Quzman, his sword recaptured before it had even stopped vibrating in the ground, was smiling again, the white teeth gleaming. "Now that," he said, "is pretty. Why don't you throw some mud on it like a peasant? You do seem to enjoy scrabbling in the earth."
The pain was bad and would probably get worse, but Blaise didn't think his ear was gone. Not entirely, at any rate. He seemed to still be hearing sounds from that side. He thought of Bertran suddenly, with his own missing ear lobe. He thought of how much depended on his walking alive from this field. And with that his anger was upon him fully, the familiar, frightening daemon that came to him in battle.
"Spare your breath," he said thickly, and surged up from the ground to engage the other man. There were no words then, no space for words and indeed no breath, only the quick chittering clatter of blades glancing and sliding from each other, or the harder, heavier clang as sword met blocking shield, the controlled grunting of two men as they circled each other, probing with cold metal and cold eyes for an avenue along which they could kill.
Quzman of Arimonda was indeed good, and driven by the fierce pride of his country and his family, and he had a sworn vengeance to claim. He fought with the fluid, deadly passion of a dancer and Blaise was wounded twice more, in the forearm and across the back of his calf, in the first three engagements.
But Quzman's thigh was gashed, and the leather armour over his ribs was not quite equal to the scything blow it took on a forehand slash from an Aulensburg sword wielded by a man with a passion and rage of his own.
Blaise didn't stop to gauge how badly he had wounded the man. He drove forward, attacking on both sides, parried each time with impacts that sent shocks up his elbow and shoulder. He registered the welling of blood at Quzman's left side, ignoring as best he could the stiffening protest from his own leg as he pushed off it. He could easily have been crippled by that low blow, he knew. He hadn't been. He was still on his feet, and before him was a man who stood in the path of… what? Of a great many things, his own dream of Gorhaut not least of all. Of what his home should be, in the eyes of the world, in the sight of Corannos, in his own soul. He had said this two nights ago, words very like this, to King Daufridi of Valensa. He'd been asked if he loved his country.
He did. He loved it with a heart that ached like an old man's fingers in rain, hurting for the Gorhaut of his own vision, a land worthy of the god who had chosen it, and of the honour of men. Not a place of scheming wiles, of a degraded, sensuously corrupt king, of people dispossessed of their lands by a cowardly treaty, or of ugly designs under the false, perverted aegis of Corannos for nothing less than annihilation here south of the mountains.
It was one thing to have ambitions for one's homeland, dreams of scope and expansion. It was another to use the sky-blue cloak of the god to hide a smoke-shrouded inferno of men and women—a nation of them—thrown to burn on heretics' pyres. Blaise had seen such fires as a boy. He would never forget the first time. His father had clutched his shoulder and had not let him turn away.
He knew exactly what Galbert wanted, what Ademar of Gorhaut would be guided to do when he came south. He knew how strong, how wealthy the army of Gorhaut would be by the time the snows melted in the spring. He had seen those pyres; he would not watch another burn. He had sworn it to himself those long years ago, watching an old woman die screaming, flames in her white hair. And to stop them, to stop his father and his king, he had first to defeat this Arimondan who stood now in his way with a curved sword already reddened by Blaise's own blood.
The most celebrated troubadours and the better known joglars did not watch the tournaments from the commons' standing ground. By courtesy of Ariane de Carenzu, as a sign of their high favour in Arbonne, they were given a pavilion, not far down the lists from her own. An invitation to sit among those in the pavilion was one of the prime measures of success each year among the musicians, and this autumn marked the first time Lisseut had found herself included in the elect. She owed it to Alain, she knew, to his own growing reputation, and to the little man's brash assertiveness that memorable night in Tavernel when she had sung his song to the queen of the Court of Love and the dukes of Talair and Miraval.
And to the red-bearded Gorhaut coran who was now battling for his life on the grass before them. It seemed he wasn't just a coran, though. Not since those two bright banners had been run up above his tent and the herald's voice had fought to be heard over a roar of sound. She had known since Midsummer who Blaise de Garsenc was and had kept faith by telling no one. Now he had revealed his identity to the world, and had done something rather more than that. The man she had upbraided so caustically in The Liensenne a season ago, and had then followed to the Correze gardens later that same night, was laying claim to the crown of Gorhaut.
It was with a sense of deep unreality that Lisseut remembered inviting him to come back with her that night in Tavernel. Unlucky to spend tonight alone in this city, she had told him. Unluckier still to have a degree of presumption as rash as her own. Her mother would likely be forced to take to her bed if she found out about any of this. Even now, months after, Lisseut could not stop herself from flushing at the memory.
Looking up at those two banners in the wind, she wondered what he must have thought of her, of the wet and straggle-haired, interfering, impertinent singer who had accosted him twice in a night and then taken his arm in the street and invited him to bed with her. He didn't even like singing, she remembered. Lisseut, among friends in a bright pavilion, had winced at that thought, too. No one had noticed. The others were busy wagering on the coming fight, laying odds on a man's death.
Then thoughts of herself and memories of summer had gone flying far away, for the two men on the grass had drawn their blades, the straight sword and the curved one, and had advanced upon each other. Blaise had bent to throw grass and mud at the other man's shield, something she hadn't understood until Aurelian, without being asked, had quickly stooped to speak an explanation in her ear. She had not turned to him. She had been unable to take her eyes from the two men on the grass, though a part of her was recoiling in horror even as she watched. They spoke to each other, but none of them could hear the words. She saw the Arimondan react as if scalded by something said, and then spring to attack. She saw him parried, once and then twice, as her breath caught in her throat. Death was here. This was not for show. The reality of that came home to her, and just then she saw the curved sword planted, unexpectedly, in the earth.
And it had been in the next moment, precisely then, she would afterwards remember—the Arimondan's flung dagger slicing through Blaise's ear as he twisted away, then the swift, bright flowering of blood—that Lisseut of Vezét realized, with a cold dawning of despair, that her heart was gone from her. It had left without her knowing, like a bird in winter, flying north to a hopelessly wrong destination where no haven or warmth or welcome could even be imagined.
"Oh, mother," she whispered then, softly, to a woman far away among olive groves above a coastal town. No one paid any attention to her. Two men were trying to kill each other in front of them, and one of them had claimed a crown. This was matter for song, whatever happened; it was matter for tavern and castle talk for years to come. Lisseut, her hands gripping each other tightly in her lap, spoke a prayer then to sweet Rian, and watched, even as she felt the flight of her heart from her breast across the bright green grass.