The Red Knight

Chapter Nine

Sister Amicia

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The fog was thin and wispy, but it did its job. It forced whatever was watching them to be more aggressive with the animals it was using. Rabbits came out of the woods in broad daylight. Starlings flew over the new diggings, first in pairs and then in swift flocks.

Toward midday, when Ser Jehannes had the double outer ditch dug and when the merchant adventurers of Harndon, Lorica, Theva and Albin were cursing their luck and their temporary taskmaster as the blisters on their hands popped, the Abbess cast again, the fog grew thicker, and the animals grew more numerous still.

By the time the nearly mutinous merchants were allowed to end their day and go to Mass, the fog was so thick that the watchmen on the fortress towers couldn’t see the base of their own wall. They could see the far horizon, though. The captain had no intention of letting his own fog put him at a disadvantage. Despite which precaution, wyverns overflew the fortress every hour or two, and the hearts of the defenders flinched each time the leathery wings passed. Out in the trees beyond the fields there was movement – the kind of movement a hunter sees when his quarry shakes a tree, or when a squirrel leaps to a branch too light to support the weight of the jump.

Michael opened a blank book of bound parchment, and wrote in his best hand:

The Siege of Lissen Carak. Day One. Or is it Day Eight?

Today the captain and the lady Abbess raised a fog with a powerful phantasm. The enemy are all around us, and many have commented that the air seems thick and difficult to breathe. Maddock the Archer was shot dead with a longbow arrow from the cover of a stand of trees when he ventured from the new trenches to retrieve a mallet. He must have left the cover of the lady’s fog.

There is a wyvern in the air over us. I can hear it scream. And I can feel it, even through the roof – a pressure on the top of my head.

Michael put a line through that last, and then very carefully inked it over until not a word was legible.

The captain has a sortie mounted and ready to ride at all hours. Every armoured man has a turn in the Sortie. He also ordered heavy machines constructed in the towers. The fortress has two heavy towers, and one now holds a heavy ballista and the other, lower tower holds a trebuchet.

The people of the countryside and the merchants of the caravans have dug a trench from the Lower Town all the way to Bridge Castle. It is deeper than a man is tall, and wide enough to drive a small wagon along the bottom. We are lining it with boards. The captain has ordered bags placed along the bottom and no man knows what is in them.

At sunset Michael went on to the walls, and joined with every man and woman in the fortress in prayer. They sent their voices up to heaven, and then the lady cast again, a simple sending such as any village witch might make, but aided, Michael hoped, by the wishes and prayers of every man and woman. She worked an aversion – the sort of thing Wise Women did for granaries on farms, which kept the smaller animals from eating the grain. She simply did it on a larger scale, and with a great deal more power.

West of Albinkirk – Gerald Random

Master Random’s convoy shook out early despite the adventures of the night, or perhaps because of them.

He was quite proud of them. Men were singing in the dawn – some shaved at mirrors hung from wagon sides, and other men sharpened blades, sharpened arrow heads and crossbow quarrels. Men were rolling their blankets tight against the damp. Others boiled water in copper pots, or heated up a cupful of last night’s porridge. At his own fire, the old Magus was heating ale in a copper shoe.

‘You seem content to help yourself,’ Random said.

Harmodius didn’t even raise an eyebrow. ‘I pay you the compliment of assuming that you are a generous man. And I made some for you.’

Random laughed. He was camping with a legend, who was heating him ale on a chilly spring morning.

Birds sang, and men sang, and Random could see young Adrian from the goldsmiths sitting on a wagon box and sketching.

Adrian was a pargeter – an artist in gold leaf. He was a likely lad, just about to leave apprenticeship for journeyman status, which would be a brief stop for him. His father was both talented and rich – one of the goldsmith’s coming men. Adrian was medium height, thin and fit, in expensive arming clothes made by professionals. He was wearing his breast- and backplate, his arming hood, and his armoured gloves lay across his lap. More and more of the young men were starting to ape the manners of the sell-swords – wearing their harnesses all day, carefully tending to their weapons.

Random couldn’t see what young Adrian was sketching – it was on the other side of one of the goldsmith’s wagons. Warm ale in hand, he went to look.

He smelled the thing long before he saw it. It had a horrible, sulphurous smell, overlaid with a sickly sweet-shop smell, like sugared liver.

He smelled the smell, but it didn’t warn him.

The dead thing had been a daemon.

Young Adrian looked up from his sketch. ‘Henry found it in the bush.’ The other goldsmith apprentice stood by the corpse with determined possessiveness, despite the horror of it.

Close up and dead, the daemon was deeply disconcerting. The size of a small horse, it had finely scaled skin, like a river bass or a blue-gill; and the scales varied from white to pale gray with veins of blue and black like fine marble – all surmounted by an opalescent sheen with all the colours of the rainbow. Its eyes were empty pits, the lids collapsed on them as if its death had robbed it of its eyes. It had a heavy, raptor-like head with a snout or a beak, and a crest like the plumage a man might wear on a tournament helm. It lay limp in death, like wilted flowers. It had two arms on its long trunk that were disturbingly like heavy human arms – the muscled arms of a blacksmith, perhaps – and heavy, powerful legs that seemed twice the size of the arms. Upright it must have stood as high as a man on a wagon.

The legs and torso were balanced by a heavy tail covered in sharp spines.

It was no animal. The beak and spines were inlaid in lead and gold in fantastic patterns; the bony ridge above the eyes held more inlay, and the dead daemon wore a cote of scarlet leather lined in fur – beautiful work. Random couldn’t help himself – he knelt, despite the stink, and fingered the material. Deerskin – dyed brighter and better than any dye he knew of, and tightly sewn in sinew.

There wasn’t a mark on the monster, and the most disconcerting part of it was that its alien face was strangely beautiful, and wore a look of terror.

The old Magus wandered over, drinking ale. He stopped and looked at the daemon.

‘Ah,’ he said.

Random didn’t know how to broach his thought. ‘I’d like the cote,’ he said.

Harmodius looked at him as if he was mad.

‘You killed it. It’s yours.’ Random shrugged. ‘Or that’s how we did things when I was in the king’s army.’

Harmodius shook his head. ‘Heh,’ he said. ‘Take it then. My gift. For your hospitality.’

Three more of the goldsmith apprentices helped him roll it over. It took him five minutes to get the cote off. It was the size of a horse blanket, or perhaps slightly smaller and was untouched by whatever wound had killed the monster, and clean. Random rolled it tightly, wrapped it in sacking, and put it in his own wagon.

The apprentices were eyeing the gold inlay.

‘Leave it,’ Harmodius said. ‘Their bodies generally fade rather than rot. I wonder-’ He bent over the corpse. Prodded it with a stick, and despite having just rolled it over, the apprentices stepped back, and Henry hurried to get a quarrel in his crossbow.

The Magus drew a short stick from his cote. It was like a twig – a crazy twig that looked like a lightning bolt – but it was beautifully maintained with an oil finish that most twigs couldn’t hold. The ends had minute silver caps.

Harmodius ran it over the corpse – back and forth. Back and forth.

‘Ah!’ he said. He said a verse of Archaic to the delight of all present, who had never imagined being allowed to watch a famous magus work. It was different in daylight. Men who had hidden away when he cast at night now stared like churls.

Random could see the power gathering around the older man’s hand. He didn’t have the talent to cast power, but he’d always been able to see it.

Then the old man cast, flicking his fingers at the daemon.

It seemed to pulse with colour – every man let go a breath – and then it dissolved to sand.

And not very much sand, at that.

‘Fae,’ Harmodius said. ‘Something interrupted its decomposition when it died.’

Their incomprehension was evident. Harmodius shrugged. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m only talking to myself, anyway.’ He laughed. ‘Master Merchant, a word with you.’

Random followed the old Magus away from the wagons. Behind them, Old Bob, the mercenary, rode up fully armed. The pargeter was showing off his sketch and Old Bob was suddenly silent.

‘I’ve killed two of them in three days,’ Harmodius said. ‘This is very bad. I ask your help, in the name of the king. But I warn you that this will be dangerous. Extremely dangerous.’

‘What sort of help?’ Random asked. ‘And for what reward? Pardon me, my lord. I know that all the court think my kind lives only for gold. We don’t. But par dieu, messire, I have several men’s fortunes in these wagons. My own, first and foremost.’

Harmodius nodded. ‘I know. But there is clearly an incursion – perhaps even an invasion – from the Wild. The daemons are the enemy’s most valuable and most powerful asset. I thought it horrifying that I should encounter one. Two means we are watched, and there is a force in behind us. Three . . . three is unthinkable. Despite which, I ask you to send a messenger to the king. Immediately. One of your best men. And that we continue north.’

Random nodded.

‘I have no idea if the king will guarantee the value of your convoy,’ Harmodius said. ‘What’s it worth?’

‘Sixty thousand golden nobles,’ Random said.

Harmodius sucked in a breath, and then laughed.

‘Then I can safely say that the king can’t replace it for you. Good Christ, man, how can you take so much into the wilderness?’ Harmodius laughed.

Random shrugged. ‘We go to buy a year’s produce of grain from a thousand farms,’ he said. ‘And beef from the hillmen – maybe fifteen hundred animals, ready to be fattened for market. And beer, small wine, skins from deer, beaver, rabbit, otter, bear and wolf – a year’s worth for every haberdasher and every furrier in Harndon. That’s the business of the Northern Fair, and that’s without their staple of wool.’

Harmodius shook his head. ‘I’ve never thought of the value of all these things,’ he said. ‘Or if I have, I’ve forgotten.’

Random nodded. ‘Half a million gold nobles. That’s the value of the Northern Fair.’

‘I didn’t know there was that much gold in the world,’ Harmodius laughed.

‘Nor is there. That’s why we have helmets and crossbows and fine wines and goldsmith work, and gaudy rings and bolts of every fabric under the sun – and raisins and dates and olive oil and sugar and every other product the north doesn’t have. To trade. It’s why my convoy must get through.’

Harmodius looked at the mountains, just breaking the distant horizon. ‘I’ve never thought about it,’ he said. ‘Now that I do, it seems very – vulnerable.’ He looked around. ‘What happens if there is no fair?’

Random had had that very thought several times in the last two days.

‘Then Harndon has no beef; it gets only the grain from the home counties; there are no furs for clothes or hats, no honey for bread, less beer and ale in every house. And the king is less by the tax he collects on the merchandise, and less again by the value of – hard to say, but let’s call it half of the wool staple. Small folks would starve. In the East, merchants who buy our wool would break. Most of the money-men of Harndon would break, and hundreds of apprentices would go out of work.’ He shrugged. ‘And that’s just this winter. It’d be worse in the spring.’

Harmodius looked at the merchant as if he was being told a fairy tale. Then he shook his head. ‘This has been an eventful morning, Master Merchant. We should be on our way. If you’ll agree to go.’

Random nodded. ‘I’ll go. Because if I turn this convoy back,’ he shrugged. ‘Well, I’ll lose a great deal of money.’ And I’ll never be mayor.

Lissen Carak – Michael

The Siege of Lissen Carak. Day Two

Michael licked his pen nib, absently painting the corner of his mouth in tree-gall and iron.

Today, all of the small folk dug at the trench. I append a small sketch of the work; it runs from the gate of the Lower Town to the out-wall of the Bridge Fort, a distance of four hundred and twenty-four paces. With just under a thousand working men and women, we dug the ditch in two days. The upcast of the ditch has been made into low walls on either side, and the captain has ordered us to plant stakes from our stores – the palisades we use when we encamp – along the edge of the ditch.

All the day a heavy fog stayed over the length of the ditch – today’s phantasm cast by the Abbess and is maintained by the good sisters, who can be heard praying at all hours in their chapel.

The enemy has sought all day to search out our new work. The air is thick with birds – starlings and crows and doves, but they dare not enter the fog, and the area close in to the castle walls seems abhorrent to them.

The Enemy has wyverns, and they ride the air currents high above us all day. Even now, there is one above me.

In the woods to the west, we can hear the sound of axes. Twice today, large bands of men advanced from the wood’s edge to within bowshot of the fog, and lofted arrows into it. We did not respond, except that our own archers crept close and retrieved the arrows.

