He stepped up behind her, and she felt the warmth of his body, the warmth of his breath on her neck. "Straighten your back, and turn your body a little more to the sidelike this."

He reached up and took hold of her left breast, adjusted her stance by half an inch, and stood there holding her, quivering. The man's legs shook.

She felt her face redden with embarra.s.sment. But in her mind, she heard the voice of Gaborn, the Earth King, warn her, "Run. You are in danger. Run."

Myrrima was suddenly so frightened that she loosed the arrow by accident. But Sir Hoswell did not release her breast.

As swiftly as she could, so that even with his endowments of metabolism he could not avoid it, she twisted around and brought her knee up into his groin.

Sir Hoswell half-collapsed, but he had her blouse in his hand, and he tried to pull her down with him.

Gaborn's voice came a second time. "Run!"

She punched at his Adam's apple. He tried to draw back, and in doing so let go of her blouse enough so that after she landed the blow, she broke free.

She turned to run.

He grabbed her ankle, tripping her. Myrrima shouted "Rape!," turned and kicked at him as she fell.

Then he was on her.

"d.a.m.n you, you b.i.t.c.h!" he hissed, slapping a hand over her face. "Shut your yap, or I'll shut it good."

He twisted his hand, putting his palm against her chin and pushing with incredible force so that her neck arced backward painfully. Then he adjusted his fingers, pinching her nostrils closed. With his palm over her mouth, she could not breathe With the weight of his body on her, she could not escape. She tried to fight him off--rammed her thumbnail into his right eye so hard that blood gushed from the socket.

"d.a.m.n you!" he cursed. "Must I kill you!"

He punched hard in her guts, knocking the air from her, making the gorge rise in her throat. For a long moment she struggled silently, fighting only to get a breath as he worked to untie his belt with his free hand. Her lungs burned with the need for air, and her vision went red. Her head began to spin, as if she were falling.

Then she heard a snapping sound, and all the air went out of Sir Hoswell. He rolled from atop her. Someone had kicked him--kicked him hard enough to break ribs.

Myrrima gasped for fresh air, felt her lungs fill and fill again, yet still she could not get, enough air.

"Here now, what's going on?" a voice asked. It was a woman's voice, and the accent was so thick that at first Myrrima did not recognize that the woman spoke Rofehavanish.

Myrrima looked up. The woman standing over her had blue eyes and wavy black hair that fell in ringlets about her shoulders. She looked to be twenty years old. Her broad shoulders hinted of more strength than even a working drudge might have. She wore a plain brown robe over a shirt of stout ring mail, and she had a heavy axe in her hand. Behind her stood a mousy woman in scholar's robes, a Days.

Myrrima glanced over at Sir Hoswell, and she half-wondered if the woman had dealt him a deathblow with the axe. This was no commoner. She was a Horsewoman of Fleeds, a warrior with enough endowments of brawn and grace that she'd likely be a match even for Hoswell.

But Sir Hoswell was still alive, holding his ribs, hunched over like a whipped cur. Blood flowed down his face. Yet he snarled, "Stay out of this, you Fleeds b.i.t.c.h."

"Och, I would not be addressing a girl so harsh like, especially when she's wielding an axe and you've had no proper introduction." The woman smiled in mockery of a lady's courtly manners. Yet her smile was full of malice.

She studied him for half a moment, then frowned. "Och, if Heredon doesn't breed better warriors than this," she mused, "I'll never get bedded."

Myrrima was gasping, terrified by all that had happened.

The woman's words barely registered, but Myrrima understood it as a joke. The Horselords of Fleeds had bred horses for a thousand generations, bred them for strength and beauty and intelligence.

In the same way, n.o.blewomen of Fleeds bred themselves to get children. A highborn woman might ask a dozen worthy men to sire children on her during her lifetime, she might even marry a man, but a husband would never rule her. Women alone carried the right to t.i.tle, since in Fleeds it was believed that "No child can know its father." The women of Fleeds laughed at the queer notion that men should rule. Thus, in Fleeds a "king" was only a man who had married a queen. And if she chose to dispose of him and choose another mate, then he would lose his t.i.tle.

"I--ah," Myrrima stammered. Hoswell held his bleeding forehead, then half-dropped, as if weary.

"You. ah, what?" the woman asked.

"I'm sorry," Myrrima said. "I only asked him to teach me to use a bow."

The woman spat at Hoswell. "You'd think your northern lords would want to teach women to fight, what with Raj Ahten knocking down your castles."

