Chapter 23

McAllister kept his attention on the Duke of Savonne while the Duke waved one of the two men standing their horses behind him closer. A brief, whispered conversation, then the Duke summoned the other horseman to close behind him. The first man left, while McAllister gave the new arrival a steady stare.

Behind the Duke and the second man, the mounted men milled about, reforming in two ranks, with the fat man on the caisson in the center of the front rank. McAllister remembered the man clearly from the attempt to kill him in Etarusca, when eleven men died and the fat man escaped.

Satisfied, McAllister nodded to the Duke.

"Attend," the Duke ordered in a cutting voice that pierced the uneven wind of the wintry day, and his horsemen steadied and quieted. "Two champions shall fight this man, each in turn. The winner holds Marcelon."

Behind the Duke, the fat man on the caisson appeared startled, and then looked to both sides and behind himself, seeing the Duke's cavalrymen arrayed in such a way as to prevent his flight. McAllister smiled to see the man glance quickly at the pair of drafthorses hitched to the caisson, then at the Jade, and then McAllister allowed his smile to grow hard as the man met his eyes.

"First man to fight is Karsu."

The fat man, obviously Karsu, shot the Duke a venomous glare, but flicked the reins on the drafthorses' backs, so as to move the caisson forward. "I've learned your name at last," McAllister said to him when he arrived

"It won't do you any good," the other said, in as grotesque a voice as McAllister had ever heard. Standing on the foot bar before the crude seat on the caisson, the man withdrew a short mace from under his cloak, the bulge of his cloak over his wide shoulders having hidden the instrument by his side. The mace was a heavy weight of iron, bound to a stout wooden shaft, and McAllister gauged it at four pounds. Though he was not particularly worried by the bludgeon as weapon, McAllister sensed a blackness about it he could not ignore.

With a whinny, the Jade turned his head to McAllister, and McAllister smiled again. "They're normal horses," he said to the Jade. "I doubt they'll want to fight you," and the color ran from the fat man's face.

"If you are ready?" Savonne asked, and McAllister nodded.

"I thought my ally has your mount," the fat man taunted McAllister.

"Oh, good horses seem to find me," McAllister replied, circling around the draft horses and the caisson. McAllister saw that the fat man let the reins fall, and meant to fight standing on the foot bar.

"You had less clothing than that the last time I saw you," the man's sickening voice taunted again.

"I hardly need armor for the likes of you," McAllister answered. The Jade surged forward, leaping at the man, clearing the drawbar in the gap between the box of the caisson and the rumps of the draft horses.

As the mace descended, McAllister saw the blow was aimed at his chest, not at the Jade's head. It was child's play to cut upward with the square back edge of the blade, as it was extended above the horse's head, ready to protect the Jade from any blow aimed at the horse.

The blunt back edge of the saber nullified the momentum of Karsu's swing as the mace was cruelly knocked from the fat man's hand. Twin shocks buffeted the Jade and McAllister in close succession then. The green roan's shoulder sent the man spinning over the wheel of the caisson, and the blunt head of the free-falling mace collided with McAllister's shoulder.

Startled, the draft horses bolted forward a few steps, pulling the caisson away from the fat man gasping for air. Karsu lay on his back in the dust of the road before the West Gate of Marcelon, in the roughly circular space before the two troops of men.

Savonne and his other man backed their horses from Karsu. The fat man sat up in the dust of the road in time to see the Jade cantering at him. McAllister leaned low over the near shoulder, the saber tip promising death to the man it rushed toward. With a hoarse ululation, Karsu pulled an amulet from his cloak. Air rushed into the space where the man had been, just a second before McAllister's saber parted the same air again, the Jade's Bronze-clad hooves flashing by.

McAllister and the Jade hauled to then, and wheeled, standing beside the mace on the ground. "No one touch this," McAllister warned. If the onlookers arranged around the dusty expanse of road before the gate did not hear the words in the wind, all clearly understood his posture and gesture.

With a clucking sound to the Jade, the horse snorted and cantered to the two men in the center of the circle the defenders and the hostile troop formed.

"I've rid you of one headache, Savonne, though I doubt I've rid myself of the same headache," McAllister reported.

"He would seem a formidable enemy," Savonne said, "and an unclean one."

McAllister nodded. "Still, I have a hope that that thing he's used to escape me twice can't be used very often more."

"You willingly chase him? He seems to possess things I'd rather not face," the Duke admitted, with a note of respect.

"I must still fight your other champion," McAllister said then, and sent his words silently to Madelle and Kira both. "It wouldn't be seemly to be too friendly just yet, Your Grace."

Savonne considered McAllister's words while turning to regard the other man he named as champion.