Nigh on sunset, we released three sorties; one north, one west, and one westerly, but right along the river.

The captain rode west into the setting sun, his armour gathering what little light penetrated the sun. Grendel had a cote of barding today – two layers of heavy chain falling to the mighty horse’s fetlocks.

It took four valets to lift the cote and get it over the big horse’s back. Grendel hated it, but the captain was confident that the Jacks would rise to his raid.

He had a dozen men-at-arms, fully harnessed, and their archers behind him, and as soon as Grendel’s hooves were clear of the Lower Town – empty and sullen but for the two archers on the stone gate towers – he put his spurs gently to the great horse’s sides, and Grendel began a heavy canter over the spring fields. The fog hid the light, and the terrain. It was possible to be ambushed in the fog, as he was aware.

But this was his own fog, and it had some special properties.

He rode south along the trench, going slowly, looking down to see the work that had been accomplished. It was a broad, deep ditch with a wooden floor. He had hidden a surprise under the wooden floor, but in ground this wet, the floor had its own essential purpose.

The palisades were too few to stop a determined enemy but, given time, he’d have the workers weave brambles and vines among them, and make a stouter barrier.

He shook his head. It didn’t matter a damn, because the whole thing was a ruse anyway.

There were five bridges across the trench, each wide enough for two fully armed horsemen to ride abreast without making their horses shy. Again, given more time, he’d arrange mechanisms to raise and lower them.

Given time, he’d make his opponent look like a complete fool. But he didn’t think he was going to get any more time. He could feel – no better explanation that that – his opponent’s frustration. He didn’t have much experience fighting men. He was arrogant.

Me too. The captain grinned and turned Grendel to cross the last bridge before Bridge Castle. Grendel’s hooves sounded hollowly, as if he were riding over a coffin.

Where’d that thought come from?

He’d walked down to the apple tree at sunset the night before. She hadn’t come. He wondered why. He remembered the touch of her lips on his.

Best concentrate on the matter at hand, he reminded himself.

He’d left her a note at the tree. She hadn’t answered it.

He was running out of fog. Beyond, the spring fields were green with new grass that would eventually be hay and fodder – or weeds – all tinged red as the sun set.

He reined Grendel in, and waited for his company to sort themselves out.

Tom was at his shoulder, and he raised a gauntleted hand. ‘Everyone look around. The fog makes it hard to see, but look at how the ground is clear from here all the way to the wood’s edge – not a ditch, not a hedgerow, not a stone wall. Keep that in mind. It we make another sortie it’ll be along this path.’

Tom nodded.

Ser Jehannes shook his head. ‘Let’s survive today before we borrow trouble for tomorrow.’

The captain looked back at his senior officer. ‘On the contrary, messire. Let us plan today for tomorrow’s triumph.’

Anger touched the older knight’s face.

‘Peace!’ the captain said. ‘We’ll discuss this later.’ He kept his voice light, as if the issue were of no moment. ‘If we contact the enemy, we ride through them, rally on the trumpet, and retreat into the fog immediately. No more. If we find boats, we destroy them. Is that clear?’

He listened carefully. If he was nervous, it didn’t show – he seemed merely attentive.

Horses fidgeted. Men spat and tried to appear as unconcerned as their captain.

The fog seemed too thin to cover so many men. But nothing happened.

And then, well to the north, there were the sounds of men cheering, and horses neighing, and the clash of steel on steel.

‘There they are,’ muttered the captain; three words to express fifteen minutes of nervous impatience. Tom grinned. Jehannes reached up and hit the catch on his visor. The sound was repeated all along their line.

But now the captain seemed in no hurry.

The cries were redoubled.

And then there were coarse bugle calls behind them, and high-pitched horn calls to the north.

It was all happening as he’d expected, and there, on the edge of battle, he had a moment of panic. What if this is a trap? How can I expect to predict what they’ll do? I’m pretending to know what I’m doing but this can’t be so simple.

His tutor in the art of war had been Hywel Writhe, his father’s master of arms. His supposed father’s master of arms. A brilliant swordsman, a magnificent jouster. Madly in love with the Lady Prudentia, and to no avail.

A memory crept into place.

Right there, on the edge of battle, the captain realised that he’d been had. His two tutors had been lovers. Of course they had been lovers.

Why do I think of this sort of thing when I’m about to fight? he thought.

Laughed aloud.

Hywel Writhe used to say, War is simple. That’s why men prefer it to real life.

And his lesson for all six of the boys who would grow to be great lords, masters of armies: Never make a plan more complicated than your ability to communicate it.

The captain reviewed his plans one more time.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

They rode out of the fog at a canter. About half a league to the north, Sauce led the northern sortie out of the shower of arrows sent by the now fully alerted Jacks, boglins and the irks who were gathering like clouds before a storm around her small force.

The captain led his men west into the setting sun, out of the fog, and right along the river bank.

There was a unmanned barricade on the road and he rode around it, and up the bank above the road, and round the first bend, and there they were.

Boats.

Sixty boats, or more. Farmers’ boats, dug-outs, canoes. Rafts of lashed branches. All pulled up out of the water.

Every archer threw a linen wrapped parcel into a boat. Some got none – some got two – and he heard horns, and trumpets, and some shrill calls to the north.

They were taking too long.

The archers down at the far end of the beach received some arrows and charged into the woods on their horses, scattering the enemy archers. Tom set off in pursuit with half the men-at-arms, and the captain suddenly feared he‘d been trapped after all. He was over-extended and the size of the bank beneath the ancient trees dwarfed his paltry raid. And now half his men were getting too far-

More shouts behind him.

He turned to Michael. ‘Sound the recall,’ he said.

Michael’s trumpet playing wasn’t his strongest suit. He was on his third try when the trumpet rang out clearly, against the sound of screams and heavy crashes from the west of the bank. The captain sat on Grendel’s back in a rage of indecision – desperate to get his men back, afraid to commit the rest to the sortie all the way down the bank.

Tom emerged from the lowering trees, his sword raised.

The captain began to breathe again.

More and more of the men-at-arms and archers emerged from beneath the trees, swords a ruddy green in the failing light.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ the captain said. He wheeled Grendel just as two arrows hit the horse’s withers, and he reared and grunted and then they were around.

There were Jacks at the edge of the trees, just to the north, their dirty white cotes shining in the last light of day. The polished heads of their war arrows seemed to flicker as they loosed.

Bootlick, one of the foreign horn-bow archers, took a shaft in the neck, right through his aventail. He went down without a croak, and his horse, well trained, kept formation.

Bill Hook – Bootlick’s man-at-arms – was off his charger in a flash of white armour, lifting the fallen archer onto his crupper. He was struck twice – both blows at long range, falling on his breastplate, and he didn’t even stagger.

The captain pointed Grendel’s armoured head at the edge of the wood. If someone didn’t stop the Jacks from shooting, his column was going to be dead in heartbeats. Most of the archer’s light horses weren’t even armoured.

Grendel rose from a heavy canter to a flowing gallop, apparently unemcumbered by a hundred pounds of double mail.

An arrow struck his visor, and two more struck his helmet. The steel heads screamed against his bascinet and were gone, but each blow rocked him in his high-backed saddle. Another heavy arrow struck the bow of his saddle and another whanged off his right knee cop and then it was like riding through hail, and he put his armoured head down and pressed his long spurs to Grendel’s sides.

He had no way of knowing whether anyone was behind him, and his whole world was narrowed to what he could see from the two eye slits of his helm.

Not much. Mostly, Grendel’s armoured neck.

Clang.

Clang-clang-clang-whang-ping.

All hits on his helmet and shoulders.

Thwak-tick-tock-clang!

He sat up in the saddle. Got a hand on the hilt of his war sword and drew, and an arrow caught the blade, shivering it in his hand.

He got his eyes up, and there they were.

Even as he watched, they broke and ran. There were only six of them – All those arrows came from six men? and they ran with a practised desperation in six different directions.

His sword took the nearest neatly, because killing fleeing infantryman was an essential part of knightly training, taken for granted, like courage. He let his arm fall, and the man died, and he used his spurs to guide Grendel after the second man, the smallest of the group. One of his mates stopped, drew, and shot.

Cursed when his arrow glanced harmlessly off the captain’s right rerebrace, and died.

Grendel was slowing, and the captain turned him. If he exhausted the war horse he’d be stranded and dead. Besides, he loved Grendel. He felt he and the horse had a great deal in common.

A healthy desire to live, for example.

The four surviving Jacks didn’t run much farther than they had to, as they heard the hooves pause.

Whang, came the first arrow off his helmet.

It was a matter of time before one of those shots found his underarm, his throat, or his eye-slits.

Ser Jehannes came out of the woods to the archer’s left, at a full gallop. He rode around the great bole of an ancient tree, and the ruddy-haired Jack lost his head in one swing of the knight’s great blade.

The other three ran west, into a thicket.

‘Thanks!’ the captain called.

Jehannes nodded.

He’s never going to like me, let alone love me, the captain thought.

He gathered Grendel under him, turned his head, and started moving east.

The fields to the north of him seemed to ripple and flow – boglins running in their odd hunched posture, low to the ground, irks, their brown bodies like moving mud.

But they were too late, and the handful of boglins who paused to loft arrows were ineffective.

At the edge of his effective casting range, the captain reined Grendel in. He stripped the gauntlet off his right hand, and pulled a small patch of charred linen from the palm.

He stepped into his palace.

‘He’s waiting for you,’ Prudentia said.

‘He doesn’t know what I can do, yet,’ the boy said. He’d already aligned his symbols. He walked to the door, but instead of opening it, he merely raised the tiny iron plate that covered the keyhole, and a waft of fierce green shot through.

‘He’s waiting for you,’ Prudentia said again.

‘He’s going to have to keep waiting,’ the boy said. He was proud of his work, and his careful preparation. ‘Look, it’s sympathetic Hermeticism. The wicks on the fire bundles are all made from the same piece of linen and soaked in oil. I have a scrap here, too, already charred.’

The breath of green touched his symbols.

‘You are the cleverest boy,’ Prudentia said.

‘Were you and Hywel lovers, Prude?’ the boy asked.

‘None of your business,’ she shot back.

He rose in his stirrups, and his charred piece of linen caught and burned red hot.

On the bank, forty-four firebombs made of oiled tow and old rags and wax and birch bark burst into flame with one, simultaneous roar.

Harndon City – Edward

Edward cast the first of the master’s tubes in the yard. He cast it in sand, and used the same mandril, polished to a mirror shine, as the model for the wax tongue he put in the mould to make it hollow. He cast the walls of the tube a finger’s width thick, as the master requested.

When it was done it wasn’t much to look at. Edward shrugged. ‘Master, I can do better. The hole would be better if I bored it, but that would require-’ he shrugged ‘-a week to make the drills and other tools. I’d like to add decoration.’ He felt incompetent.

The master picked it up and held it in his hands for a long time. ‘Let’s try,’ he said.

He bored a small hole in the base of the bronze with a hand drill, and Edward was fascinated to watch his careful patience, coaxing the fine steel drill through the heavy bronze. Then he took the tube out of the shop and into the yard, and packed it with his burning mixture – four scoops. He searched for something to put down atop the powder.

Silently, Edward handed him a one-inch hawk bell. It wasn’t perfectly round, and it was hollow, but it fitted well enough for purpose.

The master tied it to the oak tree, put wick in the hole, and lit it. They both hid behind the brick wall of the stable.

Which was just as well.

The fizzing, burning mixture made a flash and a bang like – like something hermetical.

It stripped a handspan of bark from the tree.

The tube had torn loose from its bindings and had smashed through a horse trough – a solid wood horse trough – flooding the yard with dirty water . . . and it was a day before the apprentices found the hawk’s bell. Even then, they didn’t find the bell itself, just the neat round hole it had punched through the tile roof of the forge building.

