Chapter 62: The Duel
By the fourth day, the tourney had built to the pitch that Robert had ordered it for.
Three days of jousting had burned through the field the way fire burns through kindling — methodically, leaving the best standing and everything else on the ground. The crowds on the Blackwater Rush had grown with each passing day, drawn by word spreading through the city's taverns and alleys about what was happening in the lists. By the morning of the fourth day, the bank was packed from the water's edge to the city wall, spectators standing four and five deep behind the barriers, the noise of them audible inside the Red Keep before the gates had opened.
Eight knights remained.
Henry Reyne. Sandor Clegane. Gregor Clegane. Jaime Lannister. Barristan Selmy. Garlan Tyrell. Loras Tyrell. Robar Royce.
Henry had ridden through the previous three days with the focused efficiency of a man who has decided that winning is a simpler goal than performing, and the results had accumulated accordingly — Yohn Royce, Jory Cassel, Horas Redwyne, Meryn Trant, and three others put in the dirt one after another. The Red Lion of Castamere had become the name on the crowd's lips by the second day. By the third, the commoners along the riverbank were calling him the Red Commander, which was not a title Henry had sought and which he suspected would outlast his preference.
Robert dropped into his seat on the royal platform and immediately looked impatient with the opening ceremonies. He waited approximately as long as his patience allowed — which was not long — then slapped the armrest and leaned forward.
"Enough of the formalities. Let's have the fighting."
Henry rode out into the lists on the fourth morning in his scarlet armor, Red Rain strapped across his back and a tournament lance in hand, and the sound that came off the riverbank was the kind that you feel in the chest rather than just hear. He made one circuit of the field at a walk, acknowledging it without performing for it, the way Barristan had once told him champions acknowledge a crowd — with dignity rather than display.
Passing the royal platform, he drew rein and extended the lance toward the stands.
Margaery rose from her seat in a gown the green of new leaves, leaned forward over the railing, and kissed the lance tip with the easy grace of a woman who has decided that if she is going to do something, she is going to do it properly.
"Try not to put my brother through the barrier," she said, with a smile that suggested she was only partially joking.
"I make no promises about the lance," Henry said. "Your blessing may have strengthened it beyond my control."
From further along the platform, Garlan Tyrell's voice carried over: "I'm right here, Margaery."
"I know," she said pleasantly, and sat back down.
Garlan Tyrell
Henry and Garlan rode together to the platform to lift their visors for Robert, who was already gesturing at them to skip to the part he was interested in.
"Stop dawdling, both of you! Your King is waiting!"
They returned to opposite ends and snapped their visors closed.
The horn sounded. The crowd pulled in a collective breath and held it.
Both horses launched together. Henry tracked the incoming lance tip through his visor slot, reading the angle — Garlan was direct, technically sound, exactly the kind of opponent who makes you pay for anything less than your best. At the moment of crossing, Henry tilted his shield fractionally, enough to deflect the lance tip off the edge while his own arm drove forward and put the lance squarely on the center of Garlan's shield, on the double-rose crest.
The impact traveled through the shield into Garlan's arm and through his arm into his seat. He held his grip by instinct — a good knight's reflex — but the force was past what instinct could compensate for. He came out of the saddle and hit the ground with a heavy thud that sent dust up around him in a cloud.
Henry pulled up, lifted his visor, dismounted, and walked back to where Garlan was sitting in the dirt working out whether anything was broken.
"Damn," Garlan said, to the general vicinity. He pressed his hand to his chest and coughed. "Henry. Margaery told you to go easy."
"The lance had her kiss on it. I couldn't control the force." Henry reached down and pulled him up. "You should take it up with her."
Garlan made a sound that was simultaneously a laugh and a complaint about his ribs, and let himself be helped back to the Tyrell squires waiting at the rail.
"Henry Reyne wins!" Robert announced, with the enthusiasm of a man who has been waiting all morning for something worth watching. "Next!"
The Other Bouts
The morning burned through fast.
Jaime and Barristan went nine passes before it ended — the longest bout of the tournament, two exceptional knights finding the limits of each other's defense with the methodical patience of men who know what they're doing. Nine lances broken between them. On the ninth pass, Jaime found an angle off the straight line, a slight lateral shift that put his lance tip where Barristan's shield wasn't quite covering, and the old knight went down for the first time in the tournament. The crowd was loud about it. Barristan rose without visible reaction, gathered his dignity, and walked off the field with his back straight.
Loras and Sandor ran five passes. Sandor's approach was what it always was — direct, heavy, contemptuous of technique as a concept — and for four passes it was enough to force a stalemate. On the fifth, Loras found the seam between brute force and good positioning and put him down. Sandor got up from the ground with the expression of a man who has been insulted rather than defeated and took himself off the field without speaking to anyone.
Gregor Clegane disposed of Robar Royce in a single pass with the impersonal efficiency of a man knocking a fence post out of the ground. Robar was carried off. He appeared to be conscious, which was the optimistic reading of the situation.
Four left. Henry Reyne. Jaime Lannister. Loras Tyrell. Gregor Clegane.
Henry and Jaime
Henry was at the rail checking the fit of his pauldron when the voice came from behind him.
