The Fell Sword

Chapter Twelve

Lutece, Galle – The King of Galle and his Horse

The Seneschal d’Abblemont tapped a parchment scroll against the great oak table for attention, and the war council gradually came to order.

Tancred Guisarme, the Royal Constable, was not in his magnificent dragon armour, but wore a plain brigandine covered in deerhide and a pair of Etrucan steel arms; Steilker, the Master of the King’s Crossbowman, still wore his black armour with gold lettering praising God; Vasilli, the architect of the King’s castles, wore only a maille shirt. Ser Eustace de Ribeaumont, one of the Marshals of the realm and once a famous mercenary, wore black armour with golden edges and bronze maille – very elegant. Abblemont himself wore his plain Etruscan white harness. The only unarmoured man was Messire Ciamberi, a man whose role on the council was almost always left undiscussed.

D’Abblemont waved at his secretary, and the man began to read off a scroll.

Item – The Sieur de Cavalli and four hundred lances have passed from the service of Genua and are now available for employ.

Item – The Senate and Council of Ten of Venike have come to terms with the Emperor and consequently the order for sixty galleys placed to the Arsenal. The man looked up.

D’Abblemont nodded. ‘I have a note from our last meeting – it was the largest order they have ever placed, eh?’

Vasilli fingered his beard. ‘And now cancelled. A lot of out of work shipwrights.’

‘Mayhap the Emperor can employ them,’ Abblemont quipped and they all laughed.

‘And is our man in place to trim the Emperor’s feathers?’ asked the Constable.

D’Abblemonth looked around. He waved at his secretary to sit. ‘Yes. If my sense of the timing is correct, he should be ready to storm Osawa today or tomorrow. I could be off by as much as a week.’

The Constable looked pained. He looked around like a guilty child and muttered, ‘Before the Church got so high and mighty about hermeticism, we used to be able to communicate with our – missions.’

Every head turned to Messire Ciamberi, who raised both eyebrows in mock surprise.

‘My lords – if anyone were to practise such heresy, I would have to remind you that a communication covering a thousand leagues and penetrating the Wild would require more power than-’ He shrugged. ‘Than the pagan ancients ever mustered.’

Abblemont waved a hand. ‘I trust that in this case, our agent is on our timetable.’

Men nodded. The Constable shuffled on his seat. ‘Then why are we here?’ he asked.

Abblemont tossed the parchment in his hand onto the table. ‘The Count of Arelat has sent a cartel to the King, challenging him to single combat.’

Guisarme winced. ‘Bound to happen. Of course, the old Count will eat the King up like a snack – one of the best lances in the world.’

Abblemont shook his head. If the subject pained him – and it did – he hid his complete disgust well. ‘The King will not fight,’ he said.

All the men startled. ‘This is Galle!’ de Ribeaumont said. ‘He has to fight.’

Abblemont sighed. ‘Gentlemen, the King sees in this challenge an obvious ploy by the Count to re-establish the lapsed kingdom of Arelat. Defeat of the King in single combat would probably be construed that way in the Arela – don’t you agree?’

‘Christ, spare me another mountain campaign,’ Steilker said.

It was clear from their faces that neither of the knights approved.

‘Wait until de Vrailly hears that the King refused a challenge,’ de Ribeaumont said.

There was silence.

Abblemont shook his head. ‘That’s not really the core of the difficulty,’ he said and smoothed out the parchment. ‘You see, while sending us a cartel of defiance, the Count has also sent us a detailed description of a skirmish – or rather, a series of skirmishes – in which his men-at-arms seem to have faced irks.’

‘Preposterous,’ said de Ribeaumont. ‘Now I think that our young King has a head on his shoulders. The Count de Sartre is merely using this absurd pretext to rally troops. And besides, Abblemont, did you not give us your word that your niece was at fault in the little contretemps with the King?’

Abblemont didn’t wriggle. His face retained the bland, affable look that the Horse wore at all times. ‘This matter is delicate,’ he admitted. ‘Perhaps most delicate is this piece of evidence.’

At his wave, a servant opened a sack and put a severed head on the table. It reeked of rot.

It was, palpably, an irk, fangs and all.

Messire Ciamberi leaned forward. ‘Could it be faked?’ he asked.

Steilker shook his head. ‘Holy fuck.’

Gusisarme leaned forward. ‘I would hate to take you for a liar, my friend. But the Queen tells a different tale. She says that the little chit was innocent as a saint. In which case, the Count is in the right – isn’t he?’ The Constable had never been an ally of the King’s Horse. ‘He sends this head to prove he’s loyal. And he is. Isn’t he?’

Abblemont ignored the Constable’s tone. ‘It seems to me that whether the Count is loyal or not, we need to be ready in the spring with an army.’

De Ribeaumont leaned forward. ‘My lords! If we field an army in the south – that’s no men for de Vrailly and precious little for our effort in Nova Terra’s northlands.’

‘Money?’ asked the Constable.

Abblemont shrugged. ‘Not enough to buy a second army. Not even enough, I think, to pay Cavalli’s lances.’

Steilker smiled. ‘Ah, but my lords, once he’s on a ship for the Nova Terra, we don’t ever have to pay him again.’

That evening, the King listened to music with his Etruscan Queen. After the music, he went to this private solar with his Horse and was entertained with the news of the world. Finally, he was laughing as he liked. All was well with the world.

‘Did I miss a meeting of the military council? he asked suddenly.

Abblemont nodded. ‘Yes, my liege.’

‘Bah – that foolishness of the Queen’s – that I had to see her new wardrobe. Was anything important discussed?’ the King asked.

‘No,’ Abblemont said. ‘No, Your Grace.’

N’gara Castle – Bill Redmede

‘We’re losing them,’ Nat Tyler said. He was sitting in the Great Hall, watching the irk musicians play fairy tunes. Two hundred men and women watched, faces rapt.

Redmede had thought the same thing a hundred times. And he thought it of himself, because Bess’s hand lay comfortably in his under cover of the table.

‘If we’re still in this fight, we need to leave,’ Tyler spat. He glared at Redmede. ‘Or are you sorcelled too?’

Redmede sat up straighter, like a schoolboy accused by a teacher. But Bess shook her head.

‘We ain’t sorcelled, Nat Tyler. This is as close to heaven as mortal men ever get. A little work and a lot o’ play. An’ such play!’ She shook her head. ‘What’s it for? I never been so happy as the last days. Not ever. Not even-’ She paused, and a cloud passed over her face. ‘Not even as a girl.’

Nat stood up. ‘I’m for leavin’,’ he said. ‘I’m healed. I don’t want to sit in a dream. I want to kill the King and make men free.’

Redmede sat back. ‘Nat,’ he said.

‘What?’ the older man asked. ‘I’m still true, even if you ain’t.’

Redmede shook his head. ‘Winter is falling out there,’ he said.

Bess looked at both of them.

Tyler leaned forward. ‘If you said you was coming with me, the rest of ’em would come.’

Redmede heard the faery music as if it was playing inside his head, and he looked at the art on the walls – the spidery tracery that defied his human eyes on the tapestries, the rich layers of colour in the felt hangings – and he sighed. ‘Give me a day or two to think,’ he said.

And then some days passed.

He shared a little house with Bess, and she was all he wanted. They played games, and they guarded sheep, and they made love. The other Jacks became friends – sometimes they gathered at each other’s little houses for a meal, and sometimes, they sat in the Great Hall.

Parties of Outwallers came and went, and sometimes they brought women. The Jacks had had few women. Now they had a few more – or rather, perhaps there were fewer Jacks.

One frosty afternoon, Redmede went out to gather wood. The men’s iron axes and strong muscles made them the premier gatherers of wood in the whole community, and they had gradually taken the chore upon themselves, in the irkish way – the best at any task took it, and taught it.

Redmede was a canny firewood gatherer – skilful and lazy, too. He liked to find one tree – preferably a good, big maple, dead and still standing, or dead and newly fallen, before its upper branches could rot on the ground. He liked to wander with his axe on his shoulder, enjoying the dusting of snow, the cold on his almost bare arms, the smell of the woods.

And he wore his sword, because this was, truly, the Wild of children’s stories. The hastenoch walked these marshes; the great rock trolls prowled the hills to the south, and boglins tunnelled where they didn’t run, while great beaver built six-feet-high dams that lasted a hundred years, and herds of bison moved in the clearings, watched by Guardians, the daemons of the woods. They, too, came and visited the Faery Knight. Redmede was growing more used to them. But he suspected that if he met one in the woods, alone, he would be prey, and not friend.

So he walked with pleasure, but warily. And despite his wariness, Tapio Haltija took him unawares, as he stood in silence contemplating the ruin of a great oak.

‘Ssso. Man.’ The irk was his own height, and moved without a sound.

Redmede nodded pleasantly. ‘Ser Tapio,’ he said.

The Faery Knight looked at the fallen oak. ‘Thisss issss how we will all end,’ he sang. ‘No matter how many wintersss we passs firssssst.’

Redmede nodded.

‘Man, I have many guessstsss coming.’ Ser Tapio met his eyes, and the irk’s eyes were a fathomless dark blue like a summer night lit by stars, with no whites.

