The Silver Sword by Angela Elwell Hunt

Author:Angela Elwell Hunt [Hunt, Angela Elwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-45928-2
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 1997-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

Anika mechanically played the test over and over in her mind, trying to forecast Manville’s probable moves. The joust would take place on a long rectangular field outside the castle walls. As soon as Lord John had taken his seat upon his balcony, a trumpeter would blow, and two fluttering blue pennons, one at each end of the field, would fall. She and Manville would spur their horses and charge toward each other from a distance of one hundred yards. The tilt, a wooden barrier that reached to her horse’s flank, would separate the two opponents, and Anika would aim her lance across the tilt, directly toward Sir Manville’s breastplate, until the point of impact… unless she was unseated first.

No. She blocked the thought; the contemplation of failure would be anathema. Moving into the weapons room, she selected the lightest wooden tilting lance from the wall, then checked to be sure Midnight, now her favorite mount, was properly saddled. The grooms, always eager to view a competition, hurried to dress the horse in his jousting armor, a breastplate and a metal headpiece known as the chanfron. Anika eyed the metal spike protruding from the chanfron like a gleaming horn and hoped that Midnight’s size and strength would intimidate Sir Manville … because her slight figure certainly wouldn’t.

She checked the girth strap, then slipped her left foot into the stirrup and threw herself over the horse’s broad back. Manville, she noticed as she glanced toward the far side of the stable, had already mounted his favorite steed. A servant held his horse’s reins and was leading him toward the castle barbican.

“Hurry,” she told the groom in a low voice.

The stableboy attending her grinned foolishly, then gave the horse’s flank a slap. “In a hurry to get yourself killed, are you, Kafka?” He grinned and handed her the reins. “You are as ready as you will ever be.”

She straightened, then made a quick clucking sound with her tongue, turning the stallion toward the doorway. Nervous flutterings pricked her chest as the huge animal moved out of the stable, through the barbican, and onto the tournament field. Averting her eyes from the crowd of onlookers gathering behind a rope, she faced the opposite end of the jousting field and forced her riotous emotions to settle down. In a few moments she would have completed her test. If she acquitted herself well, she would earn the right to be dubbed a knight. Of course Novak would feel compelled to tell Lord John her secret, and the Lord of Chlum might not agree to knight her.

But it wouldn’t matter. In the eyes of her fellow knights, she would have proven herself. Her parents and Sir Petrov, watching from heaven, would see and know that she had not failed them. And if Lord John cast her out of Chlum Castle, she would take her newfound skills to another manor and continue her quest of vengeance. For she had begun to believe her father was right—war did lie just over the horizon, and she was sworn to be involved in the battle.

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