Chapter Thirteen
They were too evenly matched. Such a fight could go on forever. At first Lance was afraid that Art was going easy on him, allowing for the difference between a boy raised as a warrior king and one who’d had to tend sheep between his father’s infrequent lessons in swordsmanship.
But Art’s eyes were too brightly intent for that, and anyway Lance didn’t think it lay in his nature: he’d refuse to fight him at all rather than insult him by lowering his game. The horses circled like dancers on the rock. As if from a great distance, Lance heard Gaius clatter up onto the crest. Guy was shouting, but after a moment his voice faded out to the thump of blood in Lance’s ears.
The sword sat so light in Lance’s hand that he scarcely had to exert strength to wield it. It did his bidding with no gap between thought and act, worked almost ahead of thought, leaping to block Art’s every move. Lance couldn’t have held him off otherwise. The sword was the answer: with Excalibur, he was immortal, could join Arthur’s forces and be worth something…
Just as this happy thought struck him, Balana—who was not immortal—slipped and went down like a rockslide.
Lance hit the ground first. A heartbeat later she fell on him, in a flail of legs and mane. The sword took flight. Pinned, winded, Lance watched it flash end over end and vanish off the edge of the crag.
He minded, but not half so much as he minded having hurt the horse. Her knees and flanks were bloodied: he saw it in dazed flickers as she scrambled to her feet. “Poor beast! Poor beast!” he gasped, pushing up onto his knees and holding out a shaking hand to catch her reins. She was battle-hardened, trained not to leave a fallen man, but plainly she’d been put past patience—stood staring and blowing at him with such an expression of disbelief that he almost laughed. Then pain caught up with him, and he dropped back onto the rock.
Art dismounted neatly. His weird fires were gone, quenched absolutely. Only the sweet-natured, sober lad remained. Quickly he caught Balana’s rein and stilled her. “Poor beast?” he echoed. “Poor Lance, I think. What a fall! Are you still alive?”
Lance gave it thought. “Too stupid to die,” he said, looking at the surface of the outcrop around them. “We shouldn’t have fought here, Art. It’s like glass. But never mind me. The horse…”
“The horse comes first,” Art finished for him, grimly. Gaius had appeared beside Arthur, expression unreadable, and taken the reins from his hands. Only then did Art come and crouch beside Lance. “She’s fine. They’re scratches, that’s all. You, however…” He ran both hands down Lance’s shin, glancing at him in wry admiration when he didn’t cry out. “If you were Balana, your outlook would be grim. That’s broken. Guy and I will set it for you.” He smiled pallidly. “At least, he will sit on you while I do it. Where’s your sword?”
“Went over the crag. It doesn’t matter.” For the moment, it was true: Lance knew by now he’d gladly barter immortality for five minutes at the centre of Arthur’s regard.
But Art’s face shadowed. “I’ll fetch it for you,” he said, and before either Guy or Lance could respond, had leapt to his feet and was running for the edge of the rock. “Guy, look after him!”
Lance flipped over onto his stomach, oblivious to the sunburst of pain in his leg. He watched in horror as Art hesitated, assessing the drop, then slipped lithely over the precipice and vanished. “Gaius, stop him!” he gasped. “It reallydoesn’tmatter. Gods—not that much, anyway!”
“The sword from the lake?” Gaius roughly demanded. “It damn well should. As for stopping him…” He unfastened his cloak, took it off and dropped it on Lance without ceremony. “As for stopping him, you’ve surely seen by now how easy that is.” He gave Lance a look that made his face burn with shame. “You’ve been a big help, by the way.” Then he too was gone, leaving Lance almost too mortified to cover himself with the cloak.
***
Climbing rocks. It had been the one game Guy could win against Art. At first all their contests had been easy: Guy was older and bigger, and angry enough not to give Art an inch on either count, no matter how hard Ectorius scolded him. Then the prince, the Pendragon’s son who could do no wrong, had fledged like an eagle, and overnight, it seemed to Guy, with a minimum of training, had become a natural expert in archery, swordfighting, horsemanship, all the arts of war in which Ector was having them trained. He hadn’t forgotten being crushed by the bigger boy, either, and Guy had suffered accordingly.
For some reason, though, Guy remained better at scrambling up and down the cliffs that towered along Dumnonia’s coast. Brute strength, probably, he bitterly reflected, beginning his descent. Big limbs, harder to break than his royal highness’s: Art had grown into the length of his bones but would never be husky. Guy glanced down the crag and saw him making a decent job of negotiating the pitching, jagged slope, but as ever he was headstrong, not stopping to plan his route. Guy could see a better one. He steadied himself, undid his own sword belt lest the blade unbalance him, and sturdily began to scramble down.
The sword was lodged tightly in a deep cleft between two massive outcrops of the ridge.Two scales of the dragon’s spine, Art thought, shuddering. It was cold down here, and damp, as if the sunlight had despaired of the place long ago. He wouldn’t have seen the hilt if it didn’t have a weird light of its own, if its spiral, didn’t seem to dance in the corners of his vision, then go still when he looked at them direct. But for all its gleaming and dancing, Art couldn’t reach it, not without a leap across four foot of empty space over a sickening drop.
The sword was all Lance had. It was his pledge, his promise, from the Lady of the Lake, and he’d lost it through Arthur’s own fault. He had to try. Bracing himself to the rock, he glanced across the gap, swallowed hard and made ready to jump.
“Arthur Pendragon! Don’t you bloody dare!”
Art froze where he was. Guy was growing into his father’s voice, and that still had power to halt him in his tracks. He glanced up to the source of the roared-out command, and saw his foster brother making his way down toward him. The sight of him, the rugged solidity of his bearing, which for all his teasing Arthur secretly envied, made him feel like a child again, and he hated the tremor in his voice when he called out, “But the sword, Guy! We have to get it back for him!”
“I know. I don’t think he’d want us to kill ourselves doing it, though. Stay where you are! There’s an easy way over from here.”
Art frowned up into the distant, blazing sky. Was there? Ah, yes—an obvious one, too, if he’d bothered to look. Ectorius accused him sometimes of making things hard for himself on purpose, and he’d always denied it, but perhaps it was so. Certainly life tasted best to him when he was riding full-pelt against it. No old men or visions assaulted him then. He watched Guy step over the gap where it was only a big stride across, and begin to scramble down to the sword.
He almost jumped anyway. His pride had been dented by Guy’s common sense, and it would be a coup to spring over the abyss and get there before him.
Squinting, he looked up to see his brother’s expression. There was no malice there, no trace of triumph. There hadn’t been for years, he realised. Guy was just trying, as usual, to take care of him. He’d risked his neck in the process, too, and not for the first time—even the more sensible path he’d taken down the crag was fraught with danger. His homely face was concentrated with the effort of staying upright. Art felt a surge of affection for him, and began with care to make his way up to the safe path he’d been shown.
“Damn thing’s stuck,” Guy observed as Art slithered down the last few feet of the scree to where he was sitting. “Blade’s gone clean down between these two rocks.”
Arthur came to a halt and surveyed the scene. He rested one hand on his own sword hilt and ran the other through his hair, blowing out a puzzled breath. “How did he manage that?”
“I don’t know, but I bet you he couldn’t do it again.”
They broke into brief laughter. “I’m sorry, Guy,” Art said. “I picked the fight with Lance. He didn’t want it at all. And I just got carried away.”
“You two are meant to be friends. That’s why I left you alone this afternoon—to use your diplomatic skills to persuade him to come with us tomorrow.”
