“Be quiet, you irritating lump of morose flesh!” Cavor snarled, and lunged with his sword at Maximilian; Ravenna clutched at the Manteceros’ stiff mane and hauled the creature back a pace or two.
Maximilian surprised Cavor. The prince’s body was lean compared to Cavor’s well-muscled frame, but it belied a strength that had been built over seventeen years of back-breaking labour in the Veins. He met and parried Cavor’s first thrust, then drove home the attack himself. But Cavor met attack with vicious determination, and soon Maximilian found himself retreating first one step, then another, then three more.
Cavor grinned.
Yet if he had won an initial advantage, soon Maximilian’s knowledge of the Veins came to his aid. The gloom was his friend, the hanging wall his ally. He knew the darkness with a lover’s intimacy, and he used it as an additional weapon, melding with shadows one moment, rushing out of them the next, stepping lithely over rocks that Cavor stumbled—and once almost fell—over, letting the darkness envelop him, comfort him, hold him as it had for so very many years.
He merged with the gloom and the shadows, became one with them; Cavor fought them and cursed them, and then had to spit out the choking dust that filled his mouth.
Soon he realised why Maximilian had only worn light breeches. Sweat trickled down his body, collecting in small pockets underneath his armour, rubbing, chaffing, irritating. Cavor was a strong man, and used to fighting in full armour, but soon even this light plate he wore felt as though he had rocks strapped to his back, his shoulders and his arms.
Maximilian had barely raised a sweat.
Cavor stepped back, drawing desperately needed breath into lungs screaming with abuse, then wasting it all in a scream of rage as he lunged for Maximilian again.
“Truly!” the Manteceros muttered under its breath, then turned its head and nuzzled Ravenna. The girl’s face was pale and damp with sweat; even though Maximilian was holding his own, she did not know how he could possibly manage to best Cavor.
“Sweet lady,” the Manteceros said quietly, “I must administer the ordeal. This clashing of swords will accomplish nothing—save, perhaps, the death of the true king.”
Ravenna dragged her eyes away from Cavor and Maximilian. Was the Manteceros admitting some preference for Maximilian?
“Egalion stands between me and the two men, Ravenna. Can you pull him back? Then stay with me, bury one hand deep within my mane and stroke my neck with the other, and give me the courage to administer this ordeal. It is very painful.”
“But you said that it wouldn’t harm them!” Ravenna cried.
“Not them,” the Manteceros replied, and Ravenna could see that it was close to tears, “but its sadness will plunge a sword into my own heart. Now, do as I ask.”
Hesitating, Ravenna tugged at Egalion’s arm. The man jumped. All his attention had been on the two fighting before him.
“Please,” Ravenna mumbled, and indicated that he should step behind her and the Manteceros.
Egalion blinked, turned to look at Maximilian and Cavor, then nodded, his shoulders slumping wearily. He stood at Cavor’s back, but he watched the battle as if he stood at Maximilian’s. He did not want the prince to die.
Ravenna flinched at the tortured rasp of metal against metal as she and the Manteceros drew as close to the men as they dared.
The creature coughed, then cleared its throat.
Neither man took any notice.
“Only the ordeal can determine the true king,” the Manteceros said softly, reaching deep within itself for the strength to do what it had to. “Not this ridiculous duel.”
The Manteceros lifted its head, but its voice remained soft. “Listen to me. Listen to the sadness I must relate. Live it.”
Neither man paid this any attention either. Cavor had driven Maximilian to his knees with a parry of strokes that seemed deadlier than any he’d struck before, and Ravenna cried out softly as Maximilian barely managed to regain his feet. For the first time it appeared the prince was tiring.
“Listen to me,” the Manteceros repeated. “Live it.” Its eyes were now far distant, looking at something far sadder than the battle before it.
“Once there was a woman, married to a blacksmith in Ruen. As wives are wont to do, she waxed great with child, and one afternoon her time came. Her husband sent for the local midwife, but she was busy elsewhere, and the midwife from the neighbourhood next to theirs answered the call. She was a short woman, stout, and she had a hunched shoulder, a twisted arm, and wall eyes that stared at deviant angles. When she entered the birthing chamber, the wife cried out in shock and terror, and the midwife took affront.”
The swords clashed in fury, and a shower of sparks cascaded to the floor. Ravenna did not think either man heard the Manteceros. But she…now she was there in the birthing chamber with the woman struggling with the new life within her.
“In spite the midwife sat back when the woman bled, and let her life’s blood drain into useless pools in the bed. And from these cooling pools she lifted a baby girl even as the mother took one last shuddering breath and died. ‘I curse you,’ the midwife cried to the infant, ‘to a sad life!’ Then she picked up her instruments, laid the infant down by her dead mother, and left the room.”
The Manteceros paused, and as it did so Ravenna roused enough to notice that Maximilian and Cavor also paused. Perhaps they were listening.
But the next moment their swords met again, and both grunted with the effort of dealing each other death.
“The blacksmith mourned his wife, for she had been useful, and blamed his infant daughter for his loss. He put her out to a wet nurse, begrudging every coin he had to pay to let his daughter suck at the woman’s breast, and only reluctantly took her back into his house when she was four. The blacksmith already had three older sons, and he did not want this daughter, but he was obliged to take her.”
The Manteceros took a great, shuddering breath, and through the mists that wrapped her mind Ravenna heard Maximilian cry out softly. Had he been hurt?
“She grew, but following the midwife’s curse she grew only into sadness. Her father and brothers treated her with cold indifference that too often bordered on hostility. The girl spent her days attending their needs, never leaving the house or the forge that abutted it, keeping her head bowed, never smiling. She had no reason to smile.”
Now both men’s movements had slowed, and their shoulders dropped as if they carried some tremendous weight. Ravenna’s head was buried in the Manteceros’ mane, and her shoulders trembled.
The Manteceros continued, but great tears rolled out of its eyes and down its cheeks. Ravenna leaned even closer, rubbing, stroking, comforting, gaining comfort herself from the creature’s warmth.
“She grew into young womanhood, yet her days were as grey and featureless as they had been as a child. Her only comfort was her mother’s small collection of books which she kept under her bed and only pulled out to read once everyone else in the house was asleep. These books were her only friends. Until…until one day a young man came to the forge, bringing his horse which had cast a shoe. He spied the woman as she sought to hide in the shadows, and managed a quiet word to her. Over the next few weeks, with increasing courage, she met him for snatched minutes in the alley behind the house, exchanging words, hopes, dreams. For the first time in her life she learned to smile.”
The Manteceros hesitated, and when it continued its voice was thick with sorrow. “Alas!”
Both Maximilian and Cavor stumbled and cried out with the Manteceros. “Alas!”
“Alas! One night she determined to run away with the young man, run to an inn nearby where they planned to consummate their love and from there move into a world of hope. But she was careless, and in her eagerness left her father’s house before she had dried the dishes washed from the evening meal. Her brothers followed her, furious at her slovenliness, and found her even as her lover’s lips were for the first time lowering to hers.”
The Manteceros sobbed, and the king and the prince let the tips of their swords droop to the floor for a moment. Both of their faces were grey with horror.
Both were so lost in the Manteceros’ story, they were hardly aware of each other.
“They seized him, crowing with fury, and bore him to the ground. They were strong men, and could have killed him quickly, but they chose to take their time, and they drew out his death until his screams shattered the night. And yet no-one threw open their shuttered windows to investigate. No-one. When he was dead they turned to their sister, and one took his knife and, as the others held her down, he put out her eyes so that she need never be tempted again.”