"Finally." Jaime lifted his visor, his golden hair dark with sweat, his eyes carrying the particular brightness that came into them when he was genuinely interested in something. The arm that had been dislocated on the first day showed no sign of affecting him. "I've been waiting three days for this."
Henry turned. "Keep your visor down when we ride. I'd rather not have to explain to the King why his Kingsguard has a broken nose."
"I hope you hit harder than your Sarsfield boy." Jaime smiled, and the smile had nothing friendly in it, and he snapped the lion-head visor down.
On the royal platform, Cersei sat forward in her seat for the first time all morning.
They rode to opposite ends. The horn sounded.
First pass. Both men read each other coming — two experienced riders who had each watched the other for three days. Henry felt the lance tip graze off his shield as Jaime deflected it, felt his own tip catch nothing but air. They pulled up at opposite ends and turned back without speaking.
Second pass. Both men settled forward in the saddle, the posture of men who have decided that deflection is finished and direct force is the answer. The horses came together fast, and the impact when it came was simultaneous — both lances finding both shields at the same instant, both shafts shattering with a crack that rang across the field. The force was equal and total. Both men left their saddles.
Henry rolled on landing, came up onto one knee, and pushed himself to his feet. Across the field, Jaime was doing the same, pulling himself up with his jaw set and his gilded armor painted with dust.
Both men turned to the platform.
Robert came off his seat. His eyes were bright and his voice needed no herald.
"Dead even! We settle it on foot!" He sat back down and slapped the armrest with satisfaction. "Now we're getting somewhere!"
Jon Snow was at the rail with Henry's weapons before Henry had reached it — moving quickly, anticipating, the way a good squire does. He held out Red Rain.
Henry shook his head. "Tournament rules. Not today." He took the two-handed practice sword instead — heavy, blunted, built for this — and turned back to the field.
Across the lists, Jaime had taken sword and shield from his squire. He stood and looked at Henry, and did not advance. He set his feet and his shield and waited — the posture of a man who has decided to make his opponent come to him and reveal something in the coming.
Henry came forward with the two-handed blade low, the tip nearly dragging the ground, and swung it in a flat arc at Jaime's legs.
Jaime stepped back and let it pass. The moment Henry's weight shifted forward through the end of the swing, Jaime drove his shield forward in a hard shove aimed at Henry's leading shoulder.
It hit. Henry didn't move.
"Seven hells." Jaime's voice, from behind the visor, had the tone of a man revising an estimate.
Henry brought the two-hander up overhead and brought it straight down on Jaime's shield. The impact rang out across the yard. Jaime's arm dipped under the force, his feet shuffling back half a step. Before he'd fully absorbed it, the second blow fell. Then the third.
Henry worked in a steady rhythm, each strike landing on the same point of Jaime's shield — the center, where the stress accumulated — the way a man splits timber, not with one spectacular swing but with patient, accumulated force applied to the same place until the wood has no choice. Jaime was giving ground with each strike, his footwork still good, his shield coming up by instinct where conscious decision was becoming harder to maintain.
The leather facing of the shield split first. Then the facing peeled back, revealing the wood beneath. The wood began to show the marks of the blade — not cuts, the blade was blunted, but compressions and fractures building on each other with each successive blow.
Jaime's arm was no longer absorbing the impacts cleanly. Henry could see it in the way the shield came up — reactive rather than set, the difference between a man blocking and a man flinching.
The shield split in two on what Henry counted as the fourteenth blow.
The blade's remaining momentum carried through the broken shield and struck the side of Jaime's lion-head helmet. The metal dented inward with a sound like a bell struck badly. Jaime sat down hard on the ground.
There was a moment of complete silence on the riverbank.
Then:
"I yield!" The voice from inside the dented helmet was muffled and had lost most of its usual quality. "I yield — get this thing off me—"
He had thrown down his sword. He was trying to raise his hands to remove the helmet. The dented metal had folded against his jaw on one side, and the visor slot had warped, and his arms were not entirely responding to what he was asking them to do. He made several attempts to get upright before settling for sitting in the dirt and waiting for assistance.
The commoners along the bank made the sound that commoners make when someone they have been watching carefully for three days gets comprehensively put on the ground. It was not a polite sound. There was laughter in it and something cruder than laughter, and the noise ran the full length of the barrier.
From the noble seats, considerably more restrained sounds came — the suppressed amusement of people who understand that laughing openly at a Kingsguard knight sitting in the dirt with a jammed helmet is not the kind of thing you do, and who are laughing anyway because the alternative requires more discipline than the moment permits.
Robert's laugh was the only one that asked no permission from anyone. He leaned back in his chair and let it go completely, slapping the armrest hard enough that the whole platform shook slightly, tears running down his face in a way that had nothing to do with his illness.
Cersei was watching Henry from the platform with an expression that had passed through fury and humiliation and arrived somewhere quieter and considerably more dangerous.
The Lannister household guards came onto the field and got Jaime to his feet, steering him toward the rail with the careful efficiency of men trying to accomplish something difficult while their employer maintains what dignity the situation allows. A blacksmith would be needed for the helmet. This was apparent to everyone.
Robert wiped his face, got himself under control, and raised his voice over the dying noise of the crowd.
"The Red Lion takes it." He was still smiling in a way that suggested the smile would not be leaving his face for the rest of the afternoon. "Best thing I've seen in this field in twenty years. Next!"
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