The Fell Sword

Chapter Four

Lutece – The King of Galle

‘Jean de Vrailly?’ asked the King, and his voice was high and sharp. ‘He’s in the Nova Terra? How lovely. For all of us.’

Courtiers laughed. A few frowned.

The Seneschal d’Abblemont laughed. ‘He sent a letter, Your Grace.’

The King rolled his eyes. ‘I had no idea he could read or write,’ the King said. Women tittered. ‘Very well, read it.’

From the Noble Knight, Jean de Vrailly, to his royal liege and master, the most puissant and powerful, Lord of the Pensey Mountains, Defender of the-

‘Spare me, Abblemont.’ The King’s thin voice cut like a sharp eating knife.

‘Your Grace. Ahem. Greetings. In the spirit of errantry, and to prove myself worthy of the title, granted me by many, of best knight in the world – Your Grace that’s what it says.’ Abblemont looked a little more like a large monkey stuffed into satin than was quite right, with too much facial hair and a curling beard, protuberant teeth, and a wrinkled forehead balancing an almost perfectly flat nose with two enormous nostrils. Wits at court debated whether he was more like a pig or a dog, but the name that stuck was ‘The Horse’.

Despite a truly stunning ugliness, he remained the King’s favourite. Or perhaps because of it. His ugliness couldn’t threaten the King, and some whispered that the King was a little too easily threatened – by his favourites, by his mother, and most of all by his wife and Queen.

The Horse glanced at the King, grinned wickedly, cleared his throat and went on.

Having earned the approval of the King of Alba and all the knights of his court, I accompanied the Alban King on campaign in the north country of this kingdom, where I encountered many worthy foes, to whit: daemons, Wyverns like small dragonets, irks, and a new species of adversary, called by Albans the boglin, a small creature, insignificant in arms but dangerous in great shoals and tides – and there did disport myself with such fearsomeness and prowess as to win a great victory over the forces of evil-

The King yawned. ‘Does he really expect us to believe this tissue of self-delusion?’

The Archbishop of Lutece frowned. ‘Irks and daemons are well-known servants of the Enemy, Your Grace.’

The King sneered. ‘Has anyone seen one alive this century?’ He glanced at Abblemont. ‘Is there more of the same?’

Abblemont shrugged. ‘Yes and no, Your Grace.’ He raised his eyes from the parchment. ‘I believe him.’

The King leaned forward on the arms of his throne. ‘You do?’ he asked, his voice suggesting delight.

Abblemont shrugged. ‘First, Holy Church requires me to believe – it is an article of faith. And not one as difficult as the trinity.’

His delicate blasphemy made the ladies blush.

‘Second, de Vrailly is a rash, dangerous fool, but he’s not a braggart. Or rather, he is – but he isn’t imaginative enough to invent this. Indeed, Your Grace, if you consider the report of the Seneschal of Outremer only this morning-’

The King shot back as if he’d received a blow. ‘Silence, Horse,’ he ordered.

The whole court fell silent. No lady simpered, much less tittered or giggled; no man sneered. Their faces had a certain vacuous sameness of expression. All waiting for the axe to fall.

It was hard to say if the King was young or old. He wore black – black velvet, relieved by touches of gold – a pair of gold earrings, the gold hilt of his sword, a single gold ring set with onyx on his finger, gold buckles on his shoes worth the value of a small village. Around his shoulders he wore a gold collar of linked suns. His skin was almost perfectly white, and his hair was the same impossible golden colour as de Vrailly’s, which was only reasonable, as they were cousins. But there the resemblance ended. The King was, if not the smallest man in the room, then nearly so; well formed, but shorter than many of the women who gathered near the centre of power. He was not given to the practice of arms; and his ascetic devotion to religion did more to keep him thin than his time in the tiltyard. He was handsome – indeed, more than a few troubadours found themselves able to sing of him as the handsomest knight in the kingdom.

The Duchess de Savigny had been heard to say that he was beautiful, if you liked children – but having been heard to say it, she no longer attended court.

The King whistled a moment, and then shrugged. ‘So – perhaps these improbable monsters exist,’ he said. He looked at Abblemont. ‘And perhaps there truly are witches who cast spells too?’ he added, giggling.

The Horse gave a very slight nod. ‘Perhaps there are, as you say.’

Conversation returned.

‘Go on,’ the King said.

Abblemont laughed. ‘Nay, I shan’t read it word for word,’ he said. ‘Only that they fought a great battle and slew thousands of these monsters, and now de Vrailly is named the Alban king’s champion.’

The King nodded, pulling his beard.

‘He says that the Queen of Alba is one of the most beautiful women in the world,’ Abblemont continued, his eyes scanning the page.

‘You might have mentioned that at the start,’ the King said with more interest. ‘Does he send a portrait?’

‘And she and the King are the most perfect example of wedded bliss.’ Abblemont glanced at his master, whose fist closed.

‘They will give a great tournament next spring, after Lent, to celebrate his victory-’

‘He’s a braggart. I suspect she’s beautiful as a poxed whore and just as faithful.’ The King looked down at his Horse, and the Horse gazed resolutely at his parchment.

‘He closes by mentioning his unshakeable loyalty to Your Grace, and stating baldly that he expects to take the kingdom for his own. And for your crown. Your Grace.’ Abblemont looked up and met the King’s eyes, and saw them flash almost red, as if lit by an inner fire – reviewed his last ten words and realised he’d misstepped. ‘Ah – my apologies, Your Grace.’

He should not have mentioned that de Vrailly intended to conquer Alba for the King in open court.

But the King was a consummate actor, and he stretched and smiled. ‘Perhaps Lady Clarissa would be kind enough to play for us, Abblemont?’

Clarissa was fifteen, pretty as a virgin in a book of hours, and a near-perfect player of the psaltery. She was shorter than the King by almost a head, and had a quiet, demure quality that affronted many of the other ladies.

‘The Queen has refused to permit her in her solar,’ whispered the Contesse D’Angluleme. She gave her cousin, the Vidame, a significant look.

‘Poor thing, she looks underfed.’ The Vidame watched her walk by, cradling her musical instrument. ‘I think the Queen is cruel,’ she said, her voice suggesting the exact opposite.

‘I don’t. The creature is brazen as a steetwalker, dear.’ She leaned close to her cousin and whispered in her ear.

The Vidame’s arched eyebrows still had a little room to rise, and they shot up – her handkerchief came out of her sleeve as if snapped by a crossbow, and she raised it to her lips. ‘No!’ she said, sounding too deeply satisfied.

If Clarissa de Sartres heard a word, it didn’t crease her dignity, and she crossed the black and white marble floor, her plain brown wool overdress gliding silently over it, her head down just a little, hiding her expression. She wore an intricate net of silk and beads in her hair with a pair of linen horns rising from a base of auburn hair and pearls, and from the front hung a linen veil so fine that it was possible to see the shape of her face without distinguishing, at least by candlelight, her expression. She held her instrument the way a proud mother might hold a baby. If she was aware of the unbridled hatred she received as the King’s first female favourite, she showed not the least sign of it.

And in fairness, it must be said that no woman in the whole of the great, cavernous throne room looked less like a royal favourite. If all the flowers of the field were not enough to adorn the rest of the women and most of the men, Clarissa de Sartres was as plain as a sleek brown mouse and about as noticeable. Without the magnificent headdress and the musical instrument, she might easily have been taken for an important female servant – complete to a small linen apron over her gown and set of keys with a pair of scissors tied to her apron strings.

Gossip and comment moved before her like a wind-blown fire in a dry forest.

She arrived at the base of the throne and curtsied so deeply that it seemed possible that she would collapse on the floor – yet so gracefully that no one ever imagined such a thing might happen.

‘Your Grace,’ she said.

The King smiled at her, and his gold and ivory face warmed to life. ‘Clarissa!’ he said. ‘I didn’t see you.’

‘Indeed, Your Grace, I considered staying away.’ Did she smile? The veil was so delicate that you thought you ought to be able to see her expression. Some imagined that she simpered, and some that she sneered, and a few thought she looked troubled.

‘May I play?’ she asked.

The King’s smile grew warmer still. ‘I live for it,’ he said.

Abblemont permitted himself the very smallest smile.

The King waited for the notes to begin, watched his court dissolve into ill-mannered conversation – no one listened to her music but he – and turned to his other favourite. ‘That was ill done, Horse.’

‘Apologies, Your Grace.’

‘None of us is perfect, Horse. Watch yourself. The brute may yet pull the whole – Sweet Jesu, she can play.’ He smiled at the girl, and she played on, quite obviously lost in her own music.

The King watched her a moment and then nodded to Abblemont. ‘When she’s done, clear the room,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to talk to any of them, and I’ve given them a proper target for their execrable gossip. Does de Vrailly need anything?’

Abblemont watched the girl play. He loved music, and he could all but feel her passion and the strings under her fingers. She made the rest of the women look like fools.

She made him feel a fool, too.

‘There are one or two things, Your Grace.’

‘We’ll have a military council, then. But let her play, first.’

Abblemont was on all of the councils – military, civil, treasury, even Church. To be the King’s favourite was to be the keeper of his time and his innermost confidant. Most of the men present – even the hard-faced professional knights like de Ribeaumont, the Marshal, tended to ask Abblemont for his opinion before approaching the King. They assembled in full armour, because that was the way of Galle, and the Rule of War applied every day. Only the King was excepted. De Ribeaumont wore elaborate armour, with sliding plates across his chest edged with bronze and plated gold, with verses from the Bible in hammered silver. Tancred Guisarme, the Royal Constable and the oldest man present by twenty years, wore the highly decorated armour of his jousting guild, made to look as if he were himself a young dragon, all in green metal and gold trim. His arm and leg harnesses were made of scales as small as the tip of a lady’s finger, in alternating rows of silver, gold, and copper-bronze. Steilker, the Master of Crossbowman, wore black armour with gold lettering praising God; Vasilli, the Master of the King’s Works and sometime architect of the King’s castles, wore a breast- and backplate and maille. No one was likely to challenge him to fight to the death, as he was both commonly born and foreign, but it spoke volumes for the Rule of War that even he wore metal. Abblemont himself wore plain white harness – excellent stuff, utterly without adornment, the way the Etruscans made it.