Myrrima couldn't argue. She. knelt over Hoswell. He coughed and began feebly trying to crawl to his knees. She tried to help him up, but Hoswell slapped her hands away. "Leave me, you Mystarrian wh.o.r.e! I should have known you'd be trouble."

He made it to his knees, then got up and lurched away, swaying from side to side.

Myrrima didn't know quite how to feel. She was stung by his words: "Mystarrian wh.o.r.e." She'd been born and raised here in Heredon. Hoswell knew her. Did he dare call her a wh.o.r.e for marrying a man from Mystarria?

The woman of Fleeds said, "Don't make any sad faces for that one. I know his kind. At dinner, he'll be telling them all that he had his way with you, then tripped and hit his face on a rock."

"We should go get a physic," Myrrima said. "I'm not sure he can make it back to camp."

"It will just lead to a fight," the horsewoman said. "If. you want to avenge your honor, just put an arrow into the fellow's back now."

"No," Myrrima said. "Then leave him."

Myrrima frowned. She didn't think herself a paragon of virtue, but she'd never thought she'd leave a wounded man to fend for himself.

I should be mad as h.e.l.l at that blackguard, not feeling sympathy for him, she thought.

Myrrima hardened her jaw. If she were going to go to war, she'd see worse than some man staggering around with a knot above his nose.

"Thank you," Myrrima said to the horsewoman. "I'm lucky that you happened by."

"Oh, I didn't happen by," the Fleeds woman said. "I was around the spur of that hill, and the Earth King said someone here needed help."

"Oh," Myrrima said, surprised.

The horsewoman studied Myrrima frankly. "You're a pretty thing. What endowments do you have?"

"Two of glamour, one of wit," Myrrima said.

"What are you? Highborn, or a wealthy wh.o.r.e? Though I don't see much difference between the two."

"Highborn..." Myrrima said, then hesitated, for it was a lie. "Sort of. My name is Myrrima. My husband is in the King's Guard."

"Have him teach you the bow," the woman said, not hiding her disgust at northerners and their dullards ways. She turned as if to march up into the trees.

"Wait!" Myrrima begged.

The woman turned.

"Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?" Myrrima thought her manners sounded far too dainty, too refined for such a rough woman.

"Erin, Erin of Clan Connal."

She was a princess, daughter of the High Queen Herin the Red.

"I'm sorry for your father," Myrrima said, for she could think of nothing else to say. Word had reached Heredon several days past that Raj Ahten had captured the High King Connal, and fed him alive to frowth giants.

Lady Connal merely nodded, her blue eyes flashing. She could have said something deprecatory about her father, demeaned his prowess in war. Such deprecations pa.s.sed for humility in her land. She could have given some sign that she loved him. A child's love for her father was also a worthy emotion. She did neither. "Many warriors died," was all she said. "Men and women. The dead ones are the lucky ones. Some things are worse than death."

Erin reached down and picked up Myrrima's bow and quiver. She nocked an arrow and drew the shaft full, then let it fly. The arrow struck the center of the target on the hayc.o.c.k.

She's showing off, Myrrima realized. She wants me to respect her.

Raj Ahten had impelled thirty thousand warriors of Fleeds to join his army. The Wolf Lord had so many endowments of glamour and of Voice that few could withstand his persuasive powers.

Myrrima suddenly understood Erin Connal. She was proud of her father, proud to have him dead rather than converted.

Half a moment before, Myrrima would have been afraid to beg a boon from this lady. But on seeing Erin's own embarra.s.sment, Myrrima could also see the woman's humanity. We are no different, she realized.

"Princess Connal, can you teach me?" Myrrima asked.

"If you can learn," Connal said. "But the first thing you'll have to learn is not to call me 'Princess, or 'Lady, or any of your courtly t.i.tles. I'll not be spoken to as if I was some man's pet. And in my own land, a woman becomes High Lord of the Clans by working for it, not being born to it, so I've little right to your t.i.tles. You'll call me Connal, or if you want a t.i.tle, call me 'horsesister, or just 'sister, for short."

Myrrima nodded numbly.

Sir Hoswell had just rounded the bend, pa.s.sing through a screen of trees. Sister Connal said, "Let's get out of here, before that weasel finds some friends and comes back."

Myrrima took her bow and arrows, and Sister Connal led her up through the woods, with Connal's Days walking discreetly behind. The gra.s.s in the fields felt dry to the touch,, but once they got under the trees, the rains from two nights past had softened the gra.s.s stalks and the fallen leaves, so that it felt as if they walked upon a soggy carpet.

