The Fell Sword

Chapter Six

Liviapolis – Morgan Mortirmir

Morgan Mortirmir was days recovering from the fight. He slept and slept – slept the clock round, at one point. At another, he awoke to find the noblewoman – he had to admit she was a courtesan, perhaps merely a whore, but she didn’t look like any whore he’d ever met in Harndon, with her exotic make-up and pouting lips – was bent over him, rebandaging his shin where it was split open and bleeding merrily. He watched her hands moving with assurance, and wondered where she had learned to wrap bandages quite so well.

‘Are you planning to sleep here for ever?’ she asked him. She smiled. Her eyes were deliciously tilted. ‘I would like the bed back.’

‘Most courteously asked, fair friend,’ he said. After a pause, he realised he’d spoken in Alban, and he tried again, in High Archaic.

She smiled.

He rose carefully – he was wearing only a shirt, and it had to have been one of the Nordikan’s as it hung to Mortirmir’s knees. She stood close enough that he could smell the scent on her – a delicate, flowery scent with a bite at the end of it. She was wearing a deep burgundy overgown over a tight kirtle of pale green silk. At least it looked like silk to him.

He sighed. ‘Where is Messire Derkensun?’ he asked.

‘You have your wits under control, ser barbarian,’ she said. ‘I have not seen him these three days. Much has happened in the city.’ She sat on the bed. ‘I would like to be fed, but I have no money. I would like to stop being scared. I nursed you – I hope that you will now prove appreciative.’ She shrugged. ‘But men so seldom are.’

‘Your name, despoina?’ he asked. It is difficult to manage a courtly bow while you try to get your hose on. Hose were worn – at least in Harndon – separately, not joined the way they were worn in Galle. That meant getting one on, smoothing it up over the thigh, tying it to the waist band of his braes, buckling his garter . . .

He couldn’t find his garters.

‘Oh,’ she said, with complete falsity. ‘Those were yours? I liked them.’ She raised the hem of her gown, and showed him her knees – and his garters.

‘They – er – they become you much better. Than . . .’ He blushed, stammered, and came to a stop.

She laughed. ‘How old are you, ser? What is your name and style?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m sixteen, despoina, and I am called Morgan Mortirmir.’ He looked about. ‘Does Messire Derkensun have any leather lace? Or anything I can use as garters?’

She laughed. ‘Why not just ask for your own back?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘I’m an inexperienced boy,’ he said, ‘but I’m quite sure that would be ungallant of me.’

Instead of giggling, she looked at him with hard eyes. ‘Are you trying to bed me, ser? As a commercial matter, I could use the business, but I promise you that my Nordikan will think less of both of us for it.’

Mortirmir met her eye. This was the longest conversation he’d ever had with a woman not his mother – he felt he was doing well enough. ‘I had hoped that this was flirting,’ he said. ‘I’ve been told I need practice.’

‘Oh, as to flirting,’ she said, ‘I’m not be a good teacher, since at the end of the day I always say yes.’ She looked at him expectantly, and swung her legs a little, sitting on the bed, like a much younger girl.

Mortirmir found his doublet and got his arms into it. ‘And your name, despoina?’

‘I’m called Anna,’ she said. ‘By the handful of people who know my name.’ She got up from the bed and brushed her skirts. ‘Will you buy me a little food, ser knight?’

‘I’m not a knight yet. I’m too young,’ said Mortirmir. He realised that he’d taken her too literally, and he smiled. ‘I’d be delighted to feed you.’

‘Then I’ll teach you what I know about flirting. To begin with, if you ever want to kiss a girl, you’ll need to brush your teeth.’ She smiled to take a little of the sting out, and he looked away.

‘You have money?’ she asked. ‘Please note that I didn’t take your purse and run.’

‘Why not?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘I like Derkensun. But he is gone, and I am hungry. Every hour, I thought of your purse. Is that too honest of me to say?’

Mortirmir was learning about the world hand over fist.

They went down the stairs of the taverna where Derkensun had rooms. The innkeeper’s wife met them at the entrance to the common room. She was a handsome woman of forty, in dark clothes which were almost black; but the coral beads of her long rosary, the gold crucifix that hung from it, and the black work on her shift showed her to be a woman of property. She put up a hand, barring their entrance to the common room. She inclined her head politely at Mortirmir.

‘And who might you be, kyrios?’ she asked.

Mortirmir had a moment of confusion. But he realised that this wasn’t his inn; he was coming from one of the landlady’s rooms with a whore, however well spoken she was.

He bowed. ‘Despoina, my friend Derkensun the Nordikan rescued me, and this fine young woman has been my nurse. Three days I have rested on one of your bolsters. Far from trying to evade my bill, I was on my way to take a meal with my nurse.’

The landlady inclined her head. She looked at Anna, sniffed, and said, ‘I can well imagine what kind of nursing you have received.’

‘Can you really?’ asked Anna.

Mortirmir’s hand went into his purse and emerged with a silver crown – an Alban coin, but one with value everywhere in Nova Terra. ‘Might I know your name, despoina?’

The lady inclined her head a little more. ‘You may call me Stella, fair sir,’ she said in passable Alban. ‘Come with me. I do not ordinarily allow women and men to dine together unless they are married – this is a proper inn, and we observe the laws. But as there is no one in the common room, I’ll allow you to sit together.’

Anna sat in a high-backed chair and made a face. ‘Now I will have to go back to climbing her gutter to get into his room,’ she said. ‘I hate women like that. A tavern keeper’s wife? Likely she spread her legs for clients in her day – but now she pays for masses and is more virtuous than a saint.’

Mortirmir shrugged. ‘I don’t know any tavern keepers,’ he said.

‘Or whores!’ she added. But she fell silent as the hostess came up.

Stella came with a pitcher of wine and another of lemon and water. ‘I can make sausages and I have a good bread.’

Mortirmir realised that he was ravenous. ‘Splendid.’

Anna tore through the bread, drank the wine, devoured six sausages and then tried to pretend to be dainty with a dish of figs. Mortirmir felt less ill at ease as the meal progressed; among other things, her appalling lack of table manners made him feel more confident. Eventually he leaned over and cut her sausages with his eating knife, and she watched him use his pricker to feed himself.

She ate with her fingers.

‘I had a knife,’ she said. ‘Harald gave it to me. I had to sell it.’

‘How many days did I miss? What’s happened?’ Mortirmir was young, and inexperienced, but a taverna with an empty common room at mid-day was an oddity anywhere, and the landlady’s attentiveness spoke volumes for her desire for money.

Anna looked at him, her mouth full of figs. She chewed, and chewed, and finally they both giggled.

‘You aren’t any older than I am,’ he said.

‘That’s crap,’ she said. ‘I’m almost seventeen.’ She sighed. ‘My looks will go soon.’ She leaned back. ‘So – here’s what I know. Three days ago – the morning you went to sleep in Harald’s bed – he went on duty at one of the gates. And the Emperor was taken prisoner by the Duke of Thrake. You know who he is?’

Mortirmir shrugged. ‘His son was at the Academy one day. An arrogant pup.’ He smiled. ‘Even worse than me.’

‘There was a fight inside the palace. That is all anyone knows. Rumour says Harald survived and that the Princess Irene has taken the purple and is Imperatrix.’

Without any warning, she burst into tears. ‘It has been three days!’ she said. ‘Where is he?’

Mortirmir felt well out of his depth. ‘You love him?’ he asked.

She bawled for as long as a man might say ten pater nosters. It embarrassed Mortirmir, who didn’t know how to deal with it, and it embarrassed the landlady who overcame her aversion to whores for long enough to bring the young woman a handkerchief.

‘I don’t want to be a whore!’ she said. ‘I want to marry him and have babies! What if he’s dead? Oh, by my sweet and gentle Christ-’

‘I could take you to the palace,’ Mortirmir heard himself say. He swallowed, and reviewed his words. Yes, he really had said that.

Anna looked at him. ‘Really? We might be killed.’ She got to her feet. ‘I will teach you everything about flirting if you will take me to the palace. And let us take wine and bread.’

The landlady, listening in, put a hand on the cross on her ample bosom. ‘Take wine to the palace? Surely they have the finest wine-’

Anna used the handkerchief to wipe her face. ‘They may not have received any deliveries in three days. The Mayor of the Palace is dead – everyone was saying so yesterday. Eh?’

The landlady nodded hesitantly. ‘It is true. And they say that the Grand Chamberlain has left the city with his leman, abandoning his wife.’ She looked fiercely at Anna. ‘The markets are closed. There has been looting. And no woman is safe.’ She spoke more softly. ‘Not even a whore.’

Mortirmir shook his head. ‘No – listen. I’ll go. Stella, will you let my nurse stay here? I will take no wine. I will find Derkensun, and I will return.’ In fact, he found the prospect daunting. And yet exciting, despite his throbbing temples and the ache in his gut and across his back – the long tally of bruises, abrasions, and not-quite sprains from wrestling with a giant.

Anna shook her head. ‘Do you know the way from here to the palace?’

Mortirmir shrugged. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am a scholar at the University. I know how to reach the palace.’

The landlady shrugged. ‘He’s a barbarian,’ she said. ‘They will never let him in.’

Mortirmir shrugged. ‘Neither of you would change that. But you’d make the risks greater.’

What has come over me?

The women agreed – too readily, Mortirmir thought. He paid for the meal and fetched his sword and went out into the empty, damp streets of the city. The inn was close enough to his own that he thought of going for his horse, but the palace was less than a mile away; the sun was high in the sky, somewhere beyond the rain clouds, and the streets were empty.

He had to cross the square of the jewellers, one of his favourite places in the city, where the craftsman sat and hawked their wares, from cheap knock-offs of court jewellery, through magnificent reproductions of such stuff, all the way up the scale to the real thing, with a sapphire ring costing more than a thousand ducats.