Edward looked at the hole and whistled.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The captain had six magnificent bruises from the archery. Other men had worse. Bootlick was dead, despite Bill Hook – known to the gentles as Ser Willem Greville – despite his best efforts at rescue. Francis Atcourt had a Jack’s arrow right through the join in his cote of plates – through his gut. Wat Simple and Oak Pew both had arrows in their limbs and were screaming in pain and mortal afraid the heads were poisoned.

If they hadn’t had the nuns, all of them might have died of their wounds.

As it was, the skill and power of the nuns seemed to mean that any man who wasn’t killed outright would be healed. The captain, who was just coming to terms with the idea of a convent of women of power, was staggered by the healing power they poured into his men – Sauce had six badly wounded men, including Long Paw – one of their best men in every respect.

But the barrage of phantasm was more effective than the barrage of arrows had been.

The captain walked through the hospital ward in his arming clothes. The wounded were cheerful – as any man or woman might be, waking to find an ugly wound completely banished. Oak Pew, a woman whose dark wood-coloured skin and heavy muscles had given her the name, lay laughing helplessly at one of Wilful Murder’s stories. Wat Simple was already gone, the captain had seen him playing at piquet. Long Paw lay watching Oak Pew laugh.

‘Thought I was a goner,’ he admitted, when the captain sat on his counterpane. He showed the captain where a shaft had gone into his chest.

‘I coughed up blood,’ he said. ‘I know what that means.’ He raised himself, coughed, and looked at the nun in the corner. ‘Pretty nun says if it’d been a finger’s width lower, I’d ha’ been dead.’ He shrugged. ‘I owe her.’

The captain squeezed Long Paw’s shoulder. ‘How do you feel?’ he asked. He knew it was a stupid question, but it was part of the job of being captain.

Long Paw looked at him for a moment. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I feel like I was dead, and now I’m not. It’s not all bad – not all good.’ He smiled, but it wasn’t one of the archer’s usual smiles. ‘Ever ask yourself what we’re here for, Captain?’

All the time, he thought, but he replied, ‘Sometimes.’

‘Never been that close to being dead before,’ Long Paw said. He lay back. ‘I reckon I’ll be right as rain in a day,’ he said. He smiled, a little more like himself. ‘Or two.’

The pretty novice was, of course, Amicia. She was slumped in a chair at the end of the lower ward. When he saw her, the captain realised he’d been hoping to find her in the hospital. He knew she had power – had felt it himself, but he’d finally made the connection to healing when he saw her go in and out of the hospital building that adjoined the dormitory.

Her closed eyes didn’t invite conversation, so he walked softly past her, and up the steps, to see Messire Francis Atcourt. Atcourt was not a gently born man; not a knight. Rumour was he’d started life as a tailor. The captain found him propped up with pillows looking very pale. Reading. The parchment cover with its spidery writing didn’t offer the captain a title, but closer to, he saw the man was reading psalms.

The captain shook his head.

‘Nice to see you, m’lord,’ Atcourt said. ‘I’m malingering.’

The captain smiled. Atcourt was forty – maybe older. He could start a fire, trim meat, make a leather pouch, repair horse harness. On the road, the captain had seen him teach a young girl to make a closed back-stitch. He was not the best man-at-arms in the company, but he was a vital man. The kind of man you trusted to get things done. If you asked him to make sure dinner got cooked, it got cooked.

He was not the sort of man who malingered.

‘Me, too. You’ve lost a lot of blood.’ The captain sat on his counterpane.

‘Your nun – the pretty one-’

The captain felt himself blushing. ‘Not my nun-’ he stammered.

Atcourt smiled like a schoolteacher. ‘As you say, of course.’

It was odd – the captain had remarked it before. The commonly born men-at-arms – leaving aside Bad Tom, who was more like a force of nature than like a man, anyway – had prettier manners than the gently born. Atcourt had especially good manners.

‘At any rate, the lovely young novice who gives orders so well,’ Atcourt smiled. ‘She healed me. I felt her-’ He smiled again. ‘That is what goodness feels like, I reckon. And she brought me this to read, so I am reading.’ He made a face. ‘Perhaps I’ll finish up a monk. ’Ello, Tom.’

Bad Tom towered over them. He nodded to his friend. ‘If that arrow had struck you a hand’s breadth lower, you could ha’ been a nun.’ Then he leered at the captain. ‘The tall nun’s awake, and stretching like a cat. I stopped to watch.’ He laughed his great laugh. ‘What a set o’ necks she has, eh?’

The captain turned to glare, but it was nearly impossible to glare at Tom. Having sat, the captain could feel every tired muscle, every one of his six bruises.

‘We all saw you charge those archers,’ Tom said, as he turned away.

The captain paused.

‘You should a’ died,’ Tom went on. ‘You got hit what – eight times? Ten? By war-bows?’

The captain paused.

‘I’m just sayin’, lad. Don’t be foolish. You ha’ the de’il’s own luck. What if it runs out?’ he asked.

‘Then I’ll be dead,’ the captain said. He shrugged. ‘Someone had to do it.’

‘Jehannes did it, and he did it right,’ Tom said. ‘Next time, raise your sword and tell someone to ride at the archers. Someone else.’

The captain shrugged again. For once, he looked every heartbeat of twenty years old – the shrug was a rebellious refusal to accept the reality of what an adult was trying to teach him, and in that moment the captain was a very young man caught out being a fool. And he knew it.

‘Cap’n,’ Tom said, and suddenly he was a big, dangerous man. ‘If you die I much misdoubt we will ride through this. So here’s my rede: don’t die.’

‘Amen,’ said the captain.

‘The pretty novice’ll be far more compliant with a living man than a dead one,’ Tom said.

‘That based on experience, Tom?’ Atcourt said. ‘Leave the lad alone. Leave the captain alone. Sorry, m’lord.’

The captain shook his head. On balance, it was difficult to be annoyed when you discover that men like you and desire your continued health.

Atcourt laughed aloud. Tom leaned over him, and whispered something, and Atcourt doubled up – first laughing, and then in obvious pain.

The captain paused to look back, and Tom was taking cards and dice out of his purse, and Atcourt was holding his side and grinning.

The captain ran down the steps, his leather soles slapping the stone stairs, but she wasn’t there, and he cursed Tom’s leer and ran out into the new darkness.

He wanted a cup of wine, but he was sure he’d go to sleep. Which he needed.

He smiled at his own foolishness and went to the apple tree instead.

And there she was, sitting in the new starlight, singing softly to herself.

‘You didn’t come last night,’ he said. The very last thing he wanted to say.

She shrugged. ‘I fell asleep,’ she said. ‘Which, it seems to me, might be a wise course for you. My lord.’

Her tone was forbidding. There was nothing about her to suggest that they’d ever kissed, or had intimate conversation. Or even angry conversation.

‘But you wanted to see me,’ he said. I sound like a fool.

‘I wanted to tell you that you were perfectly correct. I plotted to meet you outside her door. And she used me, the old witch. I love her, but she’s throwing me at you. I was blind to it. She’s playing courtly love with you and substituting my body for hers. Or something.’ Amicia shrugged, and the motion was just visible in the starlight.

The silence stretched on. He didn’t know what to say. It sounded quite likely to him, and he didn’t see a way to make it seem better. And he found he had no desire to speak ill of the Abbess.

‘I’m sorry that I spoke so brusquely, anyway,’ he said.

‘Brusquely?’ she asked, and laughed. ‘You mean, you are sorry that you crushed my excuses and made light of my vanity and my piety? That you showed me up as a sorry hypocrite?’

‘I didn’t mean to do any of those things,’ he said. Not for the first time, he felt vastly her inferior. Legions of willing servant girls hadn’t prepared him for this.

‘I do love Jesus,’ she went on. ‘Although I’m not always sure what loving God should mean. And it hurts me, like a physical pain, that you deny God.’

‘I don’t deny God,’ he said. ‘I’m quite positive that the petty bastard exists.’

Her face, pale in the new moonlight, set hard.

I’m really too tired to do this, he thought. ‘I love you,’ he heard himself say. He thought of Michael and winced.

She put her hand to her mouth. ‘You have a funny way of showing it,’ she said.

He sat down suddenly. Like saying I love you, it wasn’t really a decision. His legs were done.

She reached out a hand to take his, and as their fingers met, she flinched.

‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Gentle Jesu, messire, you are in pain.’

She leaned over him, and she breathed on him. That’s how it felt.

He opened his defences, running into the tower. Prudentia shook her head, but her disapproval could be taken for granted for any woman, and he opened the door, secure that the walls of the fortress would protect him from the green storm.

No sooner did the door open, then she was all around him.

But the green was right behind her.

She was very distinct, and she looked the way ignorant men supposed ghosts to look – a pale and colourless picture of herself.

He reached out and took her hand.

‘You are letting me in?’ she asked. She looked around, clearly amazed. She curtsied to Prudentia. ‘Gracious and Living God, my lord – is she alive?’

‘She is alive in my memory,’ he said, with some dissimulation. He had some secrets too evil to share.

She twirled. ‘It’s magnificent! How many sigils have you?’

‘Sigils?’ he asked.

‘Signs. Workings. Phantasms.’

He shrugged. ‘More than twenty,’ he said. It wasn’t a lie. It was merely an encouragement to underestimation.

She chuckled. She was bigger here, her face slightly more elfin and slightly more feral. Her eyes glowed like a cat at night, and were just faintly almond-shaped. ‘I knew you when I first saw you,’ she said. ‘Wearing power like a cloak. The power of the Wild.’

He smiled. ‘We are two of a kind,’ he said.

She had his hand, and now she took it and put it on her right breast – except that things here were not of the world. His hand didn’t find her breast. Rather, he found himself standing on a bridge. Beneath him flowed a mountain stream, burbling a dark, clear brown, full of leaves. The trees on either bank were rich, verdant green, towering into the heavens. Now, instead of the grey raiment of her order, she wore a green kirtel and a green belt.

‘My bridge risks being swept away by a spring flood,’ she said. ‘But your tower is too confining.’

He watched the power flow under the bridge, and he was a little afraid of her. ‘You can cast all of this?’

She smiled. ‘I’m learning. I tire quickly, and I don’t have your twenty workings.’

He smiled. ‘You know, unless Prudentia has misled me, now that we have been to each other’s places we are bonded.’

‘As long as that armoured door of yours is closed, I can’t even find you,’ she said. She gave him a flirtatious frown. ‘I’ve tried.’

He reached out for her.

As his hands closed on her shoulders, her concentration slipped, or his did, and they were sitting on the bench in the apple-scented darkness.

They kissed.

She laid her head on his arming cote and he opened his mouth.

‘Please don’t talk,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to talk.’

So he sat, perfectly happy, in the darkness. It was some time before he realised she’d magicked his bruises. By then she was asleep.

Later, he had to pee. And the stone bench was icy cold, despite the warm spring air. And the edge of the bench bit into the back of his thigh at a bad angle. Gradually cut off the flow of blood to his leg, which began to go all pins and needles.

He wondered if it was his duty to wake her up and send her to bed. Or if he was supposed to wake her up and attack her with kisses. It occurred to him that the loss of a night’s sleep was not a wise move on his part.

Later still, he realised that her eyes were open.

She wriggled off his lap. He considered a dozen remarks – all variations on being warmer than her gentle Jesus, but then dismissed them all.

He was, after all, growing up.

He kissed her hand.

She smiled. ‘You pretend to be far worse than you are,’ she said.

He shrugged.

She reached into her sleeve, and put something in his hand. It was a plain square of linen.

‘My vow of poverty isn’t worth much, because I have nothing,’ she said. ‘I did a little to ease the tire-woman’s joints, and she gave me this. But I’ve cried in it. Twice.’ She smiled.

He hoped that he wasn’t seeing her in the first light of morning.

‘I think that makes it mine,’ she said.

He crushed it to his heart, pushed it inside his arming cote, kissed her hand.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

‘You,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘Silly. What do you want out of life?’

‘You first,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘I’m easy. I want people to be happy. To live free. And well. With enough to eat. In good health.’ She shrugged. ‘I like it when people are happy.’ She smiled at him. ‘And brave. And good.’

He winced. ‘War must be very hard on you.’ Winced again. ‘Brave and good?’