As he’d already been asked about today’s notion and found it acceptable, men spoke to the King with confidence. And Abblemont, true to his word, had already mentioned the whole notion to the King – that they begin exploring the northern wastes of the Nova Terra.

‘The Moreans have many contacts with the Outwallers in the north,’ the merchant said. He was far more than a mere merchant – he was a great owner of ships and his ships formed the flexible backbone of the navy. He had twenty great round cogs, high-sided, bluff-bowed, and impervious to weather and to all but the strongest of sea engines – almost impregnable, too, to the sea creatures of the Wild that were just as vicious as their land-based cousins. His name was Oliver de Marche, and he was dressed as plainly as the girl, Clarissa. His doublet was good black wool, and his hat, too; his hose were more of the same, and if that wool cost twenty gold leopards the ell when fulled, that was something only he and his tailor knew.

‘Despite the Church prohibition on contact with the Wild,’ de Marche went on, ‘the Emperor has officers appointed to deal with the chiefs of the Outwallers, and through them, he receives the very best of their trade goods – spider silk, beaver pelts, and Wild honey,’ he said.

The King was given samples of all three to examine. He tasted the honey and smiled. ‘Delicious,’ he said.

‘Apparently in Nova Terra there are small ponds of the stuff, leaking from great hives of monstrous bees the size of hummingbirds,’ de Marche said. ‘Men there say it is hermetical.’ He shrugged as if to dispose of such notions. ‘Men in the Nova Terra believe such superstitions, Your Grace.’ Stony royal silence. He bowed. ‘I have seen several of the bees. And-’ he looked around the room ‘-an Irk.’

Abblemont had suggested that the merchant mention this. The King was just dipping his folding silver spoon into the honey again – he looked up, and his eyebrows arched. ‘You’ve seen one?’ he asked.

‘That I have, Your Grace. And a gryphon or some such creature of evil omen on the wing – far to the south of me on one of their inland seas, but I swear on my hope of heaven it was no bird. And the beaver-’

The King rubbed the fur with his thumb. It was as soft as plush, and deep, and curiously warm. ‘Superb,’ he said.

De Marche nodded. ‘We could own the trade,’ he said. ‘All these things are a mere curiosity for the Emperor. For us-’

The King’s eyes went to a great roll of hide – a stag or hind, tanned carefully, and with a chart drawn on it. ‘I never really saw the shape of Nova Terra before,’ he said quietly. ‘So the Emperor has Alba to his west and these Outwallers to his north.’

‘Technically, the Kingdom of Alba is a part of the Empire,’ Abblemont said.

‘Technically, the Kingdom of Galle is part of the Empire of Ruhm,’ the King snapped back. ‘And the current Emperor in Liviapolis claims to be my suzerain, by some absurd quibble of history.’

In fact, the quibble was hardly absurd or historical – every man present knew the strength of the Emperor’s claim on paper. And the weakness of his armies to enforce it.

But Abblemont was the only one there who was permitted to directly dispute his word, and that was a chancy business at the best of times. Further, as it happened, Abblemont agreed with his sovereign that it was time for Galle to rule others, and cease to be ruled. So rather than suggest that the Emperor might have a point – that the King’s own father had kissed the Emperor’s red boots and sworn his fealty – Abblemont leaned back in his chair and said, ‘Trade with the tribes north of the Wall would give us new products to tax, increase trade with the south and put us in a position to – hmm – let us say to influence the wild impulses of the heathen Outwallers.’

‘Convert them to the true faith?’ asked the Marshal.

If you define the true faith as a willingness to do the bidding of the King of Galle, thought Abblemont. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Through our priests and our soldiers, and not those of the Patriarch and the Emperor.’

De Ribeaumont smiled like a wolf. ‘Ahh. Yes.’ He shook his head. ‘My lords, I’m old and slow. If de Vrailly is only one half as successful as the bastard claims, and if we could gain any force at all in the northern wild-’ He sucked his teeth. ‘Good Christ, my lords, we could crush the Emperor like a nut. Or the King of Alba.’ He nodded. ‘Take Nova Terra for ourselves.’

‘We might not need to,’ Abblemont said, tossing a scroll tube on the table with a rattle. ‘You gentlemen can read that at your leisure. One of my letter-writing friends.’ He leaned back.

The King extended a long black-clad arm and his delicate fingers snapped up the scroll like the sharp-tipped arm of a spider. ‘Who is he?’ he asked, his eyes darting rapidly over the author’s elegant hand.

‘I do not know myself, and I would not say his name even in this august assembly if I knew it,’ Abblemont said. ‘Remember our little disaster last year in Arles.’

Tancred Guisarme, the Constable, made a face as if he’d swallowed something bitter. ‘Someone talked,’ he said.

‘The fucking herald talked,’ said de Ribeaumont. ‘And he’s dog food now. But that’s not the point.’

Abblemont nodded. ‘Exactly. Do you know that in the Archaic Empire, the Master of Spies referred to every agent by the name of a flower or an animal or some such – never by their own names. Not even their sexes were known.’

‘Sex?’ asked Guisarme. ‘We wouldn’t use women as spies, would we?’

There was the briefest pause, as there always is when a dozen men realise that one of their number is a fool.

‘Unchivalrous,’ muttered Guisarme, in the tone of a man who’s just discovered that his neighbours worship Satan.

De Marche cleared his throat. ‘If Your Grace will admit of the possibilities,’ he began carefully.

The King was mindful that one of his duties was not to leave his best servants blowing in the wind. He smiled and sat up. ‘What do we need to start our horse in this race?’ he asked.

De Marche smiled. ‘Your Grace, it was in my mind to send a trade expedition, well dowered with our goods – swords and armour, which the Outwallers value above all things; wool and linen, flashy, cheap jewels such as peasant women wear, and bronze and copper pots for cooking. I’m told, by our Etruscan source, that these sell well in the north.’ He nodded. ‘Those have to be well made. The Outwallers like shiny things, but they are not children nor yet fools. So the Etruscan tells me.’

The King pulled at his beard and looked at his Horse.

Abblemont nodded slowly. ‘I would do this thing,’ he said carefully. ‘But I would prime the pump first – with a mailed fist.’

That was the right kind of talk for the war council. De Ribeaumont – obviously bored and ill at ease talking to a merchant, even one who’d fought at sea and earned himself a knighthood – sat up and smiled. ‘A military expedition?’ he asked.

Abblemont smiled his simian smile. ‘Something a trifle subtler than a charge of knights, Marshal.’

‘Of course,’ the Marshal said.

‘Perhaps a sellsword,’ Abblemont said, almost as an afterthought.

It was the King’s turn to straighten up. ‘Not that arrogant boy and his company of thugs,’ he shot. The King had endured an unfortunate encounter with a company of lances the year before, when he tried to take Arles by subterfuge, and failed.

Abblemont smiled. If I could hire that company then I would, he thought, but they had apparently left for Nova Terra and vanished into its maw.

De Marche leaned forward. ‘Your Grace, I have a man in mind – a very successful adventurer, one of Your Grace’s own subjects. Ser Hartmut Li Orguelleus.’

‘The slaver knight?’ the King said, and he winced. ‘The Black Knight? The Knight of Ill Renown?’

De Marche shrugged. ‘They are just names, Your Grace. His loyalty is deep and entirely to Your Grace. He has sailed far to the south, landed in Ifriquy’a and come away the conqueror.’

‘In the Middle Sea, he’s served our purposes well,’ Abblemont said. ‘Though I confess I wouldn’t invite him home to dinner. Nor would I allow him to address my daughter, no matter how honourable his intentions.’

‘Tar sticks,’ said the King. ‘He has an evil name. He fought for the Necromancer in Ifriqu’ya!’

De Marche sighed. ‘Your Grace, it takes a remarkable man to go to a distant land at the head of a tiny company, and make war for us. To make decisions-’

‘Decisions that would bind us,’ the King said. He looked pensive.

‘The kind of decisions that the Outwallers would respect,’ Abblemont said cautiously.

‘He has been very successful taking slaves in Ifriquy’a,’ de Marche put in.

‘He almost started a war with Dar-as-Salaam that could have broken our Middle Sea trade,’ hissed the King.

Abblemont shrugged. ‘To be fair, he also defeated the Emir’s fleet at Na’dia.’

The men around the table shared a glance. A long one. The King looked from one to another.

‘Great plans require great risks, and I suspect that the employment of this terrible man is not the smallest risk we will incur to take Nova Terra,’ said the King. He swirled the wine in his golden cup and stood. ‘Let it be so,’ he said, and de Marche smiled.

‘Your Grace,’ he agreed, with a bow. ‘I have him waiting below.’

The King paled. He put a hand on his chest. ‘I don’t intend to meet him,’ the King snapped. ‘Send him to massacre heathens and bring me what I desire, but do not expect me to suffer his odious spirit in my chambers.’

The merchant recoiled. He bowed with proper ceremony. The King relented and gave him a hand to kiss, and de Marche bowed deeply.

‘I approve of what you are doing,’ the King said in a low voice.

Abblemont smiled very slightly – much as he had when the King had shown his pleasure to the Lady Clarissa.

