The Fell Sword

Chapter Fourteen

Liviapolis – The Princess

Lady Maria stood in the informal throne room with the scrolls in her sewing basket.

‘The Megas Ducas is – apparently – on his way home,’ she said. ‘He sends word that he’ll be back in a week.’ She raised her eyes. ‘He bids you prepare for Christmas.’

‘My father is still a hostage?’ the princess asked.

‘He has been treated very badly,’ Lady Maria said. ‘The Megas Ducas bids you not lose hope. The Emperor has been moved further into the mountains, he says.’

The princess turned her head and sobbed, ‘What!’ and then burst into tears.

Acting Spatharios Darkhair pushed forward. ‘What’s happened? And where?’

Maria opened a chart. ‘It is fiendishly complicated. The Megas Ducas went west almost to the Green Hills and outmarched Andronicus to western Thrake. He defeated Demetrius, who retreated. Andronicus raised an army and then dispersed it.’

Ser George Brewes nodded. ‘Of course. He didn’t have a supply train.’

Darkhair chortled. ‘But we did!’ he said.

Lady Maria permitted herself a small smile. ‘We did.’

Brewes whistled. ‘So – the furs were a feint all along.’

Lady Maria raised her voice so the princess, sitting disconsolate on her throne, could hear. ‘No, gentlemen. The main army marched north along the lake and will – apparently – escort the furs south.’ She ran her eyes over a fourth dispatch, and shrugged. ‘This says there is a Gallish force on the Inner Sea that our Megas Ducas expects will retire at the sight of our banners, but I have difficulty believing there are Galles on the lake. At the edge of winter? There have been reports, but this still seems to me to be a scribal error.’

The princess shook her head. ‘But he said he was going east!’

Ser George Brewes bit his tongue. He managed a smile and said, ‘Either way, it’s a neat campaign. And we’ll have a bonny Christmas.’

Far, far to the north, Ser Hartmut watched bitterly as his galleys raced into the light snow. Already, the mouth of the lake had ice that needed to be broken.

They’d burned two towns of wicker huts and hide houses. He had nothing else to show for all his military might, and he’d been forced to retreat when an army – a magnificent army – had appeared over the hills to the south.

‘Three lacs d’amour,’ he said to de Marche, shaking his head. ‘Who was that?’

De Marche groaned. ‘Do you know the story of the King’s attempt on Arles?’ he asked.

Ser Hartmut looked back through the snow. ‘That captain? Ah, Master de Marche. I will need to look to my arms in order to teach him some manners. That will win me the King’s love.’ He rolled his shoulder against the stiffness. ‘Those were good men-at-arms. As good as my own.’

‘You didn’t lose a man. I lost six sailors.’ De Marche was fed up with war.

Ser Hartmut shrugged. ‘Fortuna. If their horse-archers had pressed harder, we’d all have been taken. The ambush was a pointless fanfaronade – I admit it.’

De Marche let go the breath he’d gathered to speak his mind. Instead, he asked, ‘I assume that operations are done for the winter?’

‘You mean, if we are not all caught in the ice and crushed like bugs by the winter?’ Ser Hartmut said. ‘You wouldn’t try sailing home at this time of year?’

‘Christ on the cross!’ de Marche said. ‘No, my lord, I would not. I’ll pull my ships off the water and brace them and perhaps even build them sheds, if the weather allows me.’

‘Good. And we’ll train the natives. They have much to learn from us,’ Ser Hartmut said. ‘We’’ll teach them to be braver.’

De Marche knew that fully two-thirds of their Outwallers had left them after two days of fruitless combat, leaving only the Galles and a handful of loyal stalwarts to face the rising Morean tide. By Outwallers standards, they had been exceptionally loyal allies, fighting after it was clear that the Moreans and the Southern Huran had the upper hand.

But he looked at Ser Hartmut, and said nothing.

Liviapolis – Master Kronmir

It had been one of the coldest rides of his life. Kronmir lost the little finger from his left hand as soon as he found a doctor, and it took him three long days to get warm again, even among the civilised hypocausts of Liviapolis.

Master Kronmir posed as a wealthy merchant this time, and he rented rooms at the Silver Chalice, an inn much frequented by Etruscans and other foreigners.

The army was still absent from the city, and he made his rounds as soon as he felt warm and secure. He spent half a day making purchases, merely to assure himself that he was not being followed, and then he visited his best agents and left them Christmas presents – amulets fashioned by Aeskepiles. He left them coded instructions for the use of the amulets and his warmest wishes for the New Year, and then he began cautiously probing for a malcontent among the newly recruited sailors at the now-thriving Navy Yard.

The malcontent was a fool, and a dangerous, malicious fool – the worst sort of agent. But Kronmir had little choice. He used the tool to hand. And he had to meet Snea, the fool, in person – he couldn’t be trusted to a cut-out – and that was dangerous.

Kronmir was taking chances. And he knew, as few men really did, where that path had to lead.

South of N’gara – Nat Tyler

Tyler left the Faery Knight’s castle at the break of day, well aware of what kind of trek awaited him. There was no force to hold him, and he walked free of the hold’s magicks, not quite fleeing. When he crossed the hold’s not-quite-visible sanctuary line – the border of the lord’s power – he saw moths out in the snow, a hundred or more of the things fluttering weakly against the bitter cold among the trees, like snowy owls without heads. He didn’t like them much as an omen, and he liked them even less when two followed him.

Perhaps it helped him that he didn’t particularly care whether he lived or died.

At some point in the past, he’d known how much of this was on his own head, but he’d had weeks to revisit his version of events, and by the time his feet were crunching along on frozen snow, supported by the web of rawhide thong on rackets that the Outwallers used, he no longer thought about Bess, or how long he’d loved her. He kept his thoughts fixed firmly on the uselessness of the younger generation of Jacks, not one of whom had wanted to accompany him.

I’ll free the poor serfs if’n I have to do it myself, Tyler said. And a pox on Bill Redmede and that harlot.

He made it a day on anger, and another. Anger burns very clear in the winter. And the weather was as kind as winter can be – clear and cold, yes, but without the sudden thaw that might have killed a man travelling alone. Tyler was no fool, for all that he was consumed with jealousy and rage, and he made camp early, gathered immense piles of brush and dry wood – easy enough with the snow four feet above the forest floor. He camped under downed spruce trees, or built shelters of spruce bows, and he had his Outwaller sleigh – he pulled it himself – on which to lie on a thick pallet of skins. The wood of the sleigh and the layers of fur and the warmth of the fire kept him alive, and every morning he fried a piece of his frozen bacon and prepared to face another day. He expected to be fifteen days crossing the Wild, if he was lucky; by the time he reached the villages around Albinkirk he’d be out of food and desperate.

If he lived that long, it would be a wonder. But he couldn’t stay and watch the remnants of the Jacks betray everything they stood for. They would soon turn Bill Redmede into a lord and follow the Faery Knight into servitude.

On his third night on the trail, he downed a deer with his bow and tracked it by blood spore across a ridge. He was late making camp and not as careful as he might have been – worried, more than anything, that he’d felt something give in his bow when he drew to his ear in the deep cold. He gathered firewood in a near frenzy, and sweated too much into his clothes, for which he’d pay in the deep darkness of midnight when the slick of sweat next to his skin turned to a pool of ice water.

