Jezal’s eyes were fixed on the hooded man. He saw a great hand slip out from his sleeve and reach for the clasp on his cloak. He blinked in surprise. Was the hand blue? Or was it just a trick of the light through the stained glass? The cloak dropped to the floor.
Jezal swallowed, his heart thumping loud in his ears. It was like staring at a terrible wound: the more he was revolted, the less he could look away. The laughter died, the shouting died, the great space became terribly still once more.
Fenris the Feared seemed larger yet without his cloak, towering over his cringing translator. Without any doubt, he was the biggest man that Jezal had ever seen, if man he was. His face was in constant, twisted, sneering motion. His bulging eyes twitched and blinked as they stared crazily round at the assembly. His thin lips smiled and grimaced and frowned by turns, never still. But all this seemed ordinary, by comparison with his strangest feature.
His whole left side, from head to toe, was covered in writing.
Crabby runes were scrawled across the left half of his shaven head, across his eyelid, his lips, his scalp, his ear. His huge left arm was tattooed blue with tiny writing, from bulging shoulder to the tips of his long fingers. Even his bare left foot was covered in strange letters. An enormous, inhuman, painted monster stood at the very heart of the Union’s government. Jezal’s jaw hung open.
Around the high table there were fourteen Knights of the Body, each man a hard-trained fighter of good blood. There were perhaps forty guardsmen of Jezal’s own company around the walls, each one a seasoned veteran. They outnumbered these two Northmen more than twenty to one, and were well armed with the best steel the King’s armouries could provide. Fenris the Feared carried no weapon. For all his size and strangeness, he should have been no threat to them.
But Jezal did not feel safe. He felt alone, weak, helpless, and terribly afraid. His skin was tingling, his mouth was dry. He felt a sudden urge to run, and hide, and never come out again.
And this strange effect was not limited to him, or even to those around the high table. Angry laughs turned to shocked gurgles as the painted monster turned slowly around in the centre of the circular floor, flickering eyes running over the crowd. Meed shrank back onto his bench, anger all leached out of him. A couple of worthies on the front row actually scrambled over the backs of their benches and into the row behind. Others looked away, or covered their faces with their hands. One of the soldiers dropped his spear, and it clattered loudly to the floor.
Fenris the Feared turned slowly to the high table, raising his great tattooed fist, opening his chasm of a mouth, a hideous spasm running over his face. “Angland!” he screamed, louder and more terrible by far than the Lord Chamberlain had ever been. The echoes of his voice bounced off the domed ceiling high above, resounded from the curved walls, filling the great space with piercing sound.
One of the Knights of the Body stumbled back and slipped, his armoured leg clanking against the edge of the high table.
The King shrank back and covered his face with his hand, one terrified eye staring out from between his fingers, crown teetering on his head.
The quill of one of the clerks dropped from his nerveless fingers. The hand of the other moved across the paper by habit while his mouth fell open, scrawling a messy word diagonally through the neat lines of script above.
Angland.
The Lord Chamberlain’s face had turned waxy pale. He reached slowly for his goblet, raised it to his lips. It was empty. He placed it carefully back down on the table, but his hand was trembling, and the base rattled on the wood. He paused for a moment, breathing heavily through his nose. “Plainly, this offer is not acceptable.”
“That is unfortunate,” said White-Eye Hansul, “but there is still the gift.” Every eye turned towards him. “In the North we have a tradition. On occasion, when there is bad blood between two clans, when there is the threat of war, champions come forward from each side, to fight for all their people, so that the issue might be decided… with only one death.”
He slowly opened the lid of the wooden box. There was a long knife inside, blade polished mirror-bright. “His Greatness, Bethod, sends the Feared not only as his envoy, but as his champion. He will fight for Angland, if any here will face him, and spare you a war you will not win.” He held the box up to the painted monster. “This is my master’s gift to you, and there could be none richer… your lives.”
Fenris’ right hand darted out and snatched the knife from the box. He raised it high, blade flashing in the coloured light from the great windows. The knights should have jumped forward. Jezal should have drawn his sword. All should have rushed to the defence of the King, but nobody moved. Every mouth was agape, every eye fastened on that glinting tooth of steel.
The blade flashed down. Its point drove easily through skin and flesh until it was buried right to the hilt. The point emerged, dripping blood, from the underside of Fenris’ own tattooed left arm. His face twitched, but no more than usual. The blade moved grotesquely as he stretched out his fingers, raised his left arm high for all to see. The drops of blood made a steady patter on the floor of the Lords’ Round.
“Who will fight me?” he screamed, great cords of sinew bulging from his neck. His voice was almost painful to the ear.
Utter silence. The Announcer, who was closest to the Feared, and already on his knees, swooned and collapsed on his face.
Fenris turned his goggling eyes on the biggest knight before the table, a full head shorter than he was. “You?” he hissed. The unfortunate man’s foot scraped on the floor as he backed away, no doubt wishing he had been born a dwarf.
A puddle of dark blood had spread across the floor beneath Fenris’ elbow. “You?” he snarled at Fedor dan Meed. The young man turned slightly grey, teeth rattling together, no doubt wishing he was someone else’s son.
Those blinking eyes swept across the ashen faces on the high table. Jezal’s throat constricted as Fenris’ eyes met his. “You?”
“Well I would, but I’m terribly busy this afternoon. Perhaps tomorrow?” The voice hardly sounded like his own. He certainly hadn’t meant to say any such thing. But who else’s could it be? The words floated confidently, breezily up towards the gilded dome above.
There was scattered laughter, a shout of “Bravo!” from somewhere at the back, but the eyes of the Feared did not leave Jezal’s for an instant. He waited for the sounds to die, then his mouth twisted into a hideous leer.
“Tomorrow then,” he whispered. Jezal’s guts gave a sudden painful shift. The seriousness of the situation pressed itself upon him like a ton of rocks. Him? Fight that?
“No.” It was the Lord Chamberlain. He was still pale, but his voice had regained much of its vigour. Jezal took heart, and fought manfully for control of his bowels. “No!” barked Hoff again. “There will be no duel here! There is no issue to decide! Angland is a part of the Union, by ancient law!”
White-Eye Hansul chuckled softly. “Ancient law? Angland is part of the North. Two hundred years ago there were Northmen there, living free. You wanted iron, so you crossed the sea, and slaughtered them and stole their land! It must be, then, that most ancient of laws: that the strong take what they wish from the weak?” His eyes narrowed. “We have that law also!”
Fenris the Feared ripped the knife from his arm. A few last drops of blood spattered onto the tiles, but that was all. There was no wound on the tattooed flesh. No mark at all. The knife clattered onto the tiles and lay there in the pool of blood at his feet. Fenris swept the assembly with his bulging, blinking, crazy eyes one last time, then he turned and strode across the floor and up the aisle, Lords and proxies scrambling away down their benches as he approached.