At the Joust

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  Roland Wright

  #1 Future Knight

  #2 Brand-New Page

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2008 by Tony Davis

  Cover art copyright © 2011 by James Madsen

  Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Gregory Rogers

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in paperback in Australia by Random House Australia, Sydney, in 2008.

  Yearling and the jumping horse design are

  registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools,

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Davis, Tony.

  At the joust / by Tony Davis ; illustrated by Gregory Rogers. — 1st Yearling ed.

  p. cm. — (Roland Wright ; #3)

  Summary: Roland, a scrawny, aspiring knight prone to hiccups, serving as a page in Twofold Castle, attends his first tournament, where knights from near and far take part in a full day of jousting.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-98925-4

  [1. Knights and knighthood—Fiction. 2. Castles—Fiction. 3. Middle Ages—Fiction.]

  I. Rogers, Gregory, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.D3194At 2011

  [Fic]—dc22

  2011007846

  Random House Children’s Books supports the

  First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  ONE. Sir Lucas

  TWO. Morris Brings News

  THREE. The Next King

  FOUR. Hector’s Surprise

  FIVE. The First Joust

  SIX. Expert Opinion

  SEVEN. Little Douglas

  EIGHT. Nudge’s Decision

  NINE. The Moment of Truth

  TEN. An Heir Is Announced

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  One

  Sir Lucas

  Roland Wright couldn’t decide which was worse: the clanging great longsword that kept crashing down on his helmet, rattling his teeth and threatening to cleave his head in two, or the hiccups.

  Every time Roland lined up a good strike of his own, a bubble of air—or whatever it was—came flying up his windpipe and “H’uppp!”, he missed.

  Whenever he tried to defend himself, exactly the same thing happened. “H’uppp!”, then clang! Sometimes it was “H’uppp, h’uppp, h’uppp” and “h’uppp!” And each hiccup was followed by an echo inside his helmet as well as a clang.

  Roland was fast, but the knight he was facing was faster. Roland was strong for his size, but the other fighter was too—and he was a great deal bigger.

  Roland’s best defense was his ability to move his sword at lightning speed and block. However, that wasn’t much good to him today. Even when he stopped the knight’s sword, each blow was so mighty it just about knocked Roland out of his shoes.

  Roland was ducking and weaving, slipping back and blocking. But he was still being hit hard and often.

  “Ouch!” he would cry when his helmet clanged under the falling edge of a longsword. Then “H’uppp!” Then “Arggh!” when his own attacking shot was blocked, then “H’uppp!” again as air rushed up his throat at the speed of a galloping horse.

  Roland should never have eaten those grapes. And he should never have tried to fight this knight.

  They were both using longswords, large, heavy weapons that were held with two hands, meaning neither fighter had a shield.

  Roland found it hard work even to lift his weapon, or to see out of his helmet. He was wearing bits and pieces of borrowed armor, some of it rusty, some of it very loose-fitting.

  The knight swung his sword effortlessly and moved smoothly. He looked immaculate too, with a long white silk scarf around his neck and a helmet so shiny it sent sharp flashes of light through Roland’s narrow eye slots.

  So the newest page at Twofold Castle—the home of the noble King John—was squinting as well as hiccuping, as well as being hit in the helmet, as well as being struck on the body by an opponent who was older, larger and stronger.

  He’d had better days. “Ouch! H’uppp! Arggh! H’uppp!”

  Roland’s pet white mouse, Nudge, was waiting nearby, in a cloth bag hooked over a tree branch. Nudge wasn’t having much fun either, having been dropped on the ground earlier by a very nervous Roland. Nudge now had his paws pushed over his ears to block out the crashing, banging, smashing and walloping.

  Roland slipped back again, out of range of the other longsword. He needed to remember what he’d been taught at the castle, to make sure he was fighting not just fiercely, but smartly.

  Roland pointed his leading foot toward his target: the very top of the knight’s helmet. He turned his back foot sideways for better balance. He kept his body straight and made sure his weight was on the balls of his feet. He changed his grip, holding his longsword tightly just behind the cross-guard with his stronger hand, his left hand. This meant he could swing more quickly. He also made sure his knuckles were perfectly lined up with the cutting edge, or the true edge, as the knights called it.

  More importantly than any of that, Roland stuck out his bottom lip, as he always did when trying his very hardest. He moved in quickly, the longsword held high above his head. With the tip pointing at the sky, he thrust his arms as far forward as he could to create blade speed. At the last moment he cut down hard. For extra power, he stepped forward and shifted his weight to his front foot at exactly the same time.

  As his blade swooped, Roland let forth a string of astonishing hiccups. “H’uppp, h’uppp, h’uppp, h’uppp … hhhh’uppp!” They echoed in his helmet—and probably in the surrounding hills too. But he didn’t flinch, and his sword landed right in the middle of the knight’s helmet, splitting in two the colorful plume on top.

  It was a strike so hard that vibrations traveled right up Roland’s arms. For the first time, he knew his opponent was in trouble.