But full darkness found him cooking deer meat in front of a respectable fire, and he’d made a good shelter in the lee of a downed, dead tree that had fallen in a windstorm and taken its roots with it, so that the roots made a wall and an overhang, studded with rocks big enough to split his skull if they fell on his head. But there was room enough to wedge his little sleigh in place and he sat on it, eating hot meat and drinking hot water.

He heard the crunching of footsteps on the snow when it was far too late. He rose to his feet, wondering who, or what would be out in this weather, at this time of year, and then there was a man – tall and straight, with thick white hair tied back with a quill-wrapped thong. The man wore a heavy robe of squirrel skins that was as black as the night around them, and he bore a staff that seemed to be made of iron, and he had no gloves.

‘May I be welcome at your fire?’ asked the man.

Nat Tyler had walked the world a long time. He got his sword hilt under his hand and then turned. ‘You ain’t no man, to need my fire. Whatever you are – if you are a guest, take a guest’s oath.’

The black-clad man bowed. ‘You are wise. I will do no harm at this fire, or indeed, to the fire’s maker,’ he said.

Tyler nodded. ‘I’ve sassafras tea, if’n you have a mind to it,’ he said.

‘Do you know who I am?’ asked the figure.

Tyler nodded. ‘You smell like Thorn, to me,’ he said.

The figure rose and bowed again. ‘You are wise. Wiser than your comrade, who betrayed me.’

Tyler crossed his fingers inside his mitten. ‘I ain’t no friend o’ Bill Redmede’s just now, Warlock, but he never betrayed you. You wanted dominion. We want no one to hold dominion over others. We was allies. And you wasn’t much of an ally to us.’

Thorn’s gaze was steady across the fire. ‘Nonetheless, you are leaving Redmede. With plans of your own.’

‘I am,’ Tyler admitted.

‘I could use you,’ Thorn said.

Tyler smiled toothlessly. ‘Aye, Warlock. I imagine you could use me. But I’d rather not be used.’

Thorn laughed mirthlessly. ‘You are a bold rogue, and I am out of practice in such converse. What do you want, to do my will?’

Tyler took a deep breath. He let it out slowly, and watched as it turned to white mist. He wondered how many breaths he had left. ‘I doubt you have anything I want,’ he said.

‘What if I told you that your Bess only loves Bill Redmede because the irk lord has cast a glamour on her? And on your friend? They aren’t even acting under their own wills. They are puppets.’

A stick snapped. Something let out a very animal-like grunt and Tyler stood up and drew his sword – an absurd motion when he was sitting across the fire from Thorn, who was unmoved.

A third figure glided into the firelight.

‘Ill met by firelight, tressssspasssser.’ Tapio’s fangs glinted like metal. ‘You are a fine one to ssspeak of puppetssss. Man, you accept ssstrange guessstsss at your fire.’

Thorn turned his head. ‘Tapio. You are very foolish, coming out of your circle of power.’

‘Not-a-man, you are very far from your own, do you not think? ’ The irk stood easily on the snow.

Thorn rose and faced it, holding his staff before him. ‘Shall we have our contest now?’ he asked.

The irk shrugged. ‘I would regret killing this man, who is my guest friend.’

Thorn didn’t move, even so much as an eyebrow. The shape of Speaker of Tongues was his perfect cloak – it looked like the body of a man, and yet had a thousand pockets to hold surprises.

He drew one and threw it.

Tapio flicked it away in the twitch of an eyebrow. ‘I could help you, Thorn,’ he said.

‘Help me? We are foes!’ Thorn said, reaching for a more subtle preparation to cast.

Tapio gestured again, a slight wind passed, the fire flared, and Thorn’s casting dissipated among the stars, impotent. ‘I have had thousssandsss of yearsss to perfect thisss,’ he said. ‘We need not be foesss.’

Thorn’s staff crackled and a wave of green and black shot out, mottled like mould. It passed through Tapio, who vanished.

‘That was far easier than it should have been,’ Thorn said. ‘I distrust even victory.’

‘You have gained in wisssdom, then, Thorn.’ Tapio’s voice seemed to come out of the air. ‘Master Tyler, I came to keep you free of thisss – entanglement.’

‘Yes, this cruel little elf has made your lady-love a strumpet and broken your friendship and has come to help you,’ Thorn said.

The irk’s laughter rang on the clear, cold air. ‘Cruel little elf! Ah, my pooor friend. You reek of Asssh.’

Thorn moved, and the irk was suddenly outlined in a pale green light. Thorn’s staff shot out – there was a flash, and then another – a sound like distant thunder, and the tree behind Thorn burst into a thousand splinters – some of them quite large. One penetrated right through Thorn’s man-form. But it was a form, not a man, and Thorn paid the wound no heed as he worked again, and the very air became pellucid – Tyler could not breathe, but only watch. It seemed that only Thorn could move, and the tongues of his dark fire licked at the irk’s form . . . and then something gave. It felt to Tyler as if the whole world missed a beat, and suddenly he was alone at his fire, heart in his throat, choking.

Well off to the east, perhaps ten miles away in the rugged hills he’d crossed on the way from the disaster at Lissen Carrak, there was a rumble like a mighty avalanche, and the flash of green-tinted lightning was followed by pulses of lavender lightning, and then the thunder carried – crack, crack and then a rumbling like the sound of a mighty army on the march.

Tyler threw more wood on the fire. He shivered, pulled his blankets closer, and sat with his sword across his knees. He was reasonably sure it wouldn’t stand him in any stead against either foe, but he felt more comfortable having it ready.

Distant thunder mocked him. He had time to ponder Thorn’s words. To imagine Bess, ensorcelled, locked in Redmede’s embrace.

I’ll show them, though.

He threw more wood on his fire, and then Thorn was back – the long spruce splinter still transfixing him. The warlock gestured. ‘I will show you a secret,’ he said.

‘I want none of your secrets,’ Tyler said. ‘Did you defeat the irk?’

‘Of course,’ Thorn said. ‘What a foolish question. Listen, man. You will die here. Or at your next camp, or your next. Winter is a more formidable foe than either Tapio or Thorn and you have neither the training nor the fortitude to defeat it. I, too, seek the death of Alba’s King. Let me help you live to try it.’

Tyler felt the cold all around him. Sometimes, even when you know you are being manipulated, you have very few options. Flow with the river.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a long spoon.’ He managed a brave grin. ‘Like I always say, needs must when the devil drives.’

Thorn’s human form seemed to frown. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘Come.’

He held out his hand.

‘I’ll need my kit,’ Tyler said.

Thorn’s face remained unchanged. ‘Very well.’

Tyler gathered his blankets and what remained of his food, including frozen portions of venison. His cold fingers were not quick, and the darkness hindered him at every turn. ‘I could use some light,’ he muttered.

‘Make a torch, then. I do not make light.’

Eventually he was done, and he pulled his toboggan to where the sorcerer stood with a four-foot length of wood through his body. Some of his entrails had been blown out of his back and a length of spine showed.