‘Yes,’ she said. She shook her head. ‘You don’t know me very well, not yet. Now you. What do you want?’

He shook his head. He didn’t dare tell the truth and didn’t want to lie to her. So he tried to find a middle ground. ‘To defy God, and my mother.’ He shrugged, sure that her face had just hardened, set in automatic anger. ‘To be the best knight in the world.’

She looked at him. The moon was up – that’s all it was, not daylight – and her face shone. ‘You?’

‘If you can be a nun, I can be the best knight,’ he said. ‘If you, the very queen of love, can deny your body to be a nun, then I – cursed by God to sin – can be a great knight.’ He laughed.

She laughed with him.

That’s how he liked to remember her, ever after – laughing in the moonlight, without the shadow of reserve in her face. She held out her arms, they embraced, and she was gone on soft feet.

He didn’t even stop to shiver. He ran up the steps to the commanderies, drank off a cold cup of hippocras that had once been hot. But before he let himself sleep, he woke Toby and sent him for Ser Adrian, his company secretary. The man came softly, in a heavy wool overrobe.

‘I don’t mean to whine,’ said the scribe, ‘But do you know what time it is?’

The captain drank another cup of wine. ‘I want you to ask around,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I’m hoping you can find it for me. I know I’m not making sense. But there’s a traitor in this fortress. I have suspicions, but nothing like a shred of proof. Who here can communicate with the outside world? Who has a secret hatred of the Abbess? Or a secret love of the Wild?’

He almost choked on the last words.

The scribe shook his head. Yawned. ‘I’ll ask around,’ he said. ‘Can I go back to bed?’

The captain felt foolish. ‘I may be wrong,’ he said.

The scribe rolled his eyes – but he waited until he was out of the captain’s door to do it.

The captain finished his cup and threw himself, fully dressed, on his bed. When the chapel bell rang he tried not to count the rings, so he could pretend he’d had a full night’s sleep.

The Siege of Lissen Carak, Day Three.

Michael could hear the captain snoring, and envied him. The archers said he’d ‘been busy’ half the night with his pretty nun, and Michael was vaguely envious, vaguely jealous, and desperately admiring. And mad as hell, of course. It was unfair.

The third day had been so without event that Michael had begun to wonder whether the captain was wrong. He’d told them the enemy would attack.

All day, the wyverns flew back and forth.

Something monstrous belled and belled, a high, clear note made somehow huge and terrifying in the woods.

No action today. We watched the enemy assemble rafts to replace the boats we burned. The captain warned us that they will eventually assemble machines of war – that the men among the Enemy would traitorously teach the monsters to use them. The fog kept up all day, so that, while the sentries on the fortress walls can see many leagues, almost nothing can be seen of the fields immediately around the castle. The men say that the Abbess can see through the fog.

We heard cutting and chopping all day.

Towards sunset, a great force moved through the woods to the west. We could see the trees moving and the glitter of the late sun on weapons. And the roar of many monsters. The captain says a force is crossing the river. He ordered a sortie to form when another force, even larger, formed in the woods opposite our trench, but then dismissed us to dinner when there was no attack.

Michael sat back. He wasn’t any good at keeping a journal, and he knew that he was leaving out important developments. Wilful Murder had shot a boglin almost three hundred paces away – shooting from a high tower, over the fog, on the dawn breeze. He was now drunk as a lord on the beer ration provided by his mates. But it didn’t seem to change the siege. Or be a notable or noble event. Michael had only the histories from his father’s library as his examples, and they never mentioned archers.

The captain came in. He had dark circles under his eyes.

‘Go to bed,’ he said.

Michael needed no second urging. But he paused in the doorway.

‘No attack?’ he said.

‘Your talent for stating the obvious must make you wildly popular,’ the captain said savagely.

Michael shrugged. ‘Sorry.’

The captain rubbed his head. ‘I was sure he’d attack the trench today. Instead, he’s sent something – and I worry it’s a strong force – south across the river, despite our burning his boats. There’s a convoy down there, he’s going to destroy it, and I can’t stop him – or even try – until I’ve bloodied his nose in my little trap, and my trap isn’t catching anything.’ The captain drank some wine. ‘It’s all fucking hubris. I can’t actually predict what the enemy will do.’

Michael was stung. ‘You’ve done all right so far.’

The captain shrugged. ‘It’s all luck. Go sleep. The fun part of this siege is over. If he doesn’t go for my nice trench-’

‘Why should he?’ Michael asked.

‘Is that the apprentice captain asking, or the squire?’ the captain asked, pouring himself more wine. He spilled some.

‘Just an interested bystander,’ Michael said, and casually, by mistake done-apurpose., knocked the captain’s wine off the table. ‘Sorry, m’lord. I’ll fetch more.’

The captain stiffened, and then yawned. ‘Nah. I’ve had too much. He has to assume I’ve filled the trench with men and that with one good rush he can overrun it and kill half my force.’

‘But you have filled it with men,’ Michael said. ‘I saw you send them out.’

The captain smiled.

Michael shook his head. ‘Where are they?’

‘In the Bridge Castle,’ the captain said. ‘It was very clever, but either he saw through the whole thing or he’s too much of a coward to try us.’ He looked in his wine cup and made a face. ‘Where’s Miss Lanthorn?’ he asked. Then he relented. ‘Why don’t you go see her?’

Michael bowed. ‘Good night,’ he said. And he slipped out into the hallway and pulled his pallet across the captain’s door.

He spent an eternity searching the torchlit darkness.

Elissa was sitting on a barrel entertaining half the garrison with a lewd story. But her youngest sister wasn’t there.

Mary was drinking wine in the Western Tower with Lis the laundress, Sukey Oakshot, the seamstress’s daughter, Bad Tom, Ser George Brewes, and Francis Atcourt. There were cards and dice on the table, and the women were laughing hard. All seven looked up when Michael leaned in.

‘She’s not here,’ Tom yelled, and guffawed. The other men-at-arms laughed indulgently, and Michael fled.

‘Who’s not here?’ Lis asked.

‘His leman. Boy’s in love.’ Tom shook his head and his great hand, under the table, chanced against Sukey’s ankle. She kicked him. ‘Which I’m a’married,’ she said, apparently unafraid of the largest man in the castle.

Tom shrugged. ‘Can’t fault a man for trying,’ he said.

‘Who’s his leman, then?’ Lis asked. ‘One o’ your slatterns? He’s too nice for an oyster, ain’t he?’

‘Oyster?’ asked Mary.

‘A lass as opens and shuts with the tide,’ Lis said, and drank more wine.

‘Like you, eh?’ said Mary.

Lis laughed. ‘Mary, you’re a local girl. Boys think you are easy. That’s a long chalk from what those girls do.’

Francis Atcourt shrugged. ‘They’re people like everyone else, Lis. An’ they play cards and go to church.’ He shrugged. ‘Sorry. I got a deep draught of mortality today.’

Tom nodded. ‘Drink more.’

Mary looked at Lis, caught beween admiration and anger. ‘So what you do-’ she said.

‘What I do is live my life wi’out being ruled by a man,’ Lis said. ‘Men is good for play and not so good for anything else.’

Tom laughed.

Ser George tossed his cards on the table, disgusted. ‘What is this, philosophy hour?’

‘And it’s your fucking sister the young squire’s riding,’ Lis said. She wasn’t sure just why she was angry.

Mary stood up, affronted. ‘That’s just like Fran – make a rule and then break it herself.’

Lis laughed. ‘Not Fran.’

Mary stopped dead. ‘Kaitlin? She’s not – she wouldn’t! She’s-’

Lis laughed.

Michael found her in the stable with three other girls, all younger. They were dancing. He went from horse to horse, looking them over. The girls stopped dancing, and one suddenly shouted that she was an evil monster and started shrieking, and the other two were laughing, or crying.

And then one of them was screaming, and Kaitlin was soothing her. Michael had been fooled by the screams, but he was over the stall and with them in a moment.

Kaitlin’s eyes met his. She had the little girl pressed against her.

‘We’re going to be eaten,’ bawled the child.

Kaitlin rocked her back and forth. ‘No, we’re not,’ she said firmly. She raised her face to Michael.

Michael knew she was asking something of him, but neither of them were sure exactly what it was. So he knelt with them. ‘I swear on my hope of being a knight and going to heaven, I will protect you,’ he said.

‘He’s not a knight, he’s just a squire,’ said the other girl, with the dreadful truthfulness that afflicts the young. She looked at Michael with enormous eyes.

Kaitlin’s eyes met his.

‘I will protect you anyway.’ Michael said, keeping his voice light.

‘I don’t want to be eaten!’ said the first girl. But the sobs were fading.

‘I’ll bet we’re gooey and delicious!’ said the second girl. She grinned at Michael. ‘And that’s why they attack us!’ she said, as if this solved a deep, difficult problem she’d been having.

Kaitlin hugged them both. ‘I think some people are silly,’ she said.

The third girl threw a clod of horse manure at Michael and he was caught in an odd dilemma. He wanted Kaitlin alone and yet, watching her with children, he wanted this moment to go on forever. And for the first time, he thought – I could marry her.

Amicia reached out. His door was very slightly open and she slipped through, a wraith in the green light. The Warlock who laid siege to the fortress was so powerful that he shone like a green sun in her woods, and the green light battered his tower door.

He was there, standing by the statue of a woman.

‘I was just coming to look for you,’ he said happily. And yawned.

She shook her head. ‘Go to sleep. You didn’t even renew your powers this morn.’

He shook his head. ‘One hour with you-’

She backed away. ‘Good night,’ she said, and she shut the door. From outside.

He fell asleep so quickly he dreamed of her.

Michael leaned down and placed his mouth tenderly on hers, and her lips opened under his.

‘I love you,’ he said.

She laughed. ‘Silly.’

He grabbed her chin. ‘I’ll marry you,’ he said.

Her eyes grew huge.

The door of the next stall flew open. ‘Kaitlin Lanthorn!’ shrieked her sister. ‘You little bitch!’

Green light exploded in the sky outside the stables, and a thunderous concussion shook the walls.

‘To arms!’ shouted twenty voices on the walls.

The captain leapt from his bed without knowing what had awakened him, and found himself standing by his armour rack with Michael, who had never gone to bed, getting him into his hauberk. He wasn’t even awake and Michael was pulling the laces as tight as he could at the back, and then he had his old shoes on over bare legs and was racing along the wall.

‘Bridge Castle,’ Bent shouted from the tower above them. Michael was trying to get into his brigantine while simultaneously watching the starlit sky and the walls.

The fog was gone – it had been swept away in a mighty gust of wind. The captain felt the wind, and knew it for what it was. He smiled into it.

‘Here we go,’ he said.

Two beacon fires were alight, and there was a lot of shouting – the distinctive sound of men in danger, or anger.

‘We need a way to communicate with the Bridge Castle.’ The captain leaned on the wall as Michael, now secure in his brigantine and feeling the pain from his ribs, knelt to buckle his knight’s metal leg harnesses on – a pair of valets were carrying the armour along behind them as the captain moved. It might have been comical, if the situation hadn’t been so terrifying.

Michael gradually got the captain into his harness as the infuriating man moved from position to position throughout the fortress. He made off-colour jokes to nursing sisters and he clasped hands with Bad Tom and he ordered Sauce to mount up in the new covered alley in the courtyard – covered, Michael assumed, to keep the wyverns off the horses. It was the same sortie he’d prepared the night before, and ordered to stand down.

An hour later, the west tower ballista loosed with a sharp crack. As far as Michael could see the bolt had no effect out in the dark.

Michael got the rest of his own armour on, paused to rest, and fell asleep standing up at the corner where the west wall intersected the west tower.

He awoke to a loud roar. A sea of fire stretched almost to his feet and screams pierced the full-throated bellow of war. The captain’s hand closed on his vambrace. ‘Here they come!’ he shouted. ‘On my mark!’

Michael looked up, and saw a man leaning far out over the west tower edge, and the sky was not light, but it was grey.

‘Welcome back,’ the captain said cheerfully. ‘Have a good nap?’

‘Sorry,’ Michael mumbled.

