James Enge: Blood of Ambrose

But the black knight had not remained lying in the dust. He had recovered his spear, at least (his horse was down at the far end of the lists), and stood with it in hand, awaiting the Red Knight's onset. When the Red Knight's horse was almost upon him he dodged across its path with an agility that was astounding in a fully armored man and, lifting his lance like a club, struck the Red Knight from the saddle.

A roar of spontaneous applause drowned the crash of the Red Knight's fall. Wyrtheorn crowed with delight, then shouted, "Ambrose! Ambrose! Merlin's children!"

A sudden silence followed this shocking slogan, which reminded the crowd of the political realities behind this combat. Since that was what Wyrtheorn intended to do, he continued to shout into the silence, "Ambrose and the Ambrosii! The Royal House!"

"The King," suggested someone near at hand. Wyrth thought he recognized his friend Genjandro's voice.

"The King!" Wyrtheorn agreed vociferously. "Justice for the King! The King!"

There were a few faint echoes in the enclosure, but no answering roar. Still, there was a frozen thoughtfulness on many faces in the crowd. Wyrth had hoped for no more and sat back satisfied. The glittering stare of hatred the Protector had fixed on the squirming King did not escape him. But he doubted anything he could do would intensify the Protector's already lambent hatred for the last descendant of Uthar the Great.

The Red Knight had risen from the ground, meanwhile, dust like wreaths of smoke in the air about him. He said nothing, but drew the heavy sword swung from his belt.

The black knight, waiting at one side, lightly tossed away his spear and drew his own blade, narrow and long, with a deadly point.

The King looked curiously at Wyrth.

"No, Your Majesty," the dwarf said, answering the unspoken question. "That is not the accursed sword Tyrfing. Tyrfing is not merely a weapon but a focus of power; to kill with it is an act with grim consequences. Morlock would not carry it into a combat such as this. Besides, the ban on magic forbids it."

"Tyrfing is a fable," the Protector remarked, "and Morlock is a ghost story. I wonder who is really wearing that armor-some pawn of Ambrosia afraid to use his own name, I suppose."

The King looked fearfully at his Protector, as if he had thought the same thing. Wyrth laughed, but did not argue.

The knights on the field awaited no formal preliminaries to the second part of the combat. Before the heralds had raised the trumpets to their lips, the Red Knight's broadsword had crashed onto the black-and-white Ambrosian shield. The black knight thrust forward simultaneously with his bright deadly blade and the Red Knight was forced to retreat. The blade of the black knight gleamed red as he leapt forward in pursuit.

"First blood to Ambrosius!" Wyrth said grimly. "You see, Lord Urdhven, the ghost story that is sweating down on yonder dusty field learned his fencing from Naevros syr Tol, the greatest swordsman of the old time. He is not like anyone your champion has met before."

The Protector was still smiling. "They have all been different," he remarked. "They all came from different places, wearing different colors, skilled in different skills. They have one thing in common, dwarf: Hlosian killed them all."

Wyrtheorn shrugged and turned back to the fight. Urdhven's wholly unassumed confidence disturbed him more than he was willing to admit. It also disturbed him that there was no doubt in the faces of the crowd. They watched in fascination, but there was no suspense. They clearly expected the Red Knight's victory, though he was wounded in three places now.

The clash of steel against steel continued as the sun sank from its zenith and the heat of the day grew worse. When the black knight had wounded the Red Knight at least once in each limb, and twice in the neck, he began a furious offense clearly aimed at bringing final victory. Sword strokes fell like silver sheets of rain, varying with sudden lightning-bright thrusts.

The Red Knight backed slowly away two more steps under this onslaught and was wounded several times-it was hard to say how many, because blood did not stand out on his red-enamelled plate armor. But his manner hardly changed throughout the fight, despite his wounds. It occurred to Wyrtheorn that he was waiting for something.

The dwarf glanced over at the prisoner's stake and saw that Ambrosia's gray eyes were fixed on him. He shrugged uneasily, but her expression did not change. She looked back at the combat.

She knows something, Wyrth thought. What puzzles me does not puzzle her. He drummed his fingers on his knees and looked meditatively back to the field.

The black knight's assault slowed visibly. He had actually hacked holes in the Red Knight's plate armor over his right arm and left leg. But Sir Hlosian Bekh still defended himself with the same lumbering vigor and the same mediocre skill.

Then it happened. The black knight's sword-no longer bright and keen, but notched along its edge and stained dark with drying blood-lashed out in an attack on the Red Knight's sword arm. The black knight's sword caught in the gap between the forearm plate and the upper arm plate, where the Red Knight's chain mail was visible. Instead of retreating, the Red Knight trapped the black shield with his own and struck a thunderous blow with his heavy sword on the black knight's helm.

Ambrosia's champion staggered like a drunk. The Red Knight braced himself and struck out with his shield. The black knight was forced back a step. Hlosian struck again with sword and shield, and again the black knight was forced back.

"It is always the same," the Protector's voice said. Wyrth turned to him: the golden lord seemed almost sad as he returned the dwarf's glance. "Your friend, whoever he is, fought well. Better than any I have ever seen, perhaps, and I have been coming to the combats for thirty years. Hlosian, as you have seen, does not fight well. But he always wins."

"He has magical protection," the dwarf guessed.

The Protector replied, with a shrug, "He is strong enough to outlast any opponent, and he is not afraid of death. That is all the magic he needs. Look at the crowd, dwarf. This is nothing new to them. They have seen it all before."

Stonily, Wyrth turned his gaze back to the field. But he could not help noticing, with the corner of his eye, the patient, unsurprised faces of the crowd. They were fascinated, but they were not really in suspense. To them this was not a combat but a ritual death. They had seen it before.

Wyrtheorn was seeing what he had never seen before: the black knight being driven back, step by step, toward defeat. The Red Knight now had his back toward the Victor's Square, and he was forcing his opponent toward the far border of the lists. If forced across, the black knight would be defeated.

"It will be over soon," the Protector said thoughtfully. "I hope he does not try to flee under the rail. It is unpleasant to see a friend killed while groveling on the ground-"

"Morlock Ambrosius will never flee," the dwarf said flatly.

"He, or whoever is pretending to be him, has never faced Sir Hlosian Bekh. There is something frightening about Hlosian, something different."

"Will he not allow his opponent to yield?" the little King asked sud denly. Wyrth, glancing at him, saw his eyes were wide with concern-he had probably never seen a man killed in combat before.

The Protector shook his head, smiling. "Sir Hlosian never offers mercy. Like defeat, it is foreign to his nature."

It seemed to Wyrth, as he looked back at the combat, that the black knight was giving way to panic. To the dwarf's way of thinking, the only chance the black knight had was to disable the Red Knight's sword arm or one of his legs. But the black knight had ceased attacking these entirely. From the looks of things (the Red Knight was partially eclipsing Wyrth's view), the black knight was hacking and stabbing repeatedly at his opponent's breastplate. The likelihood of breaking through this (and the chain mail that surely lay beneath) for a fatal blow was so slight that Wyrth had to believe the black knight was no longer rational.