Redmede never found it easy to communicate with the irk. The other creature’s mind did not work like a man’s. ‘What guests?’ he asked.

‘Alliesss,’ Tapio said. ‘The cold in the air is the firsst bite of war.’

Redmede was startled by the turn of conversation, but then, talking to the lord of the irks was never easy. ‘War?’ he asked. ‘What war? Against the King?’

The Faery Knight shrugged – a very human gesture. ‘I care nothing for any king of men,’ he said. His voice sounded like a dozen stringed instruments playing together in harmony. ‘I consssider a war with a rival. I consssult thossse who I sssee asss alliesss.’

Redmede broke off gazing at the irk and looked back at his fallen oak. ‘Am I an ally?’ he asked.

The irk’s smile was hard for a man to get used to. It meant something different among irks, and it involved a great many teeth. Tapio further complicated communications by using his smile both the irk way – as aggression – and the human way, for pleasure.

‘That isss for you to tell me, man.’

The next day brought a retinue of Wardens – or Guardians, or daemons, depending on your point of view. They had tall red plumes, which Bill knew to be natural and not worn as decorations, although the magnificent gold and silver and lead and bronze and tin inlay in their beaks was all craft. Redmede watched two young daemons receive their first inlays by a pair of irk craftsmen who worked with their hands and magic alike. A year before he’d have fled. Now he watched in fascination.

The next day, Nat Tyler caught him by the shoulder as he entered the worm’s nest of corridors of the great central keep.

‘I’m gone,’ he said. ‘You comin’?’

Redmede took a deep breath. ‘Nat – I kept you alive,’ he said. ‘I dragged your weary arse out of the battle, and I carried you out here – most of the way. Now I want a winter off.’

Tyler shook his head. ‘Man and women are being worked to death by lords in Jarsay,’ he said. ‘The fuckin’ Church will celebrate Christmas on the backs of the poor. Outwallers will be hunted like vermin. You want a rest.’ He leaned in close. ‘You’ve found a lord, just like your turncoat brother.’

‘Nat, will it kill us to be happy for a while, and rest? Listen to music? Lady Tamlin nursed you herself – do you owe her nothing for that?’ He had no trouble meeting Tyler’s eyes, which he found slightly mad.

He had the oddest feeling, because they’d switched roles. He had always been the driven one, the committed one.

‘Mayhap you need a girl,’ he assayed.

‘Jarsay is in flames and Alba is on the verge of civil war, you fool! This is our time. The nobles are fighting each other.’ Tyler was shouting, and irks paused to look at them, or drew back against the walls. A blue-crested daemon was framed against the snow outside.

Redmede’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you say?’ he asked.

Tyler shrugged. ‘Nothing. Come or don’t. The cause is bigger than you, Bill Redmede. Stay here and rot.’ He avoided Redmede’s attempt to restrain him and pushed past.

Redmede turned to catch him and found himself face to snout with the elegantly inlaid beak and tall blue crest of Mogon, the Queen of the western daemons. He knew her. Not well, but they had been-

alliesss.

The thought slipped into his head.

‘Mogon,’ he said. She smelled like burning soap, and filled the tunnel from side to side. She had to crouch to fit.

‘Jack,’ she said. ‘Not your true name, I will guess.’

He stood his ground. ‘I’m Bill Redmede, daemon,’ he said, fighting an urge to turn and flee. All the daemons projected a sort of wave front of fear – as did many of the other Wild creatures, but the daemons were the most powerful in every way. Even at rest, in a quiet hold, surrounded by other creatures, she emanated menace.

She made an effort – the blue feathers on her crest went flat. ‘Why must your little men require me to pretend to be dominated?’ she asked.

Her beak had surprisingly little effect on her speech.

He found himself released from terror. He forced himself to speak. ‘Are you an ally? Of Tapio?’

She sighed and stretched herself in the confined corridor. ‘We’ll see, Master Redmede. May I say: it is a pleasure to find a former ally here?’

‘I am only a guest,’ he spat. ‘I lead no men,’ he added. ‘But the men I brought here remember you. You left us to die, at Lissen.’

‘Really?’ she asked. ‘My brother sent me to warn the Outwallers. Were you not warned? We are a chivalrous people.’ The stench of burned soap increased.

‘Chivalrous? Lady, a hundred of my Jacks died for nothing when you turned tail and ran.’ People – irks, men, even a winged faery – were gathering to watch them.

‘Ran?’ she breathed. ‘You insult my brood.’

Redmede realised that her gold-inlaid beak was less than a finger’s width from his nose. He was angry enough that he didn’t care.

‘Your brood is alive to be insulted,’ Redmede said.

The crest on her head sprang erect, and the wavefront of terror crashed around him. He stepped back – a faery vanished with a pop and most of the men in the corridor flinched as she raised a heavy forefoot and flexed the vicious talons that could slice through maille.

‘You say words that would end in your death outside the sanctity of this hold,’ Mogon barked. ‘But I will explain, Master Redmede. Let is not be said that Mogon Fairweather of the Bluecrest People was ever less than fair, even to vermin and men. My brother hated Thorn. He distrusted him. And when he found that we had been posted – and I mean no offence, but speak simple truth – had been posted with only the weakest of allies, he assumed we’d been sent to die.’

Redmede released the breath he’d held through her whole speech. He ducked his head clumsily – the best he could manage of a bow. ‘Lady Mogon, you exceed me in courtesy,’ he growled. ‘I am but man, and vermin. But I love my people as you love yours, and to see them die in defeat fair turned my stomach. Perhaps you are right. I have no time for Thorn and his schemes. But . . . well perhaps if you had charged into the flank of the King’s men, we’d have carried the day. And killed the King.’

Mogon nodded. ‘Mayhap. But killing the King of Alba is worth nothing to me. Not worth the life of one Warden. Every year, there are fewer of us.’

He could feel the heat coming off her, and the stench of burning soap filled the air.

‘But I can feel the loss of your people.’ She, too, inclined her head. ‘I hope we may again be allies. We should not be held to blame for refusing to serve Thorn.’

Redmede tried to keep his knees from shaking. ‘I am just a man,’ he said, offering nothing.

Her hard black eyes glittered in her round sockets. He found it difficult to meet both eyes at once.

‘All the other men and the females, they will follow you when the war comes.’ Mogon nodded again. ‘We will talk again.’

Redmede took another breath. ‘Aye, like enough, lady.’

Ticondaga Castle – Ghause

The closer she grew to the decisive moment with the Queen’s unborn baby, the more concerned Lady Ghause grew with Richard Plangere.

Her unease had begun the day she found his spy-moth fluttering in her casting chamber, but the gradual infestation of the castle with moths – minute, pale silver moths – made her angry.

But anger, for Ghause, was power. And while she had no way to strike back at Plangere – whose power she could feel like a distant lamp in a cold room – she had many weapons in her arsenal. She used her favourite.

Her body.

It had seldom failed her since her breasts budded. Had Plangere been a woman, she would have had to use other wiles, but in his case . . .

She danced naked, throwing gouts of power into the aether. She walked about her chambers naked. She stroked her flanks, ran hands over her own breasts and between her thighs, stretched, bobbed, stripped and dressed. Moths gathered in veritable clouds, and while she made violent love to her husband or teased a groom, she postured for Plangere, while thinking, You always were a fool. Look at me, and devour me, and you’ll never see what I’m doing.

The moths made her laugh – he was always so proud of his toys.

In a space in the cellars, heavily defended by runes and sigils and her own workings and some ancient webs too complicated even for her, she killed moths with various techniques until she perfected a method of killing them that was efficient and absolute, because a single survivor would mean the end of her plan. And she moved her great working there. The floor of her tower room was a web of silver and alum chalk, while the floor of her cellar sanctum had only a simple pentagram and ten words in High Archaic.

Then she built another spell – simple to power, labyrinthine in is complexity. It was a layered illusion.

Of her.

Naked.

She watched it critically, several times. She’d only get one chance at this. She made different versions.

She’d cast her curse on the Queen’s foetus, Plangere would come to watch, and she’d ensnare him. Or not. He was very strong. Either way, he’d know to keep his distance.

She was eating honey cakes and stretching – there were moths aplenty – when Aneas came to the door and informed her that the Earl needed her.

Her son stayed to lace her kirtle and pull her velvet gown lined in ermine over her head. She twirled a few times – for herself – and put her feet into slippers with wool felt soles.

‘What does your pater want, sweeting?’ she asked Aneas.

He shrugged. ‘He’s planning a war,’ he said. ‘He’s going to take me with him.’

She climbed out of the cellars and walked along the corridor that was lined with cells. The Earl inclined more to outright murder than to cruel confinement, and the only men in the cells were a soldier taken for rape, a second taken for theft, and a woman accused of killing another woman. Ghause peered into each cell.

The woman had power. She hadn’t noted that before.

She followed Aneas up the guard’s stair, smiled lasciviously at the two men on duty, received the attention which was her due, and passed up a second flight of stone steps to the yard.

