Humiliating as it was to refuse, it would be worse to accept—to have his inadequacy made explicit on the field. Makedon’s eyes said that was exactly what he wanted: his return to the fold conditional on the discrediting of Laurent.
Damen waited for Laurent to sidestep, to evade, to find, somehow, the words to extricate himself from the situation. The flags fluttered loudly. The stands were silent, to a man.
‘Why not?’ said Laurent.
* * *
Mounted, Damen faced the course, holding his horse ready at the starting line. His mount shifted, fractious, eager for the horn that would signal his start. Two horses down from his own, he could see Laurent’s bright head.
Laurent’s spears were tipped in blue. Damen’s in red. Of the other three competitors, Pallas, already triple-crowned, carried spears tipped in green. Aktis, who had won the spear throwing on the flat, had white. Lydos black.
The okton was a competitive display in which spears were thrown from horseback. Called the sport of kings, it was a test of marksmanship, athleticism, and skill with the horse: competitors must ride between two targets in a constant figure eight, throwing spears. Then, amid the deadly flash of hooves, each rider must bend seamlessly to pick up new spears, launching back in for another circuit without stopping—riding eight circuits in total. The challenge was to achieve as many bullseyes with the spear as possible, while evading the flying spears of the other riders.
But the true challenge of the okton was this: if you missed, your spear might kill your opponent. If your opponent missed, you were dead.
Damen had ridden the okton often as a boy. But the okton was not something that you simply vaulted onto a horse and attempted, no matter how good you were with a spear. He had practised with instructors for months on horseback in the training arena before he had been allowed to compete on the field for the first time.
Laurent, he knew, was good at riding. Damen had seen him race over uneven countryside. He had seen him turn his horse on air in battle, while killing with precision.
Laurent could also throw a spear. Probably. The spear wasn’t a Veretian war weapon, but it was the weapon Veretians used in boar hunting. Laurent would have thrown a spear from horseback before.
But all of that meant nothing in the face of the okton. Men died during the okton. Men fell, men suffered permanent injury—from a spear; from hooves after a fall. Out of the corner of his eye, Damen could see the physicians, including Paschal, who waited on the sidelines, ready to patch and sew. There was a great deal at stake for the lives of the physicians, with royalty from two countries on the field. There was a great deal at stake for everyone.
Damen could not aid Laurent in the contest. With two armies watching, he must win to defend his own status and position. The other three Akielon riders would have even fewer scruples, likely wanting nothing more than to beat the Veretian Prince at the sport of kings.
Laurent took up his first spear and faced the course with a calm aspect. There was something intellectual in the way he assessed the field, and it set him apart from the other riders. For Laurent, physical pursuits were not instinctive, and for the first time it occurred to Damen to wonder if Laurent even enjoyed them. Laurent had been bookish as a boy, before he had re-formed himself.
There was no time to think more than that. The starts were staggered, and it was Laurent who had drawn first. The horn sounded; the crowd hollered. For a moment Laurent was racing alone across the field, with the eyes of every spectator on him.
It was quickly apparent that if Makedon had hoped to prove Veretians inferior, in this, at least, he had hoped in vain. Laurent could ride. Slender and balanced, the beautiful proportions of his body were in effortless communication with his horse. His first spear soared, blue-tipped: a bullseye. Everyone screamed. And then the second horn sounded, and Pallas was off, riding hard behind Laurent, and then the third, and Damen flung his own horse into a gallop.
With royalty from rival countries on the field, the okton became one of the noisiest events imaginable. In his peripheral vision, Damen glimpsed the arc of a blue spear (Laurent taking his second bullseye), and a green (Pallas likewise). Aktis’s spear landed to the right of centre. Lydos’s throw was short, spearing the grass, forcing Pallas’s horse to swerve.
Damen avoided Pallas expertly, his eyes on the field; he didn’t need to watch his own spears land to know that they were hitting dead-centre. He knew the okton well enough to know he must keep his attention on the field.
By the end of the first circuit, it was clear where the true competition lay: Laurent, Damen and Pallas were hitting bullseyes. Aktis, practised on the flat, did not have the same ability from horseback; nor did Lydos.
Reaching the apex, Damen dipped to snatch up his second set of spears without slowing. He risked a glance at Laurent, saw him take his horse inside Lydos’s to take his shot, ignoring Lydos’s own throw as it passed a half-foot from him. Laurent dealt with the danger of the okton by simply behaving as though it did not exist.
Another bullseye. Damen could feel the excitement of the crowd, tension rising with every throw. It was rare for anyone to ride a perfect okton, let alone three riders in the same match, but Damen, Laurent and Pallas had yet to miss a throw. He heard the thud as a spear hit the target to his left. Aktis. Three more circuits. Two. One.
The course was a stream of surging horseflesh, of deadly spears and hooves that flung up turf. They thundered into the final circuit, buoyed by the elation, the ecstasy of the crowd. Damen, Laurent and Pallas were dead-even in score, and for a moment it seemed flawless, balanced, as though they were all part of a single
whole.
It was a mistake anyone might have made. A simple miscalculation: Aktis threw his spear too early. Damen saw it; saw the spear leave Aktis’s hand, saw its trajectory, saw it hit with a sickening thunk not the target, but the crucial support strut that was holding the target up.
At galloping speed, all five riders had a momentum that could not be halted. Lydos and Pallas loosed their spears. Both throws were straight and true, but the target, swaying and collapsing without its strut, was no longer there.
Lydos’s spear, shearing through air on the other side of the course, was going to hit either Pallas, or Laurent, who was riding alongside him.
But Damen could do no more than shout a warning that was whipped from his mouth by the wind, because the second spear, Pallas’s spear, was aimed right for him.
He couldn’t dodge it. He didn’t know where the other riders were positioned, couldn’t risk his own evasion causing the spear to harm one of them.
Instinct reacted before thought. The spear was driving towards his chest; Damen caught it out of the air, his hand closing hard around the shaft, the momentum of it wrenching his shoulder back. He absorbed it, tightening his grip with his thighs to keep himself in the saddle. He caught a flash of Lydos’s stunned face beside him, heard the cries of the crowd. He was barely thinking of himself or what he had done. All his attention was on the other spear, flying towards Laurent. His heart jammed in his throat.
On the other side of the course, Pallas was frozen. In that stricken moment of choice, Pallas could only decide whether to dodge and risk his cowardice killing a prince, or stand his ground and receive a spear to the throat. His fate was tied to Laurent’s, and unlike Damen, he had no recourse for what to do.