“Let them play, milord,” the warchief replied with the casual certainty of a man who knows that he’s wearing a battlesuit and his king is not. “I have doubts about both of them. More than doubts about the—”
“Hey!” boomed an amplified voice.
A warrior strode onto the field behind the Easterner. Red-blue-silver battlesuit—
“Watch him, Malcolm!” Hansen shouted. “He’s nut—”
The Easterner spun like a dancer, slashing at Malcolm’s head. Malcolm got his arc up in time, but the shock of meeting knocked him to his knees.
Hansen stepped forward and cut at the Easterner’s live gauntlet. All three armored warriors froze like a group of statuary as sparks roared and dazzled in all directions.
The Eastern leader’s suit was of very high quality. The artificial intelligences controlling the other two suits had to drain all power from their servos to prevent the Easterner’s arc from finishing Malcolm. A patch of mud beneath the trio began to harden as full-power discharges lashed across it.
Hansen leaned forward and reached out with his left hand, moving against the dead weight and stiffness of his suit.
The Easterner’s weapon was slowly driving down Malcolm’s guard. Hansen’s right gauntlet had grown hot, and his air system reeked with the odor of suede as the lining charred.
Hansen unlatched the Easterner’s suit, shutting off the arc and the defensive charges instantly. Malcolm’s straining arm slashed upward when the resistance was released, plowing across the Easterner’s plastron in a glare of burning metal.
The Easterner fell face-down. Steam gouted as mud cooled the glowing mass where his chest had been. Malcolm tried to rise—and failed; then tried to open his own battlesuit. His gauntlet pawed in the general direction of the latch without quite touching it.
Hansen found the latch of his own suit by closing his eyes and letting instinct guide his desperate hand. He swung open the front of his clamshell and paused, too exhausted to go further until the pain of his burning right hand goaded him to drag his arms out of their casings.
He stared, dull-eyed, at the steaming ruin of the Eastern leader.
The ruin also of Hansen’s hopes for a first-class battlesuit. The steel which sheathed the electronics had a good deal of mechanical strength, but against the full wrath of an arc weapon it might as well have been so much tissue paper. Malcolm had burned the Easterner out of his suit’s chest cavity, and in so doing had irreparably ruined the plastron itself.
Oh, the piece could be repaired in time—though certainly not in time for battle against the Lord of Thrasey. But the battlesuit would never be as good as it had been before the damage, not even in the unlikely event that the repairs were done by a smith as skillful as the original builder.
“Well, I said I had my doubts, milord,” Taddeusz said. “Lamullo will command the left wing as usual.”
Golsingh nodded. “Shall we go back to the hall now?” he said. “I hope there’s been a message from Frekka about the suits we ordered.”
The king and warchief turned their backs. Hansen swore quietly, trying to gather up enough strength to get out of his armor. Maharg and Shill had stripped and were aiding Malcolm.
Golsingh’s blond wife had accompanied her husband to the practice field. Hansen blinked to see her staring at him. Her face didn’t change as he met her eyes, then turned and walked on with the other nobles.
Chapter Fifteen
Fortin waited a moment for other members of Rolls’ entourage to form around him in an alcove of the entrance hall. When the six big men had done so as planned, Fortin squatted down and reversed his cloak to bring the pink side out.
There was a white beret under his slouch hat. He kicked off his black boots, replaced them with pink sandals, and pulled up white tights to cover his legs as he rose.
The last item of Fortin’s disguise was the pink violin, hidden beneath his cloak with the sandals.
At the moment Rolls swept Penny into his arms at the far end of the hall, Fortin stepped through the mirrored door at the back of alcove. He was an unremarkable flash of pink in the event that any of Penny’s servants noticed him at all.