Chapter 1
The cheering and shouts of the crowd fade away to a dull buzz in my ears. The weight of my helmet and armour vanishes as my squire hands me a lance. The unbearable heat is ignored for the moment and all of my focus is given to my opponent on the other side of the field.
My horse is tense beneath my legs, I can feel the urge to charge even through the metal I wear. He is a powerful beast, meant for war and slaughter, and he is always anxious for the kill. My horse is much like me, for just as he longs and lives for these moments, so do I.
The comforting weight of the lance in my hand serves to calm my nerves even as the herald announces me.
“To my left, I present to you the scourge of the east. The slayer of infidels, and the avenger of the faith. Hailing from parts unknown, the Dragon Knight, Sir Francis of the Stormlands.”
Beneath my helm, my face contorts into an ugly expression. Those names have been granted to me as a reward for my many deeds, but I have never enjoyed them. They paint me as an unkillable brute, beyond remorse or sadness. I have never disabused those who think of me as such of that notion, for a reputation as terrible as mine does have a purpose. Fear is of more use before combat than during, and if my reputation offers me the opportunity to live out my life in relative tranquility, then I am more than thankful for it. I simply wished that heralds would forget the name Dragon Knight. My heraldry is of a dragon, but not of my choice.
My moment of inner monologue almost cost me dearly, as I was barely aware of the flag descending between me and my opponent. Thankfully, my horse was not distracted by the same things as I was, and the moment my opponent surged forward, so did I. The sudden transition to movement from stillness was enough to jar me out of my daydream. I leaned forward in the saddle, my knees flexed and supporting my weight. The lance in my right hand remained still, point flashing in the air above my head. As we closed, I dropped it quickly, the lance lever with the center of my shield.
My eyes were locked on my opponent, studying his position, his movement and the way he held his lance. He was experienced with a horse and lance. Though it was hard to tell with the tourney armour that covered his body, the way he rode the beast told much. He was a lancer, and at home on a horse, the tourney weapon bobbed with the horse, but always level with the center of his chest. He was better than I was, I could tell that much, my only hope was to make him overconfident. If I could make him believe he had already won, I might be able to snatch a victory from thin air.
A standard tourney round is normally over in three passes. The better you do against your opponent, the greater your odds of victory are. Unhorsing was always counted as a victory, and everything else depended on broken lances. In the unlikely chance that both opponents did equally well. It was up to the king to decide the victor. Theoretically, the king could call anyone a victor, even if they lost, but that was almost never done.
During a joust, knights usually wear tournament plate, it is heavier and thicker than battle armour, so as to limit accidental injuries on the lists. They do still happen from time to time, and death sometimes happens as well. Usually those incidents occur when someone has cheated, but accidents do happen.
Unlike most knights, I do not wear tourney plate. I do have ceremonial armour and tournament armour on my estate, but I very rarely wear it. I do not fear accidents or injury on the lists any more than I do on the field. My mentor taught me that men who feared a tournament more than they did a battle were fools and cowards.
Because I only wore battle plate, I knew that a direct hit would knock the wind from my chest, and in order to convince him he was winning, I would need to be hit twice. I have never enjoyed being struck on purpose, even if it was part of a greater scheme. I always thought that allowing myself to be hit meant I was letting my own self down, that I was disappointing my own abilities. A foolish thought I know, but one that I could not ignore.
He closed with me, and as I readied my shield and kept my eyes locked on his visor, I noticed something that I thought he would have trained to ignore. The moment before the impact, he tucked his chin into his neck, lowing the slits on the visor and losing sight of me. It did not matter this time, for the lance shattered on my shield, throwing me back into the saddle. My own glanced off of his without so much as a scratch.
Though my shield took the brunt of the force, my arm was numb from the impact, and tingling. As our horses reached the end of the list, I slowly turned it to return to my side, and as we passed one another, we raised our lances in salute.
