Page 63 of The Captive Knight
“Not at first.” He pushed up from the pommel. Light flashed off his arm braces as he swung his lame foot over his horse. “She may never forgive me. But my sister deserves to have someone fighting for her. In the absence of my damned coward of a father, that someone will be me.”
The boy hit the ground with surprising grace. One of his pike men stepped forward to lead the steed away. Laurent pulled his sword from its scabbard, swinging it in a full circle by the hilt before gripping it in two hands, waiting.
Jehan remembered Aliénor’s hands on his chest.
You won’t fight him, Jehan.
He breathed hard through his nose. The boy wasn’t giving him any choice. He eyeballed Laurent’s armor, saw the outline of some kind of padded, plated doublet beneath his surcoat. Yet the young fool wore no mailed hose, no chain-mail coif. No helmet. The boy’s feet were braced, his grip on the hilt firm.
Damn it.
Jehan dismounted. He yanked off his chain-mail gauntlets and tossed them aside. His helm joined them with a clatter. He crouched to pinch the buckles on his chausses, intending to bring some sort of parity to this contest.
The boy said, “Enough,” and then started toward him, a lurching blur. Jehan fell to one knee as he grasped the hilt of his sword, pulling it free in time to stop the boy’s angular swing. The clash of metal rang across the clearing, not so loud as to drown out Aliénor’s scream.
Beyond their crossed swords, Laurent’s face darkened in determination. Lunging to his feet, Jehan shoved the boy. Then he fixed his stance and gripped his sword to give the boy a moment to regain his balance.
Laurent found his feet faster than expected.
Jehan said, “You’ve been training.”
“All my life.”
Laurent lunged again. The boy’s uneven gait made predicting the arc of his sword-swing tricky, but Jehan parried without a pause. He brought his sword around and knocked Laurent’s out of his way, opening the boy’s torso to attack, but Laurent lurched to his good side more quickly than his crooked leg seemed to allow—then dropped to roll upon the ground and lay a sharp, flat-sided blow to Jehan’s chain-mail hose.
Jehan recoiled a step, the metal links ringing. He slammed the flat of his sword on the boy’s bent back. A whistling noise alerted him to a blade slicing through air, a blow he lurched to avoid but not before it cut a welt through the embroidery of his surcoat.
Jehan frowned at the frayed fabric. A sly, effective feint. Jehan had intended to make this fight look fierce, to draw some blood and to give some of his own as well. It would be cruel to shame Aliénor’s brother in front of his men-at-arms and the villagers who once looked upon this young Tournan as the future lord. But he didn’t expect the crippled boy to be trained enough to earn his ounce of pride.
Jehan narrowed his focus grimly.
The boy wanted a real fight.
He swung his sword and the vibration of the clash shuddered to his shoulder. The boy had been trained to use not just his arms but the bulk of his body to hold firm. Jehan swung away and returned at a different angle, again and again, testing Laurent’s favored side for weakness. The boy stood firm when he could, took a few steps back when pressed, and slid his sword down to release it from a hold when he grew weary.
Jehan shifted his attention, eyeing the way Laurent maneuvered his crippled foot to better predict the direction of the next attack. He struck hard, pushed in the boy’s weaker direction, but the boy slid his sword free like water through a sluice. Jehan used the landscape of this muddy field to nudge his opponent toward rocks that formed tripping hazards all across the ground, but the boy must have remembered the location of each one, because he danced over them without once looking down or removing his gaze from Jehan’s face.
Chasing the boy was like trying to chase lightning. Laurent was using his slimness and freedom from armor to advantage. But Jehan saw the effort it was costing him. Sweat plastered the boy’s dark hair against his forehead.
Yet Laurent’s determined black gaze hadn’t dimmed.
Parrying a new attack, Jehan focused on the fight while one part of his mind scrambled for a resolution of this tangle to satisfy him, Laurent, and most of all, the woman who watched from the ramparts in unspoken agony. The boy had already earned his pride. Jehan felt more than a grudging admiration for Laurent’s hard-learned skills. If it were not for the bloodlust in her brother’s eyes, Jehan could imagine he was honing a young squire’s talents in the hopes of taking him as one of his men.
Jehan would take such a fighter, too, crippled leg and all.
But Laurent would never accept such a position. Not in a house where he thought his sister was treated no better than a whore.
Marry her,screamed his heart, and not for the first time since she’d given herself to him. If the world only knew how much he wanted to slide a ring upon her finger and prove it wasn’t just lust that kept him at her side. He defied his prince every day he remained in this castle. He defied a vow of allegiance he’d made before God. He risked the chance that his continual disobedience would destroy the prince’s hard-earned favor, leaving him renounced without protection or resources, enemy to English as well as French, as vulnerable as he was when he’d been a penniless man-at-arms turning to thievery on the Gascon hills.
If he married her, she’d be as vulnerable as he. The thought gutted him just as cold steel bit into his thigh.
By instinct, he took three swift steps back to restore his stance, grunting as blood stained the wool of his hose. His sword sliced the air as he lifted it in defense. But the move was unnecessary, for the boy had already lost his advantage—one that might have won the match—by freezing in place to stare at the blood seeping through Jehan’s hose.
Time to end this.
Jehan moved fast, swinging his sword so hard he forced the boy to angle his weapon in defense as he backtracked, nearly crashing into one of his own men-at-arms before he wheeled off, stumbling. Taking the advantage, Jehan swung the flat of his sword blind and heard the boy grunt at impact.
Sweat flying from his brow, Jehan turned to see Laurent clutch his jaw, blood running through his fingers, as he took several wobbly steps on his crippled leg before falling to one knee. Jehan surged toward him but his twisting blow to dislodge the sword from Laurent’s hand met nothing but air. A slicing sensation seared his upper arm. He jerked away from the sword the boy had maneuvered around his back.
