[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

A thin young man wearing a black shirt and black trousers pushed
past him toward the knight who still lay sprawled before the barbican.
He carried a clipboard of yellow paper and called loudly as he went,
"Ramon of Navarra, arm wound--the MacRae, arm and leg--Olivier le
Setois, arm wound--Sforza of Lombardy, slain." The knight sat up, then
got to his feet. The man in black said, "Go on over to Glendower's Oak,
you know where that is? They've got beer and sandwiches--check yourself
off the big roster, first thing." He turned briskly back toward the
sudden clatter of swords and garbage-can racket of whirling flails that
had erupted behind the barrier. Farrell, easing discreetly away into
the deeper woods, got a glimpse of two defending knights standing back
to back, each one assailed by at least two men. Sforza of Lombardy
marched by, slain in combat and heading for neutral territory until the
end of the war. He was whistling softly and snapping his fingers.
Behind Farrell, Hamid clucked his tongue disapprovingly. "Now you
see, that man is not serious. The _serious_ ones, they lie right where
they fall, all day."
Battle had apparently broken out on all three beachheads. Knights
of Simon Widefarer's army went leaping past Farrell, waving their
swords and tangling their cloaks in the shrubbery, all hurrying to
reinforce the besieged outworks. Simon's lone semblance of a campaign
a
a
T
T
n
n
s
s
F
F
f
f
o
o
D
D
r
r
P
P
m
m
Y
Y
e
e
Y
Y
r
r
B
B
2
2
.
.
B
B
A
A
Click here to buy
Click here to buy
w
w
m
m
w
w
o
o
w
w
c
c
.
.
.
.
A
A
Y
Y
B
B
Y
Y
B
B
r r
plan involved the archers' keeping off the landing parties for as long
as possible, and then giving ground slowly, digging in at every
fortification, until it came time for the last stand in the castle and
the hope of sundown.
Hamid ibn Shanfara strode the island tirelessly in his white
robes and turban, wailing Moorish and Celtic battle songs and
constantly inventing immediate rhymed accounts of events that were
still going on as he chanted them. Farrell stayed closer to Mathgamhain
of Cliodhna, dutifully cheering the Irish lord into every encounter,
bearing messages for him and his household, and casting increasingly
wistful glances at the refreshment table each time he was swept past
it, _That's where I make my stand, boy. Bury me where the
braunschweiger'll wave over my grave_.
It was like being at a League tourney that went on forever,
without dancing or jugglers. In a certain fashion, matters obeyed the
vague rhythms of a real campaign, lurching back and forth between the
various outworks and the shore, but continually breaking off for
innumerable ritualized and irrelevant personal combats. All action
halted in any quarter when it was shouted that Brian des Rêves was
blade to blade with Olaf Holmquist, or that Raoul of Carcassonne and
the Ronin Benkei, each with a sword in one hand and a cudgel in the
other, were holding six knights something more than at bay in a poison-
oak ravine. The rest of it was dust, prickly sweat, squatting boredom,
aimless running and ducking into bushes, occasional flurries of pushing
and falling down, the bustling of the black-clad referees, and
eternally the idiot yells of "Yield thee, recreant!" and "To me! To me!
House of the Bear, here to me!" Garth's tactics continued to be no more
imaginative than Simon Widefarer's, but it was obvious that no one
truly cared which side gained or lost ground--the fighting was all, and
Farrell wondered that he should ever have expected it to be any other
way.
There was no sign or sense of Aiffe, nor of Nicholas Bonner, and
Farrell found himself almost disappointed. Ben was hardly more visible
than they, for all his fearsome reputation. Farrell glimpsed him now
and then, at a distance, on the trailing edge of some flanking attack
or mop-up maneuver; but so far he figured nowhere in Hamid's evolving
chronicle of the War of the Witch. Mathgamhain fell at midafternoon,
not in battle, but of what appeared to be acute indigestion, and he was
followed in quick order by four similar cases and three of sunstroke.
Farrell remembered William the Dubious' prediction and would have
thought little more of this, but then the injured started coming in.
Two had apparently fallen into deep pits that opened beneath their
feet; three others had been knocked half-senseless by branches falling
from great redwoods. Hamid, skillfully bandaging a victim, looked
across him at Farrell and said, "Methinks, man."
"Me, too," Farrell said. But he was hot and grubby and unable at
present to think seriously about anything but beer. While Mathgamhain's
men were choosing a new captain from among themselves, he wandered away
among the trees until he came to a clear-trodden path that he thought
led to Glendower's Oak, where the slain and the captive alike went, and
where there might be something on hand other than William's stickily
dangerous mead. The woods seemed thicker and wilder here, laced with
deep, luminous alleys, and the air tasted of old silence. Farrell began
to play softly as he walked--a Latin drinking song that Chaucer had
known--and presently paused to retune the lute to a more suitable mode.
But for that halt, he might not have heard Aiffe's voice directly ahead
of him nor had time to lie down by the path among tree roots and long
a
a
T
T
n
n
s
s
F
F
f
f
o
o
D
D
r
r
P
P
m
m
Y
Y
e
e
Y
Y
r
r
B
B
2
2
.
.
B
B
A
A
Click here to buy
Click here to buy
w
w
m
m
w
w
o
o
w
w
c
c
.
.
.
.
A
A
Y
Y
B
B
Y
Y
B
B
r r
grass. He could not see her, because his cheek was tucked hard against
spongy bark and his eyes were shut. He knew beyond the absurdity of it
that she would find him if he opened his eyes. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]