Peasants believe that when we do so, we are showing honour to one another, but nothing could be farther from the truth. We raise our lances in passing in order to brag. It is a way of saying “Look at my broken weapon.” To one another without so much as saying a word.
My squire came to me when I returned to my home position and looked at my shield. It was dented and scratched, but nothing that would compromise the integrity of the object itself. The oak had no cracks or splinters, and the slats were still bound together tightly.
I tried to shake out my arm in order to return feeling to it, and while it did help, I knew I would have to take another hit just as strong as the last. My opponent had the reach on me, his own lance would strike just before mine. And that was why my own failed to strike with any force.
My opponent takes his new lance from the squire, and once again we prepare to meet on the field of honour.
The herald raises the flag, and my horse tenses underneath my legs. One breath, and then two, pass before the flag is lowered. I kick my feet against the flank of my steed and we surge forth once more.
The distance between us vanishes in an instant and all too soon I have couched my lance in preparation for the pass. I ready myself, leaning forward to absorb the blow, and keeping mindful of the fact that he has the advantage on me.
Just before we both close, I twist my body slightly to make that advantage vanish, and it is mildly successful. My lance connects at the same time as his, but my slight twist puts me off balance, and I am hit much harder than I expected to be. I drop my shield with my left hand and grab wildly for the horn of the saddle. My fingers manage to grab it before I fall backwards completely, and with all my strength I manage to hold on while the horse reaches the end of the run. I look to the lance in my hand and smiled; it was broken.
As my horse turns back to return to the starting position and we pass by each other to salute, I noticed that his salute did not match the height of his previous one. That last pass cost him, I only hope that it cost him more than it did me. My shield lay on the ground, covered in dust, and broken. My small twist rendered it useless, while it gave me the extra reach I needed. It also removed the angle on my shield, and instead of simply glancing off and passing by, the lance connected solidly with it and shattered.
I never understood why a hit that would shatter my shield would hurt my arm less, either it was all in my mind or there was some principle at work that I didn’t understand. Either way, I was down one shield, and up one broken lance. My only hope in the next pass was that he would miss, and that I would not.
My squire handed me a new lance, and gathered the remains of my shield. I am a poor knight, from a noble and esteemed family; yes, but poor despite all that. I have never accepted aid from my family, and everything I have, I earned it with my own sweat, blood and tears. For most knights a shield is simply a matter of visiting an armourer and promising payment, for my however it would mean winning this tournament. That was another reason for my lack of tourney plate, it was mostly because of the morals instilled in me by my mentor, but a part of me wished I was able to afford the fancy suits that all these other nobles could.
The third pass would decide it all. It was then that I realized the crowd had fallen silent. After spending the last two passes ignoring the cheers and jeers the silence that accompanied this last one was almost deafening. I noticed a few pointing fingers and whispering peasants, but the majority of my attention was devoted to my opponent. For the first time I noticed something odd about the person facing me. The way he held himself seemed a little strange, as if his back was too straight or he was sitting on something that made him taller than he was accustomed to. Nothing important, but it was an interesting thing to note. Perhaps I would ask him about it later, win or lose.
The knight bent at the waist and whispered something to his squire, the squire hesitated and handed him a new lance.
The herald waited patiently, and my opponent’s herald finally signaled that his charge was ready and armed.
The knight looked at me, or at least I assumed he did, because after a second of inaction, he dropped his own shield to match me. It wasn’t a small gesture on his behalf, to bring himself down to the same level as I was meant he wanted his win to be fair and beyond reproach. This way there would be no way for me to say that the only reason he won was because I was at a disadvantage, but it would also allow him to save face if he lost. It was a brilliant move on his part, and one I wished I had thought of on purpose. It would also make it harder for me to win. The only way to achieve a clear victory would be to unhorse him, but unhorsing someone is never as easy as it looks. Though the horses are galloping at full speed, and the lances are striking a solid object, it requires more luck than skill to achieve an unhorsing.