‘Don’t be. Real soldiers sleep every minute they can, in times like this. Our attackers are making an attempt on the Bridge Castle and the Lower Town, while, I assume, sending men to look at what we built yesterday. Or perhaps to burn it.’ He sounded quite happy about the prospect.

Michael took a deep breath. A valet put a cup of warm wine into his hand and he drank it off.

The captain leaned well out over the wall. ‘Loose!’ he called.

The trebuchet in the western tower creaked, and the whole tower moved by the width of a finger.

‘Hail shot. Watch this.’

Michael had sometimes entertained his brothers and sisters by throwing handfuls of stones into water. This was like that, only multiplied many hundreds of times, with larger stones, and instead of striking water most of them hit the ground. The rest fell on chitinous hides and flesh and blood, having fallen several hundred feet.

‘Again!’ the captain called.

Down in the Bridge Castle, both of their heavy onagers loosed together, throwing baskets of stones the size of a man’s heart out into the trenches built the day before.

Screams rose out of the churned ground.

‘You seem very pleased with yourself,’ the Abbess said. She was fully dressed and looked exactly the same as she did in the height of a calm day. She had come around the corner by the west tower, attended by stretcher-bearers and a pair of nursing sisters.

‘The enemy has just fallen into our little trap with both feet.’ He turned to Bent. ‘We’ll get one more round off. Then raise both red flags. At that signal everyone – everyone in the garrison except you and the engine crews – attacks down the road. On me.’

The captain then managed to combine a bow to the Abbess with a duck under the lintel of the West Tower door. The valets had Grendel saddled, and the captain took his place at the head of Sauce’s column. Michael, still fuzzy headed and with his ribs burning in his chest, tried to keep up with him.

Jacques was standing by Michael’s horse. ‘You looked like you needed your sleep,’ the man said, with a smile. ‘Don’t get fancy, youngster. Those ribs will kill you.’ He leaned close. ‘So will kissing girls, if it costs you sleep.’

Then Michael was up, Jacques’ hand shoving his rump to get him into the saddle, and he was out of the low stable gateway and into the courtyard. Toby was holding the captain’s helmet while eating a half-loaf of bread, and the captain was pinning something – a white linen handkerchief – on his cote armour. It was very white against the scarlet velvet.

Michael grinned. ‘What is that?’ he began.

‘Honi soit qui mal y pense,’ said the captain. He winked, took his helmet from Toby, gave the boy a smile, and wheeled Grendel with his knees. ‘Listen up!’ he called.

The sortie quieted.

‘Once we’re through that gate kill everything that comes under your sword,’ the captain said. ‘The trench edge will be marked in fire so remember your route. If you lose me, follow the route. When you hear Carlus sound the recall, you turn and come back. Understand me?’

And with that as a speech, they rode from the gate as the trebuchet sprayed another rain of death out over their heads.

The hour was on the knife edge between day and night, and the trebuchet’s great baskets of stones had obliterated life over a swathe of ground that was roughly the shape of a great egg – creatures had been turned to a bloody or ichorous pulp, and the ground itself was littered with the stones – softer ground had deep pock-marks. Bushes and grass were pulverized. In the half-dark it was a vision of hell, and the sudden burst of balefire in the new-dug trenches added to the terrible aspect.

Especially when viewed through the slit of a closed visor.

There was no fight in the men or the monsters that struggled to win free of the beaten ground, or routed away from the hail of missiles still pelting them from the Bridge Castle. They were streaming for the woods, over a mile distant.

The captain led his sortie well to the south, right along the river, along the smooth ground, and then formed them up in a single rank and brought up his trumpeter and his great black banner with the lacs d’amour and the golden collars – his personal badge – and drew his sword.

‘All the way to the edge of the wood, and then form up on me.’ He had his visor up, and he looked around – Bad Tom was at his back, Sauce to one side, and Ser Jehannes was close.

‘Kill everything that comes under your sword,’ he said again. Michael didn’t think they’d lost a single man getting here. The war machines had utterly shattered the enemy attack. He took a deep breath, and the routed enemy flowed past them, running on exhausted feet – or talons or claws or paws – for the woods.

‘Charge!’ he roared, and the banner pointed at the enemy and the trumpets sounded.

Michael had never been in a charge before.

It was exhilarating, and nothing on the ground seemed to be able to touch them. They swept over the irks and the broken men and a single larger creature, something nightmarish that gleamed a sickening green hue in the first light of the sun, but Bad Tom put his lance tip precisely in the thing’s ear-bole as it turned its talons on Grendel, and his lance tip – a spear point as long as a man’s forearm and as wide as a big man’s palm – ripped its brain pan from its lower jaw.

‘Lachlan for Aa!’ the big man roared.

The monster died, and the line of knights swept over the pitiful resistance and then into the running men – and things.

By the time the sun was above the horizon, they had reached the wood’s edge, and the creatures and men of the Wild were a bloody mangle on the grass behind them – or rather, any they’d chanced on were a bloody mangle, while hundreds more ran around them to the north or south, or lay flat and prayed as the horses thundered over them.

And then the captain led them back to the gate by much the same road, crashing though a line of desperate irks trying vainly to defend themselves with spears which splintered on steel armour. Right through, and on to the edge of the fortress hill, where twenty valets waited with fresh horses.

Michael was mystified. His elation was ebbing quickly to be replaced by fatigue and the thumping pain of his ribs, jarred by the gallop and barely held together by his cote armour.

All of the men-at-arms and many of the archers were changing horses. The men on the walls were cheering them.

The captain rode up to him and opened his visor. ‘You’re moving badly,’ the captain said bluntly. ‘In fact, you look like shit. Fall out.’

‘What? Where-’ Michael spluttered.

Jacques took his reins. Michael noted that the valet was in armour – good armour – as Jacques got him out of his saddle and Michael wanted to cry – but at the same time, he couldn’t imagine fighting again.

Then Jacques swung up on a heavy horse of his own – an ugly roan with a roman nose. ‘I’ll keep him alive, lad,’ Jacques said.

So Michael stood there and watched as they changed horses and formed up, and then to his surprise they turned away from the beaten enemy and rode south, along the edge of the rising sun, moving at a canter. They rode straight for the Bridge Castle’s gate, and it opened as if by magic letting them pass through, canter over the bridge, and vanish onto the southern road.

Even as he watched, Gelfred, the master of the hunt, left Bridge Castle with three men and a cart. The men each took a brace of dogs – beautiful dogs – and moved briskly off to the west with a dozen archers covering them.

Just as the first starlings and ravens began to appear, gyrfalcons began to soar into the heavens over Bridge Castle, one after another. Up on the walls, a great eagle leaped into the air with a scream that must have chilled every lesser bird for three leagues.

Gelfred had struck, and the Abbess with him.

Braces of hounds emerged from the cover of Bridge Castle, running flat out for the leverets and the coneys and any other animal that lurked at the edge of the woods, and the gyrfalcon, Parcival the eagle and the lesser birds – well-trained birds brought from Theva to sell at the fair – struck the starlings, the ravens, and the oversized doves, ripping through their flocks like a knight through a crowd of peasants, and feathers, wings, blood and whole dead birds fell like an avian rain.

It took Michael half an hour to climb back to the fortress gate. The valets ignored him, and he stumbled many times, until someone on the walls saw the trail of blood he was leaving and a pair of archers appeared to hold him up.

Amicia cut the sabatons off his feet, and found the flint javelin which had cut deeply into the muscle at the back of his leg. Blood was flowing out like beer from an open tap.

She was speaking rapidly and cheerfully, and he just had time to think how beautiful she was.

Lissen Carak – the Abbess

The Abbess watched the captain’s sortie head east along the road, moving so fast that they were gone from sight before she recovered her eagle.

I have certainly given away my station to every gentleman here, she thought. She wondered if the siege would leave her any secrets at all.

Parcival, her magnificent Ferlander eagle, was killing his way through the flocks of wild birds like a tiger let loose in a sheepfold. But she could see the big old bird was tiring, and she began to cast her lure. Just to be sure.

She whirled it carefully over her head, and Parcival saw it, turned at the flash of Tyrian red, and abandoned his pursuit of his defeated enemies. He came to her like a unicorn to a maiden – shyly at first, and finally eager to be caught.

His weight was far too much for her, but young Theodora helped her, and got a faceful of wings for her trouble as the creature bated and bated again, unused to his mistress having a helper. But she got the jesses slipped over his talons, and Theodora put the hood on him, and he calmed, while the Abbess said, ‘There’s my brave knight. There’s my fine warrior – you poor old thing.’ The eagle was tired, grumpy and very pleased with himself, all at the same time.

Theodora stroked his back and wings and he straightened up.

‘Give him a morsel of chicken, dear,’ the Abbess said. She smiled at the novice. ‘It’s just like having a man, child. Never give him what he wants – only give him what you want. If he eats too much we’ll never get him into the air again.’

Theodora looked out from the height of the tower. The plain and the river were far below them, and the eagle’s sudden stoop from this height had shattered the lesser birds.

Amicia appeared from the hospital with a message from Sister Miram. The Abbess looked at it and nodded. ‘Tell Miram to use anything she needs. No sense in hoarding.’

Amicia’s eyes were elsewhere. ‘They’re gone,’ Amicia said. ‘The enemy’s spies. Even the wyverns. I can feel it.’

Theodora was startled that a novice would speak directly to the Abbess.

The Abbess seemed untroubled. ‘You are very perceptive,’ the Abbess said. ‘But there’s something I don’t like about this.’ She walked to the edge of the tower and looked down. Just below her, a pack of nuns stood on the broad platform of the gatehouse and watched the end of the rout below and the disappearing column of dust that marked the captain’s sortie.

One nun left the wall, her skirts held in her hands as she ran. The Abbess wondered idly why Sister Bryanne was in such a hurry until she saw the priest. He was on the wall, alone, and praying loudly for the destruction of the enemy.

That was well enough, she supposed. Father Henry was a festering boil – his hatred for the captain and his attempts to discipline her nuns were heading them for a confrontation.

But the siege was pushing the routine away, and she worried that it would never return. And what if the captain went out and died?

‘What do you say, my lady?’ Amicia asked, and the Abbess smiled at her.

‘Oh, my dear, we old people sometimes say aloud what we ought to keep inside.’

Amicia, too, was looking out to the east where a touch of dust still hung over the road that ran south of the river. And she wondered, like every nun, every novice, every farmer and every child in the fortress, why they were riding away, and if they would return.

North of Albinkirk – Peter

Peter was learning to move through the woods. Home for him was grass savannah, dry brush and deep-cut rocky riverbeds, dry most of the year and impassable with fast brown water the rest. But here, with the soft ground, the sharp rock, the massive trees that stretched to the heavens, the odd marshes on hilltops and the endless streams and lakes, a different kind of stealth was required, a different speed, different muscles, different tools.

The Sossag flowed over the ground, following trails that appeared out of nowhere and seemed to vanish again as fast.

At mid-day, Ota Qwan stopped him and they stood, both of them breathing hard.

‘Do you know where we are?’ the older man asked.

Peter looked around. And laughed. ‘Headed for Albinkirk.’

‘Yes and no,’ Ota Qwan said. ‘But for a sailor on the sea of trees, you are fair enough.’ He reached into a bag of bark twine made into a net that he wore at his hip all the time, and drew forth an ear of cooked corn. He took a bite and passed it to Peter. Peter took a bite and passed it to the man behind him – Pal Kut, he thought the man called himself, a cheerful fellow with a red and green face and no hair.

Peter reached into his own bag and took out a small bark container of dried berries he’d found in Grundag’s effects.

Ota Qwan ate a handful and grunted. ‘You give with both hands, Peter.’

The man behind him took half a handful and held them to his forehead, a sign Peter had never seen before.

‘He’s telling you that he respects the labour of your work and the sacrifice you make in sharing. When we share pillaged food – well, it never really belonged to any of us to begin with, did it?’ Ota Qwan laughed, and it was a cruel sound.

‘What about the dinner I cooked?’ Peter asked, ready to be indignant.

‘You were a slave then!’ Ota Qwan thumped his chest. ‘My slave.’