Tyler shuddered.

‘Take my hand,’ Thorn said.

‘Where are we going?’ Tyler asked.

‘An excellent question. We are going through the aether to an entrance to the Serpent’s Walk.’

Mont Reale – Ser Hartmut Li Orguelleus, the Black Knight

The Gallish fleet turned into the Great Huran River out of the lake in good order. They camped for three days, built great fires, got warm and ate sparingly. The Black Knight took every precaution to prepare his men, and he ignored de Marche’s whining, assembled his men, and gave his orders.

The fleet sailed after mass on a Sunday, and he kept them moving through the night, with oil lamps in the sterns of his four war galleys and exhortations and occasional trumpet calls, and as the sun rose on Monday, he looked over the stern of his own Saint Michael and counted the boats, and reached a satisfactory number.

‘Now, we will see something, I think,’ the Black Knight said.

Oliver de Marche elected to try one more time. The loss of his servant left him without a confident translator – Lucius had been killed by the Imperial troops who’d materialised out of the snow and wrecked the Black Knight’s already precarious campaign against the Southern Huran. With Lucius at his side, he could have attempted to contact the Northern Huran leaders directly.

But de Marche had little choice, so he put on a bold face and climbed the steps to the quarter deck. ‘Ser knight?’ he asked. ‘Ser Hartmut?’

The Black Knight gave him a hard smile. ‘Ah – merchant. Come to dissuade me? Eh?’

De Marche nodded. ‘Ser knight, it cannot help the King or your own reputation to do this.’

Ser Hartmut laughed aloud, and the sound was fell. ‘Merchant, I am called the Black Knight for a reason, and what I am about to fashion will suit my reputation exactly. Indeed, what I do, I do in part so these beasts of the woods will know me – and fear me.’

‘They will fear you, and being brave, then they will make war on you,’ de Marche said.

‘Brave? De Marche, I would have had the Southern Huran in the palm of my hand if those cowards had done my bidding. Even without them-’

De Marche bit the end of his moustache and planted his feet. ‘Either way, you never had a chance against a professional army and a string of well-supplied forts. Seizing Osawa was beyond you, so taking Ticondaga is a goal as far over our heads as that bird. We would not have taken Osawa, even if the Outwallers had thrown themselves at its walls like automatons. You seek to make them bear the weight of your – of our – own failings.’

De Marche braced himself for death.

The Black Knight’s rage passed over his face like a shower on a sunny day – passed over, and was gone. Ser Hartmut fingered his beard, ‘You are a good blade, de Marche. I have learned to respect you – you are not one of us, but you are no coward. But in this, you are a complete fool. These Outwallers are not worth a fart, as my men – and yours – will demonstrate in an hour. And in the spring I will take some of them and train them as soldiers – real soldiers – as I did in Ifriqu’ya. They will learn, and they will obey.’

De Marche fought an urge to shout, or tremble. ‘You cannot storm Mont Reale. It is the largest Outwaller settlement in the north. Even the armies of Alba have never attempted it, not at the height of the old King’s power. Nor the Moreans.’

‘More fool they. Watch and learn, merchant. Your way might work, but it is too slow.’ The Black Knight brushed a pair of moths away from his helmet. ‘When the ice clears in spring, we will have another fleet coming down the river bringing me more soldiers. Men who will follow me willingly, for loot, for plunder – perhaps even for God.’ He smiled, and his smile was the final nail.

‘You will get us all killed!’ de Marche shouted. The moths flitted away. ‘You will incur the wrath of God and every decent man!’

Ser Hartmut laughed. ‘Listen to me, merchant. I am a man of honour, and I live by the rule of war. I will do this openly, not in the dark, and my message will be loud. I do exactly what the Moreans have done, what the Albans have done – indeed, what every man has done since men first came to Nova Terra. Outwallers are not men. They are outside the walls of the church and of civilisation. Their deaths will not even leave a stain on our blades.’

‘You are insane!’ spat de Marche.

A pair of marines grabbed him from behind.

‘This has been said to me before,’ said the Black Knight. ‘Yet kings continue to employ me. So which of us is really insane, do you think?’

Mist was still rising from the Great River when the fleet drew even with the island at Mont Reale, and Ser Hartmut took the flag of Galle from one of his squires and was the first man over the bow, splashing through the shallow water and up the beach. A handful of early risers from the massive Outwaller town came down to help the Galles land, and Ser Hartmut brushed past them as his marines formed up behind him and de Marche’s sailors, as eager as the soldiers, knelt in the gravel, were blessed by a priest, and then picked up their weapons.

An Outwaller boy threaded in among the sailors. He saw something he liked, and a quick hand darted out – he took a dagger, and ran, laughing.

One of the marines raised a crossbow and casually shot him in the back. The bow was one of the new steel varieties and the bolt ripped through the boy and tossed his small body several yards. The shamefaced sailor retrieved his knife.

Up on the bluff above the beach, the boy’s sister began to scream.

At a nod from Ser Hartmut, another marine silenced her with an arrow.

‘I claim this island, the river, and the land along its shores for the King of Galle,’ said Ser Hartmut. He began to walk up the broad path towards the town.

His squires and men-at-arms walked behind him in a loose wedge, and the marines spread out on either side.

The crossbows coughed, and the Outwallers who had made the mistake of waking too early died first.

Mont Reale had sentries. They were, however, normal men who had trouble believing that their allies would betray them. It was not until the first flames were licking at the longhouses kept for visitors that they screamed the alarm.

Mont Reale had almost a thousand warriors.

They came from their houses and cabins half armed, and were shot down in the slushy mud of the streets. Or they attempted, unarmoured, to face Ser Hartmut and his knights as they cleared small knots of resistance. Ser Hartmut had divided the town into four quarters, and his troops cleared a quarter at a time, emptying a street, torching a few houses. As the red ball of the sun peeked above the distant mountains, Ser Hartmut clambered over the palisade of the citadel, helped by the snow already piled against the walls. The last organised resistance was crushed.

Officers moved through the town, ordering sailors to put out the fires, assigning houses to soldiers and ejecting their occupants into the snow. The survivors stood, stone-faced, watching their snug cabins turned into housing for their former allies. Then they were gathered into groups and chained together.

An old man had his squirrel robe ripped from his body. He turned with the dignity of an emperor and spat at Ser Hartmut’s feet.

Ser Hartmut met his eye. ‘You would not serve alongside me as allies?’ he said. ‘So be it. In God’s name, you will serve me as slaves.’

Kilkis, in Western Thrake – The Red Knight and Bad Tom

The ride south was almost a triumphal procession, despite the increasingly bitter weather. Mag and the Red Knight combined to lay bridges of ice over the Meander, and when the Captain laced his with turrets, Mag added rearing horses of wind-blown frost to hers. Tom affected to shudder with revulsion, but many of the soldiers were delighted. They were more delighted when the two casters placed a great shining hemisphere over them during a vicious snow squall.

They reached Kilkis, the westernmost settlement on the road to the Green Hills and the last village in Morea before the Inn of Dorling, at vespers. The town was fully prepared to receive them, and the Megas Ducas paraded his full force under the walls of the snow-capped fortress.