For one, the lance is blunted and weakened, this keeps the rider safe by ensuring that it breaks on a solid impact. Unfortunately, the weakening makes it so very few impacts strike with enough force to knock a rider out of his seat. The weight of the rider factors in as well, I weigh just over 12 stone, and my armour weighs another 3. My armour is thinner than most and therefore lighter and many knights weigh more than I do and I have only ever been unhorsed four times in my entire career.
The mechanics of the joust have been created in such a way that it is almost impossible to be thrown off your horse. Other than the weight of the knight and the fragility of knight, the saddle rises in the back, making it easier for the knight to remain seated. Not to mention the stirrups which lock in the knight’s feet and prevents sliding off the back.
To make it even more difficult, the knight often leans forward into the strike, in order to absorb the blow and prevent the exact thing that every knight tries to achieve. All of these factors combine to make unhorsing your opponent one of the most difficult things anyone can achieve, not impossible but nearly so.
The herald lowered the flag once more, and for the ninth and final time that day, I faced the lance and resolved to win.
As the horses thundered down the along the tilt and the lances leveled with the chests of their opponents, I rehearsed the movements in my mind. Lean, tilt, thrust and hold. Lean, tilt, thrust and hold. I imagined the movements in my head, and tensed the muscles in accordance to those thoughts. The horses grew closer and time stopped.
Everything else became non-existent, and my eyes only saw my opponent. The shining plate, the straight lance, the slight lift off of the saddle, and the tensed legs. I must have looked much the same to our watchers, but both of us knew the difference.
He was more skilled than I, and we both knew it. He dropped his shield in order to humiliate me, a taunt as if to say “I don’t need any advantage to defeat you”. In most cases he would be correct. I have faced very few knights as skilled as my opponent and against all of those his victory would be assured.
We closed on one another, the noses of our horses passing within inches of one another and the lances connecting.
Just before the impact, I all but stood on my saddle, twisted my torso into my opponent’s lance, and thrust my own arm forward. I strained with all my might, putting as much force into my own blow as was humanly possible.
For a long moment I wondered if I made a mistake, my opponent was quite skilled, surely there was no way that they would be unable to react to my actions. Tactically I had put myself into the worst position possible. I was raised off my saddle completely, my body was twisted out of balance, and my arm was overextended. If he was able to react quickly enough. The glancing blow I was expecting would become a full on strike, and I would go flying through the air without any chance of recovery.
Thankfully, he wasn’t able to react in time. His lance point scraped by left side, barely touching me, while my own slammed into his chest, just below the sternum. The lance tip exploded, splinters flying in every direction. I was rocked backwards by the impact, but my arm was still pushing out. The tip of the lance vanished, and with no resistance my arm shot forward ever further. Pushing the broken and jagged edge of the lance into my opponent’s torso once more, this time with a much different outcome.
The first impact rocked him back in the saddle, much as I had reacted on the first pass, but he did not recover in time to brace himself at the second strike. The lance impacted once more, and for a long moment my opponent hung on, the momentum of the horse and of his own body carrying him forward. We passed by one another, and he remained in his saddle, arms beginning to flail for purchase, and then I was past. My horse slowed down and turned quickly and I dropped the lance on the ground throwing out to the side so as not to foul my horse’s feet. The crowd was deathly silent as I swiveled to face my opponent, but just as I lay my eyes on him once more, it exploded into applause.
He managed to grab the horn of his saddle, and was hanging on. My horse returned to our starting position while my hopes fell. My opponent slumped forward over the saddle while his squires ran to his aid, and my spirits raised slightly. If my opponent was knocked out or even just too badly wounded to walk, then my odds of winning were increased a hundredfold. We had both tied, two broken lances each, it was up to the king now.
His squires helped him off the horse, they worked quickly and efficiently. They were quite distraught, but I knew that my opponent wouldn’t be wounded that badly, there was nothing to be worried about, but I suppose they were simply being cautious.
As that thought ran through my head, the royal surgeon ran on to the field, as did the captain of the guard, and the king’s current champion.