  The knight moved backward, a little unsteady on his feet. For a moment he looked to be falling. Then he straightened, marched back in, flicked his scarf away with his left hand and picked up the pace of his attack.

  The knight swung his sword from above. He swung it from below, from the left side and the right. He twitched and twisted and turned it too, attacking not just with the true edge, but with the other side, known as the false edge.

  At times the knight swung his blade behind him and struck with the pommel, the round weight at the end of the handle. Doinggg!

  Roland realized the man in the dazzlingly shiny armor and long white scarf had been taking it easy until now.

  “Ouch! H’uppp! Arggh! H’uppp!” Roland blurted out. A doinggg! or two later, he was without his sword. It had been twisted from his hands by a winding movement so quick Roland had scarcely seen it. He could merely watch through the eye slots as his sword was flung into the distance.

  Roland was hit yet again with the pommel—doinggg!—and found himself lying on the ground, looking up at a knight raising his longsword and preparing to bring it down like a spear.

  For the first time, Roland was scared. Longswords could not easily pierce through steel in comb
at. But when a knight was on the ground and without any defense, a longsword could be thrust through a joint or any other weak part of the armor.

  Roland looked up and saw the sword flying down toward his visor. He closed his eyes, fearing that his last word on earth would be “H’uppp!”

  Everything went black. The sword slid deeply and noisily into something. Roland hoped it wasn’t him. After a moment he opened his eyes. He turned his head sideways and saw the sword sticking into the grass. He then looked up to see the knight removing his helmet, pulling off the cloth arming cap he wore underneath and shaking his long brown hair.

  “Hmmm, that’s enough for today’s lesson,” the knight said, straightening his scarf. He had a thin mustache and eyes that were almost as green as the trees. “I only brought the sword down at the end to give you a scare—I thought it might cure your hiccups.”

  Roland slowly dragged himself to his feet, removed his own helmet and tried to shake the sweat off his face and out of his thick red hair. His ears were still ringing from all the blows to his helmet. He stood for a while, waiting for the next “H’uppp!”, but it never arrived. “Thank you, Sir Lucas, I think I’m cured.”

  “That’s good,” said Sir Lucas after a pause. He always thought carefully before he said anything. “More grapes?”

  “No thanks,” said Roland, reaching instead for his leather water pouch.

  Roland had been fighting Sir Lucas on the meadow outside the north wall of Twofold Castle, with a dozen or so pages watching. One of the pages had long straw-colored hair and didn’t seem able to stand still. He moved his weight from foot to foot as he watched the fight and spoke with the page next to him.

  The page next to him was short and had straight black hair and a plump face. Two big dimples appeared whenever he smiled at what the first page was saying. That wasn’t often, though, because the page with the black hair much preferred talking to listening.

  The two boys were Humphrey and Morris, Roland’s roommates. They had gasped when it looked as though Sir Lucas would stab Roland through the helmet, but now they were cheering.

  “Bravo, Sir Lucas, bravo, Roland,” yelled out Humphrey. “A terrifically good fight, a terrifically good fight.” He tended to repeat his words when he was excited.

  “Thanks, Sir Lucas, for curing the hiccups too,” shouted Morris. “I wouldn’t have slept tonight if Roland kept going ‘h’uppp, h’uppp’ and ‘h’uppp!’ It was even louder than Humphrey’s snoring.”

  Sir Lucas used his arming cap to wipe sweat from his forehead, twirled one end of his thin mustache between thumb and first finger and then looked at Roland.

  “Don’t worry that you scored so few hits, Master Wright. I wanted you to learn where your weaknesses are so we can work on them. You did well, and next week we’ll go back to theory and some simple exercises.”

  Sir Lucas then turned to the other page boys and adjusted his scarf. “The first time I saw this thin, freckly boy, he was fighting with a wooden sword. His speed and determination were remarkable. But the most impressive thing of all was his huge heart. There’s no substitute for a huge heart. I thought: If a boy can fight so well without a lesson in his life, he’ll be terrific with a bit of instruction. So I decided that whenever I had time, I would give him a lesson and see if there’s anything I know that might help him. Because in this young boy, we have a champion of the future.”

  Sir Lucas’s words raised a round of applause from all the boys on the meadow. Well, almost all. The one who didn’t make a sound, other than a long hiss, was Hector. He was the oldest and tallest page—and the nastiest.

  Hector shook his dark, bushy hair, ground his big teeth together and hissed a second time. Roland tried to ignore him. He took a couple more sips of water from his drinking pouch, walked to the nearby oak tree and opened his cloth bag.

  “I did well,” Roland said as Nudge ran up his arm and sat on his left shoulder. “Sir Lucas said so, and he’s the most talented swordsman at the castle. I’m so lucky to be having lessons from him.”

  Roland peered at his shoulder and saw that Nudge wasn’t as excited as he was. Nudge rubbed his black eyes, then gave one of his I wish I could talk so I could tell you off looks.

  “Sorry about before,” Roland said, stroking Nudge’s back. “I didn’t mean to drop you, and I didn’t mean to tread on your tail when I was trying to pick you up.”