‘Where are we going?’ Peter asked. He didn’t like the way Ota Qwan claimed him.

Skadai appeared out of thin air to take the last handful of the dried berries, he, too, made the gesture of respect. ‘Good berries,’ he said. ‘We go to look at Albinkirk. Then we hunt on our own.’

Peter shook his head as the war captain moved on. ‘Hunt on our own?’

‘Yesterday, while you rutted like a stag – wait, do you know even who Thorn is?’ Ota Qwan asked him, as if he were a child.

Peter wanted to rub his face in it, but in truth, he’d heard the name mentioned but didn’t know who he was. And he was increasingly eager to know how his new world worked. ‘No,’ he said, pouting.

Ota Qwan ignored his tone. ‘Thorn wishes to be the lord of these woods.’ He made a face. ‘He is reputed a great sorcerer who was once a man. Now he seeks revenge on men. But yesterday he was defeated – not beaten, but bloodied. We did not follow him to battle because Skadai didn’t like the plan he heard, so now we go east to fight our own battles.’

‘Defeated? By whom?’ Peter looked around. ‘Where was this battle?’

‘Six leagues from where you rutted with Senegral, two hundred men died and twice that number of creatures of the Wild.’ He shrugged. ‘Thorn has ten times that many creatures and men at his beck and call and he summons more. But the Sossag are not slaves, servants, bound men – only allies, and only then when it suits our need.’

‘Surely this Thorn is angry at us?’ Peter asked.

‘So angry that if he dared he would kill us all, or destroy our villages, or force Skadai to die in torment.’ Ota Qwan cackled. ‘But to do so would be to forfeit the alliance of every creature, every boglin, every man in his service. This is the Wild, my friend. If he had won we would look foolish and weak.’ Ota Qwan gave a wicked smile. ‘But he lost, so it is he who looks foolish and weak while we go to burn the lands around Albinkirk, which was built on our lands many years ago. We have long memories.’

Peter looked at him. ‘I assume you were not born a Sossag.’

‘Hah!’ Ota Qwan sighed. ‘I was born south of Albinkirk.’ He shrugged. ‘It boots nothing, friend. Now I am Sossag. And we will burn the farms of the city, or what Thorn has left of it. He wants the Castle of the Women, which interests us not at all.’ Ota Qwan gave a queer smile. ‘The Sossag have never been to war with the Castle of Women. And he has failed.’ Ota Qwan looked into the distance, where the mountains rolled like waves on the sea. ‘For now. And Skadai says, let Albinkirk see the colour of our steel.’

The words thrilled Peter, who thought he should be too mature to fall for such things. But war had a simplicity that could be a relief. Sometimes, it is good merely to hate.

And then Peter thought that Ota Qwan was an injured soul who had fallen into the Sossag to heal himself. But the former slave shook his head and said to himself, ‘Be one of them. And you will never be another man’s slave.’

At nightfall on the second day they were in sight of the town. Peter sat on his haunches, eating a thin rabbit that he’d cooked with herbs, sharing it with his new band. Ota Qwan had complimented his cooking, and had admitted that their new band of war-brothers – Pal Kut, Brant, Skahas Gaho, Mullet and Barbface (the best Peter could do with his name) were gathered as much for Peter’s food as for Ota Qwan’s leadership.

Either way, it was good to belong. Good to be part of a group. Brant smiled when he took food. Skahas Gaho patted the ground on his blanket when Peter hovered by the fire, looking for a place to sit.

Two days, and these were his comrades.

Skadai came to their fire towards true dark, and sat on his haunches. He spoke quickly, smiled often, and then surprised Peter by patting him on the arm. He ate a bowl of rabbit soup with his fingers, grinned, and left them for the next fire.

Ota Qwan sighed. The other men took sharpening stones from their bags, and began to touch up their arrowheads, and then their knives, and Skahas Gaho, who had a sword, a short, heavy-bladed weapon like a Morean xiphos, made the steel sing as he passed his stone over it.

‘Tomorrow, we fight,’ Ota Qwan said.

Peter nodded.

‘Not Albinkirk,’ Ota Qwan said. ‘A richer target. Something to take home with us. Something to make our winter shorter.’ He licked his lips and Brant asked him a question and then guffawed at the answer.

Skahas Gaho kept sharpening his short sword, and men began to laugh. He was stroking it tenderly, with long, lingering strokes of the stone. And then shorter, faster ones.

Brant laughed, and then spat disgustedly and unrolled his furs.

Peter did the same. He had no trouble getting to sleep.

South and East of Lissen Carak – Gerald Random

Random had been ready for ambush for five days, and it didn’t matter when it happened. His men almost won through.

Almost.

They were now riding through deep forest, and the western road was a double cart track with the trees sometimes arched right over the road. However, the old forest was open, the great boles of the trunks sixty feet apart or more with little enough underbrush so his flankers could ride alongside, his advance guard could clear the trail a hundred horse-lengths wide, and his wagons were moving well – it was the fifth straight day without rain, and the road was dry except in the deeper ruts and puddles and some deep holes like muddy ponds.

The woods were so deep that it was difficult to gauge the passage of time, and he had no idea how far they’d travelled on the narrow track until Old Bob rode back to say that he thought he could hear the river.

At that news, Random’s heart rose. Even though what he was doing was suicidally foolish, to aid an old Magus, and his wife would never approve when she found out.

He was on the lead wagon, and he stood up to look – a natural thing to do, even when listening would have been more natural. But all he could hear was the wind in the trees overhead.

‘Ambush!’ shouted one of the vanguard. He pointed at a dozen boglins around a young troll, a monster the size of a plough horse with the antlers like a great elk’s and a smooth stone face like the visor on a black helmet. It was covered in thick armour plates of obsidian.

The troll charged them, racing like a mad dog straight at the wagons. The horses panicked but his men did not, and quarrels flew thick as snow, and the troll screamed and slowed, seemed for a moment to be swimming through steel, and then suddenly fell with a crash.

The boglins vanished.

Random, standing on the wagon seat, took an arrow in the breastplate. It didn’t bite, but it knocked him off the seat and it hurt when he got to his feet – his shoulder hurt and his neck hurt like fire.

Just ahead, the vanguard was abruptly locked up with more boglins.

Old Bob was racing for the melee.

Random watched as his soldiers crushed the smaller creatures with weight of horse and better weapons, better skill, and the boglins, as was inevitable, broke and ran.

Old Bob shouted something, but his words were lost in the triumph of the moment, and the troopers turned as one to harry the fleeing boglins . . . and suddenly the trolls were on them – a pair, smashing in from either flank. Blood came off the melee like smoke as they struck, and horses died faster than they could fall to the ground.

Random had never seen a troll before, but the Wild name for them – dhag – stuck in his mind, as did a picture in a Book of Hours he’d purchased in Harndon for the market – taller than a peasant’s house, as black as night or expensive velvet, with plates of black stone like armour and no face, topped with antlers like clubs. A troll could crush an armoured man’s breastplate in one blow and behead him in another, could move as fast as a horse and as quiet as a bear.

The vanguard was dead before Random could close his mouth. Six men gone in a breath.

Old Bob had a light lance, and he lowered the point – one of the monsters turned, almost falling as it skidded to a stop, feeling the vibration of the charging horse. It braced itself, head low, horn-clad feet still churning at the earth, and Random could see the great plate of stone that protected its skull.

And then Old Bob’s horse was by and his lance, thrown, not couched, went into the beast’s side – struck deep between two stone plates, and the meaty sound of the heavy spearhead going home in the flesh carried across the distance.

A dozen bolts hit the creature.

Gawin had the rearguard up, forming to the right and left, with companies of guildsmen coming up next to the wagons on either side – not the smoothest, and their faces were as white as snow, and their hands shook, but they were coming.

‘Halt!’ Gawin shouted, and Guilbert came from the other side of the wagons with another five of the wagon guards.

Guilbert took command with one glance. ‘Pick a target!’ he called.

The woods were surprisingly silent.

Old Bob had his horse around, but he never saw the dozen boglins coming. One of them put a spear into his horse effortlessly, like a dancer, the squat thing pirouetting as its spear skewered the beast, and the horse stopped its turn and gave a shrill scream as the wounded troll attacked. Its first blow ripped Old Bob’s lower jaw off his face under the brim of his open-faced helmet – then it crushed his breastplate so that a fountain of blood blew out of his open throat.

The wounded troll slumped. The second one stopped and bent down to feed off both of them, its visor opening and a set of fangs showing sharp against the black of its mouth.

The wave of boglins charged the line of bowmen and soldiers, and this time his men broke and ran.

Random watched them with complete understanding, terrified and virtually unable to move his limbs too, and the sight of the old knight being ripped asunder by the troll seemed to have numbed his mind. He tried to speak. He watched as the guildsmen shuffled, cursed, and turned too. The guards had horses, and they put their spurs to their mounts.

‘Stand!’ Guilbert shouted. ‘Stand or you are all dead men!’

They ignored him.

And then Ser Gawin laughed.

The sound of his laughter didn’t stop the horrified men from running. It didn’t stop the mounted men from raking their spurs into their panicked mounts . . . but it did make many men turn their heads.

His visor fell over his face with a click.

His destrier took its first steps, already moving quickly, as any horse trained to the joust knows to do.

His lance, erect in his hand, dipped, the pennon fluttering, and then he was moving like a streak of steel lightning across the ground between the wagons and the boglins. They, in turn, froze like animals hearing a hunter’s call.

The feeding troll raised its head.

The chief of the boglins raised a horn and it blew a long, sweet note. Other horns echoed, and Random was suddenly freed from the vice of fear that ground against his heart. He got his sword clear of its scabbard.

‘Hear me, Saint Christopher,’ he vowed,’ if I live through this, I will build a church to you.’

Gawin Murien settled the lance in its rest. The boglin chief was standing on the dead troll’s chest, the one the crossbowmen had killed, and the knight’s heavy lance passed through him so quickly that for a heartbeat Random thought the knight had missed, until the small monster was lifted from its feet, all limbs writhing in a horrible parody of an impaled insect, and a thin scream lifting from its throat, and then it was crushed against the stone wall of the remaining troll’s head with a wet sound like a melon breaking, and the stone troll staggered under the imapact.

It roared – a long belling sound that made the woods ring.

Gawin thundered away to the right. He kept his lance, passed through a thicket and emerged to the far right of the wagons. His horse was moving at a slow canter.

Guildsmen and soldiers began to gather again, their rout forgotten, and the boglins began to reach them in ones and twos, their desultory chase become a desperate melee in the turn of a card. A dozen guildsmen were cut down, but instead of spurring the others to run, the deaths of their comrades pulled more and more of the townsmen back to their duty.

Or perhaps it was Gawin’s repeated war cry that did it, ringing as loud as the monsters roar. ‘God and Saint George!’ he shouted, and even the wagons trembled.

The troll dipped its antlers, and spat something. Great clods of moss flew up, and a smell filled the air – a bitter reek of musk. Then it lifted its armoured head and charged, shoulders bunched from its first massive leap forward.

Random swung his sword, his right arm seeming to function independently of his mind, and smashed a boglin with the blow. He backed a step, suddenly aware of a dozen of the things around him, and he got his sword up, point in line, left hand gripping it halfway down the blade.

He charged them. He had the example of the knight before his eyes, and he only had faint a notion that there was more to a charge than bluster. He felt the pain of the first wound and the pressure of the blows on his shoulders and backplate, he also had the time to kill one boglin with the point, break a second with his pommel so that it seemed to burst, and then sweep the legs from a third in as many heartbeats. They had armour – whether it was their own chitinous skin or something made of leather and bone, he had no time to tell – but his heavy sword penetrated it with every thrust, and when it did, they died.

Light flashed, as if lightning had pulsed from the sky.

In a single heartbeat all of his opponents fell, and as they fell they turned to sand. His sword actually passed through one, and beyond his suddenly evaporated opponents, Ser Gawin rode directly at the troll. A horse length from collision his destrier danced to the right – and Ser Gawin’s lance passed under its stone visor to strike it hard in the fanged mouth, plunging his lance the length of a man’s arm into the thing’s throat and crossing the massive monster’s centre-line so that it snapped the lance and tripped the beast, which fell, unbalanced, its armoured head digging a massive furrow in the earth as Ser Gawin and his destrier danced clear.