If only people would simply believe me, he thought, this would all be so much easier. He had a strategy of campaign ready for Ser Hartmut. He had a strategy that would end in the subjugation of Alba and the Empire – and Arles and Etrusca as well. He doubted he’d see it all done in his own lifetime, but the recruitment of the Black Knight was a vital step.

‘He’ll need a siege train,’ Abblemont added.

‘Whatever for?’ asked the King. De Marche was already gone.

‘It would take us years to build a port in Nova Terra,’ Abblemont said. ‘So much easier to seize one instead.’

The King sighed. ‘I sense that you have already chosen your target,’ he said.

Abblemont smiled. ‘One of the foremost castles in the world,’ he said. ‘Ticondaga.’

‘I’ve never heard of it, Abblemont.’ The King shrugged, distancing himself from the idea. He leaned back. ‘May I send for the lady now, my Horse?’

Abblemont pursed his lips.

‘Why target such a powerful castle, then?’ asked the King.

‘It will save money in garrison. And it will send a strong message to Your Grace’s enemies. And rebound all the more to Your Grace’s glory.’ Abblemonte bowed.

‘And if the Black Knight fails, or commits some hideous crime instead?’ the King asked.

Abblemont shrugged. ‘Then we disown him and speak much of the rapaciousness of merchants and mercenaries.’ He rubbed the back of his thumb against a small hermetical instrument that looked like a stud on his sword belt. It would cause a low musical tone to play in Clarissa de Sartres’ ear, summoning her. It was the Horse’s method of ensuring that she always ‘happened’ upon the King.

The King gave his courtier a wry smile. ‘Let it be so,’ he said.

The Long Lakes – Squash Country – Nita Qwan

Peter – Nita Qwan – wouldn’t have gone back to Ifrquy’a if he’d been offered a winged ship and a company of houris.

He had this elaborate thought as he lay on his back under a magnificent maple tree, watching his wife’s round bottom as she hoed their squash, cutting weeds with the bronze-tipped hoe he’d made from a scrap of discarded armour.

She was probably pregnant, and that neither lessened her beauty nor made him feel that he should leap to his feet and hoe the ground for her. It was women’s work.

Behind him three great hides stretched on frames indicated that he had pulled his weight. And the shape of her buttocks and complete lack of any covering beyond a single layer of deerskin – their rhythmic movement-

She turned and looked at him under her lashes. She laughed. ‘I’m a shaman – I can read your mind.’

She went back to hoeing her way down the row. She reaped the weeds like a soldier killing boggles – efficient and ruthless. He had never imagined her to be such a good farmer, but then, when he killed her husband and took her, he’d known nothing about her but the softness between her thighs.

She was working her way back along the edge of the corn now – the head-high, ripe corn. The matrons had already harvested the first ears and all the maidens of the right age had run through the corn with young men chasing them. There had been a great deal of laughter and gallons of good cider, and Ota Qwan had taken a young wife.

His own wife stopped and pulled a ripe ear of corn from a stalk. Slowly she stripped back the husk and the silk. Her eyes met his. Her lips touched the end of the ear of corn-

He leaped to his feet and ran to her.

She stepped into the rows of corn and dropped her wrap skirt. ‘Mind the baby,’ she said. And laughed into his mouth.

Ota Qwan’s new wife was the daughter of the paramount matron, Blue Knife. Her husband was a quiet man – a gifted hunter and a deep thinker, but without apparent interest in the politics of the people.

The girl’s name was Amij’ha. She was very young – just exactly old enough to run through the corn, as the Sossag said. But she laughed well, she was prepared to ridicule her new husband like a proper wife, and she came of strong stock. She was well liked, and her marriage to Ota Qwan marked him for further advancement. And he surprised everyone by hunting deer, trapping, and even working beside his new wife in the fields. Their cabin was covered in drying hides, and when they had been home for a month from the war, he proposed to lead men to find honey – the great ponds of Wild honey that moved every year in the west, but could always be found by a party bold enough to look. When he made the proposition in front of the matrons who ruled the people in times of peace, his mother-in-law saw to it that he sounded appropriately humble, his wife supported him, and the matrons gave him the lead.

Peter had time to replace his breech clout and make tea in a fine copper kettle – almost his only loot from the summer campaign. He was still thinking how enjoyable his life was, and how much better than the fate he had expected when he was taken as a slave – when Ota Qwan’s shadow darkened his door.

‘Hello, the house!’ Ota Qwan said. ‘Hey, brother. May I come in?’

Peter threw back the deer hide and propped it open. ‘My wife says it lets flies in,’ he said. ‘I feel it lets them out.’

Ota Qwan gave him a quick embrace. ‘I suspect the Queen of Alba makes the same argument, and the King leaves the windows open anyway,’ he said, throwing himself on a bundle of furs. ‘You’ve been busy.’

‘I’m happy, and I want to keep it that way,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have a boy.’

Ota Qwan leaped to his feet and threw his arms around Peter. ‘Ah! Well done. Hence all the hunting.’

Peter shrugged. ‘I hear winter is nothing to laugh at,’ he said.

Ota Qwan was briefly sobered. ‘That’s no lie, brother.’ He made a face. ‘I mean to make a run west for some honey.’

Peter laughed. ‘Since I have a wife,’ he said, ‘I know all about it. And you know I’ll go. Not sure I was offered a choice.’

‘Honey trades well when the foreign geese come up the Great River – or even if we just trade it over the Wall.’ Ota Qwan shrugged. ‘But we get a better price from the geese.’

The wild geese, as the Sossag called them, were the great round ships from Etrusca that came into the river most years, in late fall, to trade. Sometimes there were only a few, and sometimes great fleets of them. They stayed to the east for the most part, but for the last decade, so the matrons had noted, the geese had come further and further up the Great River every year.

‘And beaver,’ Peter said. ‘I have more than thirty pelts.’

Ota Qwan made a motion that suggested that he thought beaver to be too much work. ‘If we’re quick, we can harvest as much as we can carry,’ he said. ‘I did it last year.’

‘And lost a warrior,’ Peter said.

Ota Qwan’s face darkened, but he and his brother had long since established their borders. Ota Qwan shrugged. ‘Yes.’ He looked at the ground. ‘In fact, it was my fault.’

Peter knew more about it than he wanted to know, so he remained silent. Wives talked. Husbands heard. Finally, he said, ‘I’ll be with you, anyway. You know that.’

Ota Qwan stood. ‘I’d take it as a favour if you’d say so at the fire,’ he said.

Peter nodded. ‘When do we leave?’ he asked.

Ota Qwan looked at the smoke from the hearth. ‘Water’s boiling,’ he said. ‘Two days, if I can get ten men to go.’

Peter slapped him on the shoulder, stooped for the pot, and made tea.

Harfleur and the Sea of Morea – Ser Hartmut Li Orguelleus, the Black Knight

The three round ships towered over the quay, like towers over a castle wall.

The Black Knight towered over his fellows on the quay in direct proportion. He was a head taller than any Galle around him; his arm-harnesses had the circumference of a lady’s waist. He was fully armed and armoured, despite being in a merchant port in the very best-protected roadstead in Galle.

He was watching his warhorse swayed by a crane driven by fifty criminals as it carried the drooping equine up, up, up the ship’s side. But the dockmen knew their business, and, despite his curses, they got his horse aboard, and those of all his knights – twenty great horses, and ten more besides as spares.

At his side, Oliver de Marche looked up from a tablet. ‘. . . crossbows, mostly. They sell well among the Huran, or so the Etruscans tell me.’ He shrugged. ‘They’ve never dropped a horse, my lord.’

Ser Hartmut turned to Etienne de Vrieux, his squire. He raised an eyebrow.

De Vrieux bowed to the merchant captain. ‘I must remind you that Ser Hartmut does not speak with members of the third estate.’

De Marche cleared his throat. ‘But – That is – he asked me what we were carrying!’

De Vrieux shook his head slightly. ‘No, Master Captain, if I may beg to differ, he asked the air a rhetorical question. If you would care to inform me just what you have in lading, I will pass that information on to my knight, if it proves to interest him. Otherwise, it will best become you not to address him directly.’

‘And if we enter battle?’ de Marche asked the squire. ‘Does your Lord know I was knighted by the Lord Admiral himself?’

Ser Hartmut’s eyes never left his horse. ‘Battle ennobles,’ he said. ‘If we enter battle as companions, tell the man I will have no hesitation in speaking to him, nor even in listening to what he might have to say.’ He shrugged. ‘I do not know the Lord Admiral.’ His eyes passed over his squire and locked on the merchant captain. ‘Tell him that his unseemly staring will eventually anger me.’

In truth, the Black Knight was one of the handsomest men Oliver de Marche had ever seen. He stood a head taller than any other man on the dock, with blue-black hair and smooth, unscarred olive skin like the southerner that he was. His moustaches shone as if oiled. Perhaps they were, de Marche thought to himself. And his eyes were blue. De Marche had never seen a man with blue eyes and such dark skin.

They were also a very unlikely shade of blue – a dark blue, like lapis. Damn me, I’m staring at him again.

Maistre de Marche bowed to the squire. ‘Please tell monsieur your master that his wishes will be complied with. And please assure him that these men have never dropped a horse.’

Ser Hartmut’s eyes met his, just for a moment. ‘Best they not start with mine, then,’ said the giant. Rather than madness or arrogance, the dark eyes held amusement. ‘And ask our captain, Etienne, while we have his attention – how well armed are your sailors?’

‘I won’t ship a man who can’t fight,’ de Marche said, waving the squire aside. ‘The Etruscans are growing more outrageous every year. They won’t want us in the Great Huran River, either.’ He paused and bowed, again, to the squire. ‘That is, please tell your master that my men are all armed with a coat of mail and most have a breastplate of the new steel; everyone has a steel cap, a sword, and a pair of spears.’