Not today. Today the square was empty and some broken men were gathered under the booths, hiding from the rain. Many of the booths had been smashed. There was a body lying on the cobbles.

Mortirmir edged around the square, but they saw him.

He froze in indecision. It was a foolish situation – he could kill a dozen broken men with his sword, but the cobbles were wet and he hadn’t actually ever fought anyone to the death. It seemed easier to run. Except that everything hurt.

They were spreading out as they came, and hooting to one another. He had the presence of mind to look behind him, and there was another pair, their skin the unhealthy, ruddy colour that he associated with life on the streets. He ran a few steps, his boots just a little uncertain on the rain-slick cobbles, and those few steps made his head pound. He turned to put his back against a tiny stone church with brickwork decoration and an external mosaic.

He whirled, and drew. His arming sword was steady. He sank back into the guard he’d been taught for such situations, and the lead man slowed. But he had a heavy stick and didn’t stop. He ran in and swung it heavily at Mortirmir.

If you practise things often enough, sometimes they happen whether you stop to consider them or not. The heavy blow rolled off his sweeping sword – he stepped forward, left foot passing right, and his free left hand slammed into the man’s elbow, half spinning him, then Mortirmir’s downward sword cut hit him on the crown of the head – a little flat, as the cut was too fast and a little panicked – but the effect was right. The man fell unconscious. Or perhaps just dead.

The other broken men paused.

‘We can take ’im,’ said the smallest, a bearded ruffian with two daggers.

‘You first, dickhead,’ said another, backing away.

Mortirmir was full of the spirit of prowess – he had no other words to describe it, but he felt ten feet tall, his heart thumped in his chest, and-

– and there was a bright red-gold fire burning on his left hand.

He almost lost his purse and his life right there – stunned that his left hand was cloaked in power, he missed the man coming for his left side. But he caught the incoming blow in his peripheral vision and pivoted on his hips, got his blade up and caught most of the blow, then stepped in and put his pommel into the man’s face. This rogue was faster or better trained than the first, and the pommel scraped his nose and no more. Mortirmir passed him as they both stumbled.

Mortirmir raised his left hand to ward against the man’s dagger – by luck and training he caught the man’s wrist in the tangle, although the point of the dagger pinked his thigh.

The rogue screamed and dropped the dagger. He stumbled back, his cudgel waving between them.

Mortirmir knew the phantasm for fire. He knew it intimately, and yet, in that moment, in mortal combat, he couldn’t summon the words for it, not even when whole bright red fire played on his hand.

The man with two daggers started at his right side.

Mortirmir seized hold of his mind and summoned the mental construct that he had memorised so pointlessly. He put his left hand at Two Daggers and said ‘Poieo! ’ in High Archaic.

His memory palace was a fledgling thing – well constructed, based on the temple of Minerva outside the city walls. The professors all agreed that it should be constructed of a place he loved.

The problem was that since none of his phantasms ever worked, his impetus to construct and improve the palace had withered. So the ancient pillar – flawless white marble – was indistinct, and he could not tell for sure how many facets it had, nor could he read the graffiti he’d so carefully inscribed.

But he focused his will, took a deep mental breath, and there it was – a fish for Pisces, an eagle – for-

Saint Mark! And the gospel, and

In the beginning was the WORD,

And an owl-

Sweet Christ, the owl stands for wisdom, and . . .

MINERVA . . . ?

The man’s first dagger cut almost caught his outstretched hand. He bounced back, cut with his sword-

‘Athena!’ he spat.

Two Daggers immolated.

The force of the phantasm stunned Mortirmir and he stumbled back, as much in shock as from the force of the heat. The man screamed, terribly. He wasn’t dead, and three heartbeats later, he still wasn’t dead.

Mortirmir took a deep breath, made himself step forward, and cut the man’s head from his body.

The fire went out. The man was horribly burned, his skin almost melted, one of his eyeballs popped and the other-

The image of the ruined man would haunt Mortirmir for many nights. In the meantime, he spun, ready for another attacker, and they were gone – he saw them vanish around corners like roaches fleeing a night candle. He took a deep breath.

His hands were shaking uncontrollably.

‘I did it,’ he muttered.

He stumbled a few steps, and decided, as if making the decision from a great distance, to continue his mission to the palace.

Two streets later, he realised that he still had a sword in his hand, and it was dripping blood. He stopped and expended one of his mother’s linen squares on the sword. Some of the blood was dried like lacquer. He spat on the blade, suddenly far too focused on cleaning it, and another hundred heartbeats later, he realised that he wasn’t thinking particularly well.

He got the blade clean enough, and sheathed it.

His right glove was soaked in blood, and there was blood running down his right leg from a hole in his thigh.

He kept going towards the palace.

He crossed the street of the lawyers, and it was empty. In the armourer’s streets, there were men with swords and half-pikes – workmen. He paused at the fountain.

A man in Etruscan half-armour came up to him. ‘What news, neighbour?’ the man asked courteously enough.

Mortirmir bowed. ‘I’m a student at the University,’ he said. ‘Men attacked me in the square of the jewellers.’ His saliva suddenly tasted of salt – he flashed on the burned man.

The other man nodded. ‘You don’t look like a looter to me,’ he said. But he pointed at the sword. ‘Are you a barbarian?’

Mortirmir nodded. ‘From Alba,’ he said, ignoring his automatic resentment at the term.

‘Ah. Harndon?’ the man asked.

‘I have that honour,’ Mortirmir said. His voice sounded a little wild inside his head.

‘There are fine armourers in Harndon,’ the man said. ‘Can you name one?’

Mortirmir saw that there were a dozen apprentices around him, armed to the teeth.

‘Master Pye lives in my mother’s street,’ he said. ‘I’ve been fishing with his daughters.’

The atmosphere lightened immediately. ‘Ah! Master Pye!’ cried the armoured man. He bowed. ‘These are difficult times, ser. I had to be sure. May I ask why you are out? The watch has called a curfew and we are all supposed to be in our beds.’

Mortirmir had to struggle with his own somewhat unruly mind to come up with an answer. ‘I’m going to the palace.’ He shrugged. ‘For a girl.’

Luckily for Mortirmir, the armourer had known a few young men, and a few girls. He smiled. ‘The palace is in turmoil,’ he said. ‘But I will take you there for Master Pye’s sake.’

An hour later, with four armed apprentices at his back, Mortirmir stood at the postern gate of the Outer Court and knocked. It was the fourth gate he had tried – his armourers were enjoying the adventure, but all five of them were tired of failure.

However, here the grate was opened – the first sign of life they’d seen in the palace. ‘State your business,’ said a voice.

Mortirmir had had an hour to practise his speech and calm himself from the fight in the square. ‘Kyrios,’ he said, ‘I have come to find my friend Harald Derkensun of the Nordikan Guard. And to ascertain if the palace is in need of any food or drink that the city taverns might supply in this emergency. I have at my back members of the City Guild of Smiths, who would like to know-’

The postern opened, and revealed half a dozen ill-kept-looking Scholae guardsmen.

‘Fresh bread wouldn’t be amiss,’ said the tallest of them, a man in magnificent, if somewhat tattered, satin and samnite clothes, with a breastplate of scales and three days growth of beard. ‘As for Master Derkensun, he’s with the Empress. And I’d take it as a personal favour if you’d walk a note to my bride. If she’ll still have me.’ He looked at the armourer’s apprentices. ‘She lives in your quarter.’

‘I’d like to see Master Derkensun,’ Mortirmir insisted. He felt empowered. Literally. He had never felt so full of spirit, and his hands and chest felt as if they might catch fire.

The well-dressed man shrugged. ‘If you’ll leave your weapon and promise to take my message, I’ll escort you to him,’ he said. ‘But if he’s with the – er – Empress – you won’t be allowed in.’

The palace was as empty as the streets. The Ordinaries were locked down in their barracks – a bare minimum of them walked the corridors, and those few flattened themselves against the walls when the soldiers approached.

They crossed the Outer Court and entered the Inner Court. The Scholae barracks were full, and the handsome young man took Mortirmir to the duty clerk and entered his name on a roster. Then they crossed the yard. A pair of Nordikans stood like statues in full hauberks, with great axes as tall as Mortirmir’s shoulders.

‘Is Master Derkensun at liberty?’ asked the Scholiast.

‘DERKENSUN,’ bellowed the nearer of the two blond giants. He nodded. ‘Just off duty after a murder. In the prison.’

A sleepy giant came to the door. As soon as he saw Mortirmir, he grasped both of his hands. ‘You!’ he said. ‘The witch woman said we were to be bound together.’

Mortirmir might, under other circumstances, have had to proclaim his total disdain for anyone who went by the title ‘witch woman’, but an hour before he had caused a man to die by fire, and the universe was suddenly very strange.

‘Anna sent me,’ he said. It seemed a silly thing to say.

But Derkensun’s smile burst over his face like sunrise after a long, dark night. ‘By the gods!’ he said. ‘You are a true friend. Is it chaos out there?’ He turned and bellowed something – the sound, to Mortirmir, very much like two dogs fighting.

‘By our gracious Lord, is that what Nordikan sounds like?’ he asked.

His Scholae guard grinned. ‘That’s what we say.’

Derkensun took the two men aside. ‘I’ve called for my corporal. Listen. The Emperor is taken-’

‘That much is all over the city,’ Mortirmir said.

‘But too many of the officers fell with him – or have gone over to the Duke.’ The Nordikan shrugged. ‘This palace is a dark place, and no mistake.’

‘This man offered to bring food,’ the Scholae knight said. He offered an arm. ‘Giorgios Comnenos at your service, ser barbarian. You, I take it, are a student?’

‘Is Maria Ekaterina Comnena your sister?’ Mortirmir asked.

‘First cousin,’ the man smiled. ‘You know her at University, I suppose?’