‘No rape, no plunder, no thieving. The man who steals or rapes will be executed, and the men who watch and do nothing will go to hell with him.’ He looked out over his little army, and they were silent. ‘Christmas is coming, and these people fear us like Satan come to earth. Prove them wrong, and I promise you will see a reward come pay day. And perhaps even in the next life.’ He grinned. Off to his left, Gelfred winced. ‘There is more to winning a war than defeating your enemies in the field. Go and behave. Or suffer the consequence. Dismissed.’

Bad Tom rolled his eyes when they were done and riding up the winding stone street to the citadel. ‘Good Christ, Captain. They ain’t choirboys nor little bairns. This town hates us.’

The Megas Ducas didn’t even turn his head. ‘They can obey me, or be killed.’

‘You’re becoming a right bastard,’ Tom said. ‘Why don’t you get off your high horse and shag Sauce. Or find some pert thing that takes your eye and get it done so the rest of us can relax.’

The Duke dismounted with his household officers by him, and together they went into the Great Hall, which was so warm that the air seemed thick, and men who had worn four layers of wool over their armour for twelve hours now couldn’t get it all off soon enough. Squires and pages stabled their horses or handed them to servants and then ran to their masters’ sides to disarm them, and the Great Hall echoed like a battlefield as the armour came off – first helms and bassinets, and then gauntlets, then arm harnesses, carefully unlaced and unbuckled, and then the breastplates, or the cotes of plates, or the heavy brigantines, tossed to the carpeted floors. A legion of very young servants served wine while men stood enjoying the heat in sweat-stained arming cotes and plate leg harnesses, and gradually they, too, were unlaced and unbuckled, the squires and pages – still in their own armour – kneeling or crouching to get at buckles behind thighs and knees.

The men-at-arms grew louder.

Father Arnaud spoke briefly to one of the young attendants and then muscled his way to the Duke.

‘They’ve sent us their children,’ he said. ‘It is a sign of trust. Would you say a few words?’

The Duke sighed. ‘More than I’ve already said?’ he asked. But he motioned for Toby to finish, stepped out of his right leg harness, and grinned at Father Arnaud. ‘I feel as if I could fly, anyway,’ he said, and leaped on a table.

His acrobatics got near-instant silence.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘If you look at the pages serving wine, you’ll find that the people of this town have sent their children to wait on us. Please pay them every courtesy. Don’t treat them the way you’d treat your own children.’

They laughed obediently, and Father Arnaud introduced him to the Castellan, an elderly Morean captain named Nikolas Phokus.

‘I gather that we share a mutual friend,’ the Duke said, offering his hand.

The Castellan bowed and then clasped his hand. ‘We do, my lord. He instructed me to open my gates to you, and so far I have no cause for complaint. But my lord, I must tell you that my garrison is unpaid in twenty-eight months, and there is some ill-feeling about it.’

The Duke nodded. ‘Gerald!’ he shouted over the raucous atmosphere, and Random limped his way to the front of the hall near the mammoth fireplace. ‘My lord?’

‘Am I good for another twelve thousand florins?’ the Duke asked his financier.

Gerald Random rolled his eyes and nodded to the Castellan.

‘Ah – Lord Phokus, this is Ser Gerald Random, the prince of merchant adventurers. Gerald, without Lord Phokus, there would be no furs. Can we afford to pay his garrison?’ The Duke nodded amicably.

Random indicated a chair. ‘May I sit?’ he asked. ‘Yes, you can. It won’t help your spring campaign or your fleet, but you can. Remember, my lord, that when the fur money is spent, you don’t have another increase in capital until – well, you know.’

The Duke turned to the Castellan. ‘I can pay two years’ salaries,’ he said.

Lord Phokus bowed. ‘My lord, I would say that would dissipate any – ahem – hard feeling.’

The Duke inclined his head. ‘Just so that we understand each other,’ he said, ‘I expect that once paid, your troops will remain loyal. Or put it another way – once bought, they should stay bought.’

The Castellan’s cheeks burned. ‘My lord,’ he said, his words clipped.

The Duke nodded. ‘I know it is crass to discuss such things. But Lord Phokus, I will execute – quite publicly – any of my soldiers who commits a crime in the streets of this town. So please have your men think on how I will treat a garrison who takes my wages and betrays me.’

‘You, or the Emperor?’ Phokus asked.

‘A fair question. The Emperor, naturally. But as I am now the Duke of Thrake, you may be saddled with me for some years.’ The Duke sipped his wine. ‘Is our mutual friend joining us?’

‘I don’t know – will you bully me, too?’ asked a plainly dressed man. He was smaller than the Duke and had dark hair and dark eyes and most men ignored him. Ser Ranald, on the other hand, plucked Mag’s sleeve and pointed, and her eyes widened.

The Duke bowed. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘I mean no bullying.’

The nondescript man smiled. ‘I trust you found all your food.’

The Duke nodded again. ‘It was beyond splendid, sir.’

‘Lord Phokus has his own issues with the former Duke of Thrake and does not need to be threatened into this alliance. Likewise, Lord Phokus, Ser Gabriel here threatens you only because he is tired, and not because he is one of nature’s bullies. He has, in fact, worked surprisingly hard for the restoration of the Emperor. Where is Thomas Lachlan?’

Bad Tom came forward with Ranald at his side.

‘Do you recognise me, Thomas?’ asked the man.

‘Aye. I’d know you whatever skin you wore.’ Tom towered over the smaller man, and nonetheless didn’t seem the bigger man.

‘I have a private solar for our ease,’ said Lord Phokus.

‘Then let us retire,’ the Duke said. He took Lord Phokus’s arm. ‘I apologise if I laid it on too thick.’

Phokus smiled a crooked smile. ‘I ask myself every hour if I have indeed sold this castle to you. It is painful to be reminded of it.’ He shrugged. ‘But my men need to be paid. The whole town depends on their wages.’

They went through a door to a low room with a ceiling worked in dark blue paint and bright gold stars, with tapestries of hunting along one wall and nine worthy women along the other wall. Father Arnaud joined them, and Mag, and Ser Gavin.

Toby slipped through the door and put a cup of something on the table in front of their guest, who took the head of the table. He lifted it and tasted.

‘Ah – cider. Well chosen, Toby.’

Toby flushed and all but ran from the room.

‘Call me Master Smythe,’ said the nondescript man. ‘Listen, friends. I am here only briefly. Tom, I have looked into your matter.’ Master Smythe spread his hands wide, and then folded them together – an inhuman gesture, as his steepled fingers met the way an artist might draw them, folded perfectly flat and pointing straight at heaven.

In fact, watching Master Smythe was a little liking watching a puppet show.

‘In brief, then. Hector – the Drover – was killed by Sossag Outwallers. They were, at the time, in the service of the entity who now calls himself Thorn and was formerly the magister Richard Plangere. But my investigations have shown that Thorn himself is merely the tool of one of my kind.’

Tom smiled, although the smile never reached his eyes. ‘Lovely, then. Show me to the bastard.’