  “ ,” Nudge replied grumpily.

  As they walked back to the castle drawbridge, Roland realized with a start that it had been only a month since he left his small village to start a new life as a page. It felt like much longer.

  Most things were going well. He had caught the attention of the King and the dashing young champion, Sir Lucas. But he had also caught the attention of Hector.

  Roland had become comfortable in his page uniform, a tunic with large red and blue squares pulled tight by a thick black leather belt. And he had learned his tasks, such as serving at supper and helping the squires feed the dogs and horses.

  Twofold Castle was an exciting place, and Roland’s passion for all things knightly had grown stronger and stronger.

  “Flaming catapults, Nudge,” Roland said to his left shoulder. “I’m going to see a real battle or a siege soon, I can just feel it. Or maybe some jousting. Can you imagine anything half as exciting as jousting … except perhaps a full-scale war?”

  Suddenly Roland’s tone changed. “Oh dear, Nudge, here’s Hector. He’s been leaving us alone since he last got into trouble, but I think that’s about to change.”

  Hector clomped up to Roland and Nudge and then waved his arm in a piece of mock chivalry. “After you, Roland Wrong, s-s-s-s, and your stinking rodent.”

  As he moved his hands back to his side, Hector “accidentally” clipped Roland’s ear.

  Roland quickly walked away and didn’t look back. He didn’t want to fight, and he didn’t want Hector to think he’d upset him. But Hector had upset him.

  Two

  Morris Brings News

  Ever since King John declared him “the official mouse of Twofold Castle,” Nudge had been allowed to sleep in his elm-wood box at the end of Roland’s bed.

  He could even join Roland at the supper table. Nudge just had to be kept out of sight of Queen Margaret, who hated mice. Really hated them.

  Humphrey and Morris now considered Nudge one of their roommates. They had found an old gauntlet, or steel glove, and bent it on a stone with a hammer to make it look a little—just a little—like a suit of mouse-sized armor.

  “Nudge is here by royal appointment, royal appointment,” said Humphrey, smiling as usual. “He needs his own battle dress in case he has to help defend Twofold Castle. Just in case, just in case.”

  Nudge’s armor was very rough and weighed far more than Nudge did. But Roland proudly kept it next to the elm-wood box. Just in case.

  Roland had started his studies. His teacher, Chaplain Don, was very old and very strict, and there were far too many letters to learn.

  The chaplain said schooling was absolutely necessary for anyone who wanted to be a knight. Roland wasn’t sure why: you didn’t have to be able to spell “slice” or “cut” or “stab” or “hack” to do it. And you didn’t have to count up how many people you had slain on the battlefield, then add it to the number someone else had killed, then divide by some other silly amount. Even so, Roland was determined to try hard.

  Because Humphrey was still struggling with his letters, the two boys agreed to help each other. They started work on a “page’s alphabet” they could recite while fighting.

  “A is for armor, shiny and strong,” Roland said as he lifted his wooden sword high and brought it down hard.

  “And B is for battle, bloody and long,” Humphrey replied as he blocked and caught Roland’s sword in a bind so that Roland couldn’t strike.

  “C stands for castle, high on the hill.” Roland twitched his sword and struck it across Humphrey’s shield.

  “D for th
e dragons we one day shall kill,” Humphrey replied. “And I’ve thought of another couplet on my own, another couplet. Listen:

  “E is for effort, you must give your all, while F is for fighting, in melee or brawl.”

  “Bravo,” said Roland. “If you stop hitting me for a moment, I’ll try for the next one.” Rhyming while fighting was hard to do at any time—and Roland was sore from the fight with Sir Lucas the day before.

  “G stands for gauntlet, a steely great glove,” Roland began, crunching up his forehead to think of a rhyme, “… and H for the hunting that all good knights love.”

  “You’re becoming quite skillful at this, skillful at this,” said Humphrey, pushing down Roland’s sword and jabbing toward his body. “Tomorrow we’ll do I and J, and K and L, and maybe more. Maybe more.”

  Later that day, while Humphrey was busy with his chores, Roland walked across the bailey, the large open area inside the castle walls. He was daydreaming, as usual, and bumped into Morris.

  “Ouch,” said Roland, rubbing his nose and picking up Nudge, who had been dropped in the collision.

  “I have the most amazing news,” announced Morris, who didn’t seem to notice that they had just banged heads. “There’s a big tournament in a few days, and we’re all going!”

  “Flaming catapults, a real tourney!” Roland was suddenly hugely excited … until he stopped to think about it. Morris could sometimes overstate things just a bit.

  “There will be jousting,” gushed Morris, rubbing his mouth with the back of his hand. “And there’ll be a dragon—a tame one that you can pat behind the ears, but that breathes real fire. And King Notjohn is sending across Sir Douglas, his tallest, strongest fighter, and he’s going to take on one of us pages. He’s so big they call him Little Douglas as a joke.”

  Nudge was too sore to share in the thrill of the news of the tournament. He quietly whimpered and gave Roland some very unpleasant looks.