S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

The moment was enough. Tiphaine and Rodard and Armand were all on him at once, and blood spattered into the air behind a wall of armored shoulders and weapons rising and falling and harsh meaty sounds.

Lioncel shuddered, as if he’d been dropped into cold water when he was fevered. Or had suddenly woken from a very bad dream. A glance showed him his mother and sisters were all right, though Heuradys was frozen in shock and Yolande was sobbing; Lady Juniper had to help Delia de Stafford up before she clutched them to her. The Queen Mother was emerging from the hearth with her granddaughter, who was waving pink fists and making a wuh-wuh-wuh sound, less frightened than offended at not being in the center of the universe, which was where babies thought they belonged.

Sandra Arminger looked. . alarmingly determined.

The High Queen was kneeling beside Huon, laying aside a long sword that looked a bit big for her, after a similar quick check. The blade and her right arm and side were heavily spattered.

“Where did you get that?” Tiphaine d’Ath said, as she knelt on the boy’s other side, ripping the clothing aside. Then: “Rodard, Armand, get this cluster. . fracas. . under control. See that the staircase up is secured. And we need a medic.”

“Two of the Guard knights leapt after the assassins,” Mathilda said. “Neither of them survived, much less arrived in shape to fight, but one of them lived long enough to give me this. A good thing, because there were three of the assassins. I got one, but. .”

“They operate in threes, yes.” She looked up. “Brave of him.”

Lioncel did too, and shuddered; the men had deserved that accolade, even from so exacting a source. He wasn’t particularly afraid of heights, but the thought of deliberately hurling yourself off that drop, in armor, on the off-chance you’d survive long enough to be useful. .

He approached Huon himself. The Grand Constable gave him a slight approving nod, and he found that flushed a lot of the shakiness out of him; she held out her sword, and he started to clean it and check the edge for nicks. The High Queen was tending to the wound in his comrade’s stomach, a long shallow slash from around the left hipbone slanting up to the navel, ignoring the blood with the matter-of-fact competence of long experience. One of the songs the troubadours had made about the Quest was how the nine companions had dressed each other’s wounds in the wilderness. Then she frowned.

“Wait a minute, this wound isn’t deep enough to. . he’s in shock!”

He was; his pale-olive skin was gray, and the pupils in his eyes had shrunk to pinpricks. The breath rattled in his throat.

The medics Tiphaine had called for arrived; they didn’t have far to come, since there were several clinics in the Silver Tower. One went to where Signe Havel lay clutching at her ribs and wheezing amid two countesses wielding smelling-salts and flasks of brandy, and the other to Huon. She was in the habit of the Sisters of Mercy, with a gold cross on the black leather of her doctor’s satchel.

“He’s dying,” she said flatly after a moment’s skilled investigation. “He shouldn’t be, it’s a superficial cut, but he is.”

No, Lioncel thought helplessly, inconsequentially, his hands freezing in the middle of their familiar task. Huon can’t die. . we were supposed to go hawking tomorrow. .

“No!” Mathilda Arminger said; but there was no helplessness in her voice.

Then, very softly, with her eyes shut and her hands on the injured squire:

“Mary pierced with sorrows, Queen of Angels, you said that I should be as a mother to this land. This boy is flesh of its flesh and bone of its bone, wounded because he put his body between a child and evil. I ask. . whatever grace is given me, let it pass to him.”

Nothing dramatic happened, except that a pink flush returned to Huon’s face; he sighed, began breathing more easily, and seemed to slide into a deep sleep. The Sister gave the High Queen a single sharp glance, and then began to swab and sew at what was now a perfectly ordinary mildly serious injury. Lioncel fought down a gasp.

Mathilda’s eyes opened. “No need to make much of this,” she said quietly, looking deliberately at the three of them in turn. “As the good Sister said, it’s not a life-threatening wound.”

Not now , Lioncel thought, and fought an impulse to fall to his knees in awe, or at least to cross himself.

He wasn’t entirely surprised; he’d seen the Sword of the Lady, after all. . and there was something beyond the human in an anointed monarch, everyone knew that from the stories.

In theory. It’s a lot more alarming in practice. But I know keep your mouth shut about this from someone of high rank when I hear it, even if it’s. . tactfully put.

He and his liege stood, bowed deeply to Mathilda, and backed away. Lioncel met the Grand Constable’s unreadable gray gaze and nodded very slightly: I understand. She almost-smiled in approval before she turned away. He was almost shaking with relief himself, now that there was time to appreciate just how bad the situation had been, but that helped to steady him.

Signe Havel was swearing mildly as the other medic-a layman-probed at her ribs and pronounced that several were probably cracked, but only slightly.

“I could have told you that without your sticking fingers into it,” she snarled. “Do you think it’s the first time I’ve had a sprung rib?”

He heard Virginia Thurston speaking in a similar tone to someone else, her Powder River accent much thicker than usual: “I’m pregnant, not sick, y’ durned fool, and I didn’t get hit. Leave me be and tend to them as needs it!”

Things were getting set to order; more of the d’Ath menie had shown up, and some of the Lord Chancellor’s men, and attendants of the Countesses, who were giving crisp quiet directions of their own.

“Scrub down the blood from the assassins and then burn the rags and the instruments,” Tiphaine d’Ath said. “Then wash yourselves and burn your clothes. Burn Her Majesty’s dress once she’s out of it. No, don’t touch those knives with your bare hands, you idiot! Take them to Lord Chancellor Father Ignatius, in a box, he knows how to deal with them. The assassin’s bodies will have to be burned. Prepare a pyre outside the castle walls. . a big one. With no people downwind.”

The servants gulped and paled and set to following her instructions with exaggerated care, and she went on to her household knights:

“Armand, get this troop of armored. . people. . out of the Queen Mother’s chambers, get up there with enough men and see to disarming the Guard detachment. Obviously most of them weren’t in on this but some of the ones who were may still be alive. Rodard, immediate message to Sir Tancred via the heliograph net and courier that he’s to have the High King comb the ranks of the Guard in the field.”

“Separate cells, preliminary interrogation, kid gloves, my lady?” Armand asked, clarifying.

“Right. Get going. Rodard, once that dispatch is off, go brief Conrad, he’ll be having kittens. The last thing we need is him wheeling his chair through this mess waving his cane and roaring.”

“Yes, my lady.”

She made a small exhaling sound as the knights departed briskly, glanced around to see if there was something else time-critical that needed doing immediately, and decided there wasn’t. The Queen Mother gave her an inclination of the head and mouthed: well done , which straightened Lioncel’s spine even further.

I was right, my liege is a strong right arm of the Crown ! he thought proudly . And so will I be, one day!