Master Smythe shook his head. ‘It is a great deal more complicated than that, Tom.’ He sighed. ‘I think one of my kin has decided to break a certain compact that our kind has made. That is all I will say just now. Even saying this much – that my kind have a compact with some of yours, and that this compact is threatened – forces me to take sides in this matter.’

Smoke trickled out of Master Smythe’s nose.

The Duke nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Master Smythe, but please remember that we are not at fault,’

Smythe looked down the table. ‘I was going to say that no one is innocent. But that is the merest casuistry, and we’re better than that. So I will say that I have taken certain precautions. Gabriel, you have done well, but you will need to push your timetable forward. Tom, I know that you mislike me but I must ask you to follow me west and take up the duties of Drover. Lord Phokus, your help was, and will remain, instrumental – Ser Gabriel will need to be able to move east and west on this road for more than a year to come, and this fortress may become the focus of several armies. Which, despite their very different agendas, are being moved by a single will. Gabriel, I have brought you some interesting materiel. Use it wisely. My friends – when I must finally tip my hand I will come under attack, and then things will become very difficult. I apologise for all of the ambiguity and the cloak and dagger, but if I show my hand early the consequences would be most dire.’

The Duke laughed. ‘And they accuse me of having a flair for the dramatic. Master Smythe, what kind of consequences are you thinking of?’

Master Smythe raised his eyebrows. ‘The extermination of humankind in this sphere,’ he said. He smiled, and his eyes locked with the Duke’s. ‘Are those stakes high enough to interest you, Gabriel?’

The Duke nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Good. Because, while we are, in every possible way, the underdog, the enemy has no idea who you are. Or what I can do.’ Master Smythe nodded, and his smile was as natural as his hand gestures were false. ‘It is exciting to have a true adversary after aeons of neutrality. It will require one of your God’s miracles for us to triumph.’ He nodded. ‘But I have always found that it is far more entertaining to be the underdog. There is more honour if you triumph, and no censure if you fail.’

‘Not my God,’ the Duke said, somewhat automatically.

Father Arnaud snorted. And Mag nodded.

And Harmodius said, Ahh. How I feared this.

The Sacred Island – Kevin Orley and Thorn

Orley had ordered a castle built, and instead he had a series of sheds, each fouler than the last. The young men who followed him – a growing number – lacked the inclination to build in hardwood, or to rig latrines or shingle a roof properly. He could terrify them, but he had a hard time motivating them unless there was a town to plunder. They had dead eyes and preferred raw violence to any semblance of discipline.

The sheds angered him every day.

He had more than three hundred warriors, now, who ranged in age from eleven to seventeen. A few of the older boys were fully trained warriors, and whenever he had the spirit to rouse himself from the fire, he made the older men take the boys out in the snow where he drilled them as Southern soldiers were drilled. From Nepan’ha he had crossbows, and he begged Thorn for bolts until the sorcerer made him so many that he could have used them as tent stakes – a massive outpouring of the sorcerer’s power, but one that allowed Orley to turn his least useful boys into silent killers.

He made them build a long shed for target practice, and another in which to sleep, and every time he had fifty more boys, he forced them to build another shed.

He wanted to dig a well, but in the end he had to settle for water brought from the sacred lake. That made all the boys afraid, for a while. But familiarity bred contempt so they drank the sacred water every day, fought among themselves, and the results were brutal.

There were girls as well as boys among his recruits, and they were used regularly and none kindled – some dark magery, no doubt, but nothing that Orley needed to concern himself with, although their blank eyes and lank hair felt like accusations every day. They didn’t scream, and they didn’t complain any more than the rest of his child soldiers, and he went among them like a war god, ordered them to train, to wash, to strip, to dress . . . and eventually they obeyed. The older boys seldom obeyed unless he killed one of them.

Orley grew taller. It shocked him – he’d have said he was past his last growth. He was, in fact, standing looking at the bottom of his beaded leggings, and his bare anklebones, and wondering why he’d suddenly grown four fingers, and what this portended, when suddenly the human skin of Thorn was with him.

‘Choose me your two most useless mouths,’ Thorn said.

‘Too easy,’ Orley said. He led the mage out into the main shed, and found a big boy with slabs of muscle like hams on his legs and arms. The boy was pissing on another boy while three others held him down.

‘Tail!’ Orley called.

The big boy raised his breach clout. ‘Hah! What?’ he whined.

‘You are wanted.’ Orley cuffed the boy and then grabbed the other – the runt being held by the others. ‘And the Squirrel. The master wants you both.’

The two boys were immediately silent, and their fear stank.

‘Things will begin to move, now,’ Thorn said. ‘Your warriors do not impress me, Orley.’ His voice was hoarse and low. The warriors cringed away from him.

Perhaps the long shard of wood that transfixed his abdomen and the curl of intestine protruding from his lower back was the reason. Or perhaps it was the smell.

‘You are injured?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Thorn.

Orley had never found the sorcerer so alien as in that moment. But he made himself shrug. He made himself stand up, like Orley. ‘Pulse and Dragonfly tell me that the Galles have sacked Mont Reale.’ He paused to watch his master, but the effort was wasted. In the skin of Speaker of Tongues, Thorn gave nothing away. ‘We will have many more recruits if we make war on them,’ Orley asserted.

Thorn didn’t even shrug. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We will use them as allies. They have broken the Northern Huran. There is nothing to be had from broken people.’

Orley’s eyes encompassed the boys and girls who made his ‘army’. ‘I see,’ he said.

Not for the first time, Orley wondered how fickle his new master was, and how easily discarded his little force might be.

‘When I am done with a project here, I will go to the Galles and help them determine their next course of action.’ Thorn nodded. His face was perfectly blank. It was like communicating with a stone.

Orley stood his ground. ‘I need armour, swords, more crossbows – helmets. Perhaps horses. Space to train.’

Thorn nodded. ‘Good. I can find these things.’

‘When will we fight?’ Orley asked. ‘You were going to deliver Muriens to me.’

‘His wife did well to warn him against me.’ Thorn sounded distant. ‘It will all happen in the spring. Train well, Orley. Be worthy. Because with the Galles, I may not need you, as you do not need this pair, even though this one is of the strongest.’

Both boys began to weep.

They were still weeping when Thorn fed them to the eggs, which ate their souls.

N’gara – Redmede, Mogon, and the Faery Knight

Insistent knocking at his door, and Redmede threw on a robe and went to open it. The whole house shook – the straw mats let in gusts of cold air. He drew his falchion, opened the door-

Mogon stood there, as tall as a warhorse, her plumes erect on her head. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘I need you. Dress warmly.’

Redmede looked back at Bess, who was sitting up on their snug pallet, throwing a heavy wolf fur around her shoulders.

‘I’ll come,’ Redmede said. It was a complex decision. She might eat him. Even now, he could feel the wave front of her rage. But she had more control than any of the other Wardens and her urgency communicated itself even through the medium of her alien body.

He pulled on two pairs of hose, one over another, and then deerskin leggings over all, and took Outwaller shoes – heavy moose hide, lined in fur – off the wall and laced them high on his legs. He had a good wool gown in Jack white, and he wore his falchion and took his bow, which he strung in the warmth of his little hut. He buttoned his old hood onto his head and put a fur cap atop it, and then pulled light gloves over his hands. Bess pulled heavy mittens like a knight’s gauntlets made in wool and leather over his gloves.