Aneas’s weapons’ tutor was waiting in the yard with two saddled warhorses, a great deal of kit, and a small train of servants. She smiled at him.

‘Ser Henri!’ she said, and waved.

He dismounted and knelt. ‘My lady,’ he said, in his attractive Etruscan accent. ‘How may your most humble servant indicate his devotion?’

‘Oh, you will turn my head, you flatterer!’ she cooed. ‘Please – take my son out to the tiltyard and make him a great knight. I can ask no more.’

Ser Henri had the good grace to appear disappointed. ‘No one I can kill for you, Madonna?’

‘I have my husband for that,’ she said. ‘Aneas, pay heed to your tutors.’ She swept past, and crossed the yard on the cobbles – some considerable distance, and there was the bite of snow in the air. But when she passed the kitchen she smelled new-baked bread. She paused and inhaled deeply, and grinned like a girl. She went into the kitchen and stole a new loaf, because when she was tempted, she succumbed, and she entered the Great Hall from the kitchens, chewing bread.

The Earl was surrounded by soldiers – a dozen of his officers. She knew them all, in a vague way – much the same way she knew all his horses, even when she didn’t know their names. He loved to make war, and he did it with flare and with cunning, but she thought he did it for his own entertainment and all the talk of goals and strategy were just so many rationalisations for a boy who wanted to hit things.

‘Ghause, my beauty. You said something about this sorcerer.’ The Earl was the kind of man who had little interest in sorcery. Sometimes she suspected that he didn’t believe in the power of the hermetical. It was an absurd position, but he was always surprised – surprised in a way she didn’t like – when she displayed her powers.

Sorcery in others he liked even less. And understood not at all. She suspected he thought it was all tricks – like a montebank’s show at a carnival.

She smiled. ‘You mean Thorn?’ she asked. Every moth in the hall rose from their rest and fluttered towards the high clerestory windows.

Some of the soldiers paled, and two of them made horn signs with their fingers.

The Earl shrugged. ‘Richard Plangere. That’s who you said he was.’

She nodded. ‘He was. I don’t think he is any more.’

The Earl sat back and scratched a dog’s head. ‘I just received a year’s worth of reports, sweeting. Your sorcerer, whoever he is – is getting reckless. He’s raising armies and playing power with the Outwallers.’

One of his soldiers – Edward? Edmund? She couldn’t remember – drank off his wine and set his cup on the big trestle table with a click. ‘My lord, with respect, he’ll be a tough nut. The Outwallers are clearly terrified of him.’

The Earl crossed his legs. ‘That island. Can we flush him out and take it?’

Ghause shook her head. ‘I don’t recommend it. He’s taken a place of power. He’ll be very strong there.’

‘Why – is it well defended?’ her husband asked. ‘I never heard of a stone castle further north than this one.’

In some ways, he was quite brilliant. With the hermetical, it was as if he was wilfully blind. ‘He has much power, my lord,’ she said deferentially.

The Earl threw up his hands. ‘I’ve faced the Wild all my life, love! He’ll have beasts and boggles and some lightning, I have nae doubt. I’ll have a fleet and trebuchets.’

She tried again. ‘I think that he has the power to sink a fleet, my lord.’

‘When you call me my lord, I know you’re trying to hide something. Is he a friend? One of your special friends?’ The Earl grinned, and the officers all looked away.

Ghause rolled her eyes. She turned to one of the sergeants-at-arms who guarded the Great Hall.

‘There’s a woman in the dungeon. Bring her here.’ Ghause smiled.

The man saluted – looked to his lord for confirmation – and marched away.

‘Ten ships?’ Edward said. ‘At least. There’ll be ice on the lakes in a month.’

‘What about the report of Galles at Mont Reale, Ser Edmund?’ asked another man.

Edmund she tried to remember.

Ser Edmund shrugged. ‘I’d like to say it can’t be true,’ he said. ‘But I have three reports – and yon Imperial officer – saying there’s no Etruscan fleet this season. Instead, there are Galles. They have a powerful squadron and too damned many soldiers – that much all reports agree on.’

The Earl sat back and put a thumb behind his beard and pulled on it. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why here?’

Ser Edmund shook his head. ‘Above my pay grade,’ he jested.

‘Will they give aid to the Northern Huran?’ the Earl asked.

All the soldiers looked blank.

The Earl grunted. ‘Best we settle this Thorn quickly and get back here. If the Southerners and the Northern Huran fight – if that Morean was right – then we’re for it.’

Two guards appeared with the woman between them.

The Earl looked at her incuriously, and then at his wife.

‘She’s guilty,’ Ghause said.

The woman stiffened.

The Earl frowned. ‘You’re sure?’ he asked. He prided himself on his justice.

‘She killed Wren with hermetical workings.’ Ghause turned and smiled at the woman, who froze in terror.

She fell to her knees. ‘Your Grace – you don’t know what she did to me-’

Ghause nodded. ‘Get her a priest.’

The Earl motioned the woman away. ‘I’m busy. What’s this about?’

‘I want to show you what Thorn can do.’ The moths milled about. There were far too many of them. The officers murmured at the sight.

Father Pierre came. The woman wept, and the priest shrived her and heard her confession. He turned pale. Ghause waved a hand.

The priest gave her communion. He was far more afraid of his mistress than he was of his God.

Ghause walked over to the woman. She put a hand on her bent head, and then looked at the men at the high table, planning their infantile war.

‘Watch,’ she said. She raised a hand. ‘By my right to the High Justice of the North,’ she said. Just to have the formalities done.

‘Is this going to be a trick?’ her husband asked. But he took his feet off the table and leaned down to watch her.

She reached out and touched the other woman’s power.

And she devoured it.

The condemned woman turned to ash – all at once. And the ash held its shape for the time it took a silver moth to beat its wings once. And collapsed.

No one moved.

‘Thorn is more powerful than I will ever be,’ she said into the silence.

She only wished she could have been naked. She’d certainly said his name often enough to gain his attention. Inside her head, she was laughing.

The Earl stroked his beard and growled in his throat. ‘Not the fleet this winter then.’

Ser Edmund was slower to recover. ‘This is pure sorcery,’ he said. He rallied hiumself and took a deep breath. ‘This – sorcer is more powerful?’

‘He is far more puissant,’ Ghause said.

‘And yet Gavin says he was defeated by the King in springtime. Anything the King can do, I can do. Better.’ The Earl rose to his feet.

Ghause curtsied. ‘My lord Earl, I fear that the Thorn we face now as a dangerous neighbour is ten times the warlock that our sons faced in the spring.’ She didn’t add, he’s a mere pawn of something greater than himself.

The soldiers around the table looked at each other, but none of them looked at her except her husband. ‘Well, love, you’ve put the cat among the pigeons again. If it’s not a winter campaign on the lakes, my bones tell me we’ll face these Galles and their Huran allies in the spring.’ Muriens sat back. ‘My old tutor used to tell me that nature abhors a vacuum. And look – the lands north of the Inner Sea were a vacuum, and now they all come rushing in.’

Ser Edmund drank off his wine. ‘If it please Your Grace – we could do worse than to make an alliance with the Moreans. And we need to trade all the furs we have.’

The Earl was not a man to forget the value of money. ‘True, Ser Edmund. We’ll need every farthing to pay the garrison if we have a siege. Unpaid men serve too many masters.’ He strode to the edge of the platform and stirred the dead woman’s ashy remains with a toe. ‘Damn it, woman, you’ve cost me a good war.’

She laughed. ‘You can still do it. I’ll just have to plan on a cold bed for the balance of the winter.’

‘Meaning I’ll die, witch?’ He locked eyes with her.

‘Meaning just that, lover,’ she said. ‘And I’d rather not train up another husband. I’m an old woman.’

That night, she licked the nice salty place on the Earl’s neck and bit his ear and whispered, ‘He can watch us, even in this castle. The moths.’

He was no fool. Despite being deeply engaged in his favourite pastime – after war – he understood immediately. He didn’t pause his stroke, or fumble. But a moment later, he put both arms under her shoulder blades, lifted her a little, and breathed into her ear:

‘Son of a bitch.’

Mont Reale, One Hundred Sixty Leagues East of Ticondaga – Ser Hartmut Li Orguelleus, the Black Knight

Ser Hartmut stood at the stern rail of the command cabin of the Grace de Dieu, a cup of Veneti glass in his hand, drinking sweet Candian wine and looking at the fortifications and strong wooden houses of the Outwallers at the town he’d christened Mont Reale – the King’s mount.

‘We will land our soldiers and take this town as a secure base,’ he said.

Lucius remained silent with an effort.

De Marche shook his head vehemently. ‘My lord, we must not. That would alienate the very men and women whose favour we need. They are at war with their cousins to the south. We need to give them material aid.’

Ser Hartmut scratched his chin. ‘And get what in return?’

‘Control of the trade. A secure base-’ De Marche was ticking his points off, and Ser Hartmut laughed.

‘You two are trying to teach me how to make war.’ He laughed. ‘We can land and take the town and all the trade. And send it home to the King. At a fine price. There – I can think like a merchant!’

De Marche pursed his lips. ‘And next year?’