Ser Hartmut managed a thick-lipped smile. ‘With three round ships and all my men-at-arms,’ Ser Hartmut said, with a slow smile, ‘I will endeavour to give these Etruscans an ill jest.’ He nodded. ‘We shall have some good adventures, Etienne.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ Etienne de Vrieux replied, somewhat woodenly.

The Long Lakes – Squash Country – Nita Qwan

They left in the darkness, with dawn just a murmur of orange in the east. Each man had a pair of pails made of birch bark with spruce-root handles. They weighed almost nothing, and men tied them to their spears, put bows over their shoulders, quivers on their backs, five handfuls of pemmican in their pouches, tobacco for smoking while complaining about their wives, and one blanket per man. There were women who usually ran with the warriors, but not this time.

Ota Qwan led them out at a run, and women gathered and screamed or keened farewells, sounding like irks in the warm summer morning – many affectionate farewells, most of them taunting. Peter’s wife screamed that he was leaving her to bear the child alone, and Se-hum-se’s wife complained that she already felt empty, so empty . . .

They left to laughter.

Running hard.

Nor did they slow. Men who went with Ota Qwan knew who he was and who he wanted to be. He made no secret of his desire to be named war chief again. Every man present had fought by his side, painted like demons, against the drovers and the Hardskins, and every man present knew that the matrons already talked of war with the Huran to the east. Another tribe of Outwallers with dangerous ideas and a penchant for expansion.

A few months with the Sossag had shown Peter they were as complex as any other people. For example, at home, his people had trained for war – a small caste of warriors within each tribe had trained hard. Among the Sossag, almost all men and no few women were warriors, and they never trained. Or rather, every other act was also training. Sossag warriors ran everywhere. There was never a time they walked, except to cross the village. Every hunt was training for war, and every war was practice for the hunt. Hunting in the Wild was war of a sort.

And so was gathering honey.

The first night, because he was fresh, Peter made a little oven from a bank of good clay and baked cornbread. Other men found rabbits and squirrels, and they were well fed, and no one needed a handful of pemmican. A young man – a distant cousin of his wife’s called Ayen-ta-naga – leaned over and grinned at him.

‘Men say your bread is worth coming to eat,’ he said. ‘By Tara’s bum, it is good to call you cousin.’ He laughed.

Other men nodded. In the early days no one had ever thanked him for his cooking, but now that he was fully Sossag, it seemed to be an odd, but real, fame. Nita Qwan, the life maker, was a cook. A damn good cook.

The second day it rained and he was wet, and cold. He didn’t relish sleeping in a pile of other men, but he did, and he was getting better at it – he got more sleep than he’d expected, and he rose to a drizzle that hadn’t quite extinguished the small fire that had warmed last night’s meat. He and his wife’s cousin built it big enough for the men to enjoy a little warmth. They made tea, drank it, pissed on the fire, and Ota Qwan told a sullen youngster named Gas-a-ho to carry the pot, which he did with an ill grace.

Peter stopped by the young man. ‘Wash it and put it into your honey pail,’ he said. ‘Much easier.’

The young man narrowed his lips, looked at Peter, and shrugged. ‘Fine,’ he said.

Later, when he was running beside the former slave, he said, ‘You were right. It’s easy. Tomorrow I’ll just offer to carry it.’

Peter knew he was supposed to grunt with amusement, but he nodded. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘You know, the more work you do, the less crap they’ll give you.’

Gas-a-ho ran on in silence.

They ran all day. Peter was bone tired by the end, but proud, too – when he’d first joined the people these all-day runs had nearly killed him. Now, he understood their necessity.

He still hated to run.

That night it rained so hard that there was no point in making a fire. But Ota Qwan sent two of their older men up the ridge on their left – the north – and they found a cave. Really, it was more of an overhang than a cave, and the inhabitants – a troop of coyotes – had to be driven out. They gathered wood while their muscles cooled and the shaman’s son lit it with a flick of his hand. They ate pemmican; Peter – the cook – loved pemmican. Other men groaned and complained.

In the morning they ran west again. The weather cleared so that there was a lowering mist in the streambeds, low cloud rolled over their heads, but it didn’t actually rain. Peter got a deer through nothing but luck, standing with his back to a tree, pissing down a hill, he saw a doe break cover. He had all the time in the world to finish his business, string his bow, put an arrow to it and watch her stop innocently almost at his feet in a little gully. He watched her sniffing the air – spooked by his urine, no doubt – and he put an arrow neatly between her shoulder blades. She fell dead without a single bound, and the other warriors pounded his back and praised him.

They spent a day there, made shelters, and ate the deer and another that Gas-a-ho brought down. They dried some surplus meat and rose on the sixth day to run again. They had a dry trail and no rain so they ran further than any day before, yet stopped earlier, made a fire, and cooked a sort of stew of half-dried meat and pemmican and raspberries picked from bushes around the campsite.

At darkness, Ota Qwan tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Guard,’ he said. He went from man to man, naming night guards – an hour of lost sleep.

But they were deep in the Wild, and Nita Qwan knew Ota Qwan was right. He stared into the darkness for an hour – it was an easy watch. Towards the end Ota Qwan came to him with a lit pipe, and they shared it, passing the stone and antler pipe back and forth.

They sat in complete silence for long enough that Peter could see the passage of the stars overhead. He sighed.

Ota Qwan did the same. ‘Smell it?’ he asked suddenly.

Nita Qwan had no idea what he was talking about. ‘Smell what?’ he asked.

‘Honey,’ Ota Qwan said. ‘Sweet.’

Peter realised he’d thought it was a lingering taste of sweet tobacco. ‘Ah,’ he said.

‘Quick strike and we turn for home,’ Ota Qwan said. ‘There’s something out here with us. Probably boglins after the honey, too.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s plenty for everyone.’ His body rocked as he chuckled. Peter could feel him.

‘Better hope so, anyway,’ he said.

North and West of Lissen Carrak – Thorn

Thorn sat at the base of an immense maple tree, perhaps four or five centuries old, its branches a natural tent, its trunk home to myriad creatures great and small. A burl the size of a man projected from the trunk to make a rainproof shelter, even for a frame as large as Thorn’s.

Thorn didn’t mind rain, or snow, or sun. But the tree was beautiful, and full of power of its own, and the burl and the shelf seemed to have been made just for Thorn.

He was north of the lakes – two hundred leagues and more from Lissen Carrak. The Dark Sun could not track him here. Not that he heeded the Dark Sun.

That was all behind him.

Instead, Thorn sat in the rain, smelling the air. He had felt Ghause Muriens’ sending, and he let it wash over him. She was far away, and her sending did nothing but remind him how much he disliked her and her easy carnality and her foolish passions. She had positioned herself at court as Sophia’s enemy long ago, and even though the world had changed since then, still he found her easy to despise.

Sophia is dead.

Thorn shuddered.

Nonetheless, he disliked Ghause Muriens. Almost as much as he disliked moths. And butterflies. He flicked a stick-like hand to drive a large moth off his stony hide.

He disliked moths, he had since boyhood, but just now he disliked everything. Since his escape from the field of Lissen Carrak, Thorn had questioned everything – his allegiance to the Wild, the theory that supported his relationship to other creatures – even the soundness of his own mind.

He had been a fool to attempt command of an army. That way lay nothing but emptiness – it was an empty power. He wanted something more – something palpable only in the aether.

He wanted apotheosis. And no amount of temporal posturing would take him closer to his goal. He needed time to study, time to recover, time to evaluate. The world had proved far more complex than he had imagined – again.

If Thorn could have smiled, he would have. He rose, his immense legs creaking like trees in the wind, and put an armoured hand on the trunk of the ancient maple.

‘I will go into the far west, and learn a thing or two,’ he said aloud. His voice sounded harsh.

I have made myself a mockery of what I ought to be, he thought. But then the thought I shall retain this shape to remind myself of what I allowed to happen.

If he was having a conversation with the tree, it wasn’t answering. Thorn turned to walk west, and in that moment lightning struck.

The lightning struck all around him, a moment of awesome power. The great maple was destroyed, its heartwood reduced to steaming splinters, its great trunk split as if by a behemoth’s axe.

Thorn – whose body was bigger than a giant Ruk or a mighty troll – was struck to earth and pinned under the tree’s ancient branches. And still the air around him was like a thick porridge of sheer power.

If Thorn could have screamed, he would have.

Thorn felt he had been invaded. But not destroyed. There was something in his head that he couldn’t fathom – in his web of tree roots and spiderwebs, where he cast his workings and remembered the hundreds of options he had to his potentia, he now had a black space, like rot in the sapwood of a healthy tree.

Nothing could track him here.

And yet something so powerful that Thorn couldn’t describe it had appeared, pinned him to the ground, invaded him, and vanished.

Just to the left, through the mountain of destroyed foliage, he could see an object sitting on leaves and branches as if the ruined tree was a massive nest.

It was a black egg, the size of a man’s head. But not a true egg, as it was covered in scales, with curious caps on either end – like armour.

An armoured egg.

It radiated power in the aether.

It radiated heat in the real.

Thorn put up shield after shield – glowing hemispheres of forest green, layered like a lady’s petticoats. Then he tuned, or created, phantasmic instruments to magnify, to probe, to explore. And as he did he used his powers and his massive strength to raise the corpse of the great tree off his body.

The egg – it was too obviously an egg to call it anything else – resisted his investigation.

Thorn had no immediate plans. He was, he suspected, in some sort of shock. He sat in the shelter of the burl, and watched and prodded the egg, and the edges of the raw blackness within himself.

He felt violated.

What was that entity? And what does it want?