Bess was more than just his partner, now. He saw the Hold through her eyes, sometimes – she loved to see the faeries, the irks, and the Wardens. To her, they were childhood tales made real, and she was living in some sort of paradise. He only saw the Wardens as monsters, and her vision of them steadied him.

‘Help her,’ Bess whispered. ‘If Mogon seeks your aid, it can only help all of us.’

He kissed her, and went out into the brutal cold and snow.

The tall daemon was wrapped in furs, so that she was twice as big in girth as usual. ‘My kind broadcast all our heat,’ she admitted. ‘Winter is very dangerous for us.’

‘What’s this about, lady?’ he asked.

‘Can you ride?’ she asked.

He made a face. ‘There’s not a horse in this town,’ he said.

She trotted off, her mighty three-toed feet crushing the snow flat for him, and he could walk easily except where she went through a drift. But she led him only as far as the cavernous main gate of the Hold. ‘Tapio keeps war elk. Tamsin has one saddled for you.’

‘What is this about?’ Redmede asked.

‘Tapio is missing in the snow,’ she said. ‘I can find him, but I need help. And this is not something he, or I, will wish to have known.’

‘Shit,’ Redmede said. He felt hopelessly over his head but he clung to how much Bess liked these . . . monsters. And Tamsin had ever been like a creature out of a faery tale to him. He plunged into the cavern, through the curtain of warmth, some mighty working that protected the dooryard, and just inside, a pair of small irks held a sharp-faced animal like a moose but with back-swept antlers. The animal had the complete tack of a horse, although oddly shaped, decorated with tiny bells over mottled green leather.

The two irks bowed.

Tamsin, who Bess called the Faery Queen, was standing on the other side of the animal. He felt her presence – and smelled her, too. She smelled like sunlight and cinnamon and balsam of Gilead all together. He bowed. It was reflexive – he, Bill Redmede, every man’s equal, had no hesitation in bowing to the Faery Queen.

‘Find him, ser knight,’ she said.

‘I’m no knight,’ he said.

Her sad smile told him that his opinion held no weight.

‘What of your own people?’ he asked.

‘Please go,’ she begged.

He had no resistance against her. He got a foot into the near-side stirrup and the great beast grunted.

‘You aboard? ’

Redmede gave a little shriek.

Tamsin held out an amulet. ‘It will find him. Even if he is dead.’

The bull elk trotted out into the storm.

‘Can you hear me, boss? ’

Redmede fought his trembling hands – everything in irkdom seemed to scare him. ‘I’m – how do you do that?’

‘Who knows? Good seat. Don’t worry, I won’t drop you. You do your part and I do mine. And don’t use that fucking bit unless you have to, or we’ll see which of us is stronger. Understand me? ’

Redmede put the reins carefully on the warm beast’s neck and left them there, tied together. The elk increased his pace, and Mogon trotted alongside.

Too soon, they’d left the warm darkness of the Hold and the surrounding huts behind.

‘Why?’ Redmede asked. ‘I’m not unwilling, lady. But why me?’

Mogon ran on. She ran for long enough that Redmede thought he wasn’t going to get an answer, and then she crossed a series of downed trees and paused.

‘We’re in the Wild, man. If his own nobles suspected that he was alone in the snow, badly injured – well. Suffice it to say that his mate asks a Warden and a man to save her lord.’ She turned, far more agile than a creature of her bulk had any right to be, and headed into the open woods.

Thrake – Aeskepiles

‘My father will never agree to outright assassination,’ Demetrius said.

Aeskepiles poured him more hippocras. ‘This is the time, Your Grace. If we allow the usurper to hold the city through the winter, we have lost.’

Demetrius sat back. Despite his temper, he had the quick eyes of the thinking man, and they rested on Aeskepiles’ own. ‘My father said we had already lost. That all that remained of our cause was to see how much of the north we can hold.’

Aeskepiles shook his head. ‘You father is merely despondent. It was a local defeat – a mere matter of marching-’

Demetrius cursed. ‘Listen, Magister. Perhaps the person we needed most was you. This Red Knight – he had all sorts of sorcery. He tied my two praeceptors in knots as soon as the action started. He moved a storm front the way a goodwife moves a curtain.’

Aeskepiles nodded. ‘I agree. So let’s be rid of him.’

Demetrius took another drink. ‘The world is full of sons who plot against their fathers. I am not one such. I dislike to betray my father’s trust.’

Aeskepiles could feel his audience wavering. ‘We are not betraying your father, but saving his cause. Was the Emperor a good ruler? No. He was a weak fool who made concessions to every foreigner. May I be frank? Even the usurper is better at ruling the Empire than the Emperor. I know it is blasphemy, but listen, Your Grace. I did not join this rebellion to win more power, or wider estates. There are greater issues at hand. We must win. So let’s send that message. When the usurper is dead, we can cry mea culpa to your father.’

Demetrius drank again. ‘We’ll need his signet.’

Aeskepiles nodded. ‘And the messenger leaves tomorrow for the city. We must be quick.’

Liviapolis – Kronmir and Mortirmir

More than a week after his return to the city, Kronmir stood at the Gate of Ares and watched the Imperial Army march in from the snow. They had been announced the night before, and it was widely held that they had won some great victories and had with them a fortune in furs. He might have cursed, but he didn’t bother. Kronmir lived his life successfully by concerning himself only with elements that he could control. However, it must be said that the Megas Ducas’ month-long winter campaign and its results had caused Master Kronmir to think certain thoughts about his employer and the likely durability of the cause which he was representing, and Kronmir had spent a day or two taking certain precautions.

The army, led by the Megas Ducas, looked triumphant, and far warmer than they should have. The troopers looked thin; a month of winter campaigning had shed any fat they might have had. But their white surcoats hid any deficiencies of clothing, their animals looked healthy enough, and the long train of wagons behind them spoke volumes for their triumph – Kronmir counted a hundred and sixty wagons. Enormous wagons, many drawn by oxen.

The master spy stood in the frozen evening, his hands deep in the sleeves of his fur-lined cote, and pondered how much advance planning and logistics his agents had missed which had allowed this army to march a thousand miles in winter.

He also couldn’t help but notice that the crowd – ten deep at the gate and six deep even in the squares – cheered the army like madmen. They cheered the weather-beaten stradiotes, who looked proud as Pilate, every one of them, and they cheered the spry Vardariotes and their wind-reddened faces that matched their cotes, and they cheered the magnificent Scholae, who looked a little less magnificent in white wool, but still bore themselves like elven princes. They roared for the Nordikans, who rode by, hauberks swinging, tattoos almost black against their winter-white and sun-reddened skin, and singing a hymn to the Virgin Parthenos. And, most disturbing, they roared themselves hoarse for the Megas Ducas on his tall black horse, wearing what appeared to be a cloak of white ermine – entirely of white ermine. He had a rod in his hand – a command staff – and he used it to salute the crowd, like an emperor of old.

At the back of the convoy of wagons there were forty further vehicles – just pairs of axles carrying heavy loads of lumber, pulled by oxen.