‘Next year we’ll be masters of Ticondaga and the whole of the river. We can take whatever we want and sell the rest into slavery. You, sir, are too modest, and you do not know the aims of our lord King, to which I am privy.’ He looked around. ‘You want a small profit that continues. I offer you an enormous profit, for a few years. Think of the slaves.’

De Marche blew out his cheeks, mustering arguments. As an apprentice seaman, he had shipped in the forecastle of a slaver – a big round ship out of Genua bound for the Hati lands, where once-great nations had been ground to savagery by waves of the wild off the Great Steppes. People in Hati would sell their own children as slaves. De Marche had seen it. And smelled it.

There were many things he would not do for money.

He changed directions. ‘You need soldiers for Ticondaga,’ he said. ‘These Huran will help you – if we help them first, against their enemies.’ He leaned close. ‘You heard what the Huran warrior said. Ticondaga has a garrison bigger than all your men and all my sailors combined.’ He looked at Lucius.

Lucius nodded. De Marche wasn’t sure whether Lucius had arranged the story as a fabrication or not, but he needed the Etruscan.

Ser Hartmut scratched again. De Marche felt that he looked too long at Lucius, but in the end he turned to his second squire – now his only squire. The young man – in full armour – poured more wine.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll try your way. In truth, if it doesn’t work, we can always storm the town. Their palisades are pitiful.’

With the promise of military aid, the skins flowed fast, and de Marche had his hold stowed in pelts and Wild honey in five days – days which Ser Hartmut spent training his soldiers to paddle the light bark boats the natives used, and to make war on water. He had three small row-galleys – broken down into numbered beams and pre-cut strakes in Galle – and the sailors knocked them together. All three of them had a heavy ballista on the bow and a pair of crossbows.

Just below the island, three great rivers joined, two flowing in from the north, carrying the scent of a place even wilder than where they were – pine needles and rock and snow. In the great pool below the falls, Hartmut drilled his soldiers on paddling and rowing.

After a week, he met de Marche for dinner in the aft cabin of the flagship.

‘How is trade, Master Merchant?’ he asked.

De Marche raised an eyebrow. ‘Since you are kind enough to ask, ser knight, we have done well – but we might have done better. The conflict between the Northern Huran and the Southern has kept many of the Outwaller fur merchants away. And there is a rumour that the Moreans are offering high prices and better goods. I have fewer giant beaver than I want – almost none of the white bears so prized at court.’

Ser Hartmut poured wine for the captain. The stern cabin was as small and neat as a lady’s solar, with fine oak panels set in a lattice of oak frames, so that the panels could expand and contract with weather and heat and still look splendid. A bronze-banded barrel of fortified wine gleamed like an embodiment of hospitality, and the low oak table was covered in glasses – real glass, cunningly made to be easy to hold onto at sea. The luxury of the small room contrasted utterly with the conditions that could arise outside. It was like a sliver of court, or a chapel of comfort.

Ser Hartmut seemed immune to the luxury, but de Marche had decided that the fearsome knight merely took the luxury for granted, as his due.

‘The Southern Huran have more furs?’ he asked nonchalantly. ‘And they are failing to bring them here?’

De Marche decided not to deliver an essay on the fur trade. ‘The Southern Huran are not required to trade here,’ he said, with a shrug.

Hartmut leaned back and laughed. ‘But we can oblige them to do so, surely. A few hundred barbarous savages – cursed by God? You wish to convince me to make war on these Southerners – very well, I am convinced. Let us do this thing. The season is very advanced – we’ll have to be quick.’

De Marche nodded. ‘We have the boats, your soldiers and my sailors, and the Northern Huran will give us another two hundred warriors. May I propose a plan of campaign?’ he asked.

Ser Hartmut gave him a jovial smile. ‘No. This is my business. See to your furs and bills of lading. This is war.’ He rose with a care, for he was a big man in a small cabin. ‘Let us drink a toast – to the King.’

The two men drank.

‘And another – to a profitable war!’ He laughed. ‘Send me the Huran lords, so they can hear my orders.’

De Marche nodded. ‘One doesn’t issue orders to Outwallers, Ser Hartmut.’

The knight nodded. ‘You don’t. I do. Send them to me.’

Giannis Turkos – Near Mont Reale

The onset of winter was so close that every gust of wind seemed like a warning from God to spur him on. Turkos rode as quickly as he could, once he reached dry ground, and pushed his mare harder than he had ever pushed another horse. But she responded gallantly, as if thanking him for saving her from the Ruk.

Turkos never named horses, because they died so fast under him, but she had earned a name, and by the time he made it back to Nap-na, he called her Athena.

‘You are the smartest horse I’ve ever known,’ he said, and fed her everything she could eat – slowly, so she wouldn’t gripe or bloat.

He met with Big Trout again, and they smoked. She was of the Old People, like his wife, and her Huran was fluid and difficult at first for him to understand in his current fog of fatigue. But she was patient and hospitable, and when he got a cup of her tea inside him, he found her quite fluent.

‘None of my men have made it so far,’ she said, when he described his route. ‘Long Swamp is less than ten miles from Sacred Island. Sossag land.’

He nodded. ‘I don’t know the castle I came across on a point of land facing Sacred Island,’ he said. He drew her a sketch on birch bark.

She looked at it for a moment. ‘Ba’ath,’ she said. ‘A big Sossag town.’

‘It’s been destroyed. The corpses lie in the streets.’ He looked away, because the images of desolation – of ice in the puddles and burned rafters and the wolf-gnawed corpse of a child too small to even seem like a person – were still with him.

‘He has been here,’ Big Trout said suddenly. ‘He comes as an elder – called Speaker of Tongues.’ She looked at him, and her eyes were narrowed. ‘He thinks we are children, and fools. But he has made threats. And the young people love what he promises. He makes very specific promises.’ She sighed. ‘If we fight him we will be exterminated. But if we do not fight him-’ She shrugged.

‘What of the Sossag?’ Turkos asked, with some urgency. He needed to be moving. But he also needed every scrap of information.

‘They have sent him warriors,’ she said. ‘They had to, to save themselves. Now he walks wide under the trees, and the wind tells me he visits the Northern Huran.’

Turkos had been hearing that for two months. ‘And?’ he asked her.

She shrugged. ‘You would know better than I, Empire Man. The Northern Huran have a new ally – there are new ships on the Great River and many canoes full of warriors. Men coming back from the market at Mont Reale say that the Galles buy any furs brought to them, but not at the prices paid by the Alban merchants at Ticondaga, and the goods aren’t as good as your Morean produce. But there are no Alban merchants this year. And Westerners don’t like to go all the way to the Empire’s trading posts to sell their furs. But some will.’

Turkos nodded. ‘That’s why I’m here,’ he admitted.

She made a face. ‘I know, Empire Man. I didn’t think you rode west to look for Thorn because we are friends – eh?’

He nodded and poured more tea. ‘But I did. And I shared what I learned.’ He leaned forward. ‘Tell me what you learned from those who went east.’

She shrugged. ‘Not much more. Little Bow over there went all the way to the Empire’s post at Osawa.’

Osawa was the town on the Great River closest to Turkos’s own town. He quickened with interest, having been away for more than a month.

Big Trout beckoned to the hunter, who came and sat with them. The longhouse was a combination of a tavern and hostel – it had sleeping benches for sixty adults, and more if some could be convinced to share. It had three great hearths running down the centre, and Big Trout and her several husbands served food and heavy, dark beer to those who could pay. They even had a little wine. It was built of hides and straw mats, and was very comfortable even at the edge of winter. There was always a layer of smoke inside, but it was warm.

Little Bow proved to be a small, wiry man who looked Alban. He had a ready smile and a firm handshake.

Turkos listed Alban among his dozen languages, and he offered to buy the hunter a cup of wine.

‘That’s neighbourly of you,’ Little Bow said, and sat on a stool.

‘I’m interested in the fur trade,’ Turkos said.

‘You’re a riding officer for the Emperor,’ Little Bow said. ‘We all know what you do, Morean.’

Turkos shrugged.

Little Bow nodded. ‘I’m half Alban and half Outwaller, and neither half of me has any quarrel with the Empire,’ he said. ‘I took my wife and all my furs downriver to Osawa because I heard a rumour that it was the best money this year. There was a big fight down on the Cohocton – the Wild against Alba-’ He looked at Turkos, who nodded.

‘I hear the same,’ he said. ‘You may know more about it than I do.’

Little Bow nodded. ‘I met some Sossags who fought there. They said that the Wild took a fair lickin’. No matter – but the Alban merchants were stung pretty bad. You know that the Alban trade goes up to Lissen Carrak for the fair, and then the fur merchants take caravans over the mountains to Ticondaga-’

Turkos was now scribbling furiously on his wax tablets.

‘You didn’t know that?’ asked the hunter.

Turkos smiled. ‘I did and I didn’t,’ he admitted.

The man accepted wine from Big Trout. Morning Porcupine, her surly older husband, poured himself a tankard of heavy ale and sat with them.

