Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

Fragments of the night’s events came to him in watery flashes:

Her open mouth coming to kiss his, her teeth graying toward the black of her father’s teeth, her pear-green eyes half-lidded as her tongue flicked forward, her breath with its notes of garlic, fecundity, and rot; his two fingers sunk in her up to the knuckle; her wheezing beneath him and digging into his shoulders with her fat little fingers, her legs curled up so she made a football of herself. She had bitten one of his nipples so badly he wondered if he might lose it.

“So this is Hell,” he muttered.

He glanced at his borrowed robe, which was hanging from a nail near his head. He noticed the cloth-of-gold stars on the sage-green fabric and saw that they looked very much like the stars in the actual night sky. He found the constellation of the swan. Then he found his comet, with its little bloody vein. And the smaller one near it.

He was afraid now.

He did not want to touch the robe, so he put on his soiled long shirt and inner leggings. When he sat gingerly upon the bed to put his boots on, the little dog uncurled itself and stood yapping and growling at him as if it were in pain. Soon it was, because it made the mistake of biting Thomas’s arm, for which he grabbed it, absorbing two more little bites, and flung it against the wall. It made a great noise. He didn’t look to see if it had roused the woman on the bed, because he didn’t want to see one of her large green eyes fixed on him; he was grateful to hear her chortle softly and then snore.

He took his sword and left.

Soon he was lost again in the labyrinth of stone halls, dripping candles and sputtering torches. At last he felt cool air and went outside into the night; other people, still dressed in finery from the feast, were moving in the dark courtyard as well, and some now came through the same door he had just used. The woman from his bed was one of these, her headpiece perched on her high forehead again, the wicked little dog in her arms, her green dress shining.

How did she get dressed so quickly?

She ignored him as she moved past, then turned her head and said, “You’d better find your armor. And I hope you ride better than you fuck. Théobald outclasses you miserably there.” Everyone around them heard and laughed.

He stood there, headachy and confused, while the crowd flowed past him. He looked where they were going and saw pennants flapping in the cool night breeze over a grounded constellation of lit lamps and torches.

The tournament field.

He felt a tug at his elbow and saw the boy, Simon, standing there.

“The armorer wants you.”

Run! Get out of this place!

Armorer.

How long had it been since he’d had an armorer?

In his confusion, he followed the boy to a lit tent. The two men who had taken his armor before were within, ready to suit him in his mail and plate; it had all been scoured and shone marvelously. A tournament helm sat on the arming table.

Thomas’s mouth stood open.

“Don’t just gawk at us. And don’t get too attached to it. Sir Théobald will smash it all into junk, like as not, and you with it. He fights with a mace, and he’s quick as a fish from a dead man’s skull.”

Thomas nodded at them and let them begin.

He noticed his surcoat, cleaned now, and emblazoned with a heraldic image that had not been there before. Two fleurs-de-lys and a hare.

He chuckled.

Yes, this was Hell. And if all that was left for him to do was fight, he would fight to frighten Lucifer.

“Fuck it,” he said. “Just fuck it.”

“That’s what we say, Sir Thomas,” the older armorer said. “And if it won’t let you fuck it, cut its throat. Hey, Jacmel, pass us down his sword. He’ll want that cleaned, too.”

The other man handed him the sword, and the armorer only half unsheathed it before he sheathed it again and put it down on his arming table.

“Christ! What the hell is on this thing?”

“I killed something foul in a river.”

“Well, I’m not touching it. Hey, Jacmel, you want any of this?” he asked the other one. The other one shook his head. The first one tossed the sword at Thomas’s feet, and they finished buckling him in. A horse whinnied outside the tent.

“That’ll be your horse, Grisâtre.”

“I thought he was riding Belâtre.”

“Oh, right. The seigneur is riding Grisâtre.”

At that, trumpets sounded and the herald spoke, though Thomas could not hear what he was saying. Then the crowd roared. The tourney had begun.

He went out of the tent and saw the mottled charger he was meant to ride. A gray-haired, long-headed squire in an ill-fitting jerkin and loose hose held the reins, and the man was so drunk he could barely stand. A second look at the ridiculous squire showed him to be Matthieu Hanicotte, the priest.

The sound of something punching through armor came from the tournament field, and the crowd loosed an impressed HOOOOOOAAAAA!

Thomas’s borrowed horse turned to look at him, and Matthieu motioned toward the saddle. Thomas mounted.

“Are you yourself, or a devil?” Thomas asked, putting on his tournament helmet.

“I don’t know,” he slurred, “but I’m fairly sure there’s a devil out there.”

A horrible shriek came from the field then. The crowd went, “ HO-ooooooooo ,” the way a crowd will when something awful has happened to a man. The squire-priest grabbed a lance from where it leaned against a rail and handed it to Thomas, taking up two spares as well. Thomas looked down the shaft at the point; it was a war point, sharp and deadly, not the blunted quartet of knobs one used in tourneys.

“So be it,” he said. “Let’s go die, priest.”

“I wish that were all we risked here,” Matthieu said.

He turned the horse and brought it onto the trampled sod of the list.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said under his breath.

Two horsemen were on the field, and a third waited on the far side.

What must have been a hundred torches burned, and burned the image into his mind; the German-looking Frenchman from the feast was sitting dead in the saddle, a lance through his side. His helmet was off. The seigneur, also sans helmet, circled his horse around him, then spurred it close, using a one-handed war axe to split the man’s head laterally, from nose to the back of his skull, the contents of which flew all over the sand.

The crowd screamed its approval.

Then a monkey came from beneath the stands, a monkey of the same sort as the three that had been roasted for supper, and began to pick from the sand and eat what had flown from the man’s head. When he had gotten all there was to be found on the sand, he scampered up the horse and up the armored body of the half-headed German Frenchman, and began to eat directly from the bowl of his remaining head.

“Hoooooooooo!” went the crowd.

Now the monkey kicked his heels against the armor of the dead knight he straddled, and the knight’s body jerked and spurred the horse, who trotted off the field to eat grass. The knight’s body slid heavily out of the saddle, and the monkey scampered beneath the stands again.

The crowd went silent, then began to chant, “Next! Next! NEXT! NEXT!”

The lord, still circling on Grisâtre, pointed his gory axe at Thomas.

Thomas suppressed a shudder.

I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, he thought, then spurred his horse forward to take his position at his end of the list.

“Lance, or sword?” Thomas shouted at the seigneur.

“LANCE!” he bellowed, “But not me. Him!”

Théobald de Barentin was in position now, placing his tournament helm and taking his lance. He sat a whitish horse that couldn’t wait to run. His dandy squire handed him his first lance.