They climbed through the oak forest, and Sister Connal watched Myrrima disapprovingly from the corner of her eye. "You'll have to work on your stance. The problem with being a woman archer is that your b.r.e.a.s.t.s get in the way. And you've got more than most. You could use a rag, to help tie them down. Better yet, I've seen some women just wear a leather vest."

Myrrima grimaced. She'd always been proud of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and didn't fancy the notion of tying them down or covering them in leather.

They reached the top of the knoll and stood a moment. Here, beside the old Durkin Hills Road, the lords had set their camp, and from the top of the knoll, Myrrima could see down over the pavilions to the lands all around the castle.

The fields before Castle Sylvarresta were a sea of canvas and silk. Here by the roadside camped the petty lords, men and women who could claim to be genteel only from a single line or two, people whose fathers or grandfathers had been knighted and thus raised in stature above the common peasants. A high lord would normally be knighted on all four lines, and his ancestors had won the honor generation after generation, confirming his n.o.ble blood. But as far as Myrrima was concerned, knighthood was no great honor. Any brute could win it on a good day. Most men among the petty lords had ancestors who were knighted only because their skill with a weapon matched a rude temperament and nasty disposition. For instance, "Sir" Gylmichal in the tent below her was from Myrrima's home in Bannisferre. The man had been sp.a.w.ned by a foul-mouthed drunkard who somehow discovered that he could find both righteous anger and courage in a mug of whiskey. His father, upon hearing that some bandit had attacked a traveler, would drink himself into a blind rage, usually late after midnight, and then take his hunting dogs and go murder the bandit in his sleep. For that, the peasants would have to bow and sc.r.a.pe the floor with their hats to his descendants for generations to come.

Gylmichal was thus a petty lord, a man with a t.i.tle but without the breeding or status to rub shoulders with the major lords, whose larger and more ornate pavilions were pitched off to the east side of Castle Sylvarresta.

To the west of the castle, and at its front, peasants had pitched a few shabby tents--or slept with nothing better than the sky as a roof for their heads.

Even farther to the west stood a few bright silk pavilions pitched by the merchants out of Indhopal.

Sister Connal stood atop the knoll for a moment, gazing out over the mult.i.tude of tents. "That's my pavilion," she said, pointing down to a dirt-stained canvas tent. Whereas the pavilions of Heredon were always pegged at four corners, and numerous poles held up the roof, Connal's tent was round, with a single pole at its center, in the inelegant style used by the Horselords.

Directly below Myrrima, at the center of the pavilions pitched by the petty lords, was a muddy tournament field, surrounded by posterns with rails atop them, so that spectators could watch the proceedings. Some of the rails were hung with colorful tapestries, to protect the spectators fine clothing from spattering mud. Vendors of pastries and roasted hazelnuts milled through the crowd, calling out their wares.

The sides of the knoll where Erin and Myrrima stood were so steep and filled with brush and rock that no one bothered to stand here to watch the performance below. Still, Myrrima found that it was almost a perfect spot to see over the crowds into the arena, and the sound carried remarkably well. She gazed down over the crowd some eighty feet below, clinging to the rough bark of an oak, and watched the game with Erin Connal and her Days.

Jousting was considered a game for boys in Rofehavan--young men still in training for war. Among Runelords, who were made powerful with endowments of brawn, even a casual blow from a lance could be devastating. So a time came in a warrior's life when he quit jousting.

In the tournament field, two young men in full armor were mounted on chargers. The boy on the west side of the field looked to be of fairly common stock. He wore tournament armor, which consisted of an extremely heavy helm and a breastplate that was customarily thicker on the right side where a lance was more likely to strike with any degree of force than on the left. It looked to be old armor cobbled together from mismatching outfits borrowed from other knights. His only decorations were a horse's tail, dyed a vivid purple, stuck into the helm, along with his lady's favor, a yellow silk scarf, tied to the shaft of his lance. Myrimma's heart went out to the lad.

The boy on the other side of the field was wealthier. His tournament armor was new, and had obviously been a year in the making. The matching breastplate, helm, pauldrons, and gauntlets were made of burnished silver covered in red enamel, showing an image of three fighting mastiffs. He wore a cape of cloth-of-gold, with bleached peac.o.c.k feathers in his cap.

