Toby Clements - Kingmaker - Winter Pilgrims

‘Still nothing,’ he says, and he turns his back and walks away. Then he clicks his fingers.

‘Of course,’ he says, turning back. ‘I know! I have it! Louther!’

‘Aye?’ one of the men sitting on the wall answers.

‘The beads,’ Riven says, clicking his fingers again and holding out his cupped hand. ‘Hand me the beads.’

Louther digs in his coat and pulls out a string of beads. He tosses them over. Even before Riven catches them Thomas knows what they are.

‘Where did you get them?’ he asks. His throat is blocked. He can hear pounding in his ears.

‘Oh, I think you know, don’t you, Brother Monk? Found them this morning. Just after sun-up, and only after a struggle, I’ll admit, but they often start out that way, don’t they? She enjoyed it for a bit, but Morrant here is a passionate creature, aren’t you, Morrant? Tend to take things too far, don’t you?’

The giant laughs and nods his head in cheerful agreement.

Now the quarterstaff feels light in Thomas’s hands, just as it had the day before, and he feels a surge of energy, an empowering rage. He steps forward and flicks the staff up.

Riven steps back, avoiding the blow. He laughs and tucks the rosary inside his shirt.

‘So,’ he says. ‘Now you’ll fight.’

The first blow comes in low and hard and fantastically fast from the right. It clips Thomas’s staff aside and cracks into his knee. Pain shoots up his leg. Before the next blow comes, Thomas throws himself backwards and Riven’s staff hums through empty space.

‘Ha!’ Riven laughs. ‘Not bad, Brother Monk. Quicker than your father, hey?’

Before Riven has even finished speaking, Thomas has to fling his staff up to catch the next blow. He grunts with the effort, but his clogs slip under him. He falls to his knees. Riven leaps forward and kicks him in the chest. Thomas falls back. Then Riven is on him. Thomas gets his staff up in time to stop Riven pressing his own across his throat. He is pinned to the mud though. Riven is a bulky man, his skin pitted, his breath smelling of salted pork and wine. His eye is puffed and purpled, the eyeball, barely visible, red. Thomas bucks and crashes an elbow into Riven’s bruise. He brings his knee up with a jerk that makes contact.

Riven grunts and rolls clear.

Thomas is on his feet fast but Riven is faster still. Before Thomas has grounded himself, Riven charges. Thomas shoots his staff out, but Riven’s move is a feint. The next second Thomas is face down in the sodden grass with his head ringing.

‘Too easy,’ he hears Riven say and then he feels the sole of the knight’s boot on the back of his neck. For a moment he can do nothing about it, does not know what to do about it. He looks across at the Prior whose mouth is open in the shape of an egg. The Dean is frowning and his fists are clenched.

Then Thomas thrashes smartly, like an eel in the mud. He catches Riven’s other heel and pulls. With a bellow of surprise Riven goes sprawling on to his backside. Thomas is up on his feet but Riven is still the faster and Thomas feels a blinding pain above his ear and he crashes to the grass again.

This time he rolls. He picks up his staff and is on his feet to use it to block the next blow, a simple chop delivered from above, and the next, a swing that comes from the other end of the staff that would have caught him between his legs.

Riven is still smiling as he makes another move, but Thomas sees it coming and steps inside. He takes the sting out of the blow with the tail of his own staff and then manages a glancing rake across Riven’s fingers.

Both step back.

Riven’s smile has gone. Thomas can smell his own blood.

Riven comes at him again, a flurry of feints, then two blows. Thomas stops the first but is too slow with the second. Riven brings his staff up under Thomas’s arm and in a practised move he turns him, stamps on his clog and smashes the heel of his hand into Thomas’s throat.

Thomas sags, drops his staff, and for a moment he cannot breathe for the pain. He falls backwards but lands with a jolt that rouses him in time to duck. Riven’s staff passes over his ear. Thomas snatches it and uses Riven’s strength to right himself, jerking Riven off balance. In one move he collects his staff from the mud and swings it around in a short sweep that Riven does not see it through his half-closed eye. It catches Riven behind the knee and he leaps backwards with the pain.

‘Not bad, Brother Monk,’ Riven says, ‘but this has gone on long enough, hasn’t it?’

He makes a feint that Thomas sees, then another that he does not, and then the full weight of his staff whirls around in a blurring arc and crashes across Thomas’s skull as he tries to duck.

He is face down in the mud again and with the pain comes the blood. It is hot and blinding. He gets to his knees and wipes the blood with his sleeve in time to see Riven come at him again. He manages to parry the first blow and evade the next, but then he takes a short arm punch that rattles his teeth. He feels sluggish and his sight blurs.

The fight is leaving him and Riven is circling him, ready for the end.

He blinks the blood from his eyes, triggering another attack, a rolling series of blows that would have killed, but this time Thomas trips on his sodden cassock, drops on one knee, and ducks his head as Riven’s staff passes over. Then he lunges. Again Riven is blinded in the malfunctioning eye and Thomas gets through the mêlée of Riven’s pumping arms and into the soft area below his sternum. He feels the contact, doughy and soft. He rams the staff up.

Riven stops, gasps. His eyes bulge, then swim, then roll. He staggers, falling back, tipping on his heels, powerless. He drops his quarterstaff and thumps to ground and lies there with his tongue out; his face is grey-green, his breath a groaning wheeze.

Thomas gets to his feet and pulls his muddy cassock down.

He glances across at the Prior who has still not moved, his mouth still gaping. The Dean is urging him to do something with his staff. Bring it down.

Thomas plants his legs either side of Riven’s body. He raises his staff vertically. He can bring it down now directly into Riven’s unguarded face and it will be the end. God’s will be done. He pauses. Blood drips from his wounds on to Riven below. Riven’s face is puckered with the pain and almost babyish.

Thomas leans in to lend weight to the blow, bunches his muscles, lifts the staff and plunges it down, driving it with all his might, deep into the mud, a finger’s width from Riven’s ear.

Then he turns and walks away, leaving the staff upright in the ground.

The Dean meets him with a cloth and a smirk.

‘You are wasted here, Brother Thomas,’ he says, mopping his face. ‘Fooling about with your psalter when you should be fighting the French. But why didn’t you kill him?’

Thomas can think of nothing to say. He flinches when the Dean touches the weal on his skull.

‘Probably wise,’ the Dean mutters, ‘but then I wish you’d let him kill you. We’ve a pretty problem now.’

Riven’s three retainers are gathered around him, helping him to his feet while the infirmarian hovers. Riven is hacking something up and cannot stand straight.

‘Brother Stephen,’ Thomas asks, ‘when you brought me food this morning, did you say one of the sisters has gone missing?’

The Dean nods. He looks grim.

‘Found her now, though.’

‘Is she well?’

The Dean lowers his voice.

‘Dead,’ he says. ‘So the Prioress says. We’ll bury her tomorrow.’

It takes a moment for this to settle in.

‘Riven has her rosary beads,’ Thomas says.

The Dean stares at him, calculating the value of the news, then he lunges suddenly, shoving Thomas aside.