PERHAPS YOU COULD, the dragonsoldier shouted back. BUT ANSWER ME THIS: HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A DEAD SOLAMNIC KNIGHT?
It was as though the eyes of the world had refocused. We knew it was a lie, A BASE IGNOBLE CHARGE, as Heros would have said, and I thought of our father returned on his shield. I thought of the centuries since the Cataclysm, of the Code, the Kingfisher, the Crown the Sword and the Rose, of the sacrifices. But all of that meant nothing after such a question, do you understand? For it was Breca's answer, not Sturm's or Hero's or Derek's, we awaited, had to await.
The smell of oil in the room. My nurse has lit a lamp so she may continue to write. Bad for the eyes, my dear. They play tricks enough as it is. We shall continue this in the morning.
It was Breca's answer we awaited, there on the road to the tower, the landscape white on white and blending into a faraway whiteness, only the thin dark lines of the trees and the shapes among them giving us any idea of distance, of measure. And the answer, though it lay nowhere within the rules set down by chivalry, not a THEE or a THOU or an elegant challenge, could not draw complaint from even the most strict of the knights — after all, he was not one of them, and after all, the footmen listened and applauded, their backs to the rising wind.
EVERY DEAD SOLAMNIC KNIGHT I'VE SEEN, Breca shouted, HAD ABOUT A DOZEN OF YOUR LIZARD BOYS ON HIS DANCE CARD. WE FIND THEM AROUND THE BODIES, ALL STATUED AND PRETTY LIKE A DAMN ROCK GARDEN.
The footmen laughed, but most of the knights sat uneasily atop their uneasy horses, who pawed and snorted as though they had crossed into a country of leopards. Sturm and Lord Alfred smiled. But Sturm had traveled with outlandish folk
he had, after all, served with dwarves.
But what even Sturm and Lord Alfred knew, what most of them knew, and Breca especially, was that the dragonsoldier was not finished with Breca, that this attack was as fierce and as lethal as any with a bow or with those terrible curved swords I still see in sleep until the welcome darkness of morning comes again. For the heart of the battle was at stake before the arrows flew, before the swords clashed, at least in the eyes of the knights, who thought in terms of spirit and morale, of a high game which begins not when the first piece is taken nor even the first pawn moved, but when the players sit before the chessboard.
Breca, on the other hand, was past strategy and morale, safe for now in another world I came to witness in the weeks that followed, in the tower and in the waiting. He was a swordsman, any thrust the same as any other, to be deflected or parried if he were still to call himself a swordsman. The snow settled on his helmet until I feared that soon it would cover him, cover him entirely in the face of his enemies, and then cover all of us — on foot, on horseback, on mule-back — until what remained was a pitiful series of drifts in the country of the enemy.
And the dragonsoldier called once more out of the vallenwoods. YOU AREN'T DRESSED WELL FOR SUCH BRAVERY, FOOTMAN. EVEN FROM HERE I CAN SEE THE DENTS IN THE ARMOR. I CAN TELL WHERE YOUR BREASTPLATE IS CRUMPLED AND USELESS, WHERE MY SWORD WOULD DO THE MOST DAMAGE. YOUR FEET ARE PROBABLY WRAPPED IN RAGS. THOUGH THE SNOW IS TOO HEAVY TO TELL FOR CERTAIN. YET I SUPPOSE THAT SUCH IS THE FINERY THAT KNIGHTS ISSUE THEIR FOOTMEN.
And they retreated into the thick boles and branches of the woods, so that they probably did not hear Breca's retort, which we heard nonetheless, which the footmen heard, which rode in my ears with its flat and furious blessing as we approached the gates of the tower: