Chapter 17: The Tourney
The cheers of the crowd were a physical thing, a wall of sound that pressed against Kerr’s ears and vibrated up through the soles of his boots. He stood in the center of the tourney grounds, the dust of the final joust still settling on his armor. He had entered the lists alone, a king amid knights, and broken every lance brought against him. The bare-knuckle bouts had been brief, brutish affairs; men who were legends in their own halls found themselves lifted and deposited gently, decisively, outside the ring, their pride more bruised than their bodies.
Now, for the single combat, he had shed his plate for hardened leather and mail. In his hands was Hearthguard, the warhammer. Since the Blight, his weight had risen to a healthy near 400 lbs. Though barely any of it was fat. This was him no longer starved, sleep-deprived, and near death on an hourly basis. He did not look human next to knights of even respectable size. His hammer, modified now to weigh near half a healthy grown man, he could wield with unnerving quickness and hit with nauseating force.
Across the sand, his final opponent bowed. Ser Rylan, a young lion from the Free Marches, talented and hungry for glory. His sword was a sleek curve of silverite. The crowd adored him. Kerr saw the Arl Eamon, sitting in the royal box beside Anora, who held a sleeping Eleanor. Bryce was with Greta, their nurse, somewhere safer, quieter. Eamon’s face was a mask of polite interest, but his eyes were sharp, missing nothing.
The trumpet sounded.
Ser Rylan came in fast, a blur of motion meant for a smaller, slower man. Kerr pivoted, not away, but into the charge, using his mass as a bulwark. He took the first glancing slash on the boss of his hammer, the shock traveling up the haft and dying in the vastness of his forearm. The crowd roared. He used a two-hand grip on the warhammer and displayed Ferelden dominance so Orlais knew that if it wanted what Ferelden had, it would have to go through him.
He did not press the attack. He let Rylan dance, let him show his skill. This was the spectacle Anora wanted. Each time the Marcher’s blade flickered out, Kerr met it with a short, efficient deflection of the hammer’s head or haft. The clang of steel on steel was a punctuation to the crowd’s rising and falling breath. But on the fourth pass, as Rylan’s blade sliced the air near his face, a scent cut through the sweat, leather, and dust.
Almonds. Bitter, cloying.
He smelled the poison on the blade of the final combatant. It was faint, a ghost trapped in the oil of the metal. Dragon’s Breath, maybe. Or something rarer. A touch would bring fever, paralysis, a slow, choking end.
A cold clarity settled over Kerr. The dance was over. He deflected the next strike, a vicious thrust aimed at his throat, with a sharper, harder crack of his hammer. He saw the surprise in Rylan’s eyes—not the surprise of a failed kill, but the surprise of a man whose secret was discovered. The next sweeping cut came, and Kerr didn’t deflect it. He smacked the blade away. The force of the blow, a short, explosive snap from his wrists, sent the silverite sword spinning from Rylan’s grasp to stick, quivering, in the dirt.
Silence, for one heartbeat.
Rylan stood, his hand numb, his face pale. Kerr stepped forward. The young warrior flinched, expecting the finishing arc. Instead, Kerr reversed his grip and rested the head of the hammer on the young warrior’s shoulder as a sign of mercy and respect. The weight of it forced Rylan to one knee in the sand.
“Yield,” Kerr said, his voice low, not a question.
“I yield,” Rylan gasped, the words carried by the heralds to the far reaches of the stands. The crowd erupted, Fereldan voices triumphantly drowning out the scattered, polite applause from the Orlesian delegation.
Kerr leaned down, his face close to Rylan’s. His words were lost in the tumult. “Who gave you the oil for your blade?” The young knight’s eyes widened further, flashing with fear, then a stubborn silence. Kerr straightened, pulling his hammer back. “You fought well,” he announced loudly, clapping a hand on Rylan’s pauldron, the public gesture at odds with the private threat. “A credit to the Marches.”
He turned, raising Hearthguard to the roaring approval of his people. He scanned the royal box. Anora was already standing, passing Eleanor to a handmaiden. Her face was a composed mask of regal pride, but her eyes were on him, questioning, urgent. She had seen the shift in his demeanor.