The Lord of the Games, Baron Wellensby, sat in a special pavilion off to one side with his three fat daughters and enormous wife. The Baron was ridiculously accoutred in a bright purple houppelande with arms so baggy that children could have hidden in them. Over this he wore a white hat with a wide brim that fell low enough over his face so that he obviously thought no one would notice if he slept through the tournament. His wife, who was no paragon of fashion, wore an emerald-colored cotehardie with gorgeously embroidered floating sleeves. She kept her hands tucked into the slit pockets in front of her, petting a small dog that was peeking out of her pockets just enough to bark when the knights came charging by. During a moment of silence from the crowd, her few shouts of encouragement to the warriors sounded curiously like the dog's bark.

This was obviously but one pa.s.s of many that these boys had taken. Their names had been heralded already, and if they fought for any particular honor, then the terms of the fight had been named and the conditions set.

Now, Baron Wellensby dropped his lance. At this signal, the young men on chargers dropped their own lances into a couched position and shouted, digging their heels into their mounts ribs.

The warhorses responded by shaking their heads and charging forward, their armor clanging, hooves thundering in the mud. The young man who wore the cape of cloth-of-gold had tied dozens of silver bells to the mane and tail of his mount, so that the horse made music as it ran.

Behind the Baron's pavilion, a gaggle of minstrels sat playing a quick riff on the horns and pipes and drums, providing climactic music for a charge that likely would end with nothing more than a couple of shattered lances. The lances, after all, had been hollowed so that the warriors wouldn't actually skewer one another, but only knock their opponent from his horse. Upon impact against a warrior, the lances would shatter with a cracking sound that could be heard for miles. The audience was sure to applaud.

Yet Myrrima could not resist the thrill of the battle. Men did get hurt in these affairs. Even a poor blow with a lance could leave a man badly bruised, and a knight who faltered in the way he handled his lance could rip a tendon. A lance could take a man through the visor and thus lodge in his brain, or a fall from a horse could snap a person's neck.

Mounts sometimes fell in the combat, too, rolling over and crushing. their riders. It was a rare festival that didn't end with at least a couple of deaths, and the spectacle was all the more visceral because the contenders were known to the spectators. One of the knights was bound to be someone that you knew and admired or envied or hated or loved.

The horns pealed and the drums rolled and the chargers raced together with the sound of bells and jangling armor and through it all Myrrima held her breath.

These were force horses, each with one endowment of metabolism, so that they raced toward one another with blinding speed, hooves moving so swiftly that they blurred. Goose b.u.mps thrilled up her spine.

"The poor boy on the left will win," Connal said, disinterested. "He's got the stance."

Myrrima doubted it would happen soon. A jousting match might require the combatants to make twenty or thirty pa.s.ses before a victory could be won. These young men looked weary and muddied. They'd already made several pa.s.ses.

The warriors met, and the air filled with the sound of splitting lances and the screams of horses. The rich lad went down, bowled over backward by a lance that took him full in the gorget and snapped his head backward. He tried to hold on to the heavy reins, but they snapped under his weight.

The audience cheered and thundered its approval, while those who'd bet against the fallen knight hurled insults.

"Ah, the lad dirtied those nice white peac.o.c.k feathers," Myrrima whined in mock sympathy.

Sister Connal chuckled. "They'll need a hammer and tongs to get that helm off him."

But the lad got up from his fall quickly and bowed to a.s.sure the crowd that he was all right. He hobbled from the field and squires rushed forward and began stripping off his armor, casting it into a pile to become the prize for the victor. Myrrima felt glad for the poor knight.

The smell of freshly roasted hazelnuts cooked in b.u.t.ter and cinnamon rose from vendors among the crowd, making her hungry. She wanted to go join the celebration.

"Could you beat that knight?" Myrrima asked as the victor circled the field with his broken lance held high.

"Aw, sure," Sister Connal said. "But where's the sport in it?"

Myrrima wondered. The Horselords of Fleeds were fearsome warriors who honored a leader's strength more than her bloodline. Sister Connal was likely among the toughest of the lot, and she'd have the endowments of brawn and stamina and grace to take on any warrior.

As the wounded knight left the field, heralds came forward to shout the names of the next contestants. As the first herald approached, there was a sudden dull roar, a t.i.ttering of excitement. From up here, over the myriad cries, Myrrima missed hearing the name of the warrior that the herald announced, yet immediately she realized that this was not a common fight. The herald who spoke from the far side of the field was no boy, but a grizzled old veteran warrior with a horribly scarred face. He wore no king's tunic emblazoned with the device of the lord he served, so Myrrima took him to be a Knight Equitable, sworn only to fight against evil.

At the far end of the field a knight rode out on a huge black mount, a monster of a horse with so many runes of power branded into it that it no longer seemed to be a creature of flesh and bone. It moved with surety and power, like some creature of iron come to life.