Mortirmir looked away, and didn’t say ‘she coined my nickname’. Instead he said, ‘Oh, we’ve met. Pardon my rudeness, kyrios – I am Morgan Mortirmir, of Harndon.’

‘You speak our tongue so well I’d never have taken you for a barbarian,’ Comnenos said.

Derkensun put a hand on both men’s shoulders. ‘Listen, friends, enough pleasantries. We’re all good men here – let’s act the part. Morgan, can you fetch food? Do either of you know what it would take to get deliveries moving again?’

‘My father’s steward would probably know,’ Comnenos said. ‘But if I leave the palace, half of the Scholae will leave and never return.’

The only black-haired giant that Mortirmir had ever seen came out of the barracks and bows were exchanged. He was introduced as Durn Blackhair, acting Spatharios. It was a strange title – Mortirmir’s pedantic young brain tended to translate every scrap of Archaic, and that one seemed to mean ‘sword bearer’. Not really a title at all.

Blackhair drank off a pint of unwatered wine. ‘The Duke wants a fight,’ he said. ‘I just had word that he’s moving his camp closer to the walls, and he has threatened to bombard the city with his siege machines. We need access to the farms – without them, I guess there’s no food.’

Mortirmir felt odd, speaking up when all the men around him were – well, twenty-five. Which seemed like a great age to him. ‘It seems to me,’ he said, and they all looked at him. ‘It seems to me that the taverns and inns have food – they lay in stores.’

Blackhair nodded. ‘That’s good sense,’ he said. ‘But it won’t feed the city.’

‘It would feed the palace for another day,’ Derkensun said.

‘Long enough for . . .’ The knight of the Schola shrugged. ‘You know.’ He exchanged a look with Derkensun.

‘Three days without markets,’ Comnenos said. ‘By tonight, there’ll be hungry people offering to open a gate.’

Blackhair took a deep breath. ‘Right. Young master, if you can find us two cartloads of food, we won’t waste it. I’d like to say the Empress will be grateful, but I’d say the odds aren’t too good she’ll still wear the purple.’

Mortirmir nodded. ‘Can she pay for it?’ he asked.

‘If she wins,’ Comnenos said. ‘She’s thrown her dice.’

Mortirmir laughed, caught up in it. ‘Well, I can pay,’ he said. ‘It beats going to school, anyway.’

Blackhair slapped him on the shoulder, which almost drove him to his knees. ‘I won’t forget this,’ he said. ‘Get it done and you’ll have the thanks of the Guard.’

‘Those that are left,’ said Derkensun.

‘Let me write a note for my bride,’ said the officer. He pulled a beautiful red leather cased wax tablet from his belt pouch and wrote hurriedly. Then he turned the tablet over and wrote again, and pressed the ring on his finger into the wax. ‘Green side for Despoina Helena Dukas. Red side for Kyrios Demetrios Comnenos, my father.’

As it proved, delivering the tablets was as easy as returning to the square of the smiths; the Comnenoses’ palace dominated the square, with four tall marble towers glistening wetly in the late afternoon rain. And the Dukas palace stood across the square. Of course, a damp and exhausted Mortirmir was not at first invited to meet the lovely despoina in person, but he heard a shriek of delight from above him, and a beautiful girl of seventeen or so with bright gold hair came down the stairs, sprinting like a professional messenger, and he had to endure her thanks, her offers of money, and a hundred questions – was he all right? Had he taken a wound? Was he a hero? What was the Empress doing?

He survived, downed a cup of wine, and suggested to the girl’s father that if any supplies could be spared for the palace, they would be most welcome.

Lord Andronicus Dukas gave his bedraggled visitor a somewhat sketchy bow. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But until there is a legitimate Emperor, we would hesitate to act.’

Mortirmir shrugged. ‘Ah, kyrios, I am only a poor ignorant barbarian, but it seems to me that the Empress is even now restoring order. I gather that she is victorious.’

It didn’t seem to have any effect, but Mortirmir hoped it made the bastard squirm. He crossed the square, bid farewell to his escort, and passed the other note to the lord of House Comnenos. This old patriarch met him in person, and bowed politely – more than the lord of House Dukas had done.

‘How is my young scapegrace?’ he asked. ‘Staying in trouble? Humiliating his family properly?’ But he read the note, and grinned.

‘I gather you are a student, and not just a messenger. I will prepare a cart and a dozen men-at-arms to escort it. May I offer you any further assistance?’

Mortirmir bowed. ‘If you could provide me a shirt of mail and a horse, I’d appreciate it,’ he said.

Despoina Stella filled a cart with food and wine in two hours. He spent four semesters’ worth of fees on hams, sausages, fresh baked bread and lentils. Stella and her husband, who emerged with a spear in his hand, scoured the tavernas of the neighbourhood and found a wagon, a team, and an escort of spearmen raised from their own ranks. No one challenged them on their way to rendezvous with the cart provided by the Comnenos clan; they had an escort of mounted and armoured stradiotes and ten Smith’s Guild crossbowmen when they crossed the Great Square and stood outside the Outer Court. Mortirmir, now utterly exhausted, had a moment of panic as the great gates remained resolutely closed.

He could hear hoof beats. They were far away – ten or twenty blocks – but there were an awful lot of them. The city was dark, there was no watch out in the streets, and all lights were extinguished. The sound of hooves was frightening.

The Comnenos men-at-arms drew together and took their lances from the leather sockets by their stirrups.

Mortirmir knocked on the gates again. His leather-clad knuckles made little noise against bronze-clad oak gates that were fifteen feet tall. Finally he drew his dagger and used the hilt to rap on the gate.

‘Who goes there?’ answered the sentry.

‘Food!’ Mortirmir replied.

The hoof beats were coming closer in the darkness, and sounded like thunder.

Above his head, Harald Derkensun leaned out. ‘Morgan!’ he called.

‘Here!’ Mortirmir called back.

‘I can’t open up. There’s armed men in the streets – hundreds of them. If they caught the gates open-’ Derkensun sounded unhappy.

‘Christ on the cross!’ Mortirmir shouted. ‘We have two carts and twenty men. Open the gates, for the love of God. We’ll be in before you can say “Ave Maria”.’

Derkensun sighed audibly. ‘I can’t take the risk. I’m sorry, Morgan. I take my oath to the Emperor very seriously.’

From the lead cart, a voice called, ‘Jesus and all the saints! Open the gate, Harald!’

The sound of horse’s hooves was filling the night.

‘Anna!’ Derkensun said. He sounded utterly wretched.

There was a low thump, and the Nordikan landed on his feet by Mortirmir. ‘I cannot open the gate,’ he said. ‘So I’ll die by you, here.’

The Great Square of the city was itself larger than many Alban towns. It stood between the ancient arena, where chariot races were still held, and the palace, and the entire square was lined in oak trees and paved in marble slabs cunningly worked with deep grooves to run rainwater off into gutters. Seen from above, the grooves spelled out whole chapters of the gospels. In the centre of the Great Square stood a mixed group of statuary, much of it impossibly ancient; there was the great Empress Livia, in brightly gilt bronze, driving her war-chariot against the western irks; there was Saint Aetius, standing like a young David, with his sword against his thigh, apparently contemplating his conquests – the Emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora; and even more ancient men and women. Mortirmir knew them all. They had been part of one of the entrance exams.

The horsemen entered the darkened square from the south-east. They were at least three hundred strong, and as they came on the stradiotes prepared themselves like brave men. Derkensun kissed Anna.

She slapped him lightly. ‘You could have just opened the gate,’ she said. ‘You great oaf. And I came all this way for you.’

Derkensun grinned. It was visible because Mortirmir had just cast his second ever successful phantasm – the first working any student ever learned. He made light, and set it on the peak of his borrowed helmet, so that it illuminated the group by him with a reddish light.

He was grinning uncontrollably.

‘Perhaps you should not have made us quite so obvious?’ Derkensun murmured. The professional soldiers seemed to agree.

In a rustle of hooves and harness, the house guards rode away, and the guild crossbowman cursed them.

Across the square, the horsemen came on. Mortirmir’s light glinted redly off horses and harness studded in gold or brass, and their tunics were scarlet – surely that couldn’t just be the light-

‘Vardariotes!’ said Derkensun.

They didn’t form for battle. They were moving at a fast trot, and they crossed the square in a column of fours, with a small pennon at their head made of silk, with a horse’s tail attached to it. The leader held a mace of what appeared to be solid gold, and he used it to salute the palace gate. The men – and a few women – were barbarians, Easterners, with black hair and slanted eyes and scraggly beards or clean-shaven, and every one of them wore a heavy horn bow in a scabbard at their waists, and a long, curved sword.

They entered the main road to the Gate of Ares, and the long column vanished into the arched gate of the Great Square as if it were being devoured by a dragon. In two hundred heartbeats, only the sound of their passage remained, echoing around the square, and floating on the night air from their new route.

When they were gone, voices inside ordered the Outer Court’s gate opened, and the wagons went into the yard. Mortirmir was too fatigued to be afraid, but he could see relief on every face.

An older woman in court clothes came into the yard from the palace end – the courtyard was fully illuminated with cressets and torches – and called softly for Blackhair. The Nordikan turned the carts over to Ordinaries – he’d inspected them personally – and Mortirmir was standing to hand.

‘My lady,’ he said, with a bow.

The older woman nodded. ‘Who were they?’ she asked. Her voice betrayed nothing.

‘My lady, they were the Vardariotes. They passed away to the Gate of Ares.’ He spat. ‘The traitors.’

‘Judge them not until they are proved,’ said Lady Maria.

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

‘My lord,’ breathed Lady Clarissa de Sartres. She was leaning forward, her lute clutched against her. The King had risen from his stool in his private receiving room – and put his hand on her shoulder.

He leaned down and ran his lips across the exposed nape of her neck and she stiffened. She scrambled away, her hand straying to the amulet that her great-uncle Abblemont had given her, and her thumb touched the disc at the base of the crucifix.