Little Bow was obviously a man who liked an audience. His gestures grew, and his voice lowered. ‘So there’s no trade to be had at Ticondaga now, and anyway, the Earl, who is a cantankerous old cuss at the best of times, is getting ready to make war.’

Turkos nodded. ‘I know. I was just there.’

Little Bow nodded. ‘So I went to Osawa. On the way back, we landed at Mont Reale. There’s Gallish ships there – three big round ships and an Etruscan war galley.’

Turkos began writing again. ‘You said there was no Etruscan trade this year,’ he said.

Big Trout nodded. ‘I said that,’ she admitted.

‘Nor is there,’ Little Bow said in a know-it-all tone of voice. ‘There wasn’t an Etruscan to be seen. The scuttlebutt around the trading beach said the Galles had killed the Etruscans, but a Galle merchant who was decent enough to my wife told her they’d found three Etruscan ships all taken by silkies.’

The temperature in the longhouse seemed to plummet.

‘Silkies is a myth,’ Turkos said.

Big Trout had a pipe out. She took a taper over to the hearth and lit it, used it to light a heavy candle in a finely made bronze stick – Alban work – and used the big candle to light her pipe. She cradled the pipe bowl in her left hand and used her right to cup the first smoke and pull it back over her head. The smoke made signs in the air.

‘Silkies ain’t no myth,’ she said, in a matter-of-fact tone. She handed the lit pipe to her husband. He puffed silently. ‘They come every twenty years. This ain’t their year. Next year is their year.’

Little Bow pursed his lips. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know that, either.’

‘Nor I,’ said Turkos. He took a flask out of his shoulder bag and poured some malmsey for each person at the table. ‘In fact, this is a summer’s worth of information in a single dinner.’

‘I’m not to the good part yet,’ said the hunter. ‘Them Galles has one hell of a lot of soldiers. My wife’s pretty. Soldiers talk.’ He nodded. ‘They claim they want to take Ticondaga.’ He paused for effect. ‘For Galle.’

‘Holy Mary mother of God,’ muttered Turkos.

‘That’s after they smack the Southern Huran around a bit,’ the man added, and took the pipe.

Turkos had to fight the urge to stand up and head for the door.

‘Relax – I only heard that three days back. They ain’t left yet,’ said the man. ‘But it’s a big force. More’n a hundred canoes. A lot more armour than we’re used to seeing here.’

Turkos shook his head. ‘And I’m here.’

‘You can get around Mont Reale fast enough,’ the hunter said. ‘Get ahead of ’em on the river and they’ll never catch you.’

‘I’ve always coasted the Great River,’ Turkos admitted. ‘I don’t know a route around the town.’

Little Bow smiled, showing a mouth remarkably free of teeth. ‘Well – for a small fee-’

Turkos nodded. ‘Can you leave in the morning?’

Little Bow nodded back. ‘Money first. No offence, partner – but the wife likes to see the colour of the silver.’

Turkos leaned back. ‘I don’t carry silver in the Wild,’ he said. He counted down three heavy Morean gold byzants. He gave a fourth to Big Trout, who nodded her appreciation. Even her husband grunted.

Come morning, the water was warmer than the air, and the Great River was hidden in mist. Little Bow met him in the yard of the longhouse. He had a string of pack animals, all loaded with furs.

Turkos had purchased two more pack horses, and he was booted and spurred. He raised an eyebrow at the furs. ‘I thought you sold yours?’ he asked the hunter.

The man nodded soberly. ‘Took your money and bought every hide in the village, and paid a good rate for them,’ he admitted. ‘If I’m guiding you to Osawa, I might as well make a profit.’

Turkos laughed and showed the small man his two pack horses – loaded with buffalo robes and white bears and one great wolf hide. They laughed together.

‘Let’s get going,’ Turkos said.

They rode off into the northern woods, at the edge of winter. The wind cut across open ground like a great sword, and nights were so cold that the warmth of a fire could only be felt from an arm’s length, but no snow had fallen yet and the ground was hard, and they travelled fast. They could ride across a marsh, and the lack of leaves on the trees or undergrowth in the deep woods gave them a security that would have been absent in summer. They saw Ruk to the north on the first day, but they were going too fast to be worried. On the third day they spotted ustenoch mixed with moose in a swamp, breaking the ice with their great antlers, but they stayed on a knife-edge ridge and the great beasts didn’t bother with them.

The days were short but they rode hard, changing horses at every stop. After three days, Turkos stopped changing his clothes. The little hunter was one of the toughest men Turkos had met – his saddle endurance was incredible, and he could make camp as fast as any Outwaller Turkos had known.

He admired Turkos’ little oilskin tent. ‘Cute,’ he said, but after a night in it, he helped fold it and said, ‘Not bad. You have all the best toys,’ he added, admiring the Morean’s matching sword and pipe-axe.

They were three days to Mont Reale, which they passed on the north bank.

‘Pull your cloak over all your metal,’ Little Bow said. Then they tethered their horses and crawled to the edge of a bluff.

‘That was all canoes and row-galleys a week ago,’ Little Bow said softly. ‘They’ve moved on.’

Turkos also noted that the ship reports were accurate – he drew sketches of the three great round ships, and of the new fortification being built on the headland of the island where the ships were moored.

‘Come on, partner,’ Little Bow said. ‘Lots of daylight left.’

Two days later, they came up with the fleet of canoes just turning out of the Great River for the Morean posts along the lakes.

‘He could be going for Ticondaga,’ Turkos said, but he didn’t believe it himself. There were far more than a hundred canoes – in fact, he counted almost three hundred. It was the largest force he’d seen in the north country since he became a riding officer, and it was aimed at his people and his trading posts. He felt an overwhelming sense of failure. He’d read the signs incorrectly.

Little Bow shrugged. ‘You know there’s an old road along the east bank of the lake,’ he said.

Turkos scratched his head where it itched. ‘The old Wall road. I am a soldier of the Empire, huntsman. I know the road.’

Little Bow nodded. ‘We’ll beat them to Osawa,’ he promised.

Turkos waved at the mile-wide Great River. ‘And are we going to swim our horses across?’ he asked.

Little Bow smiled his gap-toothed smile. ‘I sure hope you’ve got more o’ they pretty gold coins,’ he said.

Turkos had commanded a post on the wall for two years before becoming a riding officer, and he thought he knew the border as well as any Morean. He’d passed up and down the Great River dozens of times, and always found it an endless adventure – the life he loved.

But he was more than a little surprised to find a hidden Outwaller town just east of the entrance to the lake and so well hidden that he didn’t see it until they were all but in its streets.

He shook his head. ‘How’ve I missed this?’ he asked.

‘Abenacki rebuilt it twenty years ago.’ Little Bow showed the burned pilings out in the Great River. ‘You never looked past them, I reckon.’

‘I won’t be lynched for seeing the secret?’ Turkos asked.

Little Bow laughed. ‘No one’s afraid of the Empire,’ he said. ‘If you was one of Earl Muriens’ men, that would be different. But an Imperial? No worries.’

Turkos digested that slowly.

The owner of a serviceable boat charged two gold byzants for ferrying them and their horses across the river. He coaxed the riding horses aboard, made them unload all their furs, and then dragged their pack horses into the icy water.

Turkos swore. ‘No horse can survive that swim,’ he spat.

Little Bow put a hand on his arm. ‘Ye of little faith,’ he said. ‘She’s a witch,’ he said, pointing at the ferryman’s wife.

She was small and pretty and she sat in the stern and fed the horses gouts of power. She laughed and called them strange names and they showed no signs of lagging. Halfway across she lit a pipe and joined the men amidships. She patted Athena, blew into her nostrils, and raised her eyebrows at Turkos. ‘What do you call her?’ she asked.

‘Athena,’ he said. ‘She was a goddess of wisdom.’

The witch smiled. ‘She is a fine god,’ she said. ‘So is Tar. Your Athena was one of the dresses Tar wore for man.’ She patted the horse. ‘Tar is in this one. Your name is good. Your horse says you are a good man, so go well, good man.’

Turkos watched her wriggle through the bales of furs to the stern. ‘Tar is an old name,’ he said. The witch woman frightened him a little – made him uncomfortable, even though he could all but feel her goodness. Or her lack of evil. Having tasted Thorn, he had new standards.

Little Bow grinned. ‘Not here, Empire Man. Here, Tar is our aid and our support, as the Church says in the south about Christ.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘Not that I have anything against Christ,’ he added piously, and chuckled.

They had to take enormous care getting around the Gallish fleet. Whoever was in charge was a professional – there were scout parties on both banks of the lake, and while the fleet made camp on the western shore every night, there were parties ahead, behind, and on the opposite shore.

The second night after the ferry boat, they led their horses – in the dark – across a moonlit frozen swamp, climbed a tall bank, making far too much noise, and got onto the road – two wagons wide, interlocking flagstones laid over a deep roadbed of rock and crushed gravel. It must have been fifteen hundred years old. There were trees down on the road, and potholes deep enough to swallow a horse and rider, but there was sufficient road left to allow a man to ride in the dark at a reasonable speed.

They camped in the ruins of a watch tower. In the morning, Turkos saw signs of irks – a small party, moving fast.

