Corbenic by Catherine Fisher Page A

lances deadly and long, and even as he saw with a shock of fear that there was no padding, that they were real, Hawk’s lance struck the round shield of the blue knight with a crack, splintering, flinging the man down and off with a sickening thud on the grass. The crowd went mad, screaming their praise.
    â€œThis is crazy! He might be hurt!” Cal’s yell was lost, but Shadow just shook her head and pointed. The blue knight was on his feet.
    Still crazy, Cal thought. But the excitement was burning in him, too, he knew that as he watched Hawk leap down and hand his horse to a boy who ran out for it and then draw his sword.
    The blue knight flung off his helmet. He had a dark tanned face; he winked at Hawk. Then he attacked.
    â€œIs this a setup?” Cal had Shadow by the shoulder.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œLike a stage fight!” He had to shout in her ear. “Or is it real?”
    She looked at him then, strangely, and her answer was so low he barely heard it. “They’ll never say.”
    The swords rang and clashed. He knew nothing of this but it stirred him; he could see how the attacks were swept in, feinted, covered; how the parries worked to block and protect the body, that there were ways of balancing and using the other’s weight and force against him, that it was a whole science, a beautiful, deadly dance. Hawk slashed; the crowd gasped as the blue knight ducked barely in time, then rushed in, cutting right and left into the rock-steady parries, twisting, swinging swiftly around to avoid a vertical slice of the hissing blade.
    Shadow was yelling, jumping up and down, and so was he, he realized, shouting, “Hawk! Come on!” and other useless nonsense, and it was back, something of that crazy desperate longing that he had felt before the Grail, that hunger, that loss of himself. “Hawk!” he screamed, and the golden knight turned with a great roar and smashed his opponent’s sword aside so that it flew and skidded over the muddy grass.
    Everyone flung their arms up and cheered.
    And the blue knight knelt gasping, breathless, and laughed, and Hawk leaned on his sword and laughed with him, sweat dripping from his chin.
    And in that instant, a bird plummeted out of the sky. A sudden, violent shock, it screamed down straight into Cal’s face; he flung an arm up, caught a fluttering screech of hooked beak, a cold eye, felt the rake of talons. Then he was down, people around him scattering and yelling, Shadow dragging him and the bird diving at him again, a demented, terrifying slash so that he beat at it and flung his arms over his head, a hot scratch searing down his face.
    â€œCal! It’s gone. Are you all right?”
    Carefully, he uncurled. “What the hell was it?” he gasped.
    â€œA bird. Some sort of falcon. It seemed to go right for you.”
    â€œAn osprey.” A woman in a fifteenth-century shift pointed up. “There it is.”
    It had risen, far into the blue, a point of darkness. Three times it screamed around the castle, every eye following it, until it swooped down and down onto the arm of a huge brawny red-haired man outside in the encampment. Cal was hanging so far out over the wall to see, Shadow had to grab him. The falconer looked up, one look. Sour. Then he was gone in the crowd.
    â€œWho was it?” Shadow stared. “Did you know him?”
    â€œThat was Leo.” Blood ran onto his lip; he could taste it.
    â€œFrom that . . . from Corbenic?”
    â€œI’m sure it was him.”
    â€œCal!”
    He turned. Hawk was down on the grass, pushing through the crowd that was streaming toward the archery butts set out in the upper barbican. When he reached the foot of the wall he stared up, the sweat still gleaming on him. “Are you all right?”
    â€œFine.” Cal mopped the blood up with a tissue. “Great.”
    The sarcasm was wasted. Hawk just nodded. “The Company want to meet you.