The King was small but he was strong and very quick, and he had both of her hands, and then he pushed her against the fruitwood side table and pulled her veil off her head and put his mouth on hers. She stumbled, and used the stumble to cover a kick to his knee – and he threw her roughly to floor.

She screamed.

Abblemont came into the private solar without undue haste a few of her terrified heartbeats later. Clarissa was under the King, and he had her skirts above her knees and she was weeping. Abblemont left the door open.

‘People are coming, Your Grace,’ the Horse said. ‘Let Clarissa up, please.’

The girl had enough spirit to slap the King as soon as he released her hands, and he slammed the heel of his hand into her chin.

Abblemont dragged him off her. He was a head taller, much heavier, and he trained constantly. He managed to lift the King clear of the ground and set him on his stool without doing him much harm.

‘Get up and go – before the Queen comes,’ Abblemont said over his shoulder to his niece.

The King sucked in a deep breath, as if he had just awakened. ‘She made me!’ he said.

Abblemont turned on his niece. ‘I told you never to be alone with him,’ he said.

She clutched her ruined dress to herself and sobbed – and reached for her instrument. But when she attempted to lift it, it became clear that it had been shattered in the struggle, and a litter of discordant strings cut her sobs.

She ran from the room.

‘She seduced me,’ said the King, his eyes steady. ‘That strumpet.’

Abblemont contemplated regicide, and let the moment pass. ‘Your Grace, there is a letter from the Captal, and the Queen is on her way to this room. Are you prepared to receive her? She has some notion that Clarissa was present.’ His words were clipped and careful. He was, at some remove, quite fond of his niece – but he was altogether fonder of the peace and prosperity of Galle.

The King sat up.

His wife came in, as if summoned. ‘Ah,’ she said. She was ten years older than the King, and the daughter of the man reputed to be the richest in Christendom. Her clothes and her jewels were the finest in the world, and her grace and deportment were the toast of poets in three countries. When she was fifteen, the Lady of Flowers, as she had been called then, had danced alone, accompanied only by her own voice, in front of a crowd composed of her father’s friends, a thousand knights and their ladies, to open a great tournament, and the fame of that great feat remained her cloak and her armour.

Her expression was such that the exclamation ‘ah’ was enough to throw the King into a rage.

‘You have no right to be here, you witch!’ he shouted, like a boy at his mother.

The Queen of Galle came all the way into the room, her cloth of gold gown and the collar of emeralds she wore making the King look like a small boy. ‘Abblemont,’ said the Queen, with a slight inclination of her head.

Abblemont sank into a deep bow, his right knee on the floor, his eyes down.

The Queen sniffed slightly. ‘I would think,’ she said, ‘that you would have more care for your niece.’

Abblemont kept his eyes down.

‘She came after me like a bitch in heat!’ said the King.

‘Of course,’ said the Queen quietly. In two words, she somehow expressed disbelief, and an utter disinterest. ‘Abblemont, see to it that I never hear her name mentioned again.’

The Horse didn’t raise his eyes. ‘Of course, madame.’

Clarissa de Sartres stood on the bridge below the nunnery and watched the dark water move implacably – deep, and very cold.

An hour ago, she had considered suicide. Her immortal soul was as ruined as the rest of her – she had little interest in God, or a life of contemplation. Or anything else. And as if God had granted his permission, she found her room unlocked for the first time – and the postern gate of the nunnery unlocked as well. No one had seen her cross the courtyard. Perhaps no one cared.

But the water looked cold, and her imagination – always her bane – spun her a hell of eternal cold; dragged down to the bottom of the river and resting there for ever. With the Bain Sidhe of her nurse’s tales.

The utter humiliation of being banished from court – for ever – for the sin of being attacked by the King. Her throat closed, and her hands shook, and she gagged and the darkness closed on her again.

Not quite raped. Her imagination supplied whatever hadn’t happened, and the speed with which she’d been jettisoned by her uncle – and the sheer ferocity of the joy of the other women at court at her degradation – had been telling.

God doesn’t give a fuck, she thought. And in that moment she thought of a very young man in her father’s courtyard, saying those words. More than a year ago, in Arles. And how she had despised him for it.

She looked up at the nunnery on the mountain, and at the Rhun River flowing at her feet. She realised in that moment that she hadn’t escaped – she had been allowed to come here, so her inconvenient version of events would perish. For a few heartbeats, she was utterly consumed in hatred – an emotion she had seldom felt before.

If I kill myself, they win, she thought.

Open Ocean west of Galle – Ser Hartmut.

The crossing itself was not without incident. Ser Hartmut had never sailed in the north, and he exclaimed with joy to see great hills of ice sailing by like so many white ships of war. But the wind was fair, and ten days sweet sailing brought them off Keos, the northernmost of the islands of Morea, and they bore north and west into the setting sun. It was late in the year, and de Marche had plotted a conservative course, making each crossing of the empty blue between islands as brief as he could allow, but no storm troubled them.

West of Keos, they saw a ship’s sail – apparently a great lateen, according to the sailors – nicking the far western horizon, but when the next day dawned they were alone in the great bowl of the ocean.

Seventeen days into the voyage, and they had had no weather worse than a rain squall. The three ships were still together, well in sight; La Grace de Dieu was well in advance, with her two consorts trailing in an uneven line, each ship at least a mile from the last.

Ser Hartmut was on the deck, fully armed, as he appeared every day at daybreak and remained all day until the sun set. He had wrapped the mainmast in a thick linen canvas quilted hard, and he practised at this informal pell all day, cutting, thrusting, hammering away with a pole-axe. He would take long breaks in which he merely sat in the bows and watched the sea. Sometimes, Etienne or Louis de Harcourt, his other squire, would come and read to him. At other times they would spar with him, matching blunted swords or spears up and down the deck.

Ser Hartmut never spoke to the sailors but they had developed a healthy respect for him as a fighting man. Despite his size, he was as fast as a cat; despite his girth, he had excellent wind, and could usually fight long after his squires began to grow pale and raise their hands in token of submission.

His men-at-arms were no different, and they trained hard enough that every day had its tale of broken bones, sprains, and bruises.

Some of the sailors began to practise with their spears too – but never in the open glare of the Black Knight.

But this day saw nothing of the sort. It was hot, and the sailors were bored – many were in the rigging, simply hanging there, waiting for a slight breeze to cool them. After nonnes such a breeze arose, and from the east, so that the ship began to move, and the water whispered along the ship’s bluff cheeks.

The sun began to set.

And then everything happened at once. Whales appeared under the round ship’s counter; great leviathans rising from the deep and sounding around them.

De Marche was on deck in a moment. ‘Rig the nets! To arms!’

Etienne was pale with fatigue and had a black eye. But he ran up the ladder to the aft castle in full armour and managed a good bow. ‘Ser Hartmut asks – what is the purpose of this alarm?’

De Marche leaned over the side. His servant had his breast and back open on the hinges and his shirt of mail held high, and de Marche didn’t wait on courtesy, but put his head into the mail and then his arms. From deep in the steel mesh, he said ‘The Eeeague. They follow the whales.’

‘Eeeague?’ asked de Vrieux.

‘Silkies, sir.’ De Marche’s head popped through the neck of his hauberk and he leaned out over the wall of the castle as the boarding nets went up. Crossbows were coming out to the hold at a fair speed, and men on the deck were arming.

‘Land-ho!’ shouted the lookout. ‘Land, and three ships. Ships are hull up.’ The last report was sullen – the sound of a man who knew he’d failed in his duty.

‘Master Louis, the lookout is to be listed for punishment,’ de Marche snapped. He sprang on to the rail, swung up into the rigging, and climbed a stay, hand over hand despite the weight of his mail, until he stood on the small platform at the midpoint of the tall, single-piece aft mast. ‘Where away?’ he shouted.

The lookout in the mainmast fighting top pointed. ‘West-north-west,’ he shouted, obviously eager to be forgiven for his dereliction. ‘Bare poles,’ he called. And then, almost to himself, ‘And I’d have seen ’em sooner if they carried any sail, anyway.’

De Marche found them quickly enough. He watched them as long as his eyes could stand the sun-dazzle, and then he watched the water below his feet. From this height, he could see the great dark shapes of the whales, and the smaller shapes flitting in and out among them. Herdsmen? Tormenters?

The red flag burst from his own gallery. The Grace de Dieu heeled and began to turn, picking up the wind on her quarter she turned south – but round ships didn’t turn particularly well, and the whole process was glacial.

Two miles astern, another red flag flashed; after a few heartbeats, the middle ship, Saint Denis, answered.

Men with crossbows were lining the sides of his fore and aftercastles. A round ship was a ship shaped like half an egg, with great towers built fore and aft to raise archers and crossbowmen, and give them the height advantage they needed, whether they fought men – or things.

Amidships, in the low waist, the men-at-arms and their squires and pages, already armed, waited with axes and spears.

De Marche picked a halyard, made sure of it, and then lowered himself to the deck, landing neatly just two Gallish cloth yards behind Ser Hartmut. The giant knight turned when he felt the wood under his feet move, and found the merchant captain, wearing his hauberk, bowing to the deck.

‘Master Etienne!’ he shouted. ‘Ask your master if he has fought Eeeague.’

The steel giant raised his visor.

Etienne appeared. ‘Never,’ he admitted.

De Marche shrugged. ‘Neither have I. I thought they were something that the Etruscans made up, to warn us off their trade. None in the Middle Sea? Nor Ifriqu’ya?’

De Vrieux looked a question at his master, and spread his hands.

Ser Hartmut spun his pole-axe. It was so small, compared to the man himself, that it looked like a toy. Close up, de Marche could see it was almost half again the size most of the marines carried.