An hour passed and it did not return. The armoured egg sat, generating heat, and Thorn was gradually filled with power – filled with purpose. For the first time since his defeat on the fells of Lissen Carrak, he knew what he wanted.

North of the Wall – Giannis Turkos

Giannis Turkos sat watching his Huran wife make him moccasins. He wasn’t really looking at her; instead he was thinking of the council at which he would speak.

She raised her eyes. ‘It is nothing,’ she said. ‘They will listen to you.’

He shook his head. ‘It is more complicated than-’ He paused. Two years among the Outwallers had killed his deep-seated belief that they were children to receive lessons, but some deep-seated prejudices remained. One was that he hated sharing his plans. And the Outwallers were not men of the Empire, nor yet even Albans. They were fickle, even whimsical, in a way that no civilised man would ever allow.

But he loved his wife. And he loved her people. Even when they were bent on a war he believed was pointless and destructive.

‘There’s tea,’ she said, sounding oddly childlike with her mouth full of sinew.

Turkos shrugged. He was too worried to drink tea. He stood, went out of their cabin, and found that many of his political opponents in the village were sitting on the front step of the cabin across the small area of packed earth that Turkos thought of as the Plataea. Big Pine waved.

Big Pine was his inveterate enemy at council. Despite that, they had hunted together last fall, killing many deer together and gathering many beaver pelts. Life among Outwallers was a curious mixture of adversarial and cooperative.

So Turkos waved back, and smiled. But being outdoors didn’t offer him sanctuary from his wife’s sharp eyes and sharper tongue – or rather, it only offered sanctuary at the cost of the elusive interrogation of two hundred and fifty other Huran adults. He slipped back through the moose-hide curtain and took the copper teapot off the fire. He poured them both tea in fine, Morean-made cups, and handed one to his wife, who looked at him with a mixture of amusement and gratitude common to wives in every culture when men do exactly what women expect them to. She spat her sinew into her hand, laid it aside, and drank her tea. He put Wild honey in his.

She shook her head. ‘You are like a child,’ she said fondly.

He sat back on his chair, which he’d built with his own hands, as no Outwaller would use such a thing, with a small lamp full of olive oil at his side, and read through the scroll that had come a month ago. Again.

The Logothete of the Drum to his servants in the woodlands and wastes, greeting.

It has come to our ears, and sounded softly on our drum, that the Emperor’s enemies are attempting to use the Outwallers as a weapon against the Empire. The drum whispers of a heavy Outwaller incursion into Alba in the spring; reliable whispers state that the culprits were Sossag and Abonaki. Any conflict between the Huran and the Sossag could spill into Thrake. Such an incursion into Thrake would have the most deleterious of effects on the economy of the Empire, and with God’s will and the Emperor’s beneficence, we hope to avert such calamity. Let all the Logothete’s servants take note and act accordingly. Further, elements within the palace have become less enthusiastic about the Emperor’s policies about land and the Outwallers than before. The Logothete’s servants are required to test every assertion of this office commencing with this message for authenticity.

The message was written in a magicked ink on vellum; it was also coded using a letter-number code that was itself changed every six months, and that code translated into a form of High Archaic little used elsewhere in the world. The message had been carried by one of the Emperor’s messengers; a powerful bird bred for the purpose. Yet under all these layers of protection, the Logothete – the Emperor’s spymaster – had written a message that conveyed very little information and a strong hint of internal betrayal.

Turkos read it again. He’d deciphered it six times, each time looking for a new key or a chance phrase that might lead him to see a different meaning. He’d tried it with last year’s key. He’d tried it with a training key he’d been taught at the University.

It said what it said.

Which was very little.

‘Speak from your heart,’ his wife said. ‘Not from the skin of a dead animal.’

Kailin was small, her slim body hard with muscle and with a strong face, not exactly pretty by Morean standards, a little broad, perhaps, but full of character – happy with laughter, fierce with frowns. He loved her face. It had the slightly slanted eyes and sharp cheekbones that reminded him that some of the Outwallers were not, in fact, escaped peasants – many were a race apart from his own.

She leaned forward, and kissed him.

‘Sinew breath,’ he said, and they both laughed.

He rolled up his parchment and slipped it back into the light bone message tube in which it had come. Then he kissed her again, running a hand down her side, but she swatted him away. ‘Get dressed,’ she said. ‘I’ll have these done by the time you’ve got all your finery on.’

He rose and went to their bed, where they had both laid out his speaking clothes – a carefully chosen mixture of Morean court attire and Huran finery. He had a kaftan of deerskin, cut in the Morean manner but edged in porcupine quill work; instead of hose he wore Huran leggings, with Etruscan beads on every seam. He wore a Morean shirt and braes. As he finished getting the leggings on and tied to his Morean soldier’s belt – some things he couldn’t give up – his wife bent and offered him the new moccasins.

They were magnificent – the flaps were stiff with purple-and-red-dyed porcupine quill and edged in carefully applied purple wampum.

Purple was one of the Outwaller’s favourite colours, but it made Turkos nervous. In the Empire it was a crime to wear purple without the Emperor’s express permission.

Which did not prevent him from admiring his wife’s work. ‘You make me look like a king!’ he said.

‘The Huran spit at kings,’ she said. ‘You look like a hero. Which you are. Go speak your piece.’ She helped him put his heavy cinqueda onto his military belt.

She pulled his cloak – which she had also made – from their sleeping pile. It was made of hundreds of black squirrel pelts stitched together invisibly and lined with bright red wool. She draped it around his shoulders and pinned it with the two pins of his Morean military rank: Stheno’s immortal gorgon’s head on his right shoulder in silver; Euryale’s head on his left shoulder in gold.

Then she handed him his axe – a light steel head with a smoking pipe cunningly worked into the back. He had learned to rest it in the crook of his arm with affected nonchalance for the duration of council meetings, even when they lasted for many hours.

She stretched on her tiptoes and kissed him again. ‘When you speak for the Emperor,’ she said, ‘remember that you are also my husband, and a Huran warrior. Remember that no man at the council is your foe – that all of you strive together for the good of the people.’

He smiled at her. ‘Sometimes, I think you are my mother, and I am a small boy.’

She grinned. Took his hand, and felt that it was trembling.

‘Oh, my dear! My strength!’ She pressed his hand to her left breast.

That took his mind off his worries. He smiled. His fingers moved, almost of their own volition.

‘I shouldn’t tell you this, but the matrons have already decided to do as you ask,’ she said. ‘No one wanted war with the Sossag except the Northerners.’ She sighed. ‘Now out!’ she said. ‘Your hand is making promises that the rest of you will not be here to keep!’

He tried to stoop through the deerskin curtain with all the dignity of two years practice and another twenty years at the courts of Morea.

In the street, dressed equally magnificently, was Big Pine. The man was a head taller than Turkos. They nodded to one and other and, as fate had sent them through their cabin doors together, they were forced to walk through the village together.

‘Everyone thinks we’ve come to an agreement,’ Turkos said. They could hear the whispers from every front step.

‘Perhaps we should,’ said the tall warrior. ‘We have a hundred paces. Tell me why we should raid the Northerners and not the Sossag? The Northerners have already struck the Sossag and taken prisoners. And burned villages. They will strike back at us.’

Turkos felt as if one of Christ’s own angels had come down from heaven to open his adversary’s ears. Nothing like this had happened to him in three summers in the village. Usually his words fell flat; at one council, Big Pine had skilfully argued that Turkos did not speak the language of the people well enough to make his case and his wife had been summoned. Only later had Turkos realised this turned his speech into a woman’s words – valuable in the council of matrons, but signifying nothing in the council of men. He’d been laughed at.

Being a laughing stock had not proved as awful as he’d expected – indeed, in the aftermath, he seemed to have more friends in the village, not fewer.

All these thoughts and a hundred like them rode through his head while he walked silently beside Big Pine.

He wasted ten paces thinking.

Then, he shrugged. ‘Peace is better for the Huran than war,’ he said. ‘The Sossag lost warriors this spring but they gained many weapons and much armour. The whisper of the wind is that they have an alliance with a powerful sorcerer.’

Big Pine nodded. ‘It may be as you say,’ he admitted.

‘The Northerners want nothing but an easy victory. Their sources of beaver were hurt by the drought. Their corn crop was poor.’ Understanding struck Turkos like a bolt from the blue. He stopped walking for a moment. He could keep the Huran – at least, his village and the six others that it controlled – out of direct warfare another way.

‘What if we send no war party at all?’ he said. He took a step. He saw from the look on Big Pine’s face that his point had gone home. ‘What if we send a delegation to the Sossag, disclaiming any part of the Northerners’ war? And send our warriors out-’ he tried to find a word to represent the Morean tactical idea of defensive patrolling ‘-to watch and ambush while we harvest our crop?’

The council fire was close.

Big Pine looked at him. ‘No raid at all?’ he asked. ‘But many little parties – like hunting parties – watching every path.’ He scratched the top of his head, where he had a magnificent display of heron feathers. ‘Many little war parties kept close means many leaders – and much practice for the younger bloods.’ He looked at Turkos. ‘If you had come to me with this earlier, this might have long ago been decided.’

Turkos threw caution to the winds. ‘I just this moment thought of it,’ he said.

Big Pine was seen by the whole village to slap hands with Turkos before entering the council house. Both men were laughing.

The Morea – The Red Knight

‘He’s actually proposing to pay us by marrying me to his daughter?’ asked the Captain. They’d stopped for a rest, bridles over their shoulders, safely past Middleburgh and deep in the Morean countryside – pale green hills and sandy rock spires stretching away into the sun-drenched distance.

The Captain chuckled and almost choked on the watered wine Ser Alcaeus had offered him.

Ser Gavin grinned. ‘Men say she’s the greatest beauty of our time,’ he said. ‘Not sure what she’d have in resale value, though.’

