Corbenic by Catherine Fisher

slowly. Swords of every period and variety hung there: rapiers, épées, foils, claymores, falchions; short Roman stabbing blades, huge unwieldable medieval broadswords. He stared at the prices almost in dismay. “These things cost a fortune.”
    â€œGood replicas always do.” Shadow tapped a hanging dagger; it clinked against the others in the row. Then she said, “None of them are as special as your sword. The Company are looking after it. They’ll know what to do.”
    A trumpet rang out in the castle, and a loudspeaker rumbled blurred words inside the walls. Shadow grabbed his arm. “Come on! We’ll miss him!” She pushed through a crowd of visitors packing the gloomy tunnel of the gatehouse and out into a vast grassy courtyard lined with spectators kept back by a white rope on pegs hammered into the mud. On all four sides the walls of the castle rose, lined with people. Some families had picnic rugs or folding chairs; from crumbling windows in Marten’s tower excited kids watched, gripped firmly by the shoulders, and along the battlements a whole court smoked and catcalled and ate, a bizarre confusion of fashions and epochs. Most were in medieval dress, but there were a few Roman legionnaires, a crusader knight, and a whole gang of Roundheads, leaning nonchalantly on huge pikes. High on the tower top sat a noisy row of Vikings, their legs through the safety rails, drinking from cans passed from hand to hand. An empty can was tossed down and just missed Cal, who glared up. The Vikings jeered.
    â€œHere,” Shadow said.
    The trumpets brayed again, loud and close. She ran up a flight of stone steps built against the curtain wall, and Cal followed. The steps were steep and irregular; at the top he pushed among the spectators until he could find a space, and glancing behind him he saw that they were high on the castle’s brink, and far below was the Dell’s green moat, and beyond that the town, and the estuary, and the white and silver spans of the Severn bridges.
    â€œHere he comes!” She sounded proud, full of laughter.
    Cal turned, and stared. A gaudy procession of armed men, horses, banners. And on the first horse, bareheaded in a chainmail hauberk and a surcoat blazing with the image of a golden sun, was the Hawk. Shadow yelled at him and he saw them, waving up and blowing kisses, and Cal saw he wore a heavy sword and two boys marched behind him with a plumed helmet and a lance. “He’s going to joust ! He must be crazy!”
    Shadow smiled a secret smile. “He’s good at it. You watch.”
    The other knight wore blue, pale blue, and his helmet was crested with a leaping cat; Cal wondered at how heavy it must be. In the cleared center of the tiltyard a long space had a frail barrier down the center; marshals with white batons conferred there, calling complex instructions, gesturing the crowd back. The two knights, one at each end, were handed up their lances, heavy, unmaneuverable things, but Hawk tucked his up expertly and brought the horse around, its yellow caparison already mudflecked, its eyes in the wide holes of the golden cloth white and tense. He made a strange flamboyant salute, but not to them; to a group of people on the tower, a man in a tweed suit, and a tall man behind him, and a woman with long blond hair.
    â€œWho are they?”
    â€œQuiet! This is it.”
    The horses backed, snorting. Drums were rolling, an ominous thunder. In the hushed crowd a baby cried. At the very center of the lists, the marshal’s baton came down. The crowd roared. The horses began to run, straight at each other; the lances swiveled down. There was a terrifying second of expectation, then the blue knight’s lance sliced over Hawk’s shoulder and they were past each other, and Hawk was at the far end, wheeling around. Before Cal could speak they came again, the thunder of the hooves vibrating deep in the turf and the stones, the