‘Come, sweet friends, and let us say a prayer together!’ Ser Hartmut called out, and all of his men-at-arms and their people knelt on the deck. ‘Let our sweet and gentle Jesus send us a good fight and a worthy enemy! Amen!’

De Marche ran back up the ladder to the aftercastle, and two of his mates got his breast and back on him and closed it. The buckles took time – too much time.

‘Oh Christ,’ said a sailor behind him.

Crossbows snapped – the strings sang with almost the same sound that a sword blade makes when it strikes the pell. His men had heavy arbalests, capable of putting a bolt right through a ship’s side – or through a man in armour.

‘Sweet Jesus Sweet Jesus ohmygodohmygod,’ moaned a sailor behind him.

The tine of the last buckle under his arm slipped home, and his man Lucius slapped his back. Master Henri had his steel helmet, an open-faced bassinet with a sun-bill of steel, and a fine steel chain aventail. He got it on de Marche’s head even as the sailors behind him began to scream.

Lucius put his bill-hook into his hand and he turned.

Half the sailors at the rail were already dead.

He almost missed the arm coming for him – and then he cut with the bill-hook. He had a hard time grasping the shape of the creature – it was nearly transparent, a ghastly pink and green mottling over glistening translucence.

He slammed his bill into the thing’s organic centre – if that was its trunk, and not a continuation of its limbs – it was difficult to register its physiology in combat. His bill splurted into the trunk and blew out again in a satisfying shower of gore – but every splat of the thing’s corporeal form that touched metal ate away at it, and Lucius tore his own helmet from his head and cursed.

The head of his bill began to deform, flaking away and rusting even as he slammed it into the thing for a second time.

The port-side crossbowmen were snapping their heavy bolts into the creature from a range of a few feet – spattering their hapless mates with the sticky, deadly gore, and sometimes with the bolts themselves, and doing the thing little harm.

It uncoiled something – an arm? A weapon? – at him, and he batted it aside with nothing but the headless shaft of his bill.

An alert ship’s boy acted on a hunch and poured a helmet full of seawater on Lucius, who stopped screaming.

Ser Hartmut vaulted up the ladder and stood like a tower of steel in front of the Eeeague. It turned to face him.

He drew his great sword, and it burst into flame.

A dozen sailors shouted, ‘The Black Knight!’

The thing snapped a tendril at him, and he batted it aside and cut back, right down the same line, into the monster. The thing had already endured fifty crossbow bolts and dozens of other blows, but now it screamed – and vanished down the side of the ship.

The stench of dead fish and decomposing flesh filled the air. There were six dead men on the deck, and Lucius was still having water poured over his head. He was as red as a beet and whimpering.

Just by their stern, a whale broached and a great fluke slammed into the water, showering every man on the aftercastle. The whale turned suddenly, and its great jaws opened.

Then closed.

In passing, it delivered a nudge to the great ship – one of the largest ships ever built in a Gallish yard – and the whole ship groaned, and wooden pegs carefully driven home with great oak fids sprang loose, and water sprayed in on the bales of bright red cloth.

It was too late to turn the round ship. And the whale was gone, hurtling away into the deep.

De Marche had never had to confront the three-dimensionality of the sea so forcefully, and he had a moment of vertigo as the whale vanished beneath him.

And then another of the tentacled things came at the forecastle.

By the fourth attack, two sailors had been thrown over the side, and the squires had fetched fire from the galley and made fire spears, wrapping dry tow dipped in oil around their boarding pikes and lighting them.

It was as well, because the fourth attack was the first one that seemed to be coordinated; six tentacled monsters came up the steep sides all together. Three of them went for the low waist of the ship as the easier target, and were greeted by Ser Hartmut. But the ship itself heeled – the things had significant weight. They were not just the spirits of damned and dead sailors, as had been shouted over the panic.

One went up the forecastle, but the forecastle was the highest point on the ship, rising sheer over the bow, and the creature, for all its hellish strength and speed, had trouble getting over the boarding nets, and was impaled with fire spears and fled.

But two of them came up the aftercastle. They screamed like dead spirits, and the Etruscans’ name for them – the Eeeague – was explained. And their coming heralded a wave-front of pure terror.

De Marche stood his deck. He put a spear into one thing’s trunk and severed what might have been a translucent tentacle – Lucius had an iron bucket of hot sand, and he threw it into the beast, and another sailor – Mark, an Alban – sprayed it with oil to no effect and died.

It came right over the rail and down – de Marche took a blow and the pain shocked him – whatever hit him went right through his mail.

Like water.

He screamed, stumbled back, and let go the spear.

A tendril caught a ship’s boy and flipped him over the side, screaming.

The trunk seemed to open and inside it had a red-orange beak like a raptor concealed in its jelly-like flesh, and the boy . . .

De Marche drew his sword. He whipped it along the deck where the oil had been spilled, cocked it back in his strongest guard, and cut at the thing’s trunk as hard as he could.

Unlike the concussive weapons, the sword cut. It felt like cutting through pig fat – but the blow was well formed, and he sawed as fast as he could even as the thing sprayed his face – he screamed, ripped the sword loose, and slammed it back again.

Lucius threw water into his face.

The smell was grotesque.

But it retreated back to the sea, leaving a great hunk of its gelatinous flesh on the deck, burning its way into the wood.

The other one had killed a sailor and paused to eat him, the beak exposed and glistening red, obscene and active. The thing had no face, no limbs. It looked like wet silk.

His blade was pitting before his eyes, but he cut into the second thing, cut and cut again. Lucius called, ‘Swords,’ and men drew them and hacked with the desperation of terror. A man fell screaming to the deck with a tendril wrapped around him, his flesh boiling from his body as he screeched his hopeless terror.

Two sailors, either more alert or less panicked, got the gobbet of severed flesh on their spears and flipped it over the side.

Again, Ser Hartmut charged up the ladder from the waist, his flaming sword a beacon of hope. He fell on the creature, showering it with blows, and it vented its pain with every blow, shrill screeches like birdsong. When it began to withdraw with the slickly lubricated speed with which it did everything, he slammed his sword forward in an overhand thrust that pinned it to the deck.

It dragged itself around the burning sword, accepting bifurcation rather than remaining.

Now, for the first time, with the sword illuminating its trunk, de Marche could see its entrails – see that it rode the side of the ship like a vast and opalescent slug, and its bulk continued over the rail and down all the way into the sea.

A whale rolled past, in easy bowshot. It showed its flukes and then, with a mighty stroke of its tail, it was alongside them – the ship shuddered and men fell to their knees. The whale ripped the silky off the hull – the ship shook again and a sailor fell from the fighting top to splash into the water.

The man vanished under the waves, dragged down by the weight of his mail.

There was silence.

Ser Hartmut stepped back from the rail. His helmet was ruined – it had holes burned right through by the thing’s toxic flesh, and pitting and tendrils of rust and decay trailed all the way down his armour. His cuisses and greaves were the worst, scattered with burn holes and trails of rust brown.

He pulled the ruined helmet over his head and hurled it, aventail and all, into the sea.

He turned to de Marche. He had burns all over his face, and his hair was rucked and tufted like a patchwork gown. He was smiling.

‘Now, that, monsieur, was the sort of fight a man can come to love.’

Habit caused the merchant to look for Etienne, but the squire was lying dead in his harness in the waist of the ship, his body armour ripped asunder by one of the creatures’ beaks and his entrails ripped from his body to twist about the deck like obscene organic ribbon.

De Marche nodded. ‘Thank you, my lord, for saving us,’ he said humbly.

Ser Hartmut spat over the side. ‘You saved yourselves – every one of you. You are all worthy companions, and I am honoured to command you.’

Sailors scared past their ability to comprehend – men on the brink of despair – braced up on hearing his words.

He smiled at them. ‘Well fought. Nothing we find in Nova Terra will be worse than that!’

De Marche allowed himself a smile. ‘By the sweet saviour, I pray not.’

‘We are cut from different cloth, then, merchant. Because I pray we find worse – larger, faster, deadlier. The more horrific, the greater the honour.’ He sheathed the sword that burned like a torch in his hand.

De Marche nodded, as one does when talking to a madman. He managed a smile.

Two hours later all three ships were illuminated with torches. The danger – the insane danger – of open fire on the deck of a ship was as nothing compared to the men’s fears of facing the silkies in the dark. There were open buckets of seawater at every station.

They caught up with the three bare-poled ships just a mile or so off the rock-bound coast.

De Marche boarded one himself. Ser Hartmut boarded a second. The third they left until morning.

He led. He had to. Despite Ser Hartmut’s words, the men were in the grip of terror – their sailors’ fears of the sea now given a physical focus – and the falling darkness made it difficult for him to get a boat’s crew to row him across to the bare-poled galleass. In the boat, he felt the terror himself – even the water appeared alien, black and oily, and the oar strokes were weak. The men couldn’t stop looking over the side. In the bow, a man stood with a burning cresset – a huge pine torch usually expended only in emergency repairs at night.

He climbed the side – heavily, because his body was exhausted – and he had to steel himself before he threw a leg over the bulwark to look down at the deck. The rising moon revealed a macabre tangle of fallen rigging and tangled sailcloth.

He got a foot on the deck and drew his arming sword – his good fighting sword was utterly ruined, a brittle shard of its lethal self. His arming sword was light in his hand, and he got a leather buckler on his left fist after he had both feet on the deck. The buckler had been soaked in whale oil. So had his sword blade.

Oliver de Marche was a rational man. The silkies could be hurt – he’d seen it. Possibly they could be killed. Their fearsome ichor could be diluted by seawater, and to some extent defeated by oil. They hated fire.

None of that rational, military thinking helped him a jot. He stood on the deck in the moonlight, and he was so afraid that his sword hand shook. He had to force himself to move – to take a step, and then another. With each step, he poked the downed sails – they had the same fluid and organic shapes that the Eeeague had.