Lightning pulsed again, and two dozen more boglins spattered to the ground.

‘Rally!’ Guilbert demanded.

The guildsmen were winning.

And every boglin they broke, skewered, or sliced reinforced their growing belief that they might win this battle.

Men were still falling.

But they were going to hold.

. . . until the horses and the oxen panicked, and shredded their column in ten breaths of a terrified man. A wagon plunged through the largest block of guildsmen, scattering them, and the boglins who had stopped, or slowed their charge, or simply balked at entering weapons range, suddenly surged forward. A dozen more guildsmen died at their hands, and the wall of wagons protecting the right of the column was gone.

Random got his back to Guilbert’s. ‘Stand fast!’ he yelled. ‘Stand fast!’

A few feet away, Harmodius pulled a riding whip from his belt.

‘Fiat lux!’ he commanded, and fire raged over the boglins. A guildsman in the process of having his throat ripped out was incinerated in the strike, but the sweet horns were sounding all around them.

Random estimated that the little knot he was with had perhaps twenty men, and at least one of them was on his knees, begging for mercy.

Harmodius drew his sword. He raised an eyebrow.

‘Damn,’ Random said.

Harmodius nodded.

Guilbert shook his head. ‘Wagons punched us a hole,’ he said. ‘The mounted men are that way.’ He pointed back along the track. Back the way they’d come.

Random spat. I’m going to lose everything, he thought.

Harmodius nodded. ‘Might as well try,’ he said. ‘Ready to run, everyone?’ Random felt he ought to contribute something, but it was all happening too damned fast.

Harmodius raised his arms, and a ripple rolled from his hands like a flaw in glass, spreading outwards in a semi-circle like the ripple made by throwing a pebble in a pond, except that trees blackened and grass vanished and boglins fell like wheat under a sharp scythe before it.

Gawin, out beyond the edge of the bubble, charged his destrier straight at it. Random saw him put the animal into a jump, and they were up; down again in moments, having leaped the growing edge of the wave of destruction in a bound. And done it apparently unharmed.

‘Oh, well done,’ Harmodius said. ‘That’s a proper fellow.’

And then they were running back down the trail.

They ran, and ran.

When Harmodius couldn’t breathe, Gawin dismounted, put the Magus up on his destrier and ran along with them for a while.

And then, as if by common agreement, they all stopped running at a deep stream – the stream they’d crossed that morning at the break of day. There were a dozen wagons there, and all the mounted men on the far bank. One by one, the desperate men scrambled across, soaked to the waist, uncaring. Some stopped in mid-stream to drink from parched throats.

The mounted men began to weep, and Random ignored them.

But Gawin, alone of the panicked men crossing the stream, didn’t throw himself down in the illusory safety. He sheathed his sword.

‘I have run from terror, too,’ he said to the mounted men. ‘And it is three times as hard to regain your honour as it is to preserve it in the first place. But this is where we will all make ourselves whole. Dismount, messires. We will hold the river bank while these good men get to safety, and in so doing, we will find both honour and peace.’

And such was the power of his voice that one by one they dismounted.

Random watched with disbelief.

There were nine of them, all well armoured, and they filled the gap of the trail.

Guildsmen took their horses as more men came in – a dozen in one group, wild-eyed, and then in ones and twos, their jackets torn.

And then no more.

There were perhaps fifty survivors from the three hundred men who had awakened that morning.

They had a dozen wagons – mostly the horse drawn carts whose animals had stuck to the road, or followed the military horses. But as they waited for the next assault of the enemy, whose horns could clearly be heard – a boy appeared on the far bank, no more than fifteen years old.

‘I reckon I need some help!’ he called. ‘Can’t get these here oxen through the ford on my own!’

The boy had saved four wagons. He didn’t seem to know that he was supposed to be afraid.

‘They’re busy a-killin all the horses and cattle!’ the boy said. He grinned like it was all a great prank. ‘So I’m just walking up and taking any wagon ain’t got a bunch of ’em aboard!’

Random hugged him after they had the oxen across. Then he turned to Gawin. ‘I honour your willingness to fight here and get us clear,’ he said. ‘But I think we should all go together. It will be a long road back, and as dangerous as these woods – every step of the way.’

Gawin shrugged. ‘These men can go – although I believe they owe you a great service.’ A daemon appeared across the river, and a troll belled. ‘But I will stand here, for as long as God grants my hands the power to hold this ford,’ he said. And very softly, he said, ‘I used to be so beautiful.’

Harmodius nodded. ‘You, messire, are a true knight.’

Gawin shrugged. ‘I am whatever I am, now. I hear that daemon across the stream – I think I understand him. He calls for his blood kin. I-’ He shook his head.

‘You saved us,’ said Harmodius. ‘Like a knight.’

Gawin gave him a wounded smile. ‘It is an estate from which I have fallen,’ he said. ‘But to which I aspire.’

Harmodius grinned. ‘All the good ones do.’ He raised his hat. He was still mounted on the destrier, and he seemed a bigger man than he had before.

Across the river, the trolls belled again, and Random felt bile rise in his mouth.

But then there was the sound of a horn beyond the sweet horns of the boglins. A bronze trumpet call sounded through the trees.

South of Lissen Carak – Amy’s Hob

Amy’s Hob lay still.

He lay so still that ants crawled over him.

When he had to piss, he did so without moving.

There were boglins at the base of the hill. They were feeding. He tried not to watch, but his eyes were drawn, again and again.

They went to a corpse, covered it, and when they left it, there was nothing but bone, hair, and some sinew. A few fed alone, but most fed in a pack.

Beyond them, a pair of great horned trolls walked slowly down the ridge. Ten horse lengths from the unmoving scout, the larger of the two raised its head and called.

A dozen boglin horns sounded their sweet, cheerful notes in return.

Gelfred appeared at his side, and his face was as white as chalk.

‘How many?’ he breathed.

Amy’s Hob shok his head. ‘Thousands.’

Gelfred was made of different stuff. He raised himself on his elbows and scanned carefully from right to left. ‘Blessed Saint Eustachios stand with us,’ he said.

One of the trolls heads whipped round and saw him.

‘Run!’ he shouted.

Gelfred aimed his crossbow and the string rang like a bell and the nearest boglin folded. So did the one behind it.

‘We’re dead,’ Amy’s Hob said bitterly.

‘Don’t be such an ass,’ Gelfred said. ‘Follow me.’ They ran down the reverse slope of the ridge. The troll was crashing along behind them, much faster in the undergrowth than they were.

At the base of the ridge they were just a few horse lengths ahead of the thing, but to Amy’s Hob’s amazement, there were a pair of horses waiting. Both men vaulted into the saddle, and the horses were away, as terrified as their riders.

As soon as they outdistanced pursuit, Gelfred slowed. ‘Go to the captain – he’s on the road.’

‘I’ll tell him to get back to the fortress!’ Amy’s Hob said, eyes still wild.

Gelfred shook his head. He was still pale and his fear was obvious, but he was the kind of man who was afraid and kept on functioning. ‘No. Absolutely not. Tell him it can be done. If he’s quick.’

Amy’s Hob might have stayed to argue, but staying there was insane. He put his bare heels to the pony’s sides, and he was gone, leaving Gelfred alone in the woods with a thousand boglins and a troll.

The man knelt by his pony, and began to pray, intent on his purpose.

There was a flare of light, and Gelfred vanished.

South and East of Lissen Carrack – Bad Tom

Victory can be as much luck as skill, or strength of arms.

Bad Tom led the vanguard. They’d heard the boglin horns for a league and had stopped on the trail, a long column of twos, the war horses snorting, the archer’s ronceys trying to avoid being nipped by the bigger horses. There was new grass by the road and all the horses wanted it.

Amy’s Hob cantered in from the east and he looked as if he’d seen hell come to earth.

Tom laughed at the sight of him. ‘Guess we’ve found ’em,’ he said, delighted.

Amy’s Hob saluted the captain, who looked remarkably calm, a tall figure in scarlet and steel. ‘Gelfred says-’ He shook his head. ‘There’s a mort of ’em, but Gelfred says it’s now or not.’

‘We’re right on top of them,’ Tom said. He nodded to the scout. ‘Well done, lad. Must take balls of brass to be out there alone wi’ ’em.’

Amy’s Hob shivered. ‘Gelfred’s still out there.’

The captain listened. Sounds can be read as easily as sights, sometimes. He could see the action ahead – the road ran east along the south bank of the river, then south between the hills. Before it turned south and began to climb, it crossed a stream.

‘What’s happening?’ Michael asked.

‘The enemy is attacking a convoy,’ the captain said. He and Tom exchanged a look.

Hywel Writhe used to say, war isn’t sword cuts, it’s decisions.

‘They’re all on this side of the stream?’ he asked.

Amy’s Hob nodded. ‘Aye.’

‘Clumped up?’ he asked.

‘Which Gelfred said to tell you it is now.’ He shook his head. ‘There’s a thousand of ’em-’

The captain’s eyes met Tom’s. ‘Go,’ the captain said.

Bad Tom grinned like a madman. ‘On me!’ he roared.

Around him, men checked one more thing. It was different for each one – here, an armour strap, there, the way a helmet sat on your head. Or the check to make sure your dagger was right there, at your hip.

But men were smiling.

They said things.

They were going to do that thing that they did. When they moved like lightning and struck like the hammer on the anvil. Soldiers know, feel, these things. And luck rose about them, as if they were magi casting words of power with the hooves of their horses.

They rode right for the sound of the horns. Tom only reined in when he saw his first boglin, and he looked back to see Grendel and his rider pounding up the road.

The captain flipped him a salute. His visor was up.

‘There they are,’ Tom said. He couldn’t keep the grin off his face.

The captain listened and scratched his beard.

Their eyes met again.

‘Never met a Wild creature that could fight in two directions at once,’ Tom said. ‘They don’t fight. They hunt. And when they pounce – why, that’s all they have.’

‘You mean, the Wild doesn’t keep a reserve,’ the captain said.

‘What you say,’ Tom said. He could tell the captain was of one mind with him.

‘Someday they will,’ the captain said.

‘Not today,’ Tom said.

The captain hesitated another moment. Breathed deeply, listening. Then he turned back to Tom, and his grin was wide and feral.

‘Let’s do it,’ he said. He raised his lance, and pointed with it. Carlus, his trumpeter, raised his long, bronze instrument, and the captain gave him a nod.

Tom didn’t bother to form up, because surprise was everything. He was sure he knew what was happening ahead, and he led his men forward, armoured in that assurance. And when his destrier leaped a low fallen tree and the track turned and he saw hundreds of the little fuckers plundering wagons, he just raised his sword.

‘Lachlan for Aa!’ he roared, and he began to kill.

South and East of Lissen Carrack – The Red Knight

There is a great deal of luck involved in catching an enemy, especially a victorious enemy who outnumbers you twenty to one, flat footed, glutted with spoil, unable to either fight or flee.

There’s even more luck involved when you catch your enemy glutted with spoil and pinned against a roaring torrent of a stream, with only one ford, and that ford held by a desperate madman.

Because he was in command, and because he feared a trap, the captain was among the last men onto the field, leading half a dozen archers and two men-at-arms and Jacques with all the valets as a reserve. He came forward still full of doubt at his own decision, which seemed rash, and yet full of a sort of certainty – almost like religious faith – that he could feel the enemy’s failure.

He came on the heels of the main battle’s charge to cover Bad Tom’s headlong rush, and Jacques was less than twenty horse lengths behind the last man of the main battle, and still, by the time he rode under the big oak trees, the fighting was over by the abandoned wagons. He rode by what he assumed had been the convoy’s a last stand – a dozen guildsmen face down, some of them looking half eaten or worse.

He rode past the carcasses of not one, but three, dead dhags. He had only ever seen one, before today.

He passed down a line of carts, their draught animals dead and partially butchered in their traces. Other wagons had their oxen or their horses untouched, panicked in the traces but alive. There were human bodies among the dead boglins and other things – one corpse looked like a golden bear, cleanly beheaded.

