Isle of Glass by Judith Tarr Page A

wings bear the hawk, with Thea her white shadow. The rangy chestnut
flattened its ears and plunged after.
    In a fold of the hills lay a long lake, grey now under a
grey sky. Steel clashed on steel there; men cried out in anger and in pain.
Voices sang a deep war-chant.
    A jut of crag hid the struggle until the riders were almost
upon it. There where the lake sent an arm into a steep vale, men fought
fiercely in the sedge, hand to hand. Those who were lean and ragged as wolves
in winter would be the rebels, nearly all of them on foot. The King’s men,
well-fed and -armed, wore royal badges, and mailed knights led them, making
short work of the enemy.
    Alf found the King easily enough. Richard had adopted a new
fashion of the Crusader knights, a long light surcoat over his mail; royal
leopards ramped upon it, and on his helm he wore a crown. He of cross and keys
in the King’s company, wielding a mace, would be Bishop Aylmer.
    A hiss of steel close by made Alf turn. Jehan had drawn his
sword; there was a fierce light in his eyes.
    Battle sang in his own blood, gentle monk though he was,
with no skill in weapons. It was a poison; he fought it and quelled it. “No,”
he said. “No fighting, Jehan.”
    For a moment he thought Jehan would break free and gallop to
his death. But the novice sighed and sheathed his sword. Reluctantly he
followed Alf around the clash of armies, evading stray flights of arrows, seeking
the King’s camp.
    When they had almost reached it, a roar went up behind them.
The rebels’ leader had fallen.
    Alf crossed himself, prayed briefly, rode on.
    o0o
    Richard had camped on a low hill above the lake, open on all
sides and most well guarded. But no one stopped a pair of youths on hard-ridden
horses, errand riders surely, trotting purposefully toward the center of the
camp.
    They sought the horselines first and saw to their mounts.
There again, no one questioned them.
    Folly , Thea decreed, watching Alf rub Fara down. A
thief could walk in, take every valuable object here, and walk out again as
peaceful as you please.
    Alf glanced at her. What thief would come out here ?
    Who knows? She inspected a bucket, found it full of
water, drank delicately. What are you going to do now?
    Jehan asked the same question aloud at nearly the same time.
    “Wait for Bishop Aylmer,” Alf answered them both. He
shouldered his saddlebags, laden with books and with Morwin’s letter to the
Bishop, and slapped the mare’s neck in farewell.
    They walked through the camp. It was nearly deserted except
for a servant or two, but one large tent seemed occupied. As they neared it
they heard screams and cries, and Alf caught a scent that made his nose
wrinkle. Pain stabbed at him, multiplied tenfold, the anguish of men wounded in
battle.
    He had meant to wait by the Bishop’s tent, but his body
turned itself toward the field hospital. Even as he approached, a pair of
battered and bloody men brought another on a cloak.
    There were not so many wounded, he discovered later. Thirty
in all, and only five dead. But thirty men in agony, with but a surgeon and two
apprentices to tend them, tore at all his defenses.
    “Jehan,” he said. “Find water and bandages, and anything
else you can.” Even as he spoke, he knelt by a groaning man and set to work.
    He was aware, once, of the master surgeon’s presence, of
eyes that took him in from crown to toe and marked his youth and his
strangeness and his skillful hands. After a little the man left him alone. One
did not question a godsend. Not when it was easing an arrow out of a man’s
lung.
    The power that had forsaken him utterly with Alun rose in
him now like a flood tide. He fought to hold it back, for he dared work no
miracles here. But some escaped in spite of his efforts, easing pain, stanching
the flow of blood from an axe-hewn shoulder. He probed the wound with sensitive
fingers, seeing in his mind the path of the axe through the flesh, knowing the
way to mend it—so.
    He