He crossed the deck, his heart racing when he stepped on a rope and it squirmed under his boot; he jumped when he heard movement behind him, and whirled, sword in the high guard, ready for a heavy cut-

‘Just me, Cap’n,’ said Lucius. He had a large, sharp axe with a spike in the base of the haft, and he did as de Marche had done, spiking each sheet of canvas as he passed it.

The waist was empty, and they climbed warily into the aftcastle, weapons at the ready.

There was no one on the command deck. It was damp, and when de Marche knelt and touched the deck with his fingers, he smelled something like fish, and something like copper, and a curious sweet, oily, tree smell. His mind struggled to identify it. It was something familiar. Even pleasant.

‘Uh!’ grunted Lucius, behind him.

He whirled.

The man held up a hand. ‘Sorry. Look.’

Everything appeared distorted in the moonlight, and it took de Marche a long breath to understand what he held. It was a finger, still encased in good armour – very expensive armour. The finger had been cleanly severed from a gauntlet. The man’s flesh was still inside.

They went back down the ladder to the waist. There was a door in the side of the forecastle – the main hatch to the living spaces.

Something was moving in there.

The two men listened, and then de Marche moved carefully to the right of the door while Lucius moved to the left. He was a small man with heavy muscles; he raised the axe over his head.

‘What’s happening, there?’ called the boat keeper.

The call came up over the side and echoed against the cliffs that lined the cove.

Happening there happening there hap there there.

‘We could just leave it,’ Lucius said.

‘It is just something swaying to the rhythm of the sea,’ he said. He put out a hand on the bronze-bound hatch and shoved.

It was latched.

He put his hand on the latch.

The ship swayed – the tide was rising – and he tripped the latch. The door shot back and something inside came forward as if it was flying. It had wings spread on either side of its corpse-like head, and-

Lucius’s axe slammed into it with a crunch like a butcher dividing a carcass. De Marche’s arming sword went into its face.

Its horrible wings swept forward, wrapping wetly around them as it fell to the deck. Both men screamed.

It was clear what had happened – the Etruscans had been caught unawares and massacred. But not by silkies. Whatever had perpetrated this massacre had claws and teeth.

And a horrible sense of drama.

The ‘creature’ that had ‘attacked’ them was the corpse of a sailor, hung from a meat hook in the doorway of the sleeping cabin. His lungs had been pulled out through his back to make wings. He had died horribly, and the marks of his agony were written across his face. His eyes bulged. His mouth was open.

De Marche took the time to recover from his fear. He used his dagger to scrape the disgusting mass of the man’s lung off his shoulder, and he went to the side and threw up. After a long time, he saw that the oarsmen had moved the ship’s boat all the way to the lee of his own Grace de Dieu and he hailed them.

They didn’t want to come back.

There were twelve more bodies, but he and Lucius cleared them away like men springing traps. He offered double-shares to the oarsmen and they finally came – slowly, but they came – and backed him as he cut corpses down.

Even after a day of horror, de Marche was capable of making a profit. He took the ship’s papers for their masters – there was no need to offend the men in Ruma and Gennua and Venike with whom he traded, and they would want to know what had happened to their spring fleet. Fortunes would have been lost, as well as lives, with these ships.

He took the trade goods out of the two smaller ships and put them in the larger after hearing the same tale from Ser Hartmut, and they threw all the dead over the side. His own sailors, having survived the Eeeague, were cocooned in their own fears – throwing dead men into the deep didn’t trouble any of them. And every man knew he was richer by a share or two as they counted the trade goods – bales of good velvet, and fine woollens.

And bows. Bales of fine mountain yew from Iberia, carefully split and roughed into shape.

Nothing the Etruscans carried tallied with the items his sources had told him to bring for trade.

They lay to in shallow water at dark, in a small cove with a shelving rock beach. As the moon rose high and full over the greasy sea full of kelp, and the water roiled like a living thing, de Marche sat on the sterncastle as Lucius spread olive oil on his burns.

‘Wasn’t fucking silkies as did for the Etruscans, was it, Cap’n?’ he asked.

‘No, by God and all his saints, Lucius.’ He winced as the man’s rough fingers pressed too hard on a burn.

‘How come these things live out here, and not at home? Eh?’ Lucius was talking to hear himself.

‘I don’t know, Lucius. The King’s magisters probably have something to do with it – and the power of the Emperors. And God.’

‘Does that mean God’s writ don’t run here? Or in the Nova Terra?’ asked Lucius.

‘I don’t know that, either.’ De Marche felt himself drifting into sleep, despite his fear and pain.

‘But the whales is on our side, ain’t they?’ asked Lucius.

‘Why do you say that?’ de Marche asked. ‘Leviathan almost sank us all standing. Carpenter still hasn’t come at the leak. If we didn’t have good land under our lee-’

‘I saw him,’ Lucius said, with absolute assurance. ‘You put that fucking thing, that Satan’s spawn, over the rail, and that big fish took him in his mouth and ate ’im. And then went deep. I saw it.’

De Marche took a deep breath. ‘My Etruscan friend told me that the mermen were the herders of the whales.’

‘He told you to bring cheap red cloth an’ crossbows, too,’ Lucius growled.

‘Good point,’ murmured de Marche.

‘What killed the Etruscans, then? Cap’n?’ asked Lucius.

He thought of the man with his lungs pulled through his back. ‘I have no idea,’ he admitted. ‘And I wonder where they are?’

‘Ser Hartmut’s coming up the side,’ Lucius said.

The Black Knight paused to look at the horrific ruin of the dead Etruscan. His handsome face did not change expression.

De Marche tried to stand straight.

‘Silkies?’ Ser Harmut asked.

De Marche shook his head.

Ser Hartmut looked around. ‘They would make valuable allies,’ he said.

De Marche’s expression made the Black Knight smile.

Beaver Lakes – Nita Qwan

The same full moon that rose over the lonely cove on the rock-bound north coast of Nova Terra rose a little later over a grassy clearing, far to the west, where Nita Qwan stood guard for the second night. He took the middle watch, because Ota Qwan played no favourites, and everyone took turns – bad watches and good.

Again, he smoked at the end of his watch – he was becoming quite fond of the smoke – and when he fell asleep, Ota Qwan was looking out into the darkness, his face just barely illuminated by the coal in his pipe.

In the morning they left their weapons, which troubled many of the men.

‘We won’t be able to carry honey across the swamp as well as our weapons,’ Ota Qwan insisted.

After a handful of pemmican, Ota Qwan led them to the edge of a huge beaver swamp – as wide as a small lake, with beaver houses the size of men’s houses.

‘Tick Chuzk,’ Ota Qwan said, pointing at the nearest beaver castle. ‘We call it the Beaver Kingdom. Sometimes they come, and sometimes they do not. Great beavers are touchy and proud and very fierce. Do not posture. In fact, do not speak!’

Men bridled. No Sossag liked to be told what to do, even when the advice was good.

A great stream almost the size of a river flowed through the meadow, and after carefully crossing the treacherous grass – it might look like lawn, but the unwary human would find himself in water to his hips – they stood on a sandy bank looking at a crossing as wide as two boats tied end to end. Not that they had any boats.

Staka Gon, one of the youngest, plunged into the ford – where he stumbled, gave a choked scream, and fell backwards.

Ota Qwan caught him before he fell. ‘Idiot,’ he said. He lifted the young man, who gave a long moan.

He had a sharpened stick right through his moccasined foot. Ota Qwan pulled it out, ruthlessly, and then used his own cloth shirt to bandage the boy. ‘Every tree and plant the beaver eat becomes a trap and a weapon,’ Ota Qwan said. ‘You know that.’

Nita Qwan had been told too, but he had forgotten. He looked at the stick – just a hand’s breadth long and red with blood. He looked away.

Later, when they had crossed, leaving Staka Gon at the ford, they stripped to keep their leggings dry and crossed a long stretch of wet marsh, carrying their buckets over their heads. The mosquitoes were ferocious, but Sossag warriors didn’t show irritation at such things.

Nita Qwan did his best to keep up appearances, but he hated insects.

After a painful league of walking and swimming across the great meadow, they climbed a low, fir-covered ridge, and lay on a great slab of limestone to dry. The smell of the honey was overpowering – almost rotten, and yet perfectly sweet.

Ota Qwan had waved into the bush. ‘Easier than last year. There’s a pool right here.’ He pointed across the swamp. ‘Gwyllch. Look – there and there. And there.’

Nita Qwan was tired. ‘Gwyllch?’

Gas-a-ho lay flat. ‘We have no weapons!’ he said. And indeed, they had none – the spears and bows and swords had stayed in camp so that they could carry their buckets when full.

Ota Qwan crouched, unperturbed. ‘Without weapons, we will simply have to be careful. Which is wiser than a pointless fight anyway.’

Nita Qwan gave half a smile. ‘Who died and left you all this wisdom?’ he asked.

Ota Qwan shrugged. ‘Tadaio. Those are boggles, Nita Qwan, my brother. See them?’

He did indeed. They were moving like an army. And they were between the men and their weapons.

It took long minutes to fill the buckets. Wild honey was seldom pure – the great bees who made it often fouled it themselves, and the sugary stuff gave off a mighty odour of organic decay – sweet organic decay. Animals became trapped in it and died; insects became stuck and perished by the thousand – plant mould, sugar fungus, and whole dead trees fell in the honey deposits.

Gas-a-ho was expert at filling them, though, and he crouched on a sticky rock with Ota Qwan’s arms around his belly and scooped each bucket full. The cleaner the bucket was at delivery, the more it would fetch in price. And the more honey a man fetched the richer the profit.

Nita Qwan heard a sound like a trumpet, and the Sossag all stiffened as one.

‘Bee!’ Gas-a-ho said.

Ota Qwan looked at the sky. He sprang to his feet, ran back up onto the limestone outcrop, and stared east under his hand. In Alban, he said, ‘Shit.’ He came back to the nervous warriors.