Ser Alcaeus had become the focus of the whole Imperial messenger service, and daily flights of the great black and white birds kept him up to date on every aspect of the princess’s crisis. ‘That was ill said, Ser Gavin,’ he snapped.

The Captain knocked back the rest of his watered wine. ‘Let me get this right,’ he said. ‘The Duke of Thrake has five thousand men, a powerful magister, an unknown number of traitors inside the city, and more mercenaries coming in from Etrusca, who want the Emperor gone so they can more effectively rape the rest of the Empire. Am I good so far?’

Ser Alcaeus nodded. ‘Yes, my lord,’ he said, his bitterness obvious.

‘We have a hundred lances and our own wagon train. We can’t count on the local peasants or the local lords, and now you are telling me that the princess has declared herself Empress, claims to be our employer in lieu of the Emperor who hired us, and has no money to pay us.’

Ser Alcaeus shrugged. ‘There was never much money.’

Isn’t that the truth, muttered Harmodius.

‘So her father planned to marry her to me rather than pay us?’ asked the Captain again through a spike of pain. Any conversation with Harmodius carried the possiblity of a blinding headache and a day lost. ‘That was his plan?’

Ser Alcaeus made a face. ‘I agree that it seems odd-’

Gavin laughed, long and loud. He rolled his right shoulder where the healed flesh continued to grow a fine crop of gold-green scales. He scratched at them too often, as if assuring himself they were real. ‘Unless we’re to share her,’ he began.

Bad Tom slapped his armoured thigh with a gauntleted hand.

Alcaeus’s face flushed with blood, and his hand went to his sword.

Ser Gavin raised both hands. ‘Ser knight, I am rude in my mirth. I’m sure that the Lady Irene is beautiful above all other ladies save my own.’ Lady Mary – the Queen’s handmaiden – was Ser Gawain’s lady; her veil fluttered from his shoulder.

Ser Michael, formerly the Captain’s squire, and now known throughout the company to be the Earl of Towbray’s wayward son, took the gourd of watered wine from the Captain. ‘If all of us reserve our ladies, surely it diminishes the beauty of the Princess Irene? And yet, if we do not, what a sullen, unchivalrous lot we must seem?’

Ser Michael’s lady was a farm girl from Kentmere, and every man present saw her every day. Despite a practical disposition, a swollen belly, and hands red from washing linen with Lis the Laundress, Kaitlin Lanthorn’s beauty was not under debate, and her knight was proud to have her plain linen handkerchief adorning his shoulder.

Michael had another swig of the watered wine and handed the gourd on to Bad Tom. ‘Not to mention that Kaitlin would have my guts for garters if I were to share such a plunder.’

Tom threw his head back to laugh. The Captain had to hide his face with his long trailing sleeve. Ser Gavin turned his head and his lips curled.

Ser Alcaeus gave up the struggle and shrugged. ‘Later, I will kill you all,’ he said.

Bad Tom slapped his back. ‘You’re a loon!’ he said. The statement was his highest form of praise.

The Captain held up his hand, and they all fell silent.

‘We’re rich at the moment. There’s no danger of anyone missing a day’s pay. It’s a fine adventure – rescuing a princess and saving the Empire.’ The Red Knight turned and his eyes met his brother’s. ‘The Emperor assumed I was a penniless mercenary. Of course.’

Perhaps you could rescue her, arrange for her to fall in love with you, and then ride away romantically after burning her note, Harmodius whispered.

I could rescue her, arrange her father’s death, and make myself Emperor. Now shut up, the Red Knight muttered in the confines of his head. Carrying a puissant mage five times his own age inside his head had become a far greater burden than he’d ever expected when he rescued the man from death. Or perhaps the man was dead. Whatever was left inside the Captain’s head was beginning to hurt him all the time.

Ser Jehan, up until now silent because he was methodically eating a pair of linked sausages, spat out the casing of the last and shook his head. ‘But that won’t pay the bills.’

‘I was hoping to anticipate Ser Jehan, just this once, and show my hard-nosed practicality.’ The Captain tipped the gourd back, rolled it in his hand, stared down the neck and then handed it to Toby, his squire, who had another ready to hand.

‘But yes, we need to be paid. Saving the princess is probably good advertising, but after Lissen Carrak, it should be some years before we need to do-’ He looked around ‘-well – anything.’ He shrugged.

Ser Alcaeus narrowed his eyes. ‘We’re two days’ ride from the city. With respect, my lord, I feel as if you are not so much reflecting on the situation as renegotiating.’

The Captain dusted his scarlet surcoat, tugged at his haubergeon to get it to sit better under his many-times-repaired breast- and backplate, and kicked at the air until his riding shoe was better seated inside his right sabaton. Then he leaped onto his new roan warhorse. The horse grunted as he landed, swung his off leg over the high saddle and tucked his feet into the iron stirrups.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Alcaeus, we’re not knights set on errantry. We’re mercenaries.’ He looked around at his command staff. ‘Besides, princes only value things that they pay enormous sums to obtain. They’re like children.’

Ser Alcaeus shook his head. ‘So what do you want?’ he asked.

‘Riches, fame, prowess and glory. I’ll start with riches, though.’ The Captain smiled. ‘We’ll make camp on that big hill I see in the distance. Gelfred said it had water and fodder for a week. So we can wait there for a week while we negotiate with the princess.’

Ser Alcaeus was growing more wroth with each exchange. ‘We’re close enough to raise the siege right now – by Christ’s wounds, my lord, you haven’t said a word about this dickering until now.’

‘Everything has a season. Even dickering.’ The Captain rose in his stirrups and watched his company come down the pass out of the high mountains. The mountains in Morea were more brown than green on the nearer slopes, and the foliage was a pale green at that. Below them, forests of olive trees – some terraced and tended, some wild – ran along every ridge. The cultivated patchwork – wheat, millet and barley – began very low on the ridges and ran along the base of the valleys, where narrow watercourses followed zig-zag paths among the fields.

Only the low mountains leaning over the rocky hills separated them from the heartland of the Morea, and the rich farmland. And the city, just visible as a smudge of woodsmoke and a glint of white walls, fifteen leagues distant.

And beyond it the sea.

Ser Michael shook his head. ‘The Wild hasn’t been here in five hundred years,’ he said.

Bad Tom shrugged. ‘The wine’s good,’ he said.

Ser Alcaeus stood at the Captain’s stirrup. ‘Name your price,’ he said. His voice was cold.

‘Alcaeus, don’t take this personally. It is strictly business. I don’t particularly want to marry the Emperor’s daughter. Nor, despite all the levity, can I divide her up as payment. So, on balance, I need a concrete offer.’ The Red Knight toyed with his sword hilt.

Ser Alcaeus sputtered. ‘Tell me what you want. I’ll send word immediately.’

The Captain’s eyes were on the far horizon. ‘I want a new breast- and backplate – one that fits and hasn’t had holes punched in it. I hear there are brilliant armourers in the city.’

‘You are mocking me,’ said Ser Alcaeus.

‘No, I’m completely serious. A nice new breast and back by a master armourer would interest me. Personally. Along with everything the Duke of Thrake possesses.’

Ser Alcaeus backed away a step. ‘What? I’m sorry-’

‘I assume she’ll attaint him, and declare all his properties and titles forfeit. I’ll take them. In addition, I’ll take his office as Megas Ducas – isn’t that your title for the Captain-General? Yes? And the right to levy taxes throughout the Empire to support the army.’ He nodded, as if he had just that moment thought of the whole thing.

Ser Michael slapped his thigh. He looked around for Ser Alison – Sauce – to share the jest, but she was off with the outriders.

Ser Alcaeus bit his lip. ‘The Duke of Thrake is a prince of the Imperial blood,’ he began.

The Captain nodded. ‘You know, my friend, I know a fair bit about the Empire. I understand that these little family quarrels are common, and family members are used to being immune from retribution if they revolt. Let’s change the stakes from the beginning, shall we?’

Ser Alcaeus managed half a smile. ‘It will certainly annoy the Duke,’ he allowed.

The Lady Maria was acting as the Empress’s secretary. She approached the throne – in this case, an ivory chair in the princess’s solar – with a pair of message scrolls in her basket. She was pleased to note that the full complement of Nordikans were on guard – six in the outer chamber, and two in the inner chamber. Three days after the Duke of Thrake’s attempted coup de main, the bloodstains were gone and the palace had a somewhat brittle air of normality, best seen in the skittishness of the palace Ordinaries who were now searched for weapons at every major doorway.

‘A message from my son,’ Lady Maria said, with a curtsey.

Irene held out her hand. Her other hand held a small book, bound in vellum. ‘Yes?’ she asked. ‘Has the odious man demanded my hand in marriage? Has the gallant Ser Alcaeus dealt with that?’

‘He has,’ Lady Maria allowed.

Irene’s attention turned to her principal adviser. ‘Ah – then we have a basis for negotiation. What has he offered?’

‘It is not so much what my son has offered, as what the barbarian Captain has demanded, Majesty.’ She handed her Empress – opinion in the palace was deeply divided as to whether Irene was Empress or merely Regent, and the lady herself had been too astute to comment so far – the scroll tubes.

Imperial messengers were big birds, but their size was intended for speed and fighting strength against interceptors, not power in carrying heavy scrolls. The two tubes of birdbone held wisps of rice paper with only a few words on each.

‘I apologise for the barbarian’s insolence-’ Lady Maria said softly.

Irene’s face hardened. But her eyes twinkled – she turned to Maria and for the first time in three long days, she vouchsafed a slight smile.

‘Duke Andronicus would be incredibly angry,’ she said.

