‘Sir Colin Crocker, will you tilt against the Knight in Silver?’ the steward calls.
Crocker hesitates, then looks at the benches. Everyone is on the edge of their seat. In front of a crowd this big, this excited, he’ll surely be booed for a coward if he backs down.
Crocker nods his acceptance.
The cheers are thunderous. The Knight in Silver bows to the crowd, and raises his lance hand to his helmet in salute. The shouts grow even louder.
Show-off, Harry thinks to himself.
The two knights level their lances and spur their horses. Harry sends a little prayer up for Iain’s victory. Crocker is well trained, and plays as dirty as he can. But Iain’s armour looks strong and good, and he’s sitting well, lance steady—
Both lances break. Even score. Iain didn’t move an inch in his seat when the lance hit his shield; Crocker was forced back a little on impact. The knights slow their horses when they reach the opposite end of the lists, tossing their broken lances away. Stewards’ assistants run out onto the grounds of the lists and pick up the splintered remains, so the horses don’t injure their feet on the next pass.
Harry watches Iain reach out for a new lance. It’s put in his hand, plain scarlet like his first one. He grasps it midway up the lance, then tosses it upwards, catching it just behind the vamplate and tucking it under his arm as he turns for the second pass.
The steward’s hand is out flat, like a knife, and high in the air, arm straight. He drops his arm in a fast, chopping motion, and the thunder of hooves fills the air.
Iain’s leaning forwards. He’s enjoying it, Harry thinks. Crocker’s lance wavers, and he reseats it but it’s a little too late—
Crocker’s lance slips off Iain’s shield. Iain’s lance shatters against Crocker’s. Crocker tosses his unbroken lance aside and raises his arm, acknowledging the point against him.
Now Iain is back on Harry’s side. As he slows his horse and takes his final lance, Harry stares at him. He doesn’t know what he’s hoping for. A glance from silver-grey eyes. Perhaps an acknowledgement.
He doesn’t get it. The knight just turns around and makes ready for his final pass.
Harry looks over to Crocker. The man has rejected one lance and is pointing towards another. Fear clutches at Harry’s stomach, and the scar on his chest from Crocker’s sharpened lance-point in January burns in sympathy. If Crocker is up to his tricks—
The steward’s arm slices down. Final pass.
Both knights spur their horses to full gallop. Harry winces. They’re going to come together hard; bone-crushingly hard. And if Crocker’s lance-point is sharpened, it will go far deeper than just a shallow chest wound. It could go right through a man.
The Knight in Silver – Iain – twists his torso to the left at the last moment, sending Crocker’s lance glancing off his shield, and putting even more power behind his own lance hit. Crocker misses it, too busy trying to adjust his aim as Iain’s shield moves.
Unfortunately for Crocker, as he chases his target with his lance-point, he shifts his shield, too.
Iain’s lance glances off the edge of Crocker’s shield and is knocked upwards, into his helmet.
Through his helmet.
The lance breaks. It’s not the shattering of a well-aimed and well-caught lance. It’s the wet snap of a spear that’s got one end stuck in flesh.
The crowd gasps as one, and then the screaming starts.
Crocker’s horse keeps running. The lurching, dead weight of the unresponsive knight on his back terrifies the destrier. It reaches the end of the enclosure and whirls, as squires and stewards’ assistants fan out around it, trying to grab its reins without getting kicked in the face.
Harry nudges Nomad with his knees, shouting ‘I’ll get him’ at the terrified squires, and trying not to look at the foot and a half of ash wood sticking out of Colin Crocker’s eye. The assistants scatter. Harry yells at the closest onlookers to move back, and manages to close off Crocker’s terrified horse against a corner rail with Nomad’s body. He leans over and pulls the reins out of Crocker’s numb fingers. Then he leads the horse back to Crocker’s squire. The horse is still in the grip of panic, rolling its eyes and tossing its head, and Harry knows it needs to be removed from this small, crowded area before it does any damage.
The squire glances up at Crocker, unsure what to do.
‘He’s dead, lad,’ Harry says. ‘Don’t … don’t take him off his horse here. Let the crowd think he rode out. Give him that dignity.’
The boy’s brow furrows, furious on his master’s behalf. ‘But we need to look at that knight’s lance,’ he says.
Harry sighs, and glances at the long, deep scratch in the white paint of the Knight in Silver’s shield, the sort of scratch a properly tipped jousting lance could never make. The boy’s eyes follow his. Then Harry looks over at the glinting, sharpened metal tip of Crocker’s shattered last lance on the ground. At the plaster flaking off the iron point. ‘Boy, you don’t want to do that,’ Harry growls.
The boy gulps, and nods. Crocker’s corpse sways in the saddle as the boy leads the horse out, back to the pavilions.
Accidents aren’t uncommon in jousting. Nearly every tourney, there’s a knight who breaks a bone, or worse. A couple of times a year, someone gets hit so hard they never get up again. The crowd’s used to the high stakes. It’s part of the fun for them, Harry thinks. But it’s one thing to see a man knocked cold off his horse. It’s quite another to see a spear through a knight’s eye, to see blood leaching out the