‘Hurry,’ he said. ‘We need to get young Gon out of the ford before he becomes someone’s lunch.

Nita Qwan felt his brother’s eyes on him. He sighed. ‘I’ll fetch him,’ he said.

Ota Qwan flicked him a hard smile. ‘Good. You won’t have to carry your buckets.’

He ran – and swam – back across the meadow to the ford, after a long look at the moving line of boglins. There were hundreds of them, and they were making no attempt at concealment but were passing along the eastern edge of the meadow.

They were heading for the ford.

He beat them to it.

Despite a hard summer of constant conditioning, he was breathing hard when he splashed through the water. The boy was lying flat, already rigid with terror but doing his best to conceal it.

Nita Qwan looked at the water’s edge – then at the far distant wood line to the east, and to the north, and made his decision.

‘They are on their way to cross here,’ he said. ‘We will go north. Around them. Come – I cannot carry you.’

The boy nodded grimly and they began to burrow into the dense alders that ringed the ford. Crawling through alder was almost impossible. The sight lines were less than five yards, and in Nita Qwan’s vivid imagination it seemed ideal terrain for the little boggles. He could all but see one coming, its horrible mandibles spreading wide to show its tooth-lined pink throat-

They crawled anyway, and when they had crawled for some time, they began to hear the rustling of the boglins. They were heavy enough to break the sticks forming the little beaver dams that filled the meadow, and quiet enough otherwise to make only a rustling noise as their sinewy legs passed through the grass.

‘Faster,’ Nita Qwan whispered. The nearest boggle was a short bowshot away.

They went down a short bank and were back at the stream – or another feeder stream. But the bottom of the stream was firm gravel, they didn’t have to crawl, and the icy cold water seemed to make walking easier for Gon, who didn’t complain despite the red blood he left on every wet rock as he went.

Their stream bed wound back and forth in short twists like a swimming snake. In no time Nita Qwan lost his bearings, and attempts to look over the side of the stream were fruitless – the tangle of tiny fir trees and alder bushes and fifty species of marsh grass made seeing any kind of view impossible, and the babble of the brook at the bottom of their course obscured all noise.

Nita Qwan cursed the other men, who were doubtless better at this and should have volunteered. But he kept going, as he had no other plan, back and forth up the stream bed.

Suddenly he stopped.

He could smell the boglins. The hard metallic scent – he remembered it from the siege of the rock.

‘Down,’ he hissed.

They curled up under the bank.

Even over the babble of the brook, they heard the rustling.

The boy’s heart was pounding so hard that Nita Qwan could feel it in his back. He was curled tight against the boy, his feet braced against a long-dead birch log, his arms wrapped in the roots of a still-living fir that sheltered them. The two of them were pressed tight into the roots, covered in swamp mud, but the boy’s foot continued dripping blood.

Nita Qwan’s thighs were burning with the effort of holding the boy up against the roots. He counted to one hundred.

The rustling was close.

He smelled that sharp odour again – and another. It burned the back of his throat; metallic and yet organic, like a strong musk.

And then it began to rain. It was a gentle rain, and in his fear and his desperate effort to find them some hiding place in this open meadow Nita Qwan had missed the change in temperature and the colour of the sky. The rain fell in big drops, heralded by a gust of wind that flattened the grass to the west, and for a moment Nita Qwan could clearly see a long line of boggles walking, heads down, across the open grass, headed north and west across the ford.

And then the rain line struck harder, and he couldn’t see so much as fifty feet. The rushing rain filled the stream and the swamp in moments, and banished the acrid boggle smell.

Nita Qwan didn’t know if they were still there, or not. He hung from the roots, waiting, watching the river fill under his belly, feeling the boy’s terror. He thought of his wife’s arse when she hoed corn, and that helped him for a bit. But in the end his muscles were screaming like a man being eaten alive, and he gave a gasp and they both fell into the icy water.

It was still only a few inches deep. And if there were any boglins about, they either didn’t see the two soaked men, or didn’t care. Faster and faster, the two humans worked their way upstream, across a long beaver dam built by beavers of the normal size, and then they were at the northern edge of the meadow.

The dam that stood there defied belief. Even with his gut muscles protesting, freezing cold, and lashed by the rain, Nita Qwan had to stare at the beaver dam he had mistaken for the edge of the woods. It stood as tall as an Alban town wall, forty feet or more. Whole trees – big trees – studded it. Water seeped through it and under it, coming from a body of water somewhere above. It was extraordinary.

‘Come on,’ Nita Qwan said. Visibility was cut to a short bowshot or less, and the rain was torrential. Climbing the dam had everything to recommend it – it would be hard for the boglins to follow them, and would give them better visibility. And Nita Qwan imagined that the top of the dam would be easier walking.

Nor was he disappointed. It took them long minutes to get up the dam – all brought on by the boy’s injured foot – but the top was as wide as a cart, and in some places covered in grass. And on the far side of the damn was a body of water that continued into the middle distance, covered in dead, standing trees, each one of which had a great nest in the top – and it was studded with more beaver castles.

They moved as quickly as the boy could over the top of the dam, and came down only a mile or so north of their camp. They passed two open pools of Wild honey, and Nita Qwan tried to mark them in his mind. The boy still had his buckets, so they filled them in the rain and moved on.

Twice they heard the mechanical buzzing sound of the great bees, but they didn’t see one. They walked on and on, and eventually Nita Qwan lost his little remaining faith in his sense of direction and stopped. He made his way to the light that he could see on his right hand, fearing that it would not be the great meadow, but it was, and he made his way back to the boy. The boy’s trust in him was total, and almost as frightening as the boggles had been. Then the light began to fade, the rain came harder, and Nita Qwan began to know real fear.

Finally, an hour or so before dark, he smelled smoke – and became conscious that he’d smelled smoke for some time. He saw a glow through the trees, and then a hard-edged flash of red-orange light, and he knew he was close. The two of them went faster and faster, and gathered more petty injuries and briar scratches in the last short distance than they had in all the rest of their long walk. At last, they came to the camp. Young Gon had his back slapped a dozen times, and he bore the teasing with dignity. Nita Qwan was amazed to see that the young man said nothing of their adventures.

Ota Qwan looked at the two full buckets of honey and nodded. ‘I knew you were the right man to send,’ he said, somewhat smugly.

‘You know there’s a dam the size of a city about a league north of here?’ Nita Qwan said, when they were alone and smoking. Everyone else was asleep, which Nita Qwan had found was a good time to talk to his brother. The other man didn’t bridle and resent his words so much when he didn’t have an audience. Ota Qwan had doubled the guard, though, because tonight, they had more to protect. The whole camp smelled of Wild honey – twenty-four buckets of it. The buckets were so full that insects clustered on them – Gas-a-ho’s buckets had already leaked a little and the smooth white birch bark was covered in needles stuck to the honey.

Ota Qwan took his pipe back. ‘No. I didn’t know. It’s like last year – when the honey is mature, the Wild fills up with things coming to take it. Not much time to explore.’

‘There’s a body of water there so large you can’t even see the far shore. Heron nests, and some sort of bigger bird. And huge beaver castles.’ He took the pipe, put it between his teeth, and blew a smoke ring into the darkness. ‘Want to check it out tomorrow?’

Ota Qwan shook his head. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘We’ve already seen boggles and golden bears. I saw a pair of them moving towards the honey, and there’s never just two.’

In the morning they rose while it was still dark – ate a little honey on the remnants of their cornbread, picked up the buckets and the weapons, and started back. It took them a whole day to cross the low ground and the rocky wastes at the foot of the Beaver Kingdom, as Ota Qwan called it, and late the evening, while the scouts were looking for a place to camp and everyone else was searching for a good crossing over yet another small river, they found the dead boglins – six of them had been killed and eaten. They were all lying on the rocks of the stream.

Ta-se-ho, the oldest, crouched by the most intact corpse and rolled it over on the rocks with his spear. A cloud of bluebottles rose from the corpse and the older hunter wrinkled his nose. He was tall, with a long horsetail of dark brown hair and a scar that ran all the way up his right leg from the knee to the groin. He wore an amulet, a piece of weathered leather embroidered in quills. At some point, Peter had realised that it was a human ear.

‘Golden bears?’ asked Ota Qwan. Despite the fact that anyone who knew death could see the corpses were some days old, every warrior was crouched, looking at the trees.

Ta-se-ho shook his head. He walked over to a rock, and compared it to something only he saw.

Nita Qwan was picking his way across the ford. The boglins had died during their crossing. It had been two days ago, but still-

He stepped up out of the gully cut by the stream, and got one leather-clad foot on a rock. His thighs were still tired. All of him was tired. He put some will into his legs and powered up onto the rock, and gasped.

He pointed his spear at the boglins he had found, but they were all dead too. Strewn across a small clearing.

One had been cut in half.

He grunted, and Ta-se-ho climbed out of the stream bed and joined him.

‘Ah,’ he said. He grew pale. ‘Ah.’

Ota Qwan jumped up beside him. ‘What happened?’

Ta-se-ho moaned. ‘Crannock,’ he said. ‘Crannock people. Giants.’

Ota Qwan looked south. ‘The Crannock are allies of the Southern Huran.’

Ta-se-ho spat. ‘Thorn, too,’ he said.

North-West of the Endless Lakes – Thorn

Thorn hurried forward, excited by what he sensed, the great black egg borne on his immense trunk, secure in a web of power.

He was walking along a bay, the whole stretch of water lit in golden sunlight with pale beaches lining the deep, clear water. As he walked, the bay narrowed.

Across the bay – across a straight as wide as a river and far deeper – lay a great island. Something about that island reeked of power.

Thorn reached among the ropes and tangles of his palace of power and summoned a wind, and he spread mighty gossamer wings and flew out over the water, reckless and heedless of mere men, if any happened to see him. He rose into the setting sun, and turned south.