He shook his head in disbelief.

He couldn’t have planned it this way. Couldn’t have coordinated such a victory, not with a pair of magi to handle communications and twice the number of men.

Farther on, they were still fighting. He could hear Tom’s warcry.

He came up to two men holding a dozen fretting war horses and Jacques sent four valets to take their reins. The two men-at-arms grinned, loosened swords in their scabbards, and headed off down the trail toward the sound of belling. The captain took a breath, thinking of the kind of men and women he employed. The kind who smiled and hastened down the trail to battle. He led them. They made him happy.

He dismounted, handed his horse to Jacques, who gave him his spear. And dismounted himself.

‘Not without me, you loon,’ Jacques said.

‘I have to,’ the captain said. ‘You don’t.’

Jacques spat. ‘Can we get this over with?’ He gestured, and Toby appeared, somehow taller and more dangerous looking in a breast and back and a pot helm.

They ran forward. There was fighting off to their left – the humdrum sound of blade on blade. And ahead, heavy movement and grunting, like a huge boar in a deep thicket.

‘Don’t let it fucking cross the river!’ Tom roared, almost at his elbow.

The captain came around the great bole of an old elm, and there was the beast – twenty-five hands at the shoulder, with curling tusks.

A behemoth.

It turned.

Like every creature of the Wild, its eyes met the captain’s, and it roared a challenge.

‘Here we go,’ said Tom, with relish. ‘Captain’s here. Now we can dance!’

Jacques hip-checked the captain. ‘Mind?’ he said, and shot the thing, a clean shaft that leapt from his bowstring at full draw and plunged through its hide, vanishing to the fletchings. His war-bow was as long and heavy as Wilful Murder’s, and most men couldn’t draw it.

Somebody behind it plunged a sword deep into its side, and then a man-at-arms was sawing at its neck, and it was roaring in anger. But the flurry of blows let up, and suddenly it got its feet under it, tossed the man-at-arms free, and put its head down.

‘Oh fuck,’ Jacques said.

A solid lance of fire crossed the stream and struck the behemoth in the head, splintering a tusk and setting fire to the stump. Despite the fear, every man turned to look. Most of them had never seen a phantasm used in combat.

The captain charged it, because that seemed better than it charging him. His horse had done all the work until now, and his legs were fresh, despite the weight of steel greaves and sabatons.

The fire was a nice distraction and he slammed his heavy spear into its face, near an eye. It was collapsing back – Jacques, also unaffected by the pyrotechnics, was walking forward, putting arrow after arrow into its unguarded belly.

It turned away, suddenly less fearsome and sensing the defeat of near death. It tried to burst free across the stream but the rocky bottom betrayed it and it stumbled; a dozen archers, guildsmen and mercenaries alike, poured shafts into it, and its blood swirled in the fast water. It gathered itself up and leaped – awesome in its might – scattered the archers, and killed two guildsmen, massive front feet pounding their bodies to fleshy mush in the spring mud. And still it got its head up when the captain came out of the trees behind it, and it turned at bay. It’s great eyes met the captain’s.

‘Me again,’ the captain said.

It raised its head and bellowed, and the woods shook. One of Tom’s men-at-arms – Walter La Tour – landed a hard blow with a pole-axe and got swiped by the whole force of its mighty head in reply, crushing his breastplate and breaking all his ribs. He fell without a sound. Francis Atcourt, one day out of the infirmary, struck it with a pole-axe too, and danced aside as it’s splintered, burning tusk sought his life. He tripped and fell over a rotten stump, which saved his life as its tusks and fangs passed over his head.

The captain ran rock to rock across the stream, his sabatons flashing above the swollen water, charging his prey. It turned to finish Atcourt, caught sight of the captain’s rush, and hesitated a fraction of a heartbeat.

Bad Tom watched his captain rush the monster and laughed. ‘I love him,’ he shouted, and leaped after.

The monster lurched forward, and stumbled, and the captain thrust, catching it in the mouth, cutting up so that ivory sprayed. The splintered tusk caught the back of his rerebrace hard enough to slam him into the stream. He went down, his helmet filled with water, but he got a rock under his backplate and sprang to his feet, stomach muscles screaming as he levered his own weight plus sixty pounds up on his hips, and then he had his feet planted, knee deep in water, and he was cutting – down to the Boar’s Tooth guard, his heavy pole-arm cutting from the height of his shoulder all the way down to his hip – then back up the same path, ripping up through its trunk to the Guard of the Woman. He reversed the blade and thrust down into its eye as the creature fell.

Bad Tom slammed his fist into the thing before it was done moving. ‘I name you – meat!’ he shouted.

The mercenaries laughed. Some of the men-at-arms were even applauding and the guildsmen began to realise they might live. They began to cheer.

A last arrow flew into the corpse.

There was nervous laughter and then the cheers swelled.

‘Red Knight! Red Knight! Red Knight!’

The captain enjoyed it for three heavy breaths. Three deep, lung filling breaths to enjoy being alive, being victorious. Then-

‘We’re not out of this yet,’ the captain snapped.

At the sound of his voice the young knight who’d led the defence of the ford got up from where he’d knelt to pray – or fallen in exhaustion.

They looked at each other for a moment too long, the way only mortal foes and lovers look at each other.

And then the captain turned away. ‘Get the horses. Get everyone mounted. Get as many of these wagons as we can save. Move, move, move. Tom, collect wagons. Who’s in charge here? You?’ He was gesturing at one of the men of the convoy.

He turned to Jacques. ‘Find out who’s in charge of the convoy, get a head count. The knight in front of you-’

‘I know who he is-’ Jacques said.

‘He looks wounded,’ the captain replied.

The knight they were talking about rose and hobbled forward. His right leg was shiny and slick with blood.

‘You. Bastard!’ he said, and cocked back his sword to swing at the captain. He collapsed just as Jacques took his sword.

Tom laughed. ‘Someone who knows you?’ he said. Chortled, and got to work. ‘All right, you lot! Archers on me! Listen up!’

But the captain, sometimes known as the Red Knight, stood by the young knight’s body. For reasons none of them knew, except perhaps Jacques, it was a deeply satisfying moment. A great victory. And a little personal revenge.

Rescuing Gawin Murien.

Killing a behemoth. This one, in death, didn’t look any smaller. It was still fucking huge.

The captain threw back his head and laughed and the favour on his shoulder fluttered in the breeze.

Tom met his eye.

‘Sometimes, this is the best life I could ever have imagined,’ the captain said.

‘That’s why we love you,’ Tom said.

Harndon – Desiderata

Lady Mary stood by the empty bedstead, and watched a pair of southern maids roll the feather mattress.

‘We’re taking too much,’ Desiderata said.

Diota laughed. ‘My sweet, you won’t lie easy without a feather bed. All the knights have them.’

‘The Archaics slept on the ground, rolled in a cloak.’ Desiderata swirled, admiring the fall of her side-slit surcote and the way the slightest breeze caught the thing. Silk. She’d seen silk before – silk garters, silk floss for embroidery. This was more like something from the aether. It was magic.

‘You cannot wear that without a gown,’ Diota said. ‘I can see your tits right through it, sweeting.’

Lady Mary turned away and looked out the window. I think that’s what the Queen had in mind, she thought to herself. She exchanged a look with Becca Almspend, who glanced up from her reading to smile her thin-lipped smile.

‘Sleeping on the ground under a cloak doesn’t sound any worse that being a maid in the Royal Barracks,’ Becca said. ‘In fact,’ she glared at Lady Mary, ‘perhaps in a military camp, your friends don’t come and steal your blankets?’

The Queen smiled at Lady Mary. ‘Really, Mary?’

Mary shrugged. ‘I have seven sisters,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean to take other people’s blankets. It just happens.’ Her eyes twinkled.

The Queen stretched, rose on her toes like a dancer, and then settled, arms slightly outstretched, as if she was posing for a portrait. ‘I imagine we’ll all sleep together,’ she said.

Almspend shook her head. ‘Pin your cloak to your bodice, that’s my advice, my lady.’

Diota snorted. ‘She won’t sleep under a cloak. She’ll have a feather bed in a tent the size of a palace.’

The Queen shrugged, and the maids packed.

Lady Almspend worked her way down the day’s list. The preparations of the king’s baggage train – and then of the Queen’s – had made Lady Almspend a much more important person.

‘War horses for my lady’s squires,’ she said.

The Queen nodded. ‘How goes that task?’

Almspend shrugged. ‘I asked young Roger Calverly to see to it. He has a head on his shoulders and he seems to be trustworthy with money. But he’s come back to report that there are simply no war horses to be had. Not for anything.’

The Queen stamped her foot. It didn’t make much noise, small as it was and clad in a dance slipper, but the maids stopped moving and stood still. ‘This is not acceptable,’ she said.

Rebecca raised an eyebrow. ‘My lady, this is a matter of military reality. I asked questions this morning at first breakfast in the men’s hall.’

Diota made a spluttering sound of outrage, perhaps she did it too often, but it still effective. ‘You was in the men’s hall for breakfast, you hussy? Wi’out an escort?’

Almspend sighed. ‘There aren’t any women likely to know much about the price of war horses, now, are there, Diota?’ She rolled her eyes with the effectiveness that only a woman of seventeen can muster. ‘Ranald has taken me to the men’s hall as a guest. And-’ She paused and cleared her throat a little awkwardly, ‘And I had an escort.’

‘Really?’ Lady Mary asked. ‘Sir Ricar, I suppose?’

Lady Rebecca looked at the ground. ‘He hadn’t left yet – he was eager enough to help me.’

Diota sighed.

The Queen looked at her. ‘And?’

Almspend shrugged. ‘Alba doesn’t breed enough horses for all its knights,’ she said. ‘We import them from Galle, Morea and the Empire.’ She looked at her friend defiantly. ‘Sir Ricar explained it to me.’

The Queen stared at her secretary. ‘Gentle Jesu and Mary his mother. Does the king know?’

Almspend shrugged. ‘My lady, the past week has revealed that men conduct war without women with all the efficency and careful planning that they do anything else without us.’

Diota let out a most unladylike snort.

Lady Mary laughed aloud. ‘Is there beer involved?’ she asked.

The Queen shook her head. ‘You mean to say we don’t have enough war horses to mount our own knights, and no one cares?’

Lady Almspend shrugged. ‘I won’t say no one cares. I could gurantee that no one has taken any thought for it.’

‘What of remounts?’ the Queen asked. ‘Horses die. Like flies. I’m sure I’ve heard that said.’

Almspend shrugged.

Lady Mary nodded. ‘But Becca – you must have a plan.’ Somewhat cattily, she added, ‘You always do.’

Lady Almspend smiled at her, immune to her sarcasm. ‘As it happens I do. If we can raise a thousand florins we can purchase a whole train of Morean horses. The owner is camped outside the ditch. I met with him this morning and offered for his whole string. Twenty-one destriers.’

The Queen hugged her impulsively.

Diota shook her head. ‘We have no money, sweeting.’

The Queen shrugged. ‘Sell our jewels.’

Diota stepped up to the smaller woman. ‘Don’t be an arse, sweet. Those jewels are all you have if he dies. You don’t have a baby. If he goes down, no one will want you.’

The Queen looked steadily at her nurse. ‘Diota – I allow you nearly unlimited liberties.’

The older woman flinched.

‘But you talk and talk, and sometimes your mouth runs away with you,’ the Queen continued, and Diota backed away.

The Queen spread her arms. ‘You have it precisely backwards, dear heart. If the king dies, everyone will want me.’

The silence was punctuated only by the barking of dogs outside. Diota quailed. Lady Mary pretended to be somewhere else, and Becca opened her book.

But finally, Diota straightened her spine. ‘All I’m saying is let the king look to his own war horses. Tell the squires where they can buy them and let them squeeze their rich parents for the money. When you sell your jewels, sweeting, you will have nothing.’

The Queen stood very still. Then she smiled her invulnerable smile at her nurse. ‘I am what I am,’ she said. ‘Sell the jewels.’