K. Parker - The Proof House

He heard the girl scream as he shifted the scimitar across to his right hand. If she picks up the bow I’m still not out of this , he thought, wincing at the pain as he put his weight on his left foot. Come on, leg, this is no time for hissy fits. Maybe that’s all there were, father, son and daughter; or maybe there’s the rest of the gods-damned extended family crouched up there in the rocks – brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, fifteen different degrees of cousin, grandpa and grandma and a picnic lunch in a hamper. What I’d really like is to be somewhere else; but I’d settle for my knife back.

Azes. There’d been another kid, called Azes; a boy’s name, presumably. Now what would a good boy do, in the circumstances? Would he scoop up his kid sister and get the hell out? That’s what I’d do (only it’s not what I did) or would he come after the monster, the destroyer of his family and his home and his life – Oh I hope not. I really, really -

In the mines, you knew when someone was behind you. As the boy jumped down, Bardas was already twisting around, trying to get some sort of balance so he could use his feet. It would have been nice to side-step, hop lightly out of the way while bringing the sword up in a universal backhand parry – that’s what he’d have done if he wasn’t stumbling about in a narrow space between crates of perfume and biscuits in the back of a coach, with two clumsy, painful feet and the sun in his eyes as he looked up. As it was, he saw a blur and he hit it as hard as he could, relying on instinct (again) and basic timing. The boy’s blood hit him in the face, suggesting he’d slashed through the jugular vein. A ten, and wrong-footed.

A good ten; he’d nearly cut the boy’s head off. I hope you were Azes , he thought, turning round again. I’d really hate it if there were more of you . There was still the crossbow, spanned and cocked and with an arrow in the nut, somewhere up above his head on top of the luggage. Just as well Azes was as thick as a brick, trying to jump him from behind with a little wood-cutter’s hatchet when there was a perfectly good crossbow lying about; not that intelligence seemed to run in this family, or they wouldn’t have chosen this particular method of earning a living.

I’ve had enough of this. Let’s get out of here. A gap where the roped-down crates had shifted was just enough of a toehold to allow him to scramble up on top of the luggage, past the crossbow, past the dead boy with the knife between his eyes, and down on to the box. If there’d been a third cousin twice removed up among the rocks with another crossbow he’d have been in trouble; but there wasn’t, so that was all right. He grabbed the reins and the whip, trying to remember how you went about driving coaches – can’t be all that different from a hay-wagon, though I haven’t driven one of them since I was – oh, Gylus’ age. Nobody shot at him, or tried to cut his throat from behind, or rolled rocks down on top of him, so that was all right.

‘You’re not the usual courier,’ said the man at Melrun station, as he reached up to take the reins.

‘The courier’s dead,’ Bardas explained. ‘Someone tried to rob the coach.’

The man looked shocked. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘Straight up. Jump up and count the bodies if you don’t believe me.’

‘You fought them off?’ the man asked. ‘On your own?’

Bardas shook his head. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘I’m a hero. And besides, most of them were just kids.’

The battle was effectively over. It had been short, one-sided and rather bloody, mostly because of the rebels’ distressing reluctance to call it a day, even when it was obvious that they’d lost. Fighting to the last drop of blood sounds all very well in theory, but it’s really only ever worth the effort when you’re winning.

Temrai’s handling of the battle had been textbook perfect, from the initial skirmisher attacks that had drawn the main rebel force out of position and into the killing zone, through the flawless enveloping manoeuvres of the main cavalry wings down to the perfectly conceived and executed pursuit and mopping-up of the enemy survivors. It was a pity, General Kurrai remarked afterwards, that such a masterly battle should be wasted on a bunch of malcontents and losers who’d never stood a chance anyway. A few volleys of arrows and a simple charge would have done the trick in a matter of minutes, and the cavalry could simply have ridden them down as they ran. Simple, efficient and there wouldn’t have been that embarrassing business at the end…

At the death, when the encircling horns of horse-archers and lancers had met up to complete the ring around the zone and it was all over bar the actual killing, one of the enemy ringleaders had caught sight of the pennants of Temrai’s bodyguard and committed what was left of his forces to a suicide attack against that part of the line. Needless to say, only a handful of rebels actually made it through the shield-wall as far as the edge of the guard cordon, and nearly all of them ended up spitted on the pikes and halberds of the guards. No more than four men out of a whole double company came within striking range of Temrai himself; and of those four, just the one man actually managed to land a blow on the king’s person. A thumbnail’s width to the left, and all that effort would have been entirely justified.

Whoever he was, this one man out of so many, he must have been very angry. By the time he barged his way past the inner ring of guards, he’d already taken enough damage to stop a normal human being – two pike-thrusts puncturing his stomach, a glancing blow across the right side of his head that sprayed blood everywhere, as deep scalp wounds tend to do, a cut on the point of his left shoulder that lost him the use of that arm. But he was still on his feet and right-handed; and the backhand scimitar-cut he managed to loose, in the half-second or so before someone split his skull from behind, slammed into Temrai’s neck on the very edge of his gorget, where the lip of the metal had been curled up and back. As it was, the shock of the blow sent Temrai sprawling, the impact enough to crush his windpipe and stop him breathing for long enough to make him believe it was all over. He dropped suddenly to his knees, in time for his head to get in the way of another guard’s backswing which clattered across the front of his helmet like a blow from a smith’s hammer. He landed at a hopelessly contorted angle down among the forest of legs and ankles, and lay curled and choking to death for a very long time, until a couple of guardsmen found out where he’d disappeared to and hauled him back on to his feet before anybody else could tread on him.

By the time he was up and breathing normally again, the meaningful part of the battle was already over, leaving only abattoir chores. Some guardsmen hustled Temrai out of the crowd and back to the calm and quiet of the tents, where an armourer had to cut through the straps of the dented and misshapen gorget before he could get the thing off. A surgeon examined the ugly swollen bruise, dabbed it with witch hazel and assured Temrai that there was no permanent harm done.

‘Just as well you were wearing the thing,’ Tilden said later. She was holding the twisted, mutilated gorget and looking at it thoughtfully. ‘If it wasn’t for that little raised bit round the edge, you’d be dead. I suppose the raised bit’s there for precisely that reason.’

General Kurrai shook his head. ‘Actually, no,’ he said. ‘It’s just to stop the edge rubbing against your neck and cutting you to pieces.’

‘Oh,’ Tilden replied. ‘Well, in that case it was definitely a slice of luck.’ She put the gorget down with a little squeamish shiver, as if it had been covered in blood. ‘Do you really need to do this?’ she asked. ‘Go to all the battles, I mean. Can’t you stay near the back or something and let someone else do the actual charging about? After all, you’re the King, heaven only knows what’d happen if you got yourself killed. And it’s not as if you’re a mighty warrior or a crack shot or anything.’