He pointed them out to Little Bow.

‘Far from home,’ the small man said. He shrugged. ‘Nothing to do with us.’

Turkos wrote a note on his tablets and then they were away, trying to ride off the cold. Athena didn’t seem herself – too many nights without a fire and not enough grain, or so Turkos suspected. But he couldn’t pause to investigate, and he rode south.

It was late afternoon, and they had sacrificed caution to move quickly. They were moving at a fast trot down the road, less than twenty leagues from Osawa, when the road ahead of them sprouted warriors with cocked crossbows and bright red paint.

Nita Qwan – The Shore of the Inner Sea

It took Nita Qwan and Gas-a-ho many days to make a canoe that Ta-se-ho would accept. He rejected their first bark skin and made them harvest another. He was a poor patient, endlessly demanding, and yet a pleasant companion, smoking, offering them tea and a pipe when they were tired of cutting big trees with small axes.

Nita Qwan’s ribs bothered him more and more, until, after a sleepless night, he got the boy to use his fledgling powers on him, and then used most of their available animal hide to wrap his midsection.

They moved camp on the third day, choosing a sand bluff like a small fort with a deep old fire pit and three comfortable benches built by other hands.

‘Irks,’ Ta-se-ho said. He sat comfortably, with his back in a backrest grown from a gnarled tree. ‘This is their land. N’gara is only a few days paddle away, south and west.’

The younger man had rebuilt the older shelter, piling brush atop it until it was nearly weatherproof. The skin of the hastenoch had made it windproof, at least.

In the evening of the fifth day, he looked at their third try and nodded. ‘Tomorrow we lace on the gunwales,’ he announced. ‘You two have done well.’

By noon, their boat was complete, and their camp was packed. Ta-se-ho made them tidy away their scraps of deer meat and the litter of days of occupation.

‘Leave it the way you’d like to find it,’ the old hunter said. ‘Many men hate irks, but I’m not one of them. There’s enough woods for all of us.’

That afternoon they paddled west, and made camp in another lean-to left by irks.

‘Tapio’s kingdom,’ he said. ‘Mogon lives in the lands north of here. We’re in the border country. Be alert. Both sides keep soldiers here.’ He smiled an evil smile and rubbed his collarbone. ‘They call them soldiers, anyway,’ he added.

Their progress was painfully slow – broken bones and knitting ribs made paddling into the steady western wind a dull nightmare, despite the beauty of the sun on the water and the flocks of geese and ducks heading south, the crisp white clouds of late autumn racing overhead, the glorious profusion of red-gold leaves on the shore. Ta-se-ho took to smoking constantly. Their food ran low, and then the tobacco was gone and, finally, near the place where the Upper River flowed into the Inner Sea, they had to land and hunt and dry meat to be able to continue.

They landed late in the day, on a beach of good sand, heavily scuffed by other boats and other feet. After a fruitless evening hunt, the three of them sat, eating pemmican around a very small fire. Gas-a-ho spat out some gristle. ‘Not much wood,’ he said. ‘I scrounged what I could, but it is all women’s wood.’

Ta-se-ho nodded. ‘Wardens were here,’ he said. He pointed to the tracks that they’d all seen, and shrugged. ‘I can smell them.’ he said. ‘Fifty warriors. They stayed a day – maybe two. Killed all the deer, and burned all the wood.’

Nita Qwan looked west at the setting sun. ‘A war party?’ he asked.

Ta-se-ho shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. In the morning, we’ll find their campsite, and have a look.’

They went to bed almost as soon as darkness fell, and woke, very cold, before first light, to a steady snowfall. They had little wood to burn, and that was spruce. Nita Qwan ran down the long beach almost a mile, found some cedar driftwood, and carried it back. His ribs hurt but the exercise felt good, and he felt warm for the first time in hours. The cedar driftwood burned beautifully – the scent was almost magical, and the three of them ate their pemmican and drank sassafras tea.

Soon after first light, the three of them walked along the beach a short way, until they found where the wardens had beached their boats, and then walked up the beach to the forest edge. There, just inside the cover of the big birches, was a plashed wood fence that stood twice the height of a man. They followed the fence cautiously until they came to a gate.

‘There’s no one here,’ Ta-se-ho said, but even his voice held tension. They crept inside, looking with some awe at the big sleeping platforms and the woven mats.

‘Human work,’ Ta-se-ho said. ‘They have slaves – sometimes they trade.’ He shrugged. Then he pounced like a cat on a mouse.

Under a sleeping mat was a beautiful otter skin. The skin was sewn shut and had a cunning pocket in it, and the opening and part of the back were decorated in beads and quillwork – beads of solid gold, and quillwork in red and purple, the colours of royalty. He opened the bag, sniffed the contents, and let loose a piercing yell of triumph.

‘Tobacco!’ he shouted. He opened his own bag and took out his smallest pipe and filled it with shaking hands. He went to the fort’s hearth – dug with his knife in the ashes, and then lifted a live coal, on which he blew. He lit his pipe with the kind of satisfaction that men usually save for food and other passions, and sat on the edge of the stone hearth.

Then he looked around carefully. ‘If this was not Mogon herself,’ he said, ‘it was one of her brood mates – the royals of the lake Wardens. And I would warrant that they are not a war party. The tobacco pouch almost settles it – no one would take such a thing to war.’

Nita Qwan raised an eyebrow. ‘My people and the Albans both tend to take all their most precious things to war,’ he said.

‘There were men with them – and at least two irks. See the prints? That’s a woman, or I’m a heron. So – not a war party.’ The old man shrugged, pleased with himself and smirking.

‘They could be captives,’ Nita Qwan said.

Ta-se-ho grinned. ‘If we had come from the land side, they could be captives,’ he said. ‘Tracks must be read in tehsandran.’

Nita Qwan’s command of Sossag was very good, but he had never heard this word before. ‘Teh-san-dra-an?’ he asked.

Gas-a-ho looked at the older hunter. The two men had a wordless exchange.

‘Is this – hermetical? Magical?’ asked Nita Qwan.

‘No! It is an idea,’ said the older man. ‘It is like – when I say something by the campfire, in jest, it might have one meaning, and if I say it when we are hunting, it might have another meaning. Meanings change depending on who says the words, and how he says them, and where he says them. Feelings change.’ He flailed the air with his hands. ‘Tehsandran is that thing. The change. The place. If we had come from the landward side, this might be a raiding party. But we came from the east, on the inland sea. All the people – the humans – live in the east. So they did not take a woman prisoner in the east, because they would have paddled right past us.’ He spread his hands. ‘See?’

Nita Qwan thought hard and then laughed. ‘I do see. At first, I was afraid you were trying to tell me that if we came from the land, that would change the reality of your observation. Instead, you are saying that it changes your perception.’

Ta-se-ho shrugged. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And I’m not sure. Tracking is never about sure. It is about a vast range of possibilities, bigger than a herd of fallow deer on the plains.’

‘You are a philosopher,’ Nita Qwan said, using the archaic word.

Ta-se-ho said the word several times and chewed the stem of his pipe while he smiled. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. He walked around the enclosure for another minute, leaving a trail of pungent smoke – then walked out the gate and vanished for some minutes before he returned and emptied his pipe. ‘Eight boats. Fifty warriors, and two irks, both wearing shoes – and one man and one woman, barefoot and in moccasins.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘If they went east, we’d have seen them. If they go west, they reach Mogon’s realm in a day or two – her caves in eight days’ travel. But they came here by boat. So the natural assumption is that they came from Mogon’s caves and dens in the west. They did not pass us. Hence they went south – to Tapio at N’gara. It is an embassy – the irks were sent out by Tapio as guides. The man and woman are slaves – but trusted slaves.’

Nita Qwan followed the logic. ‘Why trusted?’

‘They went far to defecate,’ Ta-se-ho said. ‘Humans are far more fastidious about this than Wardens. They were allowed to walk off with no guards.’

‘Perhaps they are not slaves?’ Nita Qwan said.

‘They cooked all the food,’ Ta-se-ho said. He shrugged. ‘But yes – perhaps they are well paid, or merely content.’

‘How sure are you?’ Nita Qwan asked.

The old man was repacking his pipe. He met Nita Qwan’s eye with a wry smile and a raised eyebrow, and went back to packing his pipe.

‘How much time do we lose if we go to N’gara and they aren’t there?’ Nita Qwan asked.

‘A week,’ Ta-se-ho said. ‘More, if Tapio kills us.’

He and Gas-a-ho barked their laughter, and it rang from the rocks and low bluffs around them in the still autumn air.

Natia Qwan had to smile. ‘You think that’s the right thing to do,’ he said.

Ta-se-ho shrugged. But he relented. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If Tapio and Mogon bury the axe and make friends, they will be the most powerful allies in the north country, and we could not do better than to offer our people to them. Mogon’s brother and father were never bad to the people.’ He made an odd motion with his head. ‘They were never particularly good, either,’ he admitted.

‘And this Tapio?’ Nita Qwan asked.