Lady Maria kept her eyes downcast. ‘It is a shocking idea, Majesty. Let me say-’

Irene put a beautiful hand against her beautiful throat. ‘I only wish I could be present when he hears. That son of a poxed heretical slut dares to raise his filthy hand against-’ She paused. ‘Against my father? I’ll show him hell and then, with the help of this good barbarian gentleman, I’ll send him there.’

As she spoke, her pale face gathered colour and her eyes glittered. Her cheeks went from the colour of old ivory to the colour of a new red rose. The Empress looked about her. ‘Has the Grand Chamberlain been found?’

Lady Maria allowed her eyes to meet those of the Nordikan, Blackhair. The man was handsome, in a tattooed, barbaric way, and she wondered idly how this bold new barbarian mercenary would look.

Blackhair met her eyes steadily and gave a very slight shake of his head.

‘Majesty, we have to add the Grand Chamberlain to the list of traitors. Treasonable correspondence was found in his rooms and he has abandoned his home, wife and children to flee.’ Lady Maria spoke softly, with inclined head. The crisis had reduced the amount of ceremony in the palace, but Lady Maria intended to keep up the standards of her father’s day.

Irene drew herself up. ‘Seize his goods and execute his family,’ she said. ‘Every child.’

Lady Maria nodded. ‘Of course, Majesty. And yet-’

Irene turned her head. ‘I dislike this phrase. You disagree with my righteous anger? Their deaths will serve to show what line we take with traitors. Did he take the Imperial seal with him?’

‘He must have it. If it is in the palace, none of us can find it.’ The Lady Maria shrugged. ‘Your mother had a duplicate.’

Irene stiffened. ‘There can be no duplicate of a sacred artefact!’

Maria bowed her head. ‘As Your Majesty says. And yet-’

‘Again that phrase!’ Irene spat.

Maria nodded. ‘My initial hesitation, Majesty, is because the Grand Chamberlain has openly kept a young mistress for a decade. He fathered children on her and bought her a house; this woman has gone, along with her brood. The Chamberlain chose to take her and abandon his wife. Her death, I would argue, will only please the Grand Chamberlain. In the second case, while I agree that there should not be a duplicate seal, I offer Your Majesty the evidence of her own senses.’ She held out a heavy gold chain with a great ruby-coloured garnet the size of a child’s fist, flat on one face, with the arms of the Empire carved into it. Red fire seemed to burn in the heart of the great crystal.

‘It is the Heart of Aetius!’ cried the young Empress.

‘I don’t think so. I think, in fact, that your mother of sainted name and spotless repute had a duplicate seal made so that, when she disagreed with your father’s edicts on the true religion, she could quietly alter them.’ Lady Maria kept her voice down.

Irene digested this, and for a moment, she appeared to be a sixteen-year-old girl and not an ageless pagan goddess.

‘I crave your pardon, Maria. Bring the Chamberlain’s wife and children to court but strip him of his titles. Purple parchment – gold ink. Make it public. And tell the barbarian we have a deal, and I will fulfil my part when the Duke’s forces are broken and driven from my walls.’

The Lady Maria had not had an easy life. She had by turns been a penniless child-aristocrat, a precocious child-courtier, a royal mistress, a discarded royal mistress, the mother of an unwanted bastard, and worst of all, the old Empress’s ageing rival.

And now, a train of events beyond her control had catapulted her and her son to more power than she had ever dreamed of wielding. So much power – so much influence – that instead of being concerned with enriching her relatives she had to seriously consider the good of the Empire. If she lived, and if her side won.

Her son had promised her that this barbarian mercenary was capable of working military miracles.

Her reverie was interrupted by the princess. ‘Lady Maria, I gather from the Acting Spatharios, Darkhair, that a prisoner was taken during the-’ she paused ‘-the unpleasantness in the palace.’

Lady Maria put a hand to her crucifix and curtsied. ‘I know this to be true,’ she said.

Princess Irene nodded several times. ‘Lady Maria, this man needs to die.’

Lady Maria had suspected the same. ‘Consider it done,’ she said.

She had the duration of the long walk from the Empress’s presence to the stables and mews to consider the ramifications of attainting the Duke of Thrake and declaring all his titles and offices forfeit. He was the most powerful warlord in the Empire. He was the Empire’s most successful soldier.

He was an old rival for whom she had nothing but contempt.

She found the assassin in his cell deep beneath the palace stables, and summoned a guard – a Nordikan. They and the Scholae had taken over every armed duty in the palace.

‘See that this man is served wine with dinner,’ she said. She handed an amphora of wine to one of the Ordinaries.

The Nordikan bowed. ‘Yes, Despoina.’

Then she walked up too many stairs to the offices of the messenger service – one of the prides of the decaying Empire. A combination of magnificent animal husbandry, a thousand years of faloncry, selective breeding and solid hermeticism combined to render the Emperor’s communications both safe and efficient.

She wrote out the young Empress’s answer, rolled it very small, and gave it to the master of the mews. She stood and watched as one of the great black and white birds was taken from the ready aviary, given a bone tube and instructions, and launched. A low-level adept cast a complex phantasm.

The bird rose in the air, its seven-foot wings blowing a fresh breeze over the Outer Court.

Ser Alcaeus bowed at the open door of the Captain’s pavilion. Toby was polishing a sabaton with a rag dipped in wood ash. He bowed to the Morean knight and nodded. ‘He’s drinking,’ Toby said.

The Captain was sitting with Ser Alison and Ser Thomas. On the table before them lay a second-rate piece of parchment, carefully marked up in white lead and covered with other scrawls in ink and in charcoal.

The Captain nodded to Ser Alcaeus. ‘Good evening. Alcaeus – don’t be angry.’

The Morean nodded his head. ‘I’m not, my lord. But I’d like to say that I don’t like having two sets of loyalties, with both of my masters tugging at my strings.’

Bad Tom stretched out his booted legs, filling the whole back room of the pavilion. ‘Then don’t have two masters,’ he said.

Alcaeus flung himself into a stool. ‘Every man has two masters – or three, or four. Or ten. Lords, mistresses, the church, parents, friends-’

The Captain nodded. ‘Would we have any chivalric literature at all without troubled and divided loyalties?’ He shrugged at Tom. ‘You evade the issue by killing anything that disagrees with you.’

Tom fingered his short black beard. ‘If I take the job as Drover,’ he allowed.

‘Just so,’ said the Captain. ‘Alcaeus?’

The Morean handed over a pair of scroll tubes. ‘Yes, if you accept success as the only condition.’

The Captain raised his eyes. They were twinkling. ‘Well, well. How desperate she must be. How angry. I should have asked for more.’ He raised his hands. ‘I can agree to payment on success only. Toby – have Nicholas sound “All Officers”.’

Nicholas Ganfroy was a young man who had a fancy parchment from the Inns of Court in Harndon stating that he was qualified to serve as a herald in all circumstances. He was very thin and seemed younger than anyone else. There was almost no woman in the company he hadn’t mooned after in the three short weeks he’d been attached to the household. His trumpet-playing was in no way as good as the former trumpeter, Carlus the smith, a giant of a man who had died in the final battle at Lissen Carrak.

On this occasion, however, he was awake and attentive, and after three somewhat squalid tries, he managed to sound ‘All Officers’ well enough to bring Ser Jehan, Ser Milus, Master Gelfred, and the new corporals, Francis Atcourt, John le Bailli, and Ser George Brewes. Ser Alcaeus ranked as a corporal, as did Ser Alison. She raised one side of the pavilion to make more room, and shouted ‘Tommy!’ in her streetwalker shriek across the evening camp.

Her page dropped the boot he was polishing and sprinted for the command pavilion. Once arrived, he helped Toby and a dozen other pages and squires raise an awning, spread trestle tables and lay out camp stools borrowed from the other pavilions until all the officers sat in a circle around the Captain. Two senior archers came; Cully and Bent. The two men sat with the knights in easy camaraderie that had been absent a few months before, and were served wine without comment by the squires. The last man to arrive was the notary. He nodded to the Captain and took a seat by Bad Tom.

The Captain held up a hand for silence. ‘Ser Alcaeus has negotiated us a good contract with our new employer,’ he said. ‘I’ll see to it we turn a healthy profit. So now it’s time to get to work. You’ve all had several weeks of boredom and training. The new lances have had time to settle in. The old warriors have had time to shake the fear.’ He looked around. ‘Or maybe not, but we all pretend, yes?’

Sauce grinned. ‘Anytime, baby,’ she said.

‘We could make that our motto,’ allowed the Captain. ‘Gelfred? Would you sum up the situation?’

Gelfred stood and unrolled the parchment that had been opened earlier. It was a whole sheep’s hide, scraped very fine, and by lamplight it was transparent.

‘The Duke of Thrake has about five thousand men in two main forces. One is encamped on the so-called Field of Ares by the south-west gate of the city. Most of that force are knights and men-at-arms, although with a few exceptions, the Morean men-at-arms are not equipped or horsed like us at all. They ride lighter horses and wear coats of mail.’

Tom grinned. ‘So they’re what – a hundred years out of date?’

Ser Alcaeus leaned in. ‘There’s truth in what you say, Tom, but they are also much better disciplined than most of your Alban knights, and much more capable of manoeuvre than, say, the Galles.’

‘Easy meat for a shaft, though,’ Bent said.

Gelfred allowed himself a small smile. ‘As you say.’ He looked around as if expecting more interruptions, and then went on, ‘The second force is more balanced, with northern hobilars, which they call stradiotes, to support their men-at-arms, and mounted archers. They are stationed to the south-east of the city, watching the gate where the Vardariote Regiment is quartered. It is fairly obvious that this Duke is more concerned with the Vardariotes than he is with us – if he knows we’re here at all. In the last three days we’ve picked off more of his scouts than you’d believe.’ He grimaced. ‘However, he has his own force of Easterners.’ Gelfred shrugged. ‘Honours are about even. We haven’t taken one of his Easterners, and they haven’t taken any of ours, although Amy’s Hob had a close shave today.’

