It was rather exciting for Annavieve to be free of the lists and free of Victor’s acrid aura. Whenever she was around him now, she could feel the bitterness from him. Everything about him crackled towards her. Therefore, she was happy to be rid of him but she had to admit that she was eager to return to see how Kevin was faring. She was confident that he would be in the same place she had left him. She was confident that he would win it.
The moment she left the field, however, things took a downturn for Kevin.
Murder was stalking him.
*
The dark Frenchknight had been knocked off his stolen horse about a half hour after the bout had started. While that fact immediately disqualified him, he had managed to lurk in the crowd of fighting men and avoid detection by the marshals.
He’d been fortunate enough to evade capture but he had stalked through the mass of men, hunting for Kevin. It would be difficult for him to slip a dagger in his ribs as long as the man remained mounted, so the French knight had been hovering around Kevin’s general area waiting for someone to knock him off. He didn’t want to get too close to him in the beginning, fearful that Kevin would try to take him as a hostage, so it wasenough that he simply remain in Kevin’s vicinity, waiting for someone to unseat him.
But that wait grew excessive. It was evident that Kevin would not be unseated and, two hours after the bout began, the French knight’s patience was at an end. He knew he was going to have to make a move because there were only eight or ten knights still seated, and those men were going to start going down fast because they were turning on each other. Out of fifty original competitors, there were only about twenty left now and the fight was getting nasty. Men were tired and men wanted to win, a recipe for some unscrupulous fighting.
Two of the seated knights went down in short order, one knocked off by Kevin himself. A tall young man ran onto the field to collect the horse for Kevin whilst a Dorset soldier ran out to collect the knight who had fallen, dragging the man over to the group of Kevin’s captives. The dark French knight watched all of this, knowing he would have to act while there were still men on the field. It would make his actions against Kevin look like they were part of the games and less like he had singled out Kevin in particular. Knowing he had no more time to waste, he moved into action.
Kevin was first aware of trouble when someone vaulted onto the back of his steed and grabbed him around the head. Whoever it was had a strong grip and Kevin grappled to get the man off of him. There were arms wrapped around his neck from behind, choking him, and he knew he had to do something quickly or he would pass out from it. With the club still in his right hand, he swung it backwards with all his might, catching the man behind him on the head. He could hear the clash of his wood against a metal helm.
The grip around his neck loosened and Kevin grabbed the man from behind, as much as he could, and tried to pull him off, but the man grabbed at him again, holding fast. Kevin was tryingdesperately to dislodge him when Adonis rode up beside him, as one of the few remaining mounted knights, and clubbed the attacker on the head. The man slipped off the horse and crashed to the ground.
But it wasn’t the end; the attacker stood up, staggered over to Adonis, and planted a small dagger right in the man’s thigh. He did it twice. Shocked, and stabbed, Adonis tried to fight the man off with his club and was stabbed in the foot when the swinging club missed. Kevin, realizing that this attacker had an illegal weapon in the mix, kicked the attacker in the head, sending the man to the ground once more. This time, the man stayed down.
“Daggers are forbidden, you fool!” Kevin bellowed. “Stab my friend and you shall have to deal with me!”
The attacker rolled into a sitting position and turned in Kevin’s direction. Quick as a flash, he hurled the dagger at Kevin’s head. Having virtually no time to react, Kevin tried to duck but the movement of his body made it so that the knife ended up grazing his jaw. The mail prevented it from doing any real damage, but by now, Kevin was thoroughly enraged. Whoever this man was, he was out for blood and Kevin would not shy away. Any man with a sharp weapon, as far as he was concerned, was out to kill him. With that in mind, the Scorpion was unleashed.
Dismounting his horse, which instantly disqualified him, Kevin went after his attacker with a vengeance. Instead of running, his attacker met him head-on and soon, the punches were flying furiously. Blow after blow, strike after strike, the men did battle against one another, so much so that even the knights still competing in the bout slowed their movements to watch what was happening. It was a nasty, vicious brawl as Kevin and the mysterious attacker were at each other’s throats.
Kevin still had his club and when he wasn’t driving his fist into the man’s head, he was using the club to pummel him. Theattacker managed to pick up a fallen lance, which immediately put Kevin at a disadvantage, so Kevin spied a long, broken pole lance several feet away and collected it. Now, they were fighting with broken lances and Kevin used the broken, spiked end of his to ram it right into his opponent’s belly. His enemy turned slightly, catching the sharp end of the pole on the side of his torso, but it still penetrated through mail and linen tunic. It was clear that the man had been moderately impaled but he grasped the pole, sticking out of his torso, and ripped it out.
It was a move that suggested the attacker was much tougher than Kevin gave him credit for. Certainly, they had been trading vicious punches but a move like that, removing an object that had impaled him, implied that the enemy was extraordinarily seasoned. And deadly. Therefore, Kevin didn’t give the man an opportunity to breathe; he pounced on him, pinning him to the dark, muddy earth.
As big as Kevin was, and as strong, his attacker had little chance of wrestling free. With his enemy finally subdued, Kevin ripped off the man’s helm only to receive the surprise of his life.
Dark eyes and dark, long, and dirty hair came into view. The scar near the nose was obvious. Kevin’s fury took a dousing of cold, hard reality when he realized who it was.
“You!” he hissed, stunned. “De Evereux?”
Piers de Evereux gazed up at Kevin, his features lined with exhaustion and pain. “Oui,” he said, breathing heavily. “It ’tis me. You should not be surprised, Hage. Did you truly believe you would never see me again?”
Kevin, still on top of the man, pinning him, shook his head in awe. “I had not thought on it,” he said, “yet here you are and I am faced with an ugly reality. What in the hell are you doing here?”
Piers’ gaze was steady. “That should be obvious,” he said. “You killed my cousin. De Clemont wants revenge.”
Kevin’s jaw was hard, set. “He tried to kill me first.”
“So you say.”
Kevin struggled with his frustration. He could not allow emotion to enter his manner, not now. “So you followed me all the way from the Levant? That is astonishing.”
Piers lifted a dark eyebrow. “It was mostly guessing,” he said, as if it was somehow amusing in a dark sort of way. “I assumed you would go a certain way and I was lucky enough to discover I was correct. Knowing men were out to kill you, Hage, you should not have been so obvious.”
Kevin’s shrugged, vaguely. “Mayhap not,” he said. “But you are the only one who has found me. Are there others?”
Piers shrugged. “There will always be others,” he said. “You and I are in a dirty business, Hage. We turn on each other as easily as we ally with one another. You may kill me now, but there will be others. For the rest of your life you will have to look over your shoulder.”
Kevin knew that and it fed his fury. “So you have come here to kill me,” he said. Then, the irony of the situation began to weigh heavily on him as he glanced up, seeing the lists full of people. “You know I cannot kill you here in front of everyone to see. It would go badly for me.”
Piers smiled faintly. “I know,” he said. “You must let me go or suffer the consequences with hundreds of witnesses watching. Mass competition is not meant for killing and if you do, it would ruin you. Even if you kill me and tell them why, there will still be some doubt.”