Gas-a-ho leaned forward. ‘The horned one says he is a deeply cunning shaman – almost like the old gods. He says you must never go to sleep in the halls of Tapio, or you wake to find a hundred years have passed.’ He realised he had probably said too much for a young person, and looked at the ground.

Ta-se-ho lay back on a giant sleeping bench meant for a daemon nine feet tall. ‘Tapio fought a war against our forefathers,’ he said, dreamily. ‘All the stories about the faeries under the earth and the war underground are about that war. He is very old.’

Nita Qwan had never heard such stories. ‘Does he hate the Sossag?’ he asked.

Ta-se-ho cocked one moccasined foot over the other. ‘I doubt he even remembers us. But we most definitely remember him. We used to hold all the land around N’gara. This was Sossag – the people of the western door. Tapio took our great towns and sent us to flee into the Burned Lands in the north.’

Nita Qwan sighed. ‘So much for our embassy, then,’ he said.

Ta-se-ho shook his head. ‘No. We have a good life now. Tapio might help us – he took what he wanted, and we survived. Not unlike the sorcerer who wants our Sacred Island. Listen, Nita Qwan. These Powers happen. It is best to accept the change and avoid death. If we can lead them to fight among themselves-’ The old man chuckled. ‘Well, all the better. If Tapio and Thorn destroy each other, the Sossag will laugh.’

‘And be stronger,’ said Nita Qwan.

The hunter shook his head. ‘That’s your brother talking. Stronger is for those who seek strength. The people want to live. Life is not about strength. Life is about living. The matrons know this – you need to know this, too. We do not seek an alliance to make us strong. We seek an alliance to avoid as much trouble as we can avoid, so that hunters can hunt, and mothers can raise children.’

Nita Qwan looked at the old hunter with new eyes. ‘You sound as if you hold the Powers in contempt.’

The old man puffed rapidly on his pipe to keep it lit. ‘You know the kind of child who must keep showing other children how smart he is? While other children run and play and eat and love their mothers, this little boy or girl cannot stop being smart. You know this child?’

Nita Qwan laughed. ‘All too well.’

‘Powers. Mostly, they are people who never learned to live.’ Ta-se-ho leaned back and chuckled. ‘Mind you, I’m an old man with no magic. If I could kill a deer a mile away with a flick of my fingers, I’d be a different man. But I’d never learn to hunt. And I love to hunt.’ He sat up. ‘I lack the words to explain better.’

‘You are a philosopher,’ Nita Qwan said again.

The older man nodded. ‘I could learn to like this word. But let me tell you a cold fact. The Inner Sea will freeze in a week. If we are going to paddle, we’d best paddle fast.’

And hour later, they were paddling south, for N’gara.

Lissen Carrak – Abbess Mirim and Sister Amicia

The Abbess read the latest message from Harndon carefully while Sister Amicia waited patiently, hands in her sleeves.

The Abbess winced once, and then her face stilled. Careful observation indicated she was reading the whole message a second time. This time she bit her lip.

She made a face – a very un-Abbess-like face. ‘Do you know anything about the contents?’ she asked Amicia, who shook her head.

‘Ma dame, I was at my place by the Southwark ferry, in the chapel, when the royal messenger came. As his message was for here and the sabbath was passed, I brought it directly. He had other stops to make.’

Mirim tapped the arm of her chair. ‘The King has appointed a new Bishop of Lorica who believes that the whole of the Order of Saint Thomas falls within his remit.’ She smiled – not a real smile, but a combative one. ‘I suspect that Prior Wishart and I will agree that he has no power over us, but equally I can see some trouble looming.’

‘The new Bishop of Albinkirk is a fine priest,’ Amicia said.

‘He called!’ Mirim said. ‘Hah, and caught us all in our shifts. Washing day, and the new Bishop comes to the gate! But Ser Michael turned out the guard for him, and we put on a passable show, and got the washtubs into the kitchen. He really is a very pleasant man, and his theology is refreshingly modern.’ Mirim took a scroll of the table under her elbow. ‘He issued you a further license to say mass whenever there is no priest present. And he appointed us a new chaplain – Father Desmond. A scholar, no less! We’ve all been on our best behaviour.’

Amicia curtsied again. ‘I’ll look forward to meeting him.’

‘You must be tired, dear sister.’ She paused. ‘There is a good deal of muttering about the liberties you are accorded. Please be at mass tonight, and at matins, so that all here can see you at your devotions.’

Amicia flushed with instant anger, and fought it back down.

‘And we need you to help us knit the defences back together. The choir – the hermetical choir – needs to practise while you are here.’ Mirim put a hand on her head. ‘Who ever thought that convents were places of rest?’

The Sacred Island – Thorn and Ota Qwan

When the moths hatched into larvae, it was incredibly disturbing for Ota Qwan. When the larvae hatched in the hung-up corpses of men who had been his companions, it made him think about things he didn’t want to, so he busied himself on errands. He gathered the early crop of young warriors of half a dozen tribes who had been inspired by Speaker of Tongues’ vision, and he led them on a short campaign – first, to overawe the Abenacki, and then further east.

No Abenacki force rose to meet him. South of the chain of streamside villages that lay in the heart of the Abenacki nation, he rested his war party and met with a delegation of elders. He demanded warriors and threatened them with destruction, and the two older warriors who had held senior commands that spring reacted with fierce words.

He shrugged. ‘Thorn will be your lord, now,’ he said. ‘Submit and grow in power. Fight and be destroyed.’

He left them to decide, and turned south and east. He had a branch from Thorn that allowed him to control the Ruk who suddenly infested the low country by the Inner Sea, and six of the lumbering giants followed him. The rest stayed clear of his path. He had expected to feel the power flowing through him; instead, there was nothing but the sight of the Ruk doing his bidding.

After six days’ travel the war party emerged from the rock-strewn marshes near the town of Nepan’ha. He walked forward on the first snow of the season and met with the headwoman, Big Trout, who was up on the catwalk of the palisade wall, holding a spear and wearing a fancy caribou-hide coat.

‘Thorn demands your submission,’ he shouted.

‘He should come and make that demand in person,’ she said, ‘and not send some witling to do it for him.’

‘He will destroy you,’ Ota Qwan promised.

The old woman turned, raised the hem of her coat and showed him her bare buttocks. She launched a long fart, and all her people laughed.

‘Tell your sorcerer to go pleasure himself with a birch tree!’ she shouted.

Ota Qwan allowed his anger to take control of him. He felt taller – stronger – and indeed he was. He raised the branch that Thorn had given him, and pointed at the wall.

From far away, there was the sound of bellowing. The ground began to shake.

A dozen Ruk lumbered forward.

The men and women on the wall had bows and spears, and the Ruk suffered much as they attacked. Four of them died outright.

But it takes a great deal to kill a Ruk. Those who withstood the withering barrage of missiles ripped the palisade down with their bare hands and went into the town. They launched themselves on an orgy of destruction, ripping buildings to the ground and killing anything they could catch – sheep, horse, or child.

Ota Qwan followed them through the breech with his fifty warriors. He pointed a hand in either direction, and ordered his senior warriors to clear the walls.

‘And then?’ asked one of the young Abenacki.

‘Then kill them all,’ Ota Qwan said.

That was not the Outwaller way. But the men were young, and they already saw much in Kevin Orley that they wanted to emulate.

Ten hours later, the last desperate mother was found huddled in a root cellar and had her child ripped away and killed. She was raped, and beheaded. His young warriors were covered in blood, and some were sick with what they had done and others curiously elated. Rape was new to the Abenacki and the Sossag – in Outwaller warfare, women were taken home, adopted and made wives. Otherwise, the matrons punished you.

Only Thorn had no matrons.

And he was there. Thorn came, wearing Speaker of Tongues.

‘What you have done, you have done for me, and for your people,’ he said. He went and knelt gracefully by the corpse of the last woman killed. ‘It is horrible, is it not? She was a person, and you took that and made her a thing.’ He rose. And smiled. ‘Listen, my warriors. We do this to save the rest. After Nepan’ha, no other town will resist me. This will save many lives – yours included. But also the lives of other women, and other babies.’ He walked through the rubble and the burning hides of what had been the central longhouse, to where Big Trout’s corpse lay in the doorway, her big axe still in her hands. ‘She was a fool to insult Ota Qwan, and doubly a fool to resist, and the deaths of all these people lie on her, not on you. When a leader accepts the responsibility of command, she accepts that she will bear the guilt. This fat woman owns the guilt you feel. So piss on her – pour your fluid on her and rid yourself of what is hers.’ He smiled beatifically. ‘For many years, you Outwallers have honoured the corpses of your enemy dead. Stop that. Desecrate them as fools and traitors. Our way is The Way. Be soft no longer. Be hard. Trust me on this.’ Speaker did as he said – he paused and pissed a long stream on the corpse, and the fat woman seemed to melt a little, and suddenly the warriors crowded around to do the same – and as they did, found their memories of the obscenity cloud over.

Speaker of Tongues smiled. Men are so easy to use, he thought. I will make them animals, and then they will be fit to live in the Wild.

He swirled his great cloak of wolf skins and vanished.

