The Sapphire Rose

The top of the city wall was crowded with citizens, artisans, merchants and common labourers. There was an almost holiday air in the colourfully-dressed throng as they milled about atop the wall, gaping at the approaching army.

‘Watch who you’re shoving,’ one workman said belligerently to Sparhawk. ‘We got our right to look the same as you.’ He smelled strongly of cheap ale.

‘Go somewhere else and look, neighbour,’ Sparhawk told him.

‘You can’t order me around. I got my rights.’

‘You want to look, is that it?’

‘That’s what I’m here for.’

Sparhawk seized him by the front of his canvas smock, lifted him out over the edge of the wall and dropped him. The wall was about fifteen feet high at that point, and the breath whooshed out of the drunken labourer as he hit the ground. ‘The approaching army’s out that way, neighbour,’ Sparhawk said pleasantly, leaning out over the edge and pointing southward. ‘Why don’t you stroll on out there and have a closer look – just to exercise your rights?’

‘You can be very abrasive when you set your mind to it, Sparhawk,’ Vanion chided his friend.

‘I didn’t like his attitude,’ Sparhawk grunted. ‘Neighbours,’ he said then to those crowded around them, ‘would anyone else like to assert his rights?’ He glanced over the wall. The drunken labourer was scrambling towards the questionable safety of the city, limping, gibbering with terror and with his eyes starting from his face.

A place on the top of the wall immediately opened for the two Pandions.

Vanion looked out at the approaching force of Cammorians and Rendors. ‘That’s sort of what I’d hoped,’ he said to Sparhawk. ‘The bulk of Martel’s forces are still marching up from the rear, and they’re piling up behind the bridges.’ He pointed at the vast dust-cloud rising for several miles to the south. ‘He won’t be able to get those men here until almost dark. I doubt that his deployment will be complete before noon tomorrow. That gives us a little bit of time at least. Let’s go back down.’

Sparhawk turned to follow his Preceptor, but then stopped and turned back. An ornate carriage with the emblem of the Church prominently embossed on its sides had just emerged from the south gate. The monk who was driving it had a suspiciously familiar set to his shoulders. Just before the carriage turned west, a bearded man wearing the cassock of a Patriarch peered briefly out of the carriage window. The carriage was no more than thirty yards away, so Sparhawk could easily identify the supposed clergyman inside.

It was Kurik.

Sparhawk started to swear.

‘What’s the matter?’ Vanion asked him.

‘I’m going to have a long talk with Patriarch Emban,’ Sparhawk grated. ‘That’s Kurik and Berit in that carriage.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’d recognize Kurik a hundred yards away on a dark night. Emban had no right to endanger them like that.’

‘It’s too late to do anything about it now. Come along, Sparhawk. I want to go and talk with Martel.’

‘Martel?’

‘Maybe we can surprise an answer or two out of him. Do you think he’s arrogant enough to honour a flag of truce – just to demonstrate his advantage at this point?’

Sparhawk nodded slowly. ‘Probably. Martel’s ego’s a vast open sore. He’d go through the motions of being honourable even if it involved walking through fire.’

‘That’s more or less the way I see him too. Let’s go and find out if we’re right, but don’t get so caught up in exchanging insults with him that you forget to keep your eyes open, Sparhawk. What we really want to do is to get a closer look at his army. I need to know if it’s just some rabble he’s scraped together from country fairs and roadside taverns or something more serious.’

A commandeered bedsheet – although Vanion did offer to pay the frightened innkeeper for it even as Sparhawk was stripping it from the bed of an upstairs room – provided them with a flag of truce. It popped and flapped quite satisfyingly from Sparhawk’s lance as the two black-armoured knights thundered out through the south gate towards the approaching army. They rode to a hilltop and stopped there. Sparhawk turned Faran slightly so that the stiff breeze caught their improvised flag and blew it out for all to see. Though they were some distance from the van of Martel’s army, Sparhawk could hear distant shouts and commands. The army gradually undulated to a stop, and not long after, Martel, accompanied by one of his soldiers, rode out from the midst of their troops. Martel also carried a lance, and a white cape that looked suspiciously like that of a Cyrinic Knight flapped from it. Sparhawk squinted at him. ‘I wonder,’ he mused. ‘Bhelliom brought Ehlana back from the brink of death. I wonder if I could persuade it to do the same for Martel.’

‘Why would you want to?’

‘So I could kill him again, My Lord. I could make killing Martel over and over again my life’s work with just a little encouragement.’

Vanion gave him a very hard look, but he didn’t say anything.

Martel wore a very expensive suit of armour, its cuirass and shoulder-plates embossed with gold and silver and with the steel itself highly burnished. It appeared to be of Deiran forging, and it was much more elegant than the functional armour of the Church Knights. When he was within a few yards of Sparhawk and Vanion, he thrust the butt of his lance into the ground and removed his ornate, white-plumed helmet. His white hair flowed out behind him in the stiff breeze. ‘My Lord,’ he said with exaggerated courtesy, inclining his head to Vanion.

Vanion’s face was icy. He did not speak to the knight he had expelled from the Pandion Order, but motioned Sparhawk forward instead.

‘Ah,’ Martel said in a tone that might even have been one of genuine regret, ‘I expected better of you, Vanion,’ he said. ‘Oh well, I’ll talk with Sparhawk instead. Feel free to listen in, if you’d like.’

Sparhawk also drove the butt of his lance into the turf, and he also removed his helmet as he nudged Faran forward.

‘You’re looking well, old boy,’ Martel said.

‘You look about the same – except for the fancy armour.’

‘I recently had occasion to do some thinking,’ Martel replied. ‘I’ve gathered up a great deal of money in the last several years, but it occurred to me that I wasn’t enjoying it very much. I decided to buy some new toys.’