It was well known in camp that Amy’s Hob had ridden in at last light with an arrow in the fat of his arse. It had been cause for a good laugh.

‘There’s a powerful Etruscan squadron based on Salmis, across the bay from the city.’ Gelfred looked at the Captain, who nodded. ‘We have a source who suggests that the Etruscans are backing Duke Andronicus in exchange for trade concessions.’

Alcaeus nodded. ‘That matches the word my mother sends,’ he put in. If he was interested in the Captain having an alternate source of information inside the city, he didn’t say anything.

‘The Etruscans have sixteen galleys and three round ships. Almost a thousand of their marines and three hundred men-at-arms.’ He looked around.

Cully whistled. ‘Horn-bow archers, every man. Wicked devils, they are. Just like us.’

Bent agreed. ‘Rather fight boggles and irks. Their archers ain’t up to much.’

The Captain leaned back so far that his stool creaked. ‘Are the Vardariotes loyal, Alcaeus?’

‘No one is sure. They refused to parade for the traitor, but they haven’t left their barracks. Easterners are rather inscrutable.’

‘When were they last paid?’ asked the Captain.

Alcaeus fidgeted. ‘Not in a year.’

The Captain steepled his hands. ‘Can you get their leaders to meet us?’

Alcaeus shrugged. ‘I can try,’ he said.

The Captain looked around. ‘Offer to make good their arrears of pay. I’ll cover the cost. In exchange, I want them to publicly form up on their parade in the morning and ride through the streets of the town to the-’ He paused and looked at the gate. ‘The Gate of Ares.’

Everyone craned forward together.

‘We’re going to fight on the Field of Ares?’ asked Michael, the excitement plain in his voice.

‘I certainly hope that the soon to be ex-Duke of Thrake thinks so,’ said the Captain. ‘Ser Alcaeus, I need a simple “yes”, or “no” from the Vardariotes in an hour. Toby has written orders for every officer. We march in an hour.’

They sat in stunned silence.

Bad Tom laughed. ‘You thought he was going to discuss strategy?’ he asked. ‘Come on, Sauce.’

She was reading her orders already. ‘Need someone to read it to you, Tom?’ she asked.

No one else would twit Tom that way. His hand went to his sword and his head shot around, but she grinned at him.

‘We’re going to march all night across strange ground to fight people we’ve never met,’ she said.

Tom nodded. ‘Aye,’ he admitted. ‘It’s like a grand dream come true.’

The Court of Galle – The King, his Horse, and Lady Clarissa

The King watched Lady Clarissa play, and licked his lips.

She smiled at him and continued to play and sing.

When she finished her motet he applauded, and she bent her head modestly. The King rose from his stool – a stool of purest white Umroth bone from Ifriqu’ya, set by a fruitwood table inlaid with the ivory from the same beast – and walked to her. He put a hand on her shoulder and felt that she was trembling slightly, and he could not stop the spread of a predatory smile.

‘You dress very plainly for a woman of my court,’ he said.

‘My lord,’ she said very quietly.

‘I would have you wear more elegant things,’ he said. ‘I suspect that you are beautiful. I desire to be surrounded by beautiful things.’ His hand began to stroke her back and shoulder insistently.

She stiffened under his hand.

‘Your Grace?’ asked Abblemont, and the King managed not to jump.

‘Yes, my Horse?’ he asked.

He turned, his hands already far enough from the woman that he could pretend he’d never touched her.

‘Another matter – not for the military council,’ Abblemont said.

Mademoiselle de Sartres collected her lute and walked to the door of the King’s private solar. Her uncle gave the slightest sign and she knew she was released, and breathed a sigh of relief. The King saw her sigh and his temper flared like the sudden shock of cold water on hot rock.

‘I summon and I dismiss, Horse,’ he said.

‘Of course, Your Grace,’ Abblemont said. ‘But the matter is urgent and of importance to our policy and the kingdom.’

‘I was not through with her!’ the King shouted. Abblemont’s blank-faced indifference angered him as much as his mother’s and his elegant wife’s did. He seized the first thing to hand – the stool – and threw it across the room where it struck the wall and exploded, sending shards of Umroth bone in all directions.

‘Your Grace,’ Abblemont said, carefully.

As usual, when the King had destroyed something, he felt much better. ‘My apologies, Horse,’ he said. ‘You may, of course, dismiss your own niece. What is this business?’

‘I want to send more knights to de Vrailly – and more men-at-arms. He is to lead an expedition on behalf of the King of Alba, so we have it in our power to place a complete army inside that kingdom’s borders while appearing to be the best of friends.’

The King crossed his arms. ‘The Captal? Must we? That lackwit braggart . . .’ He looked away.

‘Your Grace must see him as the tool to hand,’ Abblemont said. ‘While I have your private ear, I have a report that the King of Alba’s Privy Council has openly accused us of counterfeiting their coin.’

He was unprepared for the King’s shriek of rage. ‘How dare he! As if I am some common criminal?’

Abblemont spread his arms and decided that this would be a poor time to remind the King that they were, indeed, conterfeiting Alban coinage. He stifled his sigh because it was becoming more difficult, not less, to manage the King.

‘Tell me – Horse, tell me exactly – why I need to support de Vrailly’s pretensions?’ The King didn’t shriek these words. He seemed in control of himself again.

‘Your Grace, if de Vrailly can become the King of Alba’s mailed fist, the kingdom will fall into our hands whenever we choose to claim it. As it is, the King of Alba is about to anger two of his key noblemen. He may drive them into a position where they are available to join us – or he may eliminate them, and thus reduce his own fighting power. In effect, he will be using our army to crush his own.’ Abblemont was careful not to add that he was using de Vrailly to promote cracks in the Alban court and discredit the Alban Queen. It seemed the simplest way.

‘Very well. Send more men to de Vrailly.’ The King sounded like a sulky boy, and he furthered that impression by chewing on the end of his thumb.

‘I had thought to send more knights to aid Messire de Rohan,’ Abblemont said.

‘That loathsome gossip?’ the King said. He nodded. ‘Perfect.’ He walked over and looked at the wreckage of the stool. ‘Please see that this is removed and get me another – perhaps ebony. I like to surround myself with beautiful things,’ he said.

Abblemont kept his eyes down. And you like to break them, he thought.

Liviapolis – The Princess

Harald Derkensun hated being on duty in the prison. It was demeaning. In Nordika, no one was ever put in prison. Any Nordikan would prefer to die.

The assassin, however, was a model prisoner. He was not a contemptible weakling but a man, and Derkensun found him a pleasant surprise. He nodded pleasantly to Derkensun when he came on duty, and was otherwise silent.

At some point, a pair of men from the Logothete’s office came and tortured the assassin. He said nothing – nothing at all.

The more senior of the Logothete’s men shrugged. ‘Early days yet. Heh – Nordikan. No sleep after this point, eh?’

Derkensun shook his head. ‘Eat shit and push off,’ he said. ‘I do not take part in such things.’

The Logothete’s men seemed immune to his anger, and the more junior man remained. He saw to it that the assassin was placed in an iron cage and he rattled a spear shaft against the bars periodically. The only other prisoner, an old man who had been taken for public blasphemy, complained about the noise.

Derkensun put a hand on the shoulder of the Logothete’s interrogator. ‘This is against the law,’ he said.

The interrogator shook his head. ‘There is no law,’ he said. ‘Not for animals like this one. He’s a professional killer. Hired man. And his officer escaped. When he betrays his officer, we’ll let him go.’ He grinned. ‘When we threaten to remove his feet, he’ll talk. Today was like our formal introduction; don’t be such a- Hey!’

‘Come back with a warrant,’ Derkensun said. He took the interrogator to the great iron-bound door. ‘This man is certainly a criminal. So get a writ from the princess – anything. Until then, stay out of my way.’ He was angry – angry to be made part of something so deeply dishonourable. And his actions had, at least, bought them all a night of sleep.

An hour later, dinner was served. The two men shared the wine.

The assassin looked up after a sip, and shook his head. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Poison.’

The old man crossed himself. ‘Really?’ he said.

Derkensun stood up, but the assassin was already beginning to foam at the mouth in his iron cage. He babbled a bit, and Derkensun grew pale listening to his words.

And then he died.

So did the blasphemer.

An hour later, as the almost full moon rose, casting a pale white-grey light over the tents, throwing black shadows on the ground, and making armour move like liquid metal, the company had formed up. After a month on the road, even the rawest younger son knew his place in the line. They had a hundred lances, which was to say, a hundred fully armoured men-at-arms, with another hundred squires almost as well armed; two hundred professional archers, most of them carrying the great yew or elm bows that made Alba famous, but a few with Eastern horn bows or even crossbows in the mix, depending on the tastes of the archers and their knight. And another two hundred pages, for the most part unarmoured but carrying light spears, swords, and, in some cases, bows or latches. Recent successes meant that the older pages had some armour, and almost every man had a good helmet with a chain aventail.

Birds had flown back and forth from the city for the last hour – the city itself was less than fifteen miles distant. But Alcaeus had to approach the Captain and shake his helmeted head.

‘No word from the Vardariotes,’ he admitted. ‘The Empress has sent a delegation to them but it may be hours before we hear.’

The Captain nodded. ‘I don’t have hours. Let’s ride.’

‘What if they decline?’ Alcaeus asked.

The Captain shrugged in the darkness, and his harness rustled. ‘Then an opportunity is lost, an easy victory sails through our grasp, and we have to do everything the hard way.’ He shrugged. ‘And we’re out a night’s sleep. Let’s ride.’