“You insolent bastard of a traitor! You dare instruct me on how to fight?”
Jamie shrugged again. “I warned you.”
Sir John rode up between them and cut off Pomeroy’s string of curses.
“Each of you will ride to the far end of the field and await my signal for the combat to begin,” Sir John said. “It ends when one of you concedes or is dead. Agreed?”
“Aye,” they both answered.
Jamie cantered to the edge of his side of the field and turned Thunder to face their opponent. His great warhorse danced sideways, as ready for a fight as he. Jamie fixed his eyes on Pomeroy. Cold, hard anger filled him as he let himself remember Linnet on her knees with the fiend’s hand coiled in her hair.
You will pay for the humiliation you caused her, for the fear in her eyes, for that cut on her cheek.
“Sirs, are you ready?” Sir John shouted.
“Aye!”
“At my signal,” Sir John barked out. He raised his sword, then swung it down, shouting, “Commence to fight!”
“Aaarrgh!!!” Jamie shouted his battle cry. Thunder’s hooves pounded beneath him as they charged across the field. He and this horse had been through so many battles together that they read each other like brothers. At his signal, Thunder galloped head-on at Pomeroy.
At the last minute, Pomeroy’s horse tilted left. Jamie hit Pomeroy with his shield with a loudthwackas he passed, but Pomeroy stayed on his horse. On the next pass, Jamie took a heavy blow with his shield and struck Pomeroy across the back with the flat of his sword.
So long as they were on their horses, Pomeroy’s armor gave him the advantage. Dislodging Pomeroy from his horse, however, was proving more difficult than he had anticipated.
“I do not know where you got your reputation for fighting, Pomeroy,” Jamie shouted. “You must have been at the back with the carts and the mules, for you would not have lasted a day fighting at King Henry’s side.”
Pomeroy galloped toward him with a roar and swung his sword at Jamie’s side with all his force. Jamie felt the wind of the sword on his back as he flattened himself against Thunder’s neck. Then, in one movement, he rose up and slammed the flat of his sword across Pomeroy’s back. Pomeroy was already half off his horse when Jamie turned Thunder around and flung himself onto Pomeroy’s back.
They crashed to the ground amid flying hooves. As soon as Jamie stopped rolling, he leapt to his feet, sword at the ready. He waited for Pomeroy, who was slower, hampered by his armor.
After that, the fight did not take long. Without the armor, they would have been a close match, for Pomeroy was powerful and skilled. Jamie was all that, but he was also agile and quick.
Finally, Jamie slammed Pomeroy to the ground, straddled Pomeroy’s chest, and wrenched off his helmet. Battle rage rang in Jamie’s ears. As he looked into the man’s black eyes to his blacker soul, it was all he could do not to draw his dagger across Pomeroy’s neck.
But a knight was expected to show mercy, not kill a countryman, after he had disarmed and defeated him in single combat.
“If you ever touch Linnet again,” Jamie hissed through his teeth, “I shall rip off your arms and legs and eat your heart.”
Pomeroy’s eyes had fury in them, too. “I concede,” he said through clenched teeth. “Now get off me.”
Jamie thought of the thin line of blood on Linnet’s fair skin and could not let the man go unmarked.
“First, let us see if you are as brave as she is.” Jamie picked up Pomeroy’s sword from where it had fallen and brought the shining blade to Pomeroy’s cheek.
Pomeroy’s demeanor changed instantly. His eye twitched and sweat beaded on his brow.
“Do not cut me,” Pomeroy said in a low voice.
“What is it?” Jamie demanded. When Pomeroy said nothing, Jamie pressed the flat of the blade harder against Pomeroy’s cheek without quite breaking the skin.
“Stop!” Pomeroy swallowed when Jamie eased the pressure. In a low rasp, he said, “There is poison on the blade.”
“You would stoop to poison?”
Jamie’s hand shook with the effort not to kill the man for the affront. The devil stood on his shoulder, urging him to slice the poisoned blade across Pomeroy’s cheek. The devil whispered in his ear that no one would suspect Jamie knew the blade was tainted. The blame would fall on Pomeroy himself. A man who chose so dishonorable a means to win a contest deserved an ignoble death.
But Jamie’s father had taught him that his enemy’s behavior did not guide his own. A knight did not take a man’s life by poison, no matter how richly the death was deserved.