All the warriors cheered, and the Ruk bellowed.

Kevin Orley would have liked to have been satisfied. But he couldn’t help but wonder why the sorcerer didn’t pause to heal his wounded. And his memory of the taking of the town was untouched.

Thorn left his men with a slight shudder of revulsion, rather like a surgeon closing a jar of leeches, and returned through the aether to his place of power.

He then passed a day in casting and watching. The first of his special moths was about to hatch, and he had to catch it at just the right moment to finish its accession of power. Or so he told himself, while another part of his great and web-filled mind confessed that he simply wanted to be present when his creation hatched.

He watched Ghause and the Earl. He watched her dance naked, spending power like water. He watched her cast, and was annoyed and transfixed and transformed. He sent more moths, and then more still, to observe her from every possible angle in every possible part of her life.

Sometimes he heard her speak his name. It was as if she was already calling to him, over the leagues that separated them.

He watched her subsume a witch woman, and he groaned with pleasure.

She was, in her earthy way, much more complex than he had imagined, and much more powerful, and he chuckled and increased the power of his own wards.

He looked to his defences in case of material attack against her husband.

He watched other scenes, as well, through other moths and other beasts – but what they told him was not enough to build a whole scene. His creatures in Harndon gave him fragments of a picture that he couldn’t understand – a sea of angry faces in fire-lit darkness; the Queen shouting at a young woman. The Queen weeping. The Queen, reading old parchment.

And in the subterranean corridors beneath the old palace, his other creatures were all dead. He had lost every moth, every rat, every living thing that he had created or recruited, seduced or suborned to enable him to read his own notes – or Harmodius’s notes.

In the safety of his island, he’d begun transforming other creatures – some badgers, for example, as underground spies – but he had nothing when he needed it, and this caused him immense frustration. Even the cats he had used to maintain his spells binding Harmodius were lost to him – killing mice and roaming the castle corridors, their feline minds locked against him.

Without context, his moths alone were not useful, and he cursed the time it took to move them over vast distances and the power he had to expend to monitor them. Moths could take two months – and several generations – to reach their targets.

His attempt to plant moths on the Red Knight had failed, and all the insects he sent west to watch his nearest neighbour – the famous Tapio, who had refused to be his ally in the spring – were dead.

Thorn stood and thought in unmoving, superior indignation. If Tapio killed his sendings, then the arrogant irk was going to continue to keep his distance, or worse. Why will the Wild not unite? he asked himself. Because each individual seeks only his own good. Thorn sat in the dark, watching the chrysalis case of a caterpillar as long as a man’s arm, embedded in the corpse of a man, and nodded to himself. I will unite the Wild by force, and save it. If they cannot see to benefit of my idea, I will shove it down their foolish, ruggedly individualistic throats.

Unbidden, the picture of the Red Knight standing against him at Lissen Carrak, and seizing control of his boggles, rose before him. ‘You are just some parvenu merchant’s son trying to ape the manners of his betters.’

He tried to focus his rage the way he would focus power for a working. His father had been a merchant – what of it? I will be God, he thought at the distant figure. And you will be nothing.

He managed his hate – massaged it and relived each petty humiliation of the siege – he dwelled on the moment in which he mis-sited his trebuchet batteries, and he savoured how completely he’d been out-thought the night of his great attack.

He took all that hate, and channelled it into the caterpillar like a man giving a scrap of wool to a scent hound.

When he was done, he felt lighter by the weight of much fear. It was a powerful working – akin to the spell he’d thrown on the men who had raped Nepan’ha. Hermetical workings that altered the internal reality of the sentient mind were so delicate that manipulatting the life force of a moth was child’s play by comparison, but he was beginning to see how he could perform such miracles.

After a while, he ceased his efforts to monitor the world, and turned to his preparations to deal with the Earl.

Near Osawa – Giannis Turkos

The men who surrounded them were all Outwallers – all Northern Huran and Kree, with topknots and dyed deer-hair in bright red. But they had crossbows – heavy, steel-bowed weapons, all new made.

It was the crossbows that decided Turkos, although his decision was almost too fast to be described as thought.

Even as they emerged from the shadows to gloat over their prisoners, he reared his horse – his precious horse, that he loved, Athena.

She reared obediently, and her broad stomach and long neck took all six of the crossbow bolts meant for him. And because she was all heart, she landed on four feet and continued forward after her iron-shod forefeet crushed the skulls of two warriors.

And then she fell.

Turkos landed on his feet and drew the heavy sabre he wore – as long and heavy as an Alban knight’s sword, but slightly curved and with a reinforced point that added authority to every cut.

Two more warriors fell – one with an arm cleanly severed and the other with the whole side of his face caved in from the backbone of the blade – cheekbones shattered, jaw broken.

His reckless charge into their midst created more chaos than he had any right to expect – one Kree put a heavy bolt into a Huran from behind in his haste to engage the foe. But these weren’t boggles – the older warriors were already recovering, drawing weapons, or standing clear and taking aim.

Turkos threw his best offensive working from the amulet at his neck. It was a sheet of lightning that flickered blue in the sunlight, and he laid it like a carpet, running close to the frozen earth, as his grandfather had taught him to. Men with protections wore them high, and no one can ignore a sharp blow to the ankle.

The warriors fell like puppets with their strings cut.

None of them were injured in any meaningful way, and it was the only hermetical protection he had. But knocking men down changes their view of a fight, and the veteran warriors began to consider sheer survival. He dispatched the man who fell closest to him, a sloppy blow that nonetheless buried his point in the man’s skull.

A warrior near to him got to one knee and reached for him, and he seized the man’s arm as the armatura taught and broke it and slammed the pommel of his sabre into the man’s face, knocking him unconscious and waiting for a crossbow bolt between his shoulder blades. He whirled – his time of grace was over, and he was praying to God and Jesus and the Virgin Parthenos and all the legion of saints-

The old man had put an arrow in the nearest Kree, and the rest of them were mere crashing noises running into the woods.

‘Best ye get on my horse,’ the old hunter said. He managed a laugh, but it was obvious he was shaken. ‘Glad I didn’t try an’ rob you,’ he said.

Turkos put the point of his sabre carefully on a dead man’s deerskin coat and leaned on it and breathed. He felt as if he’d run a mile.

Athena gave a great kick, and sighed. Bloody foam poured out of her mouth, and she died.

Turkos sat on his haunches by her and wept. He had a long cut across the base of his left thumb and he could see the layer of fat beneath the skin – where had that come from? And there was something in his lower leg. And Athena was dead. He had to discover her death anew, three or four times, like a man touching the stump of a missing tooth. He didn’t want her to be dead. He didn’t want to have sacrficed her.

‘Do you think there is a paradise for animals?’ he asked.

The old hunter nodded. ‘Lady Tara has a place for animals,’ he said. He looked around. ‘We should keep moving.’

Turkos mastered himself, but his eyes were hot and full. ‘I loved that horse,’ he said.

‘Then look for her in Tara’s fields, running with the deer and the foxes – no predators and no prey.’ The old man was all but chanting the words. ‘Now get your arse on my horse and let’s ride.’

In an hour they made the first of Osawa’s outposts, and Turkos gave the password and the alarm was sounded, and mounted messengers went off to the villages of the Southern Huran with news of the coming attack. With a day to prepare, none would be taken by surprise.

Turkos returned to the ancient wall tower at Osawa to read months’ worth of news as quickly as he could manage. But attempting to prepare a small fortress for siege by a vast and better-armed army precluded examining much beyond the surface knowledge that the Emperor was a prisoner of the Duke of Thrake, and that his immediate commander, the Logothete, was dead.

While his precious store of mangonels were winched onto the walls and corner towers, he read the two most recent dispatches.

The new Megas Ducas was an Alban mercenary, and – Turkos read the most recent dispatch several times with growing excitement – he was marching towards the border with an army. He – Giannis Turkos – was ordered to collect his mobile garrison and march to meet the Megas Ducas, escorting any fur merchants in Osawa and surrounding villages and their wares.

Of course he was. He was intent on protecting the Empire’s share of the fur trade.

Turkos read both dispatches one more time and then stood at his work table, a dirty bandage around his left hand which was held high in the air to stop the flow of blood, while with his right he tried to write as small as ever he’d learned from the monks in Eressos. He wrote the detailed dispatch in the latest code he had available and sent off four copies, one each for all the birds in the tower. As the last great black and white messenger bird soared away, he closed the shutters of his office against the cold and walked down the curving interior steps to the ground floor, where the hunter lay napping on the guardroom bed.

Turkos woke him. ‘I’d let you sleep, but you’ll want to be gone before the fighting starts,’ he said. ‘Here’s your gold,’ he added, and extended his hand to clasp the hunter’s, ‘and here are my thanks.’

The old man smiled sleepily. ‘I won’t miss the show,’ he said. ‘But I’ll take the gold.’

Later that afternoon, the first war canoes slipped ashore a few miles north of Osawa. A Kree chief stepped out of the first canoe and received Big Pine’s arrow in his throat, He died, thrashing, in the icy water. Big Pine’s war party screeched-

– and the war began.