Kronmir went back to his inn, closed the door on his expensive private room, and wrote a long coded missive for his new communications service to carry. He went out towards evening and dropped the whole parchment scroll into a lead pipe strapped to the underside of a farmer’s cart – right where it was supposed to be.

After latching the pipe closed, Kronmir walked back to his inn through the falling snow and listened to the sound of a city triumphant. He ordered a cup of mulled wine, sat down with his back to a wall, and warmed his feet on a stool while he contemplated the new reality.

And wondered if it was time to change sides.

Kronmir sat in the common room of his inn, enjoying a steaming tankard of hot cider and warming his toes at the fire. His tall boots hung over a frame with a dozen other pairs, and one of the inn’s urchins turned them from time to time for a copper sequin.

He’d had a busy week, and a fruitful one. His most reliable palace contact had what might prove a useful resource among the Nordikans. The Nordikans were almost impossible to seduce from their allegiance, but he suspected that there must be some disaffection with the Emperor a prisoner. Although their payment by the Megas Ducas had killed the interest of the two who had considered his earlier offers. Or perhaps all that had been a trap.

He sighed. It was worth a try, although the latest victories by the Megas Ducas had solidified his support almost beyond saving. The Alban merchants had sailed away in the hardy round ships despite winter storms, loaded to the gunwales with the cream of the fur market – but the Etruscan League, having paid its fine, had been allowed to pick and choose among the furs, and had even made private deals with the Alban merchants. Kronmir didn’t have a first-rate source, but his impression was that the Etruscan houses had avoided ruination, and now owed the Megas Ducas for their survival.

He took his eating knife from his purse and stirred his cider.

He felt someone’s regard, and lifted his eyes to see the young artist from the temple outside the city. He remembered the boy well, and his own impulse to kill him.

The boy smiled on meeting his eyes.

Kronmir returned the smile. No spy or hired bravo would flash such an ingenuous smile on his way to strike his target. Nonetheless, Kronmir flipped a slim blade out of the back of his belt and held it along his left arm.

‘Stephan!’ called the young man. He had the air of a student, but he wore a sword on a belt of silver and gold plates, like an Alban knight or a mercenary.

Kronmir knew a moment’s confusion before he settled that he had, indeed, told the young man his name was Stephan. He rose and bowed.

A potboy brought a second chair and bowed to the student.

‘Are you a resident in this inn?’ Kronmir asked.

The student nodded. ‘Red wine – Candian, if possible. What I had yesterday? Yes?’ His Archaic was superb – far better than anything Kronmir had heard from other mercenaries, and that further suggested the boy was a student. He sat. ‘Yes, this is my inn. And you, sir?’

Kronmir groaned. Killing the boy would only lead to complications. But he couldn’t share an inn with a person of wealth and property who could identify him to a magistrate. ‘Just another day or two,’ he said with an inward sigh. I liked it here. ‘You are, I take it, a student at the Academy?’

The young man bowed again, while seated. He had very good manners. ‘Yes. I am Morgan Mortirmir, Esquire, of Harndon. I am Scholasticus Affector at the Academy. And you?’

Kronmir knew the title meant he was a genuine adept – a wizard in training. He wondered if the young man was young enough to seduce to spying, but that was mere wheel-spinning. He would recruit his spy-mage only when he was confident of his own place and security, and this was not such a moment. ‘I am a mere merchant, my lord,’ Kronmir said.

‘Ah!’ Mortirmir said. ‘I had you pegged as a fellow practitioner.’

‘Whatever for?’ Kronmir allowed himself a genuine laugh.

‘The amulet you wear shines like a beacon in the aethereal. Ah – I beg your pardon, good sir. I know that some people mislike all discussion of the immaterial.’

Kronmir toyed with the amulet that the Emperor’s former wizard had given him. ‘Really?’ he asked.

‘It must be very powerful,’ Mortirmir continued. He leaned over, and Kronmir flinched back. ‘Sorry. Curiosity killed the cat, and all. I’ll desist.’

A pretty young woman in a fine Morean gown and wimple brought a wine glass, a tumbler worked with tiny tendrils of decorative glass in blues and greens, and the small flagon. She curtsied. He raised his glass to her.

Kronmir fought his rising fear and made a snap decision – the kind he made every day. Sometimes, it was easier to know things than to live in a world of fear. So he took the chain over his head and handed it to the young man. ‘My master paid handsomely for it,’ he said. ‘It is supposed to allow us to communicate. Over great distance.’

Mortirmir smiled, a little shy now that he was engaged. He took a sip of wine and turned the amulet over. It was a silver pendant in the shape of a praying man. He looked at the base of it, and frowned, weighed it in his hand, and something about his shift in his seat made Kronmir deeply uneasy. He began to look at the exits – his automatic reaction to threat.

Mortirmir flicked his thumb over the base of the amulet, and there was a minute flare of fire – blue fire.

Mortirmir dropped the amulet. ‘Well, well,’ he said with the enthusiasm of the young and passionate for an intricate device. ‘It’s very powerful. How far away is this master of yours? Etrusca?’ He laughed.

Kronmir stood up. ‘You unmask all my secrets,’ he said, taking back his device. ‘You are very clever.’

Mortirmir met his eye. ‘I’d be hesitant to hang all that unshielded potentia around my neck. What if the man who directs your business dislikes you, sir?’ He laughed. ‘I’m only being a ninny. Here you go.’

Kronmir raised an eyebrow. ‘Good to know,’ he said.

He changed inns later that afternoon with a minimum of fuss, but the damage was done – the boy would know him anywhere, and the amulet was like a badge. Kronmir was suddenly obscurely afraid of the power of the thing – as if the young scholar’s fear was a disease he’d caught. He put it in his pocket.

Thrake – Gelfred

‘This is not how I’d planned to celebrate the nativity,’ Gelfred complained.

Amy’s Hob laughed aloud, and even Daniel Favour grinned.

They had six small huts of branches leaning against carefully constructed sapling frames. The lean-tos ran either side of a fire trench that warmed both sides, and the result was like a long, very low Outwaller house. The men – a dozen of them – could lie with their feet to the fire’s warmth and their heads under the lowest and snuggest part of the shelter.

The lean-tos were covered in snow – indeed, they were buried in it, but the deep snow only made the shelters warmer. Every deer they brought down added a hide to the refinements they had worked on the openings, and every hour of daylight added to the immense pile of firewood that formed the north wall of the shelters; a barrier against the wind.

Favour’s two hounds lay with their heads on their paws near the entrance. They had their own hides to lie on, and men collected bits of food to try and lure them as sleeping companions, but they mostly slept with the young wagoner from Harndon. Even now, at the edge of night, they raised their heads when he moved.

‘He’s the youngest, and he must look most like a dog,’ Amy’s Hob said with a rare smile. The other men laughed.

Gelfred fetched his pot off the fire and served out mulled wine.

‘I’d like to do something for our Saviour’s birth,’ he said.

Young Daniel nodded. ‘Not until tomorrow though, Ser Gelfred.’

‘Wouldn’t hurt us none to sing a carol,’ Wha’Hae said. Amy’s Hob cuffed him and Wha’Hae elbowed the man. ‘What? I like to sing.’