The island was redolent of power. And empty of other Powers.

It was not Thorn’s way to ask why.

The island was the size of a great lordship in the land of men – from the air he could see that it stretched ten leagues to the south, into the Inner Sea, and as far to the west. And at the northern edge of the island, a great mountain rose more than a thousand feet above the rolling hills and shaded dells of the island.

And set into the very top of the mountain was a lake. A river rushed from it over a steep lip and down a magnificent fall, into a deep pool at its base, and then down a further short series of falls, like steps, into the Inner Sea itself.

In the midst of the mountain lake was an island, and from the island grew a single tree. He folded his vast wings and let himself fall, and then stooped towards the island – spread his wings again in the joy of flying, and coasted to a stall just a few feet above the stony surface of the island. The tree’s canopy seemed to stretch high, but it was deceptive – the tree itself was only twice the height of the sorcerer. He banished his wings, and went to touch the tree with some trepidation. It was a thorn, and he put his great stony head back and croaked, the closest he could manage to a laugh.

He felt the power of the earth through his toes. Lines of power ran strong here – three crossed, and another passed deep under the lake and bubbled up like a spring. Like a well. Like Lissen Carrak.

The power boiled up from the ground and swirled around a basin carved by the raw power. Thorn dropped his staff and knelt, his heavy legs creaking with the effort – and thrust his long, skeletal hands deep into the green-gold swirl. He raised them and raw ops rolled down his arms.

If he had possessed the facility, he might have wept.

Instead, he forced himself to his feet, raised his dripping arms, and willed the heavens to obey him.

High in the infinite aether, his power fastened on something that was between a star and a stone, and he dragged it from the heavens. It fell, hurtling, burning brighter than Venus against the falling dark as it rushed through the air at an impossible speed and struck far out in the Inner Sea.

He stretched his hands to the heavens and roared at his enemies.

Petty revenge? Try this!

Deep in the Adnacrags, an old bear raised his muzzle against the night sky. He watched the star fall, and he didn’t like what he saw. His mate growled, and he put a great paw on her back, but she felt the tremor in his paw.

Far, far to the west, Mogon saw the new star kindle and fall, and she raised her crested head and spat.

Deep in the forest, the old irk was disturbed as he plotted, and he raised his long nose and saw, amid the trees, a new star kindle, and then plunge to earth. Tapio Haltija licked his teeth and grinned at the sight, but the movement of his mouth looked more predatory than pleasant.

East and south, Aeskepiles woke suddenly from an unsound sleep full of evil dreams. He lay on the floor of a monastic church at the edge of the Field of Ares, surrounded by the Duke of Thrake’s retainers. They snored, and farted, and grumbled – none of those things had wakened him.

High above him, stars twinkled in the heavens and their light seeped through the clerestory windows in the base of the dome. He watched as one grew and grew in light until it burned like a little sun, casting its radiance so brightly that it lit some of the stained glass of the chapel and cast barely perceptible and flickering shadows over the floor and his sleeping companions. And then it began to fall to earth.

‘Vade retro!’ spat the magister. His side ached from the wound he’d taken.

A sorcerer, somewhere, had just pulled a star down from the vault of the heavens. It was a challenge, as clearly as if he had smacked every other man of power in the world with a glove. Across the face.

Aeskepiles lay in his blankets and tried to imagine how powerful and puissant a magister had to be to pull a star from the heavens.

Then a messenger came into the chapel, calling for the Duke.

‘The Vardariotes!’ he whispered urgently. ‘They’re moving!’

The Duke grumbled like any fifty-year-old man wakened untimely. He pulled on his beard and thought for as long as a man might say a prayer.

‘Order Ser Demetrios to bring his troops back to me,’ he said.

Strategos Demetrios was the border-bred Morean who commanded most of their strength of men-at-arms. He had been sent with a little less than half their force to watch the Vardariot Gate, ten miles distant around the walls.

The Duke rose. ‘Arm me,’ he told his squires.

Their most recent defector, the Grand Chamberlain, sat up. ‘Surely they will simply come over to Your Excellency,’ he said. ‘They haven’t been paid in a year.’

The Duke shook his head as if to clear it. ‘I can’t take that chance. They are superb troops – no threat to us unless we’re surprised, but we’d best be ready. They can make a feint and then cut through the city, while we have to ride around the outside. I fairly dread the thought of them loose beyone the gate – five hundred disciplined Easterners with horse bows!’ He grunted. ‘Christ Pantokrator.’

‘We can take them,’ said his son, now awake.

‘We can,’ said his father grimly. ‘But I’d rather we didn’t have to. If we show them serried ranks and a ready army-’

Aeskepiles nodded at the dark. ‘But-’ He raised his head. ‘My lord, what of the Alban mercenary? Isn’t he in the hills?’

‘Too distant to have any effect today or tomorrow,’ the Duke said. ‘And no real force of men. My source in the palace says he’s camped and haggles for more money.’

The Despot laughed. ‘Coward,’ he said.

The Duke warmed his hands on a cup of hot wine brought by a servant. ‘Let’s deal with these threats one at a time, and force the girl to make terms,’ he said.

The Grand Chamberlain managed to sound obsequious even when exhausted. ‘Ah. Well thought, my Emperor.’

‘Don’t call me that,’ spat the Duke.

South of Harndon, the Grand Prior of the Order of Saint Thomas sipped wine on his balcony, five hundred feet above the plains of Jarsay. He looked at the middle-aged priest sitting across from him. The man’s face wore the complex mask of a man both defiant and repentant – angry at himself, and angry at the world.

‘What am I to do with you, sir?’ the prior asked. He’d worn his harness for a day and a night as a penance, and every joint in his body ached. And last night sleep had eluded him – mostly because he was old, and had too much on his mind. Like many a sinful priest.

‘Send me somewhere, I suppose,’ the priest said bitterly. ‘Where I can rot.’

Prior Wishart had been a knight and a man of God for almost forty years. He knew the resilience of men – and their willingness to destroy themselves. What he knew of this man, he knew only under the seal of confession. He sat back and sipped more wine.

‘You cannot remain in Harndon,’ he said. ‘To do so would only increase the likelihood of further temptation and sin.’

‘Yes,’ said the younger man, miserably. He was forty years old, handsome in a rough-hewn way, with brown hair cut for convenience under a helmet. ‘I meant no harm by it.’

The prior smiled grimly. ‘But you did harm. And you are old enough to see the consequences. You are one of my finest knights – and a fine philosopher. But I can’t have you here. The other men look up to you – what will they do when this becomes public knowledge?’

The man straightened. ‘It will never become public knowledge.’

‘Does that make it less sinful?’ the prior asked.

‘I’m not a fool, thank you, Prior.’ The priest sat straight and glared.

‘Really?’ Prior Wishart asked. ‘Can you truly sit there and say you are not a fool?’

The man recoiled as if struck.

‘I could ask for release from my vows and you’d be shot of me,’ the priest said. For the first time he sounded more contrite than rebellious.

‘Do you wish to be released from your vows, Father Arnaud?’ The prior leaned forward.

Most knights of the order were brothers – some, as Donats, were lay brothers sworn only to obey; some were religious brothers, sworn to chastity, poverty and obedience; a life of arms and prayer and serving in the hospital. A very few became priests. The order asked very little of its fighting brethren besides obedience to orders, but it required a great deal from its priests.

Father Arnaud raised his head. Tears ran down his face. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I cannot imagine it.’

The prior’s fingers played with his beard and he glanced down at the pile of scrolls and folded correspondence under his left hand – the cure of his life and his eternal penance – the paperwork. The truth was – The truth was that Arnaud was one of the best, in the field and in council, and he’d made a terrible mistake. And Wishart didn’t want to punish him. Beyond punching him a few times for being such a love-struck fool. His eye caught on a black seal with three lacs d’amour picked out in gold leaf – a very expensive, very eye-catching seal.

He popped the seal with his thumb and read through the letter with every sign of pleasure – once he laughed aloud. When he was done, he slapped the rolled scroll against his desk with the sound a crossbow makes when it is released.

‘I will send you to be chaplain to the Red Knight,’ the prior said.

‘That arrogant boy? The godless mercenary?’ Father Arnaud sat back, paused, and took a deep breath. ‘But – this is no punishment. Any knight would want to serve – if he could be converted!’

Prior Wishart poured himself more wine. ‘Think on your own shortcomings when you preach to the Red Knight, Arnaud. Arrogance and pride. Selfish assurance. And remember the company he leads – they are men and women like any others, and need a spiritual currency.’

Arnaud knelt and kissed the prior’s hand. ‘I will go with all my heart. I’ll fetch him in for the order, and lead him to good works.’

Wishart gave his priest a wry smile. ‘He does the good works already, Arn. He merely does them while cursing God.’ He leaned over. ‘While you sinned while praising God.’

Arnaud raised a hand as if to deflect a blow.

When the priest was gone, the prior went out on his balcony, a hundred feet above the fecund plains of Jarsay. Close under his walls, the second cutting of hay stood in new-minted ricks; a winter’s fodder for his warhorses at stud, a new generation of heavy chargers that could face the largest foes the Wild had to offer. Further away in the silver moonlight, wheat stood in dark squares, with hedgerows and fences marking field edges to the horizon. Jarsay was rich; the best farmland in the Nova Terra.

To the north, a star flared silver white and dived to earth.

He saw the star form – and saw it fall. He felt the accession of power.

He sipped a little more wine.

Thorn’s latest apotheosis wasn’t even his most pressing problem. The King’s Champion had taken an army into Jarsay to collect taxes, and all he was collecting instead was corpses. And Prior Wishart was trying to decide what he would do if his order’s home farms were threatened.

Even that paled next to the possibility that the King might allow the Captal to appoint his cousin to be the Bishop of Lorica.

‘Sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof,’ the prior said quietly, to the night.