him and came on.
To Cazio’s delight, the fight wasn’t as simple as it might have been. Knights, Cazio had discovered, were extraordinarily hard to fight when they were in armor, but that had nothing to do with their swordplay, which was uniformly clumsy and boring to the point of tears. Part of it was the weapons they used, which were really more like flattened steel clubs with edges.
The sword Clement bore was a little lighter and thinner than most he had seen since leaving Vitellio, but it was still essentially the same sort of cutting tool. What was really different was the way the fellow held his blade. Knights in armor tended to cock their weapons back, to swing from the shoulder and hips. They didn’t fear the swift stop-thrust to the hand, wrist, or breast since they were usually sheathed in iron.
But Sir Clement dropped into a crabwise stance not so different from that of a dessrator, although he put a little more weight on his back leg than Cazio would recommend. The sword he held in front of him, arm extended toward Cazio’s head, so that he was looking straight