"He must battle me," McAllister said, softly, so only the two closest to him could hear the words, whipped and torn asunder in the wintry wind as they were.

The other man nodded. "I must, Savonne. I've made my choice, and embraced that which helped me grow beyond your service. Fighting McAllister is the last such service I will do for you, whatever the outcome."

"I don't know your name," McAllister said, "though you know mine."

"That's as it should be, then," and the other launched his horse at McAllister.

The first pass, as the unknown Agent of Hell cantered toward him, he met with the flat of his saber, driving the blade back toward the other's torso. The guard at the base of McAllister's goddess-made saber met the steel guard of the straight sword as both blades ran toward each other. Guards and blades rang, bell-like, the sound clearly standing out above the thudding of hooves, the wind in the trees, and the snapping of pennants.

After the first pass, both men wheeled quickly, toward the inside. The Jade understood what was needed without McAllister giving his reins input. That the other was riding a trained mount was not in question, and McAllister warned the Jade to watch for teeth and hooves. There was little time to make sense of the other's second attack. McAllister beat the blade sweeping from above to the outside, smashing the blow aside with the guard on his saber, then ducked under it. The Jade leaned his shoulder into his opponent's leg as the horses cantered past each other, and McAllister's opponent swore.

"Almost, I'd say you ride a demon horse," the other panted as they turned again, both having paused for no reason apparent to McAllister. "Though we both know better, don't we?" and the man sent his horse at McAllister again.

McAllister took a risk, then, and as in the first pass, beat the man's sword back into his body. This time he followed the blow in with his shoulder, smashing the other man in the left chest, trapping their blades between the two bodies. He drove the other man's straight blade nearly flat-on into his face, separating the man from his seat.

The Jade turned again, and McAllister stopped him. Together, they watched the other horse continue the canter past the Duke of Savonne and stop near the draft-horses still tethered to the caisson Karsu left behind.

McAllister's nameless opponent recovered his sword, and McAllister sighed. "He's on foot, and will recover before we can get close. I won't ride him down only to have him drive that blade into your chest, and I won't take the chance he could hurt you as we pass."

The Jade snorted then, an answer very like one Sable might give.

Uncannily, he could feel the dark miasma tainting the soul of the man before him, though he was aware no one else nearby was likewise tainted. Their alliance with the Mother was plain for him to feel in each of the priestesses and deacons present, though they stood behind him. McAllister even sensed something more in Donal he had not expected, though there would soon enough be time to examine it.

Before McAllister was a man, one who had the brains and the temperament to become great, and one who was willing to do it in an evil cause. McAllister felt a crystalline certainty the mace which Karsu left on the ground would be the key to what unfolded next, and he knew he was too late to stop the nameless man from reaching it.

"Go to Madelle," he told the Jade, silently, as he dismounted. Behind him, with the preternatural awareness still augmenting his senses, he heard the hoof falls of the horse, though with the wind of the day sounding in his ears, he should not have. Before him his opponent stood, blood falling from a line cut along his face from his nose over the lip, down a cheek, and over the jaw. The other held his sword at the ready in his right hand.

"My senses..." his opponent said, blood and spittle flying from his mouth. "I can sense the instrument. It calls to me. I will claim it as my right."

Through the brooch McAllister felt Sable's intensity. Closer by, he felt Kira's concern. Readying the same knotting and binding sorcery which had served him so well in the past, McAllister began his advance.

The nameless one advanced also. He bent a knee, and seized the mace lying between them with his left hand. "I feel..." he said, though what he felt, he did not say. Meeting McAllister's eyes, the other touched the mace to the blood from his ruined face.

He drew breath, and screamed in triumph and exultation. The other stood then, injuries and bruises forgotten, stood and threw his arms wide. To McAllister, it seemed as if a dark change ran through the man. A ripple of black fire suffused the tissue and bones, and erupted into a gleam of wit and intelligence in the other's eyes. McAllister shivered involuntarily.

"Karsu did not understand what he had," the other said, then, silently, to McAllister. "I am become one much like you. Still, the change rushes through me."

McAllister waited to hear no more. Having closed the distance enough, he cast the fine net of the feathery aether he formed in his left hand, drawn from his internal fire. He cast it as a fisherman casts a net, with a sidearm flick of the wrist spinning it flat over the ground. He watched it conform closely to the man who was still standing before him, arms outstretched. McAllister pulled sharply on the net of golden sorcery, and bound the man before him. The gold bound the man throughout, bound so neither muscles nor blood could move. Death would quickly follow, McAllister was certain.

He made only a slight change, freeing the other's left hand from the binding. McAllister's saber flashed in the winter daylight, severing the hand holding the mace at the wrist. Another slight change of the binding, and McAllister deliberately separated the man's head from his shoulders.