Ginger snorted. ‘I know “God rest Ye”,’ he said.

‘Ain’t we hiding in enemy territory?’ Amy’s Hob said plaintively.

Young Daniel gave a snort of derision. ‘There’s nothing moving out there but us and the deer,’ he said. ‘And the deer ain’t moving much,’ he added, and got a laugh of his own. Young he might be, but Daniel Favour was the elite hunter among an elite of woodsmen. His patience was legendary, and his arrows flew true.

Gelfred swirled his hot wine and poured a cup for Amy’s Hob, who took it with a surprisingly civil inclination of his head, as if they were all lords. ‘Besides,’ he said in his cultured voice. ‘We have sentries well out, on the road and on the hill.’

‘Sweet Jesu, Master Gelfred, that hillside is cold as a witch’s tit,’ added Will Starling, their newest scout, a former Royal Forester.

Gelfred glanced at the man. They were of an age, and the former Forester liked to swear hard and talk bawdy, which did not sit well with Master Gelfred.

‘Cold as a virgin’s-’ he added with relish.

Gelfred handed him a cup of hot wine. ‘Master Starling, life is hard enough without reminding these men of the women they do not have among them. And it is my pleasure, while you serve with me, not to hear my Saviour’s name taken in vain, or even the parts of a woman’s body. Here. Have some wine.’

Starling was interested in being provoked, but it is difficult to maintain a resentment against a man with mild manners and a cup of hot, sweet wine for you on a winter’s day, and he subsided muttering something about priesthood.

Young Daniel took his horn cup and nodded. ‘But he has a point, Ser Gelfred. We ought to build a blind. A lie. Like we was hunting deer, or duck. The wind on that hillside goes through my cloak and my cote and my gown and my boots all together.’

‘Cuts me to the prick,’ Starling said, but his heart wasn’t in it.

The oil lamp that burned by the entrance flared, and there was a slight buzz, like that of a hornet in high summer.

‘Company!’ Gelfred said, and every man had a blade in his hand. They piled into their winter gear – most had their boots to hand. Favour threw his white wool gown over his head, picked up a boar spear, and emerged into the freezing sunset air. He got his feet into the loops of his snow rackets and trotted towards the road.

The sentries each had a device rigged by Gelfred, who had command of the ars magicka. The buzzing meant the road, and a high, clear tone meant the hillside. Favour trotted well to the north of the sentry’s position – it was Short Tooth who had the road, and he wasn’t given to false alarms. Favour moved quickly, but he stayed clear of what little undergrowth stood proud of the snow and he didn’t give his position away. When he crested the low bluff which dominated the road, he fell flat in the soft snow and wriggled forward.

‘I have a pass, you nitwit!’ shouted the man on the wagon. ‘It’s fucking cold and I want to get over the pass before it snows again.’

Short Tooth moved slowly clear of the huge wagon, which towered twice the height of a man, and whose wheels sank all the way to the roadbed through three feet of snow without putting the wagon body near the surface. They were exceptionally tall wheels.

‘What you carrying?’ Short Tooth asked.

Favour saw Wha’Hae drop into the snow a few yards to his left, closer to the wagon. He worked the action on a crossbow – a latchet – while rolling on his back. Across the road, Will Starling glided up behind a dead tree and froze.

‘Grain for farmer’s market,’ the driver said. ‘Hey, you for the old Duke or the new Duke?’

‘Why don’t you shut your trap and we’ll just see your grain,’ Short Tooth said. He had worked his way to the rear of the tall wagon and he carefully cocked his own crossbow. It was a very expensive weapon – another steel latchet.

The man on the wagon box saw it.

Favour jumped down into the road and ran lightly along the surface in his rackets.

Short Tooth spared him a glance and waited for him.

‘There’s another one!’ shouted the man on the wagon box, and everything went to shit.

The back of the wagon seemed to lift off, and Short Tooth shot a man on instinct. His bolt vanished into the man’s coat-of-plates and blood splashed the snow.

Behind him, another man spanned a crossbow, but the bow itself was yew and he hadn’t warmed it so it cracked. Favour’s spearshaft caught him alongside the head.

The driver fell face first into the snow with Starling’s arrow in the back of his neck. Blood poured out of him, and he thrashed, leaving an obscene snow angel in red agony.

But there were more men in the wagon body, and Favour caught a shaft – right through his abdomen. The pain doubled him up and he fell, the snow cold against his face, and there was a cold wetness ruining his cote.

Gelfred worked – the air grew warm, there was a flash above his head, and then the men on the bluff began to pour shafts down into the wagon bed. Favour knew he was hurt badly, but he was still fully aware – he could hear Short Tooth, the man’s latchet clicking away as he pulled the cocking handle back against the weight of the steel bow and then slapped it forward.

The man was under the wagon, loosing his quarrels up into the wagon bed. And the canvas roof of the wagon provided no cover to the men inside. Blood began to drip out from between the boards.

‘Surrender,’ Gelfred called. ‘Or we will surely slay you all.’

Favour heard the men in the wagon, and heard the sound of someone throwing something heavy in the snow.

Gelfred was at his side in a dozen heartbeats. ‘Stay with me, boy. It’s Christmas. No one dies on Christmas. Everyone lives.’

Favour coughed, and blood came out.

Suddenly, everything seemed further away.

‘Right – clear them out of the wagon. Disarm all of them. Get young Daniel in the wagon. Starling, come with us. Keep him warm. Hob – you take the post.’

Then Gelfred leaned over him and passed his hands across Favour’s eyes, and that was all-

Gelfred turned to the wounded prisoner. ‘I’m in a hurry. I won’t make threats.’

The man was an Easterner, and he shrugged.

‘He won’t talk, even if we cut his fingers off,’ Starling said. ‘This one will.’

The young Thrakian whom Favour had bashed with his spear shaft held his head and retched.

The other rangers took the rest of the Thrakians away, leaving Gelfred and Starling, Wha’Hae and the Thrakian boy.

‘Just tell me,’ Gelfred said.

The boy looked at him. His pupils were enormous.

‘He can suck the soul out of your body,’ Starling said. It might have been a terrifying threat, except that the boy spoke only Morean Archaic and no Alban at all.

Gelfred leaned over. ‘You’re only six miles from the city in the worst weather in ten years. And you’re coming out of the hills with a guard of Easterners.’

The boy put his head in his hands.

‘Do you serve Duke Andronicus?’ Gelfred asked gently.

‘Yes,’ the boy answered, and was undone.

In a moment, he poured his fears out, while Starling watched in contempt.

Finally, Gelfred motioned for Wha’Hae to take the young man to the other prisoners.

‘The Duke will want to meet all of them,’ he said. ‘Leave Amy’s Hob and Wha’Hae and Short Tooth here. Watch the road and forget the hillside. The rest of you get to sleep warm tonight. Horses!’

There was a cheer, and in a handful of minutes, they were off.

‘Bring us back something nice,’ Amy’s Hob said. ‘It being Christmas.’

‘We’ll settle for the boy’s life,’ Wha’Hae said. ‘And some ale.’