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branchlet.
The archbishop howled with outrage as the younger, slighter Dhugal began
grappling with him for possession of the blade, the two of them rolling over and
over in the rough kindling, both crying out when burning brands connected with
bare flesh. Roger, Earl of Jenas, was one of the two Haldane knights who finally
pounced on Loris and overpowered him, twisting the arm with the dagger until
Loris screamed in agony.
"Drop it right now, or I'll break your arm!" Roger demanded, wrenching
the dagger out of Loris' hand.
Ciard hurried to help his young master to his feet, brushing glowing
embers from leather as his companions scrambled over Dhugal's dead horse to
assist in securing the prisoner. The scattered fire was beginning to die out.
"Father?" Dhugal breathed, as he pulled away from Ciard to stagger
toward the stake.
Duncan raised his head at the sound of Dhugal's voice, still hardly
comprehending, in his pain, that he was still alive.
"Dhugal-" He winced and gasped as Dhugal's unsteady approach jarred
glowing sticks of kindling against his raw and bloody toes. "Dear God, I thought
I'd never see you again."
"Did you think I could let you die?" Dhugal answered.
Duncan shuddered and shook his head as Dhugal began urgently shifting
debris out of the way to reach him, Ciard assisting. Bright blood seeped from
around the arrow in Duncan's shoulder, and from his other wounds, and he
moaned as Dhugal reached him, closing his eyes and shrinking from Dhugal's
touch as gloved fingers brushed the shafts protruding from shoulder and upper
thigh. Dhugal was estimating the damage, quickly surveying the other injuries,
noting the nailless fingers and toes with a sibilant intake of breath. He stripped
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off his gauntlets as Ciard attacked the shackles binding Duncan's arms around
the stake behind him, but Duncan shook his head when Dhugal would have made
a closer examination of his wounds.
"No! Merasha!" he warned weakly, dully noting Roger helping to support
him under his left arm as Ciard picked at the shackle locks with the point of a
border dirk. "Tell Alaric-important -"
But the exertion cost too much, after what he had already been through,
and he mercifully passed out. And when the locks did not yield quickly enough to
Ciard's manipulation, Dhugal set his hand on one and sent his mind into the stiff,
dust-clogged mechanism, not caring, in that moment, who saw the result and
learned what he was.
"Lord Dhugal? You?" Roger gasped, as the first one gave, though Ciard did
not bat an eye.
As the second sprang open, setting both of Duncan's wrists free now, and
Ciard and Roger caught Duncan's dead weight between them, Loris craned in his
bonds just in time to see Dhugal open the ankle fetters with a touch.
"A Deryni! Oh, God, you're Deryni, too!"
Dhugal hardly spared Loris a glance as he helped Ciard and Roger ease
Duncan into a careful carry-hold, avoiding the protruding arrows.
"That's right, Loris. I'm Deryni. Bishop Duncan is my father. And you'd
better pray he lives," he added.
"So the Deryni heretic has himself a Deryni bastard!" Loris muttered,
before one of Dhugal's borderers cuffed him into silence. But his outburst
partially covered the astonished doubletakes of those others who had not known.
Dhugal did not even care, as he helped Ciard and Roger ease his father's
limp form down off the kindling around the stake, that the revelation would be
the talk of the camp before nightfall.
Meanwhile, the battle around them had not abated, only moved on to
other venues as Kelson's army shattered the Mearan command and routed the
surprised Mearan levies. Once the enemy was in retreat, Kelson employed the
same tactics he had used at Talacara, albeit on a larger scale, his highly mobile
lancers and heavy cavalry gradually cutting off and isolating groups of Mearan
warriors for slaughter or surrender, mounted archers backing them to reinforce
the options.
Morgan, seeing Loris foiled by Dhugal's amazing feat of heroism, made it
his special mission to run Gorony to ground-and managed to restrain both
himself and his men from doing the traitor-priest any serious harm once he was
finally taken. And it was Kelson himself who led the band of knights that
eventually brought Sicard to bay.
"Give it up, Sicard!" Kelson shouted, as Sicard wheeled his tired greathorse
in a tight, snorting circle, he and his men searching frantically for an escape
route.
A score of knights remained to Sicard, two-thirds the number in Kelson's
band, some of them men of rank, minor lords in their own right. Wary and
desperate, they milled around him in a tight, well-ordered ring, facing outward.
And though they bristled with weapons, and appeared ready enough to put up a
last fight to the death. Kelson decided there had been enough killing for one day
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and determined at least to attempt some more moderate solution.
"I said, give it up!" Kelson repeated. "Your cause is lost. You cannot hope
to escape, Sicard. If not for yourself, then surrender for the good of your men,
whose only crime is loyalty to the wrong leader."
Sicard was bleeding from half a dozen painful wounds, his face sickly pale
as he slowly removed his helmet and tossed it aside, but he raised his eyes
defiantly to Kelson, his blood-streaked sword a little wobbly in his hand.
"I cannot do that, Haldane," he said softly, weaving slightly in the saddle.
"I swore an oath to my liege lady- that I would defend her cause to the death."
"Do you seek your death, and the deaths of these men, then?" Kelson
asked. "For if you persist in armed defiance, you shall have it."
"Then, face me in single combat!" Sicard blurted. "I am not afraid to die. If
I win, I go free. If not...
Coolly Kelson surveyed his foe. Though he could almost pity the man,
Sicard MacArdry had already cost too many lives. While he pursued Sicard, the
fighting had diminished to only a few odd pockets of desultory skirmishing, but
the dead and wounded of both sides lay all too thickly on the plain of Dorna. And
if, by some freak of physical endurance, the older and more experienced Sicard
managed to wound or kill him-
"No, Sicard," he said at last.
Sicard seemed almost unable to comprehend what he had just heard.
Blankly his gaze flicked over the surrounding knights to Ewan and the other
Haldane nobles gathered around the king, to the Haldane standard spilling over
Ewan's gloved hand, limp and motionless in the stifling summer stillness, to the
bright sword resting on Kelson's armored shoulder.
"What do you mean-no?"
"I mean No, I will not give you single combat," Kelson said quietly.
"Not give-but-"
Despair flickered in Sicard's dark eyes as the full implications of Kelson's
statement registered. Breathing harder, he turned his horse a full circle on its
haunches, glancing desperately at Kelson's officers for some appeal. But the
swords and lances leveled at him and his men did not waver, and he found only
hard-eyed resolution on the faces of Kelson's knights.
"I-will not surrender," he finally said. "You will have to take me by force."
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| Cytat |
Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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