He marched from the field, the adulation washing over him like a tide. He acknowledged the crowds with a raised hand, but his stride didn’t slow until he was in the shadow of the competitors’ entrance, where Arl Eamon awaited him, his wise face etched with concern.
“A clean victory, Your Majesty,” Eamon said, falling into step beside him. “Though the finish seemed… personal.”
“Fetch the chevalier delegate,” Kerr said, his voice a low growl as he unbuckled his vambrace. “And have someone secure Ser Rylan’s sword. Do not clean it. Do not touch the blade. Bag it as it is.”
Eamon’s eyebrows shot up. “Poison?”
“Dragon’s Breath. Maybe.” Kerr ripped the leather gorget from his neck. The smell was still in his nostrils. “This wasn’t about winning a tourney. This was an assassination attempt clothed in sport.”
Anora met them at the entrance to the royal tents. She dismissed the attending nobles with a look. “Explain.”
“His blade was tainted,” Kerr said, pulling her inside the relative privacy of the silk-walled space. “I smelled it. Almonds.”
Her composure cracked for a single, terrifying second, revealing the raw fear beneath. Her gaze darted to the corner where Greta held Bryce. Then the queen slammed back into place. “They wouldn’t dare. Not here. Not so openly.”
“It’s not open if I die in three days from a fever,” Kerr said, pouring water from a pitcher over his head. “Plausible deniability. A wound gone bad. The perils of combat.”
Eamon entered, his face grave. “The chevalier delegate expresses his profound horror and promises a full investigation. He is, of course, mortified.”
“Of course he is,” Anora spat. “They’re mortified they failed.”
Kerr turned to Greta, his voice dropping to a soft, deliberate calm. “Greta. Listen to me. No one serves you, or the children, anything. Not food, not water, not a goblet of wine offered in courtesy. You taste everything first yourself, from a separate portion. If you feel even a twinge of nausea, you sound the alarm. Understood?”
The old nurse’s face tightened, but she nodded, pulling Bryce closer. “Understood, sire.”
He looked back at Anora and Eamon. “The spectacle is over. The message has been sent. And received, it seems.” He hefted Hearthguard, the formidable weapon now a symbol of a threat that had become chillingly real. “They’ve just shown us their next move. It’s not a trade embargo.”
Anora stepped closer, her hand coming to rest on his damp, mailed forearm. Her touch was cold. “Then we show them ours. Publicly, we celebrate your victory. Privately, we turn every stone in Thedas to find who furnished that poison and why a Free Marcher knight would use it.” Her green eyes were like chips of ice. “The foundation must be unshakable, my love. Even when they try to crack it with venom.”
Outside, the cheers continued, blissfully ignorant. Inside the tent, with the scent of poison still haunting the air and his family looking to him, Kerr felt the true weight of the crown. It was heavier than any hammer.
It was heavier than any hammer.
The celebration in the great hall was a roar of spilled ale and boisterous song, a forced, frantic thing. Kerr sat on the dais, a carved wooden cup of untouched water in his hand, his smile a rigid, public mask. Every flutter of a serving girl’s skirt, every presented platter of roast boar, was a potential threat. His eyes tracked Greta across the room, her own face set in stony vigilance as she held Bryce close, a handmaiden he trusted implicitly shadowing her with Eleanor.
Anora’s laugh beside him was perfect, a bright, crystalline sound that cut through the noise. She leaned into Arl Eamon’s ear, her lips barely moving, her own face a masterpiece of serene enjoyment. They looked like they were sharing a witty observation about the minstrel’s tune.
The Arl’s benign expression didn’t change, but a new tension settled in the line of his shoulders. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. Then Anora pulled back, taking a delicate sip from her own goblet—a goblet she had personally filled from a sealed pitcher in their chambers.
She surveyed the sweating, cheering nobility, the flushed Orlesian envoys with their painted masks of delight. Her fingers, resting on the table, were perfectly still.
She turned her head a fraction, her voice a low, cool thread meant only for Eamon, her gaze never leaving the crowd. All trace of the queen’s public warmth was gone, replaced by something far older and sharper, a blade being drawn from a hidden sheath.
